Peter Gabriel – Sledgehammer – Music Analysis
- Album: So
- Writer: Peter Gabriel
- Producer: Daniel Lanois
- Released: 1986
- Genre: Funk rock
- Length: 4:58 (single edit), 5:16 (album)
Chords and song structure
“Sledgehammer” follows a pretty basic song structure.
Intro-Verse-Interlude-Verse-Chorus-Break-Verse-Chorus-Break-Solo-Outro
An interesting little tidbit about the song structure to “Sledgehammer” is the interlude that bridges the first and second verse together.
Normally you would repeat this sort of part but since there’s only one more verse in the entire song this part only appears once. Interludes like this are a good way to connect two identical parts together to create contrast and interest. You can call it a transitional bridge, a pre-hook or the verse cadence if you want to impress your friends with your knowledge of musical terminology.
Arrangement
Intro/Verse
This lush, 80’s musical arrangement starts off with a bang. The horns and synth play the intro riff on the upbeat before the whole rhythm section kicks it into groove-gear.
Quite a few things are going on in the intro. The groove is locked tight with the snappy gated snare and the funky bass line. The backbeat is reinforced with the addition of a tambourine, adding an extra layer of rhythm to the drum beat.
The Prophet-5 synth and the horn section play the intro riff in unison. The guitars play a supporting role throughout the song by playing simple funk grooves in the background, alternating between palm-muted funk lines to simple chord grooves in later parts of the song.
The intro changes slightly before the start of the verse, settling into the groove with chord stabs from the synths and horns and an indecipherable scat from Gabriel.
This groove is contrasted by the synth playing chord stabs alternating between Eb and Db. With the chord stabs playing sparsely and the horn section dropping out of the arrangement this creates a nice pocket of space for Peter Gabriel’s vocals.
The interlude between the verses drops down to a C minor hold. Even though this part is only 5 seconds long it serves a really great purpose as an arrangement hook to link the two verses together. The guitars drop out here with the synths and horns holding a swelling chord with the the drums and bass grooving in place. The resolve from the Cm to the Eb/Db groove is such a simple but effective hook. It creates rhythmic contrast while making the return to the verse groove an cool listening experience.
The second verse has slightly stronger-sounding vocals. It sounds very subtle but might be a combination of automatic double tracking and/or reverb and delay effects. I couldn’t be sure but it doesn’t sound like it’s actual doubling because it doesn’t sound natural, with the vocal phrase “this amusement never ends” having a slightly jarring, phasy sound.
Chorus
The alternating two-chord changes continue with a different feel in the chorus. Instead of the chord stabs hitting the 2nd and 3rd beat of the measure the chord stabs now follow the backbeat with the grace note chord on the downbeat of every measure.
This slight variation in rhythm as well as holding the chord through the phrase gives the chorus a distinctively different feel. The drums had been playing a fairly steady hit-hat groove in the verse but now the hi-hat accent lands on the offbeat of the groove. The guitars also play on the offbeat, weaving in and out of the beat of the drums. The bass actually grooves a little less, opting to follow the synthesizer chord holds instead of grooving with the off-beat drums. Background vocals enhance the chorus by harmonizing the “sledgehammer” words.
It’s interesting to compare the verse and chorus as it seems that every instrument changes their groove either from funky to steady or reverse. The drums play a funkier part while the bass plays simpler notes with the synth. The guitars weave in and out of the beat in the chorus whereas they were playing a pretty steady riff in the verse and the chord stabs that move from one section of the beat to another change the whole rhythm.
In order to enhance the verse groove break between the chorus and third verse they add a quick call and response motif between Gabriel and the backup singers along with a simple snare drum fill. The synths also drop out here, adding a dynamic change by creating a sparser arrangement going into the third verse.
The third verse has an added production element as the horns return, playing full, sustained noted contrasting the groove of the rhythm section. You can’t hear the synth anymore but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was simply doubling the horn section in the background to add fullness to the sound (and a dash of the obligatory 80s production sound).
The second chorus amps up the arrangement with the horns doubling the synth part. There’s also an added piano part but it’s extremely hard to hear in the dense arrangement. It does pop out of the arrangement at 2:20, right after he says “why don’t you call my name.” You can hear the piano chords playing a “walking” chord stab progression down into the Cm/Db chord change the chorus revolves around.
The break before the solo has Peter Gabriel scatting “Sledge” through a vocal effect, a vocoder or something similar that modulates the vocal to sound robotic. The solo is played on the E-mu Emulator II shakuhachi synthesizer. It plays the same line four times under the Eb-B-Ab bass groove. By changing the harmony and chords underneath the solo you can create a different melodic structure than by simply repeating the same melody over the same chord four times. The flute solo alternates between playing on the Eb chord and the B chord with the Ab resolving the solo every other pass.
