Reversed Parts in Music

One of the most unique things you can hear in music is a reversed part. The reason they sound so unique has to do with transients. A transient is the start of a sound. One way to understand it is the way that a mic pops when you say a word that starts with the letter B. When you play an instrument you strike a note and it rings out. If you reverse that, the ringing out will play into the strike. Instead of, "Ba Ba Baaa Baaa", it would be "aaaB aaaB aB aB". This means that reversed melodies have entirely different rhythms.

The transients of this first melody fall on the down beats.

Ba Ba Baaa Baaa

1 2 3 4

Where as the transients of the reversed melody fall on the up beats.

aaB aaB aB aB

1 AND 2 AND 3 AND 4 AND

Hopefully that makes some sense. That being said here are some of my favorite reversed parts in music.

The Pharcyde - Drop

Labcabincalifornia features numerous J Dilla produced tracks. Some of my favorites are Splattitorium, Runnin, and Drop. Drop has the classic Beasties Boys vocal, and it's built around a reversed sample of Django by Dorothy Ashby. Listening to the original, it's no where near what J Dilla used for the beat. From what I've read he used an MPC3000, so reversing the sample and getting everything to line up must not have been a simple process. Looking at the track, the way he placed the bass and the kick drum rhythmically gives the song bounce. The rhythm of the bass serves the kick drum perfectly. You can see what I mean if you listen to the way the bass leads back into the first beat of the 2 bar loop, the snare falls on 2 and 4. On top of the sample and bass, The Pharcyde members sing a melody during the hook that fits in great with the overall song.

Jimi Hendrix - Are You Experienced? / The Pharcyde - Passin Me By

A great example of reversed parts in music is the Jimi Hendrix song, Castles Made of Sand. The intro is a reversed guitar, and there is a reversed guitar solo halfway through that is just mindblowing. However, I wanna write about the song Are You Experienced? off of The Jimi Hendrix Experience's first album. The reason for this is because it was also sampled by The Pharcyde on their song Passin Me By. On the original, the reversed part is used as an intro for the song, and then used in the mix as a percussive piece. It sounds like it's Jimi Hendrix either scratching the strings with his pick or strumming muted strings on the guitar, and hi hat hits. The reversed guitar solo halfway through is out of this world. The snare hits that are with it fit perfectly, especially the rolls. Looking at The Pharcyde track, the sample is sped up. This was another sample I never realized, my Dad actually mentioned it to me. According to credits on Wikipedia, J-Swift produced all of their first album, aside from Otha Fish which was L.A. Jay and Slimkid3. The way he sped the sample up it sounds like noise from someone's mouth not guitar. I assume that's because Jimi Hendrix used a Wah pedal on the original, and the pitch increase through speeding it up makes it sound human. That's just my interpretation. It's funny, one of the most famous things about Jimi Hendrix was that he strung his guitar backwards, so he started playing backwards too.

Beastie Boys - Paul Revere

A very famous example of reversing in Hip Hop. The beat was made by reversing the 808 drum machine. I swear I remember reading that MCA knew you could reverse tapes because of Jimi Hendrix, but I can't find it anywhere. In the Beastie Boys book they write that they were working on music and MCA just blurted the idea out. What's so unique about this beat is the 808, the bass. The way they were able to get it to bounce is so impressive. It's awesome to think about them just messing around, coming up with something so influential. The open hi hat that leads into the first beat of the loop brings everything together. The entire song isn't reversed. There's the horns and the classic scratch sound, but there's also a drum hit on the first beat of the loop that you can hear at 0:43. Anytime I hear a reversed 808 I think of this song.

Playboi Carti - Foreign

One of my favorite reversed parts in music. Pi'erre Bourne has a very distinct style of creating beautiful reversed melodies from scratch. Other examples aside from this song are, Let It Go and Middle of the Summer. Looking at various remakes of this song on YouTube, Pi'erre programmed a melody that he could reverse and pitch up. One aspect that sticks out to me is how the melody fits rhythmically. It comes in on 1 and 3 of the first bar, then the second beat of the 2nd bar. It's such a unique tone and sound, and I've come up with a lot of melodies based on the idea of creating something to reverse it. The loop repeats the entire song while the drums play around it, but that's all the song needs.

Those are some cool examples of reversing a part in music. Another one that you should listen to is Tomorrow Never Knows by The Beatles, it sounds so ahead of its time. One more is Fear by Kendrick Lamar, it features an incredible reversed vocal part. Thank you for taking the time to read. Tomorrow I'm writing about The Loudness War and its Effect on the Perception of Music