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PERFORMANCE SEMINAR II
MUP662
This proposal will focus on several performance and practice issues on the song called
Roller Coaster by Dirty Loops. This song was released on January 2014 and it is from
Dirty Loops debut album entitled “Loopified”. Roller Coaster is a track number 12 out of
14 songs in the album. It is actually a song cover was originally by a Canadian singer
Justin Bieber.
BIOGRAPHY OF COMPOSER
Dirty Loops is a band from Stockholm, Sweden formed in 2008. They were known for
their jazz reharmonized covers of pop song such as “Baby” by Justin Bieber, “Rolling in
the Deep” by Adele and many more. The band started their musical journey by actively
doing cover of pop song on Youtube beginning with their take on an American singer
song Lady Gaga entitled “Just Dance”. The video became wildly successful with over
100,000 views and 10,000 Facebook shares in the first two month of release. Dirty
keyboardist, Henrik Linder a professional electric bass player and Aron Mellergardh as
the drummer and the backbone of the band’s pace energy. They are longtime friends
since secondary school as they studied music at Sodra Latin and became classmates,
attention of some of the biggest music producers such as Andreas Carlsson and David
Foster. Andreas Carlsson, a Swedish music producer and songwriter signed the band to
a management deals while David Foster, a well-known producer and songwriter signed
the band to his Verve Records and brought them on his tour of Asia in 2012.
HISTORY OF GENRE & PIECES
Dirty Loops apply their fusion jazz skills onto their unique brand of pop, bringing
together their various funk, R&B, and electronic dance music influences. Fusion jazz
defines as a musical fusion genre that developed in the late 1960s when musician
combined some element of funk rhythms and blues rhythms. It is also known as jazz-
rock because of the amplification of electronic sound of rock music, electric instruments
single key or single chord with simple or repeated melody. Others apply complex chord
arrangement is simple or complex, usually will include improvised section that can be
According to AllMusic Guide, jazz and rock were completely separated. Electric R&B
music in the United States. Music experts highlight the British pop music that was
fusion guitarist played what AllMusic categorizes as a version of jazz and American
Rhythm & Blues with Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames Group in the early 1962.
However, all of the above-mentioned musician was influenced by a jazz musician like
Miles Davis, Cannonball Adderly and many more. Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock & Mr.
Miles Davis is an American jazz trumpeter was among the creator of electric jazz or jazz
fusion and a lot of the music that we listen to. With his album entitled “Miles in the Sky”
released in 1968, he had a big-time influence on the evolution of jazz fusion. It was his
first album to include electric instrument and collaborated with other famous jazz
In 1968, Miles Davis continued the use of the electronic instruments on his album
entitled “Kilimanjaro” featuring Dave Holland as a bassist and brilliant pianist and
electronic keyboardist Armando Anthony “Chick” Corea. It is difficult to identify who and
when Jazz fusion song were originally created, but it is good to say that Miles Davis
1969 album entitled “In a Silent Way” is considered as his first jazz fusion album and the
Dirty
D
PERFORMANCE ISSUE
• Unison
In the term of music, unison is two or more musical parts or line that sound either the
same pitch or separated by interval of one or more octaves usually at the same time. In
music composition, composer creates a unison passage to bring out melodic lines that
need clarity due to extreme range or wide melodic skips or awkward-sounding intervals.
In this song, I have a problem to play the rhythm correctly and to play the unison part
Figure 1
Figure 2
As shown in Figure 1 and Figure 2, there is a lot of complex rhythm combination such
as triplets and sextuplet. Plus, it is more challenging for me to play this particular part
because the song tempo is around 126 bpm which is quite fast and I have to highlight
all the attacks part. Based on what I have seen at the score on Figure 1, the attack is
on 4 “a”, 2 “a” and 4 “n”. After analyzing the score, I gained visual understanding of the
song’s structure. In addition to that, the audio of this song helps me on getting an idea
attacks. There is some exercise on how to do a six-stroke roll that I found on the
internet as shown in Figure 3. This exercise helps me to play six-stroke roll correctly.
Figure 3
After that, I found a six-stroke roll licks which helps me on how can I apply six-stroke roll
as a drum fill. As shown in Figure 4, this is an exercise that I did for myself to gained
some ideas on applying six-stroke roll as a drum fill. Plus, the accented notes on
Figure 4
After identifying the correct way to play the rhythm, instead of practicing it note by note,
I ignore the drum notation first then I take out only the rhythm and figure out the
subdivision. I also refer to the other instrument unison line especially Piano and Hey
Horns to find out what rhythm that they play. As shown in Figure 1 and Figure 2, the
rhythm for Piano and Hey Horns look similar with my drum part. Then, once I am
comfortable with the rhythm, then only I practice the whole part with following the drum
notation.
PRACTICE ISSUE
• Rhythm
The term rhythm has more than one meaning, it can be the basic, repetitive pulse of the
music, or a repetitive rhythmic pattern throughout the music. Also, it refers as the
pattern in time of a single small group of notes. Subdivision is simply meaning to take a
large thing and divide it into a smaller part. There is a step to divide it starting with a
whole note, subdivided into quarter note, then eighth note to sixteenth note and so on.
Figure 5
I am facing a problem on that particular bar as shown in Figure 5. because it is a 32nd
notes drum fills with an attack at the end of the bar, 32 nd notes or demisemiquaver is a
note played for 1/32 of the duration of a whole note. At first, I struggle to play the 32 nd
notes fill as written because of the tempo. In order to overcome to these difficulties, I
found some useful exercise on how to count 32nd notes as shown in Figure 6.
Figure 6
The exercise helps me further understand how to count and play the subdivision
correctly. Plus, I able to get the correct feel on how 32 nd note sound in a bar. Next, after
doing the exercise several time, I use the exercise as shown in Figure 7 to help me how
Figure 7
LEARNING OUTCOMES