I was at the gym, recently, continuing my long-held practice of twice weekly workouts, when I started noticing that all the music being pumped out over the loudspeakers had a thumping bass and pounding drums. Every song! Now, usually, I listen to the chord progression and melody, doing a careful computer-brain analysis of the harmonic structure and the melodic tessitura (range). But for some reason, it had never hit me that all the songs were thump-thump-thump. So, this led me to another level of analysis, a general categorization of all pop music. Which is thus:
BEAT-BASED: This is what I heard in the gym. Essentially, it is dance music, with the beat defined by the drums and bass guitar. Since most of us have two feet, and what goes up must go down, most pop music is based on rhythms divided by two: 4/4, 2/4, etc. Rare is the waltz in pop music (other than country music, discussed below), and I can’t think of any dance-based pop that’s in 3/4. Since young people like to burn energy and jump around a lot, they favor a healthy dose of beat-based music. It’s also popular around the world, of course, probably starting in ancient times with African drumming, as the beats are easy to nod your head to and infectious, whether or not you take the next step of actually standing up and dancing.
The lyrics, melody, and chord progression are all of minimal importance with beat-based music. After all, when you’re packed in the middle of a sweaty nightclub doing your thang with a hundred others, your intellect is pretty much on hold, as you negotiate a pathway through the crowd of dancers, trying to avoid stepping on anyone’s toes (especially if he’s big and mean-looking) and working hard to impress that foxy other-sex person over there with your dancing prowess. What was the song actually about? Who knows? Does it really matter? As the kids said on the old American Bandstand show with the eternally youthful Dick Clark, “I give it a 10–it had a good beat–you could dance to it!”
LYRIC-BASED: Here’s where we find protest songs, union songs, political rallying songs, and most of country music, even today. Also clever-worded cabaret songs with interesting alliteration and twists, ala the Gershwin and Kern era. Most show tunes fall in here, too, since they are trying to move the story forward. The message affects the medium. The beat is downplayed, as well as any other musical distractions that can get in the way of communicating the message in the song. I read years ago that that’s why country music has such simple chords and familiar melodies: so as not to get in the way of the story. Makes sense, if that’s your goal.
CHORD-BASED: I don’t think this next variety actually exists. All pop music has chords as underlying support, on which the melody is draped, but I can’t think of any songs where the chord progression takes priority. Perhaps the closest to this might be bossa novas, where the Brazilian composers have mastered intricate jazz-based harmonic progressions that in and of themselves are interesting–to other musicians, mostly! Jazz musicians love this type of song, since after they play the obligatory “head” (the melody as originally written), they go into umpteen choruses of improvised melodies that are based on the chord progression that supported the original melody, usually making no references to the composed melody once the head is played (although the best jazz musicians will indeed refer back to the melody as well as the chords, as they improvise their choruses).
MELODY-BASED: Aaahhh….now here’s where the great jazz singers, pop divas, and jazz instrumentalists perk up. They want a melody they can wrap their vocal pipes (or instrument) around. Certainly the lyrics are important, and there will be some kind of regular beat going on under the song, but even if the song were sung in Swahili or Urdu, the listener would still be transported by the melody.
Now it’s important to note that the melody rarely exists in a vacuum (other than in an a capella version, irrelevant to a discussion of pop music), but is set against a harmonic progression (chords). Take the famous “One Note Samba”–if you sing it without the chords behind it, it sounds awfully lame, almost like a Morse code tapping rhythm. But add the descending harmonies behind it, and the aural perception of that one note changes constantly: first it’s the minor 3rd note of the chord, then the major 3rd, then the 4th, then the flatted 5th. Thus the tension of that repeated note against the descending chordal background increases with each new chord. So while the sung note never changes (at least in the first part of the song), it’s relation to the background harmonies does change. Otherwise you’d have an awfully boring song!
By manipulating the ranges of the different parts of the song (verse, chorus, bridge), the skilled songwriter will take advantage of the natural tension and effort that a singer (other than a Bing Crosby-type crooner) has in the higher register. The verses tend to move the story along and the melody will be in a lower range. When it’s time to get to the emotional high point of the song, the melody will work its way higher. Such tension is natural to a singer, who must exert more effort to get those high notes out properly, and that effort is readily perceived by all, e.g., even the lay public is thrilled when a tenor belts out a high C. It’s also more difficult for, say, a trumpet player to hit those high notes. The fact of that effort is interpreted by the listener as calling attention to what the singer/player is doing, thus adding importance to those high notes. (Interestingly, a pianist cannot rely on such natural effort, since all the notes are already right there under his or her fingers, and tickling an ivory near the upper end of the keyboard is no more difficult than plunking one in the mid-range. In such cases, the pianist will normally play louder; after all, they have to do something to make up for the fact that the range, alone, won’t add any special emphasis to the high notes.) If the songwriter knows what he or she is doing, those high notes will coincide with lyrical importance or an emotional high-point of the song, as well, delivering a double whammy to the listener.
Being a solo performer (singer/guitarist), I can’t generate beat-based music without a constant thrashing on the guitar, and being a skilled guitarist, that just bores me. Being a singer with over a two-octave range, I enjoy flexing those singing muscles, enjoy the sound of my voice on the high notes, so I gravitate toward soaring melodies. While I have written lyric-based songs (mostly when attempting to create a song pitchable to the country-music market), I prefer to incorporate interesting lyrics with a great melody, and often with interesting harmonies, as well. I think that’s the ultimate–so it works on more than one level at a time and bears repeated listening: some may first be carried away by the beauty of the melody, only dimly aware of the lyrics, and then on a later audition of the song start to notice the lyrics (my guess is that the general public is completely unaware of the underlying chords to a song, though they may actually feel the effect of the chords without realizing what’s causing that effect). Hopefully, the melody and lyrics will be complimentary and not go in different directions. Indeed, songwriters call the correct marriage of lyrics and melody “prosody.” And when it all comes together when performed by a skilled vocalist, it’s simply thrilling.
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Music, Travels, and Life 