Henry: OOOOO
Raffi: Lucy! U: Alright! You are now reacting to the 4
member boy group-OH!
Not boy group! Excuse me. Korean band. They play their own instruments. Lucy!
Who are formed on a survival show called "Super Band" in which they invited 121 musicians
from street performers to classical musicians.
Basically the survival show's goal was to create a super band. And the top 3 groups
formed and voted for would be able to sign to a label after winning.
Lucy placed 2nd and have been singed under Mystic Entertainment.
Fun fact: the band is named after a dog that they used to play with that lived close to
where they practiced.
Stephanie: Awww! My bunny's name was Lucy!
Henry: Oh! That's so wholesome!
U: On top of that the member Gwangil also explained that Lucy comes from the Latin word
lux meaning light.
This song you're reacting to, "Snooze", is about reminiscing on childhood memories and
experiences while being an adult.
They encourage their listeners to not feel pressured to act like an adult all the time.
H: As one of my mentors said "You should always strive to be child-like but not childish".
There's a big difference. U: Oh!
U: The song is composed by O. Yeon, Lee Ju Hyuk, Park Ji Hwan, the Lucy members Cho Wonsang,
Shin Yechan, Shin Gwangil. Yeah.
Cloud: 3, 2, 1.
Cloud: Clouds!! (lol)
H: Violin!
Kevin: Oh nice!
Flat VI.
Jason: Ooo...
Ju Young: Whoa!
JY: Wow J: Oohhh
J: Kermit likes.
J: *Kermit voice* Kermit the Frog likes. Sam & Raffi: Ooo
S: Ohh
JY: Is that like marimba? I like the marimba sounding thing going on.
K: Lot of subtle choices.
I like how faint that percussion is.
S: I love the *sings* R: Yea!
S: That little guitar...oh...
C: Yea. H: OOOOO!
Man the bass double!
C: This is such a feel good song. H: Is that a six string bass?
R: Wow!
J: Oh! This violin and bass are just...
JY: It just sounds so nice together--it blends very well.
S: Oh my god! R: He has a smooth voice.
S: That violin! Wow!
Owen: I love the hand mutes playing in tandem with the violin.
K: Ayy, got guitar picks! Yes!
J: And there's like ambient kinda singing electric guitar too to make it really nice
in the back.
S: Oh my gosh! Going down the scale!
Leon: Pentatonix! S: Yea!
J: Ah! The bass man is so sick.
*singing*
JY: OH HOHOHO! PERCUSSION! J: Really sick!
R: Good vibe.
S & R: Good vibes!
S: You know why? The chords! R: Childhood!
S: The chord progression though... R: Right.
S: I'll talk about this after because-
J: OH OH OH OH!
OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
L: Now this one! Tritone sub. J: Oh Yea!
C: Now they're just taunting us.
L: Whoa! That is so beautiful. S: Yea!
S: It really does feel like experiencing childhood. L: Yea...
S: The triplets!
K: Nice.
JY: *screams*
K: Oh yea! Give me that minimalism!
Hey that's tough.
H: Yo those are some clean octaves, my boy!
S: Ohhh!
K: I was waiting for the instrumental to kick back. It was really nice timing.
JY: SYNCOPATION!
Something about playing the same note 50 times. It's just...the intensity. Just the intensity
and anticipation that it gives is just...
WOW I REALLY LIKE THEM.
R: Oh I love it!
C: They managed to take like an alarm clock sound, something that inspires so much anxiety
in me, and make it cool.
So, good on that.
H: I didn't even notice that, the alarm clock.
C: They brought it back. Well there was like clear one, and then it was kind of in the
refrain like earlier where like you would kinda hear it a little bit.
And I was like "Interesting".
JY: I don't know, maybe I'm dumb, but the form of this song was just kinda...cause every
time there was like silence or there was space I thought it was over.
But then it wasn't over. And then this violin dude just comes in the middle and just gives
this whole presentation of the violin, and that was just so beautiful.
And then it stopped. And then there's space. I'm like "Okay! It's done! NO!" But they gave
us MORE!
JY: Sorry Jason. J: No that's okay. I can hear you screaming
so it's like...
J: *imitating* cause it's like an echo.
K: I thought that's a perfect transition but to have the *sings* as the ending...It didn't
really fit the vibe of the rest of the song.
I liked it as a middle transition. It felt like a climax.
O: The fake ending. K: Yea.
K: Also because this is one case where like I know that the song is very much in D major.
And I think going into the B min- the minor at the end?
I don't want the bittersweet this time. I just want the sweet.
Cause I feel like the lyrics are so sweet.
O: And they can get that feeling better I think with the *whistles melody* with that.
Like getting the C# (K: Wait.) and that's all one thing.
K: I think I know what they're doing. So throughout the whole song there was an alarm. With the
B note.
And so at the end when they hit the B a thousand times that's an alarm.
O: Like enough?
K: They're playing the alarm. I don't want the alarm ;-;
U: You don't want to be woke up from the sweet dream!
K: Yeah exactly. Absolutely!
U: But reality...
K: But no. So the first time it happened- O: Then they snooze it. They snooze it.
K: Yea they snooze it! O: And then the next time it actually has
to wake them up.
R: Vocally what I was really drawn to was there was like this breathiness to the sound
that we kind of always talk about.
BUT!
The onsets were really clear. And there was the one part where he's just kind of droning
the one vowel over a few measures.
And that's not easy to do. That was complete head voice with a crescendo with a decrescendo.
That takes a lot of vocal control.
