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Blog Post 1: Kanye West’s Through the Wire

Hey everyone! Today, I’m going to be looking at Kanye West’s “Through the Wire”, which was featured on his debut album, The College Dropout. This song utilizes all of the drum instruments I used in my beat tutorial, as well as some additional parts that really make this track groove. We have it all in this example. Kanye uses the standard hi-hat, snare, clap, and kick, but also utilizes some bongo drums and crash cymbals as well. This beat also features a sample of Chaka Khan’s “Through the Fire”, which is rhythmically spliced throughout the track and used as the basis for West’s beat.

Around the 0:04 mark, you’ll hear the bongo drums used as a transition from the intro of the beat to the chorus. The kick drum builds along with the bongo drums in a repetitive stack of eighth notes up until the chorus hits. The actual beat begins around the 0:06 minute mark, complete with the kick, snare, and hats all playing together for the chorus.

In terms of song structure, this is a very common technique that songwriters will use to open their instrumentals with. Here, Kanye begins the beat slightly in the Pre-Chorus and then immediately kicks off the beat in the Chorus. A good reason to start your beats off this way is that you quickly immerse your listener into the climax of the song before they have the opportunity to hear any other section of it.

Something I always found humorous in this beat is Kanye’s use of the Clap in the Chorus. At the 0:17 mark of the song (and in the following Choruses throughout the track), Kanye pauses the drums for a single quarter note and then brings the entire drum section back in, but this time, with a Clap on beat 3 of the bar. I’m not sure how to explain it, but Kanye’s subtle use of the Clap in this Chorus section always made me stop and admire him for creating just enough variation in the Chorus to make me smirk every time I hear it.

The Pre-Chorus, with the staggering kick drum and bongo drum-fill create a quick build-up that lead in nicely to the introduction of the Chorus section. Once the Chorus has been played through and the instrumental is winding down, Kanye takes that opportunity to come in and begin his first verse. An interesting compositional note here is that the same build-up that was used in the Intro of the song is used to transition from the end of the Chorus to the beginning of the first Verse.

For the Verse in this beat, West removes the hi-hats and snare drum, leaving just the snare and kick to keep the groove, as well as the bongo drum-fill from the transition portions at the beginning of the song, this time at the end of each four-bar phrase.

Harmonically, this entire beat is sample-based, so there isn’t really any Chord Progression to analyze that Kanye has written here. However, I have posted a link here: http://www.whosampled.com/sample/346/Kanye-West-Through-the-Wire-Chaka-Khan-Through-the-Fire/

to a WhoSampled.com article that compares Kanye’s track to Chaka Khan’s original that West sampled for this beat. Take a listen to the two and check out how Kanye chopped up the original to create something new and fresh for his own instrumental. This style of Hip-Hop composing was relatively innovative for the time and Kanye was a master at taking small sections from older songs and creating entirely new hip-hop instrumentals by chopping them up and re-positioning them.

One of the coolest features of this track is the bass line. West. During the Verse sections of the beat (0:33), Kanye’s bass lines follow the kick drum in short spurts of sound, followed by some longer notes that give the groove some rhythmic variation. The bass line’s subtlety is where I think it shines the most here. As with most instrumentals where the hook is the breadwinner, the bass often lays in the background serving as the harmonic foundation of the beat. In “Through the Wire”, the bass line is punchy enough that we can hear it clearly underneath the drums and Chaka Khan’s sample, but it works so well with the rest of the elements of the beat that I can’t help but praise West for his magnificent writing.

If you’ve never listened to any of Kanye’s older albums, I would highly recommend giving them a listen. West’s ability to write catchy and accessibly beats continually throughout his career as a hip-hop artist is what has made him one of the most sought-after producers/songwriters in the past 10 years. Many artists have claimed Kanye West as one of their big influences in writing hip-hop instrumentals, and I would suggest analyzing some of his other hits to get an idea as to why he’s been so successful in the pop/hip-hop music culture.

Blog Post 2: Drake’s Over My Dead Body

Good afternoon everyone! In today’s post, I’d like to take a look at Drake’s “Over My Dead Body”, which is the opening track for his breakthrough album Take Care. The beat for this track was written by Noah “40” Shebib. If you’ve never heard of him, check him out! He’s written quite a few instrumentals for Drake and his style is easily distinguishable.

This track features a very simplistic chord progression that always seems to be going somewhere. The reason for this can be found in a brief analysis of the progression.

Here is the progression: C - Dm7 - Em7/G - Am7.

For any of you who haven’t had any previous music theory training, the letters and symbols I’ve written above are represent the chords in this track’s chord progression. Here, the song begins on a C Major chord and then moves to a D minor seven chord. The “seven” in each of these chords are what give them that R&B/Jazzy texture that a lot of Drake’s tracks often feature.

If we do a theoretical analysis of these chords, it will look like this: I - ii7 - iii7/5 - vi7.

These roman numerals all stand for the certain chord that falls within a standard key signature. So, in basic terms, if C is the key we’re writing in, then the second chord in our progression would be D (C = I, D = ii, E = iii, etc.).

The roman numerals, depending on them being uppercase or lowercase, represents a major or minor chord (Major = Uppercase, minor = lowercase).

If you’d like to read more into music theory and get a good grasp on what I’m talking about here, I’ve attached some links to some great websites that go much more into detail about what I’m talking about:

http://www.music-theory-for-musicians.com/basic-music-theory.html

http://www.musicradar.com/tuition/tech/10-easy-music-theory-tricks-that-every-producer-should-know-627922

Now, let’s get back to talking about Drake’s progression. The reason it sounds like it just keeps going is because of how the song resolves the chords, or simply put, goes back to the first C chord in the progression. Instead of moving to a V chord (which would be a G Major chord in this instance) 40 decided to move from the Em chord to an Am chord, which doesn’t really sound like it should move back to the I chord in the progression. Instead, it keeps the idea of moving upwards, just as the previous chords do. If you were to play the roots of these chords on a piano, you would begin at a C and move upwards from C to D to E and then to A. Thus, the progression works really well for giving the listener the impression that the song is moving somewhere, but never actually finding a resting place.

Try using this chord progression idea in your own instrumentals. Obviously 40 has done something here that works for a typically hip-hop beat. His progression keeps the listener from feeling like the song needs to end by never actually resolving the chords and thus giving them the continual feeling of perpetual music!