I don’t pretend to speak for the movement, but here’s my two cents on the “why” of this burgeoning community, after being a part of it in Missoula for the past week:

As evidenced by the growing community and its supporting infrastructure, Occupy Missoula (and all the occupations) is much more than a protest. Some might even argue that it’s not a protest at all. I, for one, refuse to accept the current power structure in this country as a legitimate one — so it follows that any list of “demands” I make would ultimately imply that that the corporate hegemony has the power to listen to the protests and fulfill those demands. But they don’t. Only empowered citizens, both individually and as a larger community, have that power. This is more than a laundry list of complaints. This is more than public negativity towards the powers that be. This is a positive movement, where we show by example what is right. We want to grow our own food and live on the land that is ours by birthright. We want to become part of the ecosystem again; not a system of consumption, but a system of sustainable production. We want to produce our own goods, and give back what we can to the earth and the small communities that have given us our bodies, our minds, our voice, and our inalienable human rights. Someone said once, “be the change you want to see in the world.” He wasn’t talking about reform. He wasn’t talking about fighting, or war, or breaking down the world into categories of “us” and “them”. He was talking about inclusion, respect, peace, understanding, love, transcendence, humility — there are many words for it, this feeling of being a part of something, of finally being able to give instead of take. I think we all know this feeling, deep down in the basement of our minds, past the boundaries of words and arguments and explanations. Viva la Occupy!

Step outside the front door, walking down the sidewalk. Avoiding cracks and potholes, stepping over long-lost tricycles. The fluorescent paint of childhood toys faded to pastel. Walk quickly, then jog, then run. Houses turn into a white and grey and brown blur, whizzing past. Looking for something, anything. Jump and don’t hit the ground. Take flight.

Up and out, past the town’s edge, growing even now distant in the green and brown. Water below. Traveling far and fast. Wind pushing up and in. Eyes squint against the whiteness of the wind. Majesty spread out, the vision unfolds. Forested and forbidden peaks, whitened cliffs. Pushing jagged against the broken horizon. Gliding past stormclouds, black heads of purpose tunneling past. Scattered drops of rain dampen hair, clothes, skin.

Moving towards distant land. The ice of wind’s current against the cheeks, the upper arms. One thousand pinpricks of sudden cold. And yet, joy. A smile forms, rising up from terror. From uncertainty. From underwater blue with sopping horror. Flying vibrantly, a whirl of bright color. Life in the honest wind and rain and brown and green. Rushing away, and up, and towards a distant shore. Below, miles below, shadows of clouds whisper past the ocean’s blue carpet. Soft and undulant, past the earth’s curve. Past everything.

Where? Here — a long and verdant coast, lined with maples and pine. Land and rest and recover. The soil warm against the soles of feet.

Climbing inland, uphill, pushing past vines and tall grass.  Over the last hill, a ridge towers above the trees. And the horror of what waits on the ridge!  A meeting of beings. Creatures. Things unknown, things secret and solemn. Hidden by crags and rocky spires. Obscured by inland fog. Bicycles and fences could never imagine. Electricity, no. Gasoline, computers, pianos and hotels, shopping carts and indoor pools, no!

Birdlike. Tall and red and black. Legs like blackened birch trees. They stare forward, resolute. Clutching elephantine fruit, apple-like, brown with dried humus.

Faces coated in black feathers. White eyes. Oh, the secret shore. Oh, these tall and terrible cliffs. This ridge.

But what lies past? What purpose?

Guardians. Keepers of a shelter past recall. A place of peace. Pushing forward quickly, on foot, rising up to meet the blackened things. Scared, yet purposeful, long strides pregnant with primal lust. They rise and stare. One of them upturns a long, black wing, coated in feather and tar. Points. Two others crouch, pick up a large woven basket. The rest pull the brown and red fruit from the basket and stare forward. Throwing the fruit like weapons.

Crashing sounds surround the ridge. Running faster, from branch to branch. Jumping, leaping on tree tops, each tree destroyed by the brown fruit. Sprinting now, dancing atop the highest leaves. A burning bridge left behind on the distant and grassy ground. One piece whizzes so close. The sound of it unearthly, the fruit somehow screaming of its own accord. Alive, insectile, swollen with black desire. The keepers howl from the ridge, closer still. Baying like dark wolves at some unknown satellite. The shrieking fills the world with sound. The void, the light of day, all things shut out with piercing cries. They say:

“You are awash in a vast sunless sky.

A bubble drifting through the air.

Your surface is endless, without flaw.

But you will pop and be gone all the same.”

At last! Gain the ridge and look down at what is there. The keepers turn away, forgotten, yielding to the rain and fog. Look down into the valley before the ridge. A deep bowl of slumbering green, sloping away to the deepest point. A calm pool sleeps there, sky blue with mineral and water wet. Surrounded by the tallest trees and sloping hills. Silent like the first day. Tiny drops of rain echo in the bowl of verdant green. Walk down. Slowly, do not fly or run. Feel the wet and damp between the toes. Connected. Feel the leaves and branches against the skin. Connected. The taste of rain against the nose and mouth. The smell of dirt and salt and rotten bark. The sight of ants making their home, of caterpillars munching on leaves. The sound of deer clomping in the soil. Sit at the pool and wait. Become.

A humming fills the valley’s bowl. Soft and sweet, filling every pore. Sing with it, sing deep and full. The valley’s song swells and soars. The trees and deer and ants all sing in key. The water hums a soft blue tune. The leaves cry and swoon and plead. The sun serenades the crescent moon. Join the song, forget the words. Life is but a dream. Float unseen, untouched, unheard. Gently down the stream.

Pop!

Wake up, on the edge of a forgotten town.

—-

Distant Roar

sitting on the water’s edge
I watch the tide pushing in, rolling out
thoughts like seaweed floating by
not much to think about
the house behind me heavy
the recollection of a man
things I find and buy and bring
and need and save and love
that’s all I am

oh the siren’s call
the haunting rise and fall
sliding up to greet you
when you haven’t moved at all
lying prone, desiring sleep
daydreaming dark, the silent deep
waters overhead a crystal sky
so blue it makes me cry
oh, what promise past the shore
distant roar

rainclouds curl off the coast
sand whipped on the wind
storm surge pushing up and in
threat’ning what I treasure most
dear to me, this earth, this clay
spare no expense for gilded dust
the earth dissolves, the armor rusts
and it falls away

oh the siren’s call
the haunting rise and fall
sliding up to greet you
when you haven’t moved at all
lying prone, desiring sleep
daydreaming dark, the silent deep
waters overhead a crystal sky
so blue it makes me cry
oh, that promise past the shore
distant roar

am I dreaming now?
am I thinking out loud?
undertow, hear me out
riptide, hear me out
oh the siren’s call
the haunting rise and fall
oh what promises past my door
distant roar

Ed: this post includes Part 1, edited for clarity and grammar.

–

What’s in a scale?

Most popular music is written in either a major scale or a minor scale. Major scales sound happy and jubilant; minor scales are dark, stratospheric, melancholy. Think Deck The Halls vs. When Johnny Comes Marching Home as an example of the differences in sound. It is instructive to understand, however, that minor is simply a derivative of major; C major and A minor, for instance, both consist of the white notes on a piano. No flats, no sharps, no black keys. Even though the keys used are identical, if the song is played with C as “home base”, where the melodies in the song revolve around and end on C, it will sound happy; if A is used as the “base”, it will sound sad.

In this way I can say that minor, or Aeolian (the original Greek term), is the sixth mode of the major scale, much as A is the sixth note of the C major scale. The major mode (Ionian in Greek) is the first mode of the major scale. This is like saying C is the first note of the C major scale. A scale is like a skeleton key; its modes are the various doors that the key can open. A scale is the parent and its modes are the children. By way of example, the major scale can be represented by this specific sequence of seven notes, selected from the standard Western idiom of twelve possible notes [for why it's 12 notes, peruse my related essay]:

C (C#) D (D#) E F (F#) G (G#) A (A#) B

The bolded notes represent the scale of C major. The notes in parentheses are the black notes on a piano; these notes are not in the C major scale. Note that the major scale follows the pattern of two steps from C to D (skipping C#), two steps from D to E (skipping D#), one step from E to F, two steps from F to G (skipping F#), two steps from G to A (skipping G#), two steps from A to B (skipping A#), and finally one step from B to C. [Aside: I don't mean to be needlessly confusing, but traditionally a single step is referred to in most music notation as a "half step", and two steps as a "whole step", so I will use this terminology as I continue. Quick e.g. to eludicate: we consider the space between C and D as a whole step. E to F is a half step.] Written out in this way, the major scale can be represented by the the spatial pattern of “whole-whole-half-whole-whole-whole-half”, or WWHWWWH for shorthand. It’s a measurement of the distance between each note and how the distances are related. Distances between notes are called intervals. This pattern is consistent regardless of the note one begins on: the G major scale is simply G A B C D E F# G, for example, and E major is E F# G# A B C# D# E. It is left as an exercise to the reader to verify these scales’ patterns.

Now if I keep the scale the same, and start my step-counting on A, I get the universal pattern of a mode of major (Aeolian): WHWWHWW. This is the same pattern: the half-steps are separated by two whole steps and then three, which repeats ad infinitum. It is a mode of the major scale because the beginning point of the scale is simply shifted over, but the underlying pattern is the same. To wit:

WWHWWWHWWHWWWH

The above pattern is simply the spatial relationship between the notes of the major scale, repeated twice. If I choose to begin the pattern on the bolded W, this forms the first mode of major, the Ionian mode. If I begin my pattern-reckoning on the underlined W, this pattern is the sixth mode of major, or the Ionian mode.

The astute reader will wonder: “what about the other modes? Doesn’t the major scale theoretically have seven beginning-points, and thus seven modes?” This is exactly the case. In order, the seven modes of the major scale are called: Ionian (major), Dorian, Phyrgian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian (minor), and Locrian. They are all distinctly different in mood; some are darker, some are light and airy. They are related laterally, in that their step patterns are all derived from the major scale. Dorian is the mode that begins on the second interval of the major scale: it can be represented by WHWWWHW. Phyrgian is the third mode, beginning on the third interval of the major scale, and looks like this: HWWWHWW. And so on.

