Computer Technology
As revealed in the previous section, due to significant advancements in computer music software and audio-recording technology during the last few decades, the software has essentially replaced hardware in many aspects of music production.
Before now, musicians needed a machine like the Akai MPC pictured here to create, sample, and sequence certain sounds. Even then, those would have been synthesized sounds, and therefore, only a faint replica of the desired instrument.
Akai MPC
KEYSCAPE
Software platforms like KEYSCAPE can provide an enormous amount of authentic instrumental sounds, timbre, tone, and more in the current age. All one needs is a laptop, interface, and a MIDI controller to have a full orchestra at hand. Today, even a phone or an iPad has the capability of a full studio equipped to sample, record, produce, and sell a product.
At the start of the century, the fact that Nelly's " Body on Me " reached the top of the charts in the R & B genre is a prime example of the advancements made in music technology by the hip-hop culture.
The integration of other African American popular music genres can sometimes make it difficult to place a song in a specific category-genres blur. However, the chief aim of hip-hop music identifies "Blackness" as a movement of a people.
As you listen to "Body on Me," you will discover this song to contain an emcee 00:26-00:47, a singer 02:34-02:56, and the rhythmic and melodic flow from the rapper.
Nelly - Body On Me ft. Ashanti, Akon (Official Video) [ 00:00-00:00 ]
Structurally, and recalling the Ryan Leslie video, the introduction contains a repeated two-bar phrase. In addition, the second measure serves as an embedded motif in the hookAn appealing melodic phrase that drives the message in the song and is often important to a popular song's commercial success. of the piece. A hook can be identified as a phrase that drives the message in the song, much like a chorus that sums up the content of a verse.
Nelly - Body On Me ft. Ashanti, Akon (Official Video) [ 00:18-00:00 ]
The guitar enters at 00:18, and the intro is layered. Notice that the rupture occurs from 00:24-00:27 and builds up to the downbeat of the verse, sung by the emcee. From 00:27-00:33, the same material from the introduction has become four-bar groupings. Meaning, the idea notated above is repeated, and therefore, creates the standard four-measure phrase structure. At 00:40, we hear the embedded motif on the text, "body on me." Finally, we hear Nelly's flow 00:49 - 01-21.
We will witness more of this type of integration, among other elements, as we continue to explore Black music in the twenty-first century.