Ma Rainey (real name Gertrude Pridgett) was an American blues singer who wrote about what is was like to be a black woman in early part of the 20th century. 'Runaway Blues' was written and recorded in 1929.
This Song uses the standard 12 Bar blues song structure. 12 bar Blues uses the I, IV and V chords of a key.
The Pattern for this is: |I |I |I |I |IV|IV|I |I |V |IV |I |I |

'Take The A Train' became the signature song of The Duke Ellington Ochestra.
Written in 1939 and recorded in 1941, the song was a reaction to changes in licensing payments that caused Ellington to ask composer Billy Strayhorn to write the song. The title 'Take The "A" Train' comes from the directions given to Strayhorn from Ellington.
The song begins with brass and horns imitating the sound of a train's klaxon, and the brushed snare drum evokes the sound of the train on the tracks. Standard Big Band-style muted trumpet swells and smooth saxes help convey the sense of a moving train.

Written by the famous Leiber and Stoller 'Hound Dog' was originally recorded in 1952 by Big Mama Thornton.
Rock & Roll developed from a mix of jazz, blues and country music in the early 50s. The song uses 12 bar blues
format. Elvis Presley's version eclipsed all other versions and became a staple of rock and roll.
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Released in 1967 on The Beatles' "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" album, the song is notable for being
sung by the drummer, Ringo Starr, with his characteristic almost monotone voice; The Beatles made a point of giving him a song on each album.
The song received negative publicity in America where it was (wrongly) believed to be about drug use.
This is one of the more straightforward songs on the album, featuring just drums, bass, guitar, piano and vocals.
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Written and recorded in 1965, this is essentially 12-bar bluesfeaturing a driving bass guitar and horns section.
Although considered a classic of soul music, the song demonstrates Brown's pioneering move to a more 'funk' style, with .
the rhythmic emphasis being on the first beat of the bar, making it sound more exciting and dynamic.
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'Le Freak' from 1978 was written by Chic's Nile Rogers (guitarist) and Bernard Edwards (bassist), and it is those instruments that carry the song.
The drums on the 'Freak Out' refrain are typical for the genre - kick drum on the beat, snare on beats two and four, with an open hi-hat on the off beat - although in the verses, they can be heard to be playing to emphasise the bassline. The heavy funk elements are sweetened by the use of sweeping strings and female vocals.
The middle section is very sparse, featuring no solo instruments, merely rising chords that increase the tension till the vocals return; this is a song that celebrates New York's club culture, and is designed to be danced to!
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This is a semi-autobiographical story by lead singer Jimmy Somerville, dealing with being young and gay in the much-less liberal Britain of the 1980s.
The song is entirely composed and performed using electronic instruments - synthesizers, sequencers and drum machine, which contribute to the
robotic feel of the music. A big hit in 1984, the song and accompanying video, were very influential in highlighting LGBTQ issues.
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'Play Dead' is a song from the soundtrack of the film 'The Young Americans'. It was written by Icelandic singer Bjork in collaboration with David Arnold and bassist Jah Wobble. Wobble's bass playing is very prominent, almost the lead instrument. The shimmery synthesizer and percussion intro are additions for the single edit; in the film, the song actually segues from another section of the soundtrack The arrangement conveys a sense of the cinematic, with majestically sweeping strings and broody horns and brass. The drums are sampled from a 1977 song by The Isley Brothers called 'Footsteps In The Dark'
Lyrically, the song is written from the point of view of the film's main character.
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"Say My Name" was released in 1999 and is about a woman who thinks her boyfriend might be cheating.
It was produced by Rodney Jenkins, who has been responsible for the production of many R&B hits for various artistes. It features Jenkins' characteristic low-key intro with acoustic guitar sounds before picking up and with a faster more syncopated section.
Members Michelle Williams and Farrah Franklin debuted in the music video.
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'Wild Man' was released in 2011 and it is based on the Himalayan tradition of the Yeti; the first verse features the many different names that the creature has been known by. The theme of the song is that the world shouldn't try to capture the creature for profit. Kate Bush uses the yeti as a symbol of the exploitation of animals, and nature in general.
The song uses quite sparse instrumentation of bass and drums, guitar, keyboards, Tibetan bells and vocals.
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'Wonderwall' was released in 1995 and took it's name from a fim of the same title, the soundtrack to which had been composed by George Harrison of The Beatles .