And then for example, in a given melody, I could shift from C Ionian (C D E F G A B C) up to D Dorian (D E F G A B C D), and then to G Mixolydian (G A B C D E F G), and each provides a different mood, borrowing shades of major and of minor. This requires changing the home base of my song, though. The listener will clearly note the song “moving” from a home base of C, then to D, and finally to G. What about shifting around within a given tonal center? What if I want to add color and flavor to a melody, but keep it strictly based in C?

–

SPMC: it’s easier than it looks

There is a second way that the modes are related; it is a melodic relationship, in that the underlying “home base” does not change. For example, I can shift from C Ionian (WWHWWWH) to C Mixolydian (WWHWWHW). The intervalic patterns make it less clear as to what is going on, so I will write it out as a key change:

C Ionian (C D E F G A B C) —-> C Mixolydian (C D E F G A Bb C)

Now I am exploring melodic color without changing the home base of the song, otherwise known as the tonic. I would recommend mapping the other intervalic patterns to the actual piano notes as a useful exercise. What’s the difference between Phrygian and Locrian, for example? What notes change? What notes stay the same?

The melodic shift from C Ionian to C Mixolydian is a subtle one; only a single note changes, and only by a half-step at that. It is the smallest possible melodic change. This is a useful concept; it provides subtle coloring without the listener consciously pulling away from the song and thinking “well, that was obvious.” Think of it as borrowing Latin or French words as a way of adding interesting diction to a short story. For those taught in traditional harmonic counterpoint, it is like shifting from C major to G major; only one tiny thing is changing. Here on out I will refer to this concept as SPMC (Smallest Possible Melodic Change). All of the modes of major are related by SPMC, which is spelled out in exhaustive detail below.

C Lydian (C D E F# G A B C) <—-> C Ionian [major] (C D E F G A B C)

C Ionian [major] (C D E F G A B C) <—-> C Mixolydian (C D E F G A Bb C)

C Mixolydian (C D E F G A Bb C) <—-> C Dorian (C D Eb F G A Bb C)

C Dorian (C D Eb F G A Bb C) <—-> C Aeolian [minor] (C D Eb F G Ab Bb C)

C Aeolian [minor] (C D Eb F G Ab Bb C) <—-> C Phrygian (C Db Eb F G Ab Bb C)

C Phrygian (C Db Eb F G Ab Bb C) <—-> C Locrian (C Db Eb F Gb Ab Bb C)

Each relationship above features only a single note moving by a single half-step; for example, A moves to Ab when shifting from C Dorian to C Aeolian. There also are a few interesting epiphenomena that arise out of SPMC. Lydian is the “lightest” of the seven modes of major; it is airy and carefree-sounding. Locrian, on the other hand, is the “darkest”, very sinister and primordial. The fewer SPMCs that separate a mode from Lydian, the lighter in mood; likewise the closer a mode to Locrian, the darker the mood.

(Dorian is centralized and is neutral in color. Also note that when “traveling” from Lydian to Locrian via SPMC, the note that changes always descends, never ascends. Which is an interesting synesthetic point: do we perceive darker modes as being “lower”? Is Locrian the Hell mode? Is Lydian angelic? Does it soar? Does it balance on the head of a pin? Pbbbbt.)

Additionally, every note of the major scale descends by one half-step at some point in this system, except for the tonic, C. While it is technically possible to “move” from C Locrian to B Lydian, the note that changes in this shift is the tonic itself (C moves down a half step to B; this would be C Db Eb F Gb Ab Bb C —> B C# D# E# F# G# A# B, and don’t think about all the sharps and flats too hard if you haven’t taken traditional music theory). By SPMC rules, this isn’t allowed, as moving the tonic has a jarring effect on the listener, and is not considered by us to be a melodic shift, but rather a harmonic one. And we have to draw the line somewhere. Which isn’t to say that this type of shift is “illegal” and you “can’t” do it; SPMC has no inherent value, but is a tool to understand how melody works.

–

Color by numbers

The sharp/flat system has been primarily designed for use in the major/minor system; when speaking modally, it’s a lotta look, to quote a famous fashion designer. All the flats and sharps tend to obscure the simplicity of SPMC. We need a different system of talking about melody. If C is assigned the number 0, C# the number 1, all the way up to B = 11, we can study the system numerically, and also universally, as any tonic can be assumed.  Zero can just as easily be G#, or E. Also, since the tonic can never change by our definition, it’s not necessary to include it. Here’s an example to show what I’m talking about.

C Mixolydian is C D E F G A Bb C. If we assume that C = 0, and continue from there, then C Mixolydian can also be described as 0 2 4 5 7 9 10 12. Then simply note that by SPMC rules, the note C will never change, so the numbers 0 and 12 can be omitted, which leaves us with a nice universal way to describe all Mixolydian modes. Mixolydian is (2 4 5 7 9 10). Reread this paragraph, then prove to yourself that Aeolian (minor) is represented by (2 3 5 7 8 10). These six numbers also stand for how many half-steps a given note sits above its tonic; for guitarists, it can also be interpreted as tablature for lateral movement up a single string, assuming that the open string is the tonic.

Here’s the SPMC major scale order, in this new easier-to-look-at (hopefully) format:

( 2 4 6 7 9 11) Lydian

(2 4 5 7 9 11) Ionian

(2 4 5 7 9 10) Mixolydian

(2 3 5 7 9 10) Dorian

(2 3 5 7 8 10) Aeolian

(1 3 5 7 8 10) Phrygian

(1 3 5 6 8 10) Locrian

It’s worth comparing this list to the earlier SPMC list that uses sharps and flats. The relationship becomes much clearer; it is easy to see, for example, that Dorian and Phyrgian differ by two SPMCs, or that 7 exists in all of the modes except Locrian, or that the half step between 9 and 10 is present only in Mixolydian and Dorian. It is, to me, a primarily functional system. It’s a quick way of comparing two modes and determining how they are different, and why.

(Quick aside: to avoid confusion, and continue to use words the way that traditional music theory uses them, we will refer to the unwritten zero as the first note of the mode. Just mentally insert it into your understanding. After all, it is physically the first note of the mode, the tonic. The six notes shown in our numeric shorthand are the second through seventh notes, respectively. The unwritten twelve is the eighth note.)

Experiment: noodle around in the Ionian and Mixolydian modes, and end your phrases on the seventh note (the 11 and 10, respectively). Prove to yourself how 11 functions differently in Ionian from the 10 in Mixolydian. They both hold the same position in the mode as the seventh note. Yet 11 often sounds “unhappy” and “needs” to be resolved by moving up to the 12, the tonic. Conversely, the 10 of Mixolydian doesn’t have that same tonicwards pull. It’s a little happier. There’s a little bit of a pull towards the 9, but not as strong; it can also move up to the 12, or just hang there and build some juicy tension.

And that brings us to the next big section. What is tension? How can we talk about it?

–

How I learned to stop worrying and love tension

When looking purely at melodic structure, we can consider two types of tension: internal and external. Internal tension is the “happiness” of notes within a mode, not to put too fine a point on it. External tension, which I will also call stability, is the “happiness” of modes within a scale. This happiness isn’t just theoretical; you can easily hear the tension of a given note or scale, which of course is related to various cultural norms and socioeconomic upbringings and squishy qualitative “life experiences”, ad nauseum. E.g. how Ionian just sounds more “finished” at the end of a phrase than Locrian. Or e.g. just play the tonic for a given Locrian, and then hit that nasty sounding 6. It’s dissonant and filled with tasty tension. It’s hard to describe; it’s qualia. Try it for yourself.

But there are basic rules that we can talk about.

Internal tension of a mode is generally centered around that mode’s two half-step intervals. In the case of Ionian, those intervals are 4-5 and 11-12. For the closely related Lydian, it is 6-7 and 11-12. Most of the time, one of the notes in this tension-pair is happier than the other, and pulls its mate towards it. 11 really pulls towards 12; Lydian’s 6 is in love with its stable mate, the 7. Ionian’s 5 is moderately enthused about the 4, but not as strongly as the 11-12 match. The intensity of each match varies from mode to mode; speaking extremely vaguely, the closer a mode to the “end” of the SPMC continuum, the more internal tension its half-step matches carry. Lydian and Locrian have strong pairings. Dorian’s 2-3 and 9-10 are hardly attracted to each other at all. Remember of course that this explanation is descriptive, not prescriptive; go ahead and end that phrase on Lydian’s 6, if that’s what’s called for. Tension is a tool.

And don’t forget about the nonmatched notes; there are three of them in each mode. These singletons don’t have a strong pull, but conversely they don’t pull other notes towards them. Ionian’s singletons, the 2, 7, and 9, therefore exist in a tension continuum somewhat between the pullers and the pullees. We could roughly assign an order to Ionian tension, from the most pull to the least pull; this is necessarily informed a bit by our own cultural upbringing, and thus will vary from person to person. My personal evaluation of this mode goes like this: 11, 5, 9, 2, 7, 4, 0. The bolded notes want to resolve; the normal-texted notes are moderately stable; the italicized notes have a lot of pull, and feel good to end a phrase on.

I realize it’s dangerous to come out and say “this is how it is”, so bear in mind there are some serious caveats lurking all about this concept of tension. But internal tension does exist.

External tension, or stability, is a little trickier to describe. It is partly a description of where the tonic lies within a mode’s tension continuum. The less pleasing it is to finish that phrase on the tonic of the mode, obviously the less stable the mode itself will sound. For example, I could argue that Lydian is less stable than Ionian, because Lydian’s 6-7 is so tension-filled that 7 sounds like more of a release than the zero. Whereas Ionian’s 11-12 is top hog, and 11 pulls towards that 12 like nothing else can. (Also keep in mind that the tonic can be approached from both directions.)

