Formalism?

Moodles · Oct 28, 2005

This seems to be an underlying theme in a lot of threads - Does Formalism have a place in pop music criticism?

On the one hand, I understand that a purely formalist critique is too narrow - that historical and sociological factors have to be involved in a well rounded analysis. However, I feel that pop criticism has swung so far in the other direction that the music itself is being devalued.

Is a critical discussion of technical matters like melody, rhythm, harmony, chord progressions, technique, technology, production, songwriting, arranging, performance less valid than the sociological/political ramifications of the music(ian)? Do the formal considerations detract from enjoyable or meaningful criticism?

I personally wish there was more criticism dealing with how the music itself functions and how that generates meaning for the listener. Does anyone else share that view or is formalism dead in the water?

DigitalDjigit · Oct 28, 2005

Moodles said:
Is a critical discussion of technical matters like melody, rhythm, harmony, chord progressions, technique, technology, production, songwriting, arranging, performance less valid than the sociological/political ramifications of the music(ian)?

To be glib, yes, because most of it uses the same relatively simple melodies, rhythms etc. The only thing that changes are the sounds used. A lot of it is just a conversation with itself. The choices made in the production of a track are more to do with what riddim/old track one is trying to reference or what kind of general framework one is trying to fit into than anything else.

Oh, forgot to add. All the critics with a formal musical education raise their hands.

henry s · Oct 28, 2005

it's difficult for non-musicians (like myself) to discuss music in those terms...I wouldn't know an arpeggio from a farfisa (well, maybe I do), but I'd rather engage in musical discourse on the basis of emotional/cultural impact...analyzing music by way of describing its' inherent "spatiality" is a way of engaging in formal criticism, but even that method leans toward the emotional, being mainly subjective/personal...

Moodles · Oct 28, 2005

DigitalDjigit said:
To be glib, yes, because most of it uses the same relatively simple melodies, rhythms etc.

Is this really true? I wouldn't compare pop to classical in terms of technical complexity, but it seems that pop has moved fairly far beyond three chords and a steady backbeat. The proliferation and cross-polination of styles seems to bear this out.

DigitalDjigit said:
The choices made in the production of a track are more to do with what riddim/old track one is trying to reference or what kind of general framework one is trying to fit into than anything else.

This sounds like a very sample-oriented view of music production. But can it really be said that music composition and performance is simply an attempt to reference other music. From a musicians perspective, I think the goal is to use influences as a jumping off point to create something new. And as much as influences matter, aren't personal eccentricities and idiosyncracies just as important to the overall sound. I find myself having the most positive reaction to musicians who understand how to harness those idiosyncracies rather than to musicians with the smartest references.

DigitalDjigit · Oct 28, 2005

Moodles said:
Is this really true? I wouldn't compare pop to classical in terms of technical complexity, but it seems that pop has moved fairly far beyond three chords and a steady backbeat. The proliferation and cross-polination of styles seems to bear this out.

Heard Green Day lately? R'n'B these days doesn't even have chords.

Moodles said:
I find myself having the most positive reaction to musicians who understand how to harness those idiosyncracies rather than to musicians with the smartest references.

So do I, but it takes a certain amount of talent for the personal touch to outrun the gravitational pull of convention that I feel most producers out there lack. I don't think it's a conscious process all of the time but if you work within a scene then by necessity you reference other work. Scenius and all that.

I mean I find dubstep/d'n'b interchangeable for example. Musically they are pretty similar and the only reason some people prefer one over the other is because they prefer the social trappings/mystique that goes with it.

Moodles · Oct 28, 2005

henry s said:
I'd rather engage in musical discourse on the basis of emotional/cultural impact

Don't the formal aspects have an emotional/cultural impact? Beyond just the overt message or attitude of the music, isn't there a whole implicit musical vocabulary as well that deploys its own meaning.

Cartoon music comes to mind - when you hear a pair of bongos, it means that the cartoon character is going to start running. Likewise, in pop music, when we hear acoustic guitars it means "protest song," when recorders are deployed, we think "renaissance faire," major chords signify "happy," minor chords "sad," loud, distorted, chromatic power chords mean "angry," dissonance means "artistic." These are obviously over simplified, but they indicate to me that the musical material itself can tell a lot about the meaning of the piece.

Moodles · Oct 28, 2005

DigitalDjigit said:
Heard Green Day lately?.

Yeah, they suck. Why would someone want to waste a lot of time analyzing their music. (apologies to all the Green Day fans on here)
I know that is meant to be a tongue-in-cheek comment, but just to clarify: when I say that pop music has increased in complexity, I don't mean that non-complex or pointless or crappy pop music has ceased to exist.

