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Dirty Loops - Roller Coaster PDF
Dirty Loops - Roller Coaster PDF
PERFORMANCE SEMINAR II
MUP662
This proposal will focus on several performance and practice issues on the song called
Roller Coaster by Dirty Loops. This song was released on January 2014 and it is from
Dirty Loops debut album entitled “Loopified”. Roller Coaster is a track number 12 out of
14 songs in the album. It is actually a song cover was originally by a Canadian singer
Justin Bieber.
BIOGRAPHY OF COMPOSER
Dirty Loops is a band from Stockholm, Sweden formed in 2008. They were known for
their jazz reharmonized covers of pop song such as “Baby” by Justin Bieber, “Rolling in
the Deep” by Adele and many more. The band started their musical journey by actively
doing cover of pop song on Youtube beginning with their take on an American singer
song Lady Gaga entitled “Just Dance”. The video became wildly successful with over
100,000 views and 10,000 Facebook shares in the first two month of release. Dirty
keyboardist, Henrik Linder a professional electric bass player and Aron Mellergardh as
the drummer and the backbone of the band’s pace energy. They are longtime friends
since secondary school as they studied music at Sodra Latin and became classmates,
attention of some of the biggest music producers such as Andreas Carlsson and David
Foster. Andreas Carlsson, a Swedish music producer and songwriter signed the band to
a management deals while David Foster, a well-known producer and songwriter signed
the band to his Verve Records and brought them on his tour of Asia in 2012.
HISTORY OF GENRE & PIECES
Dirty Loops apply their fusion jazz skills into their unique brand of pop, bringing together
their various funk, R&B, and electronic dance music influences. Fusion jazz is defined
as a musical fusion genre that was developed in the late 1960s when musician
combined some element of funk rhythms and blues rhythms. It is also known as jazz-
rock because of the electronic sound amplification of rock music, electric instruments
single key or single chord with simple or repeated melody. Others apply complex chord
arrangement is simple or complex, it usually will include improvised section that can be
According to AllMusic Guide, jazz and rock were completely separated. Electric R&B
music in the United States. Music experts highlight the British pop music that was
fusion guitarist played what AllMusic categorizes as a version of jazz and American
Rhythm & Blues with Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames Group in the early 1962.
However, all of the above-mentioned musician was influenced by jazz musicians like
Miles Davis, Cannonball Adderly and many more. Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock & Mr.
Miles Davis is an American jazz trumpeter who was among the creator of electric jazz or
jazz fusion and a lot of the music that we listen to. With his album entitled “Miles in the
Sky” released in 1968, he had a big-time influence on the evolution of jazz fusion. It was
his first album to include electric instrument and collaborated with other famous jazz
In 1968, Miles Davis continued the use of the electronic instruments on his album
entitled “Kilimanjaro” featuring Dave Holland as a bassist and brilliant pianist and
electronic keyboardist Armando Anthony “Chick” Corea. It is not clear who and when
Jazz fusion song were originally created, but it is safe to say that Miles Davis 1969
album entitled “In a Silent Way” is considered as his first jazz fusion album and the
Dirty
D
PERFORMANCE ISSUE
• Unison
Musically speaking, unison is two or more musical parts or line that sound either the
same pitch or separated by interval of one or more octaves usually at the same time. In
music compositions, composers create a unison passage to bring out melodic lines that
need clarity due to extreme range or wide melodic skips or awkward-sounding intervals.
In this song, I have a problem to play the rhythm correctly and to play the unison part
Figure 1
Figure 2
As shown in Figure 1 and Figure 2, there are a lot of complex rhythms such as triplets
and sextuplet. Plus, it is more challenging for me to play this particular part because the
song tempo is around 126 bpm which is quite fast and I have to highlight all the attacks
part. Based on the excerpt on Figure 1, the attack is on 4 “a”, 2 “a” and 4 “n”. After
analyzing the score, I gained visual understanding of the song’s structure. In addition to
that, the audio of this song helps me on getting an idea of what the drummer actually
attacks. There is some exercise on how to do a six-stroke roll that I found on the
internet as shown in Figure 3. This exercise helps me to play six-stroke roll correctly.
Figure 3
After that, I found a six-stroke roll licks which gives me ideas on how can I apply six-
stroke roll as a drum fill. As shown in Figure 4, this is an exercise that I did for myself to
gain some ideas on applying six-stroke roll as a drum fill. Plus, the accented notes on
Figure 4
After identifying the correct way to play the rhythm, instead of practicing it note by note,
I ignore the drum notation first then I take out only the rhythm and figure out the
subdivision. I also refer to the other instrument unison line especially Piano and Hey
Horns to find out what rhythm that they play. As shown in Figure 1 and Figure 2, the
rhythm for Piano and Hey Horns look similar with my drum part. Once I am comfortable
with the rhythm, then only I practice the whole part with following the drum notation.
PRACTICE ISSUE
• Rhythm
The term rhythm has more than one meaning, it can be the basic, repetitive pulse of the
music, or a repetitive rhythmic pattern throughout the music. Also, it is referred as the
pattern in time of a single small group of notes. Subdivision simply mean to take a large
thing and divide it into a smaller part. There is a step to divide it starting with a whole
note, subdivided into quarter note, then eighth note to sixteenth note and so on.
Figure 5
I am facing a problem on that particular bar as shown in Figure 5. because it is a 32nd
notes drum fills with an attack at the end of the bar, 32 nd notes or demisemiquaver is a
note played for 1/32 of the duration of a whole note. At first, I struggled to play the 32nd
notes fill as written because of the tempo. In order to overcome these difficulties, I found
Figure 6
The exercise helps me further understand how to count and play the subdivision
correctly. Plus, I am able to get the correct feel on how 32nd note sound in a bar. Next,
after doing the exercise several time, I use the exercise as shown in Figure 7 to help
Figure 7
LEARNING OUTCOMES
Throughout the song, I find that it is important for me to play all the note correctly and
gained a new knowledge especially about complex rhythm and discover the correct way
AllMusic. 2020. Dirty Loops: Biography & History. Retrieved May 13, 2020 from
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/dirty-loops-mn0003112111/biography
Pop Culture Wiki. 2020. Jazz fusion. Retrieved May 13, 2020 from https://pop-
culture.fandom.com/wiki/Jazz_fusion
Rafa Selase. 2018. Jazz Fusion History and Musicians. Retrieved May 13, 2020 from
https://rafaselase.com/blogs/music-blog/jazz-fusion-history-and-musicians
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unison#Performance_ensembles
No Treble. 2016. Reading Complex Rhythms. Retrieved May 13, 2020 from
https://www.notreble.com/buzz/2016/06/08/reading-complex-rhythms/
Rhythm | Music 101. 2020. Music 101. Retrieved May 13, 2020 from
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-musicapp-medieval-modern/chapter/rhythm/
DrumLessons. 2020. Counting Thirty-Second Notes. Retrieved May 13, 2020 from
https://www.freedrumlessons.com/drum-lessons/thirty-second-