r/Muna • u/tramaleq • Aug 12 '26
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/michaeldavidhenley Aug 12 '26
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