How to Evaluate Liao Jialin's xiang opera Ancient Painting Edition "Rolling into the Abyss"

Recently, it was screened by a song in "1300 million decibels" in Weibo and friends circle: Hunan bel canto singer Liao Jialin adapted Adele's "Rolling into the Abyss" with Ningxiang dialect and Changsha Huagu (a genre of Hunan Huagu). To put it simply, the reason why this song is so popular is: 1, which is well mixed (A Dai, a tall man, is perfectly integrated with ancient paintings and operas), and it is brainwashing and funny (Liao Xiaoge's singing is mixed with humorous elements in many operas, and his strong falsetto is also magical).

It is necessary to give you a brief introduction to the ancient painting opera:

Ancient painting drama is a kind of Han drama, which is the most widely spread and influential in Hunan, and also distributed in Hubei, Anhui and Jiangxi. It originated from Han folk songs, and then gradually added drama performance elements, and the performance scale continued to expand. In the middle and late Qing Dynasty, a relatively complete Flower Drum Opera was formed. In the early days, ancient painting operas were performed by semi-professional troupes in the off-season. After the founding of People's Republic of China (PRC), professional ancient painting troupes at all levels were established one after another, and local schools also set up related majors.

China pentatonic mode is generally adopted in ancient Chinese paintings and operas, mostly feather mode, with horn tone and feather tone (3, 6, that is, the dominant tone and subordinate tone of the mode) as the backbone to develop melody. Melody, more steps, less jumping, frequent use of leaning sound. The rhythm of songs is relatively regular, and the melody has a high degree of coincidence with the basic rhythm. The overall sound is warm, lively and humorous (the opera itself also interacts with dialect phonology). For example, Pig's Back Daughter-in-law has the characteristics of Hunan Huagu Opera (although it was created by teacher Xu Jingqing).

Then, as for this ancient painting version of "Rolling into the Abyss", Liao Jialin's adaptation draws on many elements from "Biclassicism" (an excerpt from the famous ancient painting drama "Liu Hai Chops Wood"), such as the melody around the main notes 3 and 6, such as similar decorative sounds, and the trill of the flower tongue in the song, and so on. At the same time, Adele's main verse happens to be VIm IIIm V, and she plays an incomplete chord (in fact, only the root of the chord). The omitted 7 itself is the modal external sound of Hunan ancient painting opera, and the remaining root sound 6 3 5 is the modal sound (as well as the melody backbone sound) of Hunan ancient painting opera, which makes the original accompaniment of RITD's main song segment match the painting style melody of Hunan ancient painting opera. Coupled with the playful Ningxiang dialect, the pronunciation of Hunan English, and the blessing of Liao Jialin's own cheerful but actually high-tech singing, the whole song was forcibly distorted.

So to sum up, the success of this song adaptation lies in: 1, songs with mashup interfaces (in short, less than 4 and 7) are found in popular music; 2. According to the characteristics of traditional music, transform the existing melody; 3. Add dialect lyrics with national characteristics and related singing skills. Trinity constitutes a complete and organic national adaptation, instead of some singers just using dialects instead of lyrics, lacking relevant support in mode, harmony and melody.

Of course, this can also explain why the pre-chorus and the chorus in LIAO Jialin's RITD sound less "integrated" than the main chorus: because more and more IV is used in harmony, IV not only brings a tone voice completely opposite to that of ancient painting opera, but also the harmony connection with obvious root sounds is completely inconsistent with the usual harmony form of ancient painting opera. Crucially, Liao Jialin changed the melody line of the chorus much less than that of the main song (of course, he kept the tick sentence all the time, and if he changed it again, the song would not become RITD). Therefore, although the characteristic elements and singing details still maintain the strong style of painting in the main verse, the front chorus and chorus have discordant elements in melody, harmony and orchestration, which makes the construction of "painting style" divorced from the main verse.

Generally speaking, the dissonance in the chorus is negligible compared with the magic degree of the main song, and the adaptation of the whole song is very successful. So to sum up, the success of this version of Rolling into the Abyss lies in:

1, mode and harmony matching

2. Melody and singing have enough national characteristics.

3. Increase the support of cultural elements.

Of course, we can also think from another angle. What elements of RITD have been added to Huagu Opera?

1, strengthen the rhythm (it is not unreasonable to say that China people have a poor sense of rhythm)

2. Optimize the musical form (the structure of the lead chorus is indeed the most efficient form of emotional advancement)

3、……

I haven't summed up three yet. But Liao Jialin's version of RITD, as an explosion case, also gives us a very important revelation: how to mix and match songs? Or, how to carry out the popular transformation of China traditional music elements?

The whole "1300 million decibels" is a relevant case. As I wrote in my previous article, music programs with dialect singing as the core clue inevitably need to include popular refining of traditional music elements, and this refining process not only needs dialect text, but also needs to go deep into music and culture dimensions. The national is the world's, and everyone understands the truth. But how to achieve it? This edition of LIAO Jialin's RITD provides us with an excellent case: besides showing a more effective way to reorganize musical elements and performing it with eye-catching techniques, it is also very fun-the host's sense of variety in the program can be seamlessly extended to this song with both the beauty of mashup and the spirit of spoof.

In fact, apart from this RITD, we can also find some other excellent cases in1300 million decibels, in which local dialects are connected in series with elements of traditional music, such as Farewell to China-Hong Kong Road on September 11th, Everything Will Pass by Caravan, A Night in Chang 'an by Wang Jianfang and Changsha Policy by C-Block. Focusing these scattered musicians who are addicted to it on the program "1300 million decibels" and colliding with each other for a season will definitely inspire more inspiration and ideas. If we can extract some principles and methods from these excellent cases, we will certainly discover, package and even lead more dialect songs with both traditional music elements and pop music advantages.

And this is also building a brand-new system.