The target this time, “Candy’s Room” by Bruce Springsteen. A song about a girl but its better than 99% of them out there which is saying alot. There must be hundreds of thousands of songs on the topic. This is off the same album my last post was off of which is exciting as I’ll look for more golden sections off Darkness on the Edge of Town.

The climax occurs after an initial guitar solo and the actual climax starts when Bruce slides on the guitar twice going from low to high. Its one of the rare climaxes I can actually play on my own guitar as it only involves me sliding my fingers down the strings.

Duration: 168 seconds
Climax: 100 seconds (as describe above)

168 by 100 equals a golden section of 1.68 even.

The song for today is “Adam Raised a Cain” by Bruce Springsteen off arguably Bruce’s best album, Darkness on the Edge of Town. While every song off this album is a winner, my favorite Springsteen album would be his first, Greetings from Asbury Park.

On to the song, the song has obvious biblical references like many Springsteen songs (i.e. his use of Mary as the female character in his songs that he commented on during his VH1 behind the music show). The climax of this song comes after a long instrumental that ends with a long section of cymbal being played. The instrumental includes some great guitar riffs that you should check out. The climax is when Bruce starts singing again, you really feel the intensity in his voice. Bruce growing up did not get along with his father and you can really tell some pent up anger in this song

Duration: 274 seconds
Climax: 164 seconds

274/164 = 1.6707

Another song which is great and yet has a golden section. Coincidence?

so guys, after about a month of posting, these are the songs that we have determined conform to the golden ratio: lets all check these to make sure they really do and please tell us if you disagree with one of them.

All American Rejects- Move Along
The Beatles – I’m Looking Through You
The Beatles – In My Life
The Beatles – Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds
Ben Folds Five – Army
Buffalo Springfield – For What It’s Worth
Bruce Springsteen – Where the Bands Are
Greenday – Boulevard of Broken Dreams
James Gang- Funk #49
Jackson 5- ABC
John Denver – Take Me Home Country Road
Michael Jackson – Wanna Be Starting Somethign
Mighty Mighty Bosstones – I Never Had to
Razorlight – Golden Touch
Spoon – The Way We Get By
Supremes – Band of Gold
Van Halen – Jump

so there’s the list so far..keep up the good work!

As I was parusing a list of popular songs of the past couple of years, I took a closer look at Boulevard of Broken Dreams by Greenday, off the American Idiot album from late 2004….
To my delight, 2:42 into the 4:22 song begins the climatic guitar instrumental…

262 seconds / 162 seconds = 1.617 so close to Fibonacci!

This is one of the better examples I’ve found so far because of its nearly dead on alignment with the Fibonacci Sequence 1.618.

Hello everyone.

Here’s something i found a little interesting in Tom Petty’s “Freefallin”, and U2’s “Stuck in a Moment.” First, I figured out what I believed the climax to be and found the ratio that the ratio was a little lower than what we have been looking for. I than calculated where the climax would have to be in order for it to work out, and what I found was that in “Freefallin” it would have to be at 153 seconds, and in “Stuck in a Moment”. it would have to be at 169 seconds. What is interesting is that both of these songs follow a similar pattern. A few verses, a chorus, an instrumental period, then precisely at the “Fibonacci second” the singer starts the slower, dramatic verse. After thinkin about Brante’s post, I realized that is the point in a live performance where the crowd will be going crazy, so that could also technically be considered a climax. Go ahead check it out.

hey guys…and recently gal.

so what kind of music do you like? …well, anything but country. We’ve all heard this conversation before. And while this may be one of the most universally used and agreed on statements, there have been plenty of country artists who have managed to slip there way into pop culture. John Denver is certainly among those in that category. And the first song i think of is Take Me Home Country Roads.

Duration- 193 seconds
Climax- 120.

That gives us 1.608, right around the ratio we are looking for. I’m going to look for more of this with some other country/pop artists.

I’ve been going through a lot of my Michael Jackson collection (yes, it is a lot!) and I came across the hit song “Wanna Be Starting Something” This song has a long dramatic climax that lasts almost 15 seconds. The golden section appears halfway through that climax, making this a song to add to the list!

duration: 363
climax (mid section): 226

363/226 = 1.606 which is pretty close to the golden section…because this is the middle of the climax, the exact golden section definitely appears at some point during it.

In the tremendously well known (and sweet) Van Halen song JUMP, which is off the album “1984″…Eddie Van Halen begins a dramatic keyboard solo at 2:31 seconds in. The song is 4:03 in length:

243 / 151 = 1.6093

This example is purely instrumental and has no singing at all during the climax. However, if you watch the music video you can see some great hair-bouncing and jumping from David Lee Roth, which is always a plus…

As I thought of different popular bands of the current music era, I thought of All American Rejects and their very popular song “Move Along”, which i have heard on the radio numerous times in the past couple of days alone..

The song is 4:02 in length and at 2:32 into it, a instrumental of piano that is much quieter than the rest of the song begins. I would argue this is the climax of the song. 242 / 152 = 1.592, which is close to the fibonacci sequence. Here in lies my question…

I feel as if an interesting topic for debate. When a noticeable difference in the speed of a song occurs, for instance a fast song that has a slow verse around the time of the climax such as Move Along, does the beginning of the slow verse mark the climax or does the end of it? At the end of the piano instrumental(which does have words sung during it, at a much slower pace than the song’s previous pace) the lead singer screams loudly and marks the beginning of the fast pace of the song again, which could arguably also be called the climax. Also, does the climax have to be exclusively instrumental, with no lyrics at all?

“For What It’s Worth” is the song of the day by Buffalo Springfield. The song is a classic Vietnam era song, you’d recognize as soon as you hear it if the title is not familiar to you. It’s on the Forrest Gump soundtrack as well as on any classic rock station, probably daily.

Duration: 160 seconds
Climax: 97 seconds, the chorus starts that leads into some picking

160 by 97 gives you a ratio of 1.6495.