Classical musician reacts -- PARANOID -- Black Sabbath -- FIRST TIME LISTENING

[00:00:00]Okay, Christina here to listen to some music and today's music selection is Paranoid by Black Sabbath.

[00:00:11]This was the second place winner for the poll for songs by Black Sabbath over on Patreon and for channel members. So, thank you to everybody who voted for this one. First place I did a handful of months ago and that was War Pigs. So, if you would like to see that reaction, feel free to go back and watch that one.

[00:00:27]Otherwise, I get another chance to get to know this group. I do know Azie Osborne just a little tiny bit as an individual artist, a solo artist because he had a big hit in the early 90s and that was the little window of time like late 80s, early 90s where I did kind of get into some of the popularity music of the day. So, I know his song, No More Tears. It's a pretty cool song. I have gone back and listened to it since I did War Pigs just to kind of remind myself.

[00:00:55]It's really cool. There's like this neat instrumental part in the middle. And so maybe that can be a deep dive for the future. We'll have to see. For now, with this one, Paranoid, because I am a classically trained musician, instrumentalist, vocalist, composer, and professor, we're going to dive into this one, looking at how it was composed, the instrumentation, maybe some theory or form analysis. Sometimes I bring in some instrument demos, but also we look at how we relate to this music. Why do we like it? Or maybe why do we not like it?

[00:01:25]Oh, and we have merch. Don't forget if you go to bonfire.com, you can find some Okay, Christristina listens merch. We've got t-shirts and mugs and all sorts of fun things. I'll put a link in the description below. Okay, so enough delay. Let's listen. Okay, here we go.

[00:01:57]with my mind cuz she help me with my mind. People think I'm insane because I am frowning all the time.

[00:02:22]>> Okay. All right. A lot of energy here with this one. With War Pigs, it was a little slower, a little more sparse sounding, but this is like energy right out of the gate. Cool. Um, interesting use of the notes and the scale there.

[00:02:39]I'll get into some of that later, but I love the baseline basically.

[00:02:45]And when the voice came in, there aren't that many notes that go along with the melody line.

[00:02:57]It just kind of is centered around.

[00:03:03]It's all kind of like right around that around tonic. And what is that here? Let me E.

[00:03:13]Okay. So, E minor.

[00:03:16]I like how grounded that is, though. And then that makes what's going on in the guitars and everything stand out even more. There's a sound to the guitars. H.

[00:03:27]So, this came out in 1970.

[00:03:30]I can see that maybe this is a transition of like 60s into 70s somehow.

[00:03:37]like maybe a little a little bit of the psychedelic sound mixed with the heavy metal hard rock. H if that's completely obvious, if that is what Black Sabbath is all about, then I apologize. It just means I'm catching on to their basic aesthetic here. Uh all right, this this is a lot of fun so far. I'm going to back it up a little bit and hear the second verse, which by the way did sound a little bit familiar. I think I've heard that little D. I've heard that before. Would never have guessed it was this song, this band, whatever. But here we are. That's kind of cool. All right, let's keep going.

[00:04:22]I think I'll lose my mind if I don't find something to fight.

[00:04:34]Can you help me find you my bra?

[00:04:40]Oh yeah.

[00:04:56]I need someone to show me the things in life that I can't find. I can't see the things that make true happiness. I'm a All right, I think we're headed into a middle section here that's going to get a little interesting. That was an interesting sound there at the end. Um, yeah. So, I think I'm going to lean in a little bit on this sound development like coming from the ' 60s into the ' 70s. I've gotten to know a lot of 70s Prague rock. I'm starting to get to know more ' 60s Prague rock and like early stuff, Beach Boys, The Beatles, like I'm really starting to put together the whole music history of those few decades. I kind of already know the 80s sound a little bit, at least mid to late 80s. I kind of know that sound already.

[00:05:53]and definitely no grunge because that was the window of music that I did listen to as I've said. So, I think I can almost even detect how certain metal bands like in the mid to late 90s, which is kind of what I'm getting more familiar with here on the channel, like Tulle, um I can see how maybe they had have been influenced with some of these sounds. Okay, but let's just keep going for now. I want to hear what this middle section is going to be. And then uh kind of act three, I guess. How how is this going to end?

[00:06:51]Heat.

[00:07:09]Heat. Make a joke and I will say and you will laugh and I will cry. Happiness I cannot feel like love to me is real.

[00:07:34]So as you hear these words telling you now I tell you to enjoy life. I wish I could learn too late.