External stability/tension can also be a description of the “distance” between two modes; in other words, it is a measure of how many SPMCs separate their intervalic patterns. Moving directly from Locrian (1 3 5 6 8 10) to Lydian (2 4 6 7 9 11), for example, is a much more sudden and tension-filled shift than the comparatively bucolic Dorian-Aeolian variation (where all that changes is a half-step descent from Dorian’s 9 to Aeolian’s 8). I admit that this concept of intermodal stability is still burgeoning; I will leave it at these vague beginnings and look forward to future dialogue on the subject.

Segue: When moving from Ionian to Dorian, for example, if I want to incur only slight external tension, I could shift from Ionian (2 4 5 7 9 11) to Mixolydian (2 4 5 7 9 10), and then from Mixolydian to Dorian (2 3 5 7 9 10). There is a second SPMC-approved route, however; note that the 11 drops to 10 first, and then the 4 drops to 3, yielding Dorian. But what if this order is reversed? Then the intermediate, as yet unnamed mode would look like this: (2 3 5 7 9 11). Here, the 4 drops to 3 first, and then the 11 drops to 10 and becomes Dorian. Question: what prevents us from using this “modal pathway” instead of the intramajor shift?

–

A fucking can of goddamn worms

Answer: nothing. It’s a valid mode in its own right. Which beggars the follow-up: what prevents our theory from simply including all six-note permutations, like (3 4 5 8 9 10) and (1 4 5 6 7 11), and thus crashing under its own exhaustive potential? The qualitative response is that most “technically possible” modes sound like utter shit. A quantitative response is a bit more subtle. For those not trained in a bit of Western harmonic theory, skip the following italicized paragraphs, and just trust me that there are three other scales, each of which contain their own unique seven mode systems, that qualify for inclusion under our melodic analysis. And for those readers who seriously don’t have other things to do:

[The question stands. What makes a "valid mode"? First, remember that the Western harmonic system is based upon thirds. Even jazz 13th chords are a theoretical grouping of thirds upon thirds. A C major chord, for example, is C E G. The interval between C and E is a major third (four half-steps); between E and G, a minor third (three half-steps). Stack 'em in reverse order and you have a minor chord instead. C Eb G. Add another third on top of a C triad and you have a variety of possible sevenths. Or alternately, expand the triad to C E G#, and call it augmented (two major thirds). The point is that all of these chords are systems of major and minor thirds.

And then realize that the major scale is simply a grouping of thirds, stacked up to form a cyclical pattern. C ---> E ---> G ---> B ---> D ---> F ---> A ---> C. This scale is created by following the pattern of major third, minor third, major third, minor third, minor third, major third, minor third; we represent this by MmMmmMm. A scale has to have exactly three major thirds and four minor thirds to arrive back at the starting point, thus making a complete and enclosed harmonic system. So how many other unique combinations of thirds are available? There are three. There is mMMmmMm, or C ---> Eb ---> G ---> B ---> D ---> F ---> A ---> C, commonly known as melodic minor. There is mMMmmmM, or C ---> Eb ---> G ---> B ---> D ---> F ---> Ab ---> C, commonly known as harmonic minor. And there is MmMmmmM, or C ---> E ---> G ---> B ---> D ---> F ---> Ab ---> C, which is (un)commonly known as harmonic major.

Note that three major thirds stacked in order yield C ---> E ---> G# ----> C, and four minor thirds yield C ---> Eb ---> Gb ---> A ---> C, both of which are degenerate. Also note that this "third stacking" method insures we leave out theoretical scales that include multiple half-steps in sequence, like C-C#-D, or large jumps, like C-D-F. We find that ethnic scales that contain degenerate sequences, like Hungarian Minor, generally function in a chromatic way, their multiple half-steps used as passing notes only.

It is surely possible to include many more scales. Most of those scales are harmonically inaccessible, and melodically incomprehensible. As our inclusion of scales expands, the power of this type of melodic analysis diminishes. It is a judgment call, but one well thought out and justified by virtually all Western music and attendant theory.]

Still with me?

There are three other scales, besides the major scale, that are worthy of inclusion in this system. They are:

Major Scale: WWHWWWH (for completeness)

Melodic Minor Scale: WHWWWWH

Harmonic Minor Scale: WHWWHTH

Harmonic Major Scale: WWHWHTH

The symbol T, of course, stands for “three half steps”. The three intervalic patterns shown above are unique and non-superimposable upon both each other and the major scale. Also, for completeness, here are all 28 modes (from 4 parent scales), listed in lateral order, written in the format (unique numerical pattern) Name Of Mode – INTERVALICSTRUCTURE. This is mostly for reference and you can skip it; many of the nonmajor modes are not used in Western music very often and so have only working names.

Major Scale Modes

1. (2 4 5 7 9 11) Ionian – WWHWWWH

2. (2 3 5 7 9 10) Dorian – WHWWWHW

3. (1 3 5 7 8 10) Phrygian – HWWWHWW

4. (2 4 6 7 9 11) Lydian – WWWHWWH

5. (2 4 5 7 9 10) Mixolydian – WWHWWHW

6. (2 3 5 7 8 10) Aeolian – WHWWHWW

7. (1 3 5 6 8 10) Locrian – HWWHWWW

Melodic Minor Scale Modes

1. (2 3 5 7 9 11) Melodic Minor – WHWWWWH

2. (1 3 5 7 9 10) Dorian b2 – HWWWWHW

3. (2 4 6 8 9 11) Lydian Augmented – WWWWHWH

4. (2 4 6 7 9 10) Lydian Dominant – WWWHWHW

5. (2 4 5 7 8 10) Mixolydian b6 – WWHWHWW

6. (2 3 5 6 8 10) Locrian #2 – WHWHWWW

7. (1 3 4 6 8 10) Altered – HWHWWWW

Harmonic Minor Scale Modes

1. (2 3 5 7 8 11) Harmonic Minor – WHWWHTH

2. (1 3 5 6 9 10) Locrian Natural 6 – HWWHTHW

3. (2 4 5 8 9 11) Ionian #5 – WWHTHWH

4. (2 3 6 7 9 10) Dorian #4 – WHTHWHW

5. (1 4 5 7 8 10) Spanish Phrygian – HTHWHWW

6. (3 4 6 7 9 11) Lydian #2 – THWHWWH

7. (1 3 4 6 8 9) Altered bb7 – HWHWWHT

Harmonic Major Scale Modes

1. (2 4 5 7 8 11) Harmonic Major – WWHWHTH

2. (2 3 5 6 9 10) Dorian b5 – WHWHTHW

3. (1 3 4 7 8 10) Phrygian b4 – HWHTHWW

4. (2 3 6 7 9 11) Lydian b3 – WHTHWWH

5. (1 4 5 7 9 10) Dominant b2 – HTHWWHW

6. (3 4 6 8 9 11) Lydian Augmented #2 – THWWHWH

7. (1 3 5 6 8 9) Locrian bb7 – HWWHWHT

–

The circle of melodic dissonance

Relating only the major modes to each other by SPMC is easy enough. It travels linearly, from Lydian to Locrian, one SPMC at a time. Relating all 28 valid modes, however, is considerably more challenging. One of the simpler ways to organize such a description is in a circle; thus the circle of “melodic dissonance” was born. Music thrives on dissonance; and melodic color within a given line is acheived by subtly (or not, as is your wont) reaffirming and breaking various tension barriers. I see the circle as a “how-to” manual on all the various ways, both orthodox and unusual, to shift between acceptable modes; I will get into that briefly. First, this is how the circle is put together.

Here is a symbolic representation of how the major modes are related by SPMC. The numerals correspond to the numbers in the previous section; for example, Dorian is the 2nd mode of major, so Dorian is represented by a number 2. The circle I have arbitarily designated as symbolic of belonging to the major scale. A line between numbers shows the SPMC connection; the line between 7 and 3 indicates that Phrygian and Locrian are separated by a single SPMC. Not included is the six-note pattern of each mode: they can be referred to in the table above.

Then, we will add the melodic minor modes to the circle; they are represented similarly. The symbol of a square indicates that a given mode belongs to the melodic minor scale. For example, look at the relationship between mode 1 of major (Ionian) and mode 1 of melodic minor (Melodic Minor). They share an SPMC relationship: (2 4 5 7 9 11) <–> (2 3 5 7 9 11). And so it is with the rest of them.

Here is the full circle of melodic dissonance (don’t mind the slightly blue square; picked the wrong color). Click to enlarge.

–

Parting thoughts

So what we have arrived at is a system that describes how to shift between modes of several types of scales, and (roughly) the kind of tension that such shifts entail. A great many things are implied from this circle, too many to discuss in this post. I will make just one example. See how 7-triangle, the 7th mode of the harmonic minor scale, isn’t directly linked to the main major scale series? Not only that, but that it can only be “reached” by “traveling” though Locrian? This distance is explainable by looking at the mode itself: (1 3 4 6 8 9) Altered bb7. Note that the tonic is reached from one side by 1-0, and the other side from 9-12, a three-half-step jump. This jump really increases the internal tension of the tonic; and 9 is a half-step itself away from 8, which it prefers over 12. This tension is graphically described by the mode’s distance from the stable modes, like Dorian and Mixolydian. I’m not sure why this is, but I’m still working on it. And of course, all of this is still a work in progress. I will post more thoughts about melodic theory as I decipher them. Enjoy!

Graham

–

Most popular music is written in either a major scale or a minor scale. Major scales sound happy and jubilant; minor scales are dark, stratospheric, melancholy. It is instructive to understand, however, that minor is simply a mode of major; for instance, C major and A minor both consist of the white notes on a piano. No flats, no sharps. Even though the keys used are identical, if the all-white-keys song is played with C as “home base”, it will sound happy, whereas if A is used as the “base”, it will sound sad.

