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TET{
LITTLE TITLE TUI{ES
Towards a musicology of the mass media
by
Phitip Tagg
and
Bob Clarida
New York & Montre al, 2003
The Mass Media Music Scholars' Press
Nlh/fMr+,
('ho¡tttr 2: 7'ht cl¿c!ina of nt,'';:ul eltst,lttttsnt?
i
'Ih,: ccnr,r¿rl
¡xint of the anal-\'s('s \\'e J)rcsent concL.rn.s thc difi-erent \\'a)'s in rvhich
resp()nses fronr thr reception tt'sts relate to the musical structurcs of the pieces clic,
iting those re-cponses. it is the ncxus of .such relations that hou,se-s the pottrntial for
clcvcioping a vocal¡ular)' of rL,L-eption¿ii clescri¡;tors. To make sucll connection-c betrveen Iistener responses and nrusical structurrrs \§e have had to usc constructional
rlcscri ¡;tors to clenotr. those structures t¡ecaust-. wt, kncrrv of nr¡ existing receptional
equivalcnts. This is the fundament¿rl and ironic roason whr- this book, which advocatcs a popularisation of metatextual di.scourse, contains a fair amount of what,
from a non-muso viervpoint, ula)¡ srrem Iike gobbledlgook. We sincerely regret this
'technical mvstification' but it rt'ill be necessary to refer to musical structures in
constructional, terms until rece¡rtional eqrrivalents can be establishcd, which, in ils
turn, can onl¡'occur rvhen a rece¡ltional descriptor can be uneqtrivocally related to
a structure, which nrust logically be dcsignattd in existing terrns, wllich ¡neans
Inore constructional 'gobbled.r'gook' until etc., etc. It is a vicious circle which in onc
sense reflects the inevitable truism that urusic rvould not need to exist if its particular manner of s-"*mbolising human experience were interchangeable rvith that of
Chapter
other s-vmbolic systeurs.
Holeve'r, since music demonstrably interacts in practice with other forms of expression, and since
it clearly relates, mainly by means of homology,
3
connotation,
cross-reference and cultural convention, to phenomena outside itseif, the circle can
hardly be regarded as inrpenetrable. Therefore, while it u'ould be pointless to try
translaiing music into rvords, pictures or into an¡, other form of human expression,
it would, as we have repc'atedl.v argucd, be equally absurd to pretend t,hat music
was inscrutable, locked away in an absolutist black box. Of course, receptional de-ccriptors cannot and should not replace the relative reliability and precision of con.structional terms, but there is no reason to suggest that their development cannot
help break the vicious absolutist circle, no reason to believe that the receptional
competence of non-musos has nothing to do with how music is constructed, and no
reason at all to assume that the connections between r:rusic as structure and reception are in any way random, or that they are inherently inscrutable or unsystematisable.167 There is moreover absolutely no good ethical reason for denying nonmusos the right to a vocabular,v which may help them talk or rvrite about music
more conüncingly on the basis of their own receptional competence. Whether such
a project rvill have any success remain.s to be scen. Whatever the outcome, if the vicious circle of absoh¡ti-snr, old or nevr', is ¡rot broken nrore often than has been the
case up to nol, rve mat'never develop a popular musicolog¡y- of the mass media,let
alone contribute to the dis.solution of the disciplinary and epistemological boundarics that have so negatively affected the position of mu-sic in our institutions of ed-
Methad and proeedrur'e
r
. llf trsematic analysis 94
l\fusical structrtres: what aro tlrey?
.
94
Interobject.ive comparison 96
Commutation (h¡pothetical substitution) 98
. A simple sign typologv 99
'
r The reception t,est 107
. (-'hoice of test pieces 107
Re-sponden,':1i"fi;T.'.:il:
i
o Interpreting test
r
i;
resrrlts l2l
!Yr\s
lZz
Staristic;
143
f)iscretising
''l'ixri:ff:::t lli
.
ucation and research.
.
.
NIode
ofprescntation L52
o Tra¡rscription
152
Order ancl t¡'¡re of rliscussion 153
('lttr¡ttcr.t
.lf l[
' ttrrrl ¡tntc,',litr,
llethod
cttn rlrltu'on a rvl¡olc arra-v of constructional de.scriptors. vocal tinrbre, an erlrral!.\'
im¡xirtant aspcct of erprcssion in our culture. does not.
l'ortards thc. e nd of'tirc previous chapter rve rvrLrte that the central point of the anal\ve y;rcs{rnt in this book con«-'crns the various \va.vs in u'hiclt responses to music
relate' to the musical structures of the pieccs eliciting those responses. This chapter
-iet.s out horv u'e intend to go about dealing with that nexus of relations. Our account
f'¿rils into t¡vo main stctions: mc,thod and procedure, the latter dealing almost entirelv rvith the reception test, horv it rvas constructcd ancl conductecl, horv the results rvere interpre,ted and u.secl, etc. The first section is basicall-v a summary of
nru-.em¿rtic analy'sis methods w'e have discussed elservhere in greater detail.
The second problcnr u'ith con-strrrctional dc'scriptors i.s th¡tt the-r'drr not ilccess¿rril-1.
dcnote structural elements that'mean'an¡'thing to the listtner. Of cour.st', rcvcrting to the eX IriS'I'EAD tir eb epi.sode cited on page 90, it is clear th¿rt a.sn:allcirange
of structure can rnake a huge dilference in effect, bi¡t sometimes thc rL,verse is true.
l'or erample, rvhen clisr:ussing a riance trtrck (The Sot¡rce 19971in ¿rn analvsis class.
I [r'r] found m¡'self ]raving to play the follorving chord sequence on the piano: X
G#m7 I F#¡s B i C* i C*.t Befure grappling rvith that six-sharp ke.y signature I
\r'as sure we were hearing & progrl'ssion resenlbling the basic chord slluttL, of songs
Iike ilfy.S¿ccc/ l,r¡rd (Harrison 197l),IIe's So Fine (Chiffons 1963) or ()h Hoppy Da¡,
tlldu,irl llawkins Singers 1969). At the ke-vboard, horvever, I had to force nr¡'hands
into shapes which did not correspond with the patterns I remembered from those
sonf{s which are set in more comnlon kc¡,s. \Yhen I patrscd the CD track and coltinucd pla.ving the GfimTerC# shuttle without the intervening ch«rrds my students
rvere not slorv to hcar i/1' S¿uecl [,ord or Oh I'luppy Do.y. even if my thoughts n,ere
occupied bv constructional problems. The point is that the structural change front
a sinrple key into six sharps, insignificant for a guitarist using barré, as rvell a.s for
any listener not cursed rvith 'perfect'pitch, was highly sigrificant for me fr',r whom
eonstructing'the same thing for listeners meant constructing sorncthing quiie dif-
-\'s(,.§
lll
u s e nt. at
ic
an alys is
Having first adapted its meaning over trventy years ago frorn Charlcs Sceger, the
nrusenle, aminintal unit of ntusical meatrlng (see Glossary), has becorne an incrcasingly elusive entity. hluseme stacks and museme strings, on thc othcr han<l (see
Glossary), bccanre increasingly useful as n'ork on this project proglresscd becuuse,
as rvill become evident fiom the analyses that follow, li-stent,r con¡rot¿rtions tende'd
to correspond much more to identifi¿rbleconiltinatiotts of nrusical structures and parameters of musical expressio¡¿ (see Glossarr,) than to the individual constituent
parts of those conibinations. These comments suggest thai, ir is possible io estabiish
Iinks between music as stn¡cture and as 'meaning'but we have yet to explain/rorr.,.
The first methodological task is thcrefore to determine ,ivhat, at least for the purposes cf this book, constitutes a musical structure.
ferent at the ke.yboard.
Ilr'¿e are av,'are of these problcrns'¡¡ith con.structional de-scriptols, if we do ¡rct assulrle that they are universally applicable, and if we remember that their signilicance to musicians does not necessarily align with their significance to the lisiener,
then there i.s no reason rvhy they cannot be used, given thc¡.se resen,atíons, to dcnote
the musical structures to rvhich we will need to refer in this l¡ook.
Musical structures: u,hat are they?
Although a musical structure may have objective characteristics quantifiable in
terms of acoustic ph.ysics, our understanding of musical structure here is cultural,
i.e. as an identifiable part of a musical continuum that may be referred to or designated in either constructíottal or reccptional terms (see p.9 ff ). Although a musical
structure may or rnay not have a ready name, we posit that it must be not only audible but also identifiable and (at least approximately) repeatable b.v members of
the same music-making community, and that it must be recognisable as having the
same or similar function when it is heard by members of the same community of
listeners, even though many members of that community may be not be conscious
of either the structure or its effect (if any).
Constructional descriptors are useful tools in the designation of musical structures
but they also have disadvantages. Since their existence derives from culturally speci{ic practices involving sound technology, conventions of composition and performance, traditions of learning, etc., they are by no nleans globall-v applicable. For
example, Europeans have gteat diffrculty in getting their heads, let alone their bodies, round the West African tirne line which usually distils at least trvo metres (usuall.v- staggered to boot) into one repeated strand, rvhile Bollywood musicals, seen
and heard all over the rvorld, may still seem to our ears as if the musicians have
trouble rvith sinrple chord progressions. Another aspect of the same problem is that
conve¡rtions of teaching and learning lead to the formulation of constructional
ternls q'ht:n ¡..ertictrlar skills arr) more eflicientlv learnt bv lvord of nrr,,uth or
T
It
i¡
¿
The next qucstion conccrning us is as follows: if we are onl¡r able to denote musical
structure in constrt¡ctional terms, how can rve talk about units of'mt¡sical nteani.ng?
\Yell, we can't, unles.s we demonstrate some regularity of connection between a given musical strtrcttrre, usuall.y denoted in constructional terms, and hou'that.structure is received as sonrething other than itself. One way to establish a relationshi¡t
betrveen a musical signifier and its signif,red, to put the matter in simplifiecl semiotic terms, is of course to ask listeners what they think the music communicates or'
to observe how they react to it. We shall be reporting plenty of listener respon.se.s in
the pages that follow and rve shall attempt to link those responses to musical structures in the analysis pieces. The only trouble is that those responscs, however consistent for each test piece, are by definition receptional and cannot directl.y tell us
rvhich part of the music relates semiotically to which part of ivhich responsc. To
ovcrcome this dilemma, we rvill use two simple procedures rvhich rve have explained
at lengtlr elsewhere: interobjectir¡e comparison and hypothetical. s¡láslitulio¡¿ or
eont.¡nutation.2 Herc we will keep the explanation short. Readers may find figure 1
ip.96) helpful in following the next section of this exposé.
The analysis class took place on 13 Nover¡rber 2001. The track rvas |'ou Gt¡t 7'he [,oL'p b¡.The Sorrrce
íi397). I-eo [Iatton. u'lro chose the tr:rck for analvsis. sr.rbsequentlv revellod ihat he hrs io tune his
§
Chupttr iJ ,lf.:tho<!
I n t e robj ect i te
an<l
proc.'<lurt
t¡*
compa rison
Fig. 1. lnlercb;ective compariscn: denlonstrable and extrapolatable links
tu:alysis Ob¡ec1
llJC
¡l
=
It¿m af
TOCI\f
nrc
ltusical Code
ornoa riso
Pl"fC
=
tI
a
i
Jt
ú
i
+
4;
t
n lilaterial
Para lfusic al
*
f!
IOCM =
inter0ü;ecbve
C
i
Ao
gr
illiIOCNT
PMFC
Ccnnotaüon
-.-.--.----..-¡'. ext-apolatable link <+->
\1.'t !:t',
"t
j
I
r.¡lr¡sic rrsing
sinlilar orcllestration, pla.t'irrg sirrrilar mi¡lichrom¿rtic nrarch-lik,:
mt,lo-
contrining the sarne sort of ski¡r to a disju¡lt:t sixth or nillthi
:rr lt brisk tempo in 6i8 nletre, oversimple tonicand d,rnlin¿rnt harmonies. etc.. etc.
,.Í =Í1 l.The P1'lht,n theme(aSousantarch)rv¿rsour.t\Oandthr-rsepiect,sci"othcr
¡¡¡r¡:;ic' our IOClf . Solue of the main p:rranrusical comnron denr;mirtators i,í the
It)Ctrf werc fun, di.spla-v, hurttour, cclebration. olden tirne.s, p¿rradL,, etc. t § - 5 l,
¿ril r;f rvlriclr aligncd vcll rvith tire most comnron a.*socirtio¡rs prr»'idcrl b.\'rcsp,rndr,¡¡ts in our reception test \!7 *-» 9 ¡. Sucll interobjcctive conrparison also cnal-ilecl
,..iils rsotne of thenr cven
us to shed Iight on the semantic confusion whereby jaunt¡'old ¡¡rarche.s st,c.nr ablc
tr: lurup TROOPS and lcn-cREAll, \\'EAPONS and cIIII"DIIEN, ('lRCt,'s and \\',1R ¿rll into the
silnre ¡nusical-cultural catcgory (p.409 ff.1.5
Field§] oI
;
¡
Interobjective comparison first involves finding music which sounds similar to the
orrcrlysis object (AOl, i.e. music rese¡nbling the nrusic under analysis, Such ,other
. nlusic'is called IOC¡ú Unterobjectiue comporíson ntateriol) and the similarities the
; IOCIU exhibit should be stylistic rather than generic.3 Once IOCl,f is found, its
I
structttral elements (pitch, timbre, contour, volume, tempo, s¡'ntactic position, harmonic context, tonal idiom, etc., etc.) are conlpared rvith those of the AO (anal.ysis
object). These elements of structural similarity can be hypothesised as items of ntusical. code (-IL{C). Since ¿l¿rre is never total similaritv betrveen the I}ICs of an AO
and tho.ce of its IOCII (othenvise it rvould be exactly the same music), the structur-
,
.
al elements of the IOCNI which do resemble those of the AO are identified and notThis procedure, lr,hich establishes the existence of structural sirnilarity bet*,een
the AO and other pieces of music, is intermusical (hence !1 inthe top two boxes of
figure 1). It does nol unravel the mysteries of musical semiosis.
ed.
I
The second phase of interobjective comparison entails examining the paramusical
\ fietds of connotafion (PI\fFCs) which link with the IOCM, i.e. lyrics, title, concomitant action, visuals, functions, audience, etc. linked rvith the interobjective
'. i.o., material, including what people say or write about it ( in the lower comparboxes of
ig
figure 1).4 Three conditions have to be met before valid semiotic statements can be
made about an itenr of musical code (IIUC) in the analysis object (AO): [1] there
must be common denominators of paramusical connotation ( E = E ) relating to the
various pieces of IOCNI ( y' ) found in phase one; [2] -structural similarities must be
established between IMCs of the AO and those of the IOCM (Ji = J1); [B] the IOCM
should be part of a the same broad music culture to which the AO belongs, because
the same musical structure (defined constructionally) in tlvo raclicali¡'different music cultures is very unlikely to connote the same thing in both of thern.
If the procedure just summariscd is followed, it is then possible to put forward the
valid semiotic h-vpothesis that a particular musical structure in the AO relates to
the contrnon denominator[s] of PNIFCs found in all the IOCNI containing that same,
i or a very similar, structu re ( J7 * l§
, so to speak). For example, in our analysis of
the thenre for,lfont1, Python's Flying Circus (Tune B) l+.e found numerous pieces of
Thror¡qhor¡t thi-§ book \r'e use
sr:-1.,,i anri (lr,l)irtr.l
in the
were able to dcmon-str¿rte links betrveen thc Ilftls
associ¿rted to rvhen they
hcartl it, y' <--i 5 L gv so doing wc cAn, so to speak, drArv a thick clouble arro\\'down
thc IcfI sicle of figure 1(p.96). In fact, the more links nrade. in either direction rounrl
the boxe.s of figure 1, the greatcr thc validity of the semiotic h¡'¡rcthcse.s pose'd about
tlrr: AO. Those h¡'potheses are also strcngthencd if the clcgree of resemblance to the
AO and the number of pieces in the IOCM increases. Nlort¡over. rve have in our anal-l'st s often continued round the square in the opposite direction to that suggested
[u'o paraprraph.s ago, searching for music rv]rose PMFCs aligned with the rosponsLr
¡rattern produced our listene.r ( [§i ., l,E] I and testing the structural trait-s c,f that
IOCN{ for similarity rvith the IMCs of the AC t. J1 = i ).In the c¡rse of l}fo nlt' Fithan
that nreant, for example, unearthing circus rnusic, unclerscore to black-anrl-rvhite
nervsreel flrlms from World War II, etc. To complete the circuit in both rlireciio¡rs rve
shotrld have asked a number of composers to write music conipatiblc with our rcs¡rondents'associations and cross-checked their result.s rvith our IOCII ( i-§ *-r.á ;.0
I]_r,conrlucting rcccption tests
demonsbable link
senses explainerl bv Fabbri ug82,2000).
rvve
ol'the;\O (/'.i'llo¡¡) and its PI\IFCs (what our r€rspondents
Tlte whole procedure just described is quite intuitive and nruch casier to grasp in
practice. Perhaps a summary of the procedure applied to a particular AO miglrt
nrake things clearer. Figure 2 (p,98) shows tbe Monty Python theme as an AO about
rvhose connotations we want to know more. So, after transcribing the then¡e and
noting all its parameters of expression, including tempo, instrumentation et¡--.. (the
AO II'IC box, top left in figure 2), we asked our respondenrs to write down rvh¡rt actions, events, persons, moods, etc. they rvould expect to accompany the ¡nu-sic if used
in a film or on TV, noting at the same tirne the piece's actual titles and fu¡rctions.
