January 4, 2011

Music Flavor Profile: Salt as Syncopation

Salt as Syncopation: An essential ingredient for a full-flavored song. Thanks for your comments yesterday. We will definitely get to several of those bands/songs this week based on their respective flavors. Today, an analysis of U2, along with the video above of "Where the Streets Have No Name". U2 is a fascinating group to analyze with this idea of a "music profile", because they are probably one of the closest fits to a full-flavored band that exists today. In fact, I almost avoided choosing them to highlight a specific flavor because of that. But I want to address the fact that you know the name of this band's guitarist. And how many guitarists can you actually name who don't sing, too? That automatically puts him in the Top 5 most popular guitarists in the world. And for good reason. "The Edge" is the master of melodic syncopation. Layers of delay that build up and over each other in perfect time. He uses melody to create rhythm. It's action. It makes the music come alive. Salt is syncopation. And the really great songs all have it. Come back tomorrow to see what else great music needs.
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