In this way I can say that minor, or Aeolian (the original Greek term), is the sixth mode of the major scale. The major mode (Ionian in Greek) is the first mode of the major scale. And by the major scale I mean this specific sequence of seven notes, selected from the Western idiom of twelve possible notes:

C (C#) D (D#) E F (F#) G (G#) A (A#) B

The bolded notes represent the scale of C major. The notes in parentheses are the black notes on a piano; the notes that are not in the C major scale. Note that the major scale follows the pattern of two steps from C to D (skipping C#), two steps from D to E (skipping D#), one step from E to F, two steps from F to G (skipping F#), and so on. [Aside: I don't mean to be needlessly confusing, but traditionally a single step is referred to in most music notation as a "half step", and two steps as a "whole step", so I will use this terminology as I continue. Quick e.g.: C to D is a whole step. E to F is a half step.] Written out in this way, the major scale is simply whole-whole-half-whole-whole-whole-half, or WWHWWWH for shorthand. This pattern is consistent regardless of the note one begins on: G major is simply G A B C D E F# G, for example, and E major is E F# G# A B C# D# E. It is left as an exercise to the reader to verify these scales’ patterns.

Now if I keep the scale the same, but start my step-counting on A, I get the universal pattern of the minor mode (Aeolian): WHWWHWW. It is a mode of the major scale because the beginning point of the scale is simply shifted over, but the underlying pattern is the same. The astute reader will wonder: “what about the other modes? Doesn’t the major scale theoretically have seven beginning-points, and thus seven modes?” This is exactly the case. In order, the seven modes of the major scale are called: Ionian (major), Dorian, Phyrgian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian (minor), and Locrian. They are all distinctly different in mood; some are darker, some are light and airy. They are related laterally, in that their step patterns are all derived from the major scale; for example, in a given melody, I could shift from C Ionian (C D E F G A B C) up to D Dorian (D E F G A B C D), and then to G Mixolydian (G A B C D E F G), and so forth and so on. This requires changing the home base of my song, though. The listener will clearly note the song “moving” from a home base of C, to D, to G. What about shifting around within a given tonal center? What if I want to add color and flavor to a melody, but keep it strictly in C?

There is a second way that the modes are related; it is a melodic relationship, in that the underlying “home base” does not change. For example, I can shift from C Ionian (WWHWWWH) to C Mixolydian (WWHWWHW). The step-patterns make it less clear as to what is going on, so I will write it out:

C Ionian (C D E F G A B C) —-> C Mixolydian (C D E F G A Bb C)

I would recommend mapping the step-patterns to the actual piano notes as a useful exercise. What’s the difference between Phrygian and Locrian, for example? What notes change? What notes stay the same?

Also, note that the shift from C Ionian to C Mixolydian is quite subtle; only a single note changes, and only by a half-step at that. It is the smallest possible melodic change. This is a useful concept; it provides color without the listener consciously pulling away from the song and thinking “well, that was obvious.” For those taught in traditional harmonic counterpoint, it is like shifting from C major to G major; only one tiny thing is changing. Here on out I will refer to this concept as SPMC (Smallest Possible Melodic Change). All of the modes of major are related by SPMC, which is spelled out in exhaustive detail below.

C Lydian (C D E F# G A B C) <—-> C Ionian [major] (C D E F G A B C)

C Ionian [major] (C D E F G A B C) <—-> C Mixolydian (C D E F G A Bb C)

C Mixolydian (C D E F G A Bb C) <—-> C Dorian (C D Eb F G A Bb C)

C Dorian (C D Eb F G A Bb C) <—-> C Aeolian [minor] (C D Eb F G Ab Bb C)

C Aeolian [minor] (C D Eb F G Ab Bb C) <—-> C Phrygian (C Db Eb F G Ab Bb C)

C Phrygian (C Db Eb F G Ab Bb C) <—-> C Locrian (C Db Eb F Gb Ab Bb C)

There are a few interesting epiphenomena that arise out of SPMC. Lydian is the “lightest” of the seven modes of major; it is very airy and carefree-sounding. Locrian, on the other hand, is the “darkest”, very sinister and primordial. The closer a mode is to Lydian, the lighter in mood; the closer a mode to Locrian, the darker the mood. (Dorian is centralized and is neutral in color.) Also note that when “traveling” from Lydian to Locrian via SPMC, the note that changes always descends, never ascends.

Additionally, every note of the scale descends by one half-step at some point in this system, except for home base, the C. While it is technically possible to “move” from C Locrian to B Lydian, the note that changes in this shift is the tonic itself (C moves down a half step to B). By SPMC rules, this isn’t allowed, as moving the tonic has a jarring effect on the listener, and is not considered to be a melodic shift, but rather a harmonic one. And we have to draw the line somewhere, otherwise bestiality and pedophilia will become commonplace. And we don’t want that, do we?

–

See if you can follow me a little further. The sharp/flat system has been primarily designed for use in the major/minor system; when speaking modally, it’s a lotta look, to quote a famous fashion designer. All the flats and sharps tend to obscure the simplicity of SPMC. If C is assigned the number 0, C# the number 1, all the way up to B = 11, we can study the system numerically, and also universally, as any home base can be assumed.  0 can just as easily be G#, or E. Also, since the home base can never change by definition, it’s not necessary to include it. Here’s an example to show what I’m talking about.

C Mixolydian is C D E F G A Bb C. If we assume that C = 0, and continue from there, then C Mixolydian can also be described as 0 2 4 5 7 9 10 12. Then simply note that by SPMC rules, the note C will never change, so the numbers 0 and 12 can be omitted, which leaves us with a nice universal way to describe all Mixolydian modes. Mixolydian is (2 4 5 7 9 10). Reread this paragraph, then prove to yourself that Aeolian (minor) is represented by (2 3 5 7 8 10).

Here’s the SPMC major mode order, in this new easier-to-look-at (hopefully) format:

( 2 4 6 7 9 11) Lydian

(2 4 5 7 9 11) Ionian (major)

(2 4 5 7 9 10) Mixolydian

(2 3 5 7 9 10) Dorian

(2 3 5 7 8 10) Aeolian (minor)

(1 3 5 7 8 10) Phrygian

(1 3 5 6 8 10) Locrian

Look at how only one number changes between each set of modes. Think about this for a little while, shifting from mode to mode. The really fun stuff is just around the bend.

And we race past downtown Boston, tunneling underneath skyscraper and street, barreling eastward towards the Atlantic without breath wasted or moment savored.

And the smell of that sad and salty air! Fresh off the ocean vast and vacant! The distant streetlights of suburbs twinkle in the urban dark, not points of light so much as stars that spell out human constellation. Past Charlestown, past Everett, past Winthrop and Malden; old streets I’ve not seen in fifty weeks move towards me like adoring fans, pushing up for a rockstar’s smile and signature, and then flittering off again, ne’er to be known or remembered.

And at last the road that has been my guide for the past three thousand miles, dear Interstate 90, the vital eastern artery, shuffles off its concrete coil, ended. From Missoula past Boston, three days, seventy hours. Ever east. Godlike in perfect attainment, we pull over and park and catch our breath and look at each other, Sean and I, just lock eyes for the briefest of seconds, and know, and look calmly ahead, blankly into the dark street, human and vulnerable at last, some kind of simultaneous exhalation of the world’s breath, and just fucking know.

We step out of the car. We grab a few bags each. We walk, maybe two blocks to the apartment. Boyd is outside and he starts to get up to help us. The street and sky hang motionless. It’s that post-midnight softness of Revere, MA, my one-time home, that old and sacred humidity, the sad damp trees and the thick sidewalk, the silent flat street, the high buzz of the clustered power lines overhead, the sound and sight of the things I know and knew, the thin echo of indoor voices waiting for our late late late arrival, the orange glow of Boyd’s cigarette as he sits on the downstairs porch and smiles broadly, goddammit, all of this, this nostalgia, this tightness in the chest, this impending release, this bitter pill. Makes me feel like I have never left; I’m still living there, up on the second floor, my computer’s white cerebral glow giving the crimson red of the old bedroom that sweet vespertine pallor of long days and longer nights, those claustrophobic winter weeks when all five of us, Evan and Boyd and Alex and Beth and I, would sit and wait for the day to happen, those screaming summer soirees of drunken valor and terrible poker playing and midnight cigarette runs, all memories just buzzing through me now, torn in half, fucked, consumed, living both in past and present, oh yes. It is good to be back.

So we move all the necessities up into the apartment and make our appearance. The place is packed. Boyd, Evan, Alex, Gwen, Jess, to be sure, but also Raju and Pevner and Beth2, newer friends from the last two years I was at MIT, and Dmax, a good old friend of mine who spins DnB, and has these impossibly arcane insights about the modern world and its trappings, and is otherwise grudgingly pursuing what some would call a career at the time of this writing. I miss them all so much.

Everyone is impatient to get this party started, but I insist on distributing the gifts first. They are unwrapped to a combination of hysterical giggling and general awe. Lists are boring so I’ll just mention a few of the presents: I got Jess one of those Playskool basketball hoops that stands about four feet tall and comes with a rubber basketball about the size of a cantaloupe. Ages 3-7. Boyd got a baseball cap embroidered with the words “Living Legend”. And so on. The energy in the room at this point is starting to become viscous. People start floating, drifting around the room aimlessly, chatting and screaming and alive with this terrible powerful force. Elastic friendships, pulled apart only to snap back together tonight. Conversations between seperate beings that are so idiolectic and personal and revelatory and pregnant with multiple meanings that it’s like twins meeting for the first time. Fuck soul mates: this is a jigsaw puzzle of soul, complete in one flashing instant, the complete picture so intimidating and electric that it can’t possibly be described, only witnessed. An apartment of deities bursting at the seams. Plus like half of the people there are high, and Sean and I are running on sleep deprivation, and it’s warm and sweaty in the main room with eleven people and one cat all circling around, and it’s pretty late at night so people are starting to get the crazies, and there are six or seven bottles of liquor sitting there on the central coffee table, mocking and taunting and waiting to be opened and consumed. So we get to it.

