HAMILTON TAKE A BREAK PLUS

(More about modulation later.) BUT! He thinks in terms of harmony and ensemble, to a degree that I'm not used to, particularly in Broadway songs. LMM doesn't think in terms of melody or chord progressions (which are, of course, super related ever since before Bach) or modulation. rachelmanija has talked about here, and just talk about the music, which is also brilliant.

So now you're asking, 'cahn, why is this song one of your favorites, then? Why is it so endlessly interesting to you, now that you've taken the time to tell me what it's not doing?' Well! For now, let's lay aside the amazing lyrics, which e.g.

It lends itself beautifully to loud and over-the-top belting ('Then join in the FIGHT that will give you the right to be FREEEEE!') and it's not even the best belting song in the musical by a large margin. And even that simple song, in its chorus, has more than an octave's range and one accidental from a couple of chords in the progression.

HAMILTON TAKE A BREAK PLUS

Plus which LMM has specifically called it out as an influence on Hamilton, so it's instructive to look at the differences.) 'Do You Hear the People Sing' is a relatively simple song, not particularly the best one in the musical or anything, not one where the composers were trying to be fancy at all. (I'm going to use Les Mis as an example a lot because it's the musical I know the best, so it's easy for me to pull examples. Does Not Work.Ĭontrast, for example, Les Miserables. Try singing 'Wait for It' in an over-the-top histrionic ~Broadway~ voice. There isn't really much in the way of chord progressions, period. It's all pretty strictly single-key major scale, with no accidentals or chord progressions hinting at other keys. In fact, the majority of the notes used are… two pitches, a whole step apart (re mi). The chorus ('Love doesn't discriminate…') has a range of rather less than an octave. Take for example 'Wait for It,' one of my personal favorites, one that is a favorite of many fans, one that LMM's characterized as one of the best songs he's ever written. They don't tend to be super lyrical or frame exciting chord progressions.

What I mean by 'not thinking in terms of melody' is this: in the Hamilton songs, even the ones that aren't rap, melody is downplayed like crazy, and the melodies that are there are… flattened out. (And more relevant to my everyday life, it is very hard to belt out the songs to my baby, which is one of the big things I'm looking for in a musical right now, and as I have cheerfully done with Les Mis, Scarlet Pimpernel, Gilbert & Sullivan, and Beauty and the Beast, and others I can't think of right now.) As someone whose musical traditions are a) classical, particularly classical violin, and b) 80's Broadway, with the Phantom/Les Mis blockbusters being the ones most strongly imprinted in my brain, I find it very hard to wrap my head around it. So there's one thing that really frustrates me a lot about the musical Hamilton, and that is the same thing as what I think is one of its great and wonderful strengths: I have become convinced that Lin-Manuel Miranda doesn't think in terms of melody.

Hamilton take a break