key: Ab mixolydian
mode: Ab Bb C Db Eb F Gb Ab
melody: R F s l t d r m
form: chorus — verse 1 — chorus — verse 2 — double chorus
meter: duple
English function names: tonic subtonic
Tagg (modified): home counterpoise (away)
Riemann: T dP
Scale degrees: I VII
Chords: Ab Gb
Ab Gb
|:/ / / / |/ / / / |/ / / / |/ / / / :| loop
I am attempting this school year to provide more choice and autonomy for my students, whereas last year a class would all learn the same song. It's challenging because we are all in the same room. It's a large room and distanced from other classrooms with a little hallway, stairs, and micro-mezzanine. Occasionally a group of students will go into the hallway/mezzanine to get some space to hear themselves better. It's far less than ideal, but one works with what one has. We do all right. I find having some autonomy in song choice helps them buy into this class that they have no choice but to take. Some students, of course, do better with autonomy than others, but one works with what one has. This song and the previous two were the choices for mixolydian tonic-subtonic songs.
Here we have a shuttle, one of the songs I found from listening to Color Music Radio, and a pair of those pesky barre chords. I don't expect my Czech-native-speaker students to rap in Spanish, but what I mainly hope for is that they start to groove. It doesn't take a lot of ingredients to groove and I know that it's the groove that is the reason they pick this song. Even though it's over 20 years old, this style of hip-hop is still in play in many ways; it sounds modern and recent. It sounds more what is hitting the charts in 2023 than, say, A Tribe Called Quest (which they like, but it's definitely ol-skool).
The other point of learning any of the songs that we learn is that they serve as a model for our own songwriting. It's a chance to be creative. It's another chance for the fingers to work on the same chords, for the ears to work on the same relationships.