Switched on Pop - How Beyoncé to The Beatles Modulate Your Emotions
Episode Date: September 9, 2016Certain pop songs have that moment, when everything seems to change but still remain the same, when the drama gets ratcheted up, when the tension increases and our emotions take an elevator ride to th...e heavens. From Beyoncé to Johnny Cash, savvy pop songwriters know a well-placed harmonic modulation can leave listeners reeling. But what is this mysterious musical trick, and how does it work? Tune in and let us take you higher, and higher, and higher, as we explore the wild world of modulation. FeaturingOne Direction - Night ChangesTaylor Swift - Love StoryBackstreet Boys - I Want it That WayStevie Wonder - Knocks Me Off my FeetBeyonce - Love On TopWhitney Houston - I Will Always Love YouMozart - Queen of the Night AriaMichael Jackson - Man in the MirrorThe Beatles - Penny LaneJohnny Cash - Walk the Line Hear more of Dru Cutler's work at www.drucutler.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Hello, Charlie. How do Nate? What's up? Well, I was going through our fan mail. As you know,
it's copious. It basically fills up my entire apartment and inbox. I'm just kind of waiting through it.
You do have a small apartment. And one email recently stood out. What was that? This was a letter from
someone right here in New York City named Drew Cutler. Cool. Hey, Drew. And Drew wanted to ask us about
a musical phenomenon that we've touched on before. And I thought, given this note, it's a perfect opportunity to get deeper into a
subtle secret trick that songwriters, composers use to give pop songs that extra
umph and really pull at our emotional heartstrings.
Wait, wait, wait, we're going to open up the secret bag of tricks.
We are, we are exposing the magician's secrets because today we are going to talk about
the dark art of modulation.
Okay, let's do it.
Welcome to Switched on Pop.
I'm musicologist Nate Sloane.
I'm a songwriter Charlie Harding.
So Charlie, I am totally on board.
Let's talk about modulation in pop music.
Now, this is something that has come up, right, when we've discussed, let's see,
One Direction.
Taylor Swift, even our old friends, the Backstreet Boys.
Definitely.
But what is modulation exactly?
And maybe more importantly, how does this subtle musical technique affect our experience
of listening to music?
I bet most people would be surprised that what,
sounds like something which is, I don't know, spontaneous creativity is actually
intentional conniving composition to play with your emotions.
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, there's definitely maybe an accidental improvisational component to writing a great pop
song.
But then there are also these very deliberate tricks that you can pull out when you know
you need to take it to the next level.
Yeah, the accident is when you play the wrong note and then you just keep going with it.
But the modulation, you definitely do that on purpose.
Yeah, so we're dropping the M-bomb all over the place.
What is a modulation?
Our new friend, Drew Cutler, has a really beautiful way of kind of introducing exactly what this technique is.
In order to really understand what modulation is, we have to fundamentally understand what key is.
And I have a simple analogy for breaking this down.
Let's imagine that you live in an apartment.
This is easy to imagine because many of us do.
And right next door to your apartment is your neighbor.
And you know that that apartment has the same identical floor plan as your apartment.
And let's imagine that this is a building that contains exactly 12 apartments.
And rather than door numbers, you guys are named letters.
Your apartment, for example, is C.
So you're hanging out at your apartment.
You're sitting on the couch, you're eating funions, and you decide to go and hang out with your neighbor.
So you leave your apartment.
You walk next door to your neighbor's apartment, which is not C, but C sharp.
Immediately, it feels different.
Even though they might have the exact same floor plan as you do, they've painted the walls differently.
They have a different rug.
It feels different.
This is the key of C sharp.
Let's imagine this one step further and we knock on yet another neighbor's door.
This feels even more distant.
This is the key of D, right?
Now, just to illustrate this, because to the untrained ear, it might sound like you're still in the same apartment.
But I want to show you how far we've come.
So in order to illustrate this, I'm going to head back to our apartment and open the door.
Now that's C.
And I'm going to run all the way down the hall.
As far as I can go to the most distant apartment, the apartment of F-sharp,
I'm going to open this door at the exact same time.