H: I think there's a unique kind of freedom...ah...there's a unique kind of...
Elasticity I feel like you get to hear when each of the members are more intimately involved
with the songwriting.
Because I feel like a lot of that was probably improvised and then decided on for the piece.
Right?
Especially a lot of the fills, a lot of the little drum fills they put in, the violin
solo I'm sure that they kinda just came up with.
Like "Yea! Let's stick with that. It sounds good!" So there's that kind of flexibility
that you see really embellished in Jazz music but in this case it's cleaned up to fit a
pop structure.
That you don't get as much in other bigger groups and things that are produced by other
people or written by other people.
Oh! So good.
Also, they are great musicians!
C: I was like kinda looking at the violin a lot, because...
H: We don't see that a lot in K-pop.
C: We don't see that a lot and it like... H: Not like with them actually playing it
too.
C: Yea, I don't mean to be a dick when I say a lot of the stuff that they were playing
wasn't super hard to play on violin, but it still sounded so nice with the blend of instruments.
H: They were playing really clean. C: Yea!
C: And they had the "metro" filter on it. That's not an actual name or anything, it's
just when you go into the metro and you hear performers. Like buskers just playing in there
and it's so...
Like echo-y, and there's so much... H: Oh like a subway...
C: Yea, yea. A metro, subway, same thing.
But it's like that sound is so open and it's bouncing off the walls. I love that little
effect where you have that much resonance going.
So, I wish it /actually/ sounded like that when you took your string instrument and went
outside to play. It doesn't.
So that sound mixed with the outdoors and pretty visuals. I'm like "This is so relaxing
and such a feel good song".
U: What emotion did it make you feel?
L: Freedom. I think it's the video.
S: Yea, I did feel that the video really helped that music become alive and they worked together
really well.
Yea, but thinking about how the music represents that freedom aspect, you know? There was that
big pause before that alarm went off.
Before that alarm they totally switched up the feel. If this is the regular time and
then when you double the speed that's double time, right? Like speeding up.
But this one it went not speeding up but kind of backwards. But not double but in the triplet
subdivision. That was really cool.
So maybe...Yea thinking about the freedom musically it's the use of subdivision and
rhythmically.
S: I guess something that the not reminiscent/reminiscing chord progression but a chord progression
that a lot of people use...
The best example I can give which is not a very good one is in the Chainsmokers "Memories...Do
Not Open" album. They used this chord motif a lot.
I really love this chord progression, but when you have a predominate dominate in the
minor and then back to the dominate...
It...first of all creates this sense of nothing resolving but it doesn't sound dissonant.
So it kind of gives the ability to sort of feel like you're wandering in space. Rather
than you're grounded and you're in the place that you are.
You're floating in musical space. That's kind of the affect that creates that. So...lots
of fun!
O: I liked it! I liked the violin, it has a really nice timbre. I loved how it didn't
even sound like a guitar. It sounded like either the violin was doing pizzicato and
they overlaid it with the arco.
Or the guitar with the hand mute just sort of thing to be able to get that *sings*. You
know?
And the bass was great. I think it really...It almost felt like they took a lot of the folk
aspects, but that might just be the violin bringing in that sound.
The bass had that kind of understated-ness that really made the song nice.
K: I think one of the things that makes the song so successful, it feels like when the
song was written they cared about how the violin will project with the overall sound
of the band.
That's why when it ended up being recorded it sounds so nice, because it's not just the
sound engineer doing his/her/their magic.
O: No that actually sounds good. K: Exactly.
K: So I think it started from the composition phase where they're like "Oh we have a violin
here. We need to do something with the band, the drums..."
And so that it gets integrated very nicely. And I think it works very splendidly.
O: And the song writers didn't have to do that much work. The violinist was already
good. I mean you can tell.
K: Oh yea! Oh yea! O: *singing*
O: With the *sings* going up the octaves. Those were dead on. You know?
K: Absolutely.
JY: You know, I feel like the way that they incorporated the violin into this was just
very interesting AND it reminded me of the song "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" by
Tears for Fears.
So I can definitely hear some type of 80's influence in this.
J: That could just be like a nod to the past I guess.
JY: Yea, yea.
J: Melodically which I don't think it's a bad thing.
J: No I agree with you Ju, but I also think too the integration of the violin even in
the studio class we had today Ju...
That just like...
It's kind of like our job as classical musicians to make sure that people don't forget about
the arts, and so that we can make people interested in classical music.
Just kind of recognizing that it's not just boring old people music, you know? And bring
it into a younger generation.
And I think of course it's wonderful, we perform and you know we have concerts and we have
the New York Philharmonic and all this stuff. And they do new music, whatever.
It's great.
Personally, I believe that the best way in which we can bring classical music to younger
minds and into the common ear is by doing things like this.
By bringing it through pop culture and pop records. And I think they did a good job with
it.
Because he's proficient player and a lot of arpeggiations and scale work that he was doing
was like nice. He has a very nice tone as well.
Once this is like sonically in a younger generation's ears they're going to go "Hmmm. That sounds
really wonderful. Maybe I want to pick up the violin and try and play it".
Or maybe "I want to listen to something that sounds like that or has a similar instrument
to that". And then that leads them down the pathway of recognition of other artforms and
creation.
And their own creation if they want to start playing. You know? So that's why I thought
it was pretty inspiring.
JY: *screams*
OH MY GOD MANS PLAYS VIOLIIIIIIIIN!
I'M HAVING AN IDENTITY CRISIS RIGHT NOW! *screams*