Following the professor’s example, I picked a chart topper as well. “Someone Like You” is in duple meter, with four beats per measure. The tempo is moderate to slow. This song only consists of a piano, a lead voice (Adele), and backup voices. The rhythm is provided by the piano playing in a major key, even though it is a somber song. You can hear the main bass piano melody, of three different notes, the fourth and second being the same pitch, clearly in the opening until Adele’s voice come is at 0:14 and the piano becomes the accompaniment. This creates a homophonic melody. Adele starts off with very low pitches and a soft timbre. However as she keeps going, the intensity builds, the piano and her voice both gets louder, until it fades at 1:11 to give the indication that the verse is ending and the chorus is about to begin.
As soon as the chorus begins, the dynamics pick up again. Also, I believe the tempo speeds up a little as well. The biggest change is Adele’s voice, as she singing at higher pitch and the tone of her voice goes from soft and sad to angry and sharp.
In verse two, it repeats the same dynamics, timbre, tempo, and chords as verse one opened with, but towards the end of the verse at 2:19, the tempo picks up until the chorus at 2:37. The chorus this time is also not the same as the first one. At the end of chorus two, the line “Sometimes it lasts in love, but sometimes it hurts instead” stays in the same octave as the rest of the chorus, where in chorus one she jumped up an octave when she sang that line. Also, unlike chorus one, it is not repeated a second time.
In the third verse, a backup vocal is introduced and accompany Adele until right before the chorus, but Adele and the backup don’t stay in unison through the whole verse. Then in the third chorus at 3:21, everything slows down and the piano begins to change. The piano starts to just play the individual notes instead of chords on the downbeat of each measure. The tone of Adele’s voice returns to how she opened the song. Then at 3:37, the piano returns to playing the melody from the previous verse. Finally the entire chorus lyrics gets repeated again, and the piano goes back to the original main bass melody. As both vocals and piano become the loudest it has been in entire song. Then the volume quickly drops after “instead,” with the “yeah, yeah, yeah” the song fades to just the soft piano melody.
Was curios to know which scale this song was written in so I looked it up and found that it is in A major scale. Interesting because we generally associate major scales with feel good music.
I’m curious now as to whether or not that is one female backup singer or two singers (or more but it doesn’t sound like it to me) coming in at 3:05.
i love the instrument used ie the use of piano keys. i was wondering if her voice was the accompaniment while the pianos was the main melody. since the piano started playing before she joined in in singing. however, i like the way her voice rises gradually from a low pitch to high pitch. good choice
Do you think that there are multiple back voices or just one in the song? I’m of the opinion that only one backup singer compliments Adele from 3:05-3:20.
The introductory notes keep repeating a number of times before singer starts. The song has a duple meter, with an andante tempo. The timbre of the singer is soft, dark and gentle. Piano is the main instrument within the piece, and is being played at a moderate dynamics. The singers’ intensity of sounds varies, using crescendo to stir up listeners’ emotional response. I would say the texture is relatively simple, most likely is a ternary form.