Potato Chip Crunch as Beats: An essential ingredient for a full-flavored song. I guess I should have mentioned at the beginning of the week my original theory that "we are simply too satisfied by OK music. And that's why we never get to the good stuff." Hip hop is a great example of this. Not that hip hop itself is "easy", but that the beats themselves are. In fact, we've talked about this before. The idea that putting "clap tracks" in a song is cheating...and how I should start doing it. This is the problem with hip hop. It's too easy to be decent. But let's not throw away the beats with the bathwater. Because a solid beat is powerful. It's a potato chip crunch. It's texture. It's fun. And the really great songs all have it. Today's song is "Power" from Kanye West, a song that instantly hooks you with the potato chip crunch alone. And that's where you get to good. But, there's a reason Kanye sells more albums than any other artist in that genre. And it's because he understands this idea of a full music flavor profile. The evolution of Warren G, Kanye has successfully added artistic melody and more to the potato chip crunch. But today's lesson is that you shouldn't forget the crunch.

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.