The Music Theory of Tik Tok Sea Shanties

so tick tock shanties are big right now like anything on tick tock this has perplexed the millennials to no end giving us millennial hot takes like sea shanties are an expression of tender masculinity and sea shanties are about colonialism slavery and whale slaughter and while i don't necessarily disagree with these takes i think it's mainly people just engaging in a fleeting moment of viral wholesome fun on tick-tock but i did have to give my vox-ass explaining sea shanties using music theory take i'd say that there's some musical characteristics of sea shanties in particular that are uniquely suited to tick-tock as a platform and it's not because of the meme novelty and it's not because of the lyrical content the yearning for the sea tick tock sea shanties are a novel form of musical and tiffany what exactly do i mean by that let's get into it this video is brought to you by curiosity stream and nebula my streaming service where you can watch the extended version of this video our 90cc shanties on three compact discs while there are plenty of historical work songs associated with water sea shanties are a very specific kind of work song that were adopted in the 19th century on merchant ships as a means of coordinating massive amounts of labor these shanties were led by shanty men who would call out phrases to which the crew would respond and move accordingly another verse another foot each pull they'd sing their voices like their muscles were attuned to everybody else's in lieu of extra pay this shanty men would be rewarded with plenty of grog as thanks for a job well done musicians getting paid in booze some things never change shanties were almost always sung acapella but often feature the musical characteristics of irish scottish and english folk melodies like triplet meter from reels and jigs like six eight a bottle of rum and a bottle of gin and a bottle of irish whiskey yard and generally major scale melodies and major pentatonic melodies oh a yankee ship come down the river sails a shiver oh yeah the specific practice of a call and response with a lead shantyman and a crew to run these massive merchant vessels came from black southern and black caribbean slaves workers and sailors you can kind of hear how the call and response pattern and how the action of work is tied to that in this field recording of a southern black prison work song [Applause] relates to the general cadence of the call and response and action of work in this field recording of a sea channel [Music] it sounds kind of related but like with an irish accent the irish take on the southern black works song in the seminal selection of sea shanties 61s shanties in the seven seas seasoned scholar and seasoned sailor stan hugel states british sailors brought folk songs presumably modified for the shanty from scotland ireland and england and swapped them for work songs from southern blacks each would then mold the new material to fit their own musical idiom the techniques for coordinating massive amounts of labor slave labor through music and musical cadence were already well established in southern black work song and so in the 19th century when the need arose for the same thing to happen on merchant ships sea shanties were developed i assume you're referring to the sea shanty that's a rhythmic work song designed to increase productivity different shanties have different musical attributes depending on the work to be done long-haul shanties or halyard shanties were for things like hoisting sail which features two bars of a call from a shantyman followed by two bars have a response from the crew with two strong musical accents per chorus the spongebob squarepants theme would work quite well as a halyard shanty who lives in a pineapple under the sea [Applause] hand over hand shanties were for lighter tasks like hauling slacks of rope they're generally faster with a musical accent on every beat and a kind of lilt to them [Applause] short drag chanties were for tasks that required a large burst of musical energy the musical accent always occurs on the last syllable of the chorus presumably to get the crew pumped to pull on the bowling home where we are going on the ball in the fallen hall on the bowling before she starts the musical rhythm here is quite strange sounds like the crew is like rushing the shantyman or something this kind of broken rhythm is by design actually in 1927 william saunders wrote that for a shanti quote to be even tolerably effective it must be sung with a great expression which entails a certain amount of broken rhythm there's almost this overlap between shantyman and crew the musical pulse is not steady it's not something that you can dance to [Music] that overlapping effect is even more pronounced in this recording of the same shanty where the hall of the crewmen overlaps with the hall of the shantyman all on the ball into bristol we are going on the ball in the balloon this is called illusion the phrases have been alighted into one another which creates a lot of forward musical momentum you can hear it in other shanties like bill riley where three bar phrases have the crew and the shanty men overlapping one another creating a hectic and frenzied energy oh billy reilly mr billy riley riley o'reilly mr billy riley riley mr billy riley ale lloyd would note that the sale would need to be light or the occasion desperate for men to haul at the halyards to the beat of such a fast song as bill riley so when you actually listen to these field recordings of people doing work out at sea and actually pulling rope and moving the capstan it becomes obvious that there's a certain kind of syllable combination that sea shanties i guess naturally default to there's a lot of halls and hoes and things like that on the moment of work those musical accents i thought i would talk a little bit with my mom who's a voice teacher to try and figure out exactly why those kinds of syllables were chosen for that moment of work it's often consonants like h holler away or shall that use a lot of air if i go and then let go of the throat you feel the core pick up in a very vitalized way for young telly racket if you if you put your finger in your belly button and go ba you feel the movement there it's setting up compression in the system so you're either using h to get air started or they're using consonants to set that compression up that's how singing started i mean in order to activate things in the body you used vowels and consonants in very specific ways you're working with the large muscle groupings so you exhale on the work you exhale on the lift hey yeah all right love you love you too bye when you compare the cadences of these field recordings to the wellerman the viral sea shanty on tick tock you realize that the wellerman is not in fact a sea shanty that is right shantytalk is a lie because even though you can dance to it [Music] it doesn't have a work song cadence and specifically a c-shanty cadence army cadences do have that back and forth but sea shanties