So I won’t say on which side of the argument I stand on but I have 2 songs, all information about the artist and song removed in the tags. If you know the songs and do not have to guess, please say so.
I was going into this “blind” and would love the opinion of other people who are as ignorant as I am.
The questions I have:
how similar do you think those songs are on a scale from 1-10, 10 meaning almost the exact same song?
Is this one band or two different bands?
What’s the genre for each song respectively?
The friend I am arguing with started to take it personally, but I am still curious, just don’t wanna egg him on further so bringing in neutral opinions and views seemed like the right thing to do.
Only bother with this if you are bored or intrigued. It’s not an important matter.
They don’t sound like the same song to me, however they are quite similar in their style. My guess is it’s the same band on both.
Genre wise, I say techno / industrial
It’s the beat track that makes them the same. They are quite different, but both sound and rhythm of percussion section is really similar and as such it creates the illusion of sameness.
I was playing some old blues standards this past week, Mannish Boy by Muddy Waters, where the bass line goes E-A-E-G-E, and Boom Boom by John Lee Hooker where the bass line goes E-G-A-E
Very similar, different rhythm, but if you write a blues song in the key of E and use normal progressions, it will be similar, and I think you have that going on here.
Fairly different with respect to impact. If I envision what scene these would be playing under they have a different sense of energy intensity and smoothness. I picture different characters involved with each. Although they have technical elements in common, I wouldn’t consider them at all interchangeable with respect to communication.
I’d give their similarity maybe a 2 or 3 out of 10? I don’t have any technical reasoning for this, my ear training isn’t very good yet, but nothing in them jumps out at me as too similar.
They could be by the same band but I suspect not.
As for genre, I’m not hip to all the specific sub-genres out there but I’d probably call song 1 pop and song 2 rock.
Song 1 really feels like a soundtrack song to me, maybe something at the end of a “coming of age” movie when everything is coming together for the happy ending. To me it sounds like a modern band going for a retro/80’s sounds.
I don’t really get a strong sense of what Song 2 is, other than too long. It reminds me of these instrumental-only versions Manafest releases of his albums.
Thanks for all your input.
Interesting that there are a lot of different opinions, but it replicates pretty well what other people we know have been saying. The opinions are all over the place, which in itself is really interesting.
I’ll reveal the Bands and songs tomorrow at 20h GMT+1.
So tomorrow evening for me
1st song is some kind of a future pop, while the 2nd one would be typical post 2000 indie. They are not the same band and not really similar for that matter.
Haven’t read any elses replies yet, but this is what I’m hearing:
Similar instruments, but different style. On a scale of 1-10, I’d say they are a 3 as far as similar.
If it is the same band, then I’d be shocked if its the same era of the band.
Song 1 reminds me of 80s Miami Vice type vibe. Quite cheesy. Song 2 is more like modern (21st Century) music with a bit of synth mixed in. I quite like it.
I dont think they sound similar, the first track is very keyboardy, and slower tempo than the second.
The second is more guitar guitar driven than the first track and the genre of music is somewhat different.
This is IMO opinion,
Cheers Brian
The only similarity they have is being indie. I rate it 3 in similarity, maybe. They are 2 different bands. One is electronic indie and the other being indie pop rock.
But that’s the same as saying Michael Jackson & Justin Beiber are the same because they are both major pop artists when they are very different from each other.
I think your friend is seeing how they could both be songs for ads on YouTube where some sexy chica jumps off a cliff into a pond holding a coconut with all her friends on a summer vacation then it starts raining Almond Joy’s before it cuts back to your true crime podcast.
But I don’t actually know, they could be the same band trying adjacent styles. Happens all the time.
First song sounds kind of indie retro pop to me, almost like they are LARPing a neo-Kansas sort of vibe, until it picks up at 1:54, at which point it is just kind of pop. I didn’t like this song so much, kind of reminded me of a bank commercial or something. Also, it was kind of weird for this song to have a dubstep-like drop break at 2:45, felt really out of place.
Second song I would call either future pop or upbeat post-rock. There are some similarities with the previous song, specifically they sound to me like they were mixed by the same person (or whoever mixed them made similar choices). Similar instrumentation as well, though the second used them more effectively. Overall it’s got a lot more going on, stronger bass presence, better use of pads. No overt drop like the first song.
I would say they are quite different, say a 3 or so, may be the same band, may even be different sections of the same song (my ear couldn’t pick out the key for either so not sure) but if so it would be a really strange song.
Are these from a soundtrack? These sounded soundtracky to me, way more so than most post-rock.
Indie refers to an independent label, one that isn’t supported by a major label. Or a group on an indie label. Indie groups don’t have to follow formulas in their composition so their music can have a sound