This first procedure is indicated by the arrow joining the AO-IIIC box with the AOPNIFC box in figure 2. A drastic summary of the results of the procedure app,ear-s in
the AO-PNIFC box (bottom left). We then searched for other music resemblinq the
l'[onty P],thon therne. a procedure indicated by the arrow joining the AO-i]fC box
rvith the IOCIÍ-IMC box (top right). Having noted structt¡ral similarities betiveen
the various pieces of IOCM internally, as well as between the IOCM and the AO,
we then examined rvhat titles, lyrics, funciions, audiences, historical periods, cultural locations, and other connotations were linked to the IOCIU. That examination
I)rocess is indicated by the arrow joining the IOCM-IIIC box (top right) s'ith the
Such apparently anachronistic categories will come as no sur¡:rise to thcse familiar lvith :i.e work
olGeorge Lakoff( 1979, 1987). The pervasivenes-s of such cate¡,cries .qnd the role of muscir¡tic anal
¡'sis in unpicking them are discusserl later in this chapter {p. 123).
f
-.
.
:
r --.;.
-.,.^,..i,,-^,
.- .r rr.r ---
1r-:q,lr.,
,1.-r rl.
/.. -..
-lt
.'..'.!-')
('hupttt'
.lltt l,¡-t e¡td üroci(ltr?,
.'J;
.\[,'l
IOCII-PllFC bor (bottonr right). Thc pnrarrlusical fit,lds of'corlnot¿ltion rel¿rting to
the IOCIÍ ere drastically'summ¿rrised in the' iOCr\l-PllFC L',ox.
Fig.
2 lnterobjeclive comparison: as applied to the Monty
ttrrallr .silltilar tr-r the AO, then that elemcnt u'ill be lcss import:rnt in producing titc
tfft,cts obscn,ed than one rvhich tliverges frt;ln the conrparison n)Írtcrial. In our
rrnalysis of The Virgínian (fune 2), for exantple, hypothetical substitution is used
distinguish be,tu'ecn those aspects ol'the accompanling part.s which conrnttt¡liclted a sense of the pastoral a¡1d those rvhich did not.8
Python theme (summary)
to
IOCM - IMC
-_____
y
gr'9;;"';!t';:;:i [j Ú
¿-_ - -,>Cf
É,il:; ii,I;';,i1
r,,o i;.,i:-i.1,.)¡. -Hty:H
search for other music
resembl¡ng the AO
ir
+ other pieces resernbling the A0
l1 sim¡tle sígn typology
*
t
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a.d \=
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o
AO - PMFC
Sousa, Liberty Bell, Monty Python
parades, changing of the guard,
oñicial, public, presentation, circus,
sports, children, public holidays,
parks, olden times, military, war,
USA, Sweden, flag waving, humour,
etc., etc.
ffir-t;.ltüt.g
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t
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During the proce.ss of anal¡'sing the t,:n +.unes and of classifying thc responscs tht'¡'
¡licited, it becanre clcar that u'e u,ould need to di.stinp:isl: betwecn rvavs in rvhich
r)ne related to the otllcr. F'or exanrple, it is obvious that thc rcsponses ltt)IIANCI'1,
\\'^\ry, sH.r\lfpoo, NniFlrEENTtI CENTURY and Llgnn¡tcE do n«rt relate in tlte sil.tne u,oy
to tlre snmo pit,ce of nrusic (in this ca.se Tñ¿ Dreant of Olu'ttn't evcn though they are,
rls our anal-vsis shols, musicogenicall-r' con¡¡ruent. The sitnple' sign t-l'pologv we
hnve used can be -.unlnlari-sed a.s follorvs.9
Tahle
J+.
bo
'9
IOCM - PMFC
Entrance of the Gladiafors (circus),
For He's a Jolly Good Fellow,
The Teddy Bears'Picnic (festive)
Conric nrusic-hall and parlour songs c.1900
Military marches c. 1900
Old sports and newsreel signatures
Parades, official functions, celebration
ffi *,{}'iltt ffi
>+iV7>t)'¡o¡
Sign typology overview'
sottit arut¡tltottt,
'7
i;A.,
Genre synecdoche
fpisoaió rnaiLer -
§rtle inCicotá;
"
;
"
p/i,-"
perceived
si rni la
rity to pirranrusi c¡rl
I ¡rcñ;i*d .i m,iá;it
to
pa
s,runrl
ñn t,sic,il rno.' atDaú t
to complete cultural context of that st.yle
shori. one-ir'ay process highlighting the order or re!a.
tive imporlance of musical evtnts
-uniGirl ai-pects of musical -"iñrcturai;on lor ttie itl'¡e
in question
,\naphones
Anaphone is analogous to analoSly, except that instead of meaning 'imitation of existing nroclels... in the formation of ¿¿ords' (analogy), onaB!]png mean.s the use the
u.se of existing models in the formation of (musical) so¡¿nds. Anaphones fall into
thrce main categories.
etc., etc.
.\-o¡¿ic
C
f
ommut ation ( hypothetical substitution)
We use commutation as a simple control mechanism for testing the validity of a
semiotic deduction. The procedure has been explained and demonstrated at length
elservhere,T so this rvill be a very short account.
In order to fincl out, il a serniotic observation is valid, it is sometimes rrecessary to
determine more preciscly which elements in a musenre stack or string are operative
in producing the effects observed in reception test responses, or through interobjective comparison. Recomposing that part of the music by substituting one element
for another allows the analyst to te.st whether it is the volume, register, pitch contour, harmonv, tempo, orchestration, tirnbre, articulation, metre, or any aspect of
atr¡'other parameter of musical expression that is essential to the production of the
connotations observecl. If commutation of an element or parameter results in a
cliattgt' compatible with a substantial part of the IOCM already identified as struc-
onaphonts
A sonic anaphone can be thought of as the quasi-programmatic;'onomatopoeic's1-1'/isatiott of 'non-musical'sound, e.g. Schubert's babbling brook-s, Baroque opera thunder, Byrcl's Belis or Jimi Hendrix's 852, As Rósing (1977) points out, son«.rgrams of
Schubert's Schcine-I[iillerin becks, or of Beethoven's Pastorale Svnzphorty thunder,
little objective acoustic relationship to sonograms of the'real' things those musical stylisations are supposed to represent. But, continues Rósing, this is hardlv
the point, since the structural homologies between 'real' and 'musical' brooks or bets'een'real'and'lnusical'thunder stem partly from cultural convention, partly from
the state of development in sound technology. Thi-s dual mechanism explains rvh¡'
Vangelis's sarnpled rain sounds far more like rain than Beethoven's.10
be'ar
'S
Í)
Tune 2, torvards the end. just before the heading 'Nature travelogue or Western?'
i¡or a sliehtl',' ex¡rnnilcrl vcrsi¡rr.r ol this section. st'e Tltsg i 1992).
i
('hopt,,r
.1.
:
!
l{¿th«l ani! prct<tdurt:
r
,.
iI
Ki¡¿¿'tic enophones
I
*
Iiinetic enaphones heve to do rvith
the, relation.ship of thc lrunranbod-vto tiurc, anrl
space. Such movemr:nt can be literall-v vist¡alisecl as that of a hun:an or hunrans riding, driving, fl¡'ing. rvalking, rlrnning, strolling, et.c. through, round, across, over, to
and fro, up and don'n, in relation to a pirrticular environflrent, or fronr one cnviron-
I
{
t
f
The most familiar exanrplc of'tactile anaphones is that protluced by slorvly moving,
pads', as the sound is called on sl,nthesisers,
romantic string underscorgs
-'sf¡i¡g
because it pads holes and spaces in the sonic texture. Such -string wallpaper, performed of course by several stringed instruments, rarely solo, can be characterised
by its lack of audible attack and decay and by the relative consistency of its envelope, all frequently enhanced by extra reverb in recording. Ail this can produce the
effect of hornogeneous, thick, rich, viscous sonic texture and, b5' haptic synaesthesia, sensations of luxury, comfort and smoothness. This observation can be substantiated by noting nomenclature and in-house descriptions of mood music featuring
thick ('rich', lush') string scoring of phenomenologically non-dissonant sonorities.l2
*e
Anaphonic caueat
*
E
I
L2
For example the open landsca¡res like the start of Borodin's On f ñe -§f¿pprr.s of Central Asia ( 1880),
the end of IUussorgsky's Nigár on a Bare Mt¡untaüt, ( 1863), or 'On the Open Prairie' from Copland's
ballet suite Billy the Kid O,941). See the section on museme 1 in Tagg (2000b) for more deiails.
Note, for example. the tactile qualities (in small capitals, belorv) ascribed to the follorving tracks in
the catalog¡Lre forR¿corded Musii'for Rodio, Filnt attd 7"!'(Boosey & llarvkes). Lulloby Of Th¿ City:
sorr AsD vELvHTy, GEN't't.y flovr,ing...i Pcnthouse .\ffair:... 'clressed in stt.x AND SATIN'; Amtthysts fttr
Estlteralda.: ntclr and dreanr-t'; Girl In B/u¿:.Lt'sti, slrool'lt...i V'o/s,,¡1¡rosfasier romantic. LLrstt;
¡riercing (acute, ph¡'sical pain), the glissanclo acciacature -§uggesting the initial rcsist,ance offered b.v the skin before the knife point plunges into the b';dy.
nre
sy
necdoclte
The second main nlusicai sign t¡'pe rve heve forrnd t¡seful is theg./rr(r sl'/l(,cr/oc¡e.
In verbal languagt, s.yn(ccloch( (a special t.vpe of nreton-y'my) dt'notes a figure cf'
specch in which a part substitutes the rvhole, as in ALL IITINDS c)l,.- ttECK, impl¡'ing. irt
least from the capttrin's view, that thc sailors'bravi'n is rvorth more than their brain.
r\ musical genre synccdoche is therefore a set of musical structures inside a givcn
music&l style that refer to another (different, 'foreign', 'alien') musical style bv citing one or tlvo elenrents tvpilving that'r¡ther'stvle rvhen heard in the context of the
style into which those 'foreign'elements are imported. B.v citing a snlallporf of the
other style, the citation then alludes not onl.y to that other st.vle in its entiret--v but
also to the complcte genre of which thatothermusical st.vlc is a su[ss[.11]
Toctile anophortes
11
regular, angulirr, cii.sjointtcl, hacking ¡novcment lstu,t'calt¡ e sfitr:onlr¡ firr l(rrrnr;r¡r
Ilatts's multiple stabbing of l{ario¡l in thc -shorvc,r); the tactile ¡1.spect i.sshrrrp and
Ge
ment to another. Gallops, marcltes, pronrenades, rvalking basse's, struts, cakervalks
etc. all contain culturall-v stvli.sed kinetic anaphones for certain types of human
bodil¡'nlove¡uents. Horvever. kinctic anaphones can also be visualised as the movement of animals (e.g. flights of bumble bees, swa!:n1s of locusts, stampedes of cattle)
or objects te.g. rocket launches. truck driving, trains moving, B52s bo¡nbing, spinning w'heelsi or as the subjectivised movement of objectively stationary otrjects or
beings, e.g. the sort of movement the human hand makcs rvhen outliníng rolling
hills (pastoral undulation), gentle waves on thc sea, quadratic skyscrapcrs, jagged
rock,., etc. Even stillness can be expressed by kinctic anaphone through the very
lack of explicit metronomic time in relation to the regtrlar beats of the heart, the
regular periodicity of breathing, etc.11 Of course, since the perception of any sound
requires the positioning or movement of a body or bodies in relation to another or
others, many sonic anaphones are also kinetic (e.g. a lforoR-BixE fuzzcd guitar
panned from one -side to another, IIoRSE-I{oon clip-clops in Z-1 or 6/8 gallop metre).
Sinrilarl.y, some kinetic or sonic anaphones can also be tactile.
Anaphone types are not mutually exclusive. Bernard Herrrnann's r+'ell-known music for the famous shower scene from Psyc/¿o (1960) contains anaphones that are at
the same time sonic, kinetic and tactile. The sonic anaphone is that either of a knife
being sharpened or ofa repeated screarn (borvs scraping harsh dissonances fortissimo at high pitch); the kinetic anaphone is that of repeated, deliberate, powerful,
l{ ¿t hod
t
One well-known genre synecdochcs is found in European Baroque music: the'oass
pedal point or the simple harmonies accompanying simple tuncs in compound nretrc. This type of muserne stack, anornalous in the harmonic and rh-vthmic perpetuurn mobile of the ilaroque, was obviously decmcd an atlequate connotor of Llentral
European country music of the time (style reference) and thereb.v of the suppost,rll-v
id.vllic pastorality as shepherds in the field kept rvatch over their ficchs (gcnre svnecdoche). Ttre 'pastorai syniphoniL.s' in Handel's ,'lfessioñ o. J S B.rch's C/¡r¡sfn¡o.s
Oratorio bear witness to such use of this musical sign t¡'pc. The serlr'c s.ynecdercirc
has, in other words, Iike the anaphone, a pararnusical field of connotatio¡r. IlL'¡ii'ever, unlike the anaphone, the genre synecdoche connote.s that field, not by stvlised
synacsthetic or structural homology, but by the intermediary of another musical
style. The example of Baroque'pastoral'music shows horv the'home style'(perpetuum mobile, changing harmony, circle-of-fifths progressions, etc.) inserts elements
front a 'foreign st¡,Ie" (simple one-key tunes and chord.s, etc.) as a referencer to phenomena presumed by the'home style's'audiencc to be those of thet'foreign st¡'le'.
Since the intermediate 'foreign' style is only one part of a larger set of cultural constructs (rvay of life, attitudes, perceived environment, clothing. behaviour, etc.)
viewed by the trome style's'audience, the'foreign style' acts as s-vnecdoche for that
larger set. As stated earlier, genre synecdoches contain trvo stages of referent'e:
from certain elemernts in a 'foreign' musical st.yle to the totalitv of that style and
from that style to the rest of the culture to rvhich that'foreign'st.r'le bclongs.
Episodic marhers
Our response statistics show that some tunes (Eonr¿'o and. Ji:liet. A Sircefco¡'
Nomed Desire, for example) scored much higher than others (e.g. The Vírginian,
Emtnerclale Farnt, Iúianti Vice) in WA category 03. This categon', Episodic Time,
t3
The genre slnt'cdoche is in other rvords doubly metonymic: (1\port of a ¡nusic¡i ,¡t.vle represent-r the
entire musical style; (2) the sol,/.r,¡n¿.sirol-structuml (stylislic) aspects of a pnre sigrrily the c,,¡r¡plete set of behavioural traits that constitute the genre. Gr,¡trc and st-),/r'are c..n-:istently usoC in the
,,,,:i^q '1,'1 fl.r.1'¡¡¡1.I hv F:rhl-.ri (1!¡S:1. 2000r.
.lf ¿t
r.N, r-E.\Dr\G t'r),
i-; t.vpilicd b¡'such respLlnses as lt \s Jt'sr, trrF.R TI{,\T,.{R()t'i'TO Ii
ct"rs To, rtc. Co¡n¡1,¡n nrusical-struciural clenolninators of the rcct'pti«rn te-st's rnore
epistxlic ¡-ricces rvere short, unidirectional processes alting at lclst one parameter ol
nrusical expression. We call these unidirectirrnal mini-procresses e¡tisodit ntorhers.
