Thursday, March 8, 2012

Blog Assignment 5





                The two songs I did were, “Fluorescent Adolescent” by Arctic Monkeys and Kate Nash’s cover of that same song.  Even though they are essentially the same song they are very different in a number of ways.  The lyrics are exactly the same, which tends to be the case in covers, however the pacing and use of the lyrics is different in each song. In the Kate Nash version the tempo of her recital is much faster in comparison to the Arctic Monkey version. That tends to be the main difference in the song just in general, but I’m getting ahead of myself; let’s start with the instrumentation. In the Arctic Monkeys version it is heavily driven by drums, bass and guitar. Similarly, in the Kate Nash version it is driven by drums but there is no bass, instead they utilize piano and guitar and Nash’s more powerful vocals to push the song. The performances are also a bit different because Nash’s version was done live where as the Arctic Monkeys version was a studio recording, this definitely gives the advantage to the Arctic Monkeys as far as quality goes. This allows there intensity and pitch to be a lot sharper, although, given the circumstances Kate Nash is really able to make due with her situation. Not to mention, the instrumentation can be tweaked for the recorded version whereas with the Nash version it all has to just be done right and thus the overlap is greater, but, in my opinion, helps the sound for this type of song because it is supposed to feel cluttered and loud and fast. That is the main difference, the speed; the Arctic Monkeys have a much slower more methodical pace and Nash just kicks the tempo up to eleven and has the voice to keep up.  The organization is very similar too, as it is a cover, but the layering is a bit different. While both songs focus hard on the drums, Nash focuses more on vocals next and I think the Arctic Monkeys focuses more on guitar secondarily. Overall, I think I like the Nash version better because the song strikes me as a more fast-paced song and I think her voice has a better ability to carry the song.

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