MLP Season 1 : Five Little Songs

This time, I will review five little songs in a row, because if I did one review for every song, it wouldn't make a post long enough, and because there are a lot of other and most important songs for me to review, so those songs won't have a detailed reviews like the other ones ^^
The songs are :

• Pinkie's Gala Fantasy Song (The Grand Galloping Gala Is The Best Place For Me)
• Twilight Is My Bestest Friend
• The arrangement of Yakety Sax (The Chase song)
• Junior Speedster Chant
• A Hop, Skip and A Jump (original version)
   

 

Let's begin with Pinkie's Gala Fantasy Song !

This song is from the episode S1E3 : "The Ticket Master", and here are the lyrics:

Oh the Grand Galloping Gala is the best place for me

Oh the Grand Galloping Gala is the best place for me

Hip hip

Hooray

It's the best place for me

For Pinkie

With decorations like streamers and fairy-lights and pinwheels and piñatas and pin-cushions. With goodies like sugar cubes and sugar canes and sundaes and sun-beams and sarsaparilla. And I get to play my favorite-est of favorite fantabulous games like Pin the Tail on the Pony!

Oh the Grand Galloping Gala is the best place for me

Oh the Grand Galloping Gala is the best place for me

'Cause it's the most galarrific superly-terrific gala ever

In the whole galaxy

Wheee!

Here again, a song sung by Pinkie Pie being super-duper Pinkie Pie !

About the lyrics now, they are quite simple and redundant : Pinkie is just overly happy about going to the Grand Galloping Gala. Like in her Laughter Song, she has a long tirade impossible to sing along with her.

We discover a pony game here, which will be seen later in the show, Pin the Tail on the Pony.

The tirade is the great description of a perfect party for Pinkie, which remains true even one season later in Sweet And Elite (we can see that every thing she listed in this song is here during Twilight's birthday)
Besides, we notice that some elements of our world are present in Equestria : piñatas and sarsaparilla for example)
But once again, not much to say here, maybe we can say that the songs confirms the love of Pinkie Pie for creating new words : "galarrific superly-terrific", but that's all.

Now about the instrumentalization (I really need to find a synonym for this word ...)
Just before the song starts, we can here some notes from a xylophone,a harp and a flute with a drum roll, to introduce the song, followed by violins.
When the song really begins, I assume that it's a barrel organ with a tuba that enters and every instrument play some kind of carnival music. Throughout the song there are a lot of different effect, like the "shiny" one.
The instrument giving the pace here is a pair of cymbals, every three beats, and I believe that the song is written in a time signature of 3/4.
In the end a bell enters and strenghtens the image of a good party.
The overall results is a good carnival musical background, the type of music which can scare you at night if you're afraid of clowns ... Bucking clowns, Y U so scary !?

For the singing now, it's the same type of singing as in Laughter Song, joyful, playful, vivacious, with the high pitched and innocent voice of Pinkie Pie.



About the video, it's the fantasy of Pinkie about the Grand Galloping Gala, and it suits the lyrics to a T. Furthermore, the WTF-rate of this song is really high, and so does the video ! It's some kind of trip maybe you can have after taking LSD I guess xD A PMV used very well this video, it's called Double Rainbow Syndrome and validates my previous comparison ;)


This song is definitely of the same kind as Laughter Song, but less memorable and, let's face it, pointless like some other songs of Pinkie, but confirms what we already knew about her : as Gabby Gums said, an out-of-control party animal ! By the way, the tempo is around 115 bpm, making the song short enough not to get on our nerves. This is not the kind of song you hum time to time, at least not for me ^^


I will stop my review of this little song here =)

 

Exactly in the same state of mind as the previous song, Twilight Is My Bestest Friend is just a little pointless song, but I'll still review it quickly

Lyrics : 

Twilight is my bestest friend

Whoopee, whoopee!

           Twilight Sparkle: Pinkie...

She's the cutest, smartest, all around best pony, pony!

            Twilight Sparkle: Pinkie.

I bet if I throw a super-duper fun party, party...

            Twilight Sparkle: Pinkie!

She'll give her extra ticket to the gala to meeee–

            Twilight Sparkle: PINKIE! 

