As I’ve been gathering musical simples, I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to categorize them. There are melodic simples, otherwise known as riffs, hooks, and licks. There are rhythmic simples, otherwise known as beats, claves, and rhythm necklaces. And then there are the simples that combine a beat with a melody. Alex came up with the term “compound simples” for this last group. You might argue that all melodic simples are compound, because they all combine pitches and rhythms. But unless the rhythm stands on its own independent of the pitches, I don’t consider it to be a musical simple.
Here’s the first set of compound simples I’ve transcribed. Click each score to view the interactive Noteflight version.
Queen, “We Will Rock You“
The simplest simple of them all. If I needed to teach someone the difference between eighth notes and quarter notes, I’d use the stomp/clap pattern.
The melody is good for introducing the concept of rests, since you have to count your way through the gap between “rock you” and the next “we will.”
Michael Jackson – “Billie Jean“
Even if you’re not a music reader, you can tell a lot about this tune from looking at the symmetries in the score. Check out the drums first. The “x” symbols are hi-hat cymbals. The notes on the bottom are kick drums, and the middle ones are snares. You can see the regularity of the “boots ‘n’ cats” pattern. The bass part has two halves, which look like approximate mirror images of each other. The keyboard part at the top looks the most complicated one, with an obvious asymmetry to it. All of these visual patterns are audible too.
The notation doesn’t convey everything. It doesn’t tell you about the distinctive punch of the drums, or the layered bass sound. Even so, looking at the score gives you some idea of why the groove works: it’s mostly balanced, but not quite. It’s the symmetry that makes the groove predictable enough to dance to, and the asymmetry that keeps it interesting.
Michael Jackson, “Wanna Be Startin’ Something“
The handclap pattern is as simple as it could be and still have any musical content: long, long, long, long, long, long, short short long. The rhythm of the vocal pattern, on the other hand, is seriously complicated, and best learned by ear. Michael’s African-sounding nonsense was adapted from a different bit of African-sounding nonsense by Manu Dibango.
Parliament – “Flashlight“
Like “Billie Jean,” this is a mostly symmetrical groove. The only bit of rhythmic complexity comes right at the end, where both the bass and drums depart from the pattern.
“Flashlight” uses a chord progression that’s ubiquitous in funk: alternating bars of C minor and F7. The bassline starts on C and walks down the blues scale to F. Then it walks chromatically back up to C. Straightforward and perfect.
Muddy Waters – “Mannish Boy“
Even if you don’t know this particular tune, you certainly know the riff it’s based on. The beat is called a blues shuffle, and it’s as simple as it gets: a slow, sultry thump, tha-thump, tha-thump, tha-thump.
The last note in the guitar part before the repeat sign is an interesting one. “Mannish Boy” has one chord all the way through, with its root on A flat. Here’s the question: is it A flat major or A flat minor? That last guitar note is the third scale degree, and its quality would settle the question. If it’s C flat (or B natural, same thing), then the key is A flat minor. If it’s C natural, then the key is A flat major.
But the note in “Mannish Boy” is neither. It’s a it’s a blue note, a “neutral” third, falling in between major and minor. Noteflight doesn’t even have a way of representing it. I fudged it by writing a grace note, which is sort of how a pianist might approximate it. But to really play it correctly, you need a guitar or harmonica.
Horace Silver, “Song For My Father“
The bassline is a super simple Latin pattern: low-low, high-high, low-low, high-high. The drums are more complicated. The top row of X’s represent steady dinging on the ride cymbal, but the rim shots underneath it play a complex syncopation called Rumba clave.
John Coltrane – “My Favorite Things“
I listed Coltrane as the songwriter here and not Rodgers and Hammerstein, because his version is so different from the one in The Sound Of Music that I don’t even consider it to meaningfully be the same piece of music.
This tune is the archetypal jazz waltz. Each bar has an accent on the most offbeat of the offbeats, the one right after the downbeat, which keeps the whole thing feeling off-balance.
Björk – “Army of Me“
This is the only piece of popular music I know of that’s entirely in Locrian mode. The beat is pitched-up slices of the Levee Break, which is itself a crucial rhythmic simple.
Herbie Hancock – “Chameleon“
The rhythmic complexity of this groove jumps off the page. It looks pretty bewildering, but it makes sense when you hear it. “Chameleon” uses the same chord progression as “Flashlight,” but in B flat minor instead of C minor. The end of each bar has the same chromatic walk-up to the root of the next chord. So satisfying! Herbie Hancock was exploring Buddhism when he wrote this, and the tune has a meditative quality to it. The first few minutes consist of one melodic simple stacked atop another, repeating like mantras.
Missy Elliott – “Get Ur Freak On“
Timbaland’s finest beat. The koto sample seems at first glance like eight repetitions of the same phrase, but the seventh one lands on D flat instead of C. It’s the little things that separate the good music from the brilliant music.
Busta Rhymes – “Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See“
Like many great hip-hop songs, this groove is unbelievably complex on the page. The bassline is a sped-up sample of “Sweet Green Fields” by Seals and Crofts, with a drum machine pattern overlaid. The kick drum follows the rhythm of the sample, more or less, but everything else pushes and pulls against it to hypnotic effect.
It’s interesting to me to try to represent these tunes in standard Western notation. It’s possible that some of them were composed with pencil and paper, but most of them weren’t. Michael Jackson wrote everything by ear, and hip-hop producers almost always do too. Music notation is great for representing complex harmony, but it’s unfriendly to syncopated rhythms; they’re a pain to read and an even bigger pain to write.
The simplified MIDI versions that Noteflight plays all sound comically bad, and it gives you an appreciation for how much music there is in the sound of the instruments themselves, and the nuances of their recording and mixing. I’m excited to get more dynamically interactive versions of these things online so you can take them apart and play with them yourself.