Stephanie: SICK!
Leon: Yeahhh!
Stephanie: Ohhhh
[Rossini's Semiramide Overture playing]
Umu: So you are now reacting to the 9 member girl group Twice
and their b side song 'Last Waltz'
off of their 2021 'Formula of Love: O+T=<3' album,
do you guys know what O+T means?
Henry: Original Trilogy?
[t/n: Cue the legendary B♭ major chord]
Henry: Like Star Wars
Rachel: Oh, Onces + Twice! Umu: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!
Umu: YEAH!!!!
Rachel: OH YES!
Man.
I'm... so smart.
No I'm joking-
Sam: And it's a 3!
Sam: So it's like 1+2=3! Ju Young: Oh my goood!
Ju Young: Sam you're so smart.
[t/n: Here we witness a pair of highly advanced Homo Sapiens figuring out a complex hand sign, challenging their dexterity to the limit...]
Liam: Alright, if you just do it...eh, uh...?
[t/n: Evolutional adaptions to master spoken language means that they are capable of jointly deliberating the ideal road to success...]
Both: Yeah!!!
Liam: There it is.
Umu: Not to burst your bubble, but that was backwards...
Liam: NNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!
Umu: This track is portraying a story of two lovers saying goodbye
and trying to stay in the moment as they dance their last waltz together.
They dance in the middle of the world (Jory: That's cute)
and as they're spinning in circles they reminisce on their good times together,
trying to make this last moment together as perfect and happy as they can.
The song is composed by 심은지 (Sim Eunjee),이해솔 (Lee Hae Sol) and EJAE!
Owen: Cool, let's do it.
Is it in 3/4 time?
That's the real question.
3
2
1
Ba!
Owen: see-
Kevin: No...
Owen: Nope, it's in 4(/4)
Kevin: It's gonna turn into 3/4, please?
Liam: Her voice is so smooth.
Mmm~
Stephanie: Woooo...
*Imitates cutting out effect*
Sam: Ooookayyyy, symphonic R&B.
*String noises*
Rachel: Mmmm
Liam: I like the use of strings though.
Henry: Nice
Cloud: We found the waltz!
Liam: Ooohhh, okay.
Liam: So it went into 3(/4) after 4(/4). Rachel: 1 2 3~
Stephanie: Sick!
Leon: Yeeeeah!
Stephanie: Ohhhhh
Jory: That's pretty cool.
Nice!
Henry: Hm, they're using it like, the 3 feel as a narrative tool.
Stephanie: Wooo!
Henry: That's cute!
Stephanie: Oh, okay, hm
Owen: I really like that,
the high strings waiting while the bass comes in and then it lands.
Ju Young: Dadada da! Dadada da!
Both: Mm. Mhm. Mhm. Mmh!
Will: Mm!
Ju Young: I'm loving the harmonic action going here. Sam: Yeah.
Sam: No the chords are really interesting.
Jory: So we just get a little waltz in the first pre-chorus and that's it?
Sam: It's very minimal, but there is a lot going on.
Ju Young: Mm
Kevin: Oh, I like the dom- the V chord that's on the 7th bass.
Will: Woah!
Jory: Ooo~
Cloud: There we go. Henry: I love the way they get into that.
Kevin: Oh, the trill.
Stephanie: Yeah...
Cloud: That's really smart, to use like glass breaking as a transition back into 4(/4).
Ju Young: That sounded like a Bach motif *sings*
Sam: Yeah.
Ju Young: Oh!
OH!
Sam: What the- Ju Young: OH!
Both: MMmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm~
Stephanie: Mmm.
Killing.
Leon: Killing, yes!
Stephanie: Oh, the very beginning really caught my attention.
It was kind of like a cute vibe, with the strings, string pizz(icato)?
And then each transition, first 4/4 and then...
it just like smoothly, like,
out of kind of nowhere it goes into like the 3(/4),
and then getting back into the 4(/4) is always after that glass clash.
I feel like I've never really heard anything like that, like,
it's like a glass clash... (Leon: Yeah)
...and then back into the 4(/4).
And then, I don't know if it stopped, I miss the right word, but you know, when...
or I guess just like the break, yeah, break, (Leon: Break, yeah.)
whenever there is like a break it's like,
"Oh...
What's next?"
Henry: Switching to this triple flow-
this 3/4 from 4/4, cuz they keep the same subdivisions,
does make it super grindingly halty,
like it feels like it's so much slower,
even though the small beat is still there.
