42 Years of Popular Music Analysis Teaching in 21 Minutes [2 years per minute]

1. 42 Years of Popular Music AnalysisTeaching in 21 Minutes [2 years per minute] A short audit of a few problems in the denotation of musical structure, with suggestions for improvement Presentation at Popular Music Analysis Conference, University of Liverpool, 4 July, 2013 Philip TaggVisiting Professor, Universities of Huddersfield and Salford (UK) www.tagg.org http://tagg.org/Clips/Nantes130531.mp4 or http://youtu.be/GbDG8ApNhRsmust be accessible Previous versions ‘The Trouble with Tonal Terminology', ‘Too Important to Fail', etc. presented in Rome, Glasgow, Århus, Göteborg, Durham, Liverpool (2011); Newcastle, Lancaster, Nottingham, Berlin, Granada, London (City), Manchester, Granada, Cáceres, Huddersfield (2012), Cambridge (Anglia), Naples, Trento, Nantes (2013).

2. Background and aim Overviewpresentation overview as intended in Liverpool, 4 July 2013 • ‘Tonality’ • ‘Time’ • ‘Totality' or ‘form’ • Que faire?

3. BACKGROUND

4. Background [potted CV 1] • 1957-62 Organ, composition, trad. jazz • 1962-65 BA in Music (Cambridge); Scottish country dancing, soul/R&B • 1963 -66 Cert. Ed. (Manchester); mainstream blues/jazz, pop demos • 1966-71 Various gigging combos (Sweden) • 1971 Full time employment as music teacher ‘unusually eclectic’

5. Background [potted CV 2] • 1968-72 Choir (sing & arr.) • 1971-76 Agitrock band • 1971-78 Keyboard harmony, etc. • 1971- History and analysis (incl.euroclass., pop, jazz, ‘world’, etc.) • 1993- Music & Moving Image courses • 1998-2001 EPMOW articles • 2009 Everyday Tonality • 2012 Music’s Meanings: a musicology for non-musos

6. Visited 2012-05-03

7. Sets and subsets (1) Rain Hail ‘popular’ ‘ethno’ ‘world’ ‘dance’ ‘MUSIC’ Snow ‘contemporary’ ‘medieval’ ‘jazz’ etc. ‘avant-garde’ ‘early’ ‘rock’ etc.

8. TONALITY

9. Sets and subsets (2) Rain Hail Euroclassical c. 1730 – 1910 ― ‘functional’ (!?)― —‘tonal’ (!?)— ‘modal’ ‘pretonal’ (!) ‘posttonal’ (!?) Snow ‘contemporary’ ‘medieval’ ‘jazz’ etc. ‘atonal’ (!?) ‘primitive’ etc.

10. Tonal Terminology • Aspects of musical structure compatible with Western notation: • i.e. a system of graphic representation developed to encode mainly monometric music whose pitches conform to the twelve notes of our chromatically divided octave. • (a v. small % of all music at any time anywhere)

11. Basic definitions PLEASE DISTINGUISH between TONE and TONIC • TONE : note with audible fundamental pitch • TONAL : consisting or characteristic of tones • TONALITY : system of tonal configuration • TONIC : central reference tone in relation to which other tones in a piece or extract of music are audibly related One problem: Tonalité/tonalidad/tonalità, etc. = key/Tonart —idiome tonal for ‘tonality’/‘Tonalität’— ?

12. ‘ATONAL’ !?

13. Linguistic derivative pattern 1 — -al -ality Noun Adjective Abstract nounroot derivative derivative brute brutal brutality crime criminal criminality form formal formality mode modal modality TONE TONAL TONALITY

14. Linguistic derivative pattern 2 -ic -ical (-icality/-icism) ergo: ATONICALor NON-TONICAL, ATONICALITY, etc. Noun Adjective Noun Adjective cleric clerical clinic clinical comic comical critic critical ethic[s] ethical lyric[s] lyrical magic magical music musical mystic mystical physic[s] physical scepticsceptical rhetoric rhetorical tactic[s] tactical topic topical tropic[s] tropical Abstr. n. musicality, physicality, topicality OR criticism, mysticism, scepticism HENCETONICALITYORTONICISM TONIC TONICAL

