Ludovico Einaudi is an Italian pianist and composer, now 60, who has released thirteen albums and has written music for a host of films and commercial projects. I'm a huge fan of his music, and his compositions have had a strong impact on my playing style.
What makes a song beautiful?
Einaudi released a piano album in 2006 called Divenire, which includes a song by the same name, as well as a song called "Monday" (#3 in the album) and it's one of my favorite pieces. As a listener, I don't think too much about why I happen to love a piece of music -- I just listen to it, and sometimes I'll listen to it repeatedly until I realize that I'm late and I have to be somewhere. But as a composer I occasionally ask myself, what specifically is it about a piece that makes me love it so much? I tend to be very methodical in trying to identify the structure of a piece, and whether there is a certain part of this structure that constitutes some "magic ingredient" that makes me, or other listeners, say "Wow, that's beautiful."
Some people ask, "Why does there have to be some specific pattern or structure in a piece that makes it beautiful? Can't it just be beautiful for beauty's sake?" Along the same lines, people tend to ask these two questions as well, which are quite similar:
1) Is the "beauty" in a piece of music really just about patterns, chord structure, tempo, dynamics, etc.?
I'm going to be blunt: YES. It is definitely part of that, but it's also the emotional reaction generated by the listener, which depends on both the structure of the piece as well as how the piece stimulates the brain and the subconscious memories of the listener's personal experiences (otherwise known as relatability, which I'll talk about later), and this relatability can be especially powerful when lyrics are used. You know, the lyrics about the heartache that you could totally relate to, because it also happened to you when you were younger -- that kind of thing.
2) Can't the beauty in a piece of music be just that -- just pure beauty? Like a mystical, mysterious beauty, a beauty that doesn't require an explanation, which comes from the ether, or is merely a spiritual feeling that is just "there"?
Answer: NOPE :)
Okay, so moving on. As I said, I wondered why "Monday" struck such a chord with me. After thinking about this for some time I came to several conclusions, and one of them is that I really like "Monday" because of how much I dislike Mondays.
I love "Monday" because I hate Monday
I tried to do some research about this particular song, and I was able to find plenty of references to it, as well as recordings of the actual songs and videos of people playing it, but I wasn't able to find any information that revealed what the song is actually about. I didn't spend a ton of time researching, though, so if you're able to find anything more about it, I want to know! The song is played in a minor key, with transition notes both in the melody as well as in the background (left hand) that make it sound gloomy. It seems to match the title of the song perfectly. Whenever I listen to this piece, right from the beginning I get images of waking up on a dull, rainy Monday morning, looking out of a rain-splattered window at the ugly, gloomy wet day, and thinking to myself, "Shit, it's Monday." That's exactly the kind of emotion this song evokes in me, so I'm assuming that Einaudi had one of these days and decided to write a song about it. What's nice is that everyone has had a day like this (and most people hate Mondays), so this song is very relatable, even without lyrics.
One of the arguments I've made in the past is that the title to a song can contribute a great deal in terms of the emotional weight of the piece. You can read about this under the section entitled "That's your song title, really?" in my blog post from January, Why Music Is Incomplete Without a Background Story, Part 2. The chord structure, melodic patterns and the tempo in "Monday," for example, already create a gloomy feeling, and it tends to create images of something dreary, like a rainy day, or maybe even the image of somebody sitting at home and crying. That in itself is well-crafted, given that the composer intended to create these kinds of images or emotions. But just adding the title "Monday" makes it that much more powerful, because now we have an idea of why the person is feeling gloomy. Personally, I might have given a more specific title, but I think it's still good.
I'll reiterate again that I didn't research this song as thoroughly as I would if I had more time on my hands, so as far as I know the title could very well have a deeper meaning. The composer could have had a dog named "Monday" that died, and as far as we know that could be the real meaning behind the piece. But if that's the case, the vagueness in the title means the composer knows most people will jump to the conclusion that it's about a crappy Monday and not about a dog, or that the title has a "double meaning", in that it could mean a crappy Monday but it's really about his dog named "Monday", whose untimely death creates a similar feeling that a Monday morning does.
On the one hand, I sometimes wonder if "Monday Morning" would be a better title, but in a way I actually like the single-word title, because it seems to imply that it's not just the mornings on Monday that suck, but the entire day sucks. It puts Monday on the receiving end of this blanket-sweeping judgment (in a good way) that many people can relate to, because of their distaste for this dreary, tiring first day of the workweek.