Cuz that's your big beat,
but suddenly that becomes a small beat, so you're going:
And then you go:
So what used to be the big beat now is the small beat,
and you're feeling 1! 2 3...
Henry: So then, yeah, it feels like it's the last... Cloud: We also love a good falling sequence, we have *vocalizes*.
Henry: Which also adds to that feeling of finality.
Those are really effective musical choices, I think.
Rachel: The waltz thing kind of threw me off.
I feel like I wanted it more.
Rachel: It was just, you know... Liam: Yeah honestly, it wasn't super prevalent,
Liam: Like it was just the pre-chorus really, right?
All: And in the bridge, yeah.
Jory: If you're gonna name your song 'Last Waltz'...
just like, make it a waltz, man.
Umu: They only got a short waltz, man. Like...
(Jory: Yeah) They were saying goodbye to their lover,
and they got like two seconds.
They got their waltz and they got out. (Jory: Yeah...)
Umu: That's the story of the song. Jory: "Okay bye!"
Rachel: And also the way that they went into and out of it.
I think going into it was fine,
but then going out it was just like silence for maybe like 2 beats
and then it just went straight back into the chorus in 4/4. (Liam: Yeah, it was disorienting.)
I also think that most of the time when there's changes in time signature
it feels less sudden going into it, most of the time, than going out
because it's harder to go out of it and then go into it, you know?
(Umu: Right...) because it's harder to go out of it and then go into it, you know?
Rachel: Yeah
Liam: Like it's really smooth that way
just because like, the feel doesn't really change all that much,
it just becomes heavier in 3(/4). (Rachel: Yeah)
Rachel: Also like on the measure before that happened,
if there's space, it's like...
and the space there works,
and I think it worked less at the end
because I just wanted the in 3(/4) to be longer,
but I also understand that it's like a pre-chorus,
so it can't be super long.
It just contrasts so much with everything else, (Liam: Yeah)
both because of the change in time and also just the feeling,
it is a lot like heavier.
Liam: Yeah.
No, just the heaviness of the bass,
it's like they add in the synth instead of that kind of plucked bass that they had going on for all the verse stuff.
I wanna hear how it sounds going into the chorus.
Rachel: What is that chord?
Umu: They use a pick-up note again.
Liam: Yeah.
It's just a thing of going from even to odd,
or like less stable to more stable.
Like I'm just trying to rationalize why it doesn't really feel as solid.
Rachel: Yeah, and also the pick-up in that-
*vOcALizEs*
ugh...
ooOooh.
Like,
*vocalizes*
like, so they,
going into the triplet they went:
And then going into the chorus it went:
So they use like...
Liam: Yeah. Rachel: 4 instead of 3.
Rachel: Maybe I was expecting 3,
even though I knew that it was gonna, probably, go back into 4/4, right?
Umu: Hmm. Liam: Yeah that might be.
Rachel: But like pick-up into each of the sections was different.
Liam: I think the thing that kept it interesting kind of throughout
was like all the different textures that were going on.
Rachel: And the vocals as well, actually. (Liam: Yeah)
Ju Young: I really like the vocals in this.
It just sounds really clean.
It's probably the production,
but it's also like with the mixture of their vocals,
but it just sounded really clean.
Sam: It's very minimal.
The texture is not as dense as other songs that we've listened to,
so it was very easy to pick out, kind of, what we gravitated towards.
Like for me, I always like when the 808 is very on the 1
and that's what it does, it's like:
like just, it creates this groove,
and it just creates this kind of like full forward motion, in a way,
that I really appreciate,
and yeah, I love the- I think the string work is really cool,
I wasn't expecting the string work at all
when we heard this very minimal guitar at the beginning.
I also wanna say that the vocals were very good.
So yeah, I really like this one.
I don't have as much to say on it because it does repeat a lot,
but all the elements that we heard are very catchy,
it's a very catchy song.
Jory: I think with these groups it can get tricky because-
at least for the producers,
cuz you've got 9 voices you're trying to work in.
And I know in the past,
you've shown us stuff where the producers respond to that
by just cranking up the sound design,
like they're throwing every trick in the book there,
making their mix crazy, like every little interruption,
new sounds, new twinkles, whatever.
But this was like the opposite approach
where they're like, they're gonna tone down everything
so that everybody gets their own little place
and the voices are the focus but
in the end it just made everything kind of sound homogeneous.
Leon: I like the verse and the chorus of this song.
The verse is just the instrumentation.
