孙燕姿 - 我要的幸福

I believe it's my sister who first piqued my interest in this piece. I remember she asking me to "try keeping count of the beats".


Unlike most pop songs, this piece uses a quintuple meter. The other pieces which do so that come to mind’re Adam Clayton & Larry Mullen, Jr.’s (Theme from) Mission: Impossible and Dave Brubeck’s Take Five by. In fact, the accompaniment for this piece’s the same as that of Take Five.

In addition to the quintuple meter, this piece occasionally uses a duple meter. This makes it pretty tricky to keep count as we're used to counting in 4s and suddenly we're faced with 5s instead. Then when it alternates to 2s, which we're more comfortable with, it quickly reverts back to 5s again. Unless you're fond of counting in 5s, a bit of concentration's required if you wish to keep track of the when the 1st beat comes in.

孙燕姿 - 我要的幸福 (Score)

Please pardon me for the poor quality of the score.

孙燕姿 - 我要的幸福 (Form)

Before going into the hypermetric analysis, here’s the form for this piece:

Intro
Verse
Verse
Chorus
Verse
Verse
Chorus
Bridge
Chorus
Outro

孙燕姿 - 我要的幸福 (Analysis of Verse Section)

Verse

Here’s the meter within the hypermetric phrase structure of the 2 verses:

5-6-5-5
5-6-5-5
5-6-5-5
5-6-5-6

5-6-5-5
5-6-5-5
5-6-5-5
5-6-5-5

(The numbers denotes the crotchet beats per bar.)

The "extra 6th crotchet" in each hypermetric phrase throws off your counting. It is pretty prominent to the ear as it's heard in the bass as well as the melody. As a result, there's a slight stretch in the middle of each hypermetric phrase. Other than that, the hypermetric beats’re pretty even.

I feel that the “extra 6th crotchet” is deliberate as the melody’s still functional and tuneful even without it. I.e. the 3 crotchets in the 2nd bar of each phrase is brought forward by 1 crotchet beat, resulting in an even quintuple meter throughout. I think this’s also the composer’s way of emphasising the 3-crotchet-note groups in the melody.

Each time you see/hear 3 consecutive crotchets in the piece, the meter’ll change to duple. I hear these 3 notes as an “anacrusis” to the subsequent long melodic note. It isn’t an anacrusis per se as it all takes place within the same melodic/hypermetric phrase. However, if we’re to break the phrase down, we can hear it in 2 fragments, with the 2nd fragment starting with the 3 crotchets. Having that, we get 2 asymmetrical melodic fragments, which can explain for the hypermetric bulge (i.e. the “extra 6th crotchet”) near the middle of each phrase. This phenomenon seems to be further supported by the fact that this extra 6th crotchet is also present in the last bar of the 1st verse but not in that of the 2nd verse. The reason’s probably because the last bar of the 1st verse has a 3-crotchet-note group while that of the 2nd verse doesn’t.

孙燕姿 - 我要的幸福 (Analysis of Chorus Section)

Chorus

Here’s the meter within the hypermetric phrase structure of the chorus:

5-6-5-5
5-6-5-5
5-6-5-5
6-6-5-5

(The numbers denotes the crotchet beats per bar.)

The main difference between the verse and chorus sections is in the 4th hypermetric phrase which starts with a duple meter that lasts for 2 bars. The effect created with this is that it intensifies the ending of the chorus by creating additional hypermetric beats (on the 2nd and 3rd last bars of the chorus).

Bridge

Here’s the meter within the hypermetric phrase structure of the bridge:

5-5-5-5-6-6

(The numbers denotes the crotchet beats per bar.)

Though only six bars in length, the music intensifies before the chorus is repeated for the last time. This is done so through repetition and diminution of rhythm. Bars 3-4 are a repeat of bars 1-2 with the same rhythm. Bars 5-6beat1 are also a repeat of bars 1-2 but at half the rhythmic value. In addition, the descending major-2nd motif in the melody is repeated one more time than in bars 3-4, further intensifying this segment. The bridge connects nicely to the chorus with the use of the 3-crotchet-note group seen prevalently in the verse sections.

Hypermetrically, this section is increasingly intensifying as the beats get shortened with the diminution of the rhythm with each repetition.