MUAR 392 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Big Band, Irving Berlin, Gardan
27 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
2nd May
MUSIC BASIC + THE POP MAINSTREAM:
TIN PAN ALLEY, BIG BAND SWING, CROONERS
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Revisit basic parameters of music
• Understand the context of early 20th century popular music
– sheet music, ragtime, radio, player piano
• Understand what Tin Pan Alley was, and its significance
• Be able to hear and identify Tin Pan Alley (AABA) form
• Recognize the sound of crooning and how technology allowed for its emergence
• Understand the debates surrounding big band swing and how they framed race
• Apply the concept of essentialism to early debates on jazz
• Understand Adorno’s argument in our excerpt of “On Popular Music”
• Understand and be able to use the concept of homology
PARAMETERS OF MUSIC
• Rhythm
• Melody
• Harmony
• Texture
• Timbre
• Form
RHYTHM
Bass and drum
• One of the most important aspects of rhythm is the beat
• The beat is the steady pulse that underpins the song
• Often articulated by the rhythm instruments, such as bass or drums
• Sometimes is not strongly articulated, e.g. classical music
• Example: Kendrick, “King Kunta” (4/4)
DIFFERENT KINDS OF METER
• Not all songs are in 4/4
• Some sill use the quarter-note subdivisions
o E.g. Pink Floyd’s “Money” is in 7/4
• Seven quarter notes (beats) per measure
• Triple Meter:
o Elliott Smith “Waltz #2 XO”
• Compound Meter (6/8), if the pulse seems fast: ½ + waltz
o The Beatles “Norwegian Wood”
MELODY
• Tune of melody as the tune
• The singer usually sings the melody
• Instruments such as the lead guitar in a rock band will also play melodically
• Melodies are constructed as a succession of notes, like adding beads to a string
• The horizontal axis
• Melodies can be:
o Conjunct (notes are very close to each other: easy to sing) e.g. The Beatles “Let
it Be”
o Disjunct e.g. John Coltrane “Giant Steps”
• They can have
o A large range (Joanna Newsom, “Peach Plum Pear”)
o A small range (The Killers “Mr. Brightside”)
HARMONY
• Harmony is the color of the song
• Unlike melody, harmony is constructed using multiple pitches played at the same time
• Playing multiple pitches at once is a chord
• The vertical axis
• Major vs. minor
• Major is happy, bright-sounding; minor is sad, darker
• Is “Girl” by the Beatles in a major or minor key? Does it change from verse to chorus?
TEXTURE
• Texture is, basically, how many instruments are playing and what are their roles
• Texture can be sparse e.g. one voice and a guitar (Feist, “Gatekeeper”)
• Or rich/full (Stevens, “the Predatory Wasp”): coordinating for a shared overall effect
• Or dense (Public Enemy, “Welcome to the Terrordome”): not the case, big wall
TIMBRE
• Refers to the quality of the sound
• Rough timbres
o Public Image Ltd., “Swan Lake”
• Smooth timbres
o Nina Simone, “I Put a Spell on You”
• Smooth vocal timbres, e.g. The Crewcuts, “Sh-Boom” (white people supposedly)
• Rougher vocal timbres, e.g. The Chords, “Sh-Boom” (black people supposedly)
POP MUSIC IN THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY
• Transmitted via Sheet Music
• Comes out of domestic music making tradition of Victorian era (esp. in colonial eras)
• Families, especially women, expected to play piano
• Recording technology innovated at turn of the century
o Berliner’s Gramophone c. 1894
o Edison cylinder c. 1896
Edison Cylinders and Phonograph
Analogue (and not digital) recordings (not 0/1): the horn exemplifies the sound.
Player Piano
Melts the old world of Victorian private music making, and recordings. Programming a piano
to know which notes to play.
RADIO
• Developing in the late 19th century
• Technological advancements during WWI (used increasingly between the troops and
the public)
• Commercial radio in 1920s
• Musicians played live over the air (not records)
• Mix of music, drama, news, other programming
RAGTIME
• Piano style developed by African Americans, such as Scott Joplin (c. 1867-1917)
• Characterized by syncopated rhythms; it was ‘cool’
• associated by mainstream (white) audiences with black Americans, and in the early
days, the South
e.g. Maple Leaf Rag, Scott Joplin → lots of syncopations. It’s in 2/4. Especially when across
the bar. Very tied to dancing culture and African American culture at the time.
TIN PAN ALLEY
• Centre of music industry in the USA
• A physical place: on West 28th Street between West 42nd and West 56th in NYC
Came from the section of the town where the musicians are working, employed by
different publishing companies.
• Full in-house operation:
o Songwriters
o Lyricist
o Amanueses (Music Transcribers) – people taking notes
