Most people have a brain with two halves. Mine is divided into thirds—football, music, and words. Pitch is my personal triple frontier, the only place where these three rivers of inspiration flow into one.
The concept is very simple. 30 seconds of a musical concept. 30 seconds of a footballing one. All united by a single homophone or homonym. My brain, united.
Scroll down for a taste.
Syncopate
To stress the up beat.
V.I.P. by Youngblood Brass Band is The Sixth Sense of jazz music, hiding its off-beat bassline in plain sight by carefully curating the listener’s context. In isolation, the tuba intro supplants a false “one,” offering a backing groove whose percieved downbeat corresponds to the entrance of percussion. At 1:42, a seemingly abrupt cymbal crash shifts the feel an eighth note forward to accompany the melody. YBB’s M. Night Shyamalan reveal revolves around unveiling this discomfort as the result of a mistaken assumption rather than a metronomic alteration. To do so, the song essentially restarts at 4:09, but with new information. Now, the tuba riff starts on the “and” of one while the horns dictate the downbeat. When the transition comes again at 5:00, the chorus begins seamlessly, uncovering the truth to the listener—there is no shift or measure of 7/8. The tuba and drums were syncopated the whole time.
Syncopate
To cut short.
Zidane is football’s patron saint of early exits. This exalted position, like the canonization of many, has come at some cost—namely a throbbing forehead and a shiny silver medal. But once in his career, Zizou’s affinity for walking away unexpectedly paid dividends (or not hurt him, rather). After his exit, Real Madrid headed into El Clasico with only one win in their last six (and none in their last four domestic outings), the type of form that attracts George-Clooney-Up-in-the-Air types. Whether he foresaw Ronaldo’s turn to Turin or simply felt it was time for a change, Zidane, for perhaps the first time in his career, wasn’t punished for leaving. And this year, with Madrid well off their upstart neighbors, he’ll have to once again butt heads with his legacy.