Do you feel that?
Do you see how dissonant that is?
Do you understand how far those apartments are apart?
Pretty cool, huh?
The concept of modulation is really simple.
It's just how songwriters move from one apartment to another.
But the beauty and the power
is why they did it and how they got there.
I love this analogy because the idea that musical keys are different apartments with the same floor plan and just a slightly different color scheme,
I think that really captures what's going on here.
Yeah, I like walking from door to door.
It's like trick-or-treating.
Do you know, when I went trick-or-treating as a kid growing up in Manhattan, I knew.
never left my apartment building. Oh my gosh, you must have racked it in. You have like a huge
apartment building. Yeah, I would just go from floor, from the second floor to the 36th floor.
You know, apartments A to K on each. And man, I cleaned up. And I never had to leave, never had to
step outside. Are you like those werewolf children? Like you've actually never been outside?
I've seen, I've seen pictures of the sky and of clouds. But no, I've never seen them in real life.
I don't think anyone has, has, have they?
Okay, just cough three times if you're being held illegally in an apartment in New York City.
This is, yeah, I'm seeing.
There's Morse code throughout this podcast, rescue me.
What were we talking about, Charlie?
Modulation.
Halloween, right, modulation.
We were talking about modulation, and I feel like at this point we should probably explain what it is we're talking about.
Yeah, I totally agree.
And maybe the best way is just to first listen to a classic modulation.
I think one of the great titans of the art of modulation is also one of my favorite musicians ever,
Mr. Steveland Morris, aka Stevie Wonder.
Ooh, Stevie, what do you got?
Well, what do you think?
Should we do, knock me off my feet, please don't go, or a golden lady, take your pick?
Well, we should definitely do knocks me off my feet.
Good choice.
So smooth.
So smooth.
The song is amazing.
Okay, what just happened?
So what happened there?
I mean, besides my heart leaping up into my chest,
what Stevie Wonder did essentially was take us following Drew Cutler's analogy into another apartment.
Okay, I like it.
And again, it's like, even if you can't put your finger on it, I think you feel that something just happened there, right?
Something like, something changed.
Yes.
We just increased the intensity, increased kind of the brightness and the vibrancy of it because we
raised the key. We modulated higher. Right. So can you just like play that out for me? How did that happen?
Yeah, totally. I mean, first, let's listen to how that chorus sounded earlier in the song before the modulation.
Right. And now let's play that modulated up part. And the difference is palpable, right? Yeah, we're in a
whole new territory. And the way Stevie gets from point A to point B from one apartment to the other, so to speak, is by the use of what's called a pivot court. A
chord that is shared by both of those keys, and that is how, that is kind of the root that
takes you from one to the other.
Right.
Will you play it out for me?
Yes.
Pivot chord.
Beautiful.
And now you see we're in this, we're in this new territory.
It's higher.
It's more kind of dramatic, and it's just taking this song to a whole new level, literally.
It's the, it's the prettier apartment next door.
Yeah.
But again, everything is the same.
we're hearing the exact same chord changes,
the exact same instrumentation,
the exact same lyrics,
we're just in a slightly higher key,
and that makes a world of difference.
It's a beautiful thing.
Yeah.
And this is fundamentally different
from changing chords.
Yeah.
You can still stay in the same key
and change chords.
Maybe in this analogy,
you can still be in your apartment
and moving from one room to another,
but you're still staying in the same apartment.
Yeah.
This is, this modulation is extreme
because you're really,
you're moving from one apartment to the other.
Got it. Okay. Right. Yeah.
So if we have a firmer grasp of this subtle art of modulation,
maybe we can better understand how pop songs are able to work our emotions.
And there are different ways, I think, that modulations can be deployed.
In fact, Drew Cutler came up with a few categories of his own.
Okay.
The first of which is probably the most common kind,
when you modulate up to a higher key at the very end of a song,
and we're going to call that the diva modulation.
The diva modulation.
Yeah.
The diva, or the divo modulation in the case of someone like Stevie Wonder.
For sure.