[00:08:00]Okay just ended. All right, it ended just as quickly as it began. This is a short song, but that's okay. There's a lot to look at. So, first, let's find out what we might be paranoid about or through or not sure. I'm going to look at the lyrics. Okay. Finished with my woman cuz she couldn't help me with my mind. People think I'm insane because I am frowning all the time. So, we have a serious person. All day long I think of things but nothing seems to satisfy.

[00:08:34]Think I'll lose my mind if I don't find something to pacify. Okay, so we're restless.

[00:08:40]Can you help me occupy my brain? I need someone to show me the things in life that I can't find. I can't see the things that make true happiness. I must be blind. Okay.

[00:08:54]Make a joke and I will sigh and you will laugh and I will cry.

[00:08:59]Happiness I cannot feel and love to me is so unreal.

[00:09:05]And so as you hear these words telling you now of my state, I tell you to enjoy life. I wish I could, but it's too late.

[00:09:16]So this person has a lot of personal struggle.

[00:09:20]doesn't really seem to fit in with what they deem as reality around them, but they kind of know that that they're not quite fitting in there and they're needing someone to help them, but maybe they're not even sure that they can fit in with that person. So, this could open up to a to speak to a whole bunch of people for many different reasons. It could be a permanent situation. It could be temporary. But the point is, I think someone is asking for help. Do they expect to get the help or are they kind of like, uh, I've tried it, doesn't really work. I just got to rely on myself. I don't know. Again, I think it could be open to interpretation here by the listener. If you know the backstory as to why this was written though, I'd love to know because that is kind of helpful. Doesn't mean you have to take it that way, but um it is interesting to know why it was written and when. Okay.

[00:10:17]But wow, somebody's really hurting. And also kind of the not knowing, not trusting your own senses.

[00:10:26]Anytime anybody is uh sort of disregulated, out of sorts for whatever reason, you're going to feel that way.

[00:10:32]So, we've all been there. But this person sounds like they've been there for a long time. So, that's hard. And I can see then why this song is written that way. It is distorted in itself.

[00:10:47]That was the main sound in the instrumental section in the middle. It was so distorted. Like true distortion for a guitar. It sounded like someone was playing a kazoo, you know, and there are different sounds in the kazoo. Like there's the actual voice and then the weird distortion sounds. That's not to diminish it. I'm not saying it's a kazoo guitar. It's distortion. It's there for a reason. I can see how that's translating into someone feeling sort of paranoid about the world around them.

[00:11:17]Also, I do apologize if you hear any uh noises in the background, like storm noises. There is a storm that's coming through. I don't know how that always manages to happen right when I'm recording. But hopefully the electricity will stay on. I'll do my best to sort of take out some of the extra noises, like if you hear rain or wind or thunder or whatever. But anyway, I'm just going to keep going through in the middle of the storm. Okay. All right. This um I think even with the vocals.

[00:11:49]So, it was it was disturbing like how echoey he his voice was. I don't remember it being quite like that in War Pigs.

[00:12:00]Uh and I have listened to that song. I put these things on my playlists and I do go back and listen and I but I don't remember the echo. What I am remembering though is from the other song that I know just of Azie Osborne's from the early 90s was the the No More Tears song and his voice is kind of doubled. It's not echoey so much but it's not like just one track straightforward.

[00:12:27]This is it. Is it doubled? I can't I don't know. But it's definitely echo.

[00:12:31]There's that reverb in there and I think that almost kind of it it represents like not being able to grab onto the reality around you even more.

[00:12:43]Okay. What I do like with this is the foundational aspect of it. So there's a lot of foundation in the grounding of the key. So I I already talked about how I believe this is an E minor and the vocals just like step-wise all around tonic or that's like E and then what the baseline does it's very repetitive and it establishes a scale. Let me go back to the beginning and just hear because I think it happens right away. We'll see.

[00:13:19]Ah see this is uncomfortable too. how it starts here.

[00:13:24]Okay.

[00:13:27]So that okay.

[00:13:45]Ah okay. Oh that's five notes. Okay. So that's a pentatonic scale.

[00:13:51]And that just means that two of the notes, there should be seven tones in a scale and two of them are left out. In this case, it's the second and the sixth. That's pretty cool. So, we have an E minor pentatonic scale. And that kind of also leaves us feeling even though the notes are there, there are a couple missing. And so it's cool and almost bluesy sounding almost, but there's something unsettling like it's a rocky terrain for our foundation. So the foundation is there, but it's rocky.

[00:14:24]Okay, let's hear some of that again.

[00:14:30]>> Yeah.

[00:14:32]So now he's >> Yeah. So, it's just it doesn't go too far in the chord progression here. Like too far away from E.

[00:14:42]It just keeps going down to the flat 7.

