Consider these numbers I found myself writing on the whiteboard a couple of days ago:
While it might look like something from math class or some kind of scoring tally, these numbers actually represent notes students were to play on their 64-pad MIDI controllers. The controllers look like what you see below, and the "Bb Aeolian" written at the top reminds students that these very flexible controllers are meant to be programmed for this exercise in rows of B-flat Aeolian, meaning the first and last note of each row is a B-flat (the tonic) and the notes are in the Aeolian Mode, which is basically the same thing as natural minor. [Restricting the pitches to the notes in a given mode simplifies playback for students, although this setup does not allow the use of pitches not in the key - so, in the key of A Minor, this would be like giving students only the white keys of a piano.]
The goal for the students in this Digital Music Production class was to play the very popular right-hand piano hook from Still D.R.E., a 1999 song by the rapper Dr. Dre. I honestly didn't even really know this music (at least by name) until the past few years when it became apparent that a lot of students enjoy learning to play it on the piano - perhaps a modern addition to the "I can sort of play piano" canon of "The Knuckle Song," "Chopsticks," and "Heart and Soul."
For reasons I don't really understand, this intro music has become very meme-able. I remember a few years ago when a student in my high school choir got up and played it spontaneously, and it was clear the whole room of students was more impressed with that than anything I'd ever done. You can find lots of videos where performers get a big reaction by transitioning into this. (A common trick seems to be to take the slow-moving arpeggios from Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and then speed them up until they become the quickly rolled chords in Dr. Dre's song. Note that the sheet music below does not show the chords as rolled, but that's the way it's played.)
It's not that difficult to play on the piano, though the accidentals required for B-flat Minor make it a little trickier to teach/learn. (Lots of "easy" online versions put it in A Minor in which everything can be played on white keys.) But since our class mostly uses these pad-controllers, this was a nice way to give them something to play that requires some coordination and helps learn about modes and even voice-leading. I don't actually use the term "voice-leading," but the fact the chords change one note at a time with notes changing by step is part of what makes things sound smooth - and fairly easy to memorize. Anyway, here's a demo video I made that shows students how to play it. (My chords are a little out of sync because I tried to use my fingers in a way that makes it easy for students to see which pads to play.)
The next video shows how these chords sync with the simpler bass line - which was recorded separately into a different track. I just put the two videos side by side. You'll notice I did not start the bass line on the upbeat, as happens in the original song, because once the two-bar loop is recorded into MIDI, one can easily loop these two bars while also pulling out an upbeat to start if desired. If you're curious and don't know much about MIDI, the 64-pad controller doesn't make any sounds on its own. It is sending information to software (in this case, the educational platform Soundtrap) which routes the data through virtual instruments. Unfortunately, here my right-hand knuckles do block the camera view a bit.
A Facebook friend (and former student) made the insightful guess that the series of numbers I posted might be related to Chopin's famous Prelude in E Minor, for which the left hand has a series of slowly repeating three-note chords that are not unlike what's shown above. In this case as well, the pitches in the chords almost always change by step, though sometimes two at a time, and also using lots of chromatic notes. Although the controllers we use can be set to show the non-scale pitches, it wouldn't look as cool as the videos above because the chords would not all sit neatly on a single row.
DRE
In this case, the first eight chords would still be 3-5-8 (first inversion triads), with a switch to 2-4-8 in the next bar. In both the Chopin and Still D.R.E., the chord changes feature lots of suspensions - notes which lag behind changing harmonies, creating extra tension before the suspensions resolve. For example, the downbeat of the second complete bar of Still D.R.E. would be F Minor if the top note (Bb) would just go ahead and move straight to the Ab it's headed towards. But the delay in resolution adds drama and interest. A lot of the emotional power in Chopin's famous one-pager (in which the "melody" often stubbornly sticks to one note) comes from these suspensions and the eerily twisting harmonies they navigate.
And here's where...well, this is really what always seems to happen. I was writing this post (having prepared everything above), meaning simply to include a passing reference to the Chopin...but then I thought about how to show the connection...and...well...here you...go:
Honestly, I think it's pretty sweet. It's true that Chopin's music dominates, with the high, plunky arpeggios of Still D.R.E. brought into the same middle register as Chopin's chords. I shifted the timing of most of Chopin's mid-measure chord changes to reflect more of the Dr. Dre feel, and of course the octaves in the bass pay tribute there as well.
But to return to the series of numbers with which I started, I always marvel to realize musical sounds which seem so expressive and which can arouse such a strong emotional reaction, can so easily be reduced to numbers. And in this case, distancing a little from each work by viewing them as number patterns helped make the connection between two very different musical worlds clear. I think I may have thought of this Dr. Dre/Chopin connection before, but I love that it was a student's incorrect but insightful guess which led me down this unexpected path.
I would add that working with MIDI and the "Piano Roll" style way in which one interacts with notes and rhythms has also been reinforcing this math-music connection. Obviously, musical notation can easily be interpreted as representing numeral relationships once you know how to read it, but the numberiness gets a little lost in the mix with all the mysterious symbols. I could even compress the information above to make it more elegant: [{3-5-8} x 4 ] + [ {2-5-8} x 3 ] + [ {2-5-7} x 5 ]. But I don't suppose anyone is going to bop their head along to that....
UPDATE: In a blog which is obsessed with the principle of interconnected hyperlinks, I can't believe I forgot to mention my previous mashups of Still D.R.E. with music by Vivaldi. I do think there's a touch of the "classic" in this modern hip-hop beat which adds to its old-school appeal among the young. And note that the idea of interconnected thoughts/concepts (in a blog in which just about every post can be linked backwards or forwards to some other post) also played out in how my new Chopin/D.R.E. creation evolved from the interconnected back and forth that happens on Facebook. My former student's guess about Chopin functioned as a sort of hyperlink which led to new ideas which I can now connect back to even older ideas. It's the circle of links.
UPDATE #2 (5/8): I realized I was a little disappointed at how little the opening of this mashup sounds like the original Still D.R.E. - for two* likely reasons. 1) The key is transposed by a tritone (6 half-steps), so even someone without perfect pitch will likely notice a different feeling. 2) The distance between the Still D.R.E. left hand and right hand registers is compressed by two octaves. This a good reminder about how much register spacing can change the music's character. The wide expanse between treble and bass elements in the original Still D.R.E. sets up a particular kind of texture which allows the listener easily to hear each part as distinct. Because I decided I still wanted Chopin's melody on top, I dropped the triads an octave after the short intro, but the bass notes are still an octave lower (relationally) than in the first version I posted. I also began the intro by rolling the triads a bit before they settle into something more like Chopin's version.
* A third factor not addressed here is that the slower tempo also made it less Dre-like.
UPDATE #3 (5/8): And...just like that, a third option which is closer to the original Still D.R.E. tempo.
