7 ms·

Where did the melody go? (2017)

• deleted 7y ago
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• jacobolus 7y ago
  > While nobody knows for sure, it is believed that when music began, the most dominant if not the only element was rhythm. No melody, no harmony – just rhythm. At first it may have been random objects, and later drums. This may have been thousands of years ago, but at the time, that was it. What is the evidence for this theory? People sing in all sorts of societies all around the world. Are there even examples of human societies without singing? It’s hard for me to imagine some time “thousands of years ago” when there was no singing or other melodic music of any kind, but only drumming on “random objects”. If there are direct examples of 35,000 year old flutes, https://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/25/science/25flute.html https://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/25/science/25flute.html then presumably this “thousands of years ago” referred to is considerably older than that. > Melody was probably the next element that came into play, mostly through the various religious chants; in most cases with little to no rhythmic or harmonic context. Chanting and singing are two significantly different forms, and chanting does not necessarily have much if any melodic content. It does not seem to me that one is obviously primary; people continue to do singing and religious chanting side by side in many cultures. Maybe there’s some better evidence about this somewhere? It would be nice to see something more convincing.
  • kleer001 7y ago
    IMHO there can be no direct evidence, only speculation. My thought is that it's easier to make sounds in a rhythm (on/off) than it is to control the pitch of those sounds (relative to previous sound). Also thousands, I think, is probably an underestimate by a couple orders of magnitude.
    • jacobolus 7y ago
      It is very weak to say “it is believed that ...” and then make some very large (frankly implausible) claims without describing who believes this or why. I would maybe give this idea some credibility if it were changed to “millions of years ago before the evolution of vocal anatomy capable of complex speech”. But even then... completely speculative.
  • todd8 7y ago
    For those interested in prehistoric instruments, I suggest the research by Dr. Lana Neal. It is a book (based on Dr. Neal's Ph.D. thesis) on the Paleolithic flute. The evidence includes, quite naturally, radiocarbon-dated instruments and fragments, but most interesting to me where the cave paintings that include quite clear depictions of flute players. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Earliest-Instrument-Fertility-Paleolithic-Culture/dp/1576472213 https://www.amazon.com/Earliest-Instrument-Fertility-Paleoli...
• arman_ashrafian 7y ago
  Just saw a great youtube video about this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0Vn9V-tRCo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0Vn9V-tRCo
  • zwkrt 7y ago
    Every Frame a Painting has a video talking about how big budget movies tend not to have recognizable melodies, as well: https://youtu.be/7vfqkvwW2fs https://youtu.be/7vfqkvwW2fs
• musicale 7y ago
  Although the author points to the 17th and 18th centuries (Bach et al.) as the age of polyphony, polyphonic music and counterpoint were certainly highly developed in the 15th (Josquin) and 16th (Palestrina) centuries as well.
• codesushi42 7y ago
  Modern music has regressed into something primitive and tribal. In other words, completely mind numbing garbage. And it just gets worse every year. Post Malone is a good indication of just how fast Western society is falling.
  • paulcole 7y ago
    You should hear what my dad had to say about Elvis!
    • codesushi42 7y ago
      Not really the same. Rock & roll still had melody and lyrics. Both are continually being simplified every year. You should read this: https://science.slashdot.org/story/18/01/15/231230/is-pop-music-becoming-louder-simpler-and-more-repetitive https://science.slashdot.org/story/18/01/15/231230/is-pop-mu... 5. A researcher put 15,000 Billboard Hot 100 song lyrics through the well-known Lev-Zimpel-Vogt (LZV1) data compression algorithm, which is good at finding repetitions in data. He found that songs have steadily become more repetitive over the years, and that song lyrics from today compress 22% better on average than less repetitive song lyrics from the 1960s. The most repetitive year in song lyrics was 2014 in this study. Conclusion: There is some scientific evidence backing the widely voiced complaint -- on the internet in particular -- that pop music is getting worse and worse in the 2000s and the 2010s. The music is slower, melodically simpler, louder, more repetitive, more "I" (first-person) focused, and more angry with anti-social sentiments. The 2010s got by far the most music quality down votes with 42% from people polled on which decade has produced the worst music since the 1970s.
      • drhodes 7y ago
        It kind of sounds like you're having a hard time finding good new music. It's out there if you look. Snarky Puppy - Lingus (We Like It Here) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_XJ_s5IsQc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_XJ_s5IsQc Hiatus Kaiyote - By Fire https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ilr1AY41AA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ilr1AY41AA Alina Engibaryan - We Are https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-dusz1TyD0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-dusz1TyD0
• SubiculumCode 7y ago
  Does the author mean mainstream "on the radio" pop, or the plethora of music we not explore and listen to on music services? I've venture to say the Top 100 lists occupy a smaller proportion of today's listeners thane ever before. We are unconstrained. And melody is out there.