Like every other out-of-nowhere song of Pinkie Pie, lyrics aren't really complicated. This time, we have the feeling that Pinkie is thinking out loud about how she can bribe Twilight to get her extra ticket. Tact and subtlety ? Screw that, I'm Pinkie Pie.
Once again, ou pink pony creates a new adjective, super-duper. It's kinda like a signature in her songs actually ^^
Twilight only repeat the same word, Pinkie's name, each time louder, and literally ends up yelling at the poor pony.
Let's say it right now, this song is made to make us laugh, and nothing else.


For the intrumentalization, we can hear violins, some sort of tuba or trumpet but a trombone more likely, a guitar playing some high-pitched chords sometimes and at the end a bell to enhance Twilight's scream. I assume that I can hear a snare giving the pace at each off-beat, but its sound is so low that I can't be sure...
The overall result is kind of  a hoping and jumping rythm, reflecting Pinkie very well, and I found myself nodding my head from left to right while listenning at it.


About the voice, like before, not much to say, just Pinkie being herself, but my respects go directly to Tara Strong, because each time she says 'Pinkie', it's just hilarious. The last one is bucking amazing !


Now about the video, not much to say here either, it's just Twilight being lauched and caught in the air while Pinkie sings next to her, but seeing how Twilight gets angrier and angrier at each jump is really fun. I really liked the moment when she directly hit the ground, you see it coming long ago but still !


The conclusion is exactly the same as the previous song, except that the tempo here is more about 145 bpm


That's all for that song =)

Let's continue with the little arrangement of Yakety Sax here. The original song is from Boots Randolph and the main theme was played with a sax. No lyrics this time !


So the whole music is about the instrumentalization ^^
It begins with a nice and pretty slow drum roll to put us in the mood for that song and chase scene.
Actually, there are only three sort instruments here : drums/percussions, (two) electric guitars and a bass.
The lead guitar plays the well-known theme in a "country" kind of way I would say, while the second plays a single and brief chord every off-beat (Wow, I'm starting to have the feeling that Daniel Ingram and the other song composers love those off-beats !).
The bass sustains the lead guitar with a verastile melody paced with what I would call a "ta-dada" rythm. If you listen to the song, I'm sure you'll understand what I meant here.
At some moments we can hear wooden percussions, and always those "shiny" effects.
The overall result is a neat song which I found easier to listen at than the original version. This one seems more relaxed, maybe because there's no sax here, and because the tempo is clearly slower, about 116 bpm I believe, whereas the original is around 126 bpm.
This is the kind of version you can listen to for a very long time without being unpleased, every instrument's sound is very round and smooth, unlike the original with a saxophone (I love the saxophone's sound, but I still prefer this version to the original).

The video is the archetype of the Cartoon Chase Scene, so I won't bother explaining it, but I can summarize it with : a big and hilarious WTF !
Yeah, I use WTF a lot, I know that, but there aren't really other ways to describe it ^^


To conclude, I would say that I really enjoyed when this song started, I was very glad, especially that this is a bucking nice version of the Benny Hill Theme. My Little Pony needed a chase scene like that, and for this, there's no other choice but to pick that song. I know that the exact same type of chase scene and the exact same song appears later in the show, in A Bird In The Hoof, and guess what, I liked it too!


So that's all for this song =)

So, now, time to talk about the Junior Speedsters Chant. This song is from Griffon The Brush Off.
Here's the lyrics :

Junior Speedsters are our lives,

Sky-bound soars and daring dives

Junior Speedsters it's our quest,

            To some day be the very best! 

This is the very first song sung by somepony else than Pinkie, if I can say that it's actually sung xD

Once again, not much to say about the lyrics, it's a chant, an anthem for the Flight Camp Dash and Gilda were in. It remembers me of the songs we sang during scout camps and summer camps : fierce and simple lyrics, including the name of the camp, and let's not forget the gestures too ! Gilda even says that they had to sing it each morning, but this creeps me out a bit, because it's the type of thing in which you can fantasize a loooot of symbols, like the Hitler Youth and other ideas like that. But maybe I think of it because when I'm writing this it's 6:51 AM and I am forcing myself to finish this post before going to sleep ... After all I'm not so tired, then I might as well do it now ^^


