Who is the better singer: Bob Dylan or Céline Dion?

This came to mind via a comment thread on Ann Althouse where they were talking about things like lip-syncing and Les Miz. If you think about the comparison of Dylan and Dion in the right way, it can uncover some problems and principles of aesthetics. For example, if you say Céline Dion is obviously a better singer because she has better breath-control, or tuning, or timbre then I might answer, sure, but I would much rather hear Bob Dylan sing. Why? He has an interesting timbre often just right for the song and his phrasing is also captivating. Not to mention the songs are better.

So let's make a list of the things I just mentioned:

• Tuning: a lot of pop music now uses Auto-tune, which corrects imperfections in the tuning of the voice. If a note is a bit flat, it brings it up to pitch and vice versa. Here is a famous example:

What gives this its distinctive sound is the over-use of Auto-tune. You can hear the voice jumping from pitch to pitch as if it were a synthesizer. Other places, the Auto-tune was not used because you can hear Cher sliding from one note to another. A really good singer has enough technique to not need Auto-tune, but a lot of singers in pop music do not have much technique. Try to imagine Bob Dylan using Auto-tune! He sure wouldn't sound like Dylan anymore. He has made a virtue out of the imperfections of the singing voice. For him, singing out of tune is part of the expression. As a matter of fact, it can be that for every singer, even classical ones, because one of the great virtues of the voice is that it can sing slightly sharp or slightly flat--which is expressive!

• Breath control: a lot of singing is about breathing. How long can you hold a note? Can you hold a note without wavering or wobbling? In much pop music notes are not held for very long. Listen to Dylan singing "Like a Rolling Stone". At the beginning the only note held for any length of time is the "you" of "didn't you" and the pitch wobbles alarmingly. Compare this to Cher's singing. Dylan tends to spit out small groups of words in clumps, Cher holds every note out. 

• Timbre is the slightly fancy musical word for tone-color. In pop music a lot of impurities are actively cultivated for their expressive qualities. Céline Dion cultivates a fairly pure voice as do most of the pop divas. Bob Dylan, in common with singers like Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen, cultivates a gravelly or reedy tone full of impurities. This supposedly adds 'authenticity'. Here is a little Tom Waits as an example. One of the oddest things I ever saw on YouTube was a German baritone, an opera singer, doing a Tom Waits song! Of course it was better than if Tom Waits tried to do an opera aria, but still... 

• Phrasing is a huge and difficult to discuss topic, but I might be able to find some examples. I recall reading a book on phrasing once that turned out to be of little value because this is one of those times where written notation isn't much help. You really need to hear phrasing! Actually, a really good example is "Like a Rolling Stone". Listen to how the words of the verse tumble over one another, leading up to "didn't you" each time. This leading, this pointing forward, is one of the most important things in phrasing.

Let's listen to some Céline Dion. This is "I Surrender" from 2007. She is a terrific singer, without a doubt. As is sometimes said, she has a great instrument (her vocal cords, diaphragm, lungs, the whole physical aspect that produces the sound) which she has also trained to a high degree of perfection. She can do what she wants to do with it. Listen, for example to the phrase towards the beginning that ends with "find a way". On "way" she pushes the pitch up slightly and then slides down as an ornament. No Auto-tune here!

But I find the whole experience disappointing because the song is so bland. It seems full of emotion and expression, but it really isn't. It is too predictable for one thing. Not one harmony is unexpected. The melody, such as it is, is dull and lifeless. Go ahead, sing me the tune. Not easy is it? Because it is so unmemorable. There are no interesting contrasts in the song or the arrangement. It is all one big blanket of sound, pulsing predictably. The fact that Dion is such an excellent singer and the production is so elaborate makes it listenable, but not really enjoyable. That's for me, of course. For most people this would be just the thing because they don't actually want the music to be too interesting. Most people prefer the predictable and comfortable. But predictable, comfortable music has a pretty short shelf-life. In any case, this is perfect for Las Vegas, which is pretty much the most scathing criticism I can deliver!

Now let's hear some more Dylan for contrast. This is the original version of "All Along the Watchtower" that many, many others have since recorded.

Now this has pretty much everything against it: minimal production values, no video, no dancing, the same three chords over and over again--this song has no contrasting section, just the verse over and over. Some of the worst harmonica playing! Plus, Dylan's singing. Every note sounds like it is a strain. Every note he sings is at least a bit out of tune! Guitar, bass and drums, nothing else (but the guitar might be double-tracked as it sounds too full for just a single acoustic guitar). This has nothing going for it! Well, except the song with those amazing words. After all these years I still couldn't tell you what the song is about or what the words mean. But they are very evocative. This is one of those mysteries of music: this song and even this performance is a thousand times more interesting than the song by Céline Dion. It shouldn't be, but it is. A lot of it is that it has a unique sound, unlike any other song, especially when Dylan sings it. But there are a thousand songs like Dion's and they all sound much the same.

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Highest-Paid Musicians

I don't know about you, but I've been scratching my head for a couple of days over the recent Forbes story about the highest-earning musicians of 2012. Here's the link. Here's a couple of quotes:

Though he’s only 18 years old, Justin Bieber has had a year for the ages. The Canadian crooner released his third studio album, launched a world tour and continued investing in startups, adding to a portfolio that includes stakes in Spotify, Tinychat and others. All in all, he earned $55 million in 12 months.