"Wrap it up already!" some might say
If you have already listened to this song via the link below, you'll notice that it's well over six minutes long. Many musicians and songwriters today consider that "too long" for a song. With some songs, I would agree with this. With others, not necessarily. I think it depends on the song. I used to agree that anything over 5 minutes was "pushing it" and that people would generally become bored. I do find this to be true with a lot of songs, but throughout my experiences I've also come across 6-minute and 7-minute songs that left me stunned, or speechless, because of how perfectly well-written I found it to be.
I also believe that the concept of people who push this "5-minute limit" idea, as if they are some kind of authority on music, is actually cultural. We live in a world where everyone is in a hurry. We have things to do, and six minutes can be a long time. We need to go somewhere. We have to stop by and get milk. We need to check on our kids. We need to check Facebook. A six minute song requires you to step back from that world, sit back, close your eyes, and actually suspend yourself from reality for a moment while you immerse yourself in the piece.
Nevertheless, my first reaction to hearing "Monday" for the first time, other than I found it profoundly beautiful, was that it seemed to drag a little towards the end. But I've listened to it several times since then, and each time I hear the song I seem to be less bothered by the song's length. A song that has a nice melody and a beautiful background, like this one does, can often get away with a long-ish song. This is especially true if there is a decent amount of variety in a piece. Even a beautiful piece, although it can get away with being longer, will get repetitive if there's only one or two parts to the song. In this particular case, the dragging out that seems to occur towards the end doesn't bother me quite as much as it first did. I've spoken to some other people that have listened to it (and Einaudi's music in general) and some have said they love the piece and could listen to it another two minutes without being bothered. There are other people who will get impatient after just three minutes. The ones who get impatient after just three minutes, as far as I see it, are in too much of a hurry. So people have different reactions to things, and this leads me to my next topic.
There is no music police
As an artist, and someone who is now reviewing a song on a blog post (which reminds me to mention, by the way, that I do not pretend to be even close to qualified to critique any kind of music) I do subscribe to the notion that quality is important. But the word quality is a qualitative word, and it's often very subjective. I believe that structuring a song in a certain way, i.e. using a good melodic contour and a well-balanced ostinato pattern, is a good way to create quality. But to me, "quality" does not mean that you're just following a bunch of rules about how to write music. Something is "quality" because a large number of people love it when they listen to it, regardless of whether they know why, and regardless of whether somebody, somewhere, made up some rule saying "you can't do this" or "you can't do that."
To this end, I'm going to immediately challenge (and disagree with) the following commonly-uttered arguments:
1) A song should never exceed five minutes. If it's more than five minutes, it's too long and people will get bored.
2) There should never be two consecutive notes repeated in the background.
3) The more complex a song is, the better.
4) The simpler the song is, the better.
5) A song has to have a bridge.
6) You can't change key signatures during a song.
7) You have to change key signatures during a song.
8) The melody of a song should stand out in an obvious way and be completely separate form the background.
9) The first verse, second verse, chorus, verses with embellishments, and the bridge have to be in the same place in a song, thereby following a "magic formula" that all songs need to have in order to be good.
10) You can't (fill in the blank here), and you have to (fill in the blank here).
These are just a few that I've heard. The main reason why I adamantly oppose all of these "rules" is because they can all fit into the sentence "A good song must be _______" or "A good song must have ______". But under whose authority? There is no music police, and there is no music code, like there is a Vehicle Code at the DMV or a penal code to determine punishments for breaking laws.
The only thing that gauges how "good" a piece of music is, and I mean the only thing, is the effect it has on the listeners. If people like it, they like it. It is also my opinion that you shouldn't really have to "learn" how to like a piece of music; you should be able to just listen to it and like it instantly, without any effort, and without having to analyze or pick apart the piece. There's no such thing, in my opinion, as learning how to be "sophisticated" enough to like a song. If you're one of these people who believes this then you're being pretentious. The enjoyment of a musical piece should be effortless, and instant. It's a little different from reading a novel, in which case it sometimes needs to "sink in". I think that with music there should be instant gratification.
To avoid any confusion, if I ever say that songwriters "should" do something, it only means that, based on my experience, I think most listeners would like it. For example, I do believe that it's good to alternate between ordinary chords and more sophisticated chords, or even just use sophisticated chords in a song (i.e. use 7th chords, diminished chords, suspended chords, alternate bass notes, etc.), but I suggest this because the vast majority of listeners seem to love it, and not because I'm being a pompous jerk.
