Why Does Emo Sound Like That?

(music plays) that's the chorus of Dirty Little  Secret, by the All-American Rejects. it's a prototypical mid-2000s pop-punk  emo song, nothing super unusual, but if we skip ahead a bit to the bridge: (bang)  something's clearly changed. it's not the tempo,

that's still the same, but the groove is  slower. specifically, it's half as fast, which is why most musicians call this half-time.  half-time, and its evil twin double-time, show up everywhere in lots of different genres, but for  some reason they're particularly common in the

pop-punk and emo music of the late 90s and 2000s.  so… why? what is it about half-time that makes it such a good fit for these styles, and what can we  learn from how they use it? what is half-time for?

(tick, tick, tick, tick, tock) this video is a collaboration with emocon2026, the first ever academic conference  all about pop-punk and emo music. all their talks will be streamed online on April  11th, more on them at the end of the video.

to start off, let's talk a little bit about  what half-time is. if you've heard of half-time, you've probably had it explained as a  kind of tempo modulation. this is where you start playing in one tempo, then change to  a different one, usually with some simple ratio

between them. it's one of those concepts  that sounds tricky when you describe it, but once you hear it in action, it's really  not. check it out. (bang) the first half is 66 beats per minute, the second half is  99, for a ratio of 2 to 3. put another way,

the eighth note in the new tempo is the  exact same length as the eighth note triplet in the old one. so we could say that  half-time is the simplest tempo modulation, with a ratio of 2 to 1. the tempo is cut in half,  with a new quarter note that's the same as the old

half note. but I don't love that explanation. it  feels overengineered, like trying to solve your termite problem with a nuclear bomb. it works,  but there are some unintended consequences.

for starters, tempo modulations are a pretty  advanced technique, often mentioned in the same breath as polyrhythms, or asymmetric meter.  they're not that common in pop or rock. they mostly show up in experimental music, prog, and  some of the more technical subgenres of metal.

trying to fit them into something like emo feels  stylistically inappropriate. but also, for me, I think a tempo modulation needs to be at least  somewhat permanent. you can do it again later, but if you want your audience to feel the change,  you have to give them time to get used to the new

tempo. but that's not necessarily true for how  emo uses halftime. it can be a whole section, but it can also just be a couple bars. (bang)  and that works because there's nothing new to learn. y'see, the way I like to think about  half-time is as a simple shift in metric focus.

every groove you hear is made of pulses happening  at lots of different speeds simultaneously. there's fast ones, like 8th notes and 16ths, slow  ones like the bar or phrase, and right in the middle sits the beat. all half-time does is change  where that middle is. the pulses are the same,