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The Routledge Companion to Global Popular Culture 1st Edition Toby Miller
The Routledge Companion to Popular Music Analysis: Expanding Approaches widens the scope of analytical approaches for popular music. This study endeavors to create a new analytical paradigm for examining popular music by taking the perspective of developments in contemporary art music.
“Expanded approaches” for popular music analysis is broadly defined as exploring the pitchclass structures, form, timbre, rhythm, or aesthetics of various forms of popular music in a conceptual space not limited to the domain of common practice tonality but broadened to include any applicable compositional, analytical, or theoretical concept that illuminates the music. The essays in this collection investigate a variety of analytical, theoretical, historical, and aesthetic commonalities popular music shares with 20th and 21st century art music. From rock and pop to hip hop and rap, dance and electronica, from the 1930s to present day, this companion explores these connections in five parts:
• Establishing and Expanding Analytical Frameworks
• Technology and Timbre
• Rhythm, Pitch, and Harmony
• Form and Structure
• Critical Frameworks: Analytical, Formal, Structural, and Political
With contributions by established scholars and promising emerging scholars in music theory and historical musicology from North America, Europe, and Australia, The Routledge Companion to Popular Music Analysis: Expanding Approaches offers nuanced and detailed perspectives that address the relationships between concert and popular music.
Ciro Scotto is Associate Professor and Chair of the Music Theory Department at Ohio University, US.
Kenneth Smith is Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of Liverpool, UK.
John Brackett is Music Instructor at Vance-Granville Community College, US.
THE ROUTLEDGE COMPANION TO MUSIC, MIND, AND WELL-BEING
Edited by Penelope Gouk, James Kennaway, Jacomien Prins, and Wiebke Thormählen
Routledge Music Companions offer thorough, high-quality surveys and assessments of major topics in the study of music. All entries in each companion are specially commissioned and written by leading scholars in the field. Clear, accessible, and cutting-edge, these companions are the ideal resource for advanced undergraduates, postgraduate students, and researchers alike.
The Routledge Companion to Jazz Studies
Edited by Nicholas Gebhardt, Nichole Rustin-Paschal, and Tony Whyton
The Routledge Companion to Popular Music Analysis Expanding Approaches
Edited by Ciro Scotto, Kenneth Smith, and John Brackett
The Routledge Companion to the Study of Local Musicking
Edited by Suzel A. Reily and Katherine Brucher
The Routledge Companion to Music Cognition
Edited by Richard Ashley and Renee Timmers
The Routledge Companion to Screen Music and Sound
Edited by Miguel Mera, Ronald Sadoff, and Ben Winters
The Routledge Companion to Embodied Music Interaction
Edited by Micheline Lesaffre, Pieter-Jan Maes, and Marc Leman
The Routledge Companion to Music, Technology, and Education
Edited by Andrew King, Evangelos Himonides, and S. Alex Ruthmann
The Routledge Companion to Sounding Art
Edited by Marcel Cobussen, Vincent Meelberg, and Barry Truax
The Routledge Companion to Music and Visual Culture
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THE ROUTLEDGE COMPANION TO POPULAR MUSIC ANALYSIS
Expanding Approaches
Edited by Ciro Scotto, Kenneth Smith, and John Brackett
First published 2019 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
The right of Ciro Scotto, Kenneth Smith, and John Brackett to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Scotto, Ciro. | Smith, Kenneth M. | Brackett, John Lowell.
Title: The Routledge companion to popular music analysis: expanding approaches / edited by Ciro Scotto, Kenneth Smith, John Brackett.
Description: New York: Routledge, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018022353 (print) | LCCN 2018025025 (ebook) | ISBN 9781315544700 (ebook) | ISBN 9781138683112 (hardback)
Subjects: LCSH: Popular music–Analysis, appreciation. | Popular music–History and criticism. | Musical analysis.
18.7 Relational network for Palmer’s percussion-synthesiser sequence 273
19.1 Form in “You Keep Me Hangin’ On,” words and music by Holland-Dozier-Holland 281
19.2 Yes covers and sources
19.3 Timing and key comparisons
19.4 Verse and chorus of “Every Little Thing”
19.5 Form in “Every Little Thing,” words and music by Lennon and McCartney
20.1 First Theme, ‘Father’s Shout’
20.2 Second Theme, ‘Breast Milky’
20.3 ‘Mother Fore’ excerpt
21.1 Form of “White Ferrari”
21.2 Form of “Nights”
21.3 Reduction of Harmonic Progression from “Seigfried” (Opening)
21.4 Rotated Version of Figure 21.3 (“Seigfried,” 3:35–end)
22.1 “Bills Corpse,” transcription of Moments 1–7
22.2 Number of cell statements per moment
22.3a Rhythmic processes in “My Human Gets Me Blues”
22.3b Rhythmic processes in “Hair Pie: Bake 2”
22.4 Duration proportions in “Steal Softly Thru Snow”
22.5 Duration proportions in “Hair Pie: Bake 2”
22.6 Types of recordings on Trout Mask Replica
22.7 Repeated cells in “The Blimp (mousetrapreplica)”
22.8 Form diagram of “The Blimp (mousetrapreplica)”
22.9 Duration proportions in “The Blimp (mousetrapreplica)” 327
24.1 Cover for the album/book, Here Lies Love, 2010 (deluxe edition)
24.2 Author transcription of the opening verse 1 of “Here Lies Love”
24.3 Author transcription of the opening chorus of “Over the Rainbow”
24.4 Photo by author of Here Lies Love programme cover and excerpt of David Byrne’s essay that features “Madame Marcos”
25.1 The Path of Lacanian Drive in “Love Detective,” The Red Thread, 2001
25.2 Spy Theme, Bass Riff of “Love Detective”
25.3 Sound Layers in “Love Detective”
25.4 Towards a Deleuzian Model (I)
25.5 Towards a Deleuzian Model (II)
25.6 Towards a Deleuzian Model (III)
25.7 Cybernetic Production Across Three Dimensions
25.8 Sound Layers in “The First Big Weekend”
25.9 Ground Bass from “There Is No Ending”
25.10 Formal Design of “There is No Ending,” The Last Romance, with Track Timings
25.11 Various Stages in the Desiring Production of Several Arab Strap Songs
26.1a The main riff from Pantera’s “A New Level” (1992). Brackets above the staff show how a brief, chromatic cell is varied to create musical interest. Brackets below the tablature shows how the intuitive fretboard pattern gradually expands
26.1b Mahler’s Third Symphony, movement III, mm. 543–56. The upper system shows the harp passage with a numerically ordered sequence of rhythmic “-tuplets.” The bottom system shows how that numbering continues as a countdown to the next section at rehearsal number 32 380
26.1c An excerpt from Meshuggah’s I (13:15–14:07). Snare attacks are indicated with circled numbers as a reference in place of measure numbers
381
26.2 Gorguts’ Pleiades’ Dust (10:45–11:10), six-string bass part. The riff plays three times before its fourth iteration is extended by new material 385
26.6 Unexpect, “When the Joyful Dead Are Dancing,” Verse C (0:35), samba rhythm played by keyboard (rotary organ setting)
26.7 Unexpect, “When the Joyful Dead Are Dancing,” Verse A (0:03). Piano transcription. The brackets indicate two-note repetitions and the breath marks indicate brief pauses between attack points
26.8 Verse B (0:20).Vocal transcription, male (bottom staff ) and female (top staff) voices. Although the male voice involves unpitched death metal vocals, the instrumental accompaniment lends it an approximate sense of pitch
388
389
390
391
393
393
27.1 Song openings. (a) Track 1: “The King of Carrot Flowers Part 1” (b) Track 1: “The King of Carrot Flowers Part 1” (C) Track 2: “The King of Carrot Flowers Part 2” (d) “The King of Carrot Flowers Part 3” (e) Track 3: “In the Aeroplane over the Sea” (f ) Track 4: “Two Headed Boy” (g) Track 6: “Holland, 1945” (h) Track 7: “Communist Daughter” (i) Track 8: “Oh Comely” (j) Track 9: “Ghost” (k) Track 10: “Untitled” 405
27.2 Liquidation of guitar introductions (a) “King of Carrot Flowers Part 1” (b) “In the Aeroplane over the Sea” (c) “Two Headed Boy” (d) “Holland, 1945” (e) “Communist Daughter” (f ) “Oh Comely”
406
27.3 Postlude, “The King of Carrot Flowers Part 2” 408
27.4 Tonicization of E 409
27.5a E minor episode, verse 3
27.5b E minor episode, verse 3
27.6a Common thematic cells (a) “Two Head Boy”, from “and when all is breaking” (1’30”) (b) “Holland, 1945”, from “but then they buried her alive” (0’24”) 410
27.6b Common thematic cells (a) “Two Head Boy”, from “and when all is breaking” (1’30”) (b) “Holland, 1945”, from “but then they buried her alive” (0’24”) 410
27.7 “Communist Daughter” gridlock 411
TABLES
6.1 Four-unit periodicity in “Take on Me”
6.2 Formal structure of “Take on Me”
7.2 Summary of the nine chapter story by Hajo Mü ller
7.3 Transmedia / Multimodal Narrative
