Music Question

I’m looking for a musical term, the name of a particular type of musical flourish.

As an example, at the bridge in “Owner of a Lonely Heart” by Yes, there are a couple of these. Sadly, I can’t find a video to illustrate this because everything I’ve found is front-loaded with ads. (Really: “How to get rid of stuck poop!” Really???)

Which effect exactly? There's a bunch of orchestra stabs all over "Owner of a Lonely Heart" (which are a standard Fairlight sample), including a whole clump of them in the bridge before the guitar solo (around 2:30), and there's an occasional harp arpeggio (like at 1:12, left speaker), but there's a bunch of other random little Fairlight samples thrown in all over the place.

The “stab” is I think what I was looking for. In this case it’s the sharp, increasing pitch sound, repeated several times.

Basically, I don’t know enough technical terms for such things (though I do get “arpeggio” among other terms). And this particular song, which I heard yesterday, was a good example, so I could ask about it. And like anything else, if you don’t have the vocabulary, you can’t describe things, such as what you do or do not like.

Something I have realized over time is that vocabulary is the key to understanding almost everything. It’s the connection between things and actions and how they interact. So learning the right terminology has helped me learn a lot of skills, as well as let me converse with people from very diverse backgrounds - very helpful for a rehab therapist.

When you have an orchestra play a short, sharp chord, that’s an „orchestra hit“, or a „stab“ — feels like stabs are more a horn-centric thing, though.

This is now a thread about “Your Move” being a better song.

I'm not going there. Trevor Horn made a monster record. I don't think a comparison is legitimate, or appropriate.

Because I’m right.

I like “Your Move” and “I’ve Seen All Good People” as a whole. I don’t necessarily like “Good People” any more or less than “Owner”, partly because I see them as being part of different musical eras. With that said, there are definitely features used in much of 80’s music that became less than wonderful as the decade progressed. The thing is that I see “Owner” as one of the songs that sort of introduced things like orchestral hits/stabs (and I agree there’s enough difference between a horn hit and other orchestral hits that they deserve a distinct term).

It’s like when The Moody Blues used an orchestra in their long-form pieces…they weren’t the first rockers to use an orchestra (and neither were the Beatles), but the way they used it was more organic than just about anyone else’s use (and the Beatles orchestra use was eclectic enough that I’d call it qualitatively different).

No, because there is no comparing the two.

Is a '54 300 SL a better car than a Lamborghini Countach?

Like, unambiguously.

16-year-old me vehemently disagrees.

Age related, my relationship with 90125 is inseparable from being 12 when it was released. I didn’t really have the proper context for it, and that made me uncomfortable.


Edit: Doofy once made an excellent point about how such factors are what primarily influence people’s taste in music. This as opposed to actual quality.

I swear there's an XKCD about how everyone's favorite SNL cast is whatever the cast was when they were in high school.

SNL had turned to garbage long before I hit high school.

I'm sad for you. In its heyday, SNL was cutting edge (the Not Ready for Prime Time Players genuinely earned their title), irreverent, and even when they weren't on their A game, they were worth watching.

As for musical tastes, I'm "different". I like pretty much every genre, as long as it is "done right", which means following the rules of the genre. For example, "Country Music" isn't just pop with a twang and (maybe) a pedal steel guitar. Classical music does NOT equal "operatic music" (most of the time).

As an aside, opera in person, performed "European style" can be awesome or not good at all. It depends on whether it is performed as a play with all the words sung, or it is sung with the costumes and props just there for show. Watching Aida with a traditional European opera cast was dreadful. When Aida and the king sing of their undying love for each other, shouldn't they be facing each other, instead of being at opposite ends of the stage and singing away from each other? I guess musical theater spoiled me for opera...

Anyway, I grew up a short drive from Motown, with everything from rock and blues and R&B to country and bluegrass on the radio. My 7th grade English teacher was a member of a legitimate bluegrass band, with records and everything. So I like lots of stuff. "Hot funk, cool punk, even if it's old junk it's still rock and roll to me." Plus everything else.

I wasn't yet in junior high school (not "middle school" you whippersnapper!) when "I've Seen All Good People" came out, along with the Moody Blues' "The Story In Your Eyes", Rod's "Maggie May", Janis' "Me and Bobby McGee", Three Dog Night's "Joy to the World", Sly's "Family Affair", and so many more bit hits. This stuff was everywhere, and I loved all of it.

So is a group's work from one album better than from another? I got tired of David Lee Roth's over-the-top performances, but when Sammy Hagar started singing with Van Halen, I was hooked. I haven't found a Styx album I didn't like, though some of them have more to like than others. Journey...maybe because a lot of their stuff is arena-like, or maybe otherwise, but again not much I didn't like. Boston - all of it. Bob Seger, everything, from every album. Yeah. some songs I like more than others, but I can't say anyone's stuff is qualitatively and objectively "better" than any of their other stuff. I just like some stuff more than others.

Oh, I caught the heyday, it was just over by the time I was in high school.

What’s sad is how few people realized the most talented one was Jane Curtin.