Grade 9 Music Criteria A -Investigating
This paper will compare two songs, song number one “Feeling good” by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse and “Time to pretend” by Lazer Boomerang. There are many differences between the two songs because Feeling good is a jazz song and Time to pretend is a Synthwave song without lyrics.
Song 1 Feeling good Who made it
Feeling good is a jazz song written by British musicians Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse in 1964 for a musical “The Roar of the Greasepaint – The Smell of the Crowd”. A more well-known version of Feeling good is by Canadian singer Michael Bublé. The song is very popular online with 92 million views on YouTube (Michael’s version).
What genre
The genre of Feeling Good is jazz, a music style usually more informal and relaxed. Jazz usually has a steady beat and a often-changing melody and harmony. Jazz music can be played solo on a single instrument, in a song form. Instruments like piano, saxophone and trumpet for melody, drums (Especially snare drum and bass drum) for the rhythm structure and sometimes double bass with the drums.
Analysis (Of the most popular Michael Bublé version)
Feeling good Michael Bublé version is 4:02 minutes 115 beats per minute and 6/8 time signature. The song uses a descending scale of E-flat, C#, B, B-flat that is constantly played in the background as a chord progression or a harmony, while the main motif in the melody is the similar to a reverse version of it, being a ascending scale of E, G, A, B, creating some contrast. The chord progression is supported by many complex variations but remains very similar each time, and is in almost in the songs except for the shift to E minor from E flat minor. Parts of the song like the chorus or verse is not very clear as it have a rather innovative structure and felt slightly random.
Many different instruments are used. During the intro (0:00) to (0:54), vocals sung by Michael Bublé with the lyrics related to how a fresh start of a day make the narrator feel really good, seen lyrics like “It's a new dawn, it's a new day It's a new life, for me And I'm feeling good” accompanied by a string ensemble playing harmonies each line during (0:00 to (0:35) then transferred in to what’s similar to a call-response with the strings following with a harmony after each line is sung. (For example: The “It’s a new dawn” is followed by a chord of D♭C# E♭F#. The strings stop exactly at 0:50 when the singer said “And I'm feeling good” to create a monolog-like feel and tells the listeners “I’m feeling good” would be the main idea of what the song talks about. At around 0:54 to 0:55, verse 1 plays without the strings but instead brasses involving the trumpet playing a short melody and trombones acting like bass. Verse two starts in 1:06 and introduces the piano playing an E minor chord above C5, drums background and an electric bass guitar playing a chord progression of () and a very small but fun detail of one single finger snap between 1:06 and 1:07. Strings are then added back between the second of 1:19 and 1:20 with one or maybe more cellos repeating the chord's progression.
The third verse comes after an instrumental brass transition between (1:36) and (1:40). The third verse or chorus had a slightly different harmony using more instruments as well as more diverse chords but highly likely that every instrument except the piano is used.
In 2:18, the song transitions to E minor by sliding a base guitar note and making a sound between the frequency of two notes that went up and down. Brass and drums are played during the transition from 2:19 to 2:43 and then the new verse/chorus started in F minor and repeated “It’s a new life” and “Feeling good” referring to the start. Followed by a outro with vocals repeating “feel good” accompanied by brass and drums as well as some unclear harmonies in the background. Feeling good ended in a F minor with drums and some electric synths like a slightly sharp woodwind instrument.
Overall, feeling good constantly talks about how the singer feels good like the title. Most lyrics is about telling non-living but poetic things about how the singer feels good like “fish in the sea you know how i feels” and repeating “I’m feeling good” but the listeners are hard to get bored because of the variations of instrumentation and slight change in lyric each time.
Song 2 Time to Reboot Who made it
Time to pretend is made by a musician named “Lazer Boomerang” or Dominique Marcel Iten from Switzerland. Lazer Boomerang made over with over 500 million streams combined worldwide, according to his profile on SoundBetter website. He mainly works on modern music genres involving technology composing like pop, synth-pop, lo-fi and synthwave and often collab with similar artists like VXLLAIN.