Ont- ()xsmple fronr the ten tunes of this book is the short. tluick. uplretrt, up-bo,,v, ri.sing run-in (an¿ibasis)to nerv musical material in Rota's theme fr¡r.Ro¡¡¿ec¡ and Juliet,
another the freqr.rent changr.s of ke.r' and instn¡nrentation in Slreelcar. Episodic
markt'rs can signal beginnings, ends or changes and can be unrlerstood in ternls of
phrases like': tT'S GOING TO ST.\RT...; tlFlRE IT (lollES...; ANI) NOW FOR...; IVAIT i.-oR I'r!...;
BL:T RI:.{LLY
IT'S...; IT'S GETTIN(; DtFFEITENT...; BL:T \\'}L\T IL\PptiNS NiiXT IS...:',l'AKI.) IT 1'0
TIIE BRIDGE..,; T.,IKE I.I.FTIOII TIIE TOP..\GAIN: SO}IE TIOIIE 0I..1.IiD S,\IT!]...; }.IN,\I,I,Y..., \'ES,
etc. Episodic markers can take the fornr of'protrrulsivc repetitions like
the six-quaver upbeat to the chorus of Abba's Fernunclct (Tagg 20001r) or the ct'ntrifugal melodic -srvirls at the start of Johann Strauss's Fledtrntut¿.s waltz, (ll ¡tipistral/o), or accelerandi or ritarda¡rdi or cresccndi or dinlinue ntli. \\rhat,ever t.heir slrape
or form, episodic markers all .servc, one purpose: as long as they do not cr¡ntinuc foret'er, and as long as the.y are not inlmediatt,ly cancolltd b¡,a ¡:rusical pr()cess in thc
opposite direction along tht-'sanre parameter(.s) of nrusical expressit-rn, all strch t'pisoüc markers act as anacruses, pointing the nrusical ¡rarrative fonvard in thc direction of something nerv, be it a nerv theme, a ne\v scction, or even a new rcprise,
or the actual end of the piece.
IT'S FINISIIING,
Style indicator
The fourth and final type of musical sign is any musicalstructurc or set of musical
structures that are either constant for, or rcgardecl as typical of, the 'home' musical
style.la We are in other words talking about the cont¡tositional nortns of any given
style. Thus, music using only a very ferv chords (rarely invcrted) but sporting plenty
of vocal and instrurnental inflection (of particular types) might be rcgarcled as s/y/e
indicators of blues rather than of \¡iennese classicisrn, whercas plenty of different
chords, Ílequently inverted, ancl much less variation of vocal or instrumental inflection might be regarded as indicati.ng the style Viennese classicism rather than the
biues. Style indicators can, it should be added, be used by'foreign'musical stl,les as
genre synecdoches. For cxample, although the steel guitar sound of Country music
often functions as an indicator of the Country genre, it started its life inside that
style as a style reference to the Harvaiian guitar, i.e. as genre synecdoche for a particular strain of the exotic. Such incorporation of 'foreigrr' elements into a 'home'
st.yle is of course part and parcel of rnusical acculturation, but it is useful to note
this distinction, since the same musical element rnight connote something quite diffcrent to different (groups ofl people at different points in time and place.
Ge-neral caueat
None of the musical sign types just presented are mutuallv exclusive, except for one
pair. A genre synecdoche cannot be a style indicator, or vice versa, because as soon
as a style indicator of one st¡'le is treated as part of a'foreign'style it functions as
l
t
This st¡tement implies that the culture in qrrestion must contain at least trvo differe¡rt styles of
nrusic. \\'e are unii\\'nr*' of anv culi.ure that does not.
l¡oi
¿l genr(,sl'¡'ri'cd,lche: coi .'selv, if, as w'e ¡l¡-5q¡i[-r¡,11 in tht'previi'tts parsffrap]r, a
g('nre s-vnecdoche is used oftcn enough l)l'a'honrt'st-vle, it ivill end up b.y bcing incrrrporated i¡ito that st-vle anrl become ont, of its inclicatr¡rs. Othr:rrvi.sr'. t'irist:rlic
n:arkers are usuall-v also anaphonic because thr.ir function is tr; ltighlight the nlusic'.s sense of direction (movement, hence kineticr. u,hiie sonre anaphones simult¿r-
1
rreously rvork as genre synecdoches ond as episodic nlarkers.l5 In shi¡rt, nrtrsl
relationships betrveen ¡nusical signifier and signified are conrpound.s of one or morc
of the sign t¡,pes just describerl.
,t
I
lt
ILe*ponse to
f
t
it
i
In Chaptcr 2 wc describcrl horv intercst in the'rnr'aninfl'of mrrsic¿rl structures, re*
t'rnerging in thr: sixties anrl seveltties undt,r the banncr of seuriotics, rvas rarel5'
nimcrl at popular nrusic. In enrlier publications I lrrl sumnrarised tvh-v that gap
¡rcerlerl frlling anrl suggcsterl rvavs in which problems of nrethod might be solvcd
(Tagg 1979, 1982c). l'hose publications prompted criticisnr rvhich in its trrrn
pronr¡rte'd inr¡rrovenrcuts in anal-'rtical method.ltl It was also u.seful to h¿rve to conlront thc.sort of opinion (often heard frc¡m studertts, nrusicians and collcagues btrt
rarely documented in rvriting) to the t'lIect that, evcn though it rnight be acceptable
to di-scuss 'meaning' in connection lvith 'function¿rl' types of mt¡sic (Darbietungsntusik, e.g. film music, popular -congs), semiotic-her¡neneutic approaches could not
say nruch about'real'mu-sic.17 Dismayed by the ten¿rcity of such musit-¿rl absolr¡tisrn, but encouraged by the insolcnt conviction I *,as le-ss of a cult.ural Barbarian
than they were, I often had to lookoutside the institutionali.-sed realni of nlusic education and rcsearch to find allies and inspiiation.
I
l
earlicr worh
Non-ntu sos and ntu sicol categorie s
One important source of inspiration for developing analytical nrethod rvas the considerable interest shown by people in educatianoutsíde the field of ¡nu-"ic, i.e. b-v
those who unclerstood the importance of music in mass-media societ.v but who hacl
hitherto found musicological discourse to be Iargely either incomprehensibly intra-
nlusical or to be dealing with nrusic outside their sphere of immediatt¡ concern.ls
Thc problems encountered in those contexts are often the reversé of tltose arising
l5
For example, the int.en'ening steps of the scale, borrorred fromclassical rnrrsic, bet*'een prinre and
ñfth in the anacrusis to bar 5 of the actual tune part in Brian I\fa.v's'rock'ren«lering ofGid.Sao'r'
The Qut,en at the start of Party ot tlp Palace (2002\. The flat-sub¡nedilnt intcrrtrpted cadenee
torvards the end of that sa¡ne rendition provides another exam¡rle of the same com¡:ounrl sign ty¡re.
16 The responses of music scholars to those earlier hermeneutic-semiotic rvorks rangcd frorn
'ungrounded s¡reculation' and 'naive overinterpretation' to enthusiastic reviervs abotrt pari.rdignr
shiñs. Out-and-out critieism of earlier rvork never appeared in print: it rvas oither comr¡ltrnicatcd
orally or in letters sent to someone other than myself. The'rave reüerts'were b.r* Jrinos \laróthy in
Studia ltírtsicologiea Acadenúae Scienliarun¡ l{ungori:o4 2-l (1982): 255-256, Iro Sana¡rir in
Ilaagse Posf 31 Nlay 1980: 54-55 and Andreas Ballstaedt in Dir, Mr¿.siÁfirrscñrrrrg, 3.1/4: 51 1. Of
corlrse, these revieu'ers also offered a lot by way of constructive criticism. as did Bill Brooks in
Sut,r¿sá tidshrift ftr musikforshning, 1979 / 1:106 and lfark Steed¡nan ín Populor l[¿¿sic, I: 185-187.
l7 Here 1i'e are back to the old circular confusion ofrtus¡c IS \tLrslc and rtt'stc,ts':!tt.'stc'. Such opinion
is. as rve argrred in Llhapter 1, fraught with ideological and epistenrological inconsistenc¡. In fact,
the main point of contention for those holding such opinions seemed to be that any a¡rproacl.r
attempting to relate any type of music to an¡thing out,"ide the music itself rvas to be trerrted as an
insult to their illusory notion of.\B¡^rl.t'TE ltt'slc (Don'f e!lungsmusih) and its'absolute' aesthetic
s
r
rpe rio
rit-v.
ü
I0{ ll'.q
in n¡u."ic¡rll-r"cultivatcd'circles. Inst¿'acl of mu.so un*'illingr)!,.SS tt, considr.r ltrusic sr'nrt.sthtticall-r'. 'non-nlusos'seemed almost /oo w'illing to do so. Strch propensit-t' for
the paranlusical coirlas out in dul'¡ior¡s statenrents like'music is a universal lan¡¡uage', 'violins are r{)ntantic'or'major is happv and minor is sad', i.e. in the form of
culturai!¡' restrictc'cl assulnption-s al,rout ]inks betrvecn thc r:rusical and paranrusic¿rl.ls It is rvith a vierv to counteract such popular paramusic¿rl excesses that we
h¿rve somctimes ¡¡one to rvhat nlisht scem like inordinate length.s in discussing the
ten title tunos: it seenred x,iscr to sort out as man-v parameters of musical erxpression as possible before prcsent,ing muse¡natic conclusions. We rvantcd, as much as
possible, to avoid the risk of c¡versinrplifying ¿rnd of ultimatel_v nrisrepresenting rnusic's unique \r'ays of carrying'meaning'.
.'\ntlther instructive problem encountered arnongst non-musos is that they sometirnes perceive musematic anal,vsis as spoiling the fun antl enjo¡'nre.nt of music. This
attitude can be seen as a popular corollary'to the position adopted by musical absolutists. \\¡hereas the latter sometimes seem to fear for thcir self-a.ssumed position
as Upholders of True and Unble.mished Art rvhe¡r rnusic is related to anytlling outside itself, the former fear that nonverbalit-v's final outposts
pleasure, enjoyment, entertainment, music, etc.
are under attack from the alienating world of
corporate management and institutionalised education, with all its statistics, forms
to fiil in, irnpersonal logic and boring w'ords (like these).20
Norv, if readers do find this'book dull, it is perhaps because we do not try to celebrate our ovi'n experience of music
- as musicians rve would anyhorv be more likely
to express that in music w'ithout verbal interventi
but to explain how a small
body of music communicates a rvhole host of ideas, scenarios and feelings to several
hundred ¡leople. In that casLr, our own musical tastes are of little relevance and the
'fun value', if any, of this book is more likely to be found in the musicalcompetence
of our respondents, in their rvealth of their associations, and in the power of the test
pieces to elicit those associations. Seen in this light, the'mind's tendency to systematise music's meaningi2l can, if combined with lateral thinking and the ability to
respond to music in a direct way, become a friend rather than an enemy, enabling
18 infact,betrveenl9Sland1991 Ireceivedmoreoffersofextrateachingfromsecondaryschools,
evening classes and weekend courses, fron¡ vocational courses at radio and television stations and
from university departments of sociology, linguisticsr mass communication and education than I
did from music schools, music departnrents, etc. There are still problems on this score. T$o recent
IASPII (LrK) co¡rferences (Salford and Ealing, 1992) demonstrated that rnusicologists were still
ver¡r irttrantusical in their discussion of music and either un¿rble or unrvilling to ¡neet the sociologists and cultu¡al theorists halfrvay. The situation has slorvly started to change, horvever, so that
b;- the seventh IASI']Ill conference (Glasgow, 1995), a new generation of interdisciplinary musicolo.
gists have started to appear, e.g. Robynn Stihveli, David Brackett, Serge Lacasse, Garry Taml¡n.
19 For critique of music as a universal language, see Tagg (19S3). Restricting thevror,INS question to
the realm of Holll'urood film music, rvhy, one wonders, if üolins are intrinsically romantic, did Herrmann (1960) use nothing óul strings in P.s1'c/ro? For a detailed discussion on the ethos of minor
and major modes, see our analysis of The Virgir¡ian (Tune 2 in this book).
20 Francés (1958: 288-9) provides the nicest example of how moraliy indignant musically cultivated'
people (musical absolutists) can become when asked to indutge in a little s¡'naesthesia. One of his
reluctant respondents protested: 'Non, non et non. La musique est musique, je ne conqois pas
qu'elle puisse étre sottrce de divagations sentiment¿rles ou littéraires'(='j\io, no and no again. illusic
is music. I cannot conceive of it as a sorrrce of emotional orliteraryranrbiings').
21 See our discussicn of Sinron Relnolds'ivrilinqs rn¡r.65. 67-70\.
*
t
f
t
I¡
\!, ! itt,t!
I
tht,rtader and listc¡rer
;T
p(,\\'er and richncss.?2
i
I
I
i
1.
i.o
undcrstand. as rvcll
a.s
t'x¡x'ricncc, st¡ntethingof nru.sic's
Ir is r:ssential to taht-, thr, f'ear of anal-r'sin¡{ fun verl'.scriousl.t', especiall¡'in Iight oi'
rht, Grt,at Epistemological Divide discr.rssed in Chapter 1. This does not nrt'an ttrat
se ¡niotically inclined music anal.ysts sht",r"¡ltl untlertake tlte impos-sil-rle ¿rnd f'ruitless
t¡.sk of verbalising music.23 But it doe-s mcan that the anal-vst can try to cr:unteract
ll:c schizophrclric eflccts of the Clrcat Epistemological Divitle b-,' rt'lating Inu^sic Lo
lrc re.st of e.ristenc e, ond b¡' communicating that it is fun to do so. This implies th¿rt
t
under ¿rnalvsis be relatcd rvhere'ver possible to nont,erbal syrnbolic sysi.e.
to
other nrusic, to nonvtrrbal sound, to pictures, flctions, gestures, bod.v
tcrns,
lu¡guage, ctc. Such transmoclal procedures are of course quite fcasible i¡r 'iive'
tt'aching situations, or in the audiovisual media, but they are wt'll-nigh impossible
t() carr-v off in acadenlic rvriting. Still, according to the norms of conventional ¿rerbr.¡/
Irrgic, sornc of the (verbal) analytical discourse we present rnight seent to wander off
i¡r ¡rll srtrts of directions, but such latcral thinking is appropriato in a book rvhich
tlt,nl.s rvith musical or musicogenic types of cognition.?{ Indced, if we Inanage to ref]ecf sonrething of the nl¡¿s¿cal and connototit:e logic practised by our respondents,
t[cn u'e may have had at least some success in thinking and verbalising in musicogc,nic terms. True, orlr words at such points may occasionally act as epistemic red
r6gs to the conventionai bulls oíscrib¿rl acudeme, buu they ma.y well rrak¿ tnatters
eusier for a lot of otlier readers. Even so, it is important to declare that the very nature ofscribal, verbal presentations like this restricts the rango ofcxpression anrl
cornnrunication to words, diagrams, tables and snippets of not¿rtion, nont' of r¡'hicli
even closely resembles the sort of experience most people have of music in tlte ma.ss
ntedia. Indeed, the main part oíthis book rvould be far better off acted, ¡rerformed,
pla.l'ed, sung, gesticulated, demonstrated, televised, or recordÉrd on an intcractive
VCD than stuck on the page like this.
tlrc
¡rru.sic
l\f odulating back to a more conventional academic ke¡', it is important to note that
tilc most constructive and helpful scholarly critique of m,v- earlier work concerns its
Iack of empiricism at the level of musical perception. This critique basically states
that, even though senliotic-hermeneutic approaches ma-v be of some use, and evcll
though the routines of interobjective comparison and musematic cotnmutation (h-vpothetical substitution) may offer a certain ernpirical basis in their description of
sets of musical structures, the real arbiters of musical meanin6¡ (and ultimatt'ly of
ard are nevertheless music's I¿sers. On that f'ront,
t¡arlier rvorks likeKojah and Fern¿ndo (Tagg 1979, 1991)providt:d little or no enlpirical backup and this methodological lacuna had to be filled.
rvhat musical structures actually
il3 I IPTI am often asked if 'all that
2:l
2t
analysing' doesn't ruin my enjo¡rtrerrt ol music. No' is my honest
answer. Then I have a store of rhet.orical questions to draw on. including'Do you think experts in
hormone research alrvals analyse their neuro-chemical activities during love-making?' I have two
others, one about enjo¡'ing alcohol or being alcoholic, the other about being ra¡>ed or agreeing to
seduction, questions I reserve for informal conve¡sation. All three questions are rhetorical and
ilssunle that interlocut.ors can distinguish betrveen compulsive and voluntary aspects oltheir own
khar-iour. Of corrrse. being comptrlsively anal¡tical about music is be no ¡nore firn than not being
able or allorved to exami¡re music rvith a cool head rvhen .vou s'ant, or need to do so.