This is a party that I have held annually in various locations, once a year, since 2004. Like all good parties, it has a theme, a theme which is pretty much necessarily a little self-loathing and -deprecatory and -aggrandizing. Also it’s flat out a great idea. To wit:

The Fifteen Minute Drinking Party

1. One cannot drink before the party begins.

2. One cannot drink after the party is concluded.

A few people get out stopwatches and keep track of the time. Normally the party is held in the smallest room available, but this year there are too many people in attendance. There’s a countdown in seconds, beginning with ten. The bottles are uncapped and uncorked, glasses are readied like musket shot. A handful of us preload. Exuding smiles. Vodka and Hpnotiq and Jager. Silence. Anticipation. Rum and gin and Crown Royal. Ssssh. Total glee, of a sort. That instantaneous moment right as you jump off the diving board, before your feet have left ground, but after you’ve pushed your center of gravity out past the board, your fate somehow both sealed and open to whatever may come. And then:

Splash!

I take four shots of vodka in as many minutes, and then wait for a moment for the stomach to regroup. Sweat is pouring out of the walls almost. Someone breaks out a shot glass that stands eight inches tall. This does not end well. I lock eyes with various friends. After the first five minutes people start to talk, the pained grunts grow sparse. Unwritten rule: if you drink so much that you vomit, you lose. It’s a fine line. Fast music catalyzes the continued debauchery. I get into a brief but serious conversation with Raju and then Dmax about plans for visiting Montana. There is some screaming somewhere. I am hailed by someone as a king. A girl tries to get up but can’t. It takes about ten minutes for the effects to kick in. It’s very warm inside. No air conditioning. The main table starts to get caked with a thin layer of 80-proof resin. People knock shit over, things are upended. And just like that, the party is over. We all shout: “One minute!”  “Thirty seconds!” “Five, four, three, two, one, stop!”

Of course most people forget to stop drinking. I’m sipping on a beer, but with no drunken intent; I’m thirsty and I haven’t thought it out. A metaphysical line is crossed. Pevner damages my shoes with long distance stomach acid; fortunately I took them off earlier. Someone leaves and falls down the stairs in lieu of walking. Sean and I get into a beer fight. People’s socks are sticky. A cake, which appears out of nowhere, is partially devoured and the rest smeared on various people and objects. Shit gets acausal. The tension built up from coast-to-coast car travel is partially responsible. Fury unleashed. Things don’t wind down; they collapse. I lived here for fifteen months in 2005 and 2006, and the poster that we original five taped to the door is still there, drawn crudely on a sheet of computer paper, albeit sticky and dusty: Welcome To The CDF: Competitive Drinking Fortress. Ah, youth.

—

I come to, knocked out of a coma, just like that. Asleep and then not. Somehow resting in my sleeping bag. Sprawled out on a futon, headaching, uneasy, but together and undamaged. The floor is littered with cans, bottles, colored liquids, food, dinnerware, clothes. I sit up and immediately regret it. Everyone has left except for Sean and the people that live here. My T-shirt is stained pink for some reason. The place slowly comes to life as we compare notes and clean up. It’s about noon. Alex cleans some cake out of his ear. I change socks and put on my backup pair of shoes. Four of us – Evan, myself, Sean, Boyd – go out to lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant and linger over our food like alcoholics in their fifties, heads down, burping and groaning, old clocks rusty with age. I could wax philosophical about the human need to alter consciousness at this point, or justify my bizarre and self-damaging choices as paneceatic, a treatment for my own personal ills accumulated through Western isolation and three days of endless gazing into the horizon’s maw. I won’t. There’s no need. This and all parties, regardless or in spite of their objective immaturity, are brought into being by a secret contract of camaraderie. The rules are personal, the societies veiled. The fact that I am not ashamed but proud of my stories, the way that we all relish our “this one time” and “I can’t believe that I” narratives, is so very vitally important. Book clubs, bar friends, best friends, bands. Community. Be all, end all.

Some other irrelevant things happen. We shop for CDs, play some strategic board games, indulge in a little beer pong. We eat at a Brazilian restaurant where the waiters bring out just-cooked meat, skewered on swords. A brief nod or motion tablewards grants the user endless chicken hearts, garlic pork, kielbasa. Evan chauffers us around Boston in my trusted Subaru for a whole day before realizing that the emergency brake is still activated. Sean meets up with a good friend of his, Black Metal Justin. BMJ and his girl live on a boat at the harbor, having sold most of their possessions. A subletted house pays the food and gasoline bills. We gaze across the harbor from his boat, watch the sun set, listen to Motorhead, drink shitty beers. I meet up with Chris for a little while, and we hang out in Central Square. Eat some Ethiopian food. Walk around Cambridge. And all of a sudden, two days have gone by. I have done nothing, it’s 6 am, I’m groggy from razor-thin sleep, Sean is still awake, the car needs to be packed, I need a shower, my clothes are dirty, the car needs gas, we haven’t packed any food; yet I can hear the low moan of the road just below us. I am on old time once again. The sweet siren beckons. We can’t resist. We head out into the summer dawn, Pennsylvania-bound.

So I wake up all of a sudden, red bleating alarm, bleary-eyed on a couch, not really knowing how I got there. A dog walks over from an adjacent room and starts slobbering on my face, and then it hits me: I’m in fucking Detroit. Kind of. Novi, MI is a distant suburb, thick with million-dollar houses and luxury SUVs, hot off the lot both, the downtown qualia of carbon monoxide and cramped alley a world away. My 20th century car looks strangely out of place here, its caked-on dirt and bug-smeared windshield a soiled and depraved antithesis to this sterile and silent designer town. Not to mention my own shall I say bedraggled appearance: driver’s clothes, slept-in jeans, a faded gray tee that was born black… I am anti-Novi.

I make small talk with Sean’s parents as the suspension on the car sinks lower and lower with new accoutrements. Bagged clothes, CDs burned, a blue cooler stacked with snack; the attainment of all things road. I am impatient to be off but remain polite, my fervent glances at the whitening sky the only giveaway. This is not the West. It is hot, HOT, hot, a preheated oven flat with white heat. Sweat rolls without motion caused. It isn’t quite ninety degrees when we at long last depart, but it is close. A/C, so frivolous in the Mountain West, is here a stark necessity.

I follow Sean’s wise-man local directions to the freeway, and we put on some thrash metal. The first song of the day is the travelers’ morning joe, as powerful as coffee. Wake up. Be real. Music is a catalyst for true understanding of the abstract concept of freedom. Even if you are not a musician, there is a song somewhere that was written for you, that will release you, that will make you free. It makes you not you, it makes you the only thing that matters. It makes you the only thing. It tells a story that only you can hear. So we agree on the rule to abstain from music before rolling on to the wide blue shield highways, the Interstate. It is a totem of freedom, this first song, a morning prayer to safe travel. A fine song wishes in the day with splendor. Ah, and the Eisenhower System, glorious in its web-like connectivity and fluid motion, the true blue highways, the speed corridors of America. The relationship of the words Interstate and Internet is not lost on me. If a Sunday drive on your local byway is a delicate waltz, each moment seen and fully realized, then blue travel is a mosh pit, in some ways predetermined but chaotic, whizzing by, unseen in its power of primal connection. We travel without moving.

It is between 10 and 11 am. We are to arrive in Boston this very evening. Sean drives most of the way to Boston; I take over at a Mass Pike rest stop just outside of Worcester, MA to do my own personal navigating on the home stretch. A fine high speed burn, the day passing like water under our stolid feet. Partially cloudy and bespeckled with sun. A rainbow greets our New England arrival, a harbinger of endless perfection to come. Not much else happens in the interim between MI and MA; we jam out to tunes, we tell jokes, we act like idiots. Exempli gratia:

“Ooh I like that part where the drummer is like dadakaBAMkaBAM!”

“Is that in five?”

*drumming on parts of car ensues*

“Dream Theater is always interrupting their own riffs to be progressive.”

“We should write a letter to Dream Theater about that….”

“…but interrupt ourselves in the letter to prove like a meta-point!”

” ‘Dear Dream Theater, Why do you always inter-Dear Dream Theater, Why do you Dear Dream Theater…’ “

” ‘Dear Dream Theater, Why do Dream Theater, why do Theater, Theater?’”

*laughing to the point where it’s technically impairing the driver*

There’s a special kind of humor here which is hard to explain. Maybe it’s simply sheer delight at the world and all its strange idiosyncrasies. I don’t know. It’s like we’re children or very old people, wise and recursive, laughing just because we can. Related: there’s a game called Color Or Country which is played by a group of people, who take turns naming either a color or a country. The point of the game is to NOT name a country. If you do, you lose. The meta-point being that unless you intentionally lose, you can’t lose. So it’s not really a game, per se. But the intentionality of the game is the very thing that makes it fun. In some confusing and analogy-stretching way, the small kernel of truth that Sean and I manifest when together is the same truth that makes this game worthwhile. It’s the same truth that makes anything worthwhile. What it is I’m not sure I can express. It’s a feeling, a sense of things, something overwhelming. What it is not is a thing, an idea, an action expressed.

—

So earlier I briefly mentioned the intent to buy presents for some old friends I will be meeting at the apartment I used to live in in Boston. Five people, two presents each, one permanent and the second temporary. (I’ll also be throwing a special kind of party when I arrive, so just remember that fact and I’ll fill in those juicy details when the time comes.) The people are:

Evan. My brother, glorious in a dark and powerful way. He listens to exclusively metal and is a walking metal encyclopedia. I’d bet money that he could rattle off 200 metal bands as an involuntary reflex. He is the tightest rhythm guitarist I am aware of. Although fledging at the time, his taste for fine beers has since flourished and he prefers (when the $$$ is available) fine meads and ales over PBR. Also he likes obscure strategy games, talking in falsetto to kitties, and just being purposefully and intensely offensive. I love him. He got the short end of the stick when my parents divorced, and I hope that the rift between him and my mom will eventually close. Words can be sticks and stones sometimes. We can finish each others sentences and laugh at invisible jokes.

Gwen. His girlfriend. I hadn’t met her at the time, and had only briefly spoken to her previously. Gwen and Evan are two pieces in a 2-piece jigsaw puzzle; my s/o Beth treats Gwen like a sister-in-law, and I’m sure it won’t be too long until that legally comes to pass. She wears a lot of black and at the time, lived upstairs in the same apartment. Now they live together in a small cottage by the seashore, and simultaneously raise cats and try not to get so intoxicated that they (not the cats) forget how to eat. Beth knows her better than I do – I hope to remedy that.

