We were six in total at this week’s meeting, which meant we had an extremely focused debate; the optimum number for our sessions seems to be somewhere between five and 15 people (the previous one of 30 or so was a bit more tricky to manage).
The discussion was very wide-ranging, starting with the questions raised around the stimulus material, and developing into a long session on copyright in the song/recording, and the disparity between the way the law treats creativity (where song and recording are separately owned artefacts) and the much greater variety of individuals and processes that contribute to the final recorded object in reality. Inevitably this led to a discussion of technology as a mediator, at every point in the creativity>dissemination continuum.
Unusually for the group, we were joined by a PhD law student and two musicologists from outside pop, which helped to develop the debate in other disciplines.
We also experimented with podcasting some of the discussion. A typical UKPMC session is 3 hours, so we may not broadcast it all. For the moment I’ve posted a short excerpt on the meeting page.
A wide range of additional research sources were unearthed; these have been added to the reading page.
We agreed that the Summer 2011 meeting will be at IMR; the Winter 2010 one will be hosted at Bath Spa University. It’ll be a Tuesday afternoon in November – date TBC.
Long-time UKPMC participants (that’s, er, five of us!) will recall a 2006 session in which we discussed Walter Everett’s Making Sense of Rock’s Tonal Systems. While it was difficult to refute his assertion that “the tonal norms basic to the pop music from which rock emerged are the same norms common to the system of common-practice tonality” (Everett, 2004), we found it difficult to make the leap to accepting some of the assumptions he made about the universal conformity of rock harmony to nine classifications. Admittedly, Everett cites a raft of some 6000 or so 1950s and 1960s musical examples to support his case, but even so it was difficult to avoid the impression that there was still some way to go toward an exhaustive study of tonality in rock.
Scholars and musicians with an interest in the study of rock’s harmonic practices may be interested to read Philip Tagg‘s new book, Everyday Tonality (2009) – downloadable from here. In the book, Tagg explicitly addresses the problem of “how to talk about common tonal practices that don’t conform to tonal theory taught in conservatories and departments of music[ology]“. Tagg (rather cheerfully, perhaps) deliberately focuses on simple harmonic material – two-chord changes and four-chord loops. He cites a number of reasons for this, notably that “Since these [simple chord changes] are, thanks to their supposed harmonic simplicity, unlikely to provoke much interest among conventionally trained musos, they are in greater need of being seriously studied and theorised.” (Ibid)
Our discussion of authenticity (during meeting 5) in songs and the difference between song-as-composition and song-as-performance ended up at this interesting example. We listened to three versions of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’, performed by Cohen himself, Jeff Buckley and the X Factor contestant Alexandra Burke. When we’d got past the inevitable cultural subjectivity (all right, derision!) that many of the group exhibited toward the Burke version, we found ourselves at a very interesting point – that for many, the ‘authentic’ version was the Buckley one, despite the fact that Buckley was recording on a major label, with an MTV-friendly video directed by a professional video director, performing a song written by someone else. Does this show the subjective nature of authenticity? Or the power of martyrdom?
Prince – When Doves Cry – original video. For background information and academic links, go to the Reading pages.
Here’s an interesting 1996 Timbaland-produced cover version by Ginuwine that uses a different underlying groove, taking a different approach from what Don Traut (2005) describes as “3-5″ accent hook (note the lack of syncopation in the drum loop compared to Prince’s original).
DON TRAUT (2005). ‘Simply Irresistible’: recurring accent patterns as hooks in mainstream 1980s music. Popular Music, 24 , pp 57-77
doi:DOI:10.1017/S0261143004000303
Katharine Ellis has very kindly made available a room courtesy of the IMR, and we shall be meeting at 2.30pm on Wednesday, June 10th, in Room ST274/5 (Stewart House/32 Russell Square). Past meetings have focused on matters of theory – what I’d like to do with this meeting is to focus on a specific track, namely Prince’s ‘When Doves Cry’, and ask participants to come along willing to talk about the methodology/ies they would apply to consideration of that track, and with what particular end in view. (I know there’s more than one issue of the recording available – choose whichever you will.)
If you are intending to come, I’d appreciate a quick email, just so that we get a sense of how many to expect. And, as ever, feel free to pass this on to colleagues who may like to attend.
Here’s our first blog page – a little later than promised, but it’s here. We’re using the edublogs/Wordpress engine, which supports most of the standard blogging tools, and (most importantly) allows us to post of audio for discussion.
We were six in total at this week’s meeting, which meant we had an extremely focused debate; the optimum number for our sessions seems to be somewhere between five and 15 people (the previous one of 30 or so was a bit more tricky to manage).
Our discussion of authenticity (during 