Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2017 April 4

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April 4[edit]

Is there a name/phrase that describes playing music to the tempo of a conversation?[edit]

I have been trying to figure out what the name of the thing a person like MonoNeon( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Al2KOuzG1BQ )does where he plays music to the tempo of a conversation. I mostly need to know this so that I can search for people like MonoNeon but are more like this man ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InbaU387Wl8 ). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:247:301:4733:4009:B745:8776:CEBD (talk) 16:59, 4 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Like underscore? Or more like rap? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:01, 4 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The composer Leoš Janáček spent much of his life exploring Moravian folk music and the rhythms of his native conversational Czech language, in an attempt to make his operas sound as natural as possible. It coloured all his music, even the non-vocal stuff. This probably doesn't help, but I proffer it nonetheless. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 21:24, 4 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Much the same thing was done by Mussorgsky for Russian opera. Double sharp (talk) 14:51, 9 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I'll see your proffer and raise you a Sprechgesang. Something like it in "Bye Bye Greasy". InedibleHulk (talk) 22:20, 4 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I have never known this to have a specific name. I know it to be "described" in various ways, such as: "transcribing speech onto a musical instrument", "music written to match/augment speech", "mimicking human speech patterns with music", etc; and on occasion I'll see someone term it: "Zappafied" (named after Frank Zappa) or "Harmonization/Harmonizator" (such as in the "Hot Pepper Challenge"). But nothing has become a technically accepted musical term within the community as far as I know. Maineartists (talk) 22:26, 4 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
You might be interested in Hermeto Pascoal's melodization/harmonization of speech, such as Fernando Collor de Mello's political speech "Pensamento positivo" or Mário Lago's poem "Três coisas". (He also intonates the speech of birds in "Quando as aves se encontram"). Each clip first gives the whole unaccompanied speech, and then entire thing again with Pascoal's musicalizations. ---Sluzzelin talk 22:34, 4 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
(Sorry, related, if only laterally: while re-visiting Pascoal's "Três coisas", I thought of Diana Deutsch's Speech to Song Illusion ---Sluzzelin talk 22:45, 4 April 2017 (UTC))[reply]
What you describe is not dissimilar to Recitative in classical opera and oratorio - "in which a singer is allowed to adopt the rhythms of ordinary speech." Wymspen (talk) 09:44, 5 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
It's similar to the technique used by Steve Reich in his piece Different Trains, where instruments imitate the "melodies" of some fragments of pre-recorded speech. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 16:12, 6 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]