Song Deconstruction

For this blog i will be using the song Somebody That I Used to Know by Gotye and There With You by Ne-Yo

Goyte – Somebody I Used to Know

Phase 1

Tempo: Medium

Source: The percussion is supplying the rhythm.

Groove: Makes you feel the person’s pain that he goes through with the song

Phase 2

Instrumentation: Guitars and drums and the funny little pad sound in the back are what make the song.

Organization: The song starts off slow and picks up with intensity as it goes along and drops back to silence

Emotional Architecture: It starts off slow and gets strong at the emotional part where you’re supposed to feel the most pain.

Phase 3

Balance: Both high and low frequencies were used interchangeably.

Width: The song was balanced for the entire song, not a lot of panning going on.

Depth: Song used many instruments at different parts of the song with level volume.

Ne-Yo – There With You

Phase 1

Tempo: Medium Tempo

Source: Rhythm comes from the piano and the percussion

Groove: Gives off of a comforting vibe to the song as well as a relaxed tune.

Phase 2

Instrumentation: Many different instruments: piano, guitar, bass and drums.

Organization: It keeps the same tone throughout the song so the organization is pretty straightforward.

Emotional Architecture: Feels relaxing and calming. It wants to take you away to another land with its melody.

Phase 3

Balance: All frequencies were used in sync.

Width: the piano seems to pan left to right pretty rapidly.

Depth: everything is level and at a good volume.

These songs are two completely different songs, each from a different genre and different artists.  However, they do have some similarities with the fact that they both talk about past pain from other people.  The song Somebody That I Used to Know has to deal with people who were once close, but are now complete strangers.  It explores the pain of both the man and the woman in the situation and how one has moved on while the other has not.  In the song There With You, Ne-Yo sings about the girl he is talking to, and how she wants to get away from the world that she lives in to a paradise better and beyond.  The woman is hurting from her environment and longs for something better.  Both songs share a certain aspect of pain, but the lyrical content of them as explained above is entirely different.  As looked at by the listening phases above this, the songs are from two different genres with the melodies moving in different ways.  The first song uses its melody to make you feel the pain that the artist is portraying with its lyrics.  In There With You, the melody attempts to take you to another land and into the mind of the woman he’s talking about.  Both of the melodies in my opinion succeed in their uses of the melody.  I can feel the pain of Gotye in his lyrics and the melody to accompany his feelings of being forgotten after something beautiful had ended.  Ne-Yo takes me away into the fantasy world of the woman’s mind and her want to be taken away to another world, to her utopia.  Goyte uses intensity a little more than Ne-Yo in his song.  For example, during the hook of his song he brings more instruments and turns up the volume on all of the instruments and he screams the lyrics of his song at the top of his lungs to intensify the feeling of his pain.  Ne-Yo just keeps the same mood in the entire song so there is no real change because once you get into the land of her mind, then that’s where you would want to stay.  I like both songs equally so I cannot say that I like one better than the other.