[00:14:44]Oh, okay. Now it goes down.

[00:14:51]Yeah. Okay. So, then we actually bring back some of the sixth tone in there.

[00:14:56]Bum bum. But h I still say though that this is like um a really accurate portrayal of how someone would be feeling in this moment.

[00:15:12]that anxious anxiety type of energy and then the lack of sense of reality and the echo and you know the reverb and h and then sort of this steady but almost not annoying but just relentless drive with the drums. Let's move forward to find a spot where it's a good example of that.

[00:15:41]Okay.

[00:15:44]>> Yeah. He's crying for help. And you hear the bass with the the octave play there. So the bass I heard some octave work in the bass in Warpix as well. Interesting. And we even have like um the use of the fifth tone in there too.

[00:16:09]Let's go back and hear some of that work. It was good.

[00:16:24]Okay. But this right here.

[00:16:27]Okay. Interesting. This is interesting.

[00:16:30]Listen to it again.

[00:16:34]So that little riff right there happens over and over and over and over and over and over again. It just happened twice right there. And then the voice comes in. And is it the same?

[00:16:48]life.

[00:16:50]I can see the things that make happiness.

[00:16:57]>> Yeah. And you hear that little pentatonic scale D in the bass right there at the end of each of one of those. Okay. So, it's interesting because you hear that there's like almost no variation to it. Just the accompaniment part, the first half of it. You hear it over and over and over and over again. Just it's just that it's the same. There's no variation there. And that I think would leave anybody feeling kind of paranoid like the same thing keeps happening.

[00:17:23]You're like, is it supposed to be different? Like it's just making you question everything. Again, the the um wanting it to be something that you can depend on, but then also like so repetitive that you're like, you know, like something's not quite right. It'll leave you feeling kind of paranoid. Ah, it's so good.

[00:17:43]Okay, so let's hear some of the distortion. Hm.

[00:17:51]That's uncomfortable, but it's kind of cool.

[00:18:04]I don't mind it.

[00:18:10]Okay, now we're back.

[00:18:12]Yeah, it's just Yeah.

[00:18:15]This would leave anybody feeling paranoid if this is what they were feeling in their brain at that moment.

[00:18:20]Okay.

[00:18:22]Um, yeah, that was uncomfortable, but when you start looking at it that it's uncomfortable for the sake of being uncomfortable, then you're like, "Oh, well, that's kind of cool, and I appreciate that move musically and compositionally, so I can get used to it." You got to be able to withstand some discomfort every now and then. So, there's a good moment right there. Okay.

[00:18:43]So now let's go to the very end and hear again how it ends.

[00:18:52]Just just same thing. The same thing.

[00:18:58]There's the pentatonic scale.

[00:19:00]And that's it. That's it. And that's it.

[00:19:04]So it just So is this like a dream that someone was having? Is it just a little panic attack and as quickly as it started it ends or is it someone actually getting the help that they want or have they had enough? Did the band know it was time to stop? They all kind of they didn't stop completely at the same time. As a classical classical musician, we are all taught to release together and we have to, you know, the the note duration has to be exact and we all end at the same time. That did not happen here, but I feel like that plays into the angst of it. Kind of messing with your sense of reality and again leaves you feeling a little bit paranoid.

[00:19:55]Okay, so that was the second Black Sabbath on the channel. Now with paranoid, it does sound paranoid. It does leave you feeling a little bit paranoid. And to me, that is a musical success when you can appropriately transcribe a feeling or an experience into the music. You could hear the cry for help. You could hear the distortion.

[00:20:20]You could hear the sadness, the discomfort, and those lyrics did not hold back either. Wow. So, all right. So, is this going to go on my playlist? Well, yes, it's going to go along with War Pigs. When am I going to listen to this, though? I think what's neat is with those two songs, there's a good contrast. So, I think I could just listen to the pair of the songs anytime, and it wouldn't leave me feeling any one thing too much, if that makes sense. But there is a certain amount of energy there that you can't help but absorb from this song. And so you you have to kind of be ready for that, in the mood for it. And so that's when I will happily listen to this one, which is sort of the opposite of the feeling of it, but I'm still going to be happy to do so. So again, thank you to everybody who voted for this. And sometime soon I hope to move on to the third place winner. Can't remember what it was. I'll have to double check. And then, like I said, maybe I should go on and do like the deep dive, an in-depth analysis of the one that I already know by Aussie Osborne, the solo song, the No More Tears, because I think it's a pretty cool song, and it might deserve some extra attention. So, until then, just remember that you don't have to be perfect, just be okay, and keep listening.