What's Wrong With Music These Days?
I know I'm going to sound like an old geezer complaining about the music "those damn kids" are listening to. At this point, I don't care, this needs to said.
For starters, can we all agree that there are three basic components that make up music:
Melody came after, with the first human who learned to sing.
Harmony happened when two humans tried singing together, and eventually figured out that some noise combinations sounded better than others.
Now, almost all the best music there is has a good balance between these two elements. Some music goes farther in one direction or another, but very often, when one of the three is missing, the music ends up feeling empty, aimless or pointless.
Now, the proper balance of the three is a very subjective thing, with some people preferring more emphasis on rhythm, some people preferring a hummable melody, and some people who are made to feel all fuzzy inside from well-crafted harmony.
Until a few years ago, the balance between the three was usually kept, because getting all three right required just about the same amount of effort.
The problem started when sequencer software and rhythm loops started becoming so pervasive in popular music. All of a sudden, crafting an interesting, original rhythm became immensely easier. Most sequencing software made it trivial to grab a cool-sounding rhythm bit and just copy it ad nauseam (with a few variations thrown in here and there to keep things interesting...)
The problem starts when you realize that the same software has done nothing to make crafting compelling melodies and harmonies any easier. The net result is that many musicians and producers spend more time trying to come up with intriguing new rhythms (because playing around with the software to come up with new rhythms is fun!) and less time coming up with intriguing melodies and harmonies, because, well, that's actual work.
I realized this while listening to Radiohead.
Now, don't get me wrong, I love all of Radiohead's albums (well, except for Pablo Honey... that one's missing something...) but it really highlights the shift which, after reading this, you'll probably notice in a lot of other music you listen to.
A lot of people were annoyed by Radiohead's follow-up to the monumentally successful (commercially, critically, and, well, musically) OK Computer, the somewhat harder-to-read Kid A.
One of the big things that happened in between the making of these two albums is that some parts of the band discovered Pro Tools and other studio software, and found that they could individually play around with that on their own. So many of the songs were based on demos that were made up of cut&paste rhythm. Songs like Idiotheque and Kid A sound like they were built on a rhythm, and are somewhat lacking in melody and harmony, compared with the songs on OK Computer.
This gets even more obvious when you listen to Amnesiac, which has songs that basically have no melody or harmony (Pulk/pull revolving doors) and songs which were clearly built rhythm first, and where what little melody and harmony is left seems coincidental (Pyramid Song, which has a repeating, syncopated piano motif which sounds wrong somehow until you add the drums and percussion back in.)
One of the biggest shames (for me, anyway) on that album is the penultimate track, Like Spinning Plates, which has an intriguing melody, and a really weird sweeping rhythm that basically obliterates any chance for there to be a compelling harmony. I say this is a damn shame, because when the song is performed live, it's usually played on piano, and it's one of the most beautiful tracks Radiohead have ever come up with, with haunting melody and harmonies.
Their last album, Hail to the Thief, seems to have tried to reincorporate melody and harmony, but this only comes together on about half the tracks, and none of the tracks are as memorable as Paranoid Android, Subterranean Homesick Alien or Street Spirit (Fade Out), for example.
I hear more and more rock musicians using sampling, loops and sequencing to augment their sound, usually because it's cheaper than hiring session musicians or learning to play/compose better, but often just because it's "cool" to do it. I keep hoping more bands will stay away from composing with loops, just grab their guitars or pianos, and start composing new melodies and harmonies.
I just prefer my music to come from the performances of real people. In the quest for a perfect rhythm that never deviates, a lot of music has lost its soul.
For starters, can we all agree that there are three basic components that make up music:
- Rhythm
- Melody
- Harmony
Melody came after, with the first human who learned to sing.
Harmony happened when two humans tried singing together, and eventually figured out that some noise combinations sounded better than others.
Now, almost all the best music there is has a good balance between these two elements. Some music goes farther in one direction or another, but very often, when one of the three is missing, the music ends up feeling empty, aimless or pointless.
Now, the proper balance of the three is a very subjective thing, with some people preferring more emphasis on rhythm, some people preferring a hummable melody, and some people who are made to feel all fuzzy inside from well-crafted harmony.
Until a few years ago, the balance between the three was usually kept, because getting all three right required just about the same amount of effort.
The problem started when sequencer software and rhythm loops started becoming so pervasive in popular music. All of a sudden, crafting an interesting, original rhythm became immensely easier. Most sequencing software made it trivial to grab a cool-sounding rhythm bit and just copy it ad nauseam (with a few variations thrown in here and there to keep things interesting...)
The problem starts when you realize that the same software has done nothing to make crafting compelling melodies and harmonies any easier. The net result is that many musicians and producers spend more time trying to come up with intriguing new rhythms (because playing around with the software to come up with new rhythms is fun!) and less time coming up with intriguing melodies and harmonies, because, well, that's actual work.
