“Paranoid” from the band Black Sabbath was released in 1970 featured on the album Paranoid. ‘Parnoid’, one of Black Sabbaths iconic songs is equipped with heavy riffs and repeated rhythms giving it the ability to stand alone and out from the crowd.
In this short essay I will discuss “Paranoid” in relation to Albin Zak’s 5 categories: Musical Performance, Echo, Timbre, Ambience and Texture. Alongside these categories I will also discuss what makes this song iconic and what ingredients are mixed together to form their famous ‘sonic signature’.
Musical performance is a key ingredient for any song being performed, without a type of performance would you have music? Musical performance does not only mean live performance in-front of an audience
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So how does a performer, in this case, Black Sabbath, captivate the audience to listen to their music even with repetitive rhythms and no visual stimulus?
One thing that captivates a listener of “Paranoid” is the use of panning and 3D sound recording to enrapture a surround, full sounding track. The iconic opening riff (which is one of the most famous heavy metal opening riffs of all time (Staff, 2007)) is a great example of this, it is only played in the left ear from 0:00-0:07. “Paranoid” also features a repetitive rhythm and a steady cymbal beat leaving it easy to tap along to: this “motif” so to speak, can be heard from 1:00-1:11.
Not a lot was lost in the transformation from live to recorded as they didn't use many techniques which can create a larger impact such as auto-tuning and so there was a similarity between the live and recorded edition making it more enjoyable to listen to. The studio recoded track being parallel to the live recording gives the listener an authentic feel; what you hear is what you
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In short it is the ‘sonic colour’ which distinguishes the genre and/or artist thus transforming the music itself. The sonic colour can act in two different ways: Physical; meaning the actual sonic properties of the genre or artists and Rhetorical; the symbol associations within a particular sound.
“Paranoid” by Black Sabbath is a perfect example of timbre and ‘sonic colour’ that has greatly influenced many bands in their shadow with a few sub-genres spawning from its genre: heavy metal.
“Paranoid” doesn't feature a stereotypical sound, it features a dark and heavy one. This is due to the flattening of the tuning of the guitar into E flat by Tony Iommi. Along with this down-tuning, Black Sabbath was also very fond of using the Locrian scale (B to B) and the minor pentatonic scale which ended up influencing many big bands in the future such as Metallica. Metallica used an augmented fourth/diminished fifth (also known as a tritone) in many of their songs.
Black Sabbath also had a highly charged tempo in their songs (“Paranoid” being a prime example). This physical act of ‘sonic colour’ influenced the founding of thrash
Napalm Records have set to become a haven for stoner fans. The label saw the rising interest in this type of music, so they started testing the grounds by signing some classic acts such as Karma to Burn, Monster Magnet or Brant Bjork. Soon after, another wave arrived with psychedelic groups like My Sleeping Karma, Glowsun or the hard rock/blues of The Sword or Zodiac. To complement these lighter bands, the Austrian label grabbed British “caveman battle doom” heroes, Conan. A bold move, however, Blood Eagle is a solid record that introduced these guys to a vast audience that eats this music for breakfast.
Summarise and discuss the presentations of mental health in the two newspaper articles given in Appendix 1. (1500 words).
Chapter 18 was engaging to read and discuss in class. Throughout the chapter, we were give a detailed description of two concepts that came to life during the 1960s and further on. One of these concepts was, ‘The Power Trios’ which displayed the musical capacities of many guitarists. Most of them were given double duties by playing both the rhythm and lead roles. Just like any other genre of rock and roll the influence of the power trio came from Chicago blue bands and specifically from the Muddy Waters trio. The second concept we talked about was Heavy Metal. This style of music is strongly supported by drum and bass rhythms, which were developed in Britain. This genre of music was highly criticized by social media due to the negative attention
the impression of the traditional style of brutal death metal. We could hear the malignant of Putridity's riffs, the madness of 'Deeds of Flesh's technical structure and Brodequin's rough
The animated beat that introduces “Drown Dreams”, an oblique, dreamy, chamber pop song, doesn’t dissemble some solemnity attached to its melody and harmonic conduction. There are a few grey clouds encircling it, but also some sunrays that make the liberation possible. Exclusively on this tune, Slavin plays synth and flutes.