Alex. When I was living in the dorms he became Alex2, one of four Alexi in the building at the time. Most persons still or at one point affiliated with that dorm (Senior Haus) still call him this. He’s the quirkiest person I know; his speaking voice varies between a lilting murmur and passionate screaming, ne’er to be averaged. He’s got this Pokemon thing. He likes video games the same way I like video games: an intersection of the mindless perfect attainment of high scores and cruelly sadistic difficulty. At one point we were best friends but distance is beginning to split us apart. Dammit.

Jess. Alex’s girlfriend, and Evan’s ex-girlfriend. She tends to be very silent, so I know her the least well. She, like Evan, also appreciates offensiveness for its own sake. She also likes creepy Japanese things like Alex does. I don’t know much else about her, but the fact that she can continue to be chill in the presence of an ex-bf speaks volumes, in what language I am uncertain. Suffice it to say.

Boyd. Boyd is a good friend of both myself and Evan, but mostly Evan. Evan and Boyd act like a married couple when together, always bitching and moaning. It’s indicative of deep empathy whose value cannot be overstated. Boyd moved up to Boston to get this apartment sight unseen, a decision which I both respect and fear. People tend to like Boyd; moreso than all of us, he is a people person. Between his easy-going nature and his empathy for all, he’ll be the most successful of us yet, just you wait. Like myself, many people have never seen Boyd angry. We both also share a hesitation to express our deepest of deeps.

Sean and Chris are the other heroes of this tale. They are novels unto themselves; I will crack that nut when I come to it.

—

So we’re outside of Worcester, Sean has just given the wheel to me. We plug in the new Slayer album and floor it, forced to maintain cruising speed of like 65 on this damned Eastern coast. Loud, luxuriant, windows down, Red Bull in hand. Metaphorically screaming at the night sky. It is 11 pm, pushing on midnight. The skyscrapers loom towards us, the city swells with white sparkling force. We are the great ones who choose all paths. We are the dreaming giants who exist only as percolating thoughts of the world-at-large, bubbling up for a brief second then floating back down to the vast sunless sea. We are, we become, we breathe as one.

Welcome to the city, it’s going to get crazy.

“Those who look upon road trips not as a method of travel but rather a hobby frequently describe themselves as Road Enthusiasts or Professional Road Trippers. These motorists take the concept of road trips very seriously, some have devoted time and resources to the pursuit of the hobby. Although there are many personalities in the Road Tripping Community, many road enthusiasts advocate sharing the roadways, preservation of historic places and natural spaces, and safe driving… The goal of road trip enthusiasts is to experience the culture, nature and history of the route, and to celebrate the open road.”

Celebration of the open road. What does that mean?

Every time I glimpse the interstate, which runs through the north of town, I feel this crazy pent-up desire within me to get on it and just go, not to escape but to revel in the unknown landscapes beyond the road’s bend. Whenever I stop at a gas station, especially around sunset or after dark, I can’t help but take a deep breath and imagine that I’m in South Dakota, or Arizona, or Iowa, or Tennessee, and that I have six more hours to go until it’s time to pull over and check in at the first motel I see, unannounced. I have this impulse within me to check the route between my house and faraway places that I hear mentioned in conversation or on the news, just to see what roads I’d need to take and how long the journey would last, sleeping breaks notwithstanding. My father is a cartographer and as long as I can remember there have been maps on my bedroom walls. The strange placenames of cities unknown. Duluth. Winnipeg. Tulsa. Mobile. El Paso. The rolling Midwestern fields at dawn, the fog just beginning to lift. The cool alpine air of a mountain pass allowing snow to lay even in September. The glistening of the city’s skyscrapers, peeking over the horizon against the racing sky. The treeline stretching against ranges unnamed, brown dirt mounds uprooted from earth’s ancient center defying the erosive desert wind. The neon blink of a twenty-four hour diner reflected in wet blacktop. The smell of gasoline. The biting cold of Wyoming’s winter dark. The hush puppies and fried catfish of southern Appalachia. The road. The ever winding and endless road.

—–

13 June 2007, 10 am MDT, Missoula MT

Was going to leave at 7 am to make a good long day out of it but finished packing at 3 am and decided that a good night of sleep was the key to maintaining a consistent 12+ hour a day driving schedule. I roll the car over to the Cenex gas station that abuts I-90 and clean the windshield, fill up, grab a liter of Gatorade. My goal here is a < 10 minute break every three hours at the most, a little foolhardy but not inconceivable, as for now I am the sole traveler. I glance over the packing job as I fill up the car manually. Don’t like to leave the car filling on its own as I have a superstitious belief that the gas won’t turn off automatically and the tank’ll overflow. The presents I’ve prepared are wrapped and I’ve brought a bit of wrapping paper with me, as I’m not quite finished shopping for the eventual recipients. I figure that I’ll pick up the remainder on the way.

The first taste of the road is always a little harsh, much like that first shot of Beam or glass of cabernet. Thoughts race: Am I really doing this? Can I do this? What if something happens? What’s going to happen? Won’t this get a little boring? The new Rush album is in the player, an upbeat choice, a throwback to an old high school conversation that Rush’s Fly By Night is truly the be-all and end-all to starting any journey:

Start a new chapter
Find what I’m after
It’s changing every day
The change of a season
Is enough of a reason
To want to get away

Quiet and pensive
My thoughts apprehensive
The hours drift away
Leaving my homeland
Playing a lone hand
My life begins today

The car purrs eastward past hilly coniferous distant peaks and grassy valleys, and soon I’m stopping for a quick bite to eat at a Subway at the Virginia City exit just half an hour past Butte. It’s still morning in the mountain west so the temperature hovers below 80. I eat in the car and am eager to keep time, not normally preferring interstates but on a schedule that defies mention. I’ve been listening to Kerouac’s On The Road on CD, and it mirrors my emotional state, my thirst and desire to almost be ahead of myself, to be moving so relentlessly that I turn around and see my own body just trying to catch up. The road, although prosaic in physical form, is something that you can lose, something that you can find. It’s as if you physically become your unreachable desires, if only for an instant, the very fleeting nature of their glorious attainment inherent in their power. You reach for it. You fail, you succeed, you move on. You are not a thing. You are an action.

Alone in my thoughts, I fill up the car, eat, and relieve myself at each stop, in order to lessen their irritating frequency. Billings in Montana, Sundance in Wyoming, Wall in South Dakota; I follow I-90′s relentless track east as the sun races past overhead. The rolling western peaks gradually flatten out, becoming rolling brushland with the occasional reddened butte or exposed rock jutting up into the sky. Sagebrush is ubiquitous and trees only exist in the front yards of small town ranch houses. Hot and cloudless, the Oregon Trail in reverse. Such a thing as traffic has never graced this lonely stretch of road. Stripped tires lay across the road in places, clean-up crews being only slightly more frequent than accidents. As if on a stimulant binge, I drink little and eat less. I live only to move.

The sun sets right as I past into Central Time, my day shifting forward an hour into midnight. The road is my lullaby, I lurch at the wheel. A sudden downpour is a sign that my day is over. I pull into the first town I see, Murdo, SD, which is surprisingly vacancy-free given its nominal population, and check into a Motel 6, exhausted and vacant. A routine begins that I wish persisted to this day – I check the atlas to see how far I’ve come and set tomorrow’s goal; I check the weather on the motel’s TV; I call Beth and others to verify my progress and health; I set the alarm for an early start. I sleep hard, as if I’ve been swimming all day instead of sitting and staring into the constant and shifting horizon.

14 June 2007, 6 am CDT, Murdo SD

This isn’t really the perfect road trip, if only because I know so many people along the way. I don’t consider myself a social butterfly, but the friends I make are friends for life, and I won’t drive past a potential rendezvous, as limited as it makes my route and my timing. Yes, the perfect road trip is solitary and open, both in scope and in meaning. Another time, perhaps. I haven’t seen my friend Sean in more than a year, and to make this long journey financially and emotionally viable, he and another will join forces with me and run the road together. Not to mention that he’s one of the best people ever.

I wake up gradually, around 6:15 in the morning. I don’t really remember sleeping. Even my subconscious is rapt in anticipation. Get moving. Get up and get out there. I dawdle over continental breakfast but see nothing worth the effort; it’s time to begin the day’s momentum. I’ll get breakfast on the road. Outside a panorama of soft fog and rolling green farmland spreads before me. The day is beautifully silent, holding its breath, wishing for something from a dream. The guttural chug of my car’s engine is a crime, gasping to life against the sleepy wordless rhythm of the morning, but I feel the road’s call. It is urgent. Plus, I don’t want to be late. Damn destinations!

Within a half hour I find my place on the road, cruising at 75 mph. The fog is burned away by the rising sun, and the last wisps of mountain coolness evaporate with it. It’s the summer, after all, and my childhood experience tells me that today and the rest of these road days will be hot, sizzling, scorchers all. Farm silos, barns, wheat fields, exit signs, eighteen wheelers, construction signs; they all fade into the mile-after-mile grind. Excepting a hurried check to make sure that the fluid leaking from my engine is condensed water from the air conditioner, the horizon rolls out smoothly, effortlessly. I feel the line between the present and the future start to blur, I’m moving so fast. I exist a little after you do. Not late but prescient. Moving eastward at this rate I feel the power to predict, to transcend, to know. I take I-29 south to just north of Omaha then continue towards the east coast on I-80. I stop occasionally for snacks and to stretch my legs. I’m tired, I’m exhausted, the day runs before me; yet I unquestioningly push onwards. East of Des Moines I run into civilization – there is traffic on the road now, the speed limit slows to a stately 65. The flat sprawling cornfields and straight roads grow dull over time. That and the inability to push past the thrall of fellow travelers angers me, and it just gets worse and worse as I approach Chicago.

