what you walk out remembering

j ligon wrote:
>Melody is the primal vertebrae of all music. We never hear of people
>going around humming or whistling the chord progressions in music.

What!?!?!? OK, maybe I can't hum/whistle chords, but when I walk out of a
performance of a great piece of music. . . . I might remember any number
of things about it. . . . yes, perhaps melodic stuff, but maybe something
else --- often some weird hybrid of melody/harmony/texture/rhythm.

for example, from one of our "evil" theorists: Paul Erlich's TIBIA,
yeah, I don't walk away whistling the bass line, but I do walk away
remembering those harmonic progressions, and how I was feeling like
"eeaaaoooooooyeee" or something every time they revealed their
22-toned-ness.

beethoven 7, slow movement: that's a pretty boring tune. (a repeated
note.) the harmony(/counterpoint) is what makes it so memorable.

What about the "hook" in pop music? Yeah, pop music is usually thought of
as a melody with chord progression, but I think what we remember about a
"hook" includes lots of other stuff: timbre, the "grooviness" of the
beat, and yes, often a chord being spaced in that oh-so-sexy way.

I would say that more often than with a tune, a particular timbre/harmony
keeps ringing in my head, continuously . . . .

Anyway, I'm all for learning to write a great line. . . .I'm deeply
interested in this in fact. . . but this classical-concert-promoter "give
me a tune I can hum" is just a bunch of mindless fascism as far as I can
tell. Luckily, the way music affects most of us is (usually) not so
one-dimensional.

***From: Christopher Bailey******************

http://music.columbia.edu/~chris

**********************************************

--- In tuning@y..., Christopher Bailey <cb202@c...> wrote:

/tuning/topicId_18565.html#18565

> What!?!?!? OK, maybe I can't hum/whistle chords, but when I walk
out of a performance of a great piece of music. . . . I might remember
any number of things about it. . . . yes, perhaps melodic stuff, but
maybe something else --- often some weird hybrid of
melody/harmony/texture/rhythm.

Personally, I thought this commentary by Christopher Bailey was one
of the most interesting things I have ever read on this list!

________ _____ ____ ___ _
Joseph Pehrson

Christopher Bailey wrote,

<<but maybe something else --- often some weird hybrid of
melody/harmony/texture/rhythm.>>

Yeah, a phantasmagorical <sic> mess... and a lovelier mess I could
hardly dream of!

--Dan Stearns

--- In tuning@y..., Christopher Bailey <cb202@c...> wrote:
> j ligon wrote:
> >Melody is the primal vertebrae of all music. We never hear of
people
> >going around humming or whistling the chord progressions in music.
>
> What!?!?!? OK, maybe I can't hum/whistle chords, but when I walk out
of a
> performance of a great piece of music. . . . I might remember any
number
> of things about it. . . . yes, perhaps melodic stuff, but maybe
something
> else --- often some weird hybrid of melody/harmony/texture/rhythm.

My own musical development was completely backwards -- when I was very
young, I somehow developed an ear for chord progressions, and could
instantly tell you the chords to any pop song while listening to it
for the first time. Melodic skill came later, and rhythmic skill, much
later than that. I say backwards because I agree with Jacky that
melody is more fundamental than harmony, and I think rhythm is even
more fundamental than that.
>
> for example, from one of our "evil" theorists: Paul Erlich's TIBIA,
> yeah, I don't walk away whistling the bass line, but I do walk away
> remembering those harmonic progressions, and how I was feeling like
> "eeaaaoooooooyeee" or something every time they revealed their
> 22-toned-ness.

I hope "eeaaaoooooooyeee" is a good feeling -- that work is new to me
-- though I think David Beardsley might call it "queeeaseeey" :)

> Luckily, the way music affects most of us is (usually) not so
> one-dimensional.

That's an important point -- though melody is more fundamental than
harmony, harmony affects the "meaning" of melody. For example, the
Aeolian and Ionian modes were perhaps the fifth- and sixth-most common
modes in purely melodic Western music (Gregorian chant), but became
the two most common modes once triadic harmony developed and evolved
into what is known as tonality (which is itself a particular synthesis
of harmonic, melodic, and perhaps even

PERLICH@ACADIAN-ASSET.COM wrote:

> > for example, from one of our "evil" theorists: Paul Erlich's TIBIA,
> > yeah, I don't walk away whistling the bass line, but I do walk away
> > remembering those harmonic progressions, and how I was feeling like
> > "eeaaaoooooooyeee" or something every time they revealed their
> > 22-toned-ness.
>
> I hope "eeaaaoooooooyeee" is a good feeling -- that work is new to me
> -- though I think David Beardsley might call it "queeeaseeey" :)

I liked your pieces at AFMM 2000 very much. Another
listen and the queesy feeling would have gone away.

--
* D a v i d B e a r d s l e y
* 49/32 R a d i o "all microtonal, all the time"
* http://www.virtulink.com/immp/lookhere.htm
* http://mp3.com/davidbeardsley