MELODY

HARMONY TONALITY
There is a female and male singer.
The piece is in C minor
The vocal melody is repetitive The piece is in a minor key (C minor)
There are some spoken parts, including vocal samples It uses repeating chord sequences over and over again
The piece has a modal feel at times.
The singers sometimes sing vocables (nonsense lyrics) like oooh and aaah There is a drone in this piece on the note C

The melody lines are all short phrases The harmony is mostly diatonic
At the start (before the first verse) the female vocal part sounds like it is impro-
TEMPO
There are some chromatic notes, such as the low synth strings that play
vising. an ascending chromatic line The start of the piece is in free
Solos are taken by the Uilleann pipe, whistle and hurdy gurdy time (no set tempo/metre)
There are some extended chords (such as 7ths and 9ths)
The female vocal part has a limited range (a 6th) Then when the bodhran comes
The harmonic rhythm is slow—it feels like it stays on the same chord for
The male vocal part has a bigger range (a 13th) in a steady tempo is set.
a lot of the piece. This is common to dance music.
The vocals use glissando (slides) and ornamentation (acciaccatura) The piece is at 100bpm
The fiddle melody uses double stopping

RHYHM and METRE

The time signature is simple 4/4 (common to dance music)
AFRO CELT SOUND
There are lots of repeating rhythmic riffs/ostinato patterns in the
song. These are short phrases that are looped (repeated over and
over again)
SYSTEM—RELEASE STRUCTURE
The piece has a verse form (with no choruses)
There is syncopation used throughout It contains an intro, verses, breaks, solos and an outro.
The repeating rhythms are mostly 2 and 4 bar loops
The full structure is:
Triplets and sextuplets are used in the piece. INSTRUMENTS/SONORITY Intro, verse 1, verse 2, solos, verse 3, build, outro
The semiquavers are slightly swung (giving the piece a relaxed
African instruments: kora, talking drum
quality)
Some notes are accented to make them louder than others Celtic instruments: hurdy-gurdy, uilleann pipes, bodhrán, fiddle, whistle, accordion
Electronic Dance Music instruments: male/female vocals, synthesisers (including string
pad, soft pad, bells, bass), breath samples, drum machine, electric piano, shaker and tam-
bourine.
TEXTURE
The piece is made from looping ideas (a common dance music technique) The main texture of the piece is homophonic.
There are lots of layers of loops. And the loops drop in
Some of the playing techniques include glissando (a continuous slide of notes), ornamen- and out regularly making the texture constantly change.
tation, double stopping (playing 2 strings together on the fiddle), open and closed hi- At the start of the song, the texture builds up by adding
BACKGROUND INFORMATION hat. loops one at a time
This is a piece of fusion music, combining elements There is a reverb effect on the vocals through the whole track.
The synthesizer drone uses a filter (which automatically adjusts the EQ giving a The many overlapping loops give often the piece a poly-
of African music, Celtic folk music and electronic
“sweeping” sound) phonic feel.
dance music
There is a heterophonic texture during the outro, with
It was released in 1999
solo instruments playing the same thing, with slight vari-
The band has featured a number of guest musicians ations.
over the year, including Sinead O’Connor who sings
on “Release”.
KEY The very start of the piece is monophonic

3 Grade 5 Grade 8 Grade