  • SubiculumCode 7y ago
    My apologies for the plethora of smartphone typos in the parent comment.
• todd8 7y ago
  I recall reading an article on the algorithmic complexity of popular music by Knuth in 1977. It is really quite funny! See [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Complexity_of_Songs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Complexity_of_Songs
• todd8 7y ago
  I've tried to introduce my kids (who are college age) to the pleasures of classical music, mostly to no avail. I just recently rewatched the movie Amadeus (a 1984 masterpiece on Mozart) with my daughter, and she liked it. I highly recommend it. It was nominated for 11 Academy Awards and won 8.
  • ebruchez 7y ago
    It's a very enjoyable movie, but it's almost pure fiction, just so you know.
    • todd8 7y ago
      Yes, Hollywood isn’t very good at presenting the unvarnished truth. I felt that the movie and particularly Salier’s (fictional?) role as a competitive observer of Mozart in the movie reifys the absolute genius of Mozart in a particularly effective way. I notice that my daughter and her friends now really like Queen’s music because of Bohemian Rhapsody. In addition to Amadeus I’ve suggested The Buddy Holly Story, Ray, Coal Miner’s Daughter, and Le Bamba to her—all movies that I really enjoyed that might widen her appreciation of music outside of what she hears most today.
• woodandsteel 7y ago
  The author has a lot of good insights about the tends in mass media. However, there are lots independent artists who support themselves through live performances and selling cd's. Another route is youtube and patreon. A good example is the young drummer Sina, who has over 600,000 subscribers and definitely makes melodic music. https://www.youtube.com/user/sinadrumming https://www.youtube.com/user/sinadrumming
• aserafini 7y ago
  My issue with this article is that it elevates the ‘melody’ dimension as somehow more worthy than the ‘sonic texture’ dimension. I think both have equal merit and I enjoy complexity along both dimensions. Modern music seems to have the highest sonic texture complexity of any music so far and is enjoyable for that. Bach has high melodic complexity but low texture complexity. I suspect high complexity along all 4 dimensions simultaneously is too much for the average listener. Artists like Squarepusher and Aphex Twin get close to being high complexity along every dimension but are regarded as ‘challenging’.
  • b1daly 7y ago
    I wouldn’t say modern electronic music has a higher level of ‘sonic texture’ than orchestral music, or any music using traditional instruments. The difference is that in modern music ‘sonic texture’ is an explicit mode of “authorial expression.” The sonic textures creates by acoustic instruments are arguably richer, as they are capable of much more subtle modes of expression as playable instruments. It’s just the case that the development of novel acoustics instruments is a whole separate craft, subject to the annoying vicissitudes of the sonic properties of physical matter. The instruments were developed over centuries. As soon as instruments became electrified artists began using the ability to express themselves directly by manipulating the sounds themselves. The sonic experimentation dominating modern pop music is entirely the result of the complete digitization of the sound generating chain. I also think another factor is that digital synthesizers are woefully impoverished as instruments capable of expression through musical performance. Outside of the voice, modern pop is devoid of real-time musical expression. It’s become a non-real-time process, closer to writing, animation, the visual arts. This forces the composer to rely on the native capacities of the instruments to express ideas, and the one that is completely unavailable in the acoustic realm is to chain the fundamental timbre of the instrument. I’m a producer, recording engineer. The author of the original piece is missing that the only reasons a composer could imagine they were working primarily with the modes or melody, harmony, rhythm is that there is highly developed tradition of musicianship and instrument design to fill in the most fundamental aspect of music, which is the actual sound. Edit: there is another huge factor in the decline of melody which is the product of two interrelated technology developments. The first is the use of loop based sequencing techniques for compositional work, and the second is that the random-access editing techniques made possible by modern digital audio workstations extended the loop based composition process to all sounds, including the voice. Loops are basically short compositions. If you spend a lot of time in this mode or composition, your ideas will tend to be short. The actual mechanics of how the music is made disincline the composer from constructing both traditional harmony and melody. The DAW has fundamentally disconnected music from the strict relationship with linear time that was inherent before the age of recording. To some extent musical notation allowed composers to work around this, but the end result was always an expression that had to have a thought out beginning, middle, and end. I wrote an essay on this subject that I think is pretty good. https://dnamusiclabs.com/harmonic-distortion/daw-and-end-time https://dnamusiclabs.com/harmonic-distortion/daw-and-end-tim...
• deleted 7y ago
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• lucas_membrane 7y ago
  When melody was at its apogee, not only did songs have interesting melodies, but they also had a bridge -- a second section melodically different from the first. The best songs had seemed to be the ones with the most distinctive bridges. Somehow, Tin Pan Alley managed to exemplify this artifact from classical music. Sousa's marches, typically in 3 parts in different keys, with one foot in the classical tradition and one in the new world stand as a memorial bridge to melodic non-monotony connecting Brahms to Broadway.