\\'hy not? Because there clearly exists no one-to-one relationshrip bet*'een musical and non-musical
s-t'rnbols. Il there did, music would not be necessar¡-.
i ¡ '.rrth the "ort olcrt¡grries L,¡kolTi1987: 1l cnllsli¡¡rclicrtc,/.",1árrilirrr,','¡/ ís¡e o. l2llr.
Chupttr 3: 3Í¿th,xl ond pntcedure
ith rhtt gt,nt,rlrl h¡.pothesis that commttnl-v sharecl nlusical meanings (re'l¿rtions
of nrusical signifiers to signifretls)do exist rl'ithin a ¡¡iven culture and ttrat they art
fr;rmt,ci ¡rn( altert,d under particular social, idcological, technolop¡ical and musicalcuiturrrl contingerrcies, I tF'fl decidt'd it rvas necessarv to add an enrpirical study of
nrusical pL,rception to the hcrmeneutic-sen:iotic methods sketched in tlte previous
scction of this chapter. Son're sort of rr-ception test rvould be needed. Influencc'd by
the rvgrk of Campbell (19-12), Imbcrt¡'(1971, 1976), Karbu-<icky t1973), Rósing
(lg?5. 1g?7i and, most notably, Francis (1958), I decided to opt for free induction
as the best nrethocl of eliciting and documenting responses to the sort of music
rvhose'rneanings'I rvanted to stud¡,. The rest of this chapter describes and discus.ses the rationale, procedures and problems of that reception test rvhose results are
essential to the analyses that constitute the main part of this book.
I'it,' rtc,'itl uttt
S,¡, g
Th
t¿st
e reception tes t
Choice of test pieces
íou¡'ce details of test tunes
T¿rble 2 List of test ¡rieces
i?
l=
lz
li
:
I n"r".
i
of tune
rcomixrser, datel
o
[)r,'a t¡t (,)l' Olu'c
(('harles Williams.
T'h¿
f,
l9-12
I
0:.13
*,r'rr 1'1'¡.i1¡¡¡i'
.=
)rirr¡r.il
Sorirce of'
Airlrrevia-
(
tiolr
aurliovisrri¡I
reconling
so\trc(¡
ll'ltilt I lrue. I)ry
hurst filnrs, LlK.
Olwen
Btg Conctrto lllouit
?-r1.'nrr'.s (
0:52
ll'i rginio nl
1962)
NIIC T\¡ serics l9ti2-
Gtld¿» I lottr of'
69
Fo cou rit
(
.l[onty Pyt hon's
3
I,'l¡'
-
0:37
Python
irrg Circu.s (J-P
Sousa, c.1900)
,l
i972.*
19.t7
)
Th,'\:irginian
il'ercv Faith,
.?
rt
-''
Itfarch Lib,,ñy Bell.
BBC TV 1969-7.r
Romeo & Juliet
tNino Rota, 1966)
l:26
S-porlsnqr¡lf
0:36
Paran:ount Filrns,
R&,I
L¡K, 1968
t'lY
7' h
tt ¡tts
ls)76É
The ll:orltl of TV
Thenres (1976)
Hit the Roari to
Thenrcl¿rnd tHatch
197{.*
5
(Ton¡'I{atch,
ISporf
.s-
BBC TV c
l9i2
nightl
1973)
flit tht' Iil¡rtci ttt
'l'h¿ntland (llatch
197{
Entnt,,rdale Fort¡t
6
('[on_r'
Em¡nerdale
Yorkshire TV ( 1972-)
As 5. above
l:03
lSo),onoraJ
Goetz Pictures. USA,
I'¡ñ:, liar:c ol'Filnt
1957)
,U¡¡sir'(197i1)
Hatch, 1972)
So_)v-¡¡roro
I
lFranz
Waxman, 1957)
A S/reeúcar Nanrcd
8
'/)¿.sir¿'
(North.
1:20
Streetcar
Feldnlan/Kazan /
Warner, LISA. 1951
Fifly Years of F'ilnt
,lfu.sir' ( I973 )
1:38
Purple
Inonel
Deep Purple: Corn
1951)
Ou'td to'g'
9
(Tommy Bolin, 1975)
Tast¿'l'ltc Band
(
l0
'
)
1:11
,lf;on¡i l¡ic¿
lJan IIammer, 198-l)
0:59
Vice
T\'I1. tiSA
1r)75
)
ilf:onri
lzir¿: ( 19851
1984.88.
For fu¡ther details on original filrn and TV sources, see List of l\fusical References (LI\IR).
Table 2 shows source details of the recordings pla¡,ed to respondents in the various
test sessions describecl later (pp.115-116). Before motivatirtg our choice of te.st
tut1e.s, a ferv details in Table 2 require some explanation.
o Tune numbers
o
'
(e.g. "Tune L' for The Dreant of Olu'en, '10' for lÍiotni Vicr:) refer
to the overall order oftune presentation at test sessions.2S
Durations refer to the extracts pla¡'ed at test sessions, not to the themes as
heard in their original context or as sold commercially.
S
ingle-x,ord tune name abbreviations occur in the text of this bot¡k and are
printed in italics.
ahva¡-s
'
-
utL'e<I
to'E'
633
rlu.ríc, ciocking up eight times titc,a\,(,rase forRr.r(:K
B,\-\D lc6l?Sl, fir._times the average for indir-idual mu.sicjans or ensc¡lble, t¡,pe-s
IcSl3l, anrl eliciting the ¡¡eatest
numbcr olnrusicai-structural commt,nts
lcgl_lJ. It al.so gave rise to a blank return
rate exceL,ding thr. average b1. a factor of 1.6.1I
Such reaction's agiiinst ¡rrovicling
'r'\'As for ottcd /o §,art: renri,i-*ce,t of those e.xpressed b1' one respondent taking part
in a sinrilar stucly conductecl b, Francés
r1958)into tire pcrception of Ertropean
art music.
'No' no and no again'
trfusic is ntusic. I ca¡rnot conceivc of it as a so.rce
olem,tional or
literary rarnblings'. I 5
Tun,e 10
Although objections to iYA p.ocedure in coniunction
r'ith the Deep purple tu'e
rvere ferv' they seem to have been all the
more passionate. such strongly ht,ld n¡inority viervs suggest that claims of musical autonomy
are not restrictecl to fans of
European classical music: they are also applied
to rock.
Nevertheless, the overrvhelming majority
view about ott,eclfo .g,rvas far f ronr autonomous' The tune's blank retttrn ratc may
have bcen abo'e &verage, but sr¡ rvas
its average return of \YAs per responclent.16
Indeed, although hearcl a.s a piece of
rock music, easily ima¡¡inable as a rock performance
by rock nrusicians, our respondents'collective scenario for outecl to'g'featurecl
plenty of concrete phenome-
aa
Vic
UAMU
e
na, including concrete
itself, street lights, cars, cigarettes, arcohol, even
some
drugs, all as backdrop to the difficult life
of .you.g p"opl*, rebels, social rejects, de_
tectives and criminars in a big, tough, mocrern
cit¡ mostry by night, oftcn in swc,den
and probably in an insalubrious part of torvn.
our initial hunch had been that the Deep Purple track
would bc a suitable title
theme for a strong,
socially realist t,l'pe of drama or documentary
and containing elements of crime and crime-busting
- set in the 1g70s
about European or NorthAmerican youth culture' well, our respontlents
not only seem to harle strongly concurred: they also added a lot more detail and
were much less vague about its connotations than we hacl been. It would be
absurd to dismiss all that connotative
detail froür all those respondents as 'emotional
or literary ramblings,, more constructive to consider objections to those connotations
as yet another set ofconnota-
tions defining a particular community of culturar
opinion. That community,
w€
would arg'ue, constitutes a particular social
scenario which, in its turn, Iinks in with
the 'oppositional'wAs to which the nocx
r\rtrsrc IS ln,usrc AND NorHrNG ELSE community apparently objected. unfortunately, the
social relativity of absolutist viervs of
music is the topic of another tome altogether.
Synthesised fashion and
e$citement for the eighties
Preliminaries
-
p.634
.Transcription - p.63.1
¡ltiarni Vice List of WAs - p.638
.Jliami Vice
-
-
Special Profile Statistics - p.6.1
Analysis
1
- p.644
Intro: phatic modernity? - p.644
Latin percussion and e1e shadow - p.6.15
IOCII: fashion and notions of beaut¡'
Latin perrussion and rnenace - p.650
13' Tlrc virginian ericited 1 response (2,t*)
incategory g00M. No other tunes did.
1.6 rimes rhe
'n ?;,':Í,,1:':.'§:::_13:::,1,:,1*::
1"9*s" or iz r* *iich is roughry equir.arenr to
otu'en's or sportsnis/¿r's brank retu'n
,*ru. t24%".,i"o.,,
ozc p.ll,lllJ"":11ií
blank responses as did The Virgirtiau,,
innty python and S/.e.,icor, ju-qt over twice as many as
tr{ianti vice' around 1'5 times
.nun.u asB&J-and Errur,lrdnir-,tut
o.r. third less than soyo,aru.
i5' 'Non' non et non' La *::i3".. "*
.st mrriqre,¿e^19 coneois pas qu;elle puisse érre source
de d.ivagations sentimentales ou littéiaires' (Francés,
195g: 2gg_2gg).
,6. Return rates for WAs per
respondent are set out in appendix 6:3.
iH::Tj;"r",
rNegative drum scenario rGtritars: menace and rnetamorphosis ¡Porver chord threat
rFrom rvah and trvang to clean and neutral
The s¡'nthesiser: a many-splendoured thing - p.65.1
. Semiquaver subdivisions . S)-nthesi ser semiquave
r reiteration
Horizontal change - p.657
oI'he tune: is an¡'bod¡'there? rTimbre and textrrre .I:lannonv and lorrn
tr{ianti Vice
Transcriptian
Ja¡r [{anr¡:ler O
tr
A:t
}lCr\ }lusic, lggl
c(5)
Bb(s)
! m ,\ at lrne
'trf hal'cútñu"t
i"¡,-r,ai:l
alrltJl
fr,fi fr,
l"uongo''
l--;
-aa¿ea
]
; ¿,
tlnlrf
"'
,t'-¡at.i :;J. b,grevnt,/
Q o
I
L' c
(5)
tjl
A(5)
R\Y
6U
;g.c
'I't¡t Litf l¿ 7'itle Tuttt,s
[r.] A(2,5)
I-rd G
(2,5)
ll
Ir-Er¡¡s§l
+
(B D. +
s.D cortrn¡e)
.
-.t i
Lr,
Ld
Gt,
Rhv
Gtr
EAtl
Ld
Gtr
Rhv
Gtr.
* a-'
L +,
irl
C
L¿TJ
-
1t)
637
6++
-::'.1 percussion and
Tun,e 10
eye sl
l:-: frrst beat articulate
--: second (Jffi), the th
"E I. The frightening p
-:il just prior to the dr¿
.:iser is unlikely to he i
-
Miami Vice
Synthesised fashion and excitement
-
.:uder than the hi-hat
:alf of the beat. Betwe
--ude, register, envelop
nent of rhythmic and
fo, the eighties
Latin percust
Intro: phatie modernity?
3ecause of their indige
A bar of very quiet high-frequency rhythmic pulses (labelled hi-hat' in the tra:scription) precedes the introduction. While serving the purely phatic function -:
drawing the perceiver's attention toward the material to follow, this measure als:
establishes temporal and affective/associative expectations which help to inforc
the listener's interpretation of the subsequent material.
oould, we thought, ge
:elevant associations
;\-ere virtually no sucl
affective/associative f
\l'hereas the BooseY ai
,rn these instruments
One Cool Cuban in its
inent solo instrument
gest either that the i¡
arranging that it has l
ami Vice's basic lack
somehow alters that r
As pure sound, the short duration, high register and white-noise timbral complexity of each pulse is able to cut through the ambient sound of the viewer's living
room, even at very low intensity. A noise of this sort makes eflicient use of even the
smallest television loudspeaker and its short wave length makes it highly directional, facilitating a reflexive swivel of the head in its direction. Discrete associations
scarcely have time to form, though, because the identity of the individual pulse disappears almost immediately into the rhythmic patterning of the first beat. Along
with its affective/associative potential, the pulse's acoustic properties become timbral accessories to a larger periodic succession ofuniform events.
Since the first two bal
in percussion and the
introduction's subseq
timbales become mor
ingly dense backing t
and rhythmic charact
ers we don't know it
the tune's Productior
sounds might do, but
perhaps this in itself
As a sequence of organised sounds, the noise pulses present a fast, even rate of repetition (7.73 per second) broken at irregular intervals by pauses which effectively
double the perceived duration of the pulses which precede them. Here the alternation of 'longs' and 'shorts' conforms to a conventional metric pattern resulting in a
stylised Monss coDE or TELErRINTER motif, with its attendant associations of excitement, urgency, and potential threat.l
At this point of organisation (less than one second into the track) the pulses begin
to operate as musical units. We perceive four beats, equal in duration, timbre and
amplitude, arising from a regular patterning of sixteen equal sub-units. In this particular case, at least three of the sub-units sound in any given beat. Within this narrow grid of possibilities, the frrst bar gives us the maximum possible variety; each
beat presents a unique realisation of the rhythmic rule 'at least three sub-units
shall sound'.
1.
:'*', loose timbale soun
WAs of specifi
The unusuallY high r
a perceived corresPo
For discussion of urgency cues and Morse code rhythms, see Tagg (1979:L47-L54,2000b:235-239).
See also our Sporisnight analysis in this book.
|-
tune (Miami Vice) ar
Vice stggested conte
tion, harmonY, timbr
Vice's'horizontal' (di
all of them), and sin
rlemonstrablY non P'
'l'hc fir.st br,¿rt articul¿rtes rl. ur of it.s scnriquavers (,711 ), the sccr¡nd brar onrit,s
tlrc scconrt t.=f ). the thirrl br-'at omits the fourth (.=. ) an,l the last beat tht'third
r,= ). The fi'ightt.'ning possibilit¡'of onritting the dorv¡rbcat l.-f i i"s held in rt:.sr,rve
trntil jtrst prior to the dramutic s.1'nthesiser t,ntrance in bar 6. bv rvhich tinle the percciver is unlikel¡'to I-¡e'disturbed bv it. The introdtrct.ion proper begins in bar 2 as it
lorv, loose timbale sounrl (rvith lots of reverb)enters on the first bcat, substtrntially
Iouder than the 'hi-hat', followed qtrickly by bongo sounds subdivirling the secr',¡rrl
half'of the beat. Between the first trvo sounds' relative extre¡nt:s of tilllbrc, atnplittrde, registe.r, t,nvelope, reverb ancl rhythmic activitl' the bongos ¡rrovicle an clcment of rh¡'thrnic and acor¡stic moderation.
Latin percussian and
eye shadow
Because of their indige'nous role in the music of Latin America, timbales and bon¡¡os
rvould, rve thought, generate a significant number of geographicall-v or ethnically
relevant associations fro¡n our Iv[ianti Vice listeners. Surprisingly, tlrough, thr¡rc
rvere virtually no such responses, and this ver.v rarity niay indicate a shift in thc
affective/associative function of Latin percussion instru¡nents in popular ¡nusic.
Whereas the Boose.y and Haul¿es Cauendish Library of the mid 1960s could derpend
on these instruments to lend mock south-of-the-border authenticity to tur"res likc
One. Cool Cuban in its South Americ,r section, the in-clusion of timbales a:; a prolninent solo instrument in Iv{iami Vice evokes no similar response. This seonts to suggest either that the instrument has been so integrated inio the mai¡rstream of pop
arranging that it has lost its original referential value or, more specificall.y, that rViomi Vi.ce's basic lack of latinicity as regards characters, narrative and scenario
somehow alters that value.
Since the first two bars provide no obvious clues (so far we have heard onl¡' the Latin percussion and the hi-hat noise) we should probably begin to consider some of the
introduction's subsequent developments. Proceeding through bars 3-6 we he¿rr the
timbales become more active and we may lose the bongos and hi-hat in an increasingly dense backing track. In bar 6, the instrumental, harmonic, timbral-acoustic,
and rh-vthmic characteristics of the entire ensemble bccomc ñxcd; thougli as listeners we don't know it yct, b-v the end of this bar rve will have heard every aspcct of
the tune's pro<iuction and arrangement. At this point we can't predict rvhat these
sounds might do, but the conrposer has certainly specified for us what the.v are, and
perhaps this in itself is enough to help us answer.some of our questions of context.
