Change musical mode

No, this isn't yet another call for a new policy, but the realization that there are some people in the world who enjoy shifting songs from major to minor or vice versa.

In reality, the fact that the major key conveys happiness and joy and that the minor key is more suited to sadness and melancholy is a bit more than a myth. A researcher discovered that the minor third interval appears in actors' speech when they want to convey sadness (~~here's the Scientific American article~~), at least in Western culture. In our music, this connotation of modes has been in use since the 17th century.

Now I discover that some joker is spending time and resources changing the key of songs, producing curious and, in my opinion, questionable results.

Here, for example, is Hey Jude, moved from major to minor.

Note that this would be simple if the piece were re-performed, but they do it by digitally editing the original file and re-tuning only the notes and chords that need changing, which isn't so easy.

The main author of this remake is Oleg Berg, a Ukrainian musician, who launched the Major versus Minor project.

Even stranger sounds The House of Rising Sun

I'm bringing this up as a curiosity. Obviously, I'm not against it. Everyone is free to use their time as they wish. It just leaves me a little perplexed that something we used to do for fun when we were in high school is being proposed as an interesting idea and, above all, that is being put up for sale. $10 for the album and $1 for the single track, as if it were their own stuff. Furthermore, changing a song by an author without their permission and selling it is not a nice thing to do. Technically, it's even a crime. Now, I don't care much about copyright. My songs are under CC, but if someone takes one of my songs, changes something, and sells it, I'll get pissed off too.

Back