Matrixsynth: Jim Aikin on Melody Over Texture

Me in a serious moment

I have been following the dialog resulting on Matrixsynth from Jim Aikin's comments on the uses of texture and melody in the composition of synth based music.

"Textures can be instantly identifiable, even before the entrance of motivic content, and can carry a profound emotional charge. But I doubt that a texture stays in your head and comes back to you at odd moments the way a melody by Mozart or Lennon & McCartney will.

Again, it's evolution at work. A melody uses syntax, so it gets "filed" by the brain using the same ultra-sophisticated language-handling modules that allow you to remember, word for word, what your Significant Other (or, for that matter, a total stranger) said to you last week. Most listeners don't have the mental equipment to handle texture and tone color in that way."

This is an interesting perspective, but if you drill down a bit further there are interesting questions to explore.

What is the dividing line between "texture and tone colour" and "melodic" features of any given piece of music?

Is it a sharp line, or a grey area?

I think Jim's reference to syntax is illuminating. Wikipedia states the following about syntax:

"All theories of syntax at least share two commonalities: First, they hierarchically group subunits into constituent units (phrases). Second, they provide some system of rules to explain patterns of acceptability/grammaticality and unacceptability/ungrammaticality."

We are all familiar with arguments over the second commonality referenced by Wikipedia. This frames the familiar argument about what constitutes "real" music.

As for the first quality of syntax, it is not possible without repetition of recognizable subunits. So if we utilise syntax as an analogy for melody, melody contains both grammar (commonly accepted scales and frequency intervals) and constituent units (comprised of sounds with an easily recognizable fundamental frequency).

I think about the way that I construct music, and the instruments I choose to use, and I realize that my fascination is how far from the "standard" can I push the constituent units of my particular compositions. Most of us can hear and understand a single note played on a piano as an acceptable component of a constituent unit in the "syntax" of "melody". This is because we are familiar with hearing it in a melodic context, plus its fundamental frequency is very obvious to the human ear. When a melody is played utilising notes on a piano, we can easily recognize it. The idea of a sound needing a fairly obvious fundamental frequency to be an acceptable component of a constituent unit seems intuitive, but as a sound's tonal qualities get more complex we wander into a grey area. Like the line between a distorted, but obviously pitched, note on a guitar and a totally overblown white-noise type distorted sound with no, or many, obviously dominant frequencies.

One of the reasons I have drifted towards exploring experimental music within some of the stylistic restraints of dub music is that it is heavily influenced by the notion of repetition. Both in its simple melodic structures and its heavy use of delay, tones within a dub music structure are repeated often, with subtle or not so subtle temporal alterations. This allows me to build structures out of sounds which,upon initial listen, are not obviously suitable as "constituent units" in a "melodic" context. But both through their repetition (and the resulting familiarity to the listener) and temporal adjustment of these constituent units, a grammatical structure akin to melody can be coaxed out of the strangest soundscapes.

Jim Aikin's point about most people having more "mental equipment" for dealing with melodic qualities than tonal ones is absolutely right, but one of the interesting corrolaries of this notion is that our brain will try and find melodic qualities in soundscapes where they exist only tenuously, if at all. Most of us have had the experience of listening to an overhead fan or the sounds inside a moving car and starting to hear melodies buried in the white noise. It is this feature of how we react to sound that, in my mind, drives the most interesting explorations into the interrelationship of ambience and melody. I want to take advantage of this tendency in peoples brains in order to push at the boundaries of traditional takes on melody and structure.


Just in case you thought I was too serious