And:

Hip-hop superproducer Dr. Dre leads the pack this year with $110 million, thanks largely to his Beats headphone line. He collected $100 million pretax when handset maker HTC paid $300 million for a 51% stake in the company last year, at the beginning of our scoring period; he and his partners later bought back half of what they sold.

“The brands are so aligned, Dre and Beats, it’s just who he is,” says Kevin Liles, former president of Def Jam Recordings, who now manages acts ranging from Young Jeezy to Trey Songz. “If you look at the biggest earners, the guys have been doing it for 20 years … what’s happening now is people are really telling their truth.”

Touring and marketing are where the bucks are made. Though I guess I'm pleased that  there are two Canadians on the list, Bieber and Michael Bublé, I'm also disconcerted about what it indicates about music in Canada. I'm sort of glad to see Paul McCartney still in the top 25, but even more dismayed that U2 are there.

I wonder what the list tells us about the state of music nowadays? What strikes me is that you don't actually seem to make money from music as such. You make money from selling tickets to big spectacles where dance, costuming and light shows are as much the draw as the music. You make money selling headphones, t-shirts, perfume and a zillion other things I suppose we could categorize as "tie-ins". I guess George Lucas taught this to everyone. But somehow there has to be a veil of mysticism drawn over this because the whole commercial superstructure is teetering on the feeble proposition that these folks are in some way 'musicians'. "What's happening now is people are really telling their truth." What does that mean? What could it possibly mean? The only 'truth' these folks are telling is that wow, do we ever have a smoothly-functioning business plan.

Now for the necessary qualifications: I like some of the people on the list, McCartney, of course and Katy Perry, who does some interesting things now and then. Adele seems to be a real singer. But apart from those few (maybe I missed one or two), I really don't see much musical quality on the list. Musical quality is pretty much the only thing that really interests me as a listener, performer or composer. Here's Paul McCartney in a live show from 2005. Some quality there...

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One of our Percussionist Colleagues

From New Scientist comes this article about an update to the Roland programmable drum machine of the 80s.

It's worth it just to hear the demonstration.

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Music: Art Form or Consumer Product?

I just read this article in the New York Times about the changes Billboard has made in how they put together their charts. You should read the whole thing, but this will give you an idea:

Three weeks ago, the editors at Billboard, who for decades have defined what makes an American hit, shook up the song charts for various genres. The magazine started counting digital sales and online streams along with radio airplay in its tallies for most major formats. It also created two new charts using the same criteria, breaking out rap songs in one and R&B songs in a second. The results have given stars with a pop-oriented sound and broad crossover appeal an advantage over other artists, upsetting and puzzling some music fans. Take Psy, the pudgy South Korean pop star with the infectious dance moves whose video “Gangnam Style” went viral on the Internet. Since the new rules took effect, “Gangnam Style” has been the No. 1 song on the new Rap Songs chart for the last three weeks, even though Psy does not rap on the track and most American hip-hop radio stations have yet to embrace him as a bona fide rapper.

Of course we here at The Music Salon had a post up on Gangnam style way back on Sept. 23. Another artist who has benefitted from the changes is Rihanna whose song "Diamonds" went from No. 66 to No. 1 on the R&B and Hip-Hop chart. Let's have a listen, shall we?

Pretty much every music video by Rihanna I have seen has seemed like a brassiere commercial with an annoying soundtrack and this one is the same. There seem to be a few different videos out there, I hope I have chosen the correct one! Anyway, I'm sure Billboard has worked out a way of tracking more accurately what people are consuming. I was smiling to myself all the way through the article because what the New York Times calls "purists" of the  hip-hop, country and R&B genres were upset. Now they know what classical listeners have been suffering for quite a while now: what we view as music is pushed to the side in favor of, again, what the New York Times calls "pop-oriented sound and broad crossover appeal ."

There's consumer product music and art form music and they have rather different goals, purposes and methods. The whole idea of genres in popular music is so pulverized these days that Billboard might as well throw everything in the same pot, don't you think?

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Understanding Metal!

I had an odd phone call from someone looking for guitar lessons a few years back. Occasionally I would run an ad in the paper and it led to some interesting conversations. This fellow wanted to improve his technique and upon questioning I learned that meant fast scales. He wanted to learn how to play scales really fast. Nothing wrong with that, but he seemed a bit obsessive about it so I asked "why?" I followed that by saying that fast scales were just about the most boring thing on earth, musically. He seemed nonplussed by that so I next asked what kind of music he played. The answer, "death metal." I told him I didn't think I was the right teacher for him!

But just what the heck is "death metal"? Is it more deadly than other forms of metal? What makes something "heavy metal"? At last, there is a clip on YouTube that explains all. Here you go, ten genres of metal demonstrated in three minutes:

Just in case you missed one, here are the ten 'genres':

1. Glam Rock
2. Heavy Metal
3. Power Metal
4. Folk Metal (or perhaps, "Celtic Metal"?)
5. Black Metal
6. Death Metal (aha!)
7. Thrash Metal
8. Melodic Death Metal (heh, heh, heh)
9. Progressive Metal
10. Metalcore

The guitarist who did this, a fellow named Raz, used the term genres. I guess that's fair enough, if that's how the players and listeners think of it. Assuming that this is an accurate portrayal of the different kinds, then I have to say that pretty much any sixteen bars out of a piece by Beethoven contains more musical variety. Is it really true that small modifications to a rhythmic pattern, or to the articulation of the harmony can result in an entirely new 'genre' nowadays? There was a time when it took more than that just to write one of a set of variations. Here, see what I mean. This is the first movement of the Piano Sonata in D minor, op. 31, no. 2 by Beethoven:

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Sister Deborah from Ghana

Every now and then I like to have a look at what pop music is doing in non-Western countries. All part of that wonderful tapestry of diversity, doncha know?