9.1 Complete Track Listing of Æ nima with Durations and Description
11.1 Parrott’s Tree-Structured List
11.2 The effect of emotions on the human voice
13.1 Heart, “Alone”, rhythm layers in verse, prechorus, and chorus
13.2 Cream, “White Room”, formal plan and section characteristics
13.3 Rush, “Freewill”, formal plan and section characteristics
13.4 The Beatles, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”, formal plan and section characteristics
15.1 Songs using the central dyad discussed in this chapter
18.1 ELP’s deviations from Ginastera’s original composition
20.1 ‘Astronomy Dominé ’, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (1967)
20.2 ‘Bike,’ The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (1967)
20.3 ‘Speak to Me’ into ‘Breathe,’ The Dark Side of the Moon (1973)
20.4 ‘Atom Heart Mother Suite,’ Atom Heart Mother (1970)
20.5 Formal design in the ‘Atom Heart Mother Suite’
20.6 ‘Funky Dung’ retransition to ‘Mind Your Throats Please’
20.7 ‘Mind Your Throats Please’ outline
20.8 Final retransition timeline
21.1 Lyrical References to Marijuana on Blonde
21.2 Form of “Solo”
24.1 “Here Lies Love” Song Structure (2010)
24.2 “Here Lies Love” song structure (Original Cast Recording (2014))
26.1 Keightley’s tendencies for romantic authenticity and modernist authenticity in rock 379
26.2 Compositional techniques reflective of conservatory training and an interest in progressive rock 384
26.3 A formal diagram of the third movement of Pleiades’ Dust emphasizing moments where an aesthetic favoring complexity is most obvious 387
26.4 Narrative segments in Unexpect’s “When the Joyful Dead Are Dancing” 392
PREFACE
The Routledge Companion to Popular Music Analysis: Expanding Approaches is a valuable addition to popular music scholarship that widens the scope of popular music analysis. Stimulated initially by a desire to incorporate methods, tools, and technologies developed for contemporary art music in the service of widening the scope of popular music studies, the book adopts and adapts classical techniques as well searching for brand-new bespoke approaches where the material under scrutiny demands them. While many current articles and books explore the theoretical interconnections between popular music and classical music, relatively few studies examine the interconnection of popular and contemporary art music, and oftentimes the critical-cultural apparatus developed for one medium does not survive a cross-over into the other.
An exception could be found in the domain of tonality. The common practice tonal language shared by much popular and classical music probably accounts for the preponderance of the analytical focus being directed towards popular music’s tonal structure, but its tonal structure and its connection to classical music paints an incomplete analytical, compositional, historical, critical, and cultural picture. This study creates new analytical paradigms for examining popular music from the perspective of developments in the ways we understand contemporary art music. The goal of the study, however, is not to categorize popular music as high art music or categorize contemporary art music as popular, but to begin exploring the relevancy of the categories that divide popular and art music and possibly redefining or expanding those categories. In other words, the traditional categories may no longer adequately reflect compositional and analytical techniques or the aesthetic objectives of the music represented by the traditional categories. Moreover, demonstrating the irrelevancy of the categories that have tended to divide popular and contemporary music serve to demonstrate the appropriateness of rethinking the crossing over of techniques. Viewing popular music from such new perspectives will bring fresh analytical insights into its composition and form.
The chapters in the collection investigate a variety of analytical, theoretical, historical, and aesthetics within a time frame that extends from the 1930s to the present day. The authors of the chapters examine popular music (rock, hip hop, rap, pop, dance, electronica, etc.) that use the processes, compositional techniques, aesthetic goals, and political subtexts
that define 20th and 21st century art music as stimuli towards new expanded (and hopefully ever-expanding) approaches. The framework for the repertoire included in the companion, however, is not global in scope since the study limits the examination of popular music to English speaking countries (or for English speaking audiences). However, some authors may occasionally analyze works from outside the geographical boundaries that have a strong contemporary art music culture.