But this is definitely the kind of modulation that we might associate with singers with like, you know,
like powerhouse female singers like Beyonce, Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey.
Yeah.
Because in some ways, this modulation is less about songwriting and more about performance.
It's about showing off.
It's about taking your vocals to kind of a pyrotechnic level.
Because as the key gets higher and higher, your voice gets higher and higher.
And it's more and more challenging to sing.
Wait, I do this all the time.
Why did you leave me off the list?
I don't know if the world can handle what you've got, Charlie.
Do you do it?
Do you have a finger wag in there?
Tell me the finger wag.
Is your cat sick?
Is everything okay?
Really sick.
Very, very.
Yeah, that was really...
It doesn't sound good.
So the diva modulation is almost kind of this athletic, highly performative, even showing off kind of effect.
And there's no better example than Beyonce's love on top.
Yes, take me there.
When we get to the end of this incredible song from 2011, as Beyonce sings the chorus, you put my love on top.
every time she sings Love on Top, we actually move almost as though you feel the top shifting upward.
She's going to modulate higher and higher and higher, and every time as we hear her vocals, they get more and more intense and impressive and florid.
She keeps topping herself. She keeps topping herself.
So as we move from, again, apartment to apartment, so to speak, it kind of becomes more and more.
dazzling. Right. So basically she's showing off how she can sing higher and higher and higher every time
she modulates up and up and up. Yeah. If we're in an apartment building taking the elevator
higher and higher, you know, the view gets kind of more and more stunning as we go up. One of my
favorite things on YouTube is somebody took the video of Beyonce's Love on Top. And then I think
in the actual song, it modulates, I don't know, like five or six times, but they modulate it like
14 or 15 times and making it higher and higher and higher and higher to the point where it's
like total chipmong soul, the stuff we talked about on our last episode. And it's, it's a wonderful thing.
That's hysterical. Right. And, you know, this is a technique that can be lampooned, because in some ways, it is very familiar now and somewhat predictable and a little cookie cutter.
It takes an artist with the kind of bravura and sensitivity of Beyonce to really keep this technique fresh.
Yes. To be clear, I actually think that this is probably.
a perfect pop song.
It is really good, isn't it?
Nothing gets me more excited than Love on Top.
Oh, I'm so glad we could indulge you today, Charlie.
In doing this at the end of Love on Top, though,
Beyonce is part of a much longer lineage of female divas using modulations,
these diva modulations, to take their vocals to the next level.
Yeah.
And probably Ground Zero for this would be the iconic song by Whitney Houston
I will always love you
You want to get a taste of that modulation Charlie
Give it to me
All right
Also so smooth
It's smooth as butter
Unsalted
Is that the end?
Is that the end?
No
Sike
Oh man
I mean chills
Charlie
Chills
I'm sorry, I just passed out.
Goose bumps.
So is that some modulation there?
Yeah.
I almost can't tell it's so well done.
It's very subtle.
And yet it allows Whitney Houston to show off her insane stratospheric range.
Oh, beautiful thing.
I mean, the note she's hitting, these are the equivalent of like, these are like the vocal equivalent of, of Usain Bolt, like, track records.
I mean, this is crazy.
stuff she's doing.
Wow.
And it's worth mentioning quickly, not like a classical master's level diversion, but, you know,
this has long roots going back to the operatic tradition where divas would show off their
coloratura or their upper range.
So this is, you know, again, as everything, just a 20th or 21st century manifestation of a very old technique.
You got to show off those pipes.
Exactly.
Okay, so we got the diva modulation. What else we got?
Well, Drew Cutler has identified maybe another type of modulation that he calls the cathartic modulation.
And I think this is an important distinction because it does feel fundamentally different from the diva modulation.
This isn't just about showing off one's vocal range and ratcheting up the tension.
This is about having a modulation occur at sort of a...
key climactic moment of of the song
lyrically speaking. Oh, okay. And it's really hard to come up with a better
example than this, uh, than one from the King of Pop himself, Michael Jackson and
the man in the mirror. And I see what he did there. Yeah. Pretty cool, right? Can we
rewind that back one more time, Sir Charles? Yeah, yeah. That is, this is like, oh, you could
You could make a songwriting masterclass out of this moment.