Sister Deborah from Ghana has an interesting song called Uncle Obama, but let me hasten to say this song has no political subtext and I'm sure it has nothing to do with the current President of the US. No, this song is all about monkeys and bananas. Or is it? Warning, this video is probably not safe for work.

There is just something so charming about the single-mindedness of this song. In some ways it is even funnier than "Gangnam Style", the last piece of non-Western pop music we looked at.

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Lure of the New Disco?

Articles on music in the mainstream press sometimes go in odd directions. For example, the Wall Street Journal just put out an article on trends in popular music called "The Lure of the New Disco". It's pretty much the same old story: just like disco decades ago, the current pop music scene is invaded by dance-based electronic music (or should that be "electronic-based dance music"?). Some acts ignore the trend, some jump on board. Hey, it's a business (or should that be "industry"?)! I've written about deadmau5 before, so I think I can avoid mentioning him?

But the odd thing is where the article ends up which is with a couple of paragraphs on the English group Muse who have just released an album called The 2nd Law. They are described as "alternative rock" or "symphonic rock" or "new prog". I say this is an odd place for an article about EDM (electronic dance music) to end up, because of things like this, uh, is it a 'song'? from the album called "Unsustainable":

Except for the excessive rhythmic rigidity, the opening section could almost be a scherzo from one of the lesser-known symphonists of the early 20th century. Something uncharacteristically angry by Carl Nielsen, maybe? That's not so surprising as the instrumentation for this section was an 80 piece orchestra with a 40 voice choir. Later sections are more electronic. The disappointing thing about all this comes when you realize that a fair amount of musical ingenuity and sophistication has been put at the service of paranoid, dystopic environmentalism. That "2nd law" the album title refers to is the second law of thermodynamics which has been stated as:

the second law of thermodynamics is an expression of the tendency that over time, differences in temperature, pressure, and chemical potential equilibrate in an isolated physical system so as to result in the natural entropic dissolution of the system itself.

Now there's an excellent inspiration for a piece of music! Muse seems to be invoking some sort of techno-demon who is bellowing at us: "Unsustainable"! Isn't this way too 2007? I hesitate to get into any kind of dispute over this. I have my own views, but they are really irrelevant. The aesthetic problem I see here is that Muse, for reasons completely unrelated to music, have concocted a song with a very heavy-handed message. Music is not politics (not good music, at least). Still less is it suitable for the promotion of environmental 'causes'. Sigh.

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Let's Go to a Rock Show

I was going to put up a post about the recent epidemic of popular artists throwing up on stage in the middle of their shows. This week: Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga (four times?). But then I shook my head and said "why?" Here is something else I ran into, an account of a recent rock concert from a blog that puts up a lot of interesting things. The post walks us through the event from start to finish via photos and commentary. Let's hear a song by the opening act, Tegan and Sara, twin sisters from Calgary:

Here is another by the main attraction, The Black Keys:

Now there is nothing much wrong with this music. It's a little generic, to my ears. The singing sounds pretty much like most other bands like this. The songs are ok. But the point I want to make here is that if you go back and look at the blog post I linked to, you see photos of a lot of spectacular lighting (two huge disco balls!!). Just looking at those zillions of moving spotlights (how many, two dozen, more?) in different colors, the huge screen behind the musicians, all of it constantly changing and pulsing--I have to agree with the blogger that it was indeed a "full visual experience." So full, in fact, that I am deeply grateful I missed it! In all that kaleidoscopic welter of light and images, was there any place for music that was not really generic? If the slightest musical subtlety had come along, would it not have been completely lost in the light show?

Personally, all I want to look at when I listen to music is either nothing or a copy of the score. This is how I keep up my snotty elitist street cred! But if the music is bad, or just boring, then I would just as soon watch a video of Beyoncé frolicking about. Now doesn't that make sense? So, if pop musicians typically go on stage with a light show that is going to make it nearly impossible to notice anything about the music, then that tells us how the musicians themselves (or their audience) evaluate the music. Doesn't it?

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Asian Pop!

Occasionally while doing my "catty micro-reviews" I have run across pop artists from Asia: sometimes interesting, sometimes bizarre (at least relative to what we are used to). But there is one viral South Korean video that is worth having a look at. Psy with Gangnam Style!

As of this morning, that is up to over 250,000,000 views on YouTube! On first viewing it seems like something from another universe, but it gets funnier after a couple of viewings and you may, as I did, find yourself calling out "Gangnam Style!" and cackling maniacally for no good reason. This is a kind of humor that music is particularly good at. Think Robin Williams at his most manic. Not to everyone's taste? You bet!

For a different kind of Asian pop music, have a look at this Japanese video:

The leader, Genki Sudo, is a retired martial arts champion. He writes the songs and creates the choreography. No special effects, by the way, they just do all those moves.

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Light Weekend Posts!

