...It's Hank Williams + Van Halen, of course! Anyone who has read my work or seen any of my conference presentations knows that I love David Lee Roth with an inexplicable passion. I'm aware of how ridiculous he is; it's part of the appeal. I write about a lot of Van Halen mashups, both because of this love, and also because there are many good ones out there! A quick Google search reveals a wealth of isolated David Lee Roth vocals on the internet.
Several people sent me a link to this Bill McClintock mashup last week, "Your Jumpin' Heart" by Vank Walen:
Like most of my favorite mashups, it features a genre clash (country/rock), artists from different time periods, and a melody reharmonization. The original vocal line is set over the famous keyboard riff in "Jump" by Van Halen. I've notated it here, for the nerds:
McClintock has re-set this vocal line to the accompaniment from the classic Hank Williams song "Your Cheatin' Heart, " and it fits beautifully:
No transposition is necessary here; both songs are originally in C major, and remain so for the mashup. That isn't a deal-breaker when selecting songs to mix together, but it can be convenient, especially because transposing (especially vocals) can result in degradation of sound quality.
As I mentioned before, this is a reharmonization, but not a drastic one. Even though the styles of the two songs are incredibly different, they both use four-measure phrases, and they both use exclusively I, IV, and V chords. The reharmonization comes because the harmonic rhythm is different in each of the source songs, as are the inversions. For example, a C pedal tone underlies in the entire first phrase in "Jump" while the chords change with the right hand of the keyboard (V, I, IV, V, I, IV), in "Your Cheatin' Heart," the harmony only changes once in the same amount of time, and the bassline is much more active, alternating between the root and fifth of each chord.
There is one spot where McClintock had to transpose David Lee Roth's vocal line to get it to fit with Hank Williams's accompaniment. Take a look at the original vocals in "Jump," transcribed here:
This E with the chromatic lower neighbor works well over the A minor chord in its original context, but at this point in the Hank Williams song, the chord being played is F major. McClintock simply transposed Roth's vocals up a half step (and altered the rhythm so that the eighth notes are swung) to make it fit in its new landscape:
All in all, it's a really fantastic mashup. The best ones, of course, you never see coming. They involve truly odd pairings that cause a reaction of surprise when the listener hears how well two unrelated songs can sound together, and "Your Jumpin' Heart" definitely falls into this category. (Bonus: DLR's "Aha!" at 1:14. I laughed out loud.)
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