The song was written by guitarist Noel Gallagher and features vocals, tambourine, acoustic and electric guitars, bass, piano and drums. It also uses a Mellotron - a keyboard instrument from the 1960s widely used by The Beatles (amongst many others) - and it is this instrument that provides the 'cello' part.
The mid-90s saw a number of British groups writing guitar-based music inspired by British pop music of the previous 30 years that sounded completely unlike what popular American groups were doing at the time. This became known as 'Brit Pop'. Oasis are clearly influenced by The Beatles, as much as they were The Smiths and The Sex Pistols, etc. It is a notable aspect of 'Brit Pop' that it 'feels' British, both lyrically and sonically

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Sergio Mendes is a Brazilian jazz musician, who with his group Brasil '66, helped popularise the bossanova sound outside Brazil. They had several successful albums and singles, including their version of Burt Bacharach and Hal David's 'The Look Of Love'.
'Fanfarra Cabua Le Le' is from his 1992 album 'Brasileiro' and features samba drumming - a style that is rooted in African drumming styles, with polyrhythms, syncopation and call-and-response elements, played on a multitude of percussion instruments.
Samba developed in the 1950s in the favelas - the shanty towns - of Rio Di Janeiro. It is heavily associated with Carnival - the biggest festival in Brazil, and possibly the World! - which dates back to 1723 and takes place each year in the run-up to Lent.
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A style or genre of Balinese gamelan music of Indonesia, Kebyar means "to flare up or burst open" as the music uses many changes to tempo or dynamics.
The music sounds like it is constantly moving and evolving by use of dynamics, tempo, tonal colour, and complex, interlocking rhythms and patterns.
Gamelan was first performed in Bali in 1915 and has since become an essential part of Balinese cultural and religious life. A gamelan orchestra is made up
of various percussive instruments, gongs, keyed metallophones, as well as blown and bowed instruments.
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Kishori Amonkar (1932-2017) Born in Bombay, she was a singer famous for her performances of Indian classical, as well as light and popular music.
The singer is accompanied by droning tambura, tabla drums and sarangi; the sarangi and voice are often in unison or playing 'call & response' phrases. The sarangi is often considered to be the most 'human-sounding' of any instrument.
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What we refer to as Bhangra, is a musical style originating in the UK, based on Sikh Punjabi folk music, but utilising more modern, Western song structures and instruments.
Bhangra traditionally is a Punjabi dance form and music based around the double-ended Dhol drum; modern bhangra can be identified by it's use of dhol, dholak, tumbi drums. Bhujhangy Group is the world's oldest Bhangra group, founded in Birmingham in 1967.
Bhabiye Akh Larr Gayee was written in the early 1970s and was the first song to combine traditional Asian music with modern Western instruments.
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The steel pan band has it's origins amongst the former slaves of Trinidad and Tobago, who used calypso rhythms in their traditional harvest festival. However, due to riots in 1881, African percussion was banned and it was 1937 before it appeared again.
In the Second World War, the islands were used as a Navy base and that's when the steel pan evolved: the drum is made by removing the lower part and hammering the bottom of the oil drum to produce a very thin playing surface.
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Babatunde Olatunji was born in Nigeria in 1927 but moved to Atlanta, Georgia (USA) in 1950 to study after being given a university scholarship. After moving to New York, he started a percussion ensemble to help make ends meet. The performance of 'Jin-Go-La-Ba' in the video is from 1995 and demonstrates Nigerian percussion being played alongside saxophone, drum kit, electric guitars and bass.
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Libertango is a tune written and first recorded in 1974, introducing Piazolla's 'Nuevo Tango' to the world; tango music incorporating many of the lessons he had learned from classical music and jazz, and employing electric guitars, bass and organ alongside strings, woodwind and of course, bandoneon. The tune has various movements, changes of mood and dynamic.
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The Ladysmith Black Mambazo ‘sound’ is of lush, choral singing, rich in texture and harmony based on the sounds that group leader Joseph Shabalala ‘heard’ in a dream he had. The style is known as isicathamiya (roughly ‘tread lightly’ in the Zulu language), which itself is an evolution of Mbube (meaning ‘lion’).
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Reem Kelani was born in Manchester in 1963 to Palestinian parents. Her music features traditional instruments such as various types of drums and percussion, the ancient Palestinian arghul, the ney (a type of flute) and bagpipes. However, in her composition she also employs a jazz rhythm section of double bass, drums, tenor saxophone, clarinet and bass clarinet, plus an Egyptian violinist. ‘Sprinting Gazelle’ is a song Kelani learned from women in a Lebanese refugee camp. The recorded version in the link prominently features the arghul, a reed instrument with two pipes – one for the melody and one for the drone.
