This "Eleanor Rigby" remix started showing up in my social media feeds a couple of weeks ago. It's titled, "The Beatles - Eleanor Rigby (but all notes are E and F)." With conceptual remixes like this, the title contains all the necessary information. Literally every single pitch class in the entire song has been transposed to an E or an F. When I first clicked on the link, I expected it to be super monotonous, but it's actually not as intolerable as I thought it would be. Part of the reason for the relative amount of variety is that the creator, Uberphawx, used Es and Fs in different octaves, for both the string accompaniment and the vocal line. Here is the way the beginning of the vocal line of the first verse sounds in the original recording:
And here is the remixed version:
Despite the fact that there are only two pitch classes involved, we hear three different intervals: minor seconds, major seconds, and octaves (later in the song). The vocal phrases tend to end on F during inconclusive moments (akin to half cadences) and on E at more conclusive moments (akin to authentic cadences). E clearly remains the pitch center in the remix. Each pitch of the original melody was not randomly assigned to either E or F; rather, some thought was given to phrasing, which makes the track much more listenable. Similar to Schoenberg's retention of classical form, phrasing, and instrumentation when he abandoned pitch centricity, this retention of melodic phrasing gives the listener a familiar element to make the unusual less confusing.
There are other conceptual remixes, too. For example, "'Africa' by Toto but every word is in alphabetical order," by Dan is my Name.
Again, the concept is in the title. The intro proceeds exactly like the original, but then the lyrics begin, "A a a above Africa Africa Africa Africa Africa Africa Africa along ancient as away away away become..." This one is less "listenable" than the Beatles' remix above, because no alteration was done to any of the pitches or rhythms. Each word is simply cut from its original context and placed into alphabetical order. This remix actually functions similarly to text-analysis software (like Voyant), in that you can see/hear a frequency count for each word of the song as it goes by, and you can also hear whether or not that word is always in the same melodic/harmonic context or not. For example, when the word "Africa" is sung (seven times), the song becomes repetitive, like a record that is skipping. It's a high-frequency word in the song, and it's always placed in the same context. The word "do" also appears seven times, but it doesn't sound like a skipping record because it's not always used in the same melodic/harmonic context. There is also an interesting moment at 3:35 - the words "drums echoing" are presented in their original sequence ("I hear the drums echoing tonight" are the first words of the song), because they happen to be next to each other in alphabetical order as well. As far as I can tell, it's the only time that happens in the remix.
A final example is "Outkast - Hey Ya! but everytime they say 'Uh' or 'Alright' it gets faster," by Conor Thacker.
Once again, it's fairly clear what to expect from the title of the remix. It actually starts at a slower-than-normal speed, probably to accommodate for some sort of limit on the creator's equipment on how much a track can be sped up (or to keep the song from ending too soon). The first tempo alteration happens right at the beginning, as André 3000's lyrics begin, "One, two, three, uh!" A second shift occurs at 0:11 with another, "Uh!" That second tempo shift brings the song up to its original speed, and it lasts only until 0:26. At this point, it started to become funny to me just how many "uh!"s are in this song. The normalcy that is maintained in this remix is the pitch; it stays the same as the tempo is sped up, avoiding the chipmunk effect. Anyone who knows "Hey Ya!" might be waiting in anticipation for the moment that André 3000 sings, "Alright alright alright alright alright alright alright alright alright alright alright alright alright alright!" That moment is contained somewhere in the last two seconds of the 1:52 track. The song has been sped up so many times before that pivotal moment that it's a little hard to tell where it really begins, and the moment itself demands fourteen tempo shifts at such quick succession that it brings about the end of the track extremely quickly.
It could be easy to dismiss these conceptual remixes and others like them as being un-musical and pointless, but I think they're more than that. Each of these tracks reveals something about its source song that perhaps wasn't immediately obvious, and they reveal these moments in clever/humorous ways.
Comments