Critical Analysis

Daft Punk — Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

Length — 3 minutes 45 seconds
Tempo — 128 BPM
Year — 2001
Genre — French House

Context — Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger is a chart topping single by the robotic french house duo Daft Punk. Recorded in 2001 with Virgin records and produced by Daft Punk — Thomas Bangalter, Edwin Birdsong and Guy-Manuel de Homed-Christo.

Era — Although the 1980’s was the rise of electronic music it wasnt until the 1990s and 2000’s that electronic music became the massive, ever growing genre that it is today. This is because different distinct genres of electronic emerged, house and techno to ambient. From the 90’s came the classic and forever popular producers such as Haddaway, Corona, Culture Beat, SNAP!, Technotronic and of course Daft Punk. The 1990’s also introduced the first decade in which electronic music composition became something so mainstream that anyone could do at home if you owned a PC, as PC’s heavily resulted in the creation of software such as Fruity Loops which was aimed at home users (Digital vinyl web radio, 2014).

Electroclash, also known as Retro Electro and “The New New Wave”, is a genre of music that fuses the 1980s electro, new wave and synthpop with 1990s techno, retro-style electropop and electronic dance music(“Electroclash”, 2016). During this time of the 90’s and ealry 2000’s when the Electroclash movement occured there was a large re-run of the early 1980s synth pop sounds that were deliberately made cruder and more raw-sounding than the primitive records on which it was based (digital vinyl web radio, 2014). Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger falls into this era of the Electroclash movement as it is a very typical French House track. This song has a “four-to-the-floor” beat with groovy guitars and a bass sample from Edwin Birdsong’s 1979 track; Cold Bottle Baby. The vocals are heavily compressed which is not only common in EDM but also very common in Daft Punks music as they are the robotic duo.

Significance — Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger is focused around the rise of technology and electronic music production. While the Daft Punk duo is made up of the humans Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter, their albums are presented as music made by machines.

Paramusical Content — With the rise of technology and electronic dance music, “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” considers the nature of the music Daft Punk produces, electronica. The song manifests the visions of the transhumanists and the cyberpunks alike, rendering a pop music collective that appears to be robotic and human simultaneously as they identify this problematic identity, wondering in the song whether it is human after all or technologic(Xen, 2012).

Aesthetics — This is the Daft Punk aesthetic: “Music made not just by robots, but by well-intentioned robots; robots aware of, and trying to transcend, their robotic limitations. Daft Punk expresses the rhythmic music of production and electronic instrumentation through their use of dependence on digital instruments, loop and sample orientated lyrics, mechanistic beats and glitch sound aesthetics”. It is because of the use of robotic synthesized sounds that Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger appeals so tastefully to a sense of dance. Daft Punk have said that they donned their robot masks to easily merge the characteristics of humans and machines. Sampling often brought new life into old recordings and with the age of affordable samplers and synths, live studio sessions were not viable for most of the emerging bedroom producers who had a fondness of the genre. (FIND THE REFERENCE FOR THIS PARAGRAPH!!)

Stereo Image:
Kick Drum — 0%
Snare Drum — 25% Left
Hi-hat — 0% and 5% Left
Cymbals — 0% and 5% Left
Clap — 25% Right
Sample — Bass and lead synth — 0%
Vocals — 0%, reverb set right
Guitar — Hard left and 25% right
Filtered — Moves from left to centre

Sonic Qualties

Frequency and Dynamic range:
This songs frequencies vary from the sub-bass frequencies up to mid-range frequencies on the spectrum, it has an overall frequency range between 20hz up to 2000hz and has a very narrow dynamic range.

Instrumentation

Intro
Kick — The kick comes in punchy at twenty seconds, with a thick and muddy timbre that lies on the frequency spectrum around 50hz and 100hz.

Drums: A very common effect used through out Daft Punks music is their midi keyboard software drums. You are able to notice this effect in this song because each part of the drum kit is played differently each time.

Clap — The claps sit on the upper bass band to low-mids of the frequency spectrum between 160hz and 500hz. The timbre of the claps are light and percussive, but still driven through the mix with a short ambient reverb applied.

Guitars — The guitars through this track are very subtle, but i you listen close enough you can hear that they are live recorded guitars. Their timbre is warm, gentle and distorted with their frequency range between 1000khz and 2000khz.

Verse One: Has the same instrumentation as the Intro. However doesn't include the Edwin Birdsong’s Cola Bottle Baby sample. It does also include:

Vocals — The famous vocoder vocals with a room reverb. The use of the vocoder gives the vocals a raspy, bright, widespread, distorted vibrato. The vocals are densely compressed with a frequency range between 500hz — 3khz and were continuously playing even when the vocoder reached up frequencies that made the lyrics indecipherable.

Middle 8: Only uses the Edwin Birdsong’s Cola Bottle Baby sample.

Pre Chorus: Contains the same instrumentation as verse one.

Chorus 1: Contains the same instrumentation as verse one, however the sample, vocals and guitars are more heavily compressed.

Chorus 2: Contains the same instrumentation as Chorus 1. However again, the vocals are even more heavily compressed and more distortion has been applied.

Bridge: Contains the same instrumentation as Chorus 2.

Outro: Contains the same instrumentation as the Bridge.

References

Discovering “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” — an analysis • /r/DaftPunk. (2014). reddit. Retrieved 13 May 2016, from https://www.reddit.com/r/DaftPunk/comments/1zc0f9/discovering_harder_better_faster_stronger_an/

Harder Better Faster Stronger by Daft Punk — Theorytab. (2016). Hooktheory.com. Retrieved 13 May 2016, from https://www.hooktheory.com/theorytab/view/daft-punk/harder-better-faster-stronger

Xen, H. (2012). Lyrical Analysis: “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” by Daft Punk. House of Xen. Retrieved 13 May 2016, from https://houseofxen.com/2012/11/01/lyrical-analysis-harder-better-faster-stronger-by-daft-punk/

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger. (2016). Wikipedia. Retrieved 13 May 2016, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harder,_Better,_Faster,_Stronger