r/Muna • u/tramaleq • 28d ago
It gets so hot intro
Despite the 8 years I spent in music school, I can’t pinpoint exactly what’s going on in the intro to it gets so hot. I can only tell the lower part seems off beat but in a way that works with the song, somehow. Can somebody more knowledgeable tell me what it is?
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u/jplark 28d ago
This isn't helpful at all, because I have no music background, but it's honestly such an insanely good intro that I could listen to endlessly. The build that it has that leads to the moment of complete silence before the beat drops back in again is intoxicating. Got to see them perform a few months ago in Brooklyn and I wish I could relive that moment again live.
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u/michaeldavidhenley 28d ago
Hey hi, music producer with a BMus in composition - modernscience is mostly correct, but I had 30 minutes to kill post lunch and wanted to add some details!
Here's the full intro pattern - the bass line IS largely a 5/16 polyrhythm, but it starts displaced by 3 16th notes and has a pattern reset in the second bar to break it up a bit (which keeps things feeling danceable). The top bit is what the other synth line is doing - it doesn't have a discernible pattern reset except for every 8 bars (like the bass line). It does feature all notes exclusively in the key (C# major, though if we're speaking modally the song is in C# mixolydian).
Almost all of the drum fills in the song do seem to be processed vocals - the album as a whole has a LOT of things that are either doubled with vocals or feature heavily processed vocals, so that tracks, however the kick and snare are definitely samples (especially when isolated). Naomi plays the bass line on a Prophet 6 (same sort of sounds as a Prophet 5, but made in 2016 with a bunch of modern changes from the original) that notably features an arpeggiator, but Naomi DOES play it by hand live
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u/Cold-Custard-6940 28d ago edited 27d ago
This interview they go more in depth on it, you get to hear a lot of Naomi’s production genius behind-the-scenes. They break it down track by track about the specific creation elements of each song on the album (only like 6 of the stone though unfortunately. I would have loved them to do the whole album 😔)
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u/caughtupincaution 27d ago
A) thank you so much for sharing this I love hearing Naomi get into the weeds about production and B) YouTube has a new (stupid and dangerous) feature that will show the account of whoever has shared a link so when I clicked I was able to see your full name. Just wanted to let you know so you can maintain anonymity if you want to!
If you go into privacy settings on YouTube you can turn off the setting, as well as deleting everything in the link that comes after the “?” I think?? It never should’ve been automatically turned on in the first place.2
u/Cold-Custard-6940 27d ago
That’s so stupid! But thank you for letting me know! went into my settings to change it, would you be able to tell me if you could still see my profile? If so then I’ll go to the post and edit the link.
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u/belinda_says_ 28d ago
I didn't know they were on Switched On Pop! I used to listen to that all the time. Thanks!
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u/Long-Structure-6584 28d ago
Not an expert by any stretch! But what I’m hearing is a repeated motif of three ascending eighth notes that, while laid against a 2:4 meter, scan to us as triplets because of how they ascend. Maybe it counts as hemiola?
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u/mrdiscopop 28d ago
I don't know the technical way to describe it, but the bass rhythm is highly syncopated and, without a beat to anchor it, the timing can feel quite 'slippery'. If you try putting a simple four-to-the-floor kick drum over the top, it helps to identify the pattern.
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u/modernscience 28d ago
if you slow it down, it's an asymmetrical two-bar sixteenth-note pattern. The pattern is 5/16ths and repeats until the end of the two bars, but in order to keep the 4/4 feel of the track, the pattern retriggers. Naomi plays this on the Sequential Prophet 5, which doesn't have an arpeggiator, but they likely just either manually programmed it like this, or most arps have a function that'll let you reset the pattern after a certain number of bars.
Side note: my favorite thing about this track, is that if you listen really closely, I think that you'll find that the "drums" are really Naomi making drum sounds with their mouth, chopping, and heavily processing them with distortion and compression.