Fuck Chicago. I still have never been there and seeing as I can’t get within an hour of it without hitting bumper to bumper four-lane gridlock, I never will. Oh well. It’s clearly my fault; I should have picked a better route. Yes, you’ll agree, it’s very boring, the analysis of the best route to take and making good time, but I assure you that my dad and I have spent hours poring over this very issue. Fact: My children will have maps on their bedroom walls.

Somehow I make way past Chicago and northern Indiana, over to I-94, now in western Michigan, right as the last thread of dusky orange fades to the west. I’ve lost another hour to time zones, which is pushing back my arrival time considerably. I must’ve forgotten to take it into account. Night driving does little for the soul. The machine-like truck traffic lumbering on towards Detroit does nothing to help. I’m delirious, sick with exhaustion and the endless road. The last two hours are the hardest I’ve ever driven. No more road trips, I swear. This is inhuman. I’m doing it, I’m almost there, yet I’m somehow failing. I’m hungover from driving. I’ll never drive again.

Three in the morning, I roll off the interstate a little west of Detroit follow printed out directions to Novi, an upscale suburb near Ann Arbor. The road is wet with night, humid in the eastern air, steamy dark humidity that I’ve forgotten. The trees looming over the road are thick with life and I’ve forgotten them in my single year living in arid Montana. It’s still warm, at least eighty. I idle quietly down the last street, mansions on either side. I pull over and rest for a minute, marveling in my own power. 36 hours ago I was in Missoula, Montana, on the west side of the Rockies. Now I’m within sight of the city lights of Detroit.

I go and knock on the door, my friend Sean answers. We embrace and are awkward for a moment as it’s been a couple years, but barriers fall quickly as we listen to music and jam out to some proto-metal in his computer room. I feel like the time spent apart has fallen away, nonexistent. We chat, we reminisce, we laugh. I manage to last about an hour before I wander off to a spare bed, happy in my ability to do what on the face of it seems impossible. I am proud of myself, my car, my world. I set the alarm and fade. This is only the beginning.

1. Imagine a vast landscape, seen via bird’s eye view. Mountains stretch out into the distance. A lonely stream trickles past rocky outcrops and tufts of cat’s tails. The remainder of the ground swells with rolling grasslands that become more and more treed as they approach the distant peaks.

This is the theoretical structure of the song, which exists at all times. The song is a linear exploration of this landscape. For example, the song could start at the stream’s level, and follow the steam through a valley for a bit, and then raise up slowly to reveal the entire area, and how the stream trickles down from mountain springs and snowmelt. Or, the song can start at bird’s eye and slowly focus in on a single tuft of grass, and show how the grass’s water supply and attendant wind come from larger forces that were introduced in the beginning of the song.

2. A song is a conversation. Each voice in the song tells a difficult story; perhaps they argue, perhaps they augment. There is a conflict or there isn’t. By and by the conversation quiets or doesn’t, and the song ends.

3. A song is a description of adaption or evolution. An organism is challenged by some difficulty – it must adapt to overcome it, or fail. The song details what happens to the organism as it struggles through its environment.

4. A song is static. It doesn’t move or change; it describes nothing, it does not evolve. It is the Big Freeze, fragments of atoms and quarks at thermal equilibrium, for all time. It is lifeless, yet foreseeable, inevitable.

5. A song is an opinion; an idea is presented, and the song agrees or disagrees with it, and either backs up its claims with evidence or argues from the heart. The idea can be objectively right or wrong; the song is a value system, placed in the opinion’s context. It is the logical result of perturbing a given system.

It’s a sorry state of affairs in today’s music industry. Music-as-business has been around since about the 1920s, when Decca Records, one of the first record labels, was incorporated in Great Britain. By 1939, Decca and EMI were the only two record labels in Britain – a monopoly that still exists today in a similar form. Eighty percent of the U.S. music market, as well as seventy percent of the world music market, is controlled by just four music groups: Warner Music, EMI, Sony BMG, and Universal Music. A music group is kind of a conglomerate holding company that controls many different facets of the recording industry under a corporate umbrella. Music publishing, music recording, distributors, and actual record labels are all typically retained under the brand name of a music group. There are many side effects of the near-complete centralization of the music industry, two of which are worth mentioning here:

1. Artists must sign a contract with a music group to get their music out to the public.

This was particularly bad in the 40s, 50s, and 60s, due to the lack of both the internet and independent labels that had the ability to cater to exotic genres and non-mainstream sound design. To get your music heard, you had to go with one of the Big Four. This meant that the record labels could exercise an appalling amount of creative and financial control over the artist. A standard contract for a first time artist generally included a pennies-on-the-dollar royalty scheme, leaving said artist reliant on ticket sales and merchandise sales to be able to continue profiting and making music. A great deal of the time, lesser artists signed away their rights to their own music as well, ceding them (the rights) to the record label in question. The label generally selected the producer, the studio, and the songs to be recorded, in addition to retaining the ability to edit or censor songs and titles of songs in post-production, without the approval of the artist. Many times the producer that the record label hired would co-write the songs with the band, playing as a sort of modern-day Minimus, making sure that everything that’s produced is in sync with the perceived current popular trends in music, in addition to controlling said current. All of the music of the last two decades that you hear on the radio has gone through this process. It is literally filtered through and designed by the label to both pander to the tastes of the consumer and control what the consumer hears. And who do you think, owns most of the radio stations? You only get one guess.

2. The “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality has stifled creative growth by potential new artists.

The question remains: exactly how much influence do producers and record labels have in the actual writing and performing of songs? Generally, the more popular a song/artist is, the more that the producer/label has meddled in the song’s creation. This says something very deep about the average listener’s appreciation of music, which I’ll get to in a little while.

Exempli gratia: Max Martin and Jim Vallance are two world-class producers and songwriters who are responsible for a sizable amount of the popular music of the 80s, 90s, and 00s. Check out the links, but I’ll sum up: Vallance writes metal and hard-rock tunes. He’s most “well-known” for writing a lot of the Scorpions’ material, in addition to penning the Bryan Adams hit, Summer of ’69. (I say “well-known” because the fact that the producers – not the performers – are behind these songs’ creation is generally kept on the down-low. Thanks, Wikipedia!) Max Martin is single-handedly responsible for the Backstreet Boys’ rise to fame, as well as Britney Spears’ first wave of hits, including …Baby One More Time[1], which he wrote himself. Since U Been Gone, performed by American Idol’s Kelly Clarkson (a consumer-as-pseudo-controller paradigm which I’m not even going to get into), was also authored by Martin. To wit:

“I want to be part of every note, every single moment going on in the studio. I want nothing forgotten, I want nothing missed. I’m a perfectionist. The producer should decide what kind of music is being made, what it’s going to sound like – all of it, the why, when and how.” – Max Martin, L.A. Times, 6/05/00

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Everything I’ve written so far is the background and introduction. The two following sentences are the raison d’être of this article, which hopefully I’ll convince you of:

1) 99.99% of popular music (ever since there has been music one could call “popular”) presents itself within a common form which I have dubbed the Verse Chorus Paradigm, which is simultaneously informing and subverting creation and appreciation of new music, regardless of its popular or underground origins.

2) The fact that the V.C.P. exists and persists says something truly deep w/r/t the public’s interpretation and perception of music, and of art in general.

POINT ONE:

The Verse Chorus Paradigm is a system of organization that delineates a song’s possible structures. It has very strict rules of form and function (the reason for the V.C.P.’s name should now become clear):

Intro / Verse / Verse /(Pre-chorus) Chorus / Verse / (Pre-chorus) Chorus / Bridge / Solo / Verse / (Pre-chorus) Chorus / Outro

Intro: usually instrumental (viz. no singing) in nature, introduces the key and tempo of the song.

Verse (V): generally either 4 lines or 8 lines long, tells a story or otherwise moves the “plot” of the song along its thematic path.

Pre-chorus (PC): harmonically more “tense” than the verse, somehow leads inexorably to the chorus – this can technically be considered part of the chorus as it never appears without it, but sometimes there’s only a chorus with no harmonic/thematic lead-in, which is the main reason for this explanation. It’s generally 2-4 lines long, and sometimes only instrumental in nature (usually in rock/metal/punk only).

Chorus (C): generally close to the same length as the verse, states the theme of the song, also usually contains the song’s “hook” – that is to say the part of the song which is designed to be catchy or easy to remember – which can be lyrical or instrumental, and tends to have an affect that is clever (country), or poignant/romantic (R&B and Top 40), or a statement about the artist’s cleverness/romanticism/poignancy (hip-hop, rock, “pop-punk”), but nearly always repeats more than once. There are never more than three distinct choruses within a song; if you hear three choruses without hearing a bridge, there won’t be a bridge. This rule is never broken.

Bridge (B): melodically different than the verse, usually containing a thematic or stylistic change w/r/t the song’s established motifs, and can vary in length dramatically.

Solo (S): traditionally instrumental, as in “guitar solo”, but can also feature vocal acrobatics – this is temporally interchangeable with the bridge, i.e. the solo may come first and the bridge second.

Outro (O): clean segue out of the song, traditionally containing either a repetition of the song’s chorus, or a fade-out, or an instrumental diversion that relates harmonically/melodically back to the intro’s key and theme.

Listed above are the parts of the song and the order in which they appear. The sections in bold are never skipped – the sections in normal type are optional. My argument is that the vast majority of popular songs – and by “popular” I mean “written by a band or producer for a major record label” – follow this format. I dare you to find a song written in the last twenty years, that you’ve heard on corporate radio, that does not follow the V.C.P. explicitly. While the verses and choruses are compulsory, the most typical format is I-V-(PC)C-V-(PC)C-B-(PC)C-O; that is to say, an intro, two verse-prechorus-choruses, a bridge-prechorus-chorus, and an outro. Here are three examples, with the song structures explicitly laid out. I strongly suggest you listen to each one and follow along, otherwise it’s not going to make any sense (the title of the song links to the file; right-click and select “open in a new window/tab” to follow along).

1.) Justin Timberlake – My Love (I-V(PC)C-V(PC)C-B(PC)C-O) (2006) [2] This a pop song; you’ve probably heard it.

