Reflection paper

Reflection Paper 1: Lorde – Royals For my first reflection paper I chose to use Lorde's “Royals”. I've heard this song numerous times on the radio and on television. Although I heard it so often I never really took the opportunity to really focus and listen to the song. As with most music I come across if its not from an artist or genre I prefer I just don't pay much mind to it. Since beginning this music class I listen to almost all music differently. Just as I did with this particular song now I pay attention to minute details and focus on the musical elements to help me better understand this type of music. This song by Lorde in my opinion kind of invokes a calm, but a steady build up of expectations. The beat along with the rising pitch of vocals does that for me. As I sat and listened to the song with my eyes closed as to avoid any distractions I paid close attention to the rhythm of the song and found it to be a duple meter with a higher note at the end of the succession of rhythmic pulses. I found the melody to be conjunct where the frequency of sounds are closer together rather then far apart. I find the song to be without any tonal tension and more consonance sounding. The texture of the song is polyphony with the unique sounds combine to form different lines which simultaneously create the music. I hear what I believe to be a lot of electronically produced sounds. It isn't easy to determine just based of listening as a lot of electronically produced sounds can mimic the actual instruments sounds very well. If I was to assume I would say its not the actual instruments being used to create some of the sounds I hear. There is clear percussion instrument sounds, as well as some strange robotic sounds in the background. The drumming seems to be the over all basis of the music, with different levels and pitches of drumming combined to create the overall effect of the song. There is an almost hollow effect used at the beginning of the song. Just a few