The Sound Of Silence
Posted by andy gallant on 19 May 2008 - 3:38pm.
As The Tremeloes sang, 'Silence Is Golden' and when a tune is punctuated with the odd spot of zilch it can be uncannily uplifting. Perhaps the most obvious song tht springs to mind is Steve Harley's 'Come Up And See Me (Make Me Smile)' which is dotted with deliberate breaks namely at .56secs/1.48/2.19/3.11 - all respectively making the song richer. Any other examples of note? (Apologies if this subject has already been covered).
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i agree totally Andy..
i was having a chat about this with a mate of mine and how it's almost the musical equivalent of the very *end* point of a bungee jump JUST before you get cracked back by the elastic. It has an effect of holding the tune in suspension such that when it kicks back in, there's a kind of rush about it.
Might I add it's a fecks sight more effective than a boring key change (http://www.gearchange.org/)
And for the equivalent of it in shiny pop music - take a listen to that wonderful Groove Armada/Mutya tune from last year - there's a point in it where there's 4 'empty' bars (okay there's a drum beat there) and you can just sense when the groove it going to come back in, and it does so wonderfully!
Done it already!
I mentioned then "John John" by the Tansads and "Temptation Waits" Garbage. But is not the cracker Born to Run, with its false ending and gap, then the milli-second 1-2-3-4 shout from Bruce, motoring it all back home?
Luvverly!
Always thought that...
...it was often the gaps in songs, those little infinitesimal spaces, that make songs interesting.
Instances that spring to mind straight away include three Bowie songs:
- the gap at the end of "Young Americans" following the line "and ain't there one damn song that can make me break down and cry..." before the drums bring in the groove again
- the small space in "Wild Is The Wind" after the stretched out unaccompanied line "don't you know you're life, itself!...", again before the round-the-kit drums bring continue the so-smooth sound
- the briefest of pauses before "wham, bam, thank you man" on Suffragette City
The other obvious one is at the end of the live version of U2's "Sunday, Bloody Sunday", where everything stops, the crowd whoops, and then the drums kick back in for a brief reprise.
I'm sure there are others, but that'll do for now.
1-2-3-4!
My favourite is the pause in the Ramones' "Rockaway Beach" after which Tommy Ramone comes back in with 4 tom-tom smashes...
William Tell
The Candyman did a phone in about this subject not so long ago. the winner? The one that goes:
Daddl-ah ... daddl-ah ... daddl-ah dad dad dad-ah ... daddl-ad-dad-dad daddl-ad-dad-dad daddl-ad-dad-dad-dad-dah!
(deep breath)
duddle-um, duddle-um, duddle-um-dum-dum, duddle-um duddle-um, duddle-um-dum-dum
Oh, you know...
Unfashionable perhaps...
...but the break to silence in the Alan Parsons Project instrumental tune "Where's the Walrus?" gets me every time... shivers right up the spine!
I saw that Alan Project person. . .
live about five years ago. It was the worst concert I've ever been to. Laughably bad, in fact. He had a singer of the approximate calibre of round 2 of the East Midlands auditions for Pop Idol, who kept going "Yeah! Woo! C'mon!" and jumping up and down as if he needed to go to the toilet. The audience response was total silence and a thousand "oh, my good God" stares.
The Project Person stood at the back throughout, with a beatific grin on his face as he stretched forwards to reach the strings of his acoustic guitar. (The guitar was a yard in front of his shoulders, owing to a particularly exaggerated case of the girth issues that to varying degrees probably affect many of us now).
It was all so ghastly - in a Prog Goes to Pontins sort of way - that I was actually rather disappointed when it finished.
Someone should have had a quiet word and told him that being a legend at the board doesn't necessarily guarantee that you'll be one on the boards.
The Bea tles
Hello Goodbye stops then has the Hey-la hey-hello-a repeat to fade, joyous ending.
Ballad of John and Yoko gets a bit worked up then a pause then a bit more relaxed.
It all adds to the magic.
Garbage
The stuttering guitar works well for me.
On 'Bow Down To Me' from their 1st album - thought I'd better put that in there...