So good.
We need that catharsis.
Right, because where does this modulation occur exactly, Charlie?
When he says, make a change.
I mean, that's good stuff.
Ooh, wait a minute.
We've talked about this.
Text painting.
Text painting through the modulation.
Yeah, man.
That's good stuff.
Brilliant.
Well done.
So that is just a stunning moment.
And we can feel it's different than
the diva modulation, right?
This is like a very calculated
moment in the song where
the modulation actually supports
the lyrical message, in this case
of making a change.
Nate, I don't know if I can manage any
more change.
We're playing with my emotions.
We've got one more
for you, Charlie. Are you with me?
I don't know. Because we've heard the diva
modulation. Yeah. We've heard
the cathartic modulation.
Check. But there's one more.
But maybe the one where songwriters have to reach deepest into their bag of tricks, the most complex, the most mysterious, and perhaps also the most manipulative kind of modulation coming up after a short break.
No, stop playing with my heart.
Okay.
Check in with the man in the mirror until then, okay?
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Welcome back to Switched on Pop.
So far, we've heard Beyonce and Whitney Houston take us up and up with their diva modulations.
And Michael Jackson changed the world.
with his cathartic modulation, but there's one more kind of modulation that Drew Cutler has
identified, and it might be the most subtle one of all.
Is it hiding right behind me?
So this is the storytelling modulation.
And unlike the other ones, which occur towards the end of the song, kind of at these
climactic moments, this is maybe a more subtle use of modulation because it can happen
throughout the song.
Just, you know, I am taking notes as the, like, supposed song.
writer here. I figure I ought to be using these techniques because I really don't modulate very
frequently in my own songs. Yeah, you're going to emerge from this with an ironclad, bulletproof,
gold standard pop song. Okay, so how do I make one of these more narrative choices in modulation?
Well, maybe we should start with a kind of a gentle example from someone I know you're very fond of
Sir Paul McCartney. Oh, Paul. Let's listen to
Penny Lane.
Penny Lane, there is a bar
showing for
and sales.
I don't know if you've never noticed
there's a modulation in this song.
It's so smooth.
It's so smooth.
So so far in the verse here,
we're in one apartment.
This is apartment B
because we're in the key of B.
And now the chorus
should be in the same key,
except
what happens here?
Is that a modulation?
We just moved apartments.
Really?
And we moved down to apartment A.
It's so subtle.
Yeah.
It's so good.
And this is literally, like the lyrics of the song say, very strange.
Because this is first in general a weird move to modulate from the verse to the chorus.
Right.
And then specifically, every modulation we've seen so far has been upwards, right?
Yeah.
Right.
This one steps down from B to A.
That's lower.
So this is a very odd thing.
Charlie, I mean, I have to ask, why do you think Paul, Sir Paul, is deploying a harmonic modulation between the verse and the chorus of this song?
Okay, so if this is a storytelling modulation, I figure I probably have to go to the lyrics, so I'm going to pull those up.
And you mean you don't?
You don't have all this memorized?
I don't, not good at remembering lyrics.
I can't remember my own.
I mean neither.
Actually, I think, wasn't that a famous Beatles thing that they didn't know how to read music?
And I think when Paul asked John, what's going to happen if we forget our songs?
John said, like, well, then they're probably not very good, are they?
So maybe that just means none of my songs are good.
I can't remember my own lyrics.
Oh, I love that.
I haven't heard that, but that is very good.
What the heck is this song even about?
I mean, it's about Penny Lane, which is a street in Liverpool.
There's a barber showing photographs.
People come and say hello.
Okay, I'm looking at the lyrics and I have no idea what's going on.
Because this is like Sergeant Pepper's when they're all like in a whole another.
universe plane of consciousness. That's right. This is the B-side to Strawberry Fields, which, uh, the, the,
single that just preceded Sergeant Pepper. So yeah, this is where things are about to get psychedelic.