Starting from the hard rock riff at the beginning to the oohh and yeah!s though out the track, purple haze reflects a trippy ambience.
Sublime’s music was highlighted by bass-driven grooves, reggae rhythms, elaborately-cadenced rhyme schemes and transitions between paces and styles throughout a given song, sometimes alternating between thrash punk, ska and reggae within the same song (see “Seed”). Their music often contains psychedelic, harmonic, minor-based or bluesy guitar solos, rhythmically-improvised bass solos or dub lines, turntable scratching and rolling drum transitions and heavy bass lines. They are known for being one of the first and most influential reggae fusion musicians. (5)
Just 6 months after the release of their debut album, Black Sabbath's Paranoid was the first single released from that album. According to Geezer Butler (Black Sabbath's bassists) in a March 2004 article in Guitar World magazine, he said that their first album Black Sabbath and a good portion of the "Paranoid" album were written in the same time period and it only took 2 to 3 days to complete the whole album live in studio. Believe it or not "Paranoid" the song was just supposed to be a 3 minute filler song for the album. It was basically an afterthought and Tony did the rift. They lyrics were done my Geezer and Ozzy read and sung them at the same time.
Heavy metal reared its ugly heard in the latter part of the 1960’s (Hjelm, Kahn-Harrris and LeVine, 2011). Influential
to music critics Jackson’s album Thriller seemed to be inspired by “a mixture of several genres
Without the human intention, perception, and interpretation of sound, then the existence of music would be imaginary. Music includes talking words in a way that the person creates a sound that is made with the intention of being music (Deutsch, Diana 10-13, Justus & Timothy., 33-40). Besides, people can perceive silence and sound and put them together so as to call the outcome music. In Bakan’s fourth proposition, he identifies the approach as the Human Intention and Perception (HIP) approach (Resnicow, Joel E., 10-22). In other words, the proposition tries to suggest that music is inseparable from the makers; or more specifically the people who perceive and experience it. Bakan gives numerous examples to show that music is a product of human intention and perception. This paper conducts research and gives appropriate examples to show that music is only identified as music if the person is making it has the intention for their words to be music.
Judas Priest was influenced by Deep Purple and Black Sabbath. Both Black Sabbath and Judas Priest came from Birmingham, and were heavily influenced by the factories and bleak surroundings of the area (Bowe 26). Early in their career, Black Sabbath had let Judas Priest borrow their rehearsal space. One of the first members of Judas Priest had briefly been involved with Earth, which was the band that became Black Sabbath
The first hard rock and heavy metal music was produced by the rock group called Blue Cheer somewhere around 1967. Their music was angry and had a noticeably heavy beat.. At this time, the music of the Rolling Stones, too, became harder and angry, with a negative accent. Many other groups sprang up during this period. In truth, hard drugs, mixed with psychedelics were having an effect. The world was witnessing a new phenomenon: musical groups of young men - opening doors to the psychic world through the use of drugs - were using electrified instruments to bring in a new music that was harmful to the human psyche, destructive, and angry (2).
In order to give each other support, I noticed that the band members gave each other eye contacts occasionally; the two electric guitarists even fist bump each other to show encouragement. This was how the band members interacted with one another. During their performance, I saw that two members were playing the electronic guitar and it belongs to the String Family (Chordophones) among the five instrument families. Besides, there was also a drummer playing the drum kit behind the singers. This belongs to the Membranophones category. Some words to describe the timbre (tone color) of the electronic guitar include bassy, thick, deep, loud and sharp because we could clearly hear the sound of the electric guitar even though the environment was pretty noisy. Words to describe the timbre of the drum kit include full, I think these are some nice adjectives to describe this band because they are full of energy and provide audiences with lots of positive vibes through their voices and
The literal meaning of the word 'music' according to any dictionary is: 'art of combining vocal or instrumental sounds in a harmonious or expressive way.' But music has a meaning which is far broader than this. Music is life. Music means Self-expansion and oneness. It is an art by itself. Art, in any of its forms, is generated by a person, or a group of talented yet usually ordinary people, that express, willingly or not, an opinion regarding present times. It is not a want; it is a need. If you try to imagine yourself without it, you are bound to feel incomplete. For many of us, it has become a necessity of our lives. Music has no boundaries. Music is the