WAs of specific musical genre
The unusually high number of VV-_-As referring to a specific musical genre inrlit:ates
a perceived correspondence between the sonic and musical resources of the tr:st
tune (Miami Vice) and the genre to rvlüch the WAs refer. To our listeners, l{ío¡ni
!'ice suggested contemporary pop and dance music. Because shifts of instrun-rentation, harmony, timbre, and surface rhy'thmic patterning account for most of Iv[iunti
Více's 'horizontal'(diachronic) events (in the lead-guitarless tcst version, virtually
all of them), and sincc some of these latcr shifts, particularly'in the harmony, aro
demonstrabl¡, non pop-like, we propose that the mainlv'vertical' (synchronic) as-
pL'cts of the tuIlr', togetht'r
rtith its rh¡thmic organisation at the llrr.l
,lÍtont t
lIu.:i,
the
b¡rr,
<;f
prtrmpted tl:r, respondcnts to rc.plr.as thc¡, did.
Though our resltondents' rt'cognition ot'Jficn¡l Vic¿'s v¿rrious synchronic similarities to pop ntusic g¡enerated manv .such compatible media-i¡nntanent \yAs, the list('nL'rs al.s,r appcar to h¡n'e favourcd certain visual, tactile, and spatial metaphors
in de-scribing their n)ore connotative a.ssociations. The practice of describing tinil--ral-:rccr-lstic fe¿lture.s of ¡ni¡sic as 'gloss1J,
'brittle'or 'up fiont'finds espression
hc.rc.
in ot¡r re."pondent.s' frequr'nt \n''¡\.s like cunorrE, FLr,sIrI)iG. co.\-ctRETE A\D sp.\cE {cosrtosr. Conlbining thcse perceived qualities rvith the unyielcling speed of the surface
rh¡'thnr and the metronomic regularity of tenrpo ma), account for ¡-As"T, gtIASE, r,ul.sE,
F'§TCLTS, CITY, IL\cHnes and PLd\E. Perhaps as tht, nraterial manifestation
of r.rsr,
cllRolfE, crlASE,l\L{,(l}lINES, the WA cAR was cited far nrore oftcn for l{iomi i¡ic¿
tha¡t
for any other te.st piece, dcspite the fact that thi.s tune had rnan-y fcrvtr re.spontlcnüs
than any of the othcrs. (We will return tocen in greater dctail when n,e discr¡ss the
role of the synthesiser track). But in slteer ¡rumbers even c..\R li¿rcl to takt a b¿rck seat
to the rnerlia-immanent indoor Iocation WA oisco, a complex conccpt involving nrusic, light, speed, motion, social €¡nvironme nt, ond Latin
¡tercussion.
lVhile there is no room ht'rc to tracc the role of Latin percussion through disco an¿
subsequent urban dance music st1'les, it seems clear that these instruments had, i¡
the mid eighties, yet to be totally assimilated into the timbral-acoustic fabric of contemporary rlance music production.z If in fact Latin percussion had not lo-ct its capacity to stand out in a basicall.y Anglo-irlorth-American pop or dance music
context
in thc mid 1980s, ortr respondents'failure to hear the ll[irtnti.Iüce drums as Latin
American at that titne does not rule out the pos.sibilit-v that these instruments may
have served some other specific referential function. In order to clttermine what
that function rnight be we should first return to the listeners'responses.
We have already seen that the general context of ltiamí Vice isone of popular
music
and disco, u'ith other related associations centring around cars (r¡sr,
CHASE, IIL{CIIINES),
urban environs (cirt', coNcRe:rs), high technolory
cHRoME,
(spACE, pr-ANE),
and reiterative speed (rrcr curs, PLTLSE, FL{sHrNc). There is also the anrbiguous ENrvith its sinrultaneous implications of menace and embrace, which suggests that u'e should try to locate the more specific affective attributes of
this
speedy, mobile, technological, urban musical milieu. The high number of
nxcr.Nc
arld.'\D\'EMrLinr \YAs correlates rvell with those listed above although the
affective
tone it specifies is only slightly Iess general. But as \§e consicler nore responses,
we
find a polar disagreement among our listeners as to the specific nature ancl activities of this exciting cnt'ironmt.nt's population. B.v far the majority perceived
an ugly
scene: BAD, -\GGRESSIVE JtiliKIES on oopr and DELL\QLENIs who say 1t'E
TAfix ¡io IIoItE,
rvere being REBELLIous in their I\IESsy, INIIosprr.\Bi.E surroundings, coNTllüring
with
DECKARE over their IrAssLrNG of the local uooxERS.3
In the greatest possible contrast,
vELoP$'iG,
?
3
ritlrt'rs inraginerl ¿r t'.\su¡oN st{ow at rvhich an.\('nr}r\('E was ( t:t.}tBIL.\'[!\r-; sonle n{,\v
Evoll the t,wo geographical locations ¡ncntioned crclusivr.lv in connet:tion s'iih.lfio¡¡¡i ["icp appear to rellect this polaritv: JuNr;r.¡: and {],rl-t¡onsr..r. Di.scounting the e,cological notion of .ll\r;t.E nreírning tropital rtill f*r,,st e.-: hi{rhl.limprobabie in this context of the Iíianti r,'lce W¡\s, the nrost likcl¡'polarit.r'is either: [1] betrvecn the.¡t'xcle of dangerous, primitive brutalitv anrl(t.tr.rF(,in...¡,r as tht'
nr¡'thicai site for a modern con.sttllrer societv;'t or [2] bctrqet,n tht brr¡tal realitie.s
{concrL'te jungle) and desirable illusions of the sanrc catastrophicall-v r:onsunrt'rist
socit'ty'. Either rva-v. the scenarios oflered b-y our respondents'¿r.ssociations tr¡ thr:
llianti f-ice tht¡nre tune are contradictorl and rve rvill ¡reerl to knorr' rr()re u,hich
'lRrl^\D\'oBJE(.'T.
This is probably still true in 20t)0. It definitel-r'rvas in 1991, ivhen this
text was originally rvritten.
Respondents may have seen (heard) plerrty of drrbious deerls an,l
shad¡'places an<i the¡'certainl¡,
put l'-ire top in the cRr.,r.lr,Ty st¿kes l1Zl6l, giving it also an exclusive
on tiosTn.lry t1215i.Ilorvever,
no.cne mentione.d rhe i,.\i:{ and sr.r.i-.r.:nrxr;
ll202l or (;t,rr.t.[127{] rhat is part nn,l pn.cel of cnreltv
or ho-stilit¡,'. and onlv or.le person mentioned .lii\. Iiyir_ inr.ol.¡¡r1.
sr¡untl.s are mo.st
likely to give
rise. to rvhich VVAs.
Now, lingering logoccntricity might u,ell tcmpt us to equater bongos anrl tinrbales
rvith thc jungle,iungle rvith thc inhospitable and aggressive urban scenario, ¿rnd so
on.'lhat line of rea.soning is nrore than partially rvrongbcc¿ruse it vvor¡ld dcpend on
siniple parallelisnr bctrveen conventional verbal nretaphors (e.g., Jungle drunrs',
'concrete jungle') and betrveen these and their musical'equivalents'as rvell" On tlie
contrarr', as \¡r,e turn norv to some select Latin percussion IOCNÍ , we find that during
the mid to late eighties these instruments acquired a surprising potential lbrr,rsuIoN sno\§ / rnrlrDv o&rEgl, connotations *'hich within very ferv years becanie qulte
such a cliché.
IOCM: fashion and notions of beauty
The television series Paper Dolls (r\BC / N{GI\I I UA,1982) concerns the 'intirnate
lives and behind-the-scenes power struggles of a group of fictional thshion nrodels'.
Halliu,ell and Purser (1986: 622) also quote the headlinc advcrt for the show'LIot
passions. high fashion.s!' and continue their commentary:
'IVo teenage girls beconre high-fashion photographic models and get their lives ruined iri
the process. Glossy' ... 'and utterly resistible peep behind the scencs o[a¡r unattractive
industr-v.'
The signature tune for Po¡ter Dolls is identical to Miami. Y¡.ce 's in onl¡' trvcr aspects:
(1) its rh-rlhmic foundation is a metronomic drum machine track and (2) its chief
foreground punctuations are rapid, melodic timbale figtrres. As in Miatni Vice, the
drum machine is part of a contemporary and, for the mid eighties, 'up-to-date'[3601
pop sound, The timbales, on the other hand, are not part of the rhytlrm section in
either tune. tinlikelv{iomiVice's bongos or Paper Dolls'congas, the tinibales do not
chug along rvith the hip, morlern rhythm section to providc a foundation for something el-.e: rather, they themseives seem to constitute that 'something clse'. The_v
are still hip and rnodern, to be sure, but they are also suflicientl.)¡ non-accompanimental and lbregrounded to imply a message apart from the medium, or nrore accuratelv, to call attention to one specific sort of message from arnong the several
implicit in the medium.
Readers :nclined to bclieve in this myth are atlvised to check The Dead l{enned.vs''California Uber
Alles'on Fr¿slt F'ruit fitr RottingVcgetables, Faultl'700014, 1980. Of course. C,\r.lFoRxr,r (the notion
behind cur respondent's lYll and Florida (backdrop for theMianti V¡ce serics) hove a lot in conrnron: s'.r:n1'lnd close to L¡tin Amcrica, t.hev are:riso presen{eci to and irrylerstrx¡rl lrv n'rrrn' Noltll
.11:
o¡rr
¡ l':r
,,
In tlre tesc of Po ¡str I)oIis thest¡ tintb¿rles sonlatin)es sharc thc' fl:regrouncl
¡rrrnctuatirln rr¡.le rvith an electronic percussion sound variou.sl-r.knor.,'r: i¡r thc l;rtc. r-,ightics
as Linn drums,'svndrunl.s'or eve-n'space tlrurns'(s¿,e ex. 10:1i. The latter non-lr,ncl¿rturc probabl¡,derives Ironr use r.if similar'bccrr,'Ibju:] or,pee..r'Ipju:]
_councls in
gloss.l'laser gun ¡-:roductions like S¿r¿r llurs, r'spr..ciall-r'consiciering sucir
rtcorriings
as \fECO's 1977 disco version of the thenle from Srar ll'urs antl it.s parody
b¡, The
Spinncrs for }lel Rrooks' Spacebulls - Tht: l{t¡t'ic ( j'll,rrris l987). In the earl¡,anrl
n'ritl eighties. there \§AS no doubt that the souncl connoted a particular
t-l.pe of modernity and porver, since' chilclren .seemt'd to stop 'shooting' each other on play-
groutrds to the vocal acconlpanimcnt of revolver, rifle or machine-gun
imitations
i'bang','kerb&rtg','ratatatat', etc.), preferring to sonic¿rllv .sinrt¡latt: killing
ench other i¡r the sort ol acoustic terms pre'sented by,Sror lli¿¿¿'s' ¿rncl V's laser gun.s (i.c.
'peew', rh.yming with'phew!'1. But there is ¡nort'connotative ¡lreat
on this acoustic
bone than glossy,'h'pcr-
nr
otlcrn' viclr¡o beeping and'bct,rv-in
g,.
charactcristically, the'space dnrm'sound consists of a clistinct percussi'e attack on a sine rvave tone in the 200-400 I{2. range (hig}r for n
Ex.
'clrum'tone) frllorved by an imrnediate dorvnwarcl portamento
of about
en octave and a rapid clcca-v. The result i-s a sound rvith a pcrcussion_
like lack of pitch definition but a distinctly,synthetic'timbre u,ith little
or no cornplex noisr¡ acconipanying the at.r,ack. or ¡s it that syrrthetic?
Try vocalising the soun«l notated in ex.10:1at tlie correct pitch.
10:1
The initial sine wave tone at normal female speaking pitch (200-400IIz.)
has a hol-
lorv sound reminiscent of a diluted flute tinlbre.s If vocalised, such
a syndrurn tone
sounds like a tight thud on a slightly subduc¡d sort of high tone that thlls quickly
a\t'ay into a longer 'oh' or 'ooh' sort of vowel -_ hence verbal irnitations
like ,peew,
and 'beew', because the initial sound glissando-s dorvn an octave or so
and decays
within the space of about a quarter of a second. If vocalised by a female voice
or by
a nrale voice starting in falsetto register, what sort of interjection rvoukl
that sound
represetlt? A quick, sliding and decaying'ooh!'like that often seems to be
connected
with the expression of mild shock turning almost immediately into pleasant
surprise. We therefore suggest that listeners in the earl.y- or ntid 1gg0s woulrl
most likely have heard the lv[iat¡ti Vice space drum as either sonic anaphone for female
or
falsetto interjectio¡rs of 'pleasant shock', or as space filrn synecdoche for
a specific
type of laser-and-space modernity.6 Whether there be any validity in such
interpretations may become clearer if we discuss other aspects of the sou¡rd.
In Poper Dolls, this sound participates in the rhythm section by accenting
the sixth
quaver of each 4/4 bar (the upbeat of 3), but it also interacts rvith the
tirubales to
provide aclditional foregrouncl rhythmic interest in the junctures
between large
phrases' The Paper Dolls signature inclucle's numerous other percussisn
and synthesiser effects in its opening bars (r,ibra-slap, inside-the-piano string
scrape, fil-
tl-
Flute timbre consists basically of hvo sine waves, one oscillating trvice
as fast as. or an octave ¡bove
(Zf.i, the other (1f the fundamental).
of course, by the early nineties. the spacE nnurr, like the Acvr,lo:i \vArr-\y..\n
of the -sforsAy attd I{uti.h
thp¡ne (T Scott, 1975)' hatl trecome totally obsolete r¡s
a sonic fetish of action and nrodernity. ts¡..the
1'ear2000 its nl¿in semiotic function, if an-v, rvould probably be as genre s-lrleccioche
of f¿¡shions rnrl
irleas lront the l¿rtc 1t)70-s eild errrl., l,eF0s.
tt'rr-'tl ivhite nilist, l;lasts, t'tc.). brrt t.inl-r'tht,svn<lrt¡ms rt'm¿rin in thr. tcxture [;c-r'ontl
tht'first fiiur bnrs.7'l'hc sr,¡rdrt¡n1s nlakt'for an intertstilrg cr)ntrast rvitir b,rth thc
timh¿rlcs and tht tlrum nraclline. Thc-r' aro nlore obvioLrslv .svnthr.tic tl¡an cithcr,
and less active as u'cll. Rh-ythmicall¡'. thev seerr) unnece.ss¿lrv Rt bilth the bur It,r'el
and the phrase icvel. Thcir tirlrbr¡rl function is appirrcnti-t'to ¡.rrovitle rlt.coratio¡r
ratller than rh¡'thrnic propulsion or continuity. In the parlancc of 19.80s rccord ¡rruductio¡r, the'-v apperrr tc, bt'little r¡rorc thnn ntcde,rnistic'r.ar carrr!¡". Ilut tllcsr tinibral and rhythnric difTcrences sr-'t-ln tr; allorv the s-.,-ndrums a degrco of'ulriqiren(,ss
relative to both of the other nrain percussion tracks, and to call attr¡it.ion to t,hcir
conlmon referential potcntial. just as thr: ti¡¡rbales (i¡l both thc Paper Dt¡lls and.llranti l/ice thtmcs) c¿¡ll attention to spccific implication.s in thc rhythm sectior¡. The
plcasant surprisc is that the referential value of the s¡'ndrunrs in the nlid ig80s
was, as rve alreacly suggestcd, not limite'd to that of a genre s-vnecdoche fbr disco,-rr
Iaser-age space movies. In orde.r to demonstrate ¡his theorv, rve shall have to citt:
another bricf example.
The television advertisement for Revlon's Custonr Et'es e.r'e shaclorv, aired on Nortlr-
ern Europe's Illusic Box video network in the autumn of 1986, features an audio
track of syndrums, bongos, snare drum, hi-hat, and assortcd unpitcl'red synthesiser
noises very quietl,l' accompan¡'ing a spokesman's relaxed, sollo rroce announce¡nent
about this 'revoiutionary' cosmetic. All sounds but the voice-ovcr are mixed quite
Iorv ('beerv', rh-v-ming with 'pherv!', dencltes syndrunr hits):
(beew) (beeu,) Never (beew), never u'ill eye shadow ever be (beerv)the sa¡¡re again. Rt¡vlorr
revo- (beew) -luiionises eye siradorv witir Custoru Eye s...
There can be little doubt that the producers of Pcrper Dolls intended a simil¿rr context for their s,yndrums: the opening shot in the programme's title scquence i.s a
close-up of a Rer.lon Custom E-ves kit. If the syndrunr.s rvere intended to convcy current ideas of the FASIIIoN AND BEALT"IY variet,-y, then, 6¡¡ -"peculations concerning their
referential relationship with the drurn machine and timbales cornmon Lo lt'[íanti
Vice and Pape r Dolls suggest that it is indeed Mia¡ni V¿ce's combination of timbales
and HIp, yourl{ T.A.RGET pop music rvhich accounts for t}re F/\sHIoN sllow anil rnrxny
oB.JEcr \YAs offered by our respondent-s. We do not mean to proposc any clear linear causality, with fashion drums somehow originating in Rcvlon and pa.ssing to
l'Íianti Viceb¡'rvay of Paper Dolls. Rather, all three seenr to p¡ive evidence of a broad
new referential function for Latin percussion instruments in the context of pop music and youth products generall¡'. Further corroboration comes from at least three
sources: [1] the US television advert for Electric Musk cologne, aired during the
1986-1987 Christrnas season; [2] Music Box netrvork's November 23. L986 broadcast of designer lVendy Dagworthy's London showing of her auturnn collection; l3l
Lisa Liebm&nn's remarks in the November, 1986 issue of Artforunr magazine (pp,
8-9) concerning the recent appropriation of 'Latin and black American street st.yles'
and 'the fetishes of suburban teenagers'by orthodox Parisian designers. Certainl-v,
there are numerous counterexamples to the hypothesis that these drums signifv
fashion (or that they '-signify'an¡-thing at all); but it seems to be a fact that the peo-
i. \\'e cannot
discr:unt the possibi)itv that these other'effects'are effective in drarr-ing the listoner's
attention to the screen, brrt like the,llionri Vice'hi-hat'noise their tarly <lisappearancc srrggests a
'.1..¡'i,'
-r¡,..^ll
..
¡,r¡'.'r.^:r¡i
rl fr11,"i,r..
Ten
ple responsiblc ft¡r telcvi'sion signatur'"
Lunes, bro¿Lr-lcast
atl'ertisemt,nts, ancl .r,en
fas,irn sho*'nru'sic dirt'ction in trre nrid eighties
frctlu*.tr-r, c'rp,r.r.err a conlt¡ina-
tion of Latin and electronic perctt-qsi.n to enrphasise
tl:e 'st.vlish.L.ss,and .mocjerniof' their products. It js also highlv probabl.y
that sonre of our responclents
r{,cc,gni.sed tiris trcnd.
t]"
florv pastel-shadecl lcg u'arnters a¡rd tox'elling
headband.s (not to ruention the mint
grccn'r and ice blut''s ol!'i.e's logo
and Don Johnson's jackcts),
aerobics,
glossy ii¡r'stick' laser-lit discos, sTrace l}¡rrrs, 'pleasant shock'.
femaie or fal.setto ,quick-gliss,
'oo-ing" s-vrldrums and Latin percus-sion
all hang together is thc, subject of another
entire book' sufrice it here t. state, on the
basis of'circum.stantial evidence presented so far, that Latin percussion,
clmm machine tracks
ar¡ti l/ice (as well as in Pttpt'r DrlIs, the
and s.yndrums. as used in rUi -
Bir¿,/o
tt
Rtur¡ltttionise.s
advert ¿rnd
elservhere)' are all connectecl to the gloss.v
presentatio¡r of f.male bodies, of fashion
and modernitv, all packaged in the unmistakably
commoclity-fotishist ¡nanncr of
earl¡'-¿6-"id 1980s consunlerism.6 It seems
highly likelS,that the sounris we have
been discussing are at the basis of
such important Miorr¡vlr:¿ ¡65¡16¡¡ses
as FASrrroN
1273b-), TRENDY OBJECT 12645r, rnác( (=
'rad,, .hip" ,coor.) [10g.1r, ,HOT STI'FF' (as
in trre
1979 Donna summer disco hit)
[10551, and rxoooR LTGHTS. we arso suggt,st
that
they
are contributory
to such vlrAs as
t33501, FUTURE TilrE [3g0Fr, clL,ns
t8022], DAr\ic'PACE
lE23il and vrpro i8232l.
Indeed, in 1gg1, when rve initially conrpleted this chapter, rve rvrote:
INC [5652i4i]\'ERr
'these sou¡lds and th-e clothes, Iifest.yle,
fashio,s and jargon they underscored,
are as outof-date in trdcv as thev were hvperl-o,lu,
n bareiy , J"i"¿" ugn. R.rt th"; i.
the wa-v.,
t;
Latin, percussion and ntenace
Negatiue drum scenario
Let us return to the INHoSPITABLE /AGGIIESSñT
scenario, which rvas far more comnlon
than n¡snloN among our lvlianti vice listeners.
Here we may wish to begin by cons;idering the referentiai ñr¡rction
of the percussion sounds which have
concerned us
so far' The bongos and hi-hat noise
of the introduction aren,t likely to contributc
much to this negative scenario for several
reasons: first, the hi-hat noise drops
out
at the synthesiser entrance in bar 6 ancl
remainsfocer until just prior to the end
of
the tune' second, the
Iry dynamic ensures that even dtrring its brief appearances
this sound will be all but obliterated by
the other elemcnts of the mix. The same
is
irue of the bongos, to a le-sser clegree. Third,
neither track compensates for this lack
of anrplitude rvith any sort of indivi<lual
rh¡'thmic contribution. Instead, these two
quiet little sounds synchronise with
the Iouder instrume,ts of the rh.-vth¡n section
to the point of vanishing entirely.
These instruments playing virtuall-v
identical fig:res at an even q,ieter dynamic worked,
armost
.uuri-iro,jr;;.ü.,1n tno i.,tinate Revlon spot because they theliselves
were the 'rhythm section,. ln lvliami
z'lce' contpeting with
distortecl ;guitars'and staccato semiquaver
octaves in the uprer synthesiser part, they are
largel¡, ineffectual. (In the final section
of this anal_
'sis we'll see that e'en this
ineffectuality is not rvithout referential potential.)
Ltttl¿'l'il!¿
7'unc:,
- l(t
(;51
rlrunl nrnchint', as notecl in connectionrvith Pu¡ter Dolls, is sonrtthing ol'a chalncleon in a pop ensemble like lliunti !'icc's since it.s princi¡ral function is to provirle a
reliable rh-vthnric scaflbld. It ma.v b¡' its very prccisir¡n reinfirrcr concepts likc, iNII(.)sI,tr.-\BLE or,\GGRESSn'E here, but it seems unlikely that it rvoultl gL'ncrate these assilciations if they contradicted the affective tenor of tlle enscnrblc as a rvhole.
T]:c timbales. ior all their fashionabilit¡r, ma_r,contribute quite a lot to the grínr irrterpretation, thotrgh. In particular, the initial timbalc entrancc at bar 2 (a lt,url,
low, reverbera¡rt boom which completel-v obscures bar 1's high dry ticking) is in
keeping rvith a long tr¿rdition of sharp-attack, lorv-register doom sounds: Fra¡rk
Skinner (1950: 13) refcrs to a lorv register {plsfz---»p) as a menace note, and Rapée
(192-l: 663) cataloÉ3res Beethoven's Coriola¡r¡¿s Overture, rvith its opening of long.
lou'.,¡ffc-s, under Sinistt¡r. Thc timbales' subsequcnt material is faster, higlrt:r, and
less reverberant after the cntrance of the bass dn¡m track in bar 6, but even in this
more active material thcrc n:ay be a connotation of grave matters: & ver-1, sinlilar
timbale part (minus the pop music/fhshion t:lement of the rh.r,thm section) occu¡ries
the foreground of the autun-rn 1986 signature for the French TV5 net*,ork's bro¿rdcast of lvorld nervs. This news theme be'gins rvith a long menace note (a lorv s.vnthesiser d) and fills the texture with assorted ncbulous pitch clusters trntil the tirnbale
barrage at eight seconds. This procedure secms to follow Skilcs' recipc, based on 'sot
patterns n'hich have become familiar to the audience'(1976:79) for stnrg¡¡les und
chases: 'generally lolv register... with dissonant intervals in thc middlc anC lrigh
registers. with occasional heavy punctuation' by the percttssion.9 Skinner, in adrlition to describing the menace note, also demonstrates the technique of learlin¡¡ to a
menacing fade-in with a sweeping registral descent (1950: 26), and Skilcs uses a
precipitous drop in register to portray a car crash (1976: 143, bars 55- 56). The f¿rct
that all the timbale phrases in Miami Vice e¡rd with dorvnward pitch i¡lflections
may or may not be coincidental; but certainly this tendency would do nothing to
contradict a listener's general perception of hostility, violence, or threat, ancl tire
enormous and abrupt drop to the octave c-s in Miami. Vice's last tu'o bars would
likely hclp create such a perception. (We will discus.s the fr¡nction of these last trvo
bars i¡r greater detail in our final section on'hcrizontal'change.)
One other potentially 'threatening' aspect of the Miami Vice timbale track is thc
cavernou.s reverberation it receives in the mix. TV Cinq's news theme and the Pu¡ter
Dolls title n'rusic also sport foreground timbales supplied with ample reverb, while
the more intimate spaces in the acoustic stage set and the comforting sales ¡ritch of
Revlon Custom Eyes does awa-v with reverb practically altogether, clispensing rtlso
rvith low drums and sharp attack envelopes. Digiial sound processing in the rccording studio had recently enabled producers to fine-tune the nature and extent of each
track's reverb in a way previously impossible, in effect to fabricate a separate acoustic environment (or even a series of variable environments) for each instrument.
The Miami Vice. signature illustrates a fairly conservative approach to the use of
digital reverb by emphasising both the timbales'transient attacks (simulating close
miking) and the vastness of the si¡nulated acoustic environment in which these at-
The
9.
Skiles also spccifies that strrrggle cnd chase mr:sic shorrlrl be fast n'rovin6¡. a criterion s'hich lho
)[tantt \;tce
tacks rcsouncl. The rt'sult is somctiiing of an acoustic parailel to Skinner's.nronilct*-P' clevice, rvith the r,:r'erb eff'ectivel-r, su.strrining the timbaie sound at
a It sser anrpiitucir. lon¡¡ alter its initial sharp attack.
ing'.y'p
Anr' 'spaciousne'ss' u'hich thi.s e.xaggerated ambience might suggest. horvcycr.
is
certirinlv not olan outdr-¡or sort. in co¡ltrast to virtual Iv evrrv othe,r test piece, the
Vit'¿ theme elicited almost no respon.ses referring to landscape, topograph.y,
outdoor artilacts' or rve¿rther. but rather hacl higli conccntr¿riions of urban ancl
in-
][ionti
door location tr-l'As. JÍidnti l/ice's exclusive use of pronounced reverb for lower
registers and sharply attacked sounds (the timbalcs and thc final menace note) also
contra-ct's rvith trIorricone's penchant for appl-rrng similar amounts
of reveri: to the
rvordless soprano vocal passages in his wide-scr(,en Western scores,l0 just
to citt
one contra-sting example. The .fÍic¡¡ii Vice reverb, then. probably serves several
functions: it enhances a latent sense of forebocling in the initial tinrbale notc.s b¡,effectively prolonging their duration, thus aclding another lorv-registcr elenrent to
thc
alread-v bottom-ht'avy ntix; it suggests a largc, indoor urban space in which
an audience might gather. rather than a large outdoor space in u,hich an individual (like
the 'soaring free spirit'of l\{orricone's soprano) might be isolated; finall-v, bv calling
attention to itself as a production device b-y its lack of 'realistic'unifor¡rity, it reinforces the perception of ¡llia¡ni Vice a.s a piece of pop product, approximating
the
sounds rvhich emanate from di-qco or rock concert speakers at least as much
as it
simulates the actual interior acoustics of such venues. In all these functions,
it contributes to the prevailing nredia-innranent and potr:ntially hostile urban environnrent V\,'As our listeners reported.
Guitars: tnen.ace end ntetarrtorphosis
Power chord threat
The two 'electric guitars'(actuall-v keyboard s1'nthesiser sounds) which enter
in bar
3 also appear to be consistent with these media-immanent and lxnospm..rBlc / ACGRESST\rE responses. They play lorv regi-ster E and A string
fifths in straight quaver
'downstrokes' reminiscent of the introduction to The \lrho's l{y Generafion (1g66)
and simplifyrng the increa-singly complex la¡'ered rh¡thm of the percussion.ll
Registrall.v and d¡'namically they separate the timbales from the other percussion,
rvhile their reverb is somervhat drier than the timbales' but less so the hi-hat,s. In
addition, the distortion effect applied to both 'guitars' produces many prominent
even-numbered harnronic partials ,*,hich have been compres-ced and phase_shifted
along rvith the fundameutals to add an element of unstable high register noise
to
the timbre. The combination of this timbre rvith dorvn-stroke E anri A string fifths
re-sults in a composite effect knorvn to rock musicia¡rs as a'porver chord'.
It is standard rock practice to let the power chorcl ring for a bar or more after its
initiat attack
10' e'g' the opening music for Lo Er'.so ¿1t'i con/i ('The Big Gundorv-n',
1967) or the ,.{me:-iea di Jill' theme
from Ci'ra una uolta i/ il,¿st t,Once U¡xln a Ti¡ne in the West'. Igtlg).
l1' Ifyouplaythe Mia¡nilic¿'themeasfarasthee¡rdofbarSandstopabrupti.vjuslbeforethes¡artof
bar 4, and if you have previousl-v heard the \Wro's )fi, Ctntratio¡t
a ferv tirnes. t.ou rvill find it ver-vdifficult ¡¡ot Lo start.-l'elling "People tr-r' to prrt us dorvn'l If
just plal' bar
-r'ou
siart barvling out th.¿rt first jin. oil¡u Gcrr¡.-cti,r,¿.
ó/¿ not to
3.
ir
is virhrallyi¡rpo.r-sr-
r()nc(' rtgain rccitllirrg tht'nr('nac(' note), but.\fiorní \'icc holrls this ¡xr--siltilit¡'in rt'servc until thc rlr¿rnratic -svntht'siser t'ntr¿lnce in bar 6.
Reitcrativc or ringing out, hou'evtrr, tirese are not tlisco guitars. R¿ithcr, thr,¡'exclnplifi'a¡;prr',achc-. to pln-r'ing and rccortiing tht, ílt-*trunrent n'¡trst ('ontr¡tun trr iiru gr.,n"
res of hard rock and hcar'¡' nretal. Although dance rtcords contr..nrpornr-',' w-ith
..,.,r;¡n i¡)
'1{iami Vicr', e.g. Dtrntra Sumnrers'S/re I\¡orl¡.s Hurd F-¡tr T'ht.llo¡lr'r' í 19sll!
nlake u.se of pi)\ver chorcl gtritar fi¡¡urcs with Iittle or no extr¿llleor¡s ilenrL, r:onnotation intendecl, u'e can at Ieast put fonvard the hypothesis. as we did rvith thc fh-silion tinrbalcs, that sonle such connotation is possil-rle. Like the bongos, thc rh¡.thnt
'guitar'trat:k scttlt's into a predictable pattcrn early in the'tunr'(after the'fr¡ll .,¿rlue' por,r'er chorrl of [rars 6-7 ) nnrl st¿rys with it for quite sorne tinle. Occa.sional chan¡¡cs of thc right hanrl 'diimpirtg' pat.tcrn provide a bit of variety but thev are
corn¡rlt'tely idiont¿rtic to harcl rock rhythm guitar playing and don't suggcst ari¡.tlivergent a.ssociati<tns.
Front Laah and tu¡ang to clean and neutral
The wah-r+,ah effect (bars 16-17) and the'twang-1" string'bc'nds'(advanced rv<lrk
with the s-\,nthesiser's joy stick anÜor modulator wheel in bars 20-2L) are likervise
rather idiomatic. hut the idiom changcs: the crotchet alternation of middle and lorv
octave g-s in bars 16-17, played through the wah-rvah, recalls the -sort of 1970 funk
style exemplified by Sly and the Famil¡' Stone (e.g. Donce to the il[usic 1968) and
later by Isaac lIayes'theme for Shaft (1971). The more acti.¡e boogaloo rlrun rnachine figures in thesc two bars unclerline this shift of idiorn. Tiren, in bar 20, ihe
wah remains open to provide a continuous treble boost, whicit gives the s.vnco¡¡ated
string bends a'trvang'characteristic of good-time Southern US boogie rock (e.g. the
L-vnyrd Skynyrd album Gímme Back lvty Bullets, 1976).