Now, back to this issue of length. Yes, I think people often find songs in excess of five minutes to be too long, and they can start twiddling their thumbs towards the end. But I think there are exceptions. Some songs, for example, in addition to having a bridge, will have some sort of climax or dramatic riff in the end. In this case, I think some people don't mind a song being longer because there's more variety. I do think that if there is only a verse, a chorus and a bridge, especially if the verse has no "second verse" or embellishment, then yes a lot of people will get bored after about four and a half to five minutes.
But the song "Monday" comprises quite a few components. It's like being served a dish at someone's house when you come over for dinner, and instead of the expected three- or four-course meal (which would be typical) you find that there are six different courses on your plate. You know the experience well -- you see that there's chicken, but then there's also the potatoes, the rice, the green beans, the potato salad--geez!--and the bread? It seems that Einaudi wanted to take a bunch of different stuff and squeeze it into one song. The verse in itself seems to have three different parts. The first part of the verse can be heard immediately at the start, with no intro. There's also a very distinctive bridge, starting at 2:55 in the video (the link is below). I could go on a little more about the structure of the bridge, and about how the rhythmic structure of the bridge is different from the verse (which, I think, makes a good bridge), but I just want to point out that this song has quite a few things going on. It seems that Einaudi was trying to "fit" all the parts into the song, and was trying to give each part a justifiable amount of time. The relative complexity of the structure is what makes this song six and a half minutes. He also repeats one of the parts to his verse in the end of the song, and he could have avoided that. But again, this song is so pretty that I feel like he was able to get away with a song of this length. The bottom line is that there is no rule about how long a song should be. We can critique this guy until we're blue in the face, but the fact still remains that Ludovico Einaudi tours internationally, performs his pieces in front of thousands of people who spend a lot of money to see him. People go and see him for a reason, so it's clear that many people don't seem to mind his lengthy songs (he writes other songs that drag on like this as well). Now, the ones who write lengthy blogs are another story -- don't even get me started on those people.
I love Monday because of the repetition... and because it repeats itself
I want to cover this characteristic about the piece before I touch on a few others. One of the attractions of music is that much of it has a certain amount of repetition, and there's a fine balance between having just the right amount of it versus having too much. For some people, too much of it can get annoying. On the other hand, a song with no repetition at all can seem too random and people can get the feeling that the song doesn't "go anywhere". These characteristics also seem to hold true with lyrics and poetry.
As far as my take on this piece, I find the repetition absolutely beautiful. The first three notes in the right hand (the melody) create an introductory theme that gets played repeatedly throughout the piece, and with different variations. One of the variations is played with intervals (double notes) instead of the single notes. I have always found this effective when trying to come up with a second version of a main verse.
Then there's my absolute favorite part of this piece: the repetition in the background. The left hand part is very well crafted to begin with, because it harmonizes nicely with the melody. But the part I love even more is that whenever the melody "pauses," the left hand plays two distinct notes to fill in that pause. It then stalls, and plays a third note, which is the same note as the first. In the video link below, the pianist first does this at 0:25, and the second time you'll hear it is at 0:50. It repeats many times after that. (For you nosy music snobs, the three notes I'm talking about are F sharp and G sharp, along with the leading tone A and B with the right hand (respectively) and then back to F and A, respectively. The right hand part constitutes a minor (flatted) third and fourth in the key of F sharp minor). The fact that it only does this when the melody "takes a break" is a great example of a perfect balance between the melody and the background. The right hand's addition to those three notes creates a nice harmony, which just adds to the effect (the right hand can be used to play parts of the background, even though the background is typically played with the left hand on piano).
If you only compose in the key of C, you're lazy
I'm probably going to get assaulted by a mob of angry rock musicians for even daring to write the above line, but I really believe it's true. For those who may not be aware, the key of C is the easiest key to write in, because on the piano it only involves white keys. You don't have to worry about playing any black notes because there are no sharps or flats in the key signature, unless there are accidentals, and if you don't know what an accidental is that's okay. For this reason, songs in the key of C are the easiest to write on paper, and easiest to play on the piano. All of the songs that are taught during the first couple of months of a beginner piano course are in the key of C. Many bands and rock musicians, therefore, tend to write in the key of C because it's just easier, and they think it doesn't make a difference if you play a song in C versus G, or F, or any other key. So let me state for the record, I believe very strongly that it does make a difference.
