What's In A Song?

Getting straight to the point...

What exactly is in a song?

Well, I suppose at the most basic level, you could say that a song contains vocals, along with the noise of musical instruments. But, is it really that simple? If you're the kind of person who doesn't care about what is in a song, I wouldn't hate you for making it that simple, but why the eff would you be reading this blog if you were such a simpleton? Anyway, I don't think a song is that simple. No way, no how. Not with the diversity that we have in this day and age. The implications would shatter my feeble little mind.

Unless you've created an a cappella song, or an instrumental piece, there are two pieces that makes a song what it is: Vocals (lyrics), and Noise (musical instruments). Like I said above. Anyway, I think that to see what is really in a song, we need to delve deeper into each of the two pieces (we'll just exclude a cappella and instrumentals for now). Well, let's start with the noise. What instruments did they choose to create the noise? How does the noise sound (tone, pitch, blah blah blah)? What do the instruments look like? Brand, model number, colour...anything. And then comes the vocals. What tone and pitch are the vocals in? How do those two things vary? What choice of words were used?

Taking all this into account, I can safely say that a song consists of the emotions of the artist(s), on top of the vocals and lyrics. Look at a band like Jimmy Eat World. At times, all I think Jim Adkins is doing is moaning in either a condenser or dynamic microphone, but I bet he has a good reason that he decided to put moaning into the song. Of course, that's some quirky Emo band that no one listens to. I think they go by Alternative Rock now, though. I think that's why I started listening to them. On another point on the spectrum, we have something like In Flames. Instead of moaning like you're in a certain soft-core industry, you have screaming that will take days to figure out what is actually being said. Instead of chords and licks and riffs that might be catchy, you have people just going "BWUEIHRGWOFIJWIHWEABABALGH" onto guitar strings with their fingers and making it sound good.

The only thing I worry about is whether comparing those two bands is a good idea.