Hello gentle readers! After those two rather heavy (and word heavy) posts on aesthetics I am going to give us all a rest and put up some lighter stuff for a couple of days. Let's celebrate with one of the lighter, poppier songs from the 60s. The Turtles with their 1967 big hit "Happy Together":

The band was led by two singers, Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman, later known as Flo and Eddie. After the Turtles they briefly joined up with, of all people, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention in their 200 Motels tour (I actually saw them perform in Vancouver on that tour). This is a bit like Joan Baez touring with Metallica.

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Aesthetics of Popular Music

I'm just reading an excellent article in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy on the Aesthetics of Popular Music. I say 'excellent' because it is a very clear and well-written summary of the various positions philosophers have taken on the subject of aesthetics and popular music. But I had the odd sensation all the way through that many philosophers were skating around on the level of abstraction without ever coming to grips with the music itself. I found myself thinking that all the generalizations proposed were true--and that they were all false. All popular music is a trivial distraction? Some popular music is more than a trivial distraction? I find that I can simultaneously agree and disagree with almost every philosophical position on popular music! Why? Because I keep thinking, but which songs are you talking about?

You see, I think the problem is with the whole notion of generalization. Remember my posts on Scarlatti sonatas? Each one is different so generalizations, except the most trivial ones, are not possible. You have to take them as individuals to understand what is going on. I'm afraid the same tends to be true of all great music: the definition of a great piece of music includes the idea that it is unique in some way. This applies as much to popular music as it does to art music. The fact that much popular music is formulaic and industrialized does not mean that the outstanding examples are. Quite the contrary. How much like other popular songs is Strawberry Fields Forever? How formulaic is it?

But before going any further, let's take a look at traditional aesthetics. The article summarizes as follows:

Eighteenth-century philosophers organized a new field of study, aesthetics, around the search for a unifying principle for the disparate “fine arts” of post-Renaissance Europe. This principle would distinguish science and craft from such activities as music, poetry, theater, dance, painting, and sculpture. Following this precedent, most subsequent theorizing about music inherited distinctively modernist biases about art. Three ideas proved to be particularly relevant to later efforts to distinguish art from popular art. First, art is the product of genius. Art is constantly evolving, so successful new art involves progress. Second, the value of art is aesthetic, and aesthetic value is autonomous. Artistic value cannot be reduced to utility, moral effects, or social functions. Third, whatever is true about fine art is true about music.

In the 20th century some important new positions were stated, among them the critique of popular music by Theodor Adorno, a Marxist cultural critic. His position was:

In a commercial world where one popular song sounds much like any other, popular music cannot function as a medium of genuine communication. At best, a philosophically reflective stance sees that its standardization and commercial presentation reflects important facets of the socio-economic conditions that shape it. Its standardization reflects the alienating, oppressive standardization of modern capitalism.

More recent writers such as Richard Schusterman offer a defence of popular music:

Resisting the traditional association of form and intellectual engagement, he argues that musical form should be rooted in “organic bodily rhythms” and the social conditions that make them meaningful. Popular music’s continuing reliance on dance rhythms returns Western music to its “natural roots”. The fundamental structure of popular music lies in its bodily rhythms, so movement is necessary for appreciating it. Since these movements bear meanings, a genuine response to music is both physical and intellectual.

In a 1993 book Bruce Baugh:

proposes that rock music is best appreciated by “turning Kantian or formalist aesthetics on its head”, literally reversing traditional priorities. Rock places more value on performance than composition, more on material embodiment than structure, more on rhythm than melody and harmony, more on expressivity than formal beauty, and more on heteronomy than autonomy.

However:

Against Baugh, James O. Young and Stephen Davies argue that rock and classical music do not invite evaluation under distinct standards. Young argues that Baugh merely shows that rock music tends to employ different means of expression, not that the music has different ends. The European concert tradition includes a great deal of music that prioritizes expressivity and requires performance practices that highlight the music’s material embodiment. Consequently, Baugh has not identified standards that are unique to rock.

There is a lot more in the article which is well worth reading in its entirety, but I think that the above quotes give an overall picture.

My problem with this is that I have the distinct impression that all of these approaches contain some grains of truth, but are crippled by generalizations that are not successful in that they take slices out of the repertoire that support the position and ignore a lot of music that does not. I have stated above my reservations about generalizations, but let me flesh it out a bit. One theory professor I had presented a 'scientific' view of theory once that can illustrate this. He proposed that the practice of music theory was "composition in retrograde" which is a nice phrase that reminds me of the principle in biology that "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny", a biological hypothesis that in developing from embryo to adult, animals go through stages resembling or representing successive stages in the evolution of their remote ancestors.