The bar-20 lick itself is a common figure, prominently featured ahnost tonatinr in
Rick Derringer's Rock 'n' Roll Hoochie-Coo (1973) and Kenny Loggins' l-ootloost:
(1984), among others. By the downbeat of bar 22 Lhe rhythm 'gSuitar' has Iost all tir¡rbral and rhythmic traces of its initial character, becoming lightcr (single n«¡tes rath-
er than parallel fifths), brighter (more treble), faster and more varied in
it.s
material. There has also been a con'espondingreduction in the amount of audible
distortion, since (as every electric guitarist knows) single notes distort less than rlyads, and predorninantly treble timbres distort less than thosc rvitli more bass. In
Mianti. Více'sbar 24 thc distortion disappears outright, replaced by a very clean setting treated with a chorus device. The harp-like broken chord fip5uration enrphasises this ner¡, setting's tinrbral differences from the preceding'¡mitar' tones, and the
do-sol-re chordal structure recalls the Andy Summers-style broken chorcls of thc
Paper Dolls guitar part.
What seems to have happened is that the l[iami Vice rh1'thrn 'guitar' part has systematicall.y replaccd its low, propulsive, high distortion hard rock eleme nts (u'hich
corresponded to various Skiles, Skinner and Rapée notions of menace and conflict)
with higher, cleAner, gentler pop elernents which emphasise harmonic sophistication and timbraVacoustic transparency, corresponding to what both Skiles (1976:
9.1) and Rlr.ór'{19?,1:.{li]l tcrrrt'¡1'1¡t¡nl rtrr¡rrq"lr'\-'i"r''¡'-;a 'rl' "' -l' il-" '-' '
Jli¿l¡r¡l I'rcrr
pht,sis is slorv to begin, ancl pa-sses t)rrough tu'o intt'rmcdiattr sta¡{es of qucstionablc
roievlncr., its nct eflect is to reflect the change in matcrialanrl character of'the tinlbale trirck bttrveen bar 2 and bar E: this track too l;econres highrr, r))ore, varit'cl, lt,ss
proprrlsive, ancl acousticall)'cleaner. Our respondr:nts ga\¡e no direct evidence of
having noticr'd tirese changcs ¡thrrc \\'r,re no episodic tinrc \n'As likt'CIt.-r)ltlES I\TYl
or,\¡'TER solrET[il\c), but if the rcmoining track tihe s]'rrthtrsiser propcr) shoq,s a
simílar pattern, *'e sh¿rll have trl as.sume that this process of lightt,ning and brightening failed to inrpress its ímportance on our listeners ancl atte'mpt to account for
that failure. Such explanation rvill first entail discussing the initial details of the
J{iami l¡ic¿ s_vnthesiser track, t}ren its later details in relation to the tune's overall
pattern of 'horizont:rl' change.
The synthesiser: a mony-splendoured thing
S
emiquou
e
r
s
u b diu is ior¿s
The 'guitar' and drum machine parts leading to the dorvnbcat of bar 6 virtually
?uarzurtee that the s.vnthesiser entrance at that point rvill seem very important indecd. To recap: the bongos become more active in bar 4, irttroducing the ;fi pattern for the first time. As they continue into bar 5, the timbales re-enter ¡lwith a
:ising three-beat syncopaticn which peaks in beat fot r, at v¿hich poirrt they'reverse
direction and drive into tlie downbeat of bar 6 with the same .ff figure. tr'Ieanrvhile, the phased harmonic s\\,eep of the lead'guitar'percussion chords (bars 4-5)
subtly expands the registral compass uprvard, and the rh¡'thn 'guitar'adds a descending rock string scrape accent to the timbale syncopation before both 'guitars'
hit the A/E power chord fifth to make the tune's first harmonic change. The beneficiary of all this excitement is the"¡f synthesiser track rvith its string of staccato semiquaver octaves (the ;ñ and ,ñ figures). The sound is rather dry, with a very
sharp attack and a clegree of rh¡'thmic precision rvhich sug¡¡ests that its reiterations
are quantised and synchronised with the drum machine tracks. As is evident from
thc score, this sound follows a regular pattern of t'*'o bars in/two bars out until alrnost 80Vo of the tune has elapsed.
What does this.sound do and why is it so important? First, as one of our respondents
noted, it is a synthesiser. It distinguishes itself as such by virtue of its timbre, envelope, and function in the ensemble, all of which almost certainly contribute to the
many pop music WAs like orsco. (As rr''ith the drum machine, this seemed to be a
very popular sound in the mid eighties). But the high-velocity repetitions which this
synthesiser is given to play have a history of referential value which predates the
instrument by several hundred vears, and it is the nature of the material rather
than the instrument which seerns more significant once $;e turn from points of media immanence to issues of paramusical affect.
Rh¡hmically, the material is an unbroken series of semiquavers rvith accents on
the second and fourth subdivisions of tire second and fourth beats. This pattern
bears some resemblance to the bar-1 hi-hat figure but differs in the nature and
placement of its accents. The hi-hat, we recall, procluced accents b¡' omitting expected events from an undifferelttiated succession, imparting rc.trospectivelv perceived
t§'t-r bt'¿tts' \\'r'as
acc0nts tr¡l tht'evt'Ilt.s ¡rrt'ccriing thtl otllissions' Thtl''' in its first
l;e;tt' t'r'en if it
si'ct¡nd
of
the
evertt
first
to
the
importance
greatt'r
listt:ners ascrilie
n,r'r'ltt'
is deyoicl of attribute.s like grcater umplitucle, s[ar¡ler att¡rck, or ti¡lbral
.¡hich frequc'ntl¡'provicle an acct'llt for an unpitchecl c'r'ent' That ís' no attrlible charothcrs'
acttristic of th¿rt s,r,conrl beet's ñrst event distinguishes it frorn an¡' of tht
rvhich
'on
schcrlulc'
occur
to
and it is only thc failure of the expectecl second event
bY
acct'nt
its
afl'ects
though.
intensiiies our experience of the first. The s1'nthr'si,ser,
Of'courr'r-'
t-'t'8nt'
accentetl
thc
of
time
means of increased anrplitude at the attack
tr¿rve a standartl t¡f'
we must e-rpericnce the e vents previous to the accent in ordcr to
sr¡ch at tlrtl inst¿tnt
as
itself
eventdcclart,s
accentcd
but
the
amplitude comparison,
in the philosoph¡'
Pr:rha¡rs
later.
secontl
ol'¿l
an
eighth
t<r
st,vent,h
a
it occurs, ancl ngt
p)icnonrcnologir:al
of time perception accents of both typc's occup.v an ident'ical
,present', but in acoustic ancl nlusical time (to say notliing of neurological tinle) a
suggest that acseventh of a sccond is a fairly gross unit of bar. We don't mt'an to
tirnbre' or
anr¡llitude,
cents of the 'subsequcnt omission' type occur any'later'tl-ran
despite
o¡nission'
the
prior
to
tl'rcm,
just
hcar
where'*'e
attack accents; tht,y occur
difl'erent
of
a
are
they
But
yet'
happened
the demonstrable fact that the-v haven't
stroke'
character, just as a snare drum flam differs froln a singlo accentcd
the beat
The synthesiser part also places its accents somervhat differentl¡'rvithin
(in
sub<livision's
third
anC
first
the
accents
figure
ancl the bar linc.. While the hi-hat
on the secbeat trvo and beat thrt'e, respcctively) before introducing a Syncopatioit
to the svncopations,
art'linlited
accents
synthesiser
(beat
the
four),
oncl subclivision
on the fourtli strbcliand happct: twice, not once, per beat. The synthesiser's accent
thc {ivision (.:, ) is a new rhythmic wrinkle. with it, the syntlresiser articul¿rtes
established
universe
nal microlevel accentuation possibility in the symmetric al414
this Iinrit, it rcitby the other tracks (no wonder it's so irnportant). Having reached
series rvhile the
unbroken
an
in
erates its universe's smallest permissible units
eight be'ats'
stasis'
of
unit
perrnissible
twin'guitar'power c|ord deflrnes the longest
Sy
nth
esise
r
se
tniquau
e
r reit e r at io n
noi-*e'(fast, even repThe rhl.thmic sirnilarity of the synthesiser track to the hi-hat
of the latter's telvariation
possible
a
suggests
syncopations)
etition rvith occasional
fi'om both the
eprinter motif. But one teleprinter feature is completely lacking
of duravariations
upper ancl iorn'er synthesiser parts: the somewhat unpredictable
a series
into
ligatures
tion and attack point caused by the insertion of pauses and
apit
nrav
slight
howevcr
of otherrvise evenly -"pacecl events. This unpredictability,
By
motif'
tele'printer
the
of
pear on the lvritten page, is a crucial affcctive attribute
temporal
any
foregoing
and
means
effecting their accents through purely acoustical
generate any comirregularity, the Mionti vlce synthesiser parts seem unlikely to
are accessories
syncopations
symmetrical
Their
parable degree of unpredictability.
parts alter
synthcsiscr
the
Thus
it'12
of
intc'rruptions
to the continuity rather than
fill
emphatic'
more
accent-s
the
make
they
wa-vs:
following
the hi-hat pattern in the
ive
If
placement'
in the .missing' subdivisions, and smooth out the irregular accent
bass ¡larts. rvhich reinlorces the 4 x 2 bass
12, one siight exception is the lorver of thc trvo synthesiser
rlnrnnrrttern Rr:ler.enthisminordeviationfron:thenormiro¡rsitselforrtb','irer26'
656
'f¿n Ltttic Tttl,, 'funts
_ l0
.l[tonu Ytc¡
olso con'sider the s!'nthesi.it'r's rt'gister, d-r'narrrics,
and a¡libient char¿rcteristics, rvc,
Íind that these rvork to reinforce tire se,se
of i¡rcrea.*ed str'ngth and continuity
sugge-sted by the rhythmic changes
anci possibl.r,(if our h-ypothesis abor¡t loud,
lorv, re_
verbtlrant sounds is correct) to t'onrpen.sate
for a Iack of unpredictability rvith a
more palpable element of menace.
To follou- up on this menace h¡.pothesi.s, rr.e
can cit,
speed, micldle- and rou'-regi.ster rcpetition
in .rnlrnJt,::ffi
ations of fear' stress, and viole'nce. In this
the s-r,nthesisc.r parts appear consi.ste¡rt
rvith the TliREAr attributes of thc initial 'tr,ita;'
ancl tinrbale tracks as described
above' Repetition of this sort ma-\'also
help to support co¡rnotations of cclebration,
exces's and debaucher-v, if Rapéc''s (192't:{87)
inclusio, of the fourth moven:cnt
from Bizet's L'Arlési¿'nne suite &s an 'org.v'
piece, with its similar rate and register
of repeated notes, can be consiclerecl connotatively
accurate. Horvever, the repetitions' unrvave'ring con'stattc¡' of pitch scems
to have a referential value of its r_rwn,
one of vehicular transportation.
,::ffi:ff,i:*J.
while siL'nt filnr pianists of the 1920s would
have clepictecl the human adventure
of railroad (Rapée 1924:608) or aeroplane
travel (lgz4:2) rvith repetitive figurations and a good deal of meloclic and harmonic
activit.v, they rvould not have linlited
his portra-}'al, even in the accompaniment,
to the *o." monotonous continuous
workings of the vehicle as a rnechanisnr.
By 1g50, skinner suggested doing just
that' recommending an unchanging series of
mildly clissonant tone clu-sters in allegro semiquavers
as an appropriate'trai¡r effect'(1g50:206).
Not rvishing to be too
'rnonotonous'horvever, he demonstrates (1g50:207)
horv to combine the figure with
shapely horn and rvoodrvincl mclodies, tunes
not unlike Rapée,s. Nlore recently,
skiles (1976:146' bars 45-47) depicts a tense
dramatic scene involving a speeding
car with a series of repeatecl low g-s (456
per minute) counterpointed against
¡igh,
dissona.t'agitation'figures. rvlianti vrce increases
skires'speed a bit (from 456 to
464 per minute) and croes away rvith
the competing figurations, reaving onry the
g,itar'menace' chord again-st the synthesise.'s
.po"ái.rg .ur.
In short' rve rvould suggest firstly, then, that
the synthesiser, particularly the;flupper part' participates in the rnedia-immanent
wAs Iargely by virtue of its current
popularity
as a pop music instrument. It also informs
the muosprrA¡LE / ACGRESST'E
Iargely by virtue of its- rep¡ister, ampritude,
ambient characteristics, and rate
of repetition' Furtherrnore' the synthesiser
relates to the vehicular wAs largely
through ihe repetitive nature of its tonal
material. Its entrance also effectivel_l, closes offthe possibility of ftrrther
rhythmic development within the norms
established
in bars 1-5' Lr all this, perhaps it $'arrants
the buildup, perhaps not. It will all depend on rvhat it ushers in...
wAs
Horizontal cltonge
The tune: is anybody there?
The one group of VVAs we have yet to examine in connection rvith l[íonti V'ice includcs our listeners'aesthetic evaluation of the tune. In th!s final sr:ction rl'e ivill
discuss the trorizontal'changes which occur in the (:ourse of thc illiunti l'rct'signature and to strggest that perhaps these effectivel¡, undercut the obvious st¡,lishne"s.s
and dynantisrn of the tune's surfa.ce to such an extent th¿rt our listencrs n'ti¡'e overall
rather uninrpre.'*sed.
One principle arca of diachronic changc is melody, rvhich llionti I,'irr,.supplies in
very small and (to our Ii-stcners at least) unconvinc.ing doses. Of course, the lack of
'tune'u'a.s qtrite real technicallv as well as phenomenologicall-v for l[iunti \/ice's trvo
test sit¡-ration.s, each conductecl soon after the first Swetlish airing tif epi.sodc one,
rvith its thenre mix devoid of the'lead ppitar'parts heard in later episodes, on the
soundtrack album, and a-s transcribed at the startof this chapter. Responsesto tht,
Il'Ii.a¡ni Yrr¿ therne appear to corroborate familiar theories13 about ct-rnncctions betlveen, on the one hand, the melody/accompaniment relationship and, on the other,
the figrrre/ground or protagoni.st/environment characteristics of paramusical fielcls
of association.l3 \Ye had audienccs celebrating (.scenario 1) and delinquents hassling hookers (scenario !); lve also had rockers and young people listening to s.vnthesisers in discotheques (in the media-immanent associations: scenario 3) ancl, o{'
course, fast cars galore. ButllÍiamiVice -specifies vcry little by way of individual attributes, motivations, or activities for these (plural ) VVA character.s. An:ong the rtrspon-se categories significantly absent from the tune rvere: cogitative actions [59:]],
individual persons [2011, specific individual persons [21lX] a¡rd articles of clothing
t2621 (This last absence suggests that FASHIoN in Ivf iamiVice is sonrething gcneral
to look at rather than -qomething specific to wear).1{
The synchronic aspects of instrumentation, register, timbre, and bar-leve,l rhythmic organisation may rvell account fcr the respondents' specific interprctations of
collective background connotations, as we have tried to demonstrate. But the f'rrct
that these 'vertical' features become fi-xed so early in the tune (bar 6), coupled with
the absence of any material which is registrally, timbrally, rhythmically, anüor intervallically distinct enough to suggest itself as a melody seems by and large to
have kept our listeners from perceiving any significant VVA individuals. Of the l'ew
central indir"iduals our listeners did report in rcsponse to Mianti Vice, by far ther
commonest rvas DECKARE. Horvever, in colloquial Srvedish from the 1980s declzare
does not so much denote the detective as a person as the narrative genre of police
or detective stories in general. Whatever gr,ammatical fonn of the word our listeners were using, we suggest that a confluence of one musical and three paramusical
conditions resulted in a process of cross associatiorr whereby:
13. See i\f ardth¡' /1971 22, ff.), Tagg (1979:123. ff.; 2000b:136. if.)
14. ll{ioníl:ic¿,was heard as the Ieast invidual of the rl.rl.n tunes in that
it
scored less in 3-digit cate-
,Viuntt Vrcc
l
Our !"('spondent-s knerv thr'piece to Lrc ¿r lilrn or televi.sion.rignature f'rol¡
tirp
infirrnlation rve pror.ided thtln prior to thc t¿,st.
2' Our re'spondents'1an-¡iliaril¡'u'ith the conventions of audiovisual narratll,¡r pr(\riisposed thenl to e-xpect one or more protagoni,sts in whatever
sort of film or
progremme wAs to lollLrrv the .signature.
3' Otrr rt'sponrlents'farniliarity rr'ith the conrentions of title music predisposed
theln to expect that thc tune n'ould attenrpt to establi.sh certain attributes
of
tlte expected protagonistts).15 ,\pparenrly rnan-y respondents found these
expectation.s difficult or irnpossible to .sustain, hearing only inclieations
of a general,
collective enviro¡rnrent (the two sce'narios) or a fanliliar musical gcnre (the
pop
nrusic \\'Ast.
4. our respondents, expecti,g to ht,ar a protagonist ancl undaunted b_y the tune.s
failure to provide o¡re diachronically', wert, thus predispo-"ed to interpret
certain
s1'nchronic, environnreDtal connotations generatecl by the tune
as though thcy
pertained to a protagonist of a specific sort. Drarving upon
their competence in
the conventions of audiovisual narrative (2. above) they quite correctlv
surnriserl thatlvliantiVice's protagonist(s)waVwere clechare anüor
that the ¡rrogramme itself lvAs a deckare.
This is not to suggest that our respondents'cleckare are not'in' the IvIianti.
Vice
theme, but merely to atternpt an account of the fact that so ferv of
our listeners
heard lhem there. Perhaps the producers had similar reservations
about the
theme's mnemonic identification potential, as their subsequent
alteration of it suggt'sts' The later version of the tune, and the one which u'as
released on the pro-
grantmc's successful sountltrack LP, augrncnt-c the original
test version's repetitive
lorv register backing tracks rl'ith a registralll,, intervallical15and rhythmically dis-
tinctive lead 'guitar' part (beginning in bar 10 of the transcription).
The string
bends and hammer-on/pull-off triplet semiquavers join with ttre
added track,s
greater variety of rnaterial and slight transgressions of
the two bar phrase limit to
imply a more expressive individual presence, rvhile the distorted sustaining
timbrc
and mlxolydian pentatonic do little to contradict the urban/polcars
associations of
the tune's other component.s.
in bars 18-21 the 'lead guitar' part pla¡'s a contrasting quasi-improvisatory
series
of la-pentatonic blues clichés which help provide a context for the
original ,rhythm
guitar' shift to a 'southern boogie trvang' idiom in bar 20.i6 Finally,
in bar 22 the
added lead'guitar'returns to the original bar 10 tune in the
original bar 10 key area
(ivith no competition from the original bar l0 heavy
metal rh¡hm,guitar,) and ends
the phrase (bars 23'24) w'ith the only conclusive uprvard pitch inflection
to be found
in either the original or the revised version, a s,.rrcopated skip of
an eleyenth to a
sustained high A (bar 24). This grand inten,allic p;esture also
brings the principal
nrelodic phrase to a close on the local tonic for the first time,
the bar 10 and bar 14
phrases having ended on their local third and fifth degrees.rT
Furtht'rmcrre, thr: l¡ar-2.1 re-t'ntry of the norv'liglrter and hrighter'rhlthnl'¡"lrititr'
part rvhich accompanies this high register arrival coincidt.s rvith thr. ct,ss¿rtion of'
the s_vnthesi-ser'.s reiterated low octave pulses and tho irbrupt introduction of a nerv
s1'nthesiser effect, a rollcd quartal do-sol-re chord of'rclativel¡' Iong duration. Like
the transfbrmed rh.rthm'guitar'which it now doubies, the nerv svnthesi.qt¡r texture
is timbrall¡r trans¡rarent and enhanced rvith a chorus device.l8
Timbre e.nd texture
just seen, the synthesiscr participtrtes in the diachrr;nic'liehtening and
brightening'r'ffect rve observed earlicr in the timbale and rh1'thm'guitar'tracks. I¡r
arlclition, the hi-hat noise rvhich began the tune rvith its ear-catching high frrquencies returns in bar 22 and renrain.s in the mlr until bar 26, at rr,hich point it begins
to disappcar into the swelling reverberation of the rapid s¡'nthesi.ser arpeggios. We
should bear in rnind, though, that our respondents seemed either unawal'e of or unaffected by this timbraVacoustic shift in the test version of the tunc, repror¿i¡* 1¡tu
V\rAs indicative of inferred narrative events. Sincc all the tracks in the t¿.st version
(excepting the bongos and drum machine) contribute ter this diachronic ¡rrocess, it
seems unreasonable to suggest that it escaped the notice of our othenvise astute listeners. A more likely theory is that they noted the changes btrt chose not to interpret them as narrative points of interest, probably becatrse they highlight thc final
caclence, thereby technically, but not narratively, marking changc or clos;ulc. lforeover. the test version of the tune, largely devoid of protagonist signifiers anrl its
WAs of protagonist signitieds, suggested no-one in particular lvho might do anything. Hence these surface changes of timbre, texture, and register, rvhile periraps
engaging to the ear, implied neither conflict nor resolution. And since these synchronic features revert very quickly something Iike their origi¡ial state the change
is transient and without consequence, rather than an end point which might be
heard as a goal for the preceding sound and fury.
As u'e have
In some ways the added lead 'guitar'part makes for a markedly different effect. By
suppl,ring a distinct melodic figure in the early stages of the tune (bars L0-17). varying and accelerating the materials of'that central fip¡ure in the middle (bars 18-22),
and bringing it to a conclusion of unprecedenied stabilit-v and prominence (bar 24)
the lead 'guitar' presents an archetypal example of the AABA (or sonata form or
narrative curve...) pattern which could very likely inforrn a listener that the events
of bar 24 do indeed constitute a goal and not merely a change. While rve conducted
no listening tests with the commercially released version of the Miami Vice theme,
we suspect that such tests might show a significant increase in protagonist iclentification and perceived narrative structure, these latter consistent rvith the conventions of detective programs set in modern urban environments.
According to script writer Ed Bunker, these conventions include the follon'ing:
'In American TV the policeman always has to be the hero... ¡'ou rvrite by a fornrula in
15' This is the customary mnemonic identification function
of the signature.
16' Ioclls for the lead part here include instru¡nental
bits from the Allman Brothers,.Eo núli¡t,Man
( 1973) and ¡he Bob
DylanG.olling Thunder Revue's live version of,lfoggtu's Farn¡ (1g76).
See also
sectjon on'Wah and trvan¡¡,, p. 65;). ff.
which the hero
- must do what they call 'drive t.he action'; he nrust solve the crime; he
must emerge victorious over the forces of evil.'19
U(;?
7'¡n l-¿ft|¿ 'f¡t!¿
'luns *
f
Í
10
!"'L:1\'ill identifl'onl-l'root nlovement _- is a silitt
of three units to thr.slrarp siclc,,
using the conventional circre-of-fifths as a
¡,arcrstick. \vhire rr_rcft [¡¿rrron.]. serrronl
travels the circle'.s u'ell-rvorn grooves in thc'normal'n1anrler,
a goocl deat of film.nrr¡sic' derived from a tonaVro¡uantic tradition, has usecl
such rel¿rtively striking nroves
to the sharp -tidt'a's ional'lift.s'ivht¡¡r a change of
sce¡re is to be enrphasised. Skinner,
for example (1950:17), demonstrates the appropriateness
of a ke-v change from Aa
to Ftalso three unit.s to the sharp
-síde) for a shift fronr ¿r.broafl.nroo¿ to one rvhich
i's'carefree and full of life'. E*en a mo\¡e of a single
unit to the sharp.side constittrtes
for skinner ( 1950: 25) a'lighter'sound. But in L{iumi
vice theotlier elenrent.s of the
score, particularly the 'guitar's'move clownw'arct
to the bar-6 menace chord on A,
probably counteract any possibility of a tonal 'lift'
rvith a registral and durational
'drop'to a point of ¡Tcater stabilit¡'. The lr¿rrmonic
cha¡ge, as thc first of t¡e tune,
might rvell produce a jolt; but however stable it might sound
the new area will hardly -.eem 'lighter'or rrlore 'carcfrce'to most Iisteners.
one thing this change from C to A clocs in lu[ianti vice, thcn,
is to inclicatc that, the
harmonic rules rvill be different from those of the cl¿rssical
circlc.-of-fifths paradi¡¡,
alrd that they will quite likely conform instead to
the'disjunct'flat. side patterns of
the Hendrix Hey Joe type common to rock hannony (C-G-D*A-E,
ail in E). r\ny ristener familiar with the chord riffs which open the verse
of crcecle¡rce clearwater
Revival's Praud Mory or which separate chorus
from ver_se in thc Rolling Stones,
Brown sugar, for example, will have no trouble with pattern
a
ltkt: ll,f iami vice,s initial descending minor third. and will quite likel-v hear the
second of the two chords
as the Illore harmonicall¡' siablc. The Pror¿d Ma:ry
riff opens u,ith a reiterated root
motion from IzVII to v and closes u'ith a twice repeated
hIIi-I fiE¡rre, effecting its
arrival on both dominant a¡rd tonic by means of the minor
third descent.
3+In addition, it draws attention to the bIII ancl bvII harmonies
in their pre-ca¿ential
capacitv. The Broru, sugarpattern (in c major:
B[, Ic f) Iikcwise be_
IEb
Ic
lAb
gins with a minor third descent, this time to the
tonic, bcfore continuing with a
f'vl-lrVll-I progression which cro.ses in on the tonic from bcrow.
These well-known rock chorcl progressions have at
least two
Ex. 10:3 Jethro full:
harmonic traits in common: a preponderance of certain
Locomoath
roots
to the flat side of the tonic, ancr fi'equent clirect motion
fronr
these flat-side roots to the point(s) of harmonic
stabilit.y. In
both cases the flat-side roots involved in this direct
motion
are bIII and bvII, and the cadential intervals are
the de_
scending minor third and the ascending major
seconcl. By reversing the direction of
either interval, howet'er, one may cancel its cadential
function. If the minor third
is ascending the cffect will likely be one of departure
from a point of stability, as in
Jethro Tull's Locomoath2o riff (in A) which cadences
like theB¡-otun sttgar pattern.
lo.
Con trrct ion of 'l,ocoltln¡ i1.,- fl ¡.¡.. r r.'
'flro Kinks'r\ll Dtty uttd ,\ll of tltt.\'ill¡¿ riffreverses the direction of thc major second and cadences
hlil-l: (F-+) G-'l--Br,-G. The pattern i.s fa¡niliar,
but here the anacrustic Ir (the first onc) supplies
a
'normal'cadential relation betrveen Ir and G prior
Kinks:AJi Day anc
6{
ri Ií"¡!
Ex to {
Ailcl :l:o Ngni
,rj
i
;fr
r
,l
to the rL-\'ersal.
'fhe scquence of root positions in l{ia¡ni I,'icc (C-A-G-C-A-G-C) seenrs nlost likc
this la-st arrangernL,nt (in A), I-I,VII-'DIII-I (A-G-C-¡\), with a harmonicall¡'anacrustic IrIII preceding the first tonic (as in the Bro¿¿,¡r Stzgcr example). This establishes the bIII-I (C-A) as a cade¡rtial motion and the'reversed'I-h,VII tA-Cl) as a
harmonic departure. In its rnost general outlines, the harmonic rht,thm of the tune
aligns rvith this interpretation by allorving eight bars for the initial A to assert itst'lf
after a brief, odd-length beginning on the C.
But this also suggests a deviation in that the final C, twice established as the
nultimate of a c¿rdence
pe-
A, is left hanging in the last two bars. Such an 'unresolved'
encling is very unusual in rock nlusic, even if the song's harnronies are dorian or aeolian. Just imagine. a retro-rr¡ck pub band performing the Kinks' All Doy Artd All Of
The Níght, with its repeated I-[?VII-hIII-I progression, and ending it in the very
same way lG F- lBb | (G), complete with improvised tutti cadential pandemonium on the fermata tsl, (the penultirnate chord, the 'o]r' of a final'oh ¡-eah'). Our hypothetical pub rock band members would aimost certainly fall offfrom the Bb to at
least a short, final tonic'stinger'on G: leaving it mid air on Bi¡ (r,II1), though not
inconceivable as a joke, woukl be a very unlikely rvay of finishing the nt¡mber. In
any case, the move to bIIi (C in A) at the end of Miomi Vice operates dilferently.
First, it marks a cessation of surface activity rattrer than a Dionysian frenz.y as in
the bar band ending, effectively dissipating the final build rather than prolongrng
it. The acceleration of the harmonic rhythm prior to the non-tonic final adds furthor
to this foreshortening. In addition, our hypothetical bar band would almost certainly play their possible concluding I-hVII-i,III progression rvith the same directionality used throughout the tune, i.e. with an ascent of a fourth to the half cadcncc on
blll- lvtiami Vice, horvever, violates even its own previous norm by presenting it.s
bar 26 G (bVII) a-s a penultimate in second inversion. Not only does this weaken the
G somewhat in relation to all of the previous (root position) harmonies, it also leads
to a final bass motion of a descending major second, which the tune has already established as a dcparture, neither cadential, like the descending nrinor third C-A
(bIII-I), nor pre-caclential (like the ascending fourth G-C (bVII-bIII). In terrns of
this bass motion, the'C (bIII) lacks even the forward-leaning inconclu.sivenes,s of a
half cadence, becoming instead the nebulous middle term of some nelv and unspecified move away from A.
t,o
Perhaps the biggest discrepancy betrveen these two bIII endings (lhe
Ilianti l'Ice C
and the fictitious bar band's Bb) is to be found in the relation betrveen the finnl
chord and the overall form of the tune. In appl,r'ing a G-F-Bb(-G) ending to All Dav
and All the Ni.ght, the bar band is not only being consistent with the harmonic
ground rules of the Kinks original, the-v are returning to its initial c¡'clic rifT. the
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that the tune finishes rvith the initial riffafter the appropriate interventions is for-
if not harmonically, conclusive enough, and the rh.ythrnic augmentation and
increase in surface activity ma-v rvell join rvith this formal svnrmetry to make standnrd rock harmonic closure unnecessary. The two versions o[ LIíanti Vice fcrrt,go recapitulation of all but a ferv timbral anci textural details of the eariier nraterial, and
even these serve to suggest a resumption of disjunct flat-side chord changes which
ncver occurs. Instead, the final G-C change end.s the piece on a tone u,hich initiall,v
supportcd the lead-in to A (bars 3-5) and later a contrasting middle scction (b.18nrail-r'.
2».
So the largc form of the tune suggests three separate functions for the root C, [;ut
the local details don't allow tlle la.st of these functions to be effe'ctive. If thc¡l thc final bars provide closure of any sort (using'closure'in l\feyer's sense of 'pattern corrrpletir:rn') it is almost ccrtainly not a formally-inrrnancnt closure. 'ftrc pattr:rns
established carlier in the tunc are in sonre cases followerl, in otllcr c¿lscs abnnrlont.d,
but in no case are they completed and rcsolve.d. Ratht:r, thc closure pruvi«lcd by the
final trvo bars is one of a timbral, semiotic sort
- a return of'the lorv rurgistcr, lon¡¡
duration, reverberant doom sound with which the tune bt'gan. Wllatcver progress
may have been suggested by the rnusic's obvious linear procosscs is trlti¡nately in-
effective.
Art critic Carter Randall, writing inArtforurn magazine,
obst:rvcs a similar
futility
in IvÍiarni Vice's visual environment, concluding:
'By enclosirrg the ¿rr:lio¡r of tht trvo co¡r syrnnretry makes a visual argurnent that all actio¡r
is futile -- you can n)ovc the picccs around, but they always fall back into the samc oppressive patterns... No mat,[er horv violent, tho action never pu-shes at the borders of the
screen. The symmetries of plot. suggest that nothing can escape consumerist urges so
powerful they beconre ad«,lict,io¡rs, to drugs or money, to fashion or sex. No one is free, everyone zips through the vacat,ion paradise of south Florida on some disastrously fated, and
therefore rigid, itincrary. Just a character immersed in the plot, he is not in a position to
see the symmetries that trap the action, letting people mov«: fast but insisting thcy go r)owhere.'
... to which Jan Hammer's final chord says'Amen'.
So what?
Titte turue gender end. ideologY