Blog Assignment 3A

Please refer to the songs on the side bar to the right --->

Black Sabbath and Cake are two extremely different bands because of their style but also because of the period in history they are playing in. Originally Black Sabbath played the song War Pigs and then Cake covered the song and added their own style to it.

The first things to consider about the two versions of the song are the affinity of the lyrics between them. In fact the lyrics are identical in both of the versions. Also the lyrics are didactic in the way that they tell a story and feed the listener information. They paint a clear picture of what the song is about.

In Cakes cover of War Pigs the song is much more ordered then the original, which is chaotic. The organization of the song is important because it helps us hear and know the rhythm. The rhythm in Cakes version is regular. It is much easier to pick out and is apparent throughout the entire song. Where as Black Sabbath played the song so it was difficult to be able to pick out the rhythm. In the original version there were points where I thought the rhythm had changed and in other places the rhythm matched that of the cover song making it irregular.

            Another thing to look at between the songs is the speed or the tempo. I Black Sabbaths version of War Pigs the speed changes throughout the song and it is very noticeable. The speed changes are not small changes either they are rather large changes in speed. But over all the speed of the original is slower then the speed of Cakes version. Cake definitely speeds up the tempo of the song and stays pretty much constant through out. The song has a more energetic feel to it because it is faster and more exciting.

Timbre of the cover song was complex. There were more instruments and more sounds like the fire engine and the addition of the trumpet and the background singers. There was just more going on then in the original which had a lot of almost silent parts. The original version only had a few instruments playing at any given time, sometimes only one, which made the timbre simpler and made the song less noisy. This could be considered a good or a bad thing. Personally I think it make the song bore boring and harder to listen to.

So in short Cake speed up the tempo and the beat, kept the same lyrics, added instruments and sounds which made it more complex, they made the rhythm more defined, and the melody easier to pick out, they took out slow boring parts, and shortened the song, which made it easier to listen to all the way through. Cake did all of this for the song all while making the song seem more organized. In my opinion this all helped to make the song more interesting and just flat out better. I have always liked Cake and I have always liked War Pigs. So I would have to say that I like the cover more than the original.