DigitalDjigit said:
R'n'B these days doesn't even have chords.

True, though I believe that R'n'B, hip-hop, dance music, and the multitude of other electronic oriented music is sorely in need of a technical vocabulary or music theory of its own. Classical notions of music theory simply don't tell us much about these types of music. I don't think that is a failure of the music, but rather of the discourse built around that music.

DigitalDjigit said:
I mean I find dubstep/d'n'b interchangeable for example. Musically they are pretty similar and the only reason some people prefer one over the other is because they prefer the social trappings/mystique that goes with it.

Again, there is a lack of technical vocabulary to help differentiate between these genres and to compare individual tracks within the genres.

polystyle · Oct 28, 2005

I hear you Moodles
Did wince a bit at the first reply - am thinking Dig didn't REALLY mean that 'musicians' are just about
ref. an old beat or fitting into a 'general framework' , think he was giving the quick glib clip , like he said .

If the maker doesn't see , understand or know how it's done and does not care to find out ,
then they are going to have to sample , copy or ripoff another style /bt/content and jus' be on top of their world , with their own bad self with echo on .

If the maker knows what one is putting IN (an old beat , sound of Janet J turning over , etc.) to a music system - they just about know what they are going to get OUT .
So much for the mystery of making something new and feeling that rush .

Don't see any rule against formalism' threads/questions/what have you ...

Natch' just thoughts from a musicmaker with no formal training
and to each his/her own /whatever works

DigitalDjigit · Oct 28, 2005

I did not have sampling specifically in mind. For example (sorry if this maybe obscure to most people)G-Man's "Quo Vadis" seems to me like directly an extrapolation of Phylyps - Trak II. There's no sampling going on. Formally they are both a simple four-to-the-floor with a repeated chord. Not much to talk about there unless you really want to dig into the rhythmic detail. I love both tracks but I see them for what they are.

Most people (me included) couldn't produce a formal analysis, many would probably not be that interested in reading it. It's only for the real technical music nerds. I see value in it but it is probably less useful than the other kind of analysis. Especially since those are not the terms the music's creators operate in.

dogger · Oct 30, 2005

"Is a critical discussion of technical matters like melody, rhythm, harmony, chord progressions, technique, technology, production, songwriting, arranging, performance less valid than the sociological/political ramifications of the music(ian)? Do the formal considerations detract from enjoyable or meaningful criticism?

I personally wish there was more criticism dealing with how the music itself functions and how that generates meaning for the listener."

There is. A whole new branch of academic musicology has sprung up since the late 1980s calling itself 'popular music studies'. Simon Frith and Richard Middleton have produced some of the best writing on this subject. As an 'academic musicologist' myself, however - and one who had to sit through an analysis of 'Stacey's Mom' by Fountains of Wayne (yes, I can *hear* that C-natural to C# shift in the chord sequence of the chorus...) at a conference a few weeks ago - I find much of it a bit basic. Musicology, like anything else, has its own bandwagons. That's not to say the subject has no potential, though, just that it's a new area the best work has not been produced yet.
However, I think there *are* several issues that need to be dealt with. The whole question of whether the majority of 'popular' music is really complex enough to produce interesting technical analyses is a relevant one: some music may have moved beyond three chords but a lot of it hasn't. Related to that is the question of vocabulary: as someone suggested earlier in the thread (sorry, I can't remember who), it's often the *sound* that matters in pop (i.e. the timbre, the bass-kick-that-reverberates-in-your-throat, the sheer visceral impact), not the 'structure' as such. That causes problems. Musicologists are very good at describing keys, chords and cadences - a precise, technical vocabulary has evolved for that purpose - but there is virtually no vocabulary available for describing timbre. All we have are metaphors, which in the past have not been seen as too vague for a humanities discipline with scientific pretensions, although all that is rapidly changing. Plus, the greater availability of software that can analyse sound recordings directly (as opposed to analysing notated scores, which only show the keys, chords and cadences, and don't get across that bass kick), should make it more possible, in theory, to analyse pop music successfully. In practice, though, academics involved in 'popular music studies' - just like pop critics - still deal predominantly with the sociological/political side of pop a lot more than the musical/analytical side. It is true - as someone posted - that a lot of music critics don't have a formal musical education. And the reverse is equally true: a lot of academic musicologists know nothing about pop music (you would be surprised how many Oxford music students *love* S Club). So there's a real split in the specialisms - but the gap is narrowing, slowly. I'll post more on this if anyone is interested. Bye for now.

borderpolice · Oct 31, 2005

DigitalDjigit said:
I mean I find dubstep/d'n'b interchangeable for example. Musically they are pretty similar and the only reason some people prefer one over the other is because they prefer the social trappings/mystique that goes with it.

noooo. there's a very substantial difference in primary rhythmic structure. DnB comes from
breakbeats, a compressed and sped up version of 1960/70s black US funky drumming
patterns. the key stylistic element is the 'wall of beats', is 'rhythmic pressure'. DnB's
rhythmic energy comes to a significant degree from overloading the listener with too much
rhythmic elements, so the rhythm verges on the melodic.