Luckily enough, I've found a version of that scene without the voices on Youtube, I always do this when I'm commenting about the instrumentalization, but here, in the real version, I couldn't even really manage to hear what music was in the background ! Anyway, we can hear a drum, cymbals, trumpet/trombone (I can't decide) but I can't find which instrument was used to create the little melody ... Gosh, I get the feeling that the sound is between a xylophone (sometimes it seems that it's a percussion intrument) and a whistle (flute). Maybe it's just a synthetizer ... If someone has an idea, please I'll be glad to see it in the comments !
So the overall result really sound like a martial march, fortunately the little melody make the song less strict, more like a marching band and I think that this is what and chant needs : something like a fanfare background music


About the voices ... There's no real singing here : Gilda has a monotonous and jaded voice because she seemed to be reluctant to sing the chant with Dash, while our beloved pony with a rainbow colored mane kinda sound like she's reciting it with a joyful tone. There isn't really a good way to sing it, just try to sing it without the music and you'll understand quickly that the chant has been done to be recited, and not really sung.


I've already quickly spoken about the gestures of that chant, and that's all the video is about. Dash and her friend Gilda are (not really dancing, but more like) moving along the song. Dash even make a mini-tornado ! I, for one, particularly enjoy the very end when the two friends pose for the final, moving their arms high and low in the air, priceless xD Yeah, we can notice the work on the little sound effects when Dash is "dancing" : 4 in 4 seconds ! By the way, the sound effects of the whole show are marvelous and are really funny each time (Fluttershy's squees ...). I think that it wouldn't be the same show without those and that's why I wanted to tell just a few lines about them =)

Finally, I'll say that even though the song doesn't have any kind of purpose for the plot, it helps connecting us with the friendship between Dash and Gilda and gives us a funny moment just after the first and scary apparition of Gilda. The tempo around 125 bpm and the fact that the lyrics are really short gives us the shortest song of the whole show : around 10 seconds, and I thinks that's just enough not to bore us.


Another song done !

I know that there's another version "unreleased" of this song, and maybe I'll review it later, when I'm done with all the other songs directly heard in the show. I'm starting to realize the magnitude of the task I'm now engaged in ... But I'll do it anyway, writing reviews in english is a bit like a challenge for me so even if no one read them, I'll write them for me !
So this song, A Hop Skip And A Jump is featured in the episode Dragonshy and here are the lyrics :

It's not very far. Just move your little rump

You can make it if you try with a hop, skip and a jump

Twilight Sparkle : We don't have time for this!

A hop, skip and a jump

Just move your little rump

A hop, skip and a jump

A hop, skip and a jump

A hop, skip and a jump

A hop, skip and a jump

A hop, skip and a jump!

They are a bit longer in the other version by the way ^^


So yeah, we have here another out-of-nowhere and full of WTF song from Pinkie Pie. Even Twilight says it !So the lyrics are basically about ... (wait for it, because you won't believe it !) jumping ! ... Who could have guessed ? xD
There is nothing to say here but I'll signal that this is the first song in which Pinkie doesn't create a new word ^^

So it starts with a guitar chord and a xylophone playing repeatedly the same note, telling us that a song is about to begin. Then, I assume that a snare is giving the pace, but since I couldn't find an instrumental version of the song, I can't be sure. Obviously, the sound effects here are as important as the music : they complete each other in a ... "bouncy" sort of way. The tempo accelerates at the end of the song, and I think it's to show that the characters are quite in a hurry.


I can't really say that this song is sung either, it's between that and recited by Pinkie Pie ~~ 
The line of Twilight mirrors the time when she said "Tell me she's not..." during the Laughter Song and is a great response to the overkill of Pinkie's songs in the show xD


The video show us Pinkie trying to remove the vertigo of Fluttershy by demonstrating her that it isn't dangerous to jump between the cliffs (A weird lesson don't you think ... ?)


There is really really really not much to say (I tell that very often ...) about this song overall, It gives the touch of WTF their journey lacked I think. Besides, Pinkie hasn't sang for 3 episodes before that, so it's pleasant to hear her sing something totally out of the blue. Here, the tempo is faster than all the other songs, around 160 bpm (I don't count when it accelerates at the ends). So the song is very short, and that's a good thing, because I can't see myself listenning to this jumping lesson for more than 30 seconds xD For me it's the kind of song that gradually and quickly gets on my nerves, so I like it that way. The song itself is quite useless but screw that, she's Pinkie Pie once again xD !






Pheww, finally finished that big review ... 9:00 AM here after proofreading it, so I'm going to hit the hay right now ...


Brohoof everyone !