Intro (0:00-0:16) Sets up the theme with a vocal cue, then brings in the backing beat and melody for what turns out to be the

Verse (0:16-0:49) Four lines about love, the last of which is repeated in other verses (This ring here represents my heart…), which provides a harmonic and thematic tie-in to the

Pre-Chorus (0:49-1:06) Four more lines about love, which repeat in other pre-choruses, and lead directly to the

Chorus (1:06-1:36) My Love, etc. It’s the hook. Pretty melody in the second half, too. Note that the Chorus and Verse differ in length by about three seconds.

Verse (1:36-2:09) If I wrote you a love note, and made you smile at every word I wrote, what would you do?

Pre-Chorus (2:09 – 2:26) All I want you to do is to be

Chorus (2:26 – 2:56) My Love. (By the way, I’m guilty of really liking this song.)

Bridge (2:56 – 3:46) different style / theme / type of singing. This part’s pretty cool. It’s roughly twice as long as the verse.

Pre-Chorus (3:46 -4:02) Girl, you amaze me. Ain’t gotta do nothing crazy. See, all I want you to do is to be My Love.

Chorus (4:02 – 4:05) Subtly different this time, an indication that the song is ending.

Outro (4:05 – 4:06) Just a quick fade-out so the ending isn’t too abrupt.

2.) Fiona Apple – Extraordinary Machine (I-VC-VC-BC-O) (2005) This is generally considered “left-field” pop; i.e. not played very often on the radio, but music videos are still made for the hits, and the albums still go gold/platinum (100,000 / 1 million albums sold, respectively). Music that has a “following” [3] is generally in this category: pre-1990s Metallica, Bjork, and Iron Maiden are good examples.

Intro (0:00 – 0:11)

Verse (0:11 – 0:56) Chorus (o:56 – 1:19) Four lines, half the length of the chorus. Awesome hook, though, and it’s not repeated. Way to be a rebel!
Verse (1:19 – 2:04) Chorus (2:04 – 2:26)

Bridge (2:26 – 2:54) Melodically/thematically different, leads to the final Chorus (2:54 – 3:17)

Outro (3:17 – 3:44) Repeats the chorus and ends with a short melody that references the intro.

3.) Matisyahu – King without a Crown (I-VC-VC-S-BC-O) (2005) Hasidic Jewish reggae from Texas. Popular in its own right, rather than produced/written/overseen by industry insiders. Nevertheless:

Intro (0:00 – 0:46)

Verse (0:46 – 1:26) Chorus (1:26 – 1:46)

Verse (1:46 – 2:37) Chorus (2:37 – 2:57)

Solo (2:57 – 3:37)

Bridge (3:37 – 4:07) Chorus (4:07 – 4:27)

Outro (4:27 – 4:40)

The only unusual parts are that the intro’s a little longer and the first half of the last chorus doesn’t have any singing in it, both of which are probably idiosyncratic and due to the fact that it’s a live – and therefore imperfect – recording.

Pardon the excessive examples (and there will be more), but I feel it’s necessary to make a point of how ingrained this paradigm is in popular music. Part of that is a function of the corporation-artist relationship [4] that is necessary to bring the music to a sizable audience in today’s society, but I feel that the corporation-consumer relationship [5] is just as relevant. After all, we buy the music. We actively listen to it. We follow the trends on MTV, willingly vote for the Top Ten Videos on TRL, download the singles from iTunes. And that’s not to say that popular music is the only “genre” of music that uses the V.C.P., just that we as consumers whole-heartedly buy into what the corporations are selling, and what’s more, we won’t stand for anything else. There’s a reason that hundreds of popular artists have sold millions of albums despite the sameness inherent in said albums, after all, and that reason is two-fold. Us and them. The consumer and the corporation. We want it, and they’re selling it.

The Paradigm has infiltrated into many other types of music, through constant social exposure of the Paradigm to new generations. Musicians that grew up with 60s and 70s pop, and later on MTV, are now producing progressive rock, death metal, synth-pop. [6] It’s still got that good ol’ inevitable sameness, though, and you can listen to it and siphon out the V.C.-ness yourself:

( These songs all rock, by the way. They’re worth listening to a priori)

Freezepop – Stakeout (I-V(PC)C-V-B(C/PC)-C-O)

Variations: Instead of the second chorus, it goes right to the bridge, and then when the chorus comes in it’s overlaid by first the bridge, and then on the second iteration, the original prechorus. They also play the intro melody between some of the segments.

Nile – Lashed to the Slave Stick (I-VC-V2-C-B-V2-V2-C-O)

Variations: Instead of the second verse mirroring the first verse’s structure, they introduce a different one (chords instead of fast picking). It’s about the same length. The bridge is the *really* fast part, and then they go back to the second verse style for twice as long as before. The outro is a repetition of the chorus (Lashed! To! The Slave Stick! *screaming*), then part of the chorus in reverse. It ends abruptly.

Dream Theater – 6:00 (I-V(PC)-V(PC)C-S-B-S2-V(PC)C-O)

Variations: The intro is lengthy and encompasses several themes. Because they are progressive, they don’t get to the chorus on the first iteration – the second verse kind of interrupts where the first chorus would have been. There’s also a second solo section – it’s after the slow-motion bridge, and features wah-wah guitar. The outro is a crazy guitar solo.

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Granted, these are significant variations, and certainly you’re not going to hear them (the songs) on the radio any time soon, both for stylistic and commercial reasons. I can analyze their forms w/r/t the V.C.P., however, which indicates that whatever revelations or unique ideas that are brought to the recording studio are still subsumed under the all-powerful and ubiquitous Paradigm. The fact that I can point out verses and choruses, and that you can hear them without too much mental conditioning, is proof enough. The question remains: why does the V.C.P. persist?

POINT TWO:

There’s a definite tendency among the non-artists in society to just not give a shit about art, one way or the other. A classic layman’s “critical” response to a Jackson Pollock or Rothko that we’ve all heard refers to the so-called critic’s child and said child’s questionable artistic talents, and questioning as to whether or not critic’s child’s artwork’s merits might be better than or equal to the Pollock’s. So it goes. The problem is that the meaning behind the art isn’t in the execution, anyway, but in the concept or intellectual drive behind it. To wit:

“I am not interested in relationships of color or form or anything else… I am interested only in expressing the basic human emotions – tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on… The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them. And if you are moved only by their color relationships, then you miss the point.” – Mark Rothko, Conversations With Artists, 1961

In popular culture there tends to be an equivalence made between a piece’s technical aspects and its inherent value. We place value on artists for their abilities to paint photorealistically, on musicians for being divas or blow-your-mind guitarists, on movies for their special effects or theatre-quality acting. Much ado is made of the technical in today’s society, and the creators suffer. Why else would the identity of the writer of a pop tune be consciously hidden, and the performer lifted to great financial and social status? Whatever concepts lie behind great art and music are lost to the average listener. This isn’t to say that the technical has no place in great art; just that the technical aspect plays second fiddle, is a level of abstraction below. Art is built upon technique, but art is not equivalent to technique.

The point is this: Listeners aren’t interested in being intellectually challenged or forced to interpret something new. The point behind a song’s creation is not relevant – only the sounds that create the song matter. Aesthetics over intellect. And as far as aesthetics go: the average listener is interested in one thing, and one thing only. Entertainment. The uterine stasis of pop music is, above all, aesthetically pleasant. The V.C.P. persists because it is pleasant and familiar. Broken down into symbols, the V.C.P. is nearly as simple as possible: A B A B. Verse Chorus Verse Chorus. It’s pure aesthetic hedonism – someone who is pretty singing about something that is pretty within a context that is predictable and repetitive. Or if you’re a rebel – someone who is angry singing about something that is awesome within a context that is predictable and repetitive. That’s what it is, anyway. Music-as-business is business-as-music. Sell people the thing that sells: conformity.

The necessarily intellectual and conceptual approach to music-as-art is being threatened by the overwhelming presence of music-as-business and its attendant Paradigmatic form [7]. So much of non-mainstream music is based upon the V.C.P. that it’s hard to tell where the long arm of the market ends and the artist’s ideas begin. These days, if you use the V.C.P. you’re buying into the status quo, and if you avoid it, you’re subtly making a self-conscious reference to the fact that you’ve chosen to eschew it. This isn’t to say that music is dead, only that its growth is becoming increasingly limited by society’s penchant for surface-level diversions. See also television. Don’t confuse great entertainment for great art.

[1] Guess how many of the songs on Britney’s debut album were actually authored by her? That’s right, none. Twenty-seven million copies sold, though, as of this writing. See here for specifics.

[2] Did you know that Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, Christina Aguilera, and several notable actors all originate from the cast of the 1990s Mickey Mouse Club cast? The M.M.C. is the Skull-and-Bones of the entertainment industry.

[3] (= bands that have been around for 8+ years but haven’t really declined in popularity, the superficial temporary fixation of the public eye notwithstanding)

[4] i.e. corporate knows what sells based on what has sold in the past, and actively leads artist’s hand down said path, and artist’s willingness to co-opt the so-called artistic vision leads to a cornucopiac career, full of televised performances, royalties, and name-recognition, I mean come on.

[5] i.e. corporate knows what sells based on what consumer has bought in the past, and actively kind of stagnates on this one thing that the consumer likes, viz. understandability [5a], prettiness (both music- and musician-related), repetition.

[5a] can you name any pop tunes that aren’t about love, sex, having a good time, friends, or some negative consequence of the above (divorce, violence, breaking up, drug addiction)?

[6] The Beatles wrote in the V.C.P. So did Buddy Holly. So did Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra (both the songs they wrote and the songs that were written for them.) The beginning of the V.C.P. is beyond the scope of this article, but it’s related to the growth of the music industry as well as the schematics of both the blues and pre-Romantic classical music. I’ll get to it at some point: it’s a fascinating subject.

[7] Also, don’t get me wrong: there are other paradigms and other forms, as well as great new music that succeeds in exploring interesting conceptual space. Tune in next week for a spicy discussion.