I know Lordi did this in "Blood Red Sandman, "Chainsaw Buffet", and a few others, but I'm not sure if I should add them if this page will undergo a revamp. Should I mention them anyway?
With all the wicks and inbounds, this should go to TRS rather than being unilaterally cut. Please don't cut it.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman Hide / Show Replies
This is definitely a music trope - probably a cliché - but the term is being misused to represent just about any modulation at all. Examples need to be a little more cautiously minded. Can I suggest possible greater categorization? Right now it's just "Straight Examples" and "Parodies, Subversions, and Lampshade Hangings" - perhaps categorizing the songs by their modulations would help clarify what is and what is not actually a TDGC. My understanding of the trope is that it's a stepwise modulation before the final verse and/or chorus of a number, which gives you entries like this:
"Billy Joel does have one example: "Tell Her About It", which is in B-flat for the verses and F for the choruses (the outro is the chorus in B-flat)."
... which is patently NOT a gear change, but just a simple modulation between keys for verse and chorus, and suggesting that any picee with a modulation should qualify reaches People Sit On Chairs levels, or this:
"[...]Tarja's "Come Cover Me" (going up a perfect fourth from D to G),[...]"
which is less obvious, since it meets the temporal requirement (i.e. modulation for the last verse and/or chorus) but not the stepwise requirement.
So I would suggest the following categories: - Typical examples, modulation up one step before the last verse/chorus - Inversions, modulation down one step before the last verse/chorus - Other modulations before the last verse/chorus Parodies, Subversions, Lampshading, etc... can be slotted in to their respective categories, as can songs with multiple shifts.
Edited by krimsh
Did gearchange.org really invent the term? Their FAQ doesn't claim they did, and I wonder about their explanation of its origins.
I first heard the term on the radio when a DJ was discussing Eurovision songs — the DJ was almost certainly not taking the term from the website, although that's no reason to assume that there wasn't some chain of causality that brought the term from the website into the DJ's vocabulary. But the understanding I came away with was that the metaphor was describing a key change that abruptly changes the pitch, often to a note lower than the one before, and then climbs up to the new key — like a vehicle changing gears and building the revs up.
Previous Trope Repair Shop thread: Needs Help
, started by Twentington on Oct 13th 2017 at 4:29:24 AM
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman