Music 26AC /

notes.md

  • Multiculturalism
  • Identity
  • Rhythm/Beat/(Duple, Triple, Quadruple) Meter/Bar
  • Pitch/Scale/Melody/Tonic/Chord/Harmony
  • Timbre/Texture/Form
  • Acoustic Era
    • Preserve voices of ancestors (idea of preservation)
    • Limited dynamic/frequency/length
  • Electrical Era (microphone > amplifier > electromagnetic)
    • Crooning
    • Faithful documentation and recording
  • Magnetic Era (tape)
    • Audio editing, multi-track, stereo, soundstage (3D)
    • No perfect recordings required, can be in different locations
  • Digita Era
    • Softwares, plugins, autotune
  • Anglo-American Ballads (song that tells a dramatic/tragic story in 3rd person)
    • 4 lines per stanza in rhymed quatrains (abcb)
    • Strophic form (same music different stanzas)
    • Monophonic/homophonic
    • Guitar, banjo, mountain dulcimer
    • Barbar Allen (varying versions due to forgetfulness, misunderstanding of old words, localize names, censorship)
    • Child's Ballads (Francis Jamies Child)
    • Folk considered authentic
  • Corridos (Mexican ballads that tell stories in 3rd person, derived from Spanish epic ballads/Romances)
    • 4 lines per verse, octosyllabic (8 syllables per line), abcb pattern
    • Strophic form
    • Two voices in parallel thirds
    • Simple I-IV-V progression
    • Voice Duets + Guitar (popular since cost-effective)
    • Conjunto (voice, accordion)
    • Mariachi (voice, trumpet, violin)
    • Documentation from community POV, cultural/political resistance, reinforce community bonds
  • African American Spirituals
    • African Conceptual Approaches (Olly Wilson)
      • Rhythmic clashes (syncopation)
      • Percussive approach
      • Call and response
      • Filling up the musical space
      • Heterogeneous sound ideal (contrasting timbre)
      • Body motion
    • Creative and inside metaphors, for communication, in the context of slavery (parallel in Bible)
    • Heterophonic texture (multiple performer, same melody, slight embellishments)
    • Ring Shout (singing + stylized counterclockwise movement)
  • French Louisiana Music
    • Creole / creolization (implies myth of original purity and ideas of "center")
      • "Adaptability is presented as a choice instead of a survival strategy"
    • Cajun
      • Homophonic
      • Accordion (diatonic button), fiddle, guitar, triangle
    • Zydeco
      • Homophonic
      • Accordion, rubboard, electric guitar/bass, keyboard, drumkit, horns
    • Jure
      • Call and response style with lots of body percussion
  • Blues
    • Recording industry vs music publishing (Tin Pan Alley)
    • ASCAP, copyright laws on written music only, Jim Crow Laws
    • Mamie Smith records "Crazy Blues" > genre as package and sell
    • Blues notes/scale/form (AAB, 12-bar)
    • Shuffle (swing) rhythm
    • Classic Blues / Race Records (used by industry to classify Black music to Black audience)
      • Female singer + piano / jazz combo
    • Rural Blues
      • Male singer + guitar/banjo (by singer)
    • Urban Blues
      • Male singer + electric guitar/harmonica + bass/piano/drums
  • Bluegrass
    • Originated from Hillbilly Records (Race Records but marketed to rural white southerners) to Country Music
    • Bill Monroe created new genre marketed as "bluegrass" to distinguish
    • Mandolin/fiddle/banjo + bass/guiar + 1-4 SATB singers
    • Homophonic (heterophonic in jams)
    • Extremely fast with syncopation
    • Binary form (AABA, AABB, ABBA)
    • Take turns improvising
    • Considered "folk" even though commercially developed in the 1940s
    • Bluegrass festivals, structured improv (between rehearsal and performance), unspoken etiquette and social cues
  • Rock n Roll
    • First used commercially by DJ Alan Freed towards white teenage audience (baby boom)
    • Emergence due to increased economic stability, end of segregation, television, teenager as an entity (race/region to generation marketing)
    • Cover versions (copyright laws, music appropriation)
    • MTV (new strat to promote music)
      • Michael Jackson's Thriller (changed white-only format)
  • Hollywood Film Music
    • Diegetic (heard by character) vs nondiegetic (heard by audience)
    • Max Steiner, global "superculture" sound
    • Click track synchronization
    • Mickey mousing
    • Leitmotif
    • Foley sound
    • Dolby Atmos
  • Swing (big band jazz style emphasizing horn riffs)
    • 4/4 times
    • Riffs (short melodic/rhythmic phrases used as melody/call-and-response/background texture)
    • Walking bass & swing drums
    • 32-bar AABA form
    • Historically men dominant, women during war seen as temporary substitutes
    • Blues (Feminine) vs Ragtime (Masculine)
  • ROCK CRITICISM
  • Tango Salon (symbol of identity in Argentina)
    • Two 8-bar sections, quadruple meter
    • Ritmicas (rhythmic) vs ligadas (melodic/legato) melodies
    • Marcato in cuatro (marked in 4, all beats in a bar are accented) vs Marcato in dos (marked in 2, beats 1 and 3 are accented)
    • Bass lines 3-3-2 pattern
    • Bandoneon (accordion-ish), piano, double bass, violin
    • Close couple dance
    • The Milonga (Salon Culture), reinforce dominant gender dorms, seating by gender
  • Asian American Jazz
    • Challenge black-white binary