EPTI have noticed that, despite the infinite wisdom and bold confidence that the great unwashed internet masses posess, not many people have a solid grasp on what music truly is, other than what they believe it to be based on its cultural implications. Which means: everybody likes their own shit, and everything else sucks except for "their shit". If anyone is bold enough to say that a band or song "sucks", the philosophy police come to the rescue to do what they do best, which is to claim that no one can have a thought, because all thoughts are meaningless anyways, and nothing can be judged. And i admire them for taking such a radical "catch all" stance that puts them oh so high above everyone else who dares to try to make a solid claim of what is fact vs what is not. Everybody likes to be smart. And claiming that there "are no rules" and "nothing can be judged" really makes a person seem like they got it all figured out. But, the fact is, many things can be judged. And there are many concrete facts in this world. Mind games in the sky are great for feeling good about yourself, but for everyone else stuck down on land tasks require something more than just lofty guesses and ego boosting "philosophy". Many, if not all people who read this will go into it thinking there "are no rules", and that nothing is explainable when it comes to the "magic" of music. Good. I want you to remember that that is how you felt, and also how sure you were of your opinion before you realized you are wrong after you read this entire blog. This is a great opportunity for you to experience how easy it is to feel that you are 100 percent right about something, only to realize in the end the world is bigger and more interesting than you thought.
The subject matter is Music. More importantly, what music really is, and what composition is. Of course, the complete guide to everything under the sun on those subject matters is well beyond the scope of this crappy blog that will surely just get flamed anyways. But, i feel like at least something must be said for those who would stand to gain from it.
So anyways, what is "Music"? Is it a video with people dancing and acting like they invented youth and beauty? No. Thats culture. Is music a lifestyle like rapper vs rocker vs country boy? No, thats culture. "Music" is none of those things we are brainwashed to believe by both media, and our own personal emotional longings. Music is a language of tones or bits of information that exist in time. Its really easy to get lost in the words used in that description and write it off as drivel. But think about the words being used as function, rather than connotive meaning. Music is a language, just like written language. There are periods. There are commas. And music exists over time, rather than in a frozen state, which means that the entire song or phrase occurs in sequence. The magic of music is made possible because it exists as elapsed time, unlike a picture which is static and remains the same for as long as you look at it.
So right there, we already have 2 rules. Remember the you from 2 paragraphs ago, who thought "there are no rules in music". Well there are 2 rules right there that essentially define music and separate it from almost all other forms of human expression. Its identifying features alone are already setting concrete rules. For a song to exist at all it has already played by 2 major rules, that it is a language of tones that elapse over time.
So, if that is music at its core, then what defines the language? And what defines "time"? It is the human brain. Already, a 3rd rule. Already, something that cannot be changed and everything that comes after is within the scope of the 3rd rule, which is, that all music being listened to by human beings is interpreted and experienced through the computer that is the human brain. As science has proven, the human brain is a prediction machine that tries to organize and categorize everything. Everything we experience musically we experience because the way the human brain works. And it works the exact same as it did since the caveman days. Many people think that music is evolving. But that is wrong. Music cant evolve. Music cant ever be evolved. Not until the human brain itself evolves. There is no advancement of music. Music doesnt get better or more complex as new styles emerge. "Style" is cultural. The human brain is the same, and human emotions are the same as they have always been. Therefore music cannot evolve. Not until the human brain does. It is the receptor, so no matter how complex or detailed or refined musicians try to become, in the end, it is the human brain that is the receptor and therefore the limiter of what music is. Many young people convince themselves that modern music is somehow more evolved, but it isnt. It factually cannot be. It is simply more culturally relevant, which they selfishly attribute to its worth as "music".
You probably are wondering how there is a "period" in music. Or a "comma". The answer lies in the human brain, and how it perceives frequencies. A musical note, is a frequency. When two notes are heard together or in sequence the human brain (a computer) tries to interpret the ratios of the frequencies. Every single human brain on earth that functions normally percives these ratios in the exact same way. Some of you might want to contest that statement (even though its a fact of science). To you i ask, does anyone feel at ease when the Jaws theme plays? No. It doesnt matter if you are from india, or the USA, or korea in the 20s. All humans since the days of cavemen have the same organizing principles for ratios of frequencies. Complex ratios result in emotional tension. Less complex ratios result in less tension. The emotional response is universal. All human beings. All ages. All races. All sexes. Now and in the past. This hasnt changed, and will not likely change any time soon. So, here we are again. Another concrete rule, in a world where people claim there are no "rules" to music.
Lets try an example to make a point. If a musician plays a G chord on the guitar or piano etc, followed by an Am chord, every single human being on earths brain will read those ratios, and want to hear the G major recur to resolve the frequency ratio tension that it experienced when moving from the frequencies of the notes in G major to the frequencies of the notes in A minor. It is a universal that trumps taste and genre and style. There is no "taste" involved. It is simple math that the brain illicits an emotional response from. Every element of music from melody to harmony to beat works this way. You may think you are unique because you like this weeks flavor of techno, or maybe you completely shun all electronic music and only listen to records of homemade wooden instruments, but no matter what you want to think, we all share the same brain, which interprets frequency ratios in the same way. Everyone feels tense during the jaws music. Everyone feels rest after a V-I cadence. Everyone senses a key modulation when signalled through a 7th chord other than the tonic's V7 chord. And the list goes on and on. Human emotional response to varying frequency ratios is universal. Taste does not factor in. To claim it does is to believe the earth is flat.