15. Tonality v. Modality Which of these modes are tonal and which are modal? ionian (heptatonic/diatonic) phrygian(heptatonic/diatonic) NawaAthar(heptatonic)نوى أثر doh-pentatonic (anhemitonic) ré-pentatonic (anhemitonic) hirajoshi(pos. 4: hemitonic, pentatonic)

16. Chordal mystery category TERTIAL QUARTAL ‘triadic’? ‘functional’ ? ‘diatonic’? PLEASE DISTINGUISHTETRAD  FOURTH TRIAD THIRD

17. Tonal terminology conclusions • Don’t confuse TONE with TONIC. Tonal music without a tonic is ATONICAL, not ‘atonal’. • Don’t confuse TRIADs with THIRDS. If harmony based on stacked fourths is quartal, harmony based on stacked thirds is TERTIAL. • Don’t propagate false contradictions like ‘TONAL v. MODAL’. Please conceptualise all modes, including theionian, as modes. Please also consider all modes as tonal. • Don’t use TONAL and TONALITY in a musically, culturally and intellectually restrictive manner. Please consider the MULTIPLICITY of TONALITIES (tonal systems).

18. TIME SORRY. NO TIME FOR TIME THIS TIME except to mention just a few terms

19. Time: a few problem terms —under construction— • — only possible in monometric music with unequivocal downbeats • — arises when >1 rhythmic pattern is heard at the same time • — more accurate designation of rhythmictraits in many Subsaharanmusics • — term used by Subsaharan music scholars and practitioners to cover ‘polymetricity’ (a eurocentric term) • — neuroscientifically established concept essential to understanding how batches of ‘now sound’ (syncrisis, groove, etc.) work • syncopation • polyrhythm • polymetricity • cross-rhythm • extendedpresent

20. FORM “a shape; an arrangement of parts” (Concise Oxford Dictionary, 1995)

21. Visual “form” (‘composition’, ‘shape’, etc.) vessel formed as a coffee pot bush formed as a mushroom synchronic, intensional form Musical “form” (‘composition’?) Exposition | Exposition | Development | Recapitulation Chorus | Chorus |Middle 8/Bridge| Chorus A | A | B | A diachronic, extensional form

22. Play video http://tagg.org/Clips/Nantes130531.mp4 or http://youtu.be/GbDG8ApNhRs

23. QUE FAIRE?

24. What to do? (1) • Ostrich strategy. ‘Nothing is wrong’. Carry on as usual. ‘We may be in the minority but we’re always right.’ • Defeatist (‘realist’) strategy.Take note but no action: ‘interesting; some valid points but we have to deal with music theory “as is”. You can’t change >100 years of dubiously ethnocentric labelling. Get used to it!’ • Tokenist strategy. ‘We’re broad-minded and modern. We have ethnomusicology and/or popular music studies and/or music technology on the curriculum but we see no need to change the basics of music theory. • Laissez-faire (‘anti-authoritarian’) strategy. New terms are as bad as old ones. You’re forcing everyone to think like you. Let things develop organically, man!

25. What to do (2)? • Risk alienation from conservative musicology • (both ancient and modern) by making life easier for the popular majority of students through: • - simple reform of a few basic terms; • - recognition of vernacular musical competence; • - reintegration of music as a specific form of • symbolic production on a par with others.

26. What to do (3) • Establish a forum of interested parties in music education, media education, etc. • Get together to decide on priorities for a reform of music theory terminology. • Involve experts from as many musical territories as possible so as to minimise risks of producing new ethnocentric concepts. • Collaborate across cultural, disciplinary and professional boundaries to produce a music theory primer (max. 100 pp.) to take us into the 21st-century and the age of globalisation.

27. Further edification Music’s Meanings: a modern musicology for non-musos(2013) tagg.org/mmmsp/publications.htmll [710 pp.] Everyday Tonality (2009) tagg.org/mmmsp/publications.html [334 pp.] Troubles with Tonal Terminology (2011-13) —tagg.org/articles/xpdfs/Aharonian2011.pdf [32 pp.] ‘Not the sort of thing you could photocopy’ (2013)A short idea history of notation with suggestions for reform in music education and research [21 pp.]—tagg.org/articles/xpdfs/Frith1301.pdf Dominants and Dominance Musical Learning & Epistemic Diffraction Scotch Snaps: the big picture

28. THE END PhilipTagg — tagg.org — MMXIII