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Backing vocals: picking up the pace

The chorus from Moving Away

Compare the choruses at the beginning and end of the piece

IN MOVING AWAY, the chorus rhythms are faster at the end of the song, in the final chorus, than at the beginning.

In the Explorer close-up below you can listen to the original, slower chorus and the final, faster chorus, one after the other.

waveform icon

If you listen to just the first time the Backing vocals sing 'moving away' in both of these clips, you can hear that the rhythm is actually the same. In the second chorus though, it gets faster, and alters slightly each second time they sing 'moving away'.

Hand and Snap button images

To hear what’s going on, use the 'Hand' tool to move the bars from Backing vocals part in the second clip to an empty part in the first clip, so that the two line up underneath each other. (Make sure the snap button’s turned on.) Now you can hear the two choruses at the same time.

The other thing that Tunde does is to pack a lot more ‘moving away’s into the same stretch of time. You can see this in the waveform on the Explorer close-up. Why do you think he does this and what effect does it have?

One possible answer is that as the song progresses from beginning to end, it needs to build up. So at the end of the song, there’s more energy, there’s more movement. The effect of compacting the ‘moving away’s is to help the music sound more animated and excited.