Expanded approaches for popular music analysis are broadly defined as any compositional, analytical, theoretical, aesthetic, or cultural concept that goes further than current scholarship towards our understanding of the pitch-class structures, form, timbre, rhythm, aesthetics, or cultural significance of various forms of popular music. For example, several of the chapters analyze atonal, serial, minimalist, and post-common practice tonal structures in popular music while other chapters analyze the association of popular music timbral techniques with composers such as Edgard Varè se and spectralist composers. Another fruitful area of investigation is adapting rhythmic tools to analyze the complex rhythmic structures. Some chapters break new theoretical and analytical ground for popular music by developing alternative methods of categorizing pitch-class structures, by developing methods for analyzing electronic music and studio techniques, and by exploring the role technology plays in the creation of popular music. For example, progressive rock and heavy metal often use an expanded set of scalar resources that goes beyond the conventional collection of rock scales such as major, minor, pentatonic, and modal. The expanded scalar resources compositionally function analogously to set-classes in normal form; therefore, a new method of categorizing these scales could lead to new methods of analyzing their use in compositions. Moreover, the chapters focusing on electronic music, studio techniques, and technology could yield new methods of analyzing the timbral structure of a composition, the compositional process, and form. One consequence of eroding the boundary dividing popular and art music is that techniques developed for the analysis of popular music may offer a fresh vantage point for the analysis of contemporary art music, such as adapting techniques developed for the analysis of timbre in popular music to the analysis of contemporary art music.
The companion consists of five main sections: (1) Establishing and Expanding Analytical Frameworks; (2) Technology and Timbre; (3) Rhythm, Pitch, and Harmony; (4) Form and Structure; and (5) Critical Frameworks: Analytical, Formal, Structural, and Political. The chapters in Part 1, Establishing and Expanding Analytical Frameworks, culturally situate the cross-pollination of popular and 20th and 21st century art music, and establish the theoretical, analytical, and cultural frameworks for their interconnection. Some ruminate further about why exactly it is important for us to analyze popular music in the first place, seeing that much of popular music studies centers on the social context of the music’s production rather than the “music itself.” The chapters in Part 1 also reevaluate the frameworks that have shaped the analysis of popular music while also exploring alternative frameworks that expand the analytical landscape. The chapters in Part 2, Technological and Timbre, explore the influence of technology on the compositional and disseminating processes of popular music. They also explore ways to meaningfully and fruitfully analyze popular music in terms of technology, and they may suggest how technological tools and techniques developed for popular music might inform the analysis of 20th and 21st century contemporary music. The chapters in Part 3 form a progression that begins with rhythm and ends with post-tonal pitch-class analyses. The chapters in the middle of the progression fill the gap with a study of drone and its effect on structure, 20th century approaches to tonality, chromatic linear progressions in popular music, and a chapter outlining new frameworks
for approaching pitch-class analysis in heavy metal that do not focus on triadic structures. Part 4 features chapters that focus on form in popular music and its unique relationship to form in 20th and 21st century contemporary music as well as chapters exploring the formal and structural features unique to popular music.
Part 5 is an effective bookend for the volume since it returns to issues raised in Part 1, but explores them from new perspectives.The chapters in Part 5 perhaps represent the most expansive approaches taken in the study. The chapters address the consequences of the theoretical issues raised by the analytical articles for both the study of popular music and 20th and 21st century art music, such as the re-definition of the categories of popular and art music in the later 20th century. For example, should the categories popular and art music be replaced with technical categories that describe compositional method? Minimalism, for example, could be considered both art and popular music, but the appellation “minimalism” also refers to a compositional technique. The chapters also address and undermine assumptions or mythologies about rock music genres, such as hard rock, metal, and shoe gaze.
With contributions by established scholars and promising emerging scholars in music theory and historical musicology from North America, Europe, and Australia the chapters in the volume offer a variety of nuanced and detailed perspectives that address relationships between contemporary concert music and popular/rock styles of music. Furthermore, many of the contributors are experts in both areas of study, which lends an air of authority to the creation of a new analytical paradigm for both popular music studies and the study of 20th and 21st century art music. The audiences for The Routledge Companion to Popular Music Analysis: Expanding Approaches are theorists, analysts, musicologist, and popular music scholars working in both areas. Recently, many music scholars have been advocating for a larger role for popular music in the core theory curriculum in both higher education and pre-university level. Expanding Approaches for Popular Music Analysis will be an invaluable resource for educators seeking to incorporate popular music into their core curricula. Many chapters will be a suitable resource material for undergraduate courses in popular music. Moreover, we envision the volume as a suitable textbook for graduate analysis courses and a primary research monograph for both popular and 20th and 21st century art music.