As stated at the start of this blog, the entirety of music composition is beyond the scope of a blog like this. But, a few words on parallel construction never hurt a single person trying to understand the magic of music.
Parallel construction can occur on many levels, and in many different ways. It can be used, abused, and even avoided, all to gain certain emotional responses from the listener. Parallel construction is possibly the most critical of all tools a writer can use to become stronger. And the best thing about it is, the more you become familiar with it in terms of a single element of construction, the more you can apply it to other areas to get even further results and eventually get to the point where you are creating works of actual "art". NOT just personal expression.
Parallel construction exists because the human brain likes to chunk bits of information together. Its easier for it to put similar things in categories so that it can retain more information at once. If it can, it tries to break a chunk of information down from lets say 16 different unique things, into two groups of 8, each containing two groups of 4, that each contain two groups of 2. An example would be if you played a ticking sound that went tick tick tick tick tick over and over, eventually your brain starts to want to perceive it as tick TICK tick TICK tick TICK even if the sounds are identical. It will try to chunk it into groups. This is another human universal. This is another "rule". Im sure the people who thought there were no rules in music are feeling pretty stupid right now. But dont feel stupid. There is no shame in ignorance. There is only shame in it if you choose to stick with ignorance even after you have been shown the truth.
So anyways, a smart writer will not look at his song as a verse, chorus etc. He will look at it as binary, and try to create groups of call and answer groups within groups within groups. Adn the beauty part is that any element can be used to facilitate this type of logic while composing. Maybe the music itself doesnt exude any strict or clever parallel construction, but the lyrical content does, or vice versa. For any of you paying attention, this means the greatest thing an artist can ever hope for: the end of writers block. No longer are you sitting and waiting for a great idea or an inspired moment. You can create strong art at any time, anywhere, once you have a solid grasp on how parallel construction is used in strong writing. If you look at the history of great music through these eyes, you will see, that it doesnt matter the genre. It doesnt matter the style. It doesnt matter whether the writer was handsome or fat and ugly. Great writing is great writing. There are no classics that avoid the genius of parallel construction. Ever. And new classics continue to spawn even now in this wastelend of culture created by corporations that have tried to make sellable art out of dog shit. The cream always rises to the top, through the use of clever/charming parallel construction in song elements. This will never change. Because the human brain always wants to chunk information into groups within groups. If you as the artist finds clever ways to make those groups match yet not be entirely predictable, you will be better than 99 percent of other songwriters. Sounds too easy right? Its not, but it seems that way because hardly anyone takes the time to figure any of this shit out. Everyone is too busy feeling smart by claiming there "are no rules" to music.
When a song lacks clever use of parallel construction, it can be seen simply by looking at the song itself. When a song lacks intelligent use of call and answer grouping, it can be seen simply by looking at the music itself. It is not a matter of "taste". Its either there or it isnt. When a song changes key randomly for no functional reason at all (creating unneeded listener fatigue), it can be seen easily. This is how someone can look at a song and say yeah thats a poorly written song, and be right. Poorly received by the public is a completely different argument. Yeah, a song can be a massive hit and suck. But when that happens it has more to do with culture and fashion/sex than with "music". When we are talking about music as art we are not talking about fashion or performer charisma. Those are separate. Almost all popular music consists of average writing ability paired with a huge marketing campaign or image gimmick. Even musicians with reputations as "odd artistic geniuses" usually are just average writers with a cleverly executed public image. That goes for both mainstream and underground acts.
To end this massive pile of words with something a bit more usable, id like to state a couple things that i think are dead giveaways regarding whether or not a songwriter is actually "writing" music or just ape-ing what he thinks he is hearing in the songs he is trying to imitate/emulate etc.
The two biggest mistakes in songwriting technique made by almost all amateur songwriters, and many professional songwriters including famous bands:
1. Failing to correctly/cleverly resolve tension within existing musical elements of the work
and
2. Unknowingly resolving tension that was never there to begin with.
I wish i had the time to really go far into the detail of what defines "tension" vs what defines a balance between too much or not enough unity within song elements but its just too much work to write it all down. I have had people ask me if i could go into more detail about how to identify strong writing vs weak writing, and all i can say is, study the classics, no matter how unhip they might seem. Study not the style or the instrumentation, study the form. Look at how the writer uses parallel construction in lyrics, rhyme, melody rhythm patterns, metric position of the highest and lowest note of the structural phrases, etc etc. Alternate unique elements in and out of recurring elements to create predictability within unpredictability. These are all good starting points. Everything you need to learn to write high level modern songs can be found in the elements of form found in classic songs. The secret is, even the classics were ripping off compositional techniques they learned from that era's previous era of classics. Style and culture change. Human emotional response to form do not.
![[image loading]](http://www.thenewship.com/public/style_emoticons/default/hmmph.gif)
