"Tokyo Sunrise" by LP

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Every once in a while, I will stumble across a song that crashes onto the couch of my mind and stays there for days like an out-of-town house-guest. I first heard the song above just a few days ago on Monday and it's been fading in and out of my mental soundtrack ever since. As I've previously discussed, sometimes what makes a song standout is a single, subtle twist on an old familiar convention. This song contains several. Here are a couple:

Thematic Production: When the song begins, you might not expect it to venture beyond the borders of the pop-ballad formula. There's a guitar, some percussion, and a singer, all strummin', drummin', and hummin' up a great tune. Around 1:05, some violins dance their way into the mix and begin to recolor the song. This is now the chorus ("Where you gonna go, where you gonna go?") and the instrumentation is busier than before with additional percussion and other subtleties added to the track. Then, at 1:36, following a sweeping vocal glissando (the cool thing she does at the end of the word "again") we're suddenly in the midst of a soaring, ethnically-themed ballad that immerses the listener into the "Tokyo" imagery.

Melody: Part of how the song conveys this theme to the listener is the melody that is being sung by the vocals and played by the strings. They are playing around a series of five notes (with a few exceptions) that sound good pretty much anywhere at any time during the song. Many melodies are based on this scale and although it is common in countless folk tunes all over the world, it sounds characteristically Oriental if played in a certain manner. Technically speaking, the song is in the key of F#, so the melody is being played with the F# major pentatonic scale. Here's a quick visual:

Typical F# major scale:                           F#     G#     A#     B     C#     D#     E     F#
Solfege ("do -  a deer, a female deer..."):            Do    Re      Mi     Fa    Sol    La      Ti    Do

F# major pentatonic scale:                     F#     G#     A#     -      C#     D#     -       F#
Solfege:                                                    Do    Re      Mi      -      Sol    La      -       Do

If you are near a keyboard, you can easily play it: Notice how all of the black-keys are in repeating pairs of two and three. For every group of three black keys, the F# is the first one on the left. Play only the black notes anywhere on the keyboard, and you are playing the notes of the F# pentatonic scale (F#, G#, A#, C#, D#). If you want to play along with the song, you're guaranteed to sound pretty good if you stick to these notes.

It is this smart use of the pentatonic scale that richly blends a new vibe into the track, uniquely distinguishing it from a standard, American pop radio song.

Meter: A songs meter describes part of the general format of the song. It determines how many beats (or 'counts') are in each measure (a repeating chunk of music). Regardless of genre, but especially in pop music, most songs tend to have four beats per measure. That means you could repeatedly and steadily count "1 - 2 -3 - 4" to the beat of the music. If you've ever seen a live performance, you may have noticed that the drummer (usually) will click their sticks and count these numbers out loud right before the band starts playing. By doing this, the drummer is counting each beat (the meter) so the band can get a sense of how fast (the tempo) they are about to play the song.

This song breaks that convention in a pretty major yet subtle way: It has seven beats per measure. Seven?!? Yes, seven. But the way it is played out in this song feels so natural that its almost unnoticeable at first.

To hear these beats, focus on the drums. They begin playing at the 0:10 mark, right when LP starts singing (on beat 1 of that particular measure). Notice that they are played in groups of two. They are playing on beats one, three, four, and seven of each measure throughout the song. See if you can count along. You may also notice that the general rhythm of the guitar and some other instruments follow this pattern (rewind to the beginning of the song and hear how the guitar is playing this rhythm even before the drums come in).

Songs with four beats per measure are usually pretty easy to dance or clap along with because four is a very even, rounded number. You would think that a song with seven beats would feel a little "wobbly." But not so here. There could be many reasons for this. I think the largest contributor is the singing. As listeners, our ears tend to be drawn to the vocalist in the band. The instruments play repeating sequences of music that ease into the background but the vocalist is singing words with specific definitions and those words change throughout the song, bringing them to the forefront of our attention. LP sings this song with a fairly relaxed vibe. Nothing about the singing communicates, "I'm singing over seven beats per measure and this is really difficult; I might lose count!" Coupled with the minimalistic rhythm of the drums, pounding out only every few beats, this musically mathematical anomaly is cleverly disguised.

Check out some of the songs that have recently found their way into your "favorites" playlist. Maybe you'll find some hidden gems within them too!

Childhood: Lost or found?

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I found this song recently on a Spotify playlist. I like it because the lyrics capture the sometimes wordless phenomenon that seems to be fairly common among individuals trekking their way through the wide world of adulthood. It seems to be a popular subject for artistic expression as it has been portrayed from many different perspectives in media such as "Stop This Train" by John Mayer, "Cat's in the Cradle" by Henry Chapin, and the book "Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger, just to name a few. 