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The shanty (or chanty -the name possibly comes from the French word chanter, meaning ‘to sing’) originates in the days of sailing ships.
The earliest forms of shanty were the ‘capstan songs’, chants the crew would use whilst using the huge wooden windlass to raise the anchor.
As one listens to the songs, with their ‘push-pull’ rhythms, it’s easy to imagine the crew working together to gather the sails in and rowing.
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The mazurka is a Polish musical form based on stylised folk dances in triple meter, usually at a lively tempo.
The mazurka always has to have a triplet, trill, dotted eighth note (quaver) pair, or an ordinary eighth note pair
before two crotchets. The mazurka became a popular in the ballrooms and salons of Europe in the 19th century
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Hildegard of Bingen was a remarkable woman even by today's standards. Born in 1098, she became a Benedictine nun, and by the time of her death in 1179 was Abbess of Eibingen – an Abbey she founded in 1165. A polymath, in addition to her devotional and musical work, she wrote about medicine, science, natural history and many other subjects, which have gained her many admirers as a proto-feminist and forerunner of New Age philosophy and mysticism. She wrote 'O Euchari' sometime between 1150 and her death in 1179. The song is an example of Gregorian chant, a style of devotional music, commonly found in monasteries.
Gregorian chants are monophonic, meaning there is only one melody being used. Hildegard wrote tunes full of beautiful, soaring melodies and melisma that continue to appeal to this day. She is quite possibly the most sampled composer of Gregorian chant!
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‘Hallelujah’ from ‘The Messiah’ is perhaps one of the most well-known examples of baroque music. Written in 1741 by George Friedric Handel (a German who had relocated to England in 1712), it is an example of English oratorio (a satirical response to the popular Italian operatic style of the day) with the words (libretto) by Charles Jennens. Although “a meditation of our Lord as Messiah in Christian thought and belief” the text is devoutly Anglican and rejects notions of divine intervention on human affairs. The music of 'Hallelujah!' is an attempt to reflect the joyousness that the word hallelujah expresses in Hebrew.
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'Rondo Alla Turca' ('Turkish March') is the Third Movement - part - of Mozart's Piano Sonata No. 11.
Published in 1784, 'Rondo Alla Turca' is reckoned to be Mozart's best-known piano piece. He called it 'Alla Turca' because the tune was based on the music of Turkish military marching bands, that were very popular at the time apparently! .
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'Da-da-da-DAAA!'
So begins Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 5, and which must be one of the most recognisable musical motifs there is.
It was first performed in 1808, and is one of his compositions from what is called his 'Heroic Period', producing grand, 'big-sounding' pieces.
The First Movement ('Allegro con brio') of Symphony No.5 starts with that famous four-note motif, and it appears throughout the piece - which is in the traditional sonata form, incidentally - as it shifts through melodies and dynamics and changes of key.
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Tchaikovsky was commissioned to write a piece to commemorate the completion of a cathedral in Moscow, the 25th Jubilee of Tsar Alexander II and the 70th Anniversary of the 1812 defeat of Napoleon's army at Moscow, to be performed at The All-Russia Arts and Industry Exhibition in Moscow in 1882.
The piece, which Tchaikovsky wrote in six weeks in 1880, and first performed at the Exhibition. The Finale begins with with a theme on "La Marseillaise", the French national anthem, which reaches a crescendo, whereupon cannons are fired, the explosions timed with the music! In fact, Tchaikovsky scored the piece for sixteen cannon, as well as a carillion of bells to represent the church bells of Moscow. These are rung in the build-up to the triumphant section when the remaining cannon are fired, signifying Russia's triumph over Napoleon.
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Written by the Russian Modest Mussogsky in 1867, Night On A Bare Mountain is an example of a tone/symphonic poem - a piece of music - usually consisting of one movement - composed to try to create a certain mood and convey narrative for the listener to experience. as they would a book, pcture or poem
In this case it is to convey the events of a witches sabbath as they attempt to summon demons.
The piece was never performed until the 20th century, after Mussorgsky received harsh criticism for his composition.
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Maurice Ravel wrote 'Bolero' in 1928 for the dancer Ida Rubinstein. It was written in C Major for a large orchestra
and uses a 3/4 time signature. The song was famously used by ice skaters Torvill and Dean to win a gold medal at the 1984 Winter Olympics and was heard again in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
Amusingly, the instrumentation calls for a 'sopranino saxophone in F', an instrument which has never existed.
