I had no idea that Max Martin was fukking with the Weeknd. I should've known

[scuba]

A lot of valid points, but I disagree in some areas.

Hip-hop is not 'non-harmonic'. Hip-hop utilizes harmony, but tends to utilize static harmony or basic harmony, which is not different from a lot of popular music.
Popular music has been groove based for a long time. You can thank black artists like James Brown and jazz for that. Pop been about groove for a while.
Pop utilizes verse-chorus as well in a manner not dissimilar to hip-hop. The difference between the two genres in terms of 'structure' is actually not that significant.
'Integrated instrumentation' vs 'non-interacting layers'...can you elaborate on that?

Musically the biggest difference occurs in terms of rhythm, which is due to the heavy usage of syncopation and triplets. But that is nothing unique to hip hop. That comes from jazz (which is heavy on syncopation) which extends down to funk and has been incorporated in popular music. The rhythmic devices used in funk are more prevalent in hip-hop, and have also been used in popular music. Rhythm has now become just as important in popular music since it is a primary element in black music, and we all know the history of how much popular music "borrows" from black music.

Because these two genres have "borrowed" from the same sources, the musical elements themselves are not really dissimilar. I think the primary differences between the genres lie mostly in timbre and instrumentation. Two of the greatest things that hip hop culture introduced to the world are sampling and rapping. As well as eschewing melody (at least for vocalists, although a lot of hip-hop still incorporates melody in some shape or form).

Interesting. It's hard to deduce both genres down to these generic explanations.

Ehhhh I don't know if its really beneficial to split hairs too much... but a few of these things just cant stand...

Hip Hop is not generally a harmonic music... harmony has a specific definition, hip hop may have harmonic elements depending on what it samples... but by the same token probably the majority of hip hop songs do not have any harmonic elements other than a chord stab... there is no interplay between multiple voices (vocal or instrumental), there is not a vertical organization of notes from a major or minor scale used to back and give structure to the melody... because there is no melody... there can be depending on what is music is sampled but its not intrinsic to the artform... for instance... public enemy, marley marl, bdp... almost never had any harmonies going on... where as in pop music it is extremely rare for a song to be constructed without harmony...

Groove is a subjective term... pop has for the longest had dance and rhythmic drivers... but it is not groove based... meaning many perhaps the majority of hip hop songs are based around a short repeated rhythmic figure to the exclusion of all else... this rarely is the case with pop music its certainly an exception to the rule when it happens...

look at it this way pop music is all about using standard musical transitions to establish tension and release, hook you into the song then provide a climax... hip hop is all about a sustained rhythmic figure to induce a consistent trancelike zone...

 

[SirBiatch]

Ehhhh I don't know if its really beneficial to split hairs too much... but a few of these things just cant stand...

Hip Hop is not generally a harmonic music... harmony has a specific definition, hip hop may have harmonic elements depending on what it samples... but by the same token probably the majority of hip hop songs do not have any harmonic elements other than a chord stab... there is no interplay between multiple voices (vocal or instrumental), there is not a vertical organization of notes from a major or minor scale used to back and give structure to the melody... because there is no melody... there can be depending on what is music is sampled but its not intrinsic to the artform... for instance... public enemy, marley marl, bdp... almost never had any harmonies going on... where as in pop music it is extremely rare for a song to be constructed without harmony...

Groove is a subjective term... pop has for the longest had dance and rhythmic drivers... but it is not groove based... meaning many perhaps the majority of hip hop songs are based around a short repeated rhythmic figure to the exclusion of all else... this rarely is the case with pop music its certainly an exception to the rule when it happens...

look at it this way pop music is all about using standard musical transitions to establish tension and release, hook you into the song then provide a climax... hip hop is all about a sustained rhythmic figure to induce a consistent trancelike zone...

I'm sure there's a Beatles record that sounds just like this





but let these vultures tell it, rap was always pop.

I hope they're at least reading your posts in detail and taking the shyt in. Otherwise, we've both wasted our time.

 

[thelonious21]

So.. this is supposed to be the booth..
I fux wit the weeknd ...
But I was wondering. ..
Why does son have a stickied thread..
In da Boof..?
Unless......
The booth also includes R&B ....
And now...
We have a Max Martin thread..