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| C major scales played with both hands, using the "thumb-tuck" technique |
The "key" that a song is written in, for those who may be wondering, has to do with the range of pitch that the song is in. A song that's in the key of G could be played at a fairly high range (depending on which octave you play in) while the same song played in the key of C will be at a lower pitch range. The reason why the two would be considered the same song is because the "distance" between the notes in both versions are exactly the same. People who do not have perfect pitch (which is most of us, including myself) will not be able to tell which song is in which key just by listening to it -- a person with perfect pitch will. However, the same song that is played in two different keys will sound different to any listener, and may even have a different emotional effect.
One of the reasons why "Monday" sounds so beautiful is, undoubtedly, the key that it was written in, which is F sharp minor. Had it been written in a different key, like C or B flat, it would still be the same song, with the same exact melody, but it would sound different. It would have a different "feel," and very possibly it would sound a lot more bland.
To illustrate this concept, we can use the images below as an analogy of songs written in different keys. Most would agree that both images are essentially the same picture, they just look a little different. The difference, obviously, is in the colors. The two versions can even have a different emotional effect when they're being viewed.
In the same way, two of the same songs that are written in different keys are kind of like those two pictures, and the difference in the colors is analogous to the different keys that the songs are written in. And as far as critiquing the images, doesn't the picture to the left appear to be a little more bland, and slightly more dull, than the picture on the right? Many would agree that the picture on the right creates a little more emotion (whatever that emotion is) because the colors are more vibrant, making it look more "dramatic." This difference in quality can be just as great when you're dealing with two songs that are each in a different key.
I have even explored the different effects that certain key signatures have -- for example, slow melodies in G major or F sharp major, when played below middle C and in the 2nd inversion, will usually create a very "warm" and romantic feel, which is great for the sappy love songs that some people love so much.
Simple songs are not always simple
There are several other points I can make about "Monday" and why I really like the piece, but I won't delve into it too much because it would mean transitioning into other topics that I can definitely cover in a future blog. But the melody is one, as is the difference in rhythm between the verse and the bridge. The pianist who performs the piece in the YouTube video (no last name in his channel but he goes by the name of Alex) also does an amazing job at creating the emotional effect that I think Einaudi had in mind. He does this by slightly delaying some of the eighth notes in the left hand, a very common and effective technique for adding emotion to a piece. You can see examples of this at 2:36, 2:45, and others. He essentially delays the bass notes in the beginning of some of the measures.
There is also the third part of the main verse, where Einaudi uses a series of trills, followed by his use of syncopation. To me, this is brilliant. If you don't know what those things are, don't worry about it, you can still just listen to the song and bask in its beauty :D
With regard to the key signatures, the example I will end with is one that many are familiar with, which is the German composer Beethoven and his famous piece The Moonlight Sonata. The first movement of that piece is known for having a very serene, sad but beautiful progression, with triplets in the background and a very solemn, simple melody. Depending on who you ask and what skill level they are, many would regard the first movement of this piece as a very "simple" but pretty song. As far as the actual complexity of the piece, the first movement is simple -- sort of. It's simple in terms of people actually hearing the song, if that makes any sense. When you play the song, however, it's mostly simple except that it's in a very difficult key signature. Beethoven wrote the piece in C sharp minor, which has a bunch of black keys, while the song happens to feature constant chord changes, accidentals, and "double sharps" (I'm not even going to get into explaining what that is). For beginners this piece is actually very difficult because of the key it's in, but otherwise it's a relatively simply song. For experienced/advanced pianist this piece is not hard, and especially not hard compared to the third movement.
I wanted to bring up this last example to emphasize that Beethoven wasn't being a jerk by composing a song in C sharp minor. He knew that some people would find it difficult. But he chose C sharp minor anyway for aesthetic reasons, because he knew it would sound beautiful; he knew it would sound a certain way in that particular pitch range, versus writing the song in a different key. Even when the song is played in good old C, it's only a half-step away from the original key, but the song still sounds different in C natural (and in my opinion, not as good).
So if you want to write good music, be like Beethoven -- don't be lazy. An artist might be happy painting with just three or four colors, but just think how much more creative and better he would be if he had a range of 12 different colors to choose from. That kind of freedom is the freedom you have when you know how to play songs in different keys.
"Monday" by Ludovico Einaudi
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