Music theory

Andrew Goodwin

Analysing music videos• Andrew Goodwin is a director of Music and Organist at Bangor Cathedral

for 37 years. He stated there are FIVE key aspects of a particular music video that the audience should look out for when watching.

• The five key aspects are:1. Thought beats-seeing the sound in your head2. Narrative performance3. Star image4. Relation of visuals of the song5. Technical aspects of the music video

Thought Beats-seeing the sound in your head first

• First step- you look into the music closely and infer it looking at the chorus/verses

• Second step- ‘voice within the song’ The artist/singer can be different and can be verified from the rest and can be unique.

• Third step- The tale a artist is telling within their particular songs. This can make the artist also be known as a ‘storyteller’. The music video can be seen to support the story that the artist is telling us through the vocals of the particular song

Narrative Performance• Goodwin says that we tend to make up our own thought of the messages

being sent in a song from a basic understanding of what it may actually be about.

• Music videos should be of the same standard every time and narrative and performance work together in order to keep the audience interested and not bored of a music video.

• When the artist acts as the actor/singer as well as the participant in the music video, this makes the video more genuine and original.

• Goodwin believes that miming is still the most popular thing that is used in music videos nowadays, it is still in the artist/singers importance to make the miming used to seem as real as possible in music videos

Star image

• Star image is a essential feature of a music video• Artist singers want to obviously look different and

unique in order for audiences to remember them and stay modern.

• The star image develops overtime and plays a huge role in the production process of music videos

Relation of visuals of the song• There are three ways in videos that are used to promote a song

:1. Illustrate,2. Amplify3. Disjuncture• Music videos set convinced images to demonstrate the

meaning of their songs lyrics and the genre.• This is where the meaning of the song is COMPLETLEY ignored.• Repeatability-meanings and effects are manipulated and

continuously durable and publicized through video and to be clearly watched.

Technical aspects of the music video

• The technical aspects of a particular music video holds the whole music together such as camerawork movement, camera angle, mise-en-scene, editing, sound and certain special effects

• The speed of a music video, the actual camera movement, the particular editing techniques, the cutting and post productions are all forms of ‘use of camera’. The lighting and colour, creates a certain atmosphere and mood, it creates a unique emphasis on the main dramatic moments of the music video top create a extra effect

• Mise en scene-It needs have great realistic setting in order fro the music video to look real and appeal to greater audiences worldwide

• Beats-the beats and cuts that is used in a music video needs to go with the certain rhythm of the song in order to make its seem appealing and worth listening to as well as entertaining the target audiences. It needs to have good beats as people tend to dislike music where the beats and rhythms has just been thrown together rather than creating a good sound worth listening to