Dubstep really and deliberatly breaks free from this and focusses on a rather sparse
rhythmic sructure (spares in the trivial sense of there being way fewer beats per time unit,
but also in the more complicated sense that the impulses are more defined, linger less
in acoustic space, are more heavily gated).

Dubstep creates the tension through long gaps, which build up micro-expectations for
resolution, which are then played with.

there is large stylistiv overlap in virtually all other elements of production though, but
rhytmically they couldnt be further apart.

borderpolice · Oct 31, 2005

henry s said:
it's difficult for non-musicians (like myself) to discuss music in those terms...I wouldn't know an arpeggio from a farfisa (well, maybe I do), but I'd rather engage in musical discourse on the basis of emotional/cultural impact...analyzing music by way of describing its' inherent "spatiality" is a way of engaging in formal criticism, but even that method leans toward the emotional, being mainly subjective/personal...

but there's a more interesting thing you can do than discuss this "emotional/cultural impact".
make music yourself. and for that, more technical discussions are rather helpful, as they
aid learning about what musical techniques create which emotional/cultural impact.

borderpolice · Oct 31, 2005

Moodles said:
True, though I believe that R'n'B, hip-hop, dance music, and the multitude of other electronic oriented music is sorely in need of a technical vocabulary or music theory of its own. Classical notions of music theory simply don't tell us much about these types of music. I don't think that is a failure of the music, but rather of the discourse built around that music.

I agree, but this vocabulary already exists. it's the vocabulary of pro-tools, logic audio, of
cubase. You can describe most of the musical structure of said genres, and many others in
terms of the scripting languages these programs uses.

I'm not saying that this is the ideal language, but neither is that we use for classical music.
But it is being used by musicians, hence it's good enough.

borderpolice · Oct 31, 2005

dogger said:
Musicologists are very good at describing keys, chords and cadences - a precise, technical vocabulary has evolved for that purpose - but there is virtually no vocabulary available for describing timbre. All we have are metaphors, which in the past have not been seen as too vague for a humanities discipline with scientific pretensions, although all that is rapidly changing.

i don't think one can neatly separate sound and rhythm. be that as it may, the problem you mention has already been solved completly in two ways, which in praxi amount to the same:

* we can decompose any sound through fourier analysis into its basic components and their change over time. (short: we can digitise sound)

* we can communicate any timbre by putting the sound itself into the text, for example as an mp3-file: <A href="http://love.plus.net.nz/bass-beating2.mp3">this</A> was used to talk about a certain bass timbre. The only reason why this is not used more extensivly is lacking ability I believe of those who care to write about music.

DigitalDjigit · Oct 31, 2005

borderpolice said:
noooo. there's a very substantial difference in primary rhythmic structure. DnB comes from
breakbeats, a compressed and sped up version of 1960/70s black US funky drumming
patterns. the key stylistic element is the 'wall of beats', is 'rhythmic pressure'. DnB's
rhythmic energy comes to a significant degree from overloading the listener with too much
rhythmic elements, so the rhythm verges on the melodic.

Dubstep really and deliberatly breaks free from this and focusses on a rather sparse
rhythmic sructure (spares in the trivial sense of there being way fewer beats per time unit,
but also in the more complicated sense that the impulses are more defined, linger less
in acoustic space, are more heavily gated).

Dubstep creates the tension through long gaps, which build up micro-expectations for
resolution, which are then played with.

there is large stylistiv overlap in virtually all other elements of production though, but
rhytmically they couldnt be further apart.

Well, there we go. Isn't this the sort of analysis we, who want to hear more than just the social/emotional side, would all like to see more?

Drum and bass is pretty sparse too, at least the '97-mid 00's part of it where it was all two steppy (don't know what it's like now). The rhythm as melody thing was all '94-'96, wasn't it? That's what separates jungle and drum and bass in my mind.

dogger · Oct 31, 2005

borderpolice said:
i don't think one can neatly separate sound and rhythm. be that as it may, the problem you mention has already been solved completly in two ways, which in praxi amount to the same:

* we can decompose any sound through fourier analysis into its basic components and their change over time. (short: we can digitise sound)

* we can communicate any timbre by putting the sound itself into the text, for example as an mp3-file: <A href="http://love.plus.net.nz/bass-beating2.mp3">this</A> was used to talk about a certain bass timbre. The only reason why this is not used more extensivly is lacking ability I believe of those who care to write about music.