 

[IllmaticDelta]

HipHop is a form of "pop"...As I said before "Pop" music isn't really a distinct genre of it's own. Anything that's massed consumed is essentially "Pop" music. To me, I don't use the phrase "pop music" to describe a distinct sound but as a descriptor for any music that's intended to be made for mass consumption/appeal to the masses. As I once said in another thread


How can "Pop" be a musical genre of it's own when the sounds you hear in it are derived from the other well known genres of "popular" music. To me "Pop music" means two things:

1. Music from any "Popular music" genre or mainstream

2. Music based in the sounds of "Popular music" but watered down for mass consumption.



"Pop music" is just shorthand for "popular music" just as MC Hammer says @ 27:14 - 28:00





.....Max Martin is part of the machine described in def # 2


That kind of "pop"is carrying on the tradition of Tin Pan Alley

The song publishers who created Tin Pan Alley frequently had backgrounds as salesmen. The background of Isadore Witmark was selling water filters. Leo Feist had sold corsets, and Joe Stern and Edward B. Marks had sold neck-ties and buttons respectively.[7] The music houses in lower Manhattan were lively places, with a steady stream of songwriters, vaudeville and Broadway performers, musicians, and "song pluggers" coming and going.

Aspiring songwriters came to demonstrate tunes they hoped to sell. When tunes were purchased from unknowns with no previous hits, the name of someone with the firm was often added as co-composer (in order to keep a higher percentage of royalties within the firm), or all rights to the song were purchased outright for a flat fee (including rights to put someone else's name on the sheet music as the composer). Songwriters who became established producers of successful songs were hired to be on the staff of the music houses. The most successful of them, like Harry Von Tilzer and Irving Berlin, founded their own publishing firms.

"Song pluggers" were pianists and singers who made their living demonstrating songs to promote sales of sheet music. Most music stores had song pluggers on staff. Other pluggers were employed by the publishers to travel and familiarize the public with their new publications. Among the ranks of song pluggers were George Gershwin and Harry Warren. A more aggressive form of song plugging was known as "booming": it meant buying dozens of tickets for shows, infiltrating the audience and then singing the song to be plugged. At Shapiro Bernstein, Louis Bernstein recalled taking his plugging crew to cycle races at Madison Square Garden: "They had 20,000 people there, we had a pianist and a singer with a large horn. We'd sing a song to them thirty times a night. They'd cheer and yell, and we kept pounding away at them. When people walked out, they'd be singing the song. They couldn't help it."[8]

When vaudeville performers played New York City, they would often visit various Tin Pan Alley firms to find new songs for their acts. Second- and third-rate performers often paid for rights to use a new song, while famous stars were given free copies of publisher's new numbers or were paid to perform them, the publishers knowing this was valuable advertising.

Initially Tin Pan Alley specialized in melodramatic ballads and comic novelty songs, but it embraced the newly popular styles of the cakewalk and ragtime music. Later on jazz and blues were incorporated, although less completely, as Tin Pan Alley was oriented towards producing songs that amateur singers or small town bands could perform from printed music. In the 1910s and 1920s Tin Pan Alley published pop-songs and dance numbers created in newly popular jazz and blues styles

Tin Pan Alley - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Love Sosa]

dude, you had no talking points. stop it. You came in talking about asap rocky, soccer moms and my age. Then you're talking about hip hop falling off in the mid 90s... You were literally rambling. Firing shots in the dark, hoping something would stick. You never had a coherent point. fukk outta here.



That makes it undeniably a hip hop record?



That makes it undeniably a hip hop record?



That makes it undeniably a hip hop record?

Nevermind that we could argue that hip hop doesn't exist on mainstream radio anymore. Nevermind that in many cities, there are no exclusively hip hop clubs anymore but really just clubs that play hip hop. Nevermind that you're on a hip hop forum discussing Max fukking Martin.

You're easily fooled. That's fine. We're not you.

Don't be mad at me, be mad at what hip hop has become. You can live in your little world and pretend it's still 1995 or you can join the rest of us and see hip hop in 2015 for what it is whether you like it or not. I'm discussing Max Martin on this forum because there is a stickied thread at the top of the page that contains the song I'm talking about.

 

[scuba]

I think we done said enough about hip hop vs pop...

So moving on to Max Martin his talent lies in the ability to fuse different art music's together in a way that's non offensive to the majority while maintaining enough of the fused music...

Let's take a non max Martin attempt... Downtown by macklemore... The theory behind it is taking old school hip hop, throwback funk, 70s rock opera together with comedic parody rap and modern music transitions to create something that appeals to fans of all those forms that is accessible to pop fans who font particularly like any of those genres... Problem is it sounds like 3 different records cut together so it doesn't 'work'

Now look at 'One More Time' by maroon 5... It merges police style ska rock guitars, with strait rock drum patterns, but with pop drum sounds but mixed with a prioritization like hip hop drums... Adds ins Adam Levine's distinct style of pop falsetto, the dream inspired vocal sounds catchisms and a universal love that ain't working but I can't give up theme...

One sounds like a parody mix of distinct genres that fails to fully appeal to a fan of any of the constituent parts...

