Blues in Moore flat
« previous post | next post »
I've previously noted that Donald Trump sometimes introduces semi-chanted passages into his political oratory — see "Trump's prosody"; "Trumpchant in B flat"; "Tunes, political and geographical".
Here's another example, from his 12/8/2017 campaign rally for Roy Moore in Pensacola:
So get out and vote for Roy Moore!
Average f0 values (leaving out the portamento):
| Hz | ST rel. to A 100 | ST rel. to "Moore" | |
| get out | 265.8 | 15.25 | 8.4 |
| vote | 247.6 | 14.04 | 7.2 |
| Roy | 210.5 | 11.24 | 4.4 |
| Moore | 163.5 | 6.86 | 0.0 |
So "get out" to "vote" is roughly a descending semitone, with "vote" falling by a minor third to "Roy", and "Roy" by (a quarter tone more than a) major third to "Moore". "Get out" to "Moore" is overall (a quarter tone more than) a minor sixth, which may help explain the oddly plaintive tone of the whole sequence.
The tone sequence might be an interesting compositional motif: C4 B3 G#3 E3
AntC said,
December 15, 2017 @ 5:47 pm
Yes. several of the late night satire shows picked up on this strange intonation. But they couldn't read much significance into it.
I wonder what intonation was in Trump's robocalls supporting Moore?
Craig said,
December 15, 2017 @ 6:51 pm
It's kind of interesting that the melody described above outlines a Cmaj7#5 chord (C E G# B) in first inversion (E G# B C). Not an uncommon chord in jazz, but I have trouble believing that Trump knows anything about jazz.
Cynthia McLemore said,
December 15, 2017 @ 7:28 pm
It's evocative of preacher intonation. Similar in form if not precisely in tone, and more dramatic.
Ed M said,
December 15, 2017 @ 9:49 pm
A Trump robocall for Roy Moore is reported here:
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/roy-moore-campaign-releases-trump-robocall/story?id=51692574
rosie said,
December 16, 2017 @ 1:49 am
The note for "get out" is a bit off, but after that, we have quite a nice broken chord of E major.
Jonathan Gress-Wright said,
December 16, 2017 @ 1:02 pm
Googling "trump jazz" turns up interesting results:
http://www.newsweek.com/trump-smooth-jazz-white-house-paris-climate-deal-announcement-619331
Sarah Creel said,
December 16, 2017 @ 3:27 pm
On a related note, I noticed that Trump's misarticulated "United States" generated a pretty strong speech-to-song illusion. Like Cynthia McLemore above, I would think Roy Moore (more so than Trump) would be subject to evangelical preacher intonation.