Do Subtle Changes In Music Work?

[White Soul Black Heart]

Hey again!

This question might be broad, but, do you feel that a song that builds on subtle changes can interest the listener?

By subtle I mean, playing a chord variation (Am to Am7 for example) in a verse after one variation was previously used, even making a not so obvious modulation, a few new notes thrown into a riff or, more significantly in my opinion, altering perhaps one line or even one word in the chorus/verse that serves as a twist/new slant to the story.

Or do you feel that music works best when its changes are overt enough to strike the listener in a new way with well used dissonance, new voicings, change-ups etc.

Is there really a difference between the two?

The format I'm thinking of is pop/most rock music but examples from other genres are more than welcome! I've several examples in mind but I'll spare you all for now.

[MikeRobinson]

To me, those "subtle changes" are the spice of music ... and they can "make or break the song" to my ears ... if, in the mix, you can hear them.

 

When "the chorus comes around again," do something slightly-different to it.  Yay!  Add a slight change to the lyric – "he" to "me" or what-have-you – that suggests that maybe the singer "did it."    A good lyric, to me, is storytelling, and a good arrangement always supplies something a little new for the ear to hear and enjoy, without robbing the developing story.

[Dave Bradley]

Of course, of course, it's the subtle things that seems to make timeless tunes, well, timeless. A simple chord inversion here, a variation on a word in the lyric, adds to the interest. The countless cut&paste pop songs that you hear once or twice will not be the songs that will bear listening to in 50 years. Even the simplest of "standards" from the middle of twentieth century have more texture than a single listen will reveal to the average listener, but it's the subtleties that make them immortal

[Mythic]

Everything matters. It's all colours, they paint a final picture. Simplicity and subtlety can often be the most striking of features in music, for me definitely. It's all context too; what the song is, what you are conveying, who the audience are etc. But hell, even when i've found myself in a room full of sweaty drunk as hell twentysomethings screaming to the most unrefined and raw music out there, they might go bananas on something as simple as a miniscule inflection of the voice that was satisfying etc. So something is always worth something. You gotta be the judge of how much.