Melody: Cliffs of Dover - Eric Johnson

Cliffs of Dover is a piece of music without any vocals, played almost entirely on guitar.

In this version of the song, it opens with feedback and generally improvised plucking. The melody does not actually start until 0:26.

Since it is played by guitar and does not need to worry about the human vocal range like many melodies in popular music, Cliffs of Dover has a very wide range, going from very low to very high. Also, since guitars obviously don't need to breathe, the phrases are quite long.

While there are some very obviously jarring and disjunct notes, the song as a whole has a very smooth contour, sliding easily up and down in pitch.

While singing something based on this melody would probably be fairly easy, due in part to the generally smooth contour, trying to sing every note in the actual melody of this song would probably be a nightmare. The notes come out very rapidly and in very long phrases, and they also change pitch very rapidly. This melody was not meant to be sung, but rather it was meant to be played in the guitar or something similar.

Contrary to Will I, Cliffs of Dover is all about embellishment and showing off. The rapid speed of the song and changing notes indicates that well enough, but many of the notes are also accented with vibrato.

Melody: Will I, Rent

The song Will I, from the Broadway musical Rent is a very downplayed and emotional song. Many of the characters in Rent are infected with AIDS, in a time where it was even more of a mystery than it is today. Some of them attend a support group called Life Support. As is said by one of the characters, Angel, "Some people don't have anywhere else to go[.]"

Overall, this song has a generally narrow range. The piece is meant to be very humble and personal, and is not a piece meant to show off voices. Will I is just one melody repeated over and over throughout the group, creating harmonies and a polyphony, but still coming back to the one melody.

As the short melody progresses, the sub phrases get slightly longer, ending with open cadences. The characters here are asking questions and searching for more, and the way the melody is sung shows this.

The tune is generally conjunct, flowing smoothly from one note to the next, going gradually up in pitch the entire time. The most jarring disjunct is when the melody ends and it goes back to the beginning, dropping in pitch.
As such, it is a very singable melody--it was written to be sung.

Texture: Still Alive, Portal

Still Alive, the ending credits song from the video game Portal, became an overnight cult classic. A perfect ending to a perfect game, Still Alive is sung by the main villain of the game, GLaD0S; a murderous, sentient robot; after you supposedly destroy her.

Still Alive is very different from The Confrontation. There is only once singing voice in Still Alive, for example, so the texture of this piece is based almost entirely on the instruments.

(NOTE: my times are off about six seconds on this timeline. I was writing based on my mp3 of the song, and the YouTube version has six seconds of set-up before the music starts.)
0:00 - GLaD0S's voice enters by itself and the song is briefly monophonic
0:01 - Electric (possibly synthesized?) harp enters
0:17 - Shakers enter
0:31 - Drums enter
0:45 - Electric bass enters, bells replace harp
0:53 - bells exit, leaving voice, bass, drums and shakers
1:23 - Electric guitar enters and becomes lead instrument, synthesizer enters
1:45 - Synthesizer, guitar and bass exit, leaving voice, harp and shakers
1:57 - Electric guitar enters
2:01 - Electric bass enters
2:15 - Synthesizer enters, harp exits
2:30 - Synthesizer exits
2:52 - All instruments fade abruptly
2:54 - Voice exits
2:56 - Song ends

The instruments in this song are all very specifically electronic instruments. The premise of the game is that you, the player, are in a large building that is only inhabited by GLaD0S and other, non-sentient, robots. It could easily be assumed that the game takes place in the future, but it never explicitly stated. Technology is a major focal point of the game, so having acoustic instruments for the song--while it may sound nice--would not fit in with the theme of the game.

Texture: The Confrontation - Les Miserables

The confrontation is one of my favorite pieces of music to listen to in terms of texture. The incredible use of voice in this piece makes it both haunting and intense.

For this analysis, I used the 10th Anniversary edition, with Colm Wilkinson as Jean Valjean and Philip Quast as Inspector Javert for the Les Misérables 10th Anniversary Concert at London's Royal Albert Hall, 8th October 1995.