The cool part about this very eighties and produced recording is the jam section that continues from the solo. Even though a lot of the sounds sound robotic and electronic it’s easy to hear that everyone is in fact playing together in the studio, improvising and jamming for the remainder of the song.
Daniel Lanois, the producer said that the outro was an unexpected addition to the song and, “busted into a long fun jam once the planned arrangement had run its course. Peter conjured up the most incredible spontaneous vocal ad-lib, some of it non-lyrical or nonsensical, pure fun, jump-up-and-dance lines.”
You can hear a wide variety of arrangement elements throughout the outro, most notably the call and response between Peter Gabriel and the backup singers. I can’t really emphasize how great a songwriting element the call-and-response tactic is. Add a hefty amount of great ad libbing and jamming into the mix and you get a groovy and cool outro to an already awesome song.
The guitars start playing fuller chords instead of the previous single note lines and the synths jam in the background, playing much more elaborate chord stabs and holds than before. It’s really a great sounding outro where every instrument is going all out while still keeping themselves in check with each other.
The Production
The bass sound – The distinct eighties funk sound from Tony Levine is from a fretless Musicman bass, with a heavy amount of compression thrown in for sustain. The thickness of the bass is from the Boss OC2 Octave pedal that doubles his notes and octave down. There might also be slight chorus effect on the bass as well. To eliminate the muddy sound you could get from the chorus effect on an octave bass you could add the chorus via a send that’s high-pass filtered so only the highs of the bass guitar will be choruses. This will give the bass a chorused, 80’s sound while still retaining clarity in the mix.
The guitars – Although the guitars are a pretty subtle production element they do function as one of the anchoring elements of the song. They would sound very different if they didn’t have the guitars funking in the background. These are two distinct guitars although they play the exact same part. On first listen you would think the guitar part was just automatically double-tracked and panned to separate sides of the stereo spectrum. However, after a few listens you start picking slight variations in the parts, most notably in the jamming outro.
The 80’s production – The eighties were a decade of excess in music production. Everything was larger and bigger. Heavy reverb was thrown on most things to make each song larger than than the other.
If today we have the loudness wars I would say the 80’s had the reverb wars. But there is something cool you can learn from the 80’s, which is the gated reverb that’s used so effectively on the snare. Pioneered by Phil Collins,Peter Gabriel’s ex drummer in Genesis, the gated snare is still a pretty cool sound. It allows you to make a really big and spacious snare while cutting off the decay of the reverb so that it doesn’t clutter up the rest of the production.
I’ve written about how to achieve the gated reverb sound in Mixing Strategies so here’s the excerpt below:
Using the snare as a trigger for the snare-reverb you can thicken your snare sound up without cluttering the drum sound with a long reverb trail.
In any DAW, this technique is pretty simple, easy to do and doesn’t involve a lot of steps.
The things you need are:
- Snare track
- Aux send
- Effects return track
- Gate with a side-chain
- A Hall Reverb
Now, with all the components together you will mix the snare track as you like it, EQ’ing and compressing as needed. Once the snare track is ready, send it via an aux to a stereo reverb.
Dial up a big hall setting. Remember to have the effect on 100% wet so the channel only has the reverb sound.
Now, insert a gate after the reverb. Put the threshold as far up as you can, essentially killing the reverb. Now, via your side-chain on the gate, patch the gate to the snare-drum track.
When the gate on your reverb track is side-chained to the snare track you can start experimenting with the parameters of the gate. Reduce the threshold so that it starts letting the reverb through. The reverb should breathe in time with the snare drum creating a thick snare drum sound without an excessive reverb trail.
You can get different results by experimenting with the attack and release. A fairly fast attack and medium release in time with the snare makes it sound like the reverb is being sucked into the snare again.
I like having the attack a little slower. That way you hear the snare sound first, and it sounds like the snare is breathing out the reverb before promptly sucking it in again.
Experiment with the parameters until you get something you are satisfied with.
Key Take Aways
- Groove is key – A tight groove and a solid rhythm section can make or break a production. The interplay between the drums, bass and guitar really sets the stage for the rest of the production.
- Mix up the rhythmic elements – Also, playing counter to the groove just creates more interest and contrast. If you can play a really tight part that weaves in and out of the foundational groove of the rhythm section you’ve just added an extra layer of coolness to your song. This is why genres such as funk are so catchy and danceable. They put super tight rhythm players together that all play with and off each other to create a complex rhythm. In Sledge-hammer the simplest example are the synths that play chord stabs over the rhythm section and then the horns in the third verse that play sustained chords counter to the groove.
Further Reading
I hope you enjoyed this musical analysis of Bridge Over Troubled Water.
And if you’re recording music in your home studio that you need mixed, please check out the step-by-step mixing process right here.
Resources and References:
http://www.ethanhein.com/wp/2013/analyzing-the-musical-structure-of-sledgehammer-by-peter-gabriel/