I realized this while listening to Radiohead.
Now, don't get me wrong, I love all of Radiohead's albums (well, except for Pablo Honey... that one's missing something...) but it really highlights the shift which, after reading this, you'll probably notice in a lot of other music you listen to.
A lot of people were annoyed by Radiohead's follow-up to the monumentally successful (commercially, critically, and, well, musically) OK Computer, the somewhat harder-to-read Kid A.
One of the big things that happened in between the making of these two albums is that some parts of the band discovered Pro Tools and other studio software, and found that they could individually play around with that on their own. So many of the songs were based on demos that were made up of cut&paste rhythm. Songs like Idiotheque and Kid A sound like they were built on a rhythm, and are somewhat lacking in melody and harmony, compared with the songs on OK Computer.
This gets even more obvious when you listen to Amnesiac, which has songs that basically have no melody or harmony (Pulk/pull revolving doors) and songs which were clearly built rhythm first, and where what little melody and harmony is left seems coincidental (Pyramid Song, which has a repeating, syncopated piano motif which sounds wrong somehow until you add the drums and percussion back in.)
One of the biggest shames (for me, anyway) on that album is the penultimate track, Like Spinning Plates, which has an intriguing melody, and a really weird sweeping rhythm that basically obliterates any chance for there to be a compelling harmony. I say this is a damn shame, because when the song is performed live, it's usually played on piano, and it's one of the most beautiful tracks Radiohead have ever come up with, with haunting melody and harmonies.
Their last album, Hail to the Thief, seems to have tried to reincorporate melody and harmony, but this only comes together on about half the tracks, and none of the tracks are as memorable as Paranoid Android, Subterranean Homesick Alien or Street Spirit (Fade Out), for example.
I hear more and more rock musicians using sampling, loops and sequencing to augment their sound, usually because it's cheaper than hiring session musicians or learning to play/compose better, but often just because it's "cool" to do it. I keep hoping more bands will stay away from composing with loops, just grab their guitars or pianos, and start composing new melodies and harmonies.
I just prefer my music to come from the performances of real people. In the quest for a perfect rhythm that never deviates, a lot of music has lost its soul.
posted by shutz at 12:00 AM
1 Comments:
I'm not that good a musician, and I'm certainly no expert on music.
First, I would recommend looking on Wikipedia for the terms music, rhythm, harmony and melody. The definitions there will probably be better than whatever I might come up with.
But here's the context I used the words in with regards to my blog post:
Rhythm: this is the most primal part of music, as it's all you need for the music to be "danceable". It's "the beat". Any percussion, any musical notes that repeat many times, any "hit" in the music that makes you want to bob your head is part of the rhythm.
After rhythm, primitive man next came up with Melody: that's when real musical notes started (this has nothing to do with musical notation, it just means sounds of different pitches). A melody is made of of a sequence of notes, usually played one by one. You can hum a melody. Actually, a sign that you've got a good melody is that people are either humming or whistling your melody. If there's no bit in your song that people want to hum or whistle, it likely means your song lacks melody.
Third, when more than one note got played or sung at once, Harmony happened. Harmony is harder, because many combinations of pitches just don't sound right, so most musicians avoid them, unless they're going for a special effect, or trying to elicit an averse reaction. Unless your song is dense with percussion, lack of harmony will make your song seem simple, it will seem to lack depth. When you start harmonizing (by adding guitar chords, piano chords, strings, brass, a chorus of back-vocals -- I'm talking more in the context of Rock music here) the song will gradually acquire depth.
Some great songs have less harmony in them because they work even when kept sparse: for example, nursery rhymes and other kid songs, christmas carrols... many of those were, at one point, played or recorded by whole orchestras who added depth by adding harmonizing instruments, but the songs are still effective without the harmonies.
But in general, for rock music, as well as classical, most jazz, and a lot of popular music, you need a good balance of the three. If you lack a steady, thumping beat, you're not likely to ever get a large following. If you don't have a hummable melody, people will quickly forget your song. And if you don't have much harmony, your music is likely to be dismissed as lacking in complexity, depth, and will be called simplistic (unless you're a rapper -- although a lot of rap and hip-hop nowadays includes a dense assortment of instruments and samples that build up to interesting harmonies... at least, I guess, from what little I've heard... I don't like rap or hip hop...)
Hope this helped... and, by the way, this particular blog is essentially dead. I've stopped posting to it as I quickly realized that I'm not the right kind of person to keep a personal opinion blog like this one... But I do have another blog that I'm keeping up: Steal My Game Designs, where I present video game ideas, and discuss video game design in general... if you're interested in the subject, check it out...
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