Essay on Music

One particular song that I enjoy listening to is “Dirt Road Anthem” by Jason Aldean. The song is about the nostalgia of growing up in a small town. The artist takes a trip down the memory lane through music. For a person listening to the song for the first time, it sounds like modern country and the artist seems to rap during verses. The song is under the genre of country rap. As the song starts with the instruments playing, Jason Aldean starts to sing along the melody created by the instruments. This creates a homophonic texture of the song which is interesting to listen to. The predominating melodic line naturally draws my attention when am listening to the song. All other parts of the song fill in the chords to the dominating melody.

Although the song does not exhibit binary form or contrast, it expresses harmony through its counterpoint form. Most country rap songs are centered around a story. While the music in the songs is still important, it is mainly perceived as a backing for a story. As such, in the “Dirt Road Anthem,” the use of the major and minor scales enables me to listen to the story presented in the song. One commonly known song whose musical structure does not interest me is “Good Directions” by Billy Currington produced in 2006. The song is about the story of a random incident that occurred in the early years of the artist. Tzanetakis, George, and Perry Cook. "Musical genre classification of audio signals. " IEEE Transactions on speech and audio processing 10.