- #1
Hornbein
- 1,182
- 894
I like to mix together dance with other music. What I've discovered that there are three cases. Sometimes it looks perfectly natural even though the tempos and beats have no relation to one another at all. Other times it is necessary to change tempo so that there is a simple ratio like 4/3. Other times only a match will do.
No particular point in this, just an interesting observation about psychology.
Recently I have been using a vocal from one song and music from another. Same thing with tempo. Sometimes you need to match it, sometimes not. There is the additional factor of the key. Usually but not always the singing and instruments need to be in related keys. There are programs that will change the key of music. Once this has been done the singing and backup fit together surprisingly often. That is, the minor changes of the tonal center called "chord changes" don't usually matter all that much. It's easy to merge together two radically different pieces of music in this way. One usually at least gets something interesting. If you get lucky the result is arguably better than either original.
All this is possible because popular music almost always has a steady tempo. It also helps that maybe 90% of popular music is structured on powers of two. Four beats per measure, eight measures per phrase, four phrases per verse, AABA form. Dramatic changes from one song tend to match those in another.
Popular music of the past was often a lot more harmonically complicated than what we have now. The Beatles were the last of that.
No particular point in this, just an interesting observation about psychology.
Recently I have been using a vocal from one song and music from another. Same thing with tempo. Sometimes you need to match it, sometimes not. There is the additional factor of the key. Usually but not always the singing and instruments need to be in related keys. There are programs that will change the key of music. Once this has been done the singing and backup fit together surprisingly often. That is, the minor changes of the tonal center called "chord changes" don't usually matter all that much. It's easy to merge together two radically different pieces of music in this way. One usually at least gets something interesting. If you get lucky the result is arguably better than either original.
All this is possible because popular music almost always has a steady tempo. It also helps that maybe 90% of popular music is structured on powers of two. Four beats per measure, eight measures per phrase, four phrases per verse, AABA form. Dramatic changes from one song tend to match those in another.
Popular music of the past was often a lot more harmonically complicated than what we have now. The Beatles were the last of that.