This piece was actually incredibly fun to break down:
0:00 - 0:54 - Two singers, playing Javert and Valjean, begin singing. They are both singing different melodies, but with effectively no overlap, making this part of the song homophonic, once you take the accompaniment into account.
0:54 - 1:38 - Javert and Valjean begin to each sing their own melodies at the same time and at the same volume. As the verses progress, they switch back and forth between who is singing louder, putting slightly more focus on one character or the other, but the difference in their dynamic level is never enough to drown one of them out. Character development happens in this part of the song. At 1:28, there is a very brief moment of homophony when both characters should "Javert!" at the same time, accenting both singers.
1:38 - 1:50 - Musical interlude. No voices during this time, and only one instrument, making the texture monophonic.
1:50 - 2:07 - Javert "talks" to Valjean while Valjean "talks" to both Javert and Fantine. Both of them speak one at a time, bringing the texture back to homophony. During this part of the song, a lot of plot happens, so it has to be clear to the listener.
2:07 - 2:18 - Both singers sing the same words at the same time ("I swear to you, I will be there,") putting huge emphasis on them. This is the basis for the rest of the play. It is during this song that Valjean promises Fantine that he will be there for Cosette, and Javert swears that he will be "there," hunting Valjean to bring him to justice.

Throughout the song, there is minimal accompaniment and the focus is put on the characters and the singing voices.

Harmony: Seasons of Love, Rent

Seasons of Love, a song from the Broadway musical Rent, has probably the most well-known line from the production: "525,600 minutes, 525,000 moments so dear, 525,600 minutes, how do you measure, measure a year?"

One interesting thing about Seasons of Love in terms of harmony and melody is that for almost the entire first half of the song, it is sung in unison, the only harmony coming from the piano accompaniment. Then, once it first makes the switch into vocal harmony, there is very little, if any, unison singing.

The vocal harmonies start at 1:05 and continue almost uninterrupted until 2:58, going into unison or a single singer from 1:24 - 1:26 and again from 2:08 - 2:21.

The harmonic rhythm goes very slowly through the chorus (first heard at 1:09 in this video), quickly through the second male/female split (first heard at 1:31), especially in the male part, and moderately fast through the verses, where there is one prominent soloist and the other singers make vocalizations under them.
During these verses (from 1:37-2:10), the harmonic voices imitate instruments very softly, giving focus to the melodic line.

Harmony: Girl, The Beatles

Girl, by The Beatles, is among my favorite of their songs. I tend to enjoy songs that have a strong melody with patches of harmony, and this is a great example of one.

The harmonies in Girl are short, but they make a huge impact on the song as a whole. The added voices change the song from one guy lusting after this girl to all of the guys lusting after her. The vocal harmonies during the chorus (from 0:21-0:28, 0:50-0:58, 1:20-1:28, 1:50-1:58, and 2:20-2:28) when heard with the music behind it sounds like a deep, sweet sigh.

There are several examples of parallel harmonies in this song. The vocal harmonies during the chorus is an example of a repeated use of parallel harmony. You can also hear a parallel harmony from 2:00 - 2:20 instrumental interlude, where the harmony has two notes for every one that the harmony has.

You can also hear a variation on an upper drone from 1:01 - 1:19, when the harmonic voices are dinging "doot doot doot doot..." This is a drone because, while it is not in one continuous flow of pitch, the notes that are being sung change very infrequently.

Overall, the song has a slow harmonic rhythm and simple harmonies, mostly filling out chords.

Rhythm - Because, Across the Universe

Because, from the movie Across the Universe is a cover of the Beatles song by the same name. It is also an entirely different song from Daft Punk's Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger, my earlier rhythm analysis piece. I thought it would be more interesting that way.

Because has a very weak pulse right off the bat--it is not something you could dance or tap your foot to. If you listen closely, you can hear that is does had a beat, but it is also somewhat wavery. Occasionally, there are longer pauses between two notes than there was between the previous two.

This continues until about 1:09, when a soft guitar enters, steadying the beat overall.

The piece is done in a slightly exaggerated duple meter. As stated above, some notes are held slightly longer than others, preventing a totally steady rhythm.

The voices in the beginning of the song are very ethereal, keeping the beat very unclear and almost non-metric for the first minute or so.