Wait a minute. Are we not on Sergeant Pepper? No, Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields were singles that were
released in advance of Sergeant Pepper. And were then later on magical mystery tour. Oh, boy. Oh, my gosh,
my Beatles knowledge. Well, you've read like 17 Beatles biographies. Uh, no, I've just read one,
but it was a thousand pages long. So this is like the weird.
like tripped out Beatles era, I honestly cannot even figure out what's going on in these lyrics.
Yeah, and I won't, and I won't dare to say that I have the definitive interpretation here,
but I'll simply note that here the storytelling modulation serves to reinforce a shift from
third person to first person, where the verse is sort of this third person description of what
is happening in the world of Penny Lane. And then the chorus kind of shifts to the internal
first person describing this more kind of emotional,
visceral state of the narrator.
Oh, okay, yeah.
So, like, the weird, trippy stuff in the verse
is the, like, in Penny Lane, there's a fireman
with an hourglass and in his pocket as a portrait of the queen.
I don't get it.
But then it shifts to the first person in the chorus.
Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes.
There beneath the blue suburban skies, I sit and meanwhile back.
And so when he says, meanwhile, back,
then it takes us to the verse and modulates again.
Yeah, that's true.
So every time he says very strange, it cues a modulation to the chorus.
Yep.
And at the end of the chorus, he says,
Meanwhile I cues a modulation back to the verse.
No, he says Meanwhile Back.
Meanwhile back.
So these modulations support the strangeness of the lyrical form.
Right.
And kind of oscillating between these two emotional states, I guess,
or these two narrative perspectives.
Maybe states of consciousness.
Paul, what are you doing?
What's going on?
Charlie, let me hit that, man.
Don't bogart that.
But Drew Cutler pointed out kind of an even juicier example.
And this one I love because like Penny Lane, honestly, I never realized that this song modulates,
that this song is kind of a textbook storytelling modulation.
This is Walk the Line by Johnny Cash.
I love that, 20.
So good.
So far,
I keep a close watch on this heart of mine.
I keep my eyes wide open all the time.
I keep the ends out for the tie that binds.
Because you're mine.
I walk the line.
So far, everything is very normal.
Totally normal.
Oh, wait a minute.
Do you hear him humming?
Yes.
We just modulated, Charlie.
So in that modulation, that was the thing I had never noticed in the song before.
He hums.
And it's almost like he's singing the note to himself so that he makes sure that he hits the right note in the modulation.
Right?
Yeah, I think you're probably right.
Most country songs don't modulate, so maybe he's not used to modulations and he's got to catch his own note.
I think that's entirely possible.
I would definitely have to do it because it's kind of hard.
I mean, this is moving around a lot.
What's it doing?
Well, it's moving in a very part of the reason it's so subtle is that he's, remember we were talking about pivot chords earlier?
Yeah.
When he gets to the end of each of these choruses, he uses the last chord as a pivot chord to take us to a new key.
Okay, but you're going to have to totally tell me what it is you're talking about.
Okay, cool.
Let me see if I can do this real quick, actually.
So we get to the end of this first chorus, which starts in the key of E, apartment E.
and then we get to the end and we're on this E chord.
And then if I just make one small change,
if I turn this E major chord into an E7 chord,
all of a sudden we've turned our home key into a very unstable chord.
In fact, it's a chord that wants to go to a new key.
It wants to move to a new apartment, apartment A.
And indeed, that's where we head next.
So then the next chorus is in this new key, this new apartment, apartment A.
I find it very, very easy to be true.
This song has a real estate fetish, or our analysis does at least.
And that's going to happen again.
We get to the end of the second chorus, takes the home chord, makes it unstable,
which in turn pivots us to a new key.
And then this goes around until eventually we come back by the last chorus to the original key that he started in.
Ooh, okay.
So how is this narrative thing?
I feel like we got to look at the lyrics one more time.
Well, we'll check.
But before we do, check out what's different about this final chorus from the first chorus,
even though we've returned to the original key.
Okay.
So can we listen to the first chorus for one second?
I keep a close watch on this heart of mine.
Okay, so that's the first chorus.
And then we'll skip to the end.