In doing 'scientific' theory, you look at different examples of, say, sonata form, and then construct a model of how sonata form works from which, if it is a good model, you will be able to compose new examples of sonata form that will compare successfully with the original ones. Sounds plausible, doesn't it? But of course, it is complete nonsense. No-one ever composed a sonata this way (except maybe for some students in the Paris Conservatoire in the late 19th century), least of all those composers whose sonatas are the ones we actually listen to: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven. These composers, who created and used sonata form, had no textbook models. Haydn invented sonata form (though the basic harmonic principles were already there). Mozart and Beethoven were certainly inspired by Haydn. But here is why the scientific approach won't work: Haydn used the basic principles of sonata form differently in every piece! The textbooks often say that a sonata movement has two main themes, one in the tonic and a second in the dominant. But Haydn is notorious for writing lots of movements that have just one theme. Every great sonata movement by these composers is unique. Just to show you what I mean, here is the first movement from a string quartet by Haydn that uses just one theme:

And here is the first movement from a Beethoven sonata that sounds like no other. It is all about harmony and texture and is one of the first pieces to make particular use of the shimmering effect of the pedal. It does have a second theme, but that part of the movement also acts as a kind of development. Like the Haydn, this superb example of sonata cannot be generalized from:

What possible model of sonata form would be able to include both these pieces? And if the model does not, then how is it a good model of sonata form, because these two pieces are superlative examples!

Somehow I have written this long post without actually getting to the aesthetics of popular music! That reminds me of the great 18th century novel by Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, that begins with his birth and then, by means of many digressions, ends up several months before his birth! What I have done here is to state why I'm not satisfied with most of the current and past thinking on the aesthetics of music. In my next post I promise to look at the aesthetics of popular music specifically and propose my own method, which is likely to show more the influence of David Hume than any of the philosophers quoted above.

Until then, enjoy this piece of 'popular' music. This performance by Joan Baez is not the version I wanted, alas! The original is the last song on Bob Dylan's 1966 album Blond on Blond. It's a twelve minute long 'folk song'.

UPDATE: I just heard that Jacques Barzun passed away today, Saturday, Oct. 27, 2012 at the age of 104! In his wonderful book, From Dawn to Decadence he lends support to my discussion above about the problem of scientific generalization and music:

"... history cannot be a science; it is the very opposite, in that its interest resides in the particulars."

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Old Music, New Music

I just ran across something that made me smile. Jed Gottlieb writes for the Boston Herald and put up an essay titled "Why classic albums are selling more than new ones". Because they are cheaper is his answer. But it was this bit that made me pause:

And anyone who thinks old music is better than new music isn’t listening to new music. Neko Case, Vampire Weekend, Arcade Fire and a hundred other young acts are delivering brilliant art.

The "old music" he is referring to isn't J. S. Bach, let me hasten to add, but the Beatles, Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones. Since this is the internet, there was the option to leave a comment, which a number of people did. Here's the link to the comments. With only a couple of exceptions, every single commentor said the same thing: "dude, the pop musicians today have a serious shortage of talent". Heh.

OK, well we are all about exploring the new here at The Music Salon, so let's have a listen to a little Neko Case. She is, by the way, an American singer/songwriter who has done a lot of performing with a Canadian group, the New Pornographers. Here is the first clip that comes up on YouTube:

That was ... exciting? Pretty dull harmonies alternating between I and bVII nearly all the time (the same semi-progression that Gotye uses in his hit "Somebody That I Used to Know"). Drumming? OK. Guitar-playing? Subfusc. Singing? OK. Now this is awkward. In the traditional method of music criticism here at The Music Salon, now I am going to put up some 'old music' to compare this to. But it's going to be embarrassing. OK, let me see if I can find a dull song by the Stones.

I'm not a big fan of the Stones, nor of this song, but don't you think there is something going on there, some of it fairly original? It would be cruel to put Neko Case up against some real singers and songwriters, but what the heck, let's do it:

Yeah, no way that is better than Neko Case. Uh-huh.

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"Pop Music Too Loud and All Sounds the Same"

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE86P0R820120726?irpc=932

Heh, heh, heh, heh, heh!

A team led by artificial intelligence specialist Joan Serra at the Spanish National Research Council ran music from the last 50 years through some complex algorithms and found that pop songs have become intrinsically louder and more bland in terms of the chords, melodies and types of sound used.

"We found evidence of a progressive homogenization of the musical discourse," Serra told Reuters. "In particular, we obtained numerical indicators that the diversity of transitions between note combinations - roughly speaking chords plus melodies - has consistently diminished in the last 50 years."

Well, yeah!

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Music and Aspiration

One learns so many things reading Taruskin's Oxford History of Western Music, a recurring theme in this blog. For example, music in the 19th century tends to encode the values of the society. It was a time of the growth of the middle class in both prosperity and education. More and more music was written to appeal to the aspirations of this class. In some ways the way music functions in society today is still based on the changes that took place in the 19th century. The public concert series, whether of individual recitals or orchestral concerts, is an artifact of the 19th century as are all the attendant phenomena such as artist's management, subscription sales and even touring. Paganini and Liszt were the first soloists to tour extensively. Here is some Liszt to show why audiences were so enthralled.

The virtues and values of the middle class such as individual aspiration to success were reflected in the 'heroic' contrasts of the 19th century concerto--as so often, prefigured in Beethoven's concerti. This short excerpt from the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto is a good example of the individual soaring over the mass.

The subjectivity created and nurtured by the romantic trance that so much 19th century music expresses is part of this: to be truly individual you must go into and consult yourself and music such as Chopin's nocturnes is a vehicle for doing so.