PART 1
Establishing and Expanding Analytical Frameworks
1 SOME PRACTICAL ISSUES IN THE AESTHETIC ANALYSIS OF POPULAR MUSIC
Christopher Doll
The Analytical Object
Granting that aesthetic analysis can cast its light on a variety of musical phenomena— individual performances, recordings, and so on—I take its chief object of concern to be the musical work. Whatever a work exactly is, it surely is something more abstract than a performance or a recording, even in the case of indeterminate scores or purely electronic efforts.1 Nevertheless, music analysts working in the 21st century must confront the plain fact that music now comes to us predominantly via digital media. While singers still sing, and instrumentalists still hit and pluck and bow and blow, the vast majority of Western music consumed these days, whether popular or classical (or any other type),2 comes to us encoded as zeros and ones transmitted through earphones or loudspeakers. And yet, there is a significant difference in the way digital media relate to our commonplace (if cloudy) conceptions of popular versus classical works. The typical classical composer today—even the spectralist—still writes scores to be performed (preferably repeatedly, and always with some noticeable variation in sound), while the popular songwriter and producer and performer (indeed, we really need to credit all these roles) concentrate on making recordings. Popular works, by and large, are inseparable from the medium of recording, whereas classical works are more often independent of it. This distinction holds less true for popular music before the advent of multitracking in the mid-1950s, but of course there was far less popular music created before this historical point than has been created since.
That a popular work should not simply be equated with a recording can be best argued by way of example. Take the classic 1958 R&B track “(Night Time Is) The Right Time” by Ray Charles and the Raelettes. The name of the song itself differs depending on the exact source: some releases include parentheses and others do not, some releases put parentheses around the title’s first half and others put them around its second half, some releases do not feature the words “Night Time Is” at all. More problematic are the musical differences an analyst may encounter when engaging, for instance, the digitally remastered mono mix faithful to the original Atlantic Records 45rpm record, versus the digitally remastered stereo version first released on the 1994 CD The Best of Ray Charles:The Atlantic Years (which drops
“(Night Time Is)” from the title). In the earlier mono version, Raelette Margie Hendricks sings backup until the song’s middle section (around 1:30), at which point she bursts into a lead-vocal solo (with her repeated screams of “baby!”) supported by Charles and the remaining Raelettes. In the later stereo version, Hendricks’s solo is pushed back in the mix, while Charles’s vocal accompaniment and electric piano are bumped up; gendered stereo separation also contributes to the change in sound, as the ladies are panned far left while Charles is hard right. (Listening on earphones exacerbates this divide.) These two releases derive from the same source material, and are ostensibly the same “recording,” yet the middle section in the stereo remix is not really a solo. In the latter version, Charles’ persona shines through—his vocals no longer function merely as part of the accompaniment but rather create a call-and-response lovers’ duet between him (with the other Raelettes) and Margie (a mistress of Charles at the time).
As regards musical texture, then, the mono and stereo versions of “The Right Time” feature middle sections that are categorically different. The actual content of the music can thus depend on which specific release we have in front of us: the exact mix, the exact edit, the exact remastering (and oftentimes these different versions are released simultaneously, so we cannot simply chalk up differences to historical variation of preexisting material).3 Yet in a typical analytical setting, there is no advantage in recognizing two distinct musical works based solely on variations in mixing, editing, remastering, and the like; rather, these differences can easily be enumerated in relation to a single “open work” that accommodates the variations, much like the concept of the open work is used to describe classical works by John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and other experimental composers working with indeterminacy and chance procedures.4 Such accommodation is all but required if we are to consider both mixes to be versions of the work written and originally recorded by Nappy Brown in 1957 entitled simply “The Right Time,” as presumably any and every analyst would. At a certain point, however, differences between comparable recordings could be so extreme that they must be considered indicators of separate works, as would doubtless be the case when assessing Brown’s and Charles’s recordings against the 1937 track “Night Time Is the Right Time” by The Honey Dripper (Roosevelt Sykes), despite the resemblance in their titles and the common 12-bar blues structure. (Their melodic and lyrical profiles are utterly unalike.)
And yet, to accept the popular-music work as open to a certain degree of acoustic variation is not to extinguish all potential difficulties in defining the analytical object. One important consequence of such an acceptance, for instance, is that any given remastered mix might not be representative of a musical work as a whole. Analysts wishing to make claims about works, then, must exercise due diligence in researching all available versions if their assertions are to stand up to informed scrutiny. In many cases, problematic lines will still need to be drawn between what is and is not the work, as one’s analytical purview reaches bootlegs and various sorts of official and unofficial remixes.
