Thursday, July 27, 2006

Famous wrong notes

I heard Miracles by Jefferson Starship on the radio tonight. The last riff of the sax solo is all wrong notes. If it's intentional, it doesn't work in the context of the song. That's bugged me ever since I first heard it. Anyway, there are lots of famous wrong notes, or bad note choices, that make it into popular music. Like that one note in the guitar solo in Sunglasses At Night by Corey Hart. You know the one. I knew a guitar player who loved that note and was pretty sure it was intentional. I'm not convinced. There's the opening of Kurt Cobain's guitar solo in the acoustic version of The Man Who Sold The World. Flub. Charlie Watt's drum intro on Start Me Up. Oh, and back to Nirvana, there's the fact that the vocal melody on the chorus of All Apologies is in a different key than what the guitar and bass are playing. It kinda works but something isn't quite right. I love dischord and chaos and atonality - when it works, like on Beefheart's stuff or Milhaud's stuff, but that isn't what I'm talking about. I know I've left out a lot, I'll add to this list if I think of other heinous examples.

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