Behind the "Music"

Creating fun virtuoso arrangements of popular tunes is a cute little pastime that used to be enjoyed by some of my personal piano heroes. Following in their footsteps, earlier this year I recorded my version of Rihanna’s song “Don’t Stop the Music”. After posting it online, I received endless requests to do another one, so having a few relaxing weeks this summer I decided to do it once more and with the help from my fellow YouTubers picked Madonna’s “Music” for this piano makeover. Though it was fun, it is not something that I intend to do again (unless for a truly compelling reason). But I do want to share a few little thoughts behind the “Music”, and answer those of you who wanted to know more about these arrangements.

Having been both surprised and amused by the comment “this does not sound like the original” that some people posted to my “Don’t Stop The Music” video, this time I decided to give a fair upfront warning: my arrangement is NOT supposed to be the exact repetition of the original song! For my taste, playing a pop song such as “Music” note for note would be among the most boring, unoriginal and unpleasant things to hear, and I would never waste your attention or my time on such tediousness. With that said, my arrangement is, in fact, very closely linked with the original (though, I’ll admit that connecting all the dots may require some musical prowess).

So here are a few trivia points about my “Music”:

• I think it can be called a distorted baroque/classical arrangement. I took certain elements reminiscent of baroque piano sonatas and purposely distorted them to highlight the fact that this piece is a sort of musical joke and not a serious composition. (On that note, I have to mention that while I personally think that baroque/classical genre is supremely divine, today it can exist only through the works of superb masters of that era or within the context of historical and educational projects. Whoever claims to compose serious music in that style today is, in my view, choosing to always be musically inferior to the great masters of the past and musically irrelevant for the audience of the present.)

• My arrangement ends in G-major, which is a parallel major of the original song’s G-minor key. This was my little tribute to the great composers of the past (Bach immediately comes to mind) who often started compositions in the minor key and ended them in the parallel major.

• Pop music and classical music are two polar opposites in the sense that while the richness and variety of electronic sounds allow pop compositions to easily dwell on the same motif over and over again, in classical - it’s all about developing and growing your musical idea. Additionally, the sound of a single instrument (like the piano) is very “thin” comparing to the multitude of electronic sounds in a pop song. For these reasons, taking a bare pop theme and playing it on the piano unchanged would be utterly ridiculous. As the original song offered little melodic material, I had to sneak in new motifs (that were still derived from the original) in order to give my “Music” some shape and texture.
  

So that’s your quick “behind the music” tour, and now you can watch it again with completely new eyes! ;)