The other sounds like a serious emotional dance ballad, that sounds to ska rock fans like a ska rock song, sounds to hip hop fans like a hip hop dance beat, sounds to the mainstream like a dance pop song... And has strong multiple catchy elements and actually sounds a bit edgy for that crowd...

It's definitely merging a bunch of different genres and catchy components to appeal to the widest possible audience.... Its pop but it's good as far as pop can go...

 

[Insensitive]

As for the argument about Harmony, I think it depends on the producer in question.
Some producers are going to sample and not really care about what chord progressions
take place. They ignore anything pertaining to theory and focus on getting that tight, head nodding rhythm.
If it works then great, if it doesn't technically "work" but still sounds dope, even better.


While a producer like Terrace Martin keeps it "Hip Hop" with his focus on dope drums
he still manages to sling together chord progressions that are pleasing to the ear.
Sure, melody takes the back seat but I don't think you need melody to think about the
direction you want to take harmonically.



:edit:
And I'm glad heads are going at the Max Martin slobbering in this thread.
He's great for what he does but I'd take the simplest beats (NY State of Mind) with
Significantly more complex ideas communicated over them (Nas's raps) over
what typically gets sung over Max Martin's product.

 

[Artificial Intelligence]

.......................

 

[Roaden Polynice]

I think we done said enough about hip hop vs pop...

So moving on to Max Martin his talent lies in the ability to fuse different art music's together in a way that's non offensive to the majority while maintaining enough of the fused music...

Let's take a non max Martin attempt... Downtown by macklemore... The theory behind it is taking old school hip hop, throwback funk, 70s rock opera together with comedic parody rap and modern music transitions to create something that appeals to fans of all those forms that is accessible to pop fans who font particularly like any of those genres... Problem is it sounds like 3 different records cut together so it doesn't 'work'

Now look at 'One More Time' by maroon 5... It merges police style ska rock guitars, with strait rock drum patterns, but with pop drum sounds but mixed with a prioritization like hip hop drums... Adds ins Adam Levine's distinct style of pop falsetto, the dream inspired vocal sounds catchisms and a universal love that ain't working but I can't give up theme...

One sounds like a parody mix of distinct genres that fails to fully appeal to a fan of any of the constituent parts...

The other sounds like a serious emotional dance ballad, that sounds to ska rock fans like a ska rock song, sounds to hip hop fans like a hip hop dance beat, sounds to the mainstream like a dance pop song... And has strong multiple catchy elements and actually sounds a bit edgy for that crowd...

It's definitely merging a bunch of different genres and catchy components to appeal to the widest possible audience.... Its pop but it's good as far as pop can go...

One More Night is trash tho

And your comparison is disingenuous too.

 

[CrimsonTider]

All pop means is popular, if your listening to the top hip hop artists and songs, thats pop too. Drake he's pop, 50 cent he was pop. So dont be trying to go against pop like ur an underground head or a rebel, relax yourself brehs.

This

This is not factually true. Pop music is not just popular music. Pop has a specific meaning as far as a musically genre goes. This is basic, basic stuff. You can search google, even Wikipedia will tell you that...

Pop music is white people singing

Rappers can make shyt that becomes popular

But you can most definitely define pop as a genre

 

[IllmaticDelta]

All pop means is popular, if your listening to the top hip hop artists and songs, thats pop too. Drake he's pop, 50 cent he was pop. So dont be trying to go against pop like ur an underground head or a rebel, relax yourself brehs.

You're right but Sirbiatch is also right

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Pop music is white people singing

They tried to make that term to describe music made by "white" people the same way they use "rock" for marketing reasons but it doesn't actually mean that

Rappers can make shyt that becomes popular

Rap is "pop" music but that doesn't mean all rap songs are made with the intention of appealing to the masses.

But you can most definitely define pop as a genre

No you can't...is this not a pop song?

 

[CrimsonTider]

They tried to makethat term to describe music made by "white" people they same way they use "rock" for marketing reasons but it doesn't actually mean that





Rap is "pop" music but that doesn't mean all rap songs are made with the intention of appealing to the masses.





No you can't...is this not a pop song?

No it's not a pop song it just crossed over


Is this pop?





Pop music is singing by white people

 

[IllmaticDelta]

No it's not a pop song it just crossed over

Is this pop?

To me, it doesn't sound like a song that was crafted to appeal to the masses

Pop music is singing by white people

Motown wasn't pop?

 

[CrimsonTider]

To me, it doesn't sound like a song that was crafted to appeal to the masses





Motown wasn't pop?

No, Motown isn't pop

Boosie "Swerve" was made for the same purpose as in da club

Taylor swift, backstreet boys, one direction, Katy perry.

That's pop music.