Sound versus Score
The fundamental technological divide between popular and classical works reflects not only a general difference in compositional method and ontological status but also a logistical dissimilarity in their aesthetic analysis, namely the engagement of sound versus score. Although popular-music analysis is made easier by the repertory’s propensity for
repetition, it simultaneously is complicated by the medium of sound itself, with new difficulties in the form of psychoacoustical effects and densely layered multitrack mixes. Visualization can help the analytical process, just as recordings can play a supporting role in the analysis of classical works; but in most cases scores for popular music must be created ad hoc by the analysts themselves, and depending on how seriously one takes the activity of transcription, it can easily become the most difficult part of the analysis. In an article investigating the song “A Hard Day’s Night” (1964), mathematician Jason Brown runs a computer algorithm called a Fourier Transform to reveal the pitch structure of The Beatles’ famous opening chord, studying all 29,375 frequencies sounded over a onesecond sample.5 Through a process of elimination, Brown makes an informed interpretation as to which notes of the chord were fingered, based on their relative amplitudes and on what was possible on John Lennon’s six-string and George Harrison’s 12-string guitars—assuming standard tunings, and assuming there were no overdubs (but including Paul McCartney’s bass and George Martin’s piano). See Figure 1.1. While Brown’s analysis is unconventional in certain ways, it echoes some essential truths about analyzing musical sound in general: that transcription is a part of—not prior to—analysis, and that the more specific an analyst wishes to be in a transcription, the more she must rely on assumptions and guesswork. (Think of how terrifically more complicated Brown’s analysis would become were he to sample frequencies that do not simply resonate but rather change over time.)
Every sonic parameter—pitch, rhythm, timbre, loudness—presents basic problems for the transcriber. Loudness is the least offensive in its own right; its obstacles arrive mainly in the form of auditory masking (the ear’s inability to decipher objectively frequencies in certain combinations) and the relegation of some sonic elements to the back of the mix (making them harder to identify). Timbre is difficult to even define, let alone analyze; it is by far the hardest parameter to say something meaningful about, because theorists have yet to develop and adopt a reasonably comprehensive analytical language to describe it.6 Pitch and rhythm are both plagued by false notational choices and other biases imported from the analysis of classical music; in the context of this essay collection, these issues demand the closest attention. But before proceeding, it should be made clear these issues are not confined to transcription in the strict sense; rather, they are unavoidable challenges in the description of sonic elements in general—they are inherent to the activity of aesthetically analyzing popular music.
Figure 1.1 Reduction of Brown’s Transcription of the “A Hard Day’s Night” Chord
Pitch transcription can be a challenge vertically (harmonically), as suggested by the “A Hard Day’s Night” chord, or horizontally (melodically), in the form of “blue notes” and other intonationally unclear pitches.7 Additionally, pitches can hide inside sung syllables. Listeners familiar with The Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun” (1969) will likely recall the first verse’s vocal line as something like the melody depicted in Figure 1.2a. However, George Harrison is quite free in his vocal delivery, scooping into and dropping out of pitches, so much so that it is possible to hear a line closer to the melismatic alternative given in Figure 1.2b (which, despite its relative intricacy, is still notated as simply as possible, with plenty of pitch and rhythmic rounding). The considerable difference between these two examples points up the importance of having a clear answer to the question: “What is this transcription trying to show?”8 Detail has its place, but so does simplicity. Indeed, scholar David Temperley speculates (with reference to “Here Comes the Sun,” among other songs) that our brains store not specific phrasings but rather the “deep structures” of melodies, which lack certain non-chord tones and syncopations— something even simpler than version 1 in Figure 1.2a.9 Vocal performance on the whole is so difficult to transcribe because our conventional Western notation prioritizes individuated notes, even though notes are not quite so prioritized by our cognitive processes (even when shaped by Western classical training).10
Rhythmic transcription is plagued by a multitude of issues,11 of which there are two main kinds.The first is quantization, the rounding of attack and end points to some standard durational level—the eighth note, the sixteenth, the triplet sixteenth—a necessity that frequently challenges the transcriber again to find a suitable compromise between specificity and readability. While instrumental grooves can be difficult in this regard, particularly when they vary slightly over time (which they usually do unless they are sampled or sequenced),12 the most challenging element to quantize is probably vocal melody—as just witnessed in “Here Comes the Sun”—but especially when transcribing the efforts of an accomplished singer who uses the relative steadiness of the ensemble as a backdrop for fluid improvisation. Scholar Peter Winkler has written candidly on his experience attempting to notate Aretha Franklin’s vocal stylings in “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)” (1967), proffering seven distinct versions of the opening melodic phrase, “You’re a no good heartbreaker.”13 The limits of durational notation are of course pushed not only by rubato; in the contemporary classical realm, a mass of precisely calculated rhythmic figures makes the scores of
Figure 1.2a Vocal Pitch in “Here Comes the Sun” Version 1
Figure 1.2b Version 2
Brian Ferneyhough and other New Complexity composers all but impossible to read.14 Complexity arises equally from freedom and conformity.