That instrument(al) is so nice!
I don't know, I'm just a really big fan of pluck synth.
It's like Ed Sheeran 'Shape of You', (Umu: 'Shape of You')
yeah, it's like that kind of sound (Umu: Yeah...)
and then the chorus is just the mode changing thing.
Like very very minor,
but it suddenly like brightened up for a while, like dorian sound.
Stephanie: I just really like the *sings*.
Leon: Yeah.
Umu: Yeah, you liked the melody a lot. Stephanie: Yeah, I did like the melody.
Leon: It's super catchy!
Stephanie: Yeah it is!
Leon: The *vacillating minor third*, that thing, like... Stephanie: Uhu, yeah, and just like the voice, you know,
Stephanie: The quality of it was just like ugh~
Leon: The layering is really nice too, like the dorian layering,
it's just, it emphasized the dorian sound.
Kevin: It just feels like it was going in circles
in a way that wasn't really intuitive, nor was it catchy.
It hits certain intervals, yes, you know, it used the,
it used the dorian, it went all these spots,
but at the end of the day it didn't feel like...
what a song-like melody should sound like.
Owen: There is a lot of reliance on chord tones, maybe over-reliance,
and when you hear the G minor going to whatever, a dominant,
having it go like *B♭-G-B♭-G* [t/n: Minor 3rd and root, notes are part of the chord]
*A-F♯-A-F♯* [t/n: 5th and major 3rd on D]
those could maybe more other-
roles that could be fulfilled by other instruments
and you could have the melody going:
*D-E-F-E-C-D - B♭-A-G-C-D* (Kevin: Yeah, well you-)
Kevin: A song can be chord tone based
but it's just, yeah, the way they sort of-
they're like leaning on it, you know?
They're like holding on to it,
not in a way that it feels like they're exploring it.
It feels like they are relying on it more than they're...
I don't know, really sprouting a melody out of the chords.
Owen: The melody wasn't the focus for me.
I think it was more the timbral aspect of this song
that really captured my focus,
but I really liked the production of it,
I loved all the different sounds they used,
with the glass and the strings coming in,
doing like a bunch of different timbres too,
they had tremolo, pizzicato, trills,
like they were just using a really wide gamut of different ideas,
which I though was nice.
Henry: I have a conspiracy theory.
I think almost every section in here
has some kind of an allegory towards a 3 feel,
or like a sense of a group of 3,
like so many melodies in here feel like it has
phrases that have a group of 3 in them,
despite the majority of this not being actually in a waltz feel.
I don't know if that was intent-
I mean okay,
I don't know if that was intentional but my conspiracy theory is that (Cloud: There are only two actual sections in 3(/4), yeah)
Henry: all of these sections are actually informed by
groupings of 3, to have it reminisce of a waltz.
So at the beginning:
1-
123 - ba ba... 123 - da da~
Cloud: Mm, no that's totally smart.
Henry: This part, even the chorus.
Little group of 3, that's a motif,
I consider that there cuz that's the pick-up.
Right, if you're feeling the strong kind?
Cloud: You know what else is really smart? The "Ddan dan ddan..."
It's like you're literally running out of time,
they're doing like a clock motif. (Henry: Oh yeah!)
To me, what stands out in that melody is, "la ti do mi - la ti do so mi"
Right? The "la ti do" right before is...
Cloud: When you step-wise in three, yeah.
Henry: Even if it was not,
which I think, I don't know if that's intentional,
but it keeps making me feel like we're close to groups of 3
before sitting in waltz.
I didn't really hear much in the rap.
Henry: Um... Cloud: Well it's interesting because raps are always when they go triplet.
Henry: Oh, they had triplets here, yeah, that kind of... Cloud: Yeah, they always do triplets.
Henry: Oh, right here, the syncopation.
Right? That's in 3!
Henry: Right? That's all... Right, yeah! Cloud: Get those quarter note triplets, yeah.
Henry: I don't know, that feels like it means something to me,
we'll see, wheeee~
I'm a cultist now.
Cloud: WhAt?
That was very fun, I liked that.
Henry: How is that for a musical analysis?!
Henry: Once plus Twice should equal 3 exactly, not less than three.
Umu: Heart. Henry: Once plus Twice should equal 3 exactly, not less than three.
Henry: Once plus Twice should equal 3 exactly, not less than three.
Henry: But it says- or maybe it's "equals to or less than 3"
Henry: which is-
Henry: I KNOW IT'S A HEART! I'm just being dumb!