Music Theory: Cats in the Cradle - Essay Example

The boy starts turning into a grownup and when his father wants finally to start spending time with him the son refuses. The child has grown up and has a family, which he can call his own.

The song is narrated from the first-person’s viewpoint by a father who can never find time to bide with his child. Even though the child requests his father to join him in childhood actions, he responds with more than fuzzy guarantees of spending quality time together in the 'future' (Grayeb 1). Whereas hoping to spend time with his father, the child begins to shape himself into his father's attitude, thus the stanza hoping to turn out "just like him." The last two stanzas are an overturn of the duties, whereby the father requests his adult son to visit him, but the mature son says that he is at the moment too occupied to find the time for his once "too busy" father (Grayeb 1). The father then considers that he and his are both alike, uttering "My boy has turned out to be just like his dad." The song's chorus utilizes imagery and metaphors related to childhood songs such as Cat's in the Cradle, Little Boy Blue, Silver Spoon, and Man in the Moon.

Four Parameters Analysis

Whereas the relation between motion and tempo might be self-evident, the connection between verticality and pitch is less simple (Grayeb 1). The sound wave of the song was slow, which gave the song a low pitch. The artist gave a sense song of a sad feeling in the song, which also complimented the law. Harry Chapin’s song was more rhythmically complex as the artist used odd meters, as well as ways, such as additive rhythm and phasing. The artist also wrote the song in a way that lacked a sense of a regular beat as the song consisted only of long sustained tones also referred to as drones (Grayeb 1). The song also had a linear progression of tunes whereby the singer, at times, hummed or used a guitar only to give the tone. The song incorporated mixed and simply discernible frequency patterns. This was because the artist wanted to make the message clear for everyone to understand. The song incorporated low dynamics due to its tune. Also, the song had pianissimos and fortissimos, which gave the song low dynamics. The story was about a sad child; hence, the low dynamics complimented the story in a way that the listener could easily understand (Grayeb 1).

Line-Graph

The song had a series of plateaus characterized by notes. The artist did the work of a lab specialist to achieve the desired effects (Grayeb 1). Chaplin made the song the way it is by working with graphs due to the uniformity that could be adapted from the song. A majority of the more restrained variations of time and pitch might have to be disregarded before fixing the relative durations of these notes. Bar lines should also be placed upon a traditional music staff. The points in the piece could, at that stage, be replaced by notes, as well as the lines through note values (Grayeb 1). The complete pitch of every line for a non-percussive stave was confirmed by the appointment of a suitable clef sign at the suitable vertical point on the left side of the musical staff. For instance, the treble clef, also referred to as the G clef, was put on the second line, shaping that line as the first pitch G higher than 'middle C' (Grayeb 1).

Harmonic Reduction

"Cats in the Cradle" takes the form of a normal song in that it has an introduction, verse, chorus, a bridge, solo, pre-chorus, and solo over the verse. The song kicks off with an intro and then it follows with two verses and then the chorus. After the chorus, there was a brief solo and a pre-chorus. The piece concluded with a solo over the verse. Modality played a leading role in the harmony of the song (Grayeb 1). Since Harry Chapin’s song in the Major is comprised of a total of 5058 bars, as well as 5112 chord changes, it may be argued that the average rate of harmonic shift is once per bar. The harmonic language of Chaplin lies in the use of chords V, IV and I in C, F, and G major and the relative minors II and VI (D minor and A minor). The chords stated above were put together virtually because the I chord could be discerned as the "home" or tonic chord. In the key of C major, each of the chords G, F, Dm, and Am had the second-last position in the whole song (Grayeb 1). The V and IV chords were used more often than the II and VI chords in this manner, but these relative minors were uncommon.  Read More