What genre
Time to Reboot is a synthwave song, meaning the sounds in these songs either use a synthesizer which uses electricity to manipulate sound waves, creating an almost infinite combination of sounds and sound effects. Synths are sometimes made from samples which are pre-recorded sounds too.
Most synthwave music creates a nostalgic feeling as it is quite like synth/pop from 1980s, so it blends the feeling of futuristic (Sound effects like pews) with vintage Ness. Modern synthwave music (sometimes not retro ones) usually has a steady beat using drums or repeated bass, a synth melody, sometimes layers of artificial sounds. It could be ambient/dreamy by using unclear or low fidelity sounds, or a hissing noise like how tape players from 1980s.
Analysis
Time to Reboot combines the melody of “Time to Pretend” by Lazer Boomerang with cyberpunk styled “Memory reboot” by artists VØJ and Narvent. The song is released in 2025. It gained popularity on social media mainly because of many movie clip edits (Dune espeically) uses it as a background music for its unique and somehow meaningful reverb.
It uses a quite fast 144 bpm in the original version (Not sped up or slowed) and a 4/4 beat. The song is written in mainly B major with the chord progression of B-major, A flat minor, E flat minor and F# Major looped. The song is 3:22 minutes long, being mostly repetive but does have many variations.
During part one of 0:00 to 0:23, a synth melody with some ambient or reverb plays with many echoes paired with layers of sound effects and notes like distorted bass, some dynamic changes going up and down like a mountain. Part one does not have any tension build up at first but transitioned into part two during 0:21 and 0:24 by using a whoosh sound effect slowly hissing louder and higher pitched. Part two started in 0:24 at the end of the whoosh, introducing a 4/4 drum beat with a base drum in the first note of each bar and a snare in the third note while keeping up the synth melody and layers (Steady beat is a huge part of synthwave.) Another synth that is two octaves lower than the main melody is also introduced at 0:24, pairing up with the drum and acting like a bass but not so thick so it won’t disturb the melody, playing in its own 3-beat then followed by two beat pattern, repeating 2 times each bar also following the chord progression of B-A flat-E flat- F#, overlapping each other so it sounds much more interesting and made sure people won’t get bored by listening to something the repeats.
Part 2 ends 1:12 in a F# with a decrescendo and part 3 starts in 1:13 using a different synth sound then changes to a low and consistent 4/4 base drum and more ambiant synths and the chord progression like the 0:40 chorus part of Memory Reboot slowed. The part ended with a E flat- F-sharp A-Flat loop which is a signature motif of Time to Pretend. The two melodies then merged with a very audible drum beat.
Section 4 started in 2:25 with another signature motif from Time to Pretends 1:12 part and the chorus of Memory reboot then slowly faded into an unclear echo in 3:18 which acts as the outro of the song, ending in the B major it started in.
Time to Reboot combined parts of Memory Reboot and Time to Pretend very well, and any listener who focused on the details of both would easily identify and recognize the parts and elements from each song and how they are carefully combined.
Summary
Combining styles of music to create fusion songs is interesting because different styles of music can form a new style just like how many pre-existing music genres are made. For example, Retro Synthwave is created in the 2000s by combining electric music with 80s synth sound samples. The result created a very versatile style that older people find nostalgic, and modern people feel it's more of a futuristic, technologically advanced genre.
Combining music genres can take advantage of different genres and fix the problems of each genre. An example of this is real instrument music genres like classical have limitations like the max range of pitches and lack of sound effects can be compensated for from electric sound effects or synths in general.
Potential challenges of making fusion music: Music genres can be very different, especially cultural ones, and randomly combining might result in something overly noisy, eerie sounding, overly cliche and even offensive. For example, “Brazilian funk” is very popular in online edits, and it is a style merging electrical music with drum beats and Portuguese lyrics, but now many people hate it because it’s just repeating a same chord and the lyrics are usually just completely inappropriate, not even funny or energetic and the way it’s so noisy and sings so fast also makes people give up listening.
When I make any fusion music, I should carefully analyze the vibe, style and limitation of each genre of music or element, so I can create a fusion that not only puts together the advantages of different music genres but also sounds innovative and have room for fine details. If i can, I should also listen to pre-existing fusion music styles to see why they sounded good or bad.
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