This is an enormous topic and you could write books (and people have) on the precise ways in which 19th century opera encodes and expresses middle-class values. Other books have been written on what is called the "reception history" of music. Individual pieces such as Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 have a history of how they have been received by audiences that is as interesting as the work itself. The European Union, for example, has chosen the big theme from the last movement of this symphony as their supra-national anthem:

But all this backgrounding is because I want to ask, what does the music of today tell us about our values and virtues? Sure, that would make a nice book or series of books, but since this is a blog post, let's just take a quick run at it. For that reason, I'm going to skip 'classical' music entirely here, though I might do another post on it later. Let's look at the top ten songs for July 2012:

Well, that was...uh...interesting. The number two song I have already blogged about and it seems to be the most interesting one both musically and in terms of expression. What most pop music is about is fairly simple.  These songs are about wanting to party, go on vacation to beautiful beaches, oh yes and to BE beautiful and to be with someone beautiful--like Justin Bieber. Occasionally they are about waking up to your life, like the Katy Perry song. Incidentally, she has another song, "Part of Me" in which she breaks up with her cheating boyfriend and joins the Marines. That's an unusual aspiration in terms of most pop culture:

But it is the Gotye song that attracts my attention and I don't think it is just because I have heard it before. It has an original and appropriate video production and deals with the difficulties of having a relationship. Incidentally, "Gotye" is pronounced the same way you would pronounce "Gauthier" if you were French.

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Pop Criticism

One of the blogs that I look at from time to time because it usually has interesting stuff that I would never run across myself is Ghost of a Flea. He has some posts up that do some of that comparing different versions thingy that I do from time to time. Here is the song he is talking about, which is a pretty good song:

Start here, but you have to read the several posts below as well. I wish he had a permalink to the whole set of posts, but he doesn't. He offers this very wise observation:

What non-writers don't know is that it is much easier to write in a formal style than an informal style and much easier to write something long and complicated than to write something short and simple. Writing pop songs might be the best example; like playing bass, it's easy to do badly but very difficult to do well.

Yep. Here are the related posts, or you can find the first one in the blog and scroll down.

This is a pop song of utter simplicity, that shows how good pop music can be. I think classical composers have pretty much forgotten how to do this (except for the minimalist guys, but they are pretty maximal these days). But there was a time, when a classical composer was not afraid to do a song this simple:

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The "Layla" Riff

Yesterday I put up a post about a video clip in which an accomplished guitarist plays straight through "100 Riffs" of the last sixty years in rock and roll. I commented that I had the riff or lick from "Layla" stuck in my head for the rest of the day. It is quite a memorable one and it might be interesting to see what qualities it has that make it so.

First some terminology: 'riff' does not stand for "Resource Interchange File Format" nor "Reykjavik International Film Festival"  but for a short, often repeated phrase used as a refrain. A refrain is a section that is repeated such as the chorus in a song alternating verse, chorus, verse. Specifically the word 'riff' tends to refer to a short, energetic phrase on the guitar, especially in the low register. To my mind 'lick' is a pretty close equivalent, but Wikipedia makes a valiant effort to distinguish them here. The relevant section from the article is this:

A lick is different from the related concept of a riff in that riffs can also include repeated chord progressions. Licks are usually associated with single-note melodic lines rather than chord progressions.

I'm going to let you make the momentous choice of whether to call the motto, theme or motif from "Layla" a riff or a lick. Here it is:

Click to enlarge

And here is the song itself:

This is the original version from 1970 with Eric Clapton and Duane Allman on guitars. There are a lot of layers, but the notation above is the basic material. Of course, some of the impact comes from the performance style with Clapton's unique vibrato in particular soaring over the accompaniment. About halfway through the original recording it turns into a long instrumental solo with piano and guitars in their highest register. Perhaps this was inspired by the Beatles "Hey Jude" which has a similarly long coda and goes on for seven minutes as well. But let's just look at that 'riff' as that is what is really memorable.

It starts with a very attention-getting turn ornament. I say "turn" because that is the name of the ornament it most closely resembles. A 'turn' is a main note decorated with the note above and the note below. Here are some typical ones:

The main note is C and the ornamental additions are D and B. In "Layla" the main note is D and it is preceded by A and C while the turn itself is atypically DFDCD. The ornament still focuses on the main note, D, but it extends the range of the turn from a third out to a sixth. The ornament lies extremely well on guitar. In the low version (you will note that the second line just transposes it up two octaves) it only requires one finger to execute in the left hand! The D is held while a second guitar plays the two-note chords in measure two--in this version they are condensed into one part. Then the turn is expanded by those long, syncopated notes in the second and third lines of the example. First it soars up from D to F and then back to E and D with C as a lower neighbor. The second time it soars up one note higher, to G, then repeats the descent. Hmmm, well, it turns out (sorry!) that the high passage that makes a beautiful contrast with the rhythmically energetic turn figure, is that same turn figure again, but this time without the A-C prefix. Do you see it? Take away that prefix and the opening notes are DFDCD. The high, contrasting passage has the notes DFECD. There is only one note different! Then it just repeats with G instead of F.

Now who else was able to get a lot of music out of one or two very simple ideas? Well, I can think of three at least: Bach, Haydn and Beethoven. And we see the same principles of unity and variation in Clapton's riff from "Layla".

Cool!

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100 Riffs

There's a video clip making the rounds on YouTube that is kind of interesting, though perhaps not for the obvious reasons. A reader sent me the link to this article on it. Their take is "guitarist makes history". Well sure, in the Guinness Book of World Records sense. It is an impressive bit of virtuosity and musicianship to put together the key melodic licks from the last sixty years of rock and roll and execute them this smoothly. We can see what his hands are doing, but a lot of the distinctiveness of each 'riff' depends on the tone-color and electronics. He has a bunch of foot pedals out of sight of the camera and adds in or removes various effects such as fuzz, wah-wah, tremolo and others--probably some that I don't even know about since I haven't played electric guitar for a very long time. For one lick he picks up a tubular slide, which was a very common feature of the early--pre-electric--blues guitar. I used to have a 1953 Gibson Les Paul--Alex Chadwick, the guitarist doing the video, is playing on a 1958 Fender Stratocaster. Here is the video:

There seem to be several other "100 Riffs" clips on YouTube that I haven't investigated. What I find interesting about this is that it offers a cross-section of typical 'riffs' in pop music. Most of these take their structure from blues--you will probably notice that the same gestures keep coming back again and again. These are mostly short phrases and, in the absence of the bass and drums, tend to show their weakness as melodic ideas, being often fragmentary and with incoherent melodic shape. There are a few licks that have a strong harmonic component--one in particular uses secondary dominants, but I forget which. Occasionally a lick will recall traditional harmony, especially some of the very earliest ones. A bit of jazz harmony comes in now and then. Notice how often a simple melodic idea is sometimes harmonized with bare 4ths or 5ths.

If you were teaching a course in popular music, this video would be an excellent resource.

UPDATE: After listening all the way through the clip above I found myself humming one of the licks for the rest of the day. Which one? Not "Day Tripper", oddly enough, which is an occasional 'earworm' of mine. (An 'earworm' is a melody that keeps circling round your brain. Usually the only way I know to dislodge one is to hum the subject of a Bach fugue. That usually gets rid of it.) No, the lick that kept bubbling in my brain for the rest of the day was "Layla". I started wondering why and I think, when I get a chance, I'll put up a post analyzing the "Layla" riff. But I don't think any of us will be too surprised if the best guitar lick of the last sixty years turns out to be by Eric Clapton!

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Theory of Pop

I don't know who is behind Hooktheory, but a post is up doing what seems to be a rather broad analysis of harmony in popular songs. That seems interesting, so I had a look. Here is the post. This will make more sense if you go have a read. Don't bother with the comments, though.

Two things strike me about this. Firstly, it is a statistical analysis of how often chords appear, though they don't seem to measure how long chords are held for, which seems pretty important. Secondly, it is a probability analysis of the likelihood of one chord following another. If you scroll down you will see a chart titled "Chords following em [E minor]". That looks pretty wacky too. 59% of the time E minor is followed by F major in the key of C major? That's a pretty weak progression. But maybe that is, statistically, true. The problem is that all this seems quite oblivious to the function of harmony.

I've been raging about pseudo-science lately and how researchers doing research into music who know absolutely nothing about music are just embarrassing. This site is a little different. For one thing, it is digging into the music itself instead of coming at if from left field somewhere. Remember the yellow-bellied marmot in this post? Hooktheory has a page where they put all their analyses. Here that is. Here is the analysis of "California Gurls" by Katy Perry.

The first thing I did was look for a Beatles song to see how that came out. Take the analysis of "Hey Jude" for example. The authors know something about music theory, which is refreshing, but not quite enough. Look at the "outro" (I think "coda" might be the better word) for "Hey Jude". They give the progression as I, IV of IV, IV, I. The idea of a secondary dominant is a long-standing one in music theory, but it really can't be extended to the idea of a secondary subdominant which is what is being claimed so blithely here. IV of IV? S'existe pas!

The idea of a secondary dominant is a powerful one because the relationship of V or better, V7, to I is so strong that it can be transferred to any chord. There is no strong relationship of IV to I. IV, in traditional theory, prepares V, that is its role. So the progression I, IV of IV, IV, I just isn't plausible because the relationships claimed are not plausible. The progression is actually I, bVII, IV, I. This is interesting because it is so very coda-like. In common-practice harmony, the coda has the role of lowering the tension and it very commonly uses subdominant harmony to do so. Interesting that this song, with its huge coda, does the same. But what is also happening here is the creation of an ambiguity. Any time you have an ambiguous progression that fades out, it can be an undecided question just what the final chord is. For example, suppose that the key is not F but Bb? We then have the progression V, IV, I, V. That's a lot more probable than the one they suggest and just as probable as the one I first suggested. What is actually happening here is something that always happens when you have IV I progressions. It either sounds like a plagal cadence, which is inherently weak, or it sounds like the IV is actually the I. The coda to "Hey Jude" is interesting, I suggest, because it floats between both possibilities.


Well, that's my stab at doing some popular music theory. I would suggest to the authors of Hooktheory that instead of doing a statistical analysis of 1300 songs (and not coming up with much), that they pick a few good songs and try and figure out how the harmony functions.

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Overrated Songs?

I do three different things on this blog, mostly anyway. First, I try to point out cool things about music that people might not know about. Then I do some music criticism, which is criticism of the music itself and occasionally the performance. Third, I do meta-criticism, or criticism of other people's criticism. That's what this post will be. I just ran across a list of overrated songs here. This is on Big Hollywood, a division of Breitbart.com founded by Andrew Breitbart who recently passed away. Now I am all in favor of popping bubbles, but I think you need to know what you are doing. There has been a culture war in the US for quite a while now and I think the folks on the right are trying to make some inroads into what they see as the left's domination of media and culture. OK, fair enough. But this isn't the way to do it. Go read the article and we'll talk about why.

Back? OK. First of all, it is not enough to just pick some well-known songs and say they are overrated. Take the first one, number 10 on the list, by Lady Gaga, which has racked up 125 million views on YouTube. If you are going to trash a hit that big, you had better have some significant things to say other than "Her songs are awful." And the accusation of autotune? This is one of the few current singers who probably does not use autotune because she can actually sing! I can't call myself a big fan of Lady Gaga, not this song anyway, but there is no doubt she is talented: she can sing, dance and write good songs. She is also a master of self-promotion, which is why she is so popular. Bad choice of target.

Number 9 is U2 and I pretty much agree. U2 are, I think, phonies and I mentioned this in this post and this one. But Ben Shapiro really undercuts himself by saying "U2 is second only to The Beatles in the pantheon of overrated bands." Really, if you can't distinguish between the quality of U2 and that of the Beatles, you can scarcely call yourself a music critic. One simple indicator of the Beatles' place in history is the astounding number of serious books written about them and their music.

Number 8 is "My Generation" by The Who, one of the really great songs from the 60s and the one that was the classic statement of youthful rebellion. Ben doesn't get it. Like a lot of his examples, if you click on the link to the song, you are likely to enjoy it. His critique: repetitive and he can't understand the words.

Number 7 is"Born to Run" by Bruce Springsteen and I'm going to recuse myself because I have never gotten into his music to any extent, but I know a number of thoughtful listeners who think he is great.

Number 6 is the warhorse "Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin and I agree with the choice and part of the criticism. Yes, it's long and overblown and pushes the melodrama too far.

Number 5 is "Satisfaction" by the Rolling Stones, another of the great classics of the 60s and this is where I really start thinking Ben Shapiro is an idiot. He says, "It's got a memorable bass line." Yes, pretty good bass line, but he is mistaking the great fuzz guitar lick, which is very famous, for the bass part, which is not. He just can't tell the difference.

Number 4 is "London Calling" by The Clash, which was pretty important for the freshness it brought to the scene when it came out. I'm not sure it will remain a significant song, but it certainly isn't a bad one.

Number 3 is "Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana, which is another song and scene that I never responded to. But this is the iconic song of the Seattle grunge scene, for whatever that's worth and again, the problem with Shapiro's critique is that it lacks specificity and shows no signs of knowing anything. He calls the song, "jarring" and "kooky". Well so is Pierrot Lunaire!

Number 2 is "Like A Rolling Stone" by Bob Dylan and he really couldn't have chosen a less-appropriate target. I can just see hundreds of readers clicking through to the song and going "wow, what an amazing song". Which it is. Have a listen:

If that song doesn't give you shivers, I doubt there is much in the world of popular music that would!

And finally, number 1 is "Imagine" by John Lennon. Not his greatest song, certainly, and a frequent target for conservatives who don't agree with the political sentiments, but it has Lennonesque charm and is beloved by many people so if you are going to trash it you need better ammunition than Ben Shapiro can muster. Just calling the song "evil and terrible" won't cut it.

I think I will make my contribution by putting up a post on ten pieces of music that are underrated or scarcely known.

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Radiohead Revisited

Last month a commentor from Vancouver took me to task for not perceiving the virtues of Radiohead in this post. Guilty as charged, I'm afraid! But he was very helpful, as all my commentors seem to be, and offered specific things to listen for in specific songs. This is just what I would have done. So let's have another listen to Radiohead and see what we turn up. For a sense of their variety (I complained of a lack of it) he suggests comparing two albums: "Kid A" and "In Rainbows". The former was released in 2000 and the latter in 2007, so they represent different periods. Here is the first song from Kid A, "Everything In Its Right Place":

Set in a quintuple time signature, the instrumentation is electric piano, drum machine and electronically-processed voice. Here are the lyrics:

Kid A, Kid A, Kid A, Kid A
Everything, everything, everything, everything..
In its right place
In its right place
In its right place
Right place

Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon
Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon
Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon
Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon

Everything, everything, everything..
In its right place
In its right place
Right place

There are two colours in my head
There are two colours in my head
What is that you tried to say?

The first track on the album In Rainbows is "15 Step":

And here are the lyrics:

How come I end up where I started?
How come I end up where I went wrong?
Won't take my eyes off the ball again
You reel me out then you cut the string

How come I end up where I started?
How come I end up where I went wrong?
I won't take my eyes off the ball again
First you reel me out and then you cut the string

You used to be alright
What happened?
Did the cat get your tongue?
Did your string come undone?

One by one
One by one
It comes to us all
It's as soft as your pillow

 The first thing I notice about "15 Step" is that, yep, it is also in a quintuple time signature. Most discussions of "Everything..." say it is in 10/4, but it sounds like 5/4 to me (a difference without much distinction), as does "15 Step". Hmmm, the same unusual time signature used in both songs. While the textures of the two songs are different, "15 Step" having a guitar dominated accompaniment, both songs have essentially the same texture throughout, which I think was another reason I accused them of lack of variety--within songs and among songs. I'm not going to try and make much sense of the lyrics except to say that you can't actually reel something out, only in. But since Bob Dylan, obscure lyrics are totally cool, so ok.

My commentator provided several other examples, which I will take up in another post. But I have to say that so far, I'm not won over!

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