This phenomenon, in a nutshell, is a feeling of loss in regards to childhood in the face of adulthood's challenges.  

This theme is all over the lyrics of this particular song as it depicts the stress of adulthood and changing values:

"I was told when I get older all my fears would shrink

But now I'm insecure and I care what people think...

Wish we could turn back time, to the good ol' days

When our momma sang us to sleep but now we're stressed out"

Does this ever happen to you? Do you ever notice yourself being overly conscious about what someone (or a whole lot of someones) are thinking about you? Do you wonder why that stresses you out when you might not have been concerned about it when you were younger? 

It sure happens to me at times. 

How come? It's not like the world with all of its problems wasn't there when we were little. The end of the song seems to provide a theory: 

"We used to play pretend, give each other different names

We would build a rocket ship and then we'd fly it far away

Used to dream of outer space but now they're laughing in our face

Saying, 'Wake up, you need to make money'"

Money. The turning of a child into a profitable cog in the economic machine. I think that's part of it. Perhaps money is a branch of a deeper root that feeds this nostalgic condition. 

When people look back on childhood, different words may come to mind. From the descriptions and depictions of childhood that I've come across, it seems to me that "carefree" is a common characteristic that many would agree is part of the ideal childhood. To be carefree can be interpreted many ways: without responsibility, without anxiety, without fear. This isn't the same as being lazy or ignorant. 

Think of how a child interacts with the world. They have a very small but growing library of knowledge, experience, and wisdom with which to operate. They haven't yet learned how to do things efficiently, gracefully, or professionally and haven't yet been taught the mechanics of qualities like greed, kindness, hatred, love, envy, or generosity. They're taking everything in and responding to it based on the basic elements of who they are. In other words, they're just being themselves and they're really good at it. The concept of "saving face" or "fake it 'till you make it" are as distant to them as stars in another galaxy. 

As a child grows up, those distant concepts come closer as they learn them through direct instruction and practice or through indirect observation. As we grow, we understand that there is more to do in life than to just be. We start learning concepts in school, getting grades, being rewarded or punished for our performance, getting jobs, getting paid, getting promoted or demoted. We start to realize that there are certain people we want to impress; friends, family, a potential employer, date, or spouse. Winning their favor feels good. Losing it feels bad. 

Here's a thought: Childhood is about learning to be, which provides the context for an adulthood of learning to do. When you were little, you didn't need the latest gadgets, cars, a fat paycheck, or be the popular prom king to be content. For the most part, you could probably keep yourself pretty well entertained by running around in the backyard, playing with sticks or drawing with chalk. As an adult, many people seek to build, learn, advance their careers, expand their circle of influence. 

I think the tension arises when the culture around us isolates childhood and adulthood from each other, treating them as if they are two completely different and irrelevant worlds. Society doesn't currently have a great system for rewarding people for being. It's more focused on the doing. Students are pressured to choose the best colleges, to pursue a major that will land them a job in a secure and profitable field, to strive for a well-polished GPA. Not that good grades and career choices are bad goals but like most things, when they're taken out of proper context, things can get messy. People start to be valued not for who they are but for what they can do. The message that looms over children like an ominous storm-cloud is often something like, "Enjoy these years because these are the best years of your life." Does that mean it's all downhill afterwards and the fun stops? Is it any wonder that adulthood can be intimidating and overly complicated? And is it any wonder, still, that so many people seem dissatisfied with it? 

I don't think that's the way it has to be though.

Rather than fostering a culture that segregates the wonder of childhood from the productivity of adulthood, we should be bridging them. The order should be something like: because of who you are, therefore do. That way, when the job falls through or you don't make as much money as everyone else around you, the world doesn't fall apart. You keep on truckin'. In other words, what you do, make, and produce should be qualities that grow like fruit from the rich soil of your identity. Not the other way around. 

In the bible, a very well-educated and formerly highbrow man named Paul wrote something quite profound when he said "I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret to being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want." What is that secret? "I can do all this through [Jesus] who gives me strength" (Phillippians 4:12-13). Paul knew that his identity was secure in the God that created it. That's why, even though being hungry and "living in want" were still challenging, he didn't freak out when those times came. His identity didn't hinge on whether or not he was able to bring home the bacon. Not exactly the motivation that propel some folks up the rungs of the ol' corporate ladder.

So what about us? Do we treat ourselves (or others) as though we're worthless without a six-digit bank account to prove other-wise? Are the raw components of our identities, unmasked in childhood, a far-off blip in our memory that is preserved only in photo albums and fuzzy home-videos? 

A lot of good can be done to change the world. But what we do to change it isn't everything. 

Just a thought.