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Boston Observer article on WJIB

Bob got it about HALF-right when he said "there's hardly any melody in music today". Most mass-marketed recorded material is decidedly mono-TONE-ous. Yes, not just monotonous, which it is, but built around restricted "note clusters". Even if the printed page ever displayed a "key", and there are very few sheet music magazines around any more and the one at my local liberry only lists standards from the past, the word "key" implies at least an octave, but almost all the notes cluster around one note!
 
You are correct about the restricted "note clusters," the result sounds more like chanting than singing a melody. The thing that strikes me is the overwhelming use of minor keys in the background riffs, even when the lyrics are about something that isn't sad. Result: a dirge you can dance to. No wonder young people are so depressed!
 
Maybe it's easier to sing when you're only going around a group of notes close to each other--who needs a good vocal range? And even if you think in terms of pop music over the years, I long for the days when you have clearly enunciated lyrics--I've got sunshine, on a cloudy day. When it's cold outside, I've got the month of May. Or going back even further how about the humorous yet
melodic and clearly enunciated music of one Louis Jordan, telling us about a "Saturday Night
Fish Fry", or Chuck Berry's joyous look back at a "School Day"...those were the days. THESE
days (and THIS song is actually not bad in some ways), they'll try to get you to go to rehab
and you'll say no, no, no.. :) (Chuck Berry has managed to live about 4 times as long, I think,
as the doomed Ms. Winehouse...)

---
Saturday Night Live skit had psychic's predicting the following week's headlines. It was mentioned
a spacecraft was sent into the outer reaches of the galaxy, containing music of all sorts, including Chuck Berry. One psychic predicted aliens would contact us with a four word reply,
which would be on the cover of Time Magazine the next week. The four words? "SEND MORE
CHUCK BERRY"
 
Schuyler said:
You are correct about the restricted "note clusters," the result sounds more like chanting than singing a melody. The thing that strikes me is the overwhelming use of minor keys in the background riffs, even when the lyrics are about something that isn't sad. Result: a dirge you can dance to. No wonder young people are so depressed!
Click to expand...

Leonard Bernstein (like moi, born in Lawrence, MA) once observed that many Mozart pieces in major keys have a touch of sadness about them, so a piece doesn't have to be in the minor to seem "sad". One marker of a minor key is that the interval of the third is only a half-step above the note immediatley below. That's why counterintuitively A-minor has NO flats or sharps in its key signature, because there's a half-step between B and C. A-major goes from A to B to C-sharp for this reason.
 
Laurence Glavin said:
A-minor has NO flats or sharps in its key signature, because there's a half-step between B and C. A-major goes from A to B to C-sharp for this reason.
Click to expand...

Personally, I have a fetish for "quarter-time" ("1/4", also "4/4"?), with its call-and-response, synchronized, accented beat! ;D
 
Mr. Glavin, you have failed to drop the scales from my eyes. Just because it's possible to compose a piece in a major key which sounds wistful or melancholy doesn't change the proposition that minor keys tend to be associated with doom, foreboding and dispair. Since the Maestro is longer here to mediate this urgent debate, I suggest we let Bob Bittner decide, which would return this thread to its original topic. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm coming down with a coda.
 
There are probably lots of songs which aren't full of doom that are written in minor keys or often feature minor chords; in some churches (maybe Episcopal) "Alleluia" is sung first in C major but then in C minor (a song of praise and heavenly delight) while the disco standard "I Will Survive" is,
I'm pretty sure, C minor, F minor, G major (chords). Online, I found that the Beatles "And I Love Her" is in C minor, though it eventually winds up in the relative E major.

I will Survive
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBR2G-iI3-I

Oh no, not I! (Cm) I will survive! (Fm)
Oh and as (G)long as I know how to love I (Cm) know I'll stay alive.
 
I did say minor keys tend to indicate negativity, at least in pop music. Gloria Gaynor is not a bad example of an exception to this, but...
"Once I was afraid, I was petrified..." Kinda sounds like a grim struggle to make it alone, disco beat notwithstanding. But far be it from me to contribute to the delinquency of minor keys.
 
Ultimately it's a song of triumph and the minor keys--and a piano bit at the start--are there to accent the drama/melodrama of her situation.
 
I was in Newton today and gave JIB a listen, actually remebered to give it a try, sounded good.
 
Schuyler said:
Is it just me or does JIB's audio sound really good for an AM? Is it still running CQAM stereo?
Click to expand...

It's mono now, there are no more analog AM stereo stations receivable in the Boston area.

However, WJIB seems to be still running the same audio bandwidth it was running when it was in C-Quam. If you have a Wideband AM receiver and you're getting a clean signal, it sounds excellent even if in mono. High end response transmitted must be well over 5k, maybe up to 10k?
 
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