Jan 9, 2016 Young Thug's melodic contour (when not autotuned) often follows the "Law of Gravity" defined in Arabic Music. In the words of Arabic music scholar Johnny Farraj: "...the same note is not always played with the same exact pitch. The pitch may vary slightly, depending on the melodic flow and what other notes are played before and after that note. The idea behind this effect is to round sharp corners in the melody by drawing the furthest notes nearer. This effect is sometimes called the law of attraction, or gravity." I have isolated Thug's vocal line in the song 'No Way' from 'Slime Season', and run it through the software Melodyne by Celemony. This produced the following visualization [scroll down until you can no longer see this text]:
Jan 9, 2016 ive been reading through the melodic one and this is incredible. basically means thug is a melodic genius and his haters s---.
Jan 9, 2016 this parts the best cuz i can actually understand what hes talking about lmao Part Five: Text Painting in Young Thug This section is what all this analysis has been building up to, and is key to understanding Young Thug's music. Text Painting is when the musical gesture corresponding to a set of lyrics accentuates the meaning. This is similar to the previous section's idea of Melodic Logic complementing Lyrical content; but Text Painting is more gesture-based, surface level, and most importantly perceptible. Our first (and my favourite) example of this is from the hook of the song 'All Over'
Jan 9, 2016 Text Painting can also be done without words, if you're really clever. Excerpt from Verse 1: Wanna put that p---- p---- in the sky, Wanna make that p---- squirt without a try, I might hit that p---- wrong and make it ry, If I start from the ground I'll hit the sky, Comments: At the end of each line, the "ay-ay" makes you move your mouth in a somewhat sensual manner. Oral stimulation, the subject of some the lyrics, through phonetics. "Tell Em" - Rich g--- ft. Young Thug, Rick Homie Quan Excerpt from Hook: Imma pull up eat on that p---- and dip Comments: Try saying this line a couple times, you should feel it.
Jan 9, 2016 ok this guy tryina be me or something: Before sending it out into the world, I showed my dear grandmother this site. I played excerpts of various Young Thug songs, and she was vibing with it way more than I expected! Her familiarity with Indian music allowed her to hear important musical qualities; particularly melody, contour, vocal inflexions, and to an extent repeating rhythmic patterns. This made it very easy to explain to her what I heard, how I went about the analysis, as well as the larger structure of the music. Indian music consists of 'Ragas' (Melodic) and 'Talam' (Rhythmic). Ragas are the "basic musical modes which express different moods in certain characteristic progressions, with more emphasis placed on some notes than others." What better way to describe Young Thug's vocal lines? A Tala is a "regular, repeating rhythmic phrase, particularly as rendered on a percussive instrument with an ebb and flow of various intonations, intensities, or speeds." Pretty accurate descripion of beats by producers such as Metro Boomin, London, and Wheazy. Moreover, if she had been able to understand the lyrics, she would have been appalled and worried for my life - she's very conservative, and the fact that I'm even listening to music like this would disturb her. Nevertheless, the phonological richness of his music was what she listened for and appreciated. Thank you for going through this website. I hope you can now listen to Young Thug more closely, and more generally learned some useful things about music. narsh shows young thug to his parents: https://forum.sectioneighty.com/narsh-shows-young-thug-to-his-parents.t49030/#post-1351276
Jan 9, 2016 One major difference is, I believe, that Jim Morrison and The Doors crafted songs with broader scope. They combined well-developed lyrics & images, musicality & virtuosity, and overall a distinctive, powerful sound. I think it's fair to say that The Doors were trying to "say more" than Young Thug is. This leads me to the notion that Young Thug is the polar opposite of Bob Dylan. Young Thug's music has much richer Phonological content than that of Bob Dylan. & Bob Dylan's music has much richer Semantic content than that of Young Thug. You then say "But Bob Dylan's voice wasn't bad at all, in fact it was pretty good" I then say "But Young Thug's music doesn't mean nothing, in fact, it actually talks about quite a lot" Young Thug's instrumental accompanimant is imaginative: the nature of synthesizers as flexible instruments allows the timbre of the sound to capture a mood or feeling. Bob Dylan's powerful guitar, and more uniquely the harmonica, brings listeners into his 'sound world' within which he is talented and expressive on these instruments. Bob Dylan's magic is on the surface level. His lyrics (surface level feature) are resoundingly brilliant; and his sound is distinctive and captivating enough. Young Thug's magic is underlying, below the surface level. His lyrics are not the distinguishing feature of his music but not bad either; and his sound is incredibly distinctive, rich with expressivity and phonological meaning (underlying feature). Note: Surface level does not mean superficial. It means that the feature is more prominent and perceptible in the texture.
Jan 9, 2016 Alright @Narsh cut the BS we all know this is you, no way there's another indian that loves Thug more than you.