I don't really know what you mean about 'neatly separating sound and rhythm' - that isn't what I suggested at all.
But yes, as you say, we can represent sounds themselves - and reproduce these representations - in texts, using either of those two methods. However, this does not get round the central problem: linguistically representing the *experience* of sound in a meaningful, communicable way. Simply drawing a picture of a timbre using fourier analysis is incredibly complex (especially if you are actually going to chart timbral change through time), and says nothing if you can't read it (and most people can't). Even if do understand what spectral analyses show, they represent the objective acoustic reality of the sound, and relate in only a very oblique way to the experience of it. Surely the experience is the important thing, the thing that makes sound 'music' rather than physical data? But then trying to describe the experience in words exposes the basic incompatibility of the two media of words and music; I might call your bass sample grimy, booming, fat/phat/whatever, but that doesn't tell anyone else exactly what it sounds like - it merely gives a rough impression. However, my metaphors are still much more illuminating than a picture of the sound spectrum would be, assuming you take the *meaning* of music to be the central consideration and not its basis in physical sound (I consider the two to be separate in a lot of ways). So words illuminate the experience of music, although they cannot capture it.
Having said that, I think you are right that a lot of people who write about music are lacking in technical knowledge. The means of representing actual sound that you mention have a lot of potential, and will hopefully be used more as soon as music critics/musicologists start to get their head round the technology.

Moodles · Oct 31, 2005

borderpolice said:
I agree, but this vocabulary already exists. it's the vocabulary of pro-tools, logic audio, of
cubase. You can describe most of the musical structure of said genres, and many others in
terms of the scripting languages these programs uses.

I'm not saying that this is the ideal language, but neither is that we use for classical music.
But it is being used by musicians, hence it's good enough.

I totally agree with this - there is a vocabulary out there waiting to be used. Are there actually music critics that are using it? For electronic musicians, it's common currency, but what about the non-specialists who just want to learn a bit about how the music operates. Is it safe to say that there is a bit of mystification of electronic music technique that maybe doesn't exist in more traditional genres?

Also, electronic music doesn't exist completely outside of traditional music theory, but certainly music theory falls short in its ability to analyze the electronic aspects of the music.

k-punk · Oct 31, 2005

I can't see how any recording technologies help here... what CONCEPTUAL advance do mp3s/ digitization offer over analogue recording? A digitally recorded sound is in this sense no different to the sound itself - what is required is a one-level up abstract description of the sound, simply ostensively indicating the sound ('this is sound x') does not provide such a description...

I'm a bit baffled by what folk mean by the language of pro tools or cubase... These are just sequencing programmes that treat sounds indiscriminately, as cut and pasted sonorous blocks... The chief service they might offer to sonic analysis is that they provide a way to 'visualize' a sequence ... clusters of sound can literally be seen as patterns....

Or are you talking about the waves themselves? Yes, we can now 'see' the sound, but that isn't the same as being able to describe it...

My view would be that such programmes tell us nothing about the qualitative aspect of sounds ... any description would come from the users of the programmes, not the programmes themselves...

I speak as someone who is totally musicologically illiterate... I did though enjoy Susan Mclary's Feminine Endings and I'm massively sympathetic to the musicological impulse to demystify the ways in which music produces its affects/ effects...

But surely Dogger's point about timbre is well made. Someone made a similar argument at the NoiseTheoryNoise conference last year... the conclusion being that Pop, since it is based on timbre, is not music at all (if music = that which can be notated and precisely repeated). I'm happy with that, and I try not to refer to Pop as music any more... but does this mean we end up in mystification again?

shudder · Nov 1, 2005

k-punk said:
I speak as someone who is totally musicologically illiterate... I did though enjoy Susan Mclary's Feminine Endings and I'm massively sympathetic to the musicological impulse to demystify the ways in which music produces its affects/ effects...

amazed at that reference coming up here from a non-musicologist type.. does/did it have a wide impact outside of musicology types? (asking out of ignorance)... it's a pretty amazing book.

blissblogger · Nov 1, 2005

borderpolice said:
Dubstep really and deliberatly breaks free from this and focusses on a rather sparse
rhythmic sructure (spares in the trivial sense of there being way fewer beats per time unit,
but also in the more complicated sense that the impulses are more defined, linger less
in acoustic space, are more heavily gated).

.

niiiiiice!

is that why it seems more neurotic and stilted than d&B/jungle, in that the later feels like it's exploding, whereas dubstep seems more clenched and inhibited?

otherwise as you say the production and non-beat elements etc in dubstep is quite d&B, always reminds me of photek

Formalism?

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