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Dave Moore

@otherdavemoore.com

1K followers 310 following 11K posts

Music stuff. Minimal non-music stuff. 20 new songs a week or your money back at: www.otherdavemoore.com

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Dave Moore @otherdavemoore.com · 2d

New mix! Sudan Archives, ferrofluid, Indian pop, and lots of pretty stuff toward the end. Be sure to check out Yasmine Hamdan.

www.otherdavemoore.com/p/fear-is-no...

2025 Mix 40: More Taylor Swift (sorry), more Lover's Skit (not sorry), audience size guessing games with Indian pop, and pretty songs from Poland, Lebanon, South Africa, and Spain

www.otherdavemoore.com

Dave Moore @otherdavemoore.com · 5h

To use an example of something I just heard, in "Vampire" by Olivia Rodrigo, this happens almost immediately, going from the F major to the A major -- she sings the fifth (C) on F and then sharps it (C#) on A major. That's a song you couldn't play on a piano in any key using only white notes.

Dave Moore @otherdavemoore.com · 5h

You'd see this in blue notes (minor third, minor seventh, or sometimes sharp four against a major chord), which Taylor Swift basically never sings. But most pop songs eventually introduce add some modification to the key in a chord change.

Dave Moore @otherdavemoore.com · 5h

No, I'm definitely the overthinker lol. She often sings in keys with black notes, but what I mean is that she never sings a melody note that you'd have to mark as "altered" from the original key, by adding a flat, sharp, or natural sign to the individual note in the music.

Dave Moore @otherdavemoore.com · 5h

yeah, I'm trying to keep it simple with "you could technically play this without ever hitting a black note," which is true of many (if not most) songs, but seems like it would never be true of ALL songs for a single artist, esp one with hundreds of songs

Dave Moore @otherdavemoore.com · 5h

(What I found interesting about "Invisible String" is that there's no reason you *wouldn't* use a natural seventh somewhere else in the song. But because she technically doesn't, you can still play it on all white notes in G)

Dave Moore @otherdavemoore.com · 5h

The connection I made was to what I call "modal rap," where rappers learned to sing in simple repetitive modal patterns that allowed them to keep rapping without worrying about their notes. www.otherdavemoore.com/p/how-you-ge...

Dave Moore @otherdavemoore.com · 5h

The "Invisible String" example is probably a coincidence, but that and "Ophelia" are both examples where unchanging melodic scales leads to something interesting happening against new chords. The vast majority of Swift songs are in major, so it's kind of moot

Dave Moore @otherdavemoore.com · 5h

I don't know there's a "reason" behind it, would guess it's mostly intuitive on her part. I think she's found certain melodic grooves that she sings regardless of what's happening around her because she writes with rhythm more than melody.

Dave Moore @otherdavemoore.com · 6h

Hope your kids like it -- I thought mine would enjoy it but it never really took.

Dave Moore @otherdavemoore.com · 6h

Taylor Swift sings the natural seventh in a major key all the time. It's the first note in "Love Story." It's like she's skipping it on purpose in "Invisible String" because she knows she's going to have to sing the flat seventh later.

Dave Moore @otherdavemoore.com · 6h

The "Mixolydian" song (it's not really Mixolydian, but uses only the notes in that scale) is "Invisible String." The song moves into A minor from D major at one point and she's singing the C natural note -- but she never sings the C# in D major.

Dave Moore @otherdavemoore.com · 6h

I expect no one else to care about this, you should have that name muted anyway at this point, or me

Dave Moore @otherdavemoore.com · 6h

I am further down the modal melody rabbit hole and have not yet found a Taylor Swift song you could not play using only the white notes. One is in Mixolydian D: (this is not that weird, just a flat seventh in a major scale -- but she rarely sings those, except in this song where she ONLY sings them)

Dave Moore @otherdavemoore.com · 7h

the good thing about getting stuff from me is that the likelihood I won't even remember it has to be over 75% lol

Dave Moore @otherdavemoore.com · 7h

ha, I have TWO of their songs on my lists last year, must have really liked them!

Dave Moore @otherdavemoore.com · 7h

so good

Dave Moore @otherdavemoore.com · 7h

#TheTwen2ie5
Day 12

NMIXX: High Horse (2025, South Korea)

This is the K-pop song that made me think that at this point South Korea is seriously competing with American pop at its own game. Formally I think it's the pop song of the year, from any country.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jy0q...

Dave Moore @otherdavemoore.com · 12h

going on the next mix 🫡

Dave Moore @otherdavemoore.com · 13h

you might still be able to find the original vid with all of the O-Rod copyright infringement in it

Dave Moore @otherdavemoore.com · 13h

me too!!! Love this song

Dave Moore @otherdavemoore.com · 14h

I came around on this song in a big way, but not enough to put any Roddrigo on my list (would probably go with "Deja Vu"; this might be second place at this point).

Dave Moore @otherdavemoore.com · 14h

a couple technical errors in the first post but this is the gist -- may write about this for next week's post

Dave Moore @otherdavemoore.com · 14h

(The simplest way to think of this is: there is a way to play every Taylor Swift melody in a key that does not require you to ever hit a black note on a piano.)

Dave Moore @otherdavemoore.com · 14h

Woops, that's on "you," not "never" (she hits the raised sixth a bunch in that phrase, just wrote it wrong from memory)

Dave Moore @otherdavemoore.com · 14h

needs tuin

Dave Moore @otherdavemoore.com · 14h

this would be an extreme version of that even for her I think (but it might be true)