| March 24, 2003 |
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Truck Driver's Gear Change Hall of Shame
A  "truck driver's gear change" isn't what you might think. It is, in fact, a musical technique -- also referred to as "modulation" -- in which the arranger or producer shifts "the whole song up a key, usually in between choruses, towards the beginning of a 'repeat-till-fade' section." Confused? Check out "Crazy Crazy Nights" by KISS for a classic example of the hackneyed method. This site features approximately 50 gear-change examples, each with a list of key facts and "uninformative and mildly inaccurate" comments written by the creator of the site. But the best part is that you can listen to each song's gear change in MP3 format. Michael Jackson's "Man in the Mirror" features a gear change so egregious it's arguably the definitive truck driver's gear change, while Bon Jovi's fist-pumping gear change in "Livin' on a Prayer" will have you singing "Whoa-Oh" at the top of your lungs. No genre of music escapes scrutiny -- from Michael Bolton to The Misfits, the sickening grinding of gears makes itself heard. (in Music Humor) |
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