Addressing Issues of Representation in Popular Music Research
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Date
2019-03
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Abstract
Musical communication has been characterized as the perceptual process of inferring structure and meaning from an auditory surface (Temperley, 2004). Tonality, as the temporal relationship between chords, is often a primary measure of musical structure; for example, sections of a song (e.g., verse, chorus) and musical styles (e.g., “pop” or “rock”) are structural features that can be distinguished by tonal content. However, the historical over-prioritization of tonality has led to the glorification of Western European art (i.e., “classical”) music as a compositional ideal. As a result, vernacular styles such as popular music have been regarded as derivative in research. A focus on tonality also discounts the lived experiences of musicians who create and perform popular music, as perceptual research suggests only formally trained listeners can realize tonal structures from an auditory surface (Pollard-Gott, 1983). Because popular music is intended for broad audiences and is created by diverse groups of musicians, tonality may not be an appropriate model of communication for most listeners.
Songwriters have consistently advocated that instruments are critical to musical organization (De Souza, 2017; Sudnow, 1987). They argue that “riffs” or repetitive musical gestures played on the guitar or piano are a compositional first step. Riffs, however, cannot be represented by tonality alone. Because many pop-rock musicians famously have little to no formal training, and frequently report composing songs from their instruments, an ecological-based theory of affordances (Gibson, 1986) suggests that the physical constraints of instrument may be a more appropriate measure of how musical structure is generated and communicated more broadly.
This study responds with an objective measure of musical communication by 1) observing how online communities of musicians convey structure to one another through digital versions of pop-rock songs, and 2) by tracking how songs are performed and composed in real time using motion capture technology. In doing so, the study sets a methodological precedent for validating the contributions of creators of popular music. Resulting data will also provide researchers with the computational resources to look beyond tonality to describe how the components of musical organization influences perception for all listeners.
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The Arts: 2nd Place (The Ohio State University Edward F. Hayes Graduate Research Forum)
Keywords
music, music theory, music research, ecological affordances, music cognition