The second kind of problem in rhythmic transcription is metric interpretation, which can be further broken up into three often-overlapping concerns: beat-tempo; on-beat versus off-beat; and beat-grouping. Since the advent of rhythm’n’blues and rock’n’roll in the 1950s, popular music has tended to feature a clear backbeat, a regular emphasis often played on a snare drum that is typically interpreted by experienced listeners as beats 2 and 4 within a group of four. This practice has major consequences for how listeners decide which rhythmic level the beat occupies; however, there is also experimental evidence to suggest that listeners tend to associate beats with the rhythmic level closest to 120bpm.15 A song like “Sikamikanico” by Red Hot Chili Peppers (1992) clarifies what is at stake in beat-tempo decisions; see Figure 1.3. Chad Smith’s snare drumming is initially clear (Figure 1.3a), presenting an unambiguous backbeat and beat-tempo of roughly 130bpm (although this fluctuates), but this pattern soon becomes more complicated when the voice enters for the first verse (Figure 1.3b). (This second pattern actually varies subtly over time.) Different complications arrive in the ensuing transitional section that sees the return of the initial instrumental material (Figure 1.3c). Despite all these complications, the backbeat remains relatively stable until the pre-chorus (Figure 1.3d), where the snare quickens its pace, doubling the speed of the previous backbeat. The chorus then takes that doubled backbeat and fills in the remaining double beats (1, 2, 3, and 4) with snare attacks (Figure 1.3e). An eventual bridge section changes the pattern in the opposite direction, slowing down to a pace half that of the intro (Figure 1.3f). The song’s outro features snare attacks at double the rate of the previously fastest pattern in the chorus (Figure 1.3g). Although this song is
Figure 1.3a Snare Drum Patterns in “Sikamikanico” Transcribed in One Tempo, Intro
Figure 1.3b From Verse
Figure 1.3c From Transition
Figure 1.3d Pre-Chorus
1.3e Chorus
1.3f From Bridge
1.3g Outro
an extreme example, it does lay bare common types of decisions an analyst must make in determining beat-tempo: one can habitually assign beats to the level closest to 120bpm as depicted throughout Figure 1.3, but one might instead wish to convey the sectional shifts that so viscerally characterize the song with concomitant changes in beat-tempo, especially if we are confronted with altogether different backbeats, as we are at the pre-chorus (continuing through the chorus and outro) and the bridge.
Distinguishing between on-beats and off-beats (including beats versus subdivisions), is usually not so difficult as identifying beat-tempos, but analysts of popular music will undoubtedly encounter the widespread phenomenon of the metric fake-out, wherein a song creates the effect—through accents or lone attacks—of a pulse that is later displaced to form a backbeat (heard in the beginning of The Beatles’ 1964 “She’s a Woman”) or subdivision (as happens in David Bowie’s 1980 “Fashion”). The typical fake-out is not much of a transcriptional problem, because it is so routine and normally gets righted before the singer enters.16 Yet havoc can ensue when the original “fake” pattern persists. Songs such as Joan Armatrading’s “Heaven” (1983) and The Police’s “Bring on the Night” (1979) are not done justice by transcriptions that rely on single interpretations of downbeats, upbeats, and subdivisions;17 the aural discombobulation created by these tracks surely deserves depiction in the score, but precisely how to accomplish this is not obvious, because our notational systems were not designed with this purpose in mind. The inherent limitations of traditional metric notation have not been lost on classical composers: for example, the song “Autumn” (1908) by Charles Ives gives the aural impression of a displaced vocal line accompanied by thick, beat-defining chords in the lower register of the piano, even though the notation suggests the opposite arrangement (on-beat vocals and off-beat chords, a fake-out that persists so long it ceases to be fake); see Figure 1.4. At the word “radiantly,” an even lower bass note, C 2, recontextualizes the vocal line as aligned with the piano and with the notated on-beats; after the song’s climax on the word “smiles,” the lower bass line evaporates, and the vocals once again occupy perceptual off-beats but notated on-beats. This all occurs without a single change in the notated meter, a fact that could conceivably be interpreted as a critique of the notation itself, given Ives’ contrasting penchant for extravagant metric markings in many of his other scores.