I keep the ends up for the tie that bind.
Because you're fine.
I walk the line.
Johnny Cash has gotten deep.
So this is an very interesting trick because Johnny Cash has modulated back to the original key,
but he's changed it because he's dropped his voice down an octave.
So it's super low.
I mean, this is like classic Johnny Cash.
Husky Basso Profundo territory.
But you're absolutely right.
The question is, what are these series of storytelling modulations
have to do with the story being told.
Consult the lyrics.
I keep a close watch on this heart of mind.
I keep my eyes wide open all the time.
I keep the ends out for the tie that binds because you're mine.
I walk the line.
Any guesses?
Because I've got one.
I was confused because I felt like walking the line would mean you like walk straight and stay in the key.
But it seems like his way of keeping watch is going over the entire territory and looking everywhere.
Interesting.
What do you think?
Yeah, I'm into that, Charles.
I have like kind of maybe a related interpretation.
All theories are good theories, except mine are best.
And that even though the key keeps moving all over the place, everything else remains the same.
Johnny Cash sings the song in exactly the same way, exactly the same melody, exactly the same accompaniment, et cetera, et cetera.
It's like essentially no matter what happens, no matter what places I go to, I continue to walk the line.
Huh.
And then finally, when we return home and he drops his vocal down an octave, it's almost like saying, you know, and when I'm never leaving, like, I'm here to stay.
I'm going to walk this line forever.
So basically, like dropping down, getting low for Johnny Cash is basically going to a place of seriousness and saying, no, no, no, really, I am walking the line.
Right.
Yes, foundational here.
I'm walking the line.
Yeah.
It's like Batman.
I find that very persuasive.
I mean, this is a brilliant use of the storytelling modulation here.
Johnny is an expert storyteller, expert songwriter.
He knows what he's doing here.
He really does.
And whether you're using the storytelling modulation and Johnny Cash has walked the line,
the cathartic modulation in Michael Jackson's Man in the Mirror,
or the diva modulation in Beyonce's love on top,
this technique of harmonic modulation is a key trick for the songwriter.
tool bag, right? You just said toolbag. I'm sorry, I found that really funny. And sorry to burst your bubble further,
but actually that whole Johnny Cash song was actually an F the entire time. Analysis is still good,
but yeah, you were off by half an apartment. I quit. Nonetheless. So basically what you're inferring
is that these moments when I am drawn into a song
or I feel a shift in my own,
a mode of response to the music
that maybe the composer is just playing with my heart
using these modulations?
Yes, well, I'm implying it, not inferring it,
but yes, that's exactly right.
I thought you were more into, like, the humanities
than the sciences.
Tool bag.
Anyway.
So I really wanted to end this episode
by referencing a current song
on the pop charts that is making use of this modulation technique, any one of these techniques,
but after some serious searching, I haven't been able to turn up any.
So what I was thinking is now that we're all armed with laser ears to identify these modulations,
if any of our listeners find pop songs that make use of this technique, send it in,
and we can make a playlist of modulatory masterpieces.
Yeah, so they should reach out to us on Twitter at Switched On Pop.
Or hit us up at www. www.Switchedonpop.com.
There's like a whole contact section thing.
You can find us.
And then we'll publish that playlist sometime next week.
This episode of Switched On Pop was produced by me, Nate Sloan.
And me, Charlie Harding.
Huge thanks to Drew Cutler.
That's Drew D-R-U, the cool way to spell it.
You can find more of his music and activities.
I think he's got a tour coming up this fall, in fact, at D-R-U-C-U-T-L-E-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-Cutl-U-Cutler.com.
I also want to give a shout out to our favorite artist, Luke Harris, for doing our designs.
Don't forget to send us your modulatory masterpieces on Twitter at Switched-on-P-Pop or visit us at www.w.w.
And we'll be back in two weeks with another episode about musical wonder and more bags of tricks and so on.
and whatnot.
And until then, you can listen to more episodes on any of your podcatcher.
And we really appreciate it if you left us a review on iTunes.
It really helps to support the show.
Until then, as always, thanks for listening.
Thanks for listening.