have to be very particular rather it's a folk sea song very much in the style of artists like stan rogers who popularized them in the 1970s with songs like barrett's privateers the meme phenomenon of the wellerman specifically actually predates tick tock and can be traced to the shantyband the longest johns who featured it prevalently in a web series where they would sing to entertain unsuspecting players in the pirate themed game sea of thieves surprise i want to give you guys so much money in october of 2020 tick tock user forward spiral 97 started posting memes featuring the long john's original recording of the weller men soon after on december 5th ry smith posted himself singing an original recording of the welderman and then proceeded to add harmonies to himself using tick-tock's duet function others soon dueted his duet making it i guess not a duet and many chains broke off of rye smith's original on december 27th the scottish postman nathan evans posted his original recording of the wellerman which soon broke off into a number of different duetted chains this time featuring many bass and bass baritone singers creating a very rich and warm acapella texture the kind that you rarely hear in popular the music thing blew up in the mainstream when a video of promise uzuwulu initially skeptically reacting to his brother singing along with the longest john's version of willerman and then joining in with him went viral my whole family that's over the christmas break like dad you're crazy get off the grog no one is gonna listen to sea shanties and now they're blowing up online there are other shanties on tick tock of course besides the wellerman like the ones posted by sam pope let's sing a sea shanty together who posts videos with certain lyrics highlighted as a means of trying to encourage people to duet with him in this way the way that it's been set up the person who sings first in the chain fills the role of the digital shanty men and everybody else in the chain adding harmonies via the duet function fills the role of the crew calling the response because there is a little bit of latency and it does take a few moments to get oriented when you first press the record button through the duet function on tiktok it's almost necessary for the first person in the chain to sing something solo giving you time to orient yourself and begin to sing creating this natural cull and response pattern and because of this sea shanties in particular are a great resource for the technological limitations of the duet function i was way ahead of you on the whole sea shanty thing and now everyone knows that 2021 is the year of the sea shanty are you aware that 2021 is the year of the sea shanty and you're like uh i don't think so come on grandpa yeah they're fun and memey in piratey but more importantly there is a rapid back and forth between shantiman and crew the technical term for music that features call and response between two different musical groups in this case shantiman and crewmen is called antiphonal music or antiphony this particular kind of antiphony that comes from southern black work song and found its way into 19th century merchant ships through sea shanties can be found all over popular american song from the past 100 years you hear it in rock and roll my generation by the who [Music] you hear it in jazz miles davis is so what features in tiffany between base and the rest of the band [Music] you hear it pretty prevalently in black gospel music of course oh happy day is a perfect example but you have probably experienced antiphony pretty directly and not through recording whenever this happens for example [Applause] this is antiphony this is call and response when ludacris says roll out you say rollout this is a powerful way of connecting everybody in the room communal singing goes very deep in musical cultures from around the world and is used very frequently in religious services because it's a way of making us feel much larger than ourselves with no live concerts and no safe religious gathering in the past year we have been cut off from this pretty profound aspect of our shared musical humanity and so we've been left trying to find alternatives since tiktok allows users to layer on each other's videos you get awesome stuff like this tiktok's duet function makes this process frictionless it's a lot easier to connect with other people however it comes with the caveat that antiphonal music is probably better suited for the platform when you press record you hear the person first in the chain creating the call and then you respond with your part antiphony so basically the wellerman is not a sea shanty but when it's on tiktok it has c-shanty-like properties it is shanty adjacent because they are work songs sea shanties by their very nature are messy they're collaborative and a lot of fun that is my hot take that is my vox ass explaining sea shanties with music theory [Music] hey now one thing i didn't talk about in this video that much is harmony the specific kinds of harmony that was used both historically and in the tick tock trend in the extended version of this video i go into the harmonization techniques that were used back then and today and how you might adopt them into the style of 18th century european musicians as well as john coltrane's giant steps [Music] you can only watch the extended version of this video exclusively on nebula nebula is a creator-owned streaming service where you can find extended versions of my videos as well as bonus videos and extended versions of videos from many of your favorite creators here on youtube including lindsay ellis legal eagle charles cornell up in athens thomas frank 12 tone and many many more nebulas partially supported by the sponsor of today's video curiosity stream the very best place to find documentaries on the internet with thousands of titles to choose from including the very excellent documentary can a computer write a hit musical if you sign up to curiosity stream and all of its great content with the link in the description or curiositystream.com adamnelly you'll also get access to a year's subscription to nebula for free what's more is that this link gets you a 41 discount off of an annual subscription to both curiosity stream and nebula or just 11.79 a year for both streaming services by signing up for this curiosity stream nebula bundle you're not only supporting this channel but also the entire community over at nebula as we create content that aims to engage the world in a deeper and meaningful way thanks so much guys for watching if you enjoy what i do here on this channel please subscribe please engage in the comments section please let me know your favorite rendition of the willerman this was a lot of fun to put together i've learned a lot about sea shanties and i hope you did too uh yeah

Channel: Adam Neely

Views: 883,040

Keywords: adam, neely, jazz, fusion, bass, guitar, lesson, theory, music

Id: m1ovAB4vKzw

Length: 15min 53sec (953 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 19 2021