Figure
Figure
Figure
The last problematic component of metric interpretation is beat-grouping. Is the Charleston-esque 3+3+2 groove heard in Coldplay’s “Clocks” (2002) and Radiohead’s “Lotus Flower” (2011), or the clave/hambone 3+3+4+2+4 groove used in Bo Diddley’s “Bo Diddley” (1955) and Johnny Otis’s “Willie and the Hand Jive” (1958), better expressed with changing meters or with cross-rhythmic accents against a steady meter?18 Should an analyst notate the riff of Pink Floyd’s “Money” (1973) as a straightforward 7/4 (occasionally giving way to 4/4 or 8/4), or do the competing layers of 3+4 in the electric bass and 4+3 in the snare drum demand a polymetric description? More mundanely, should we notate The Beatles’ “Baby’s in Black” (1964) and the verses of “I Me Mine” (1970) in (shuffle) 3/4, even though a backbeat is articulated on the downbeat of every other bar, or should they be understood as a larger 12/8 with the triplet-level consigned to subdivisions? What about “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)” (1965) and the verses and pre-choruses of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” (1967), which are similarly 3/4 or 12/8 but lack a clearly articulated backbeat? Such questions arise out of the vagueness—or flexibility—of classical metric notation itself. This is not just an academic, literary concern. Experimental studies have suggested that metric identity is aurally linked to pitch identity, in that a series of notes and durations understood in two different metrical contexts oftentimes goes unrecognized by listeners as being the same series at all.19 Whatever the dangers of unrecognition (and granted that they are low in the case of a short 3/4 versus a long 12/8), there is no denying that rhythm very much matters in this music, and should thus be taken seriously in transcription—i.e., analysis.
What’s in a Numeral?
Further problems await the analyst of popular music in the form of inherited but illfitting analytical standards.These are especially acute in the realm of pitch, probably because pitch has been, more than any other musical parameter, the subject of intense theorization over several centuries. Consider how we might describe Steve Jones’s guitar riff from The Sex Pistols’ “Submission” (1976).20 Among the most basic elements of the riff that we
Figure 1.4 Displacement and Alignment in “Autumn,” mm. 12–19
presumably would want to identify are the chords, which include C5, E 5, F5, and B 5 with a tonal center of C. If we wish to assign roman numerals to these chords, we must decide how to address the E 5 and B 5: are they III5 and VII5, or III5 and VII5, or some combination of the two? While there are a variety of conventional approaches to roman numerals, none were designed with this sort of harmonic palette in mind, that palette being based in minor pentatonicism: C, E , F, G, B . See Figure 1.5.
Yet the challenge posed by pentatonicism is actually far deeper than merely deciding whether to assign accidentals to numerals. Indeed, the initial designation of the Pistols’ chords as C5, E 5, F5, and B 5, while allowed within our conventional diatonic system, suggests that there are two gaps: there is no version of D or A, just as there is no version of or , or II or VI. The staff notation likewise suggests two vacancies. The notes of the chords add up precisely to a complete C minor pentatonic scale, yet the diatonic numbers, letters, and staff we would assign to describe these pitches insinuate a specific shortfall. The mismatch between seven-note analytical infrastructure and non-seven-note music creates the potential danger of a false standard: for example, it would be a mistake to assume diatonic incompleteness in a melody or harmonic progression simply because it is based on a pentatonic scale.21 A priori, pentatonicism is not incomplete diatonicism, any more than diatonicism is incomplete chromaticism. This is not tantamount to saying that a particular pentatonic melody could not possibly sound diatonically incomplete in some specific instance; the claim here regards the inherent relationship between pentatonicism and diatonicism represented respectively by the music and the analytical method. Whole-tone music suffers from a similar problem. On the other side of the seven-note standard are octatonic, highly chromatic, and microtonal works, which strain diatonic infrastructure through their inclusion of too many tones—as the accidental-laden scores of classical composers from Richard Strauss to Harry Partch confirm. While any nonseven-note-based music suffers similar problems, the likelihood of employing an analytical false standard is far greater in the case of popular-music pentatonicism specifically, due to the fact that the (black-key) major and minor pentatonic scales ubiquitous in popular music can be made to fit entirely within the (white-key) major and natural minor diatonic scales, although always in three different rotations: e.g., C–Eb–F–G–Bb– C fits into C dorian, C aeolian, and C phrygian.
The potential for a false, or at least arbitrary, standard also commonly arises with regard to chord type. Are the power chords of “Submission” incomplete triads because they do not supply a chordal third, or are they merely differently defined sonorities? Do the fifth harmonic partials sounding from Steve Jones’s amplifier count as chordal thirds? Should the triad (and third-stacked harmonies more generally) dictate how we analyze chord tones versus non-chord tones? Are “sus” chords (e.g., Csus4=CFG) independent sonorities or are
Figure 1.5 Pentatonicism in “Submission”
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OBRAS DE D. JULIO CEJADOR Y FRAUCA
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comparado. Pesetas 15—Herederos de Juan Gili: Cortes, 581, Barcelona.
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C , Literatura y lingüística. Pesetas 5.
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