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Coleridge-Taylor was born in London in 1875, the son of an English mother and a black African father. At the age of 23 he premiered the First Movement of his musical interpretation of 'The Song of Hiawatha', by the American poet Longfellow.
By 1904 he had become successful enough to take his music on tour in America , where he became interested in discovering his ancestry - his father's family had been slaves in America, freed and resettled in Sierra Leone.
'Symphonic Variations on an African Air', composed in 1906, is an orchestral work based on an African-American song, "I'm Troubled In Mind." The work is interestingly structured, with themes and variations and the music is rich typani, brass and lush strings.
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The deeply patriotic British Composer Ralph Vaughan Williams based this suite on the melodies of nine English folk songs.
The piece is split into three movements: March ('Seventeen Come Sunday'), Intermezzo ('My Bonny Boy') and another March ('Fo'lk Songs From Somerset')
The Suite was originally written for a military concert band and was first performed in 1923. Vaughan Williams produced an arrangement for full orchestra the following year. There is also an arrangement for Brass Band.
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The British composer Gustav Holst began writing his 'The Planets' suite in 1914.
Each of the planets is given a unique character. Mars was named after the Roman god of war, and the music attempts to describe the reality of war, rather than a celebration.
The music uses powerful rhythmic beats and instrumentation that is often dissonant, to impart a sense of, threat, menace, terror and violence. Ironically, 'Mars' was written before the outbreak of The First World War.
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Britten’s ‘Ceremony Of Carols’ was written in 1942, during a sea voyage from the USA to Britain. The carols use lyrics taken from ‘The English Galaxy of Shorter Poems’, edited by Gerald Bullett and are mostly in Middle English, with some in Latin or Early Modern English.
The arrangements are choral, some with a harp accompaniment. Britten initially intended them to be sung by a children’s choir of soprano and alto voices, but in 1943 published an arrangement for a mixed choir (soprano, alto, tenor and bass).
The lyrics for ‘This Little Babe’ come from ‘Newe Heaven, Newe Warre’, written in 1595 by Robert Southwell, a Jesuit priest who was arrested for treason in 1592 and imprisoned in The Tower of London. The subject matter - a confrontation with the Devil - is therefore not surprising, and he was hanged in February 1595.
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In 1978, English composer John Rutter took the first four stanzas of ‘For The Beauty Of The Earth’ - an 1864 hymn by Folliott Sandford Pierpoint that reflected the poet’s joy at witnessing ‘the beauty of creation’ – and set them into two choral arrangements with accompaniments by keyboard or small orchestra.
The arrangements were for a mixed choir of soprano, alto, tenor and bass voices, and another for just soprano and alto voices.
The composition is intended to convey the joy that the poet, Pierpoint, was experiencing and directs the piece to be sung ‘Happily’.
Apparently, the piece 'demonstrates Rutter's characteristics as "lingering around a nostalgic third or fifth of the scale, exercising a catchy phrase in sequences, introducing a little groovy syncopation".’
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Written for the hit film Slumdog Millionaire, , ‘Jai Ho’ draws on very eclectic styles and influences. The song was composed using the Logic Pro sequencing program, and software-based electronic instruments and samples.
The meaning of the words "Jai ho" is "Let there be victory" making it a song of celebration and joy.
The song incorporates elements of many different World musical styles, fusing pulsing electronic beats with Arabic instruments, Japanese drums, steel guitars and vocals sung in several languages, and so forth.
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Anna Meredith is a British composer and performer, born in 1978. She writes for instruments and orchestras and also creates and performs electronic music. Her style uses many types of musical influences.
She often uses the techniques of clapping, stamping, shouting and beatboxing instead of traditional instruments.
‘Hands Free’ was her first body-percussion piece, written with David Ogle in 2012. It was premiered by the National Youth Orchestra at the BBC Proms, the Southbank Centre, the Barbican Centre and with flashmob performances on the M6 Services.
It has since been performed by youth orchestras from around the World.
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A piece using just body percussion and voice to create a complex rhythms, ‘Connect It’ was written in 2015 for a BBC project called ‘Ten Pieces’ for UK primary schools.
The piece uses a wide range of dynamics, which combined with the rhythms creates a great amount of complexity.
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British-born Anna Clyne wrote this 20-minute piece for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 2012. Her compositional technique involved the creation of seven large paintings, using the paintings to help with writing the music, and letting the music influence her painting.
The piece comes across as very ominous and spooky due to the choice of ke, and the low tones and erratic sounding melodies
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