But most would agree that the song is, instead, on its surface at least, almost therapeutic in its inventory of heart-gladdening pleasures like crisp apple strudel and schnitzel with noodles. Maria has so many favorite things she has the luxury of cherry-picking ones that rhyme to sing about. At the same time, there is a hint of melancholy shadowing the song's overtly happy face. But that shadow probably derives at least as much from Oscar Hammerstein's words as from melody and harmony.
For me at least, it emanates from the lyrics' catalogue of wintry comforts like "bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens," which evoke a particular range of snug feelings that presuppose vulnerability—a sheltering, fortifying happiness salvaged from an enveloping Alpine harshness. The shakiness of the reductive position might be more immediately apparent to anyone with even a spotty exposure like mine to Jewish religious music and its folk cousin, klezmer.
Despite its characteristic minor tonality, this music encompasses a vast range of human emotion. How could it not? It has to cover everything from prayers for the dead to adoration of the deity. The clinching example of minor-key mirth-compatibility just might be that jolt of delirious energy familiar to anyone who's attended a Jewish wedding Other good examples, anyone?
We can compile and post here the definitive, crowd-sourced list. Better yet, if there are any musicians out there with too much time on their hands, I invite you to perform your own "Eleanor Rigby" tests: Keep the melody—alter anything else lyrics, tempo, orchestration at will to produce a non-sad result. Polka and zydeco settings seem especially promising to me.
Email us your musical rebuttals, and we'll upload them here. The complementary principle in tonal determinism—major key songs are "upbeat"—seems even flimsier than its minor key counterpart. Two extremely sad major key songs immediately occur to me—Charlie Rich's abject confession of failure and despair, "Feel Like Going Home," and "Boulder to Birmingham," in which a depleted Emmylou Harris seeks relief from her apathy and emotional isolation following the death of Gram Parsons by trying to commune directly with him.
The myriad exceptions to the "sad minor third" rule illustrate a perhaps banal but basic truth about music: It's irreducibly emergent. All its elements act reciprocally, and their infinitely variable interplay produces a correspondingly variable range of emotions. You have even more advantages if you play music. Do you have any favorite tunes that get you going?
Let us know in the comments! Share this Post! Leave A Comment. Read News. Become a Fan. Moms and Babies. View Pregnancy Services. Patient Stories. Read Stories. Share your story with us. The value of the First and Last Name field is not valid. Well, this may make some sense, but I personally can't call Megalovania a happy or cheerful song, especially considering context of this song in a game - it's battle with Sans and it is one of the most dramatic or even tragic moments in a whole game.
How can someone call this "happy? Other upbeat songs I like also came from boss battles. In this context, the commenter is using it in the "happy, cheerful, optimistic music" sense; though I would be inclined to use more emotionally neutral terms like fast-paced and active, full of motion etc.
As far as I can tell, there is no strong relationship between this overall feel of the music and the more technical use of the term upbeat to refer to the un-accented subdivisions in the meter or ever more stringently: the un-accented subdivision just prior to the start of the measure.
Indeed, you'd usually refer to music that accentuates the off-beats as being "[highly] syncopated', not upbeat. Especially in classical music the "upbeat" refers to what the conductor is doing.
This may include music that is "hot", "hard" and so on but can include music that is "soft" and "light" if the tempo of the music is sufficiently quick enough. Upbeat also has connotations of causing one to leap in dance. Quick marches are like that, as is quick jazz tunes which you see people doing the lindy hop to.
In terms of metal, an upbeat tune will likely cause the audience to thrash less and perhaps engage in more hopping and jumping. This is the answer for the music critic side. For the performers, upbeat can mean something completely different. It can mean the end of the bar where a conductor punctuates the end with an upward flick of his baton. The downbeat then is the start of the bar. Sign up to join this community.
The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. What is "Upbeat Music"?
Ask Question. Asked 4 years, 7 months ago. Active 3 years, 5 months ago. Viewed 25k times. Okay, I have enough searching and now I'm just totally confused. Prologue I am not a professional musician and I don't know music terms and I can not read notesheets so bear with me. Main part Recently I saw comment about Megalovania in the same manner: "It is so upbeat".
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