Reading

10th June 2009

We will be focussing on When Doves Cry, a song described (inaccurately) by the Independent as ‘based entirely on one chord‘.

Independent article
When Doves Cry on Wikipedia
When Doves Cry – lyrics
When Doves Cry – video and audio
Purple Passion: Images of Female Desire in ‘When Doves Cry” – (Holland, 1988) – JSTOR link
[pdf version]
DON TRAUT (2005). ‘Simply Irresistible’: recurring accent patterns as hooks in mainstream 1980s music. Popular Music, 24 , pp 57-77
[pdf version]

Interestingly and perhaps paradoxically, given the song’s vocal homophony – and its dual Aeolian/Harmonic Minor verse & chorus melody, it was used as one of the test melody stimuli in Daniel J Levitin’s Absolute Memory for Musical Pitch research project (1994).

Joe’s comment -

To get the ball rolling on Wednesday’s debate, can I take issue with Traut’s assertion [pdf version] that there are multiple alternatives to the 3:3:2 rhythm. Almost every example he cites (including ‘When Doves Cry’) has a fundamental underlying 3:3:2 groove and the other ‘categories’ of hook described are just variations on it. He also suggests that 3:3:2 is an inherently 1980s compositional vocabulary – I can’t hear any evidence of its decline since this period (indeed, it’s such an ingrained ergonomic guitaristic habit that we have to actively discourage our songwriting students from using it). For an obvious contemporary example, how about Kings of Leon’s ‘Use Somebody‘ – the verse guitar part particularly illustrates the device. I suggest that there is something primal/fundamental, perhaps even genetic, about the idea of anticipating the middle of the bar by a quaver to provide momentum. Anyone know of any research about this?

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Links to online articles from previous meetings;

November 8th 2006

Walter Everett – Making Sense of Rock’s Tonal Systems (Music Theory Online 10.4)

April 25th 2007

Butler, Mark, 2006: Unlocking the Groove: Rhythm, Meter, and Musical Design in Electronic Dance Music

Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Recommended pages: 76-116.

Hasty, Christopher, 1997: Meter as Rhythm. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Part I, One (General Characterization of the Opposition; Periodicity and the Denial of Tense; Rhythmic Experience; Period versus Pattern; Metrical Accent versus Rhythmic Accent) and Part II, Seven (Meter as Projection; “Projection” Defined; Projection and Prediction).

Temperley, David, 1999: ‘Syncopation in Rock: A Perceptual Perspective’.