One of the paradoxes about music is that as human beings we seem attunded to certain melodies and chord sequences. Even people who have no musical education can tell when music is left unresolved, changes key, is in an unexpected time signature or the melody takes an unexpected twist. Most people seem to dislike being discomfited like this. When I write songs, I disregard most of them as being 'too predictable', even though that is precisely what people are attracted to, particularly in pop music.
Where is your sweet spot between comfort and discomfort? (Pyramid Song by Radiohead would be a good example of my sweet spot)
There's so much interesting stuff in this! I reckon I could go on for hours about stuff like this - especially whether it's actually truly what a lot of people think/feel, or whether they've been conditioned to think about this sense of discomfort in a negative sense by all the classic elements of history, tradition, elitism etc.
This topic always reminds me of my uni days and our often intense discussions around Adorno and his critique of "low-art music", and the pseudo-individualisation and standardisation of music made "for the masses"!
Your example of Radiohead and 'Pyramid Song' in particular is excellent. The 'Kid A'-'Amnesiac' axis is often seen by most as the more-challenging area of the Radiohead discography for audiences to access, which in itself is interesting. Is this because they are less "songy" songs (perhaps as we hear on 'The Bends')? And what makes that so?
I could (very easily and happily) wade into the weeds of musical analysis as to why a song like 'Pyramid Song' might have this effect on people (I won't now, though). There's no denying that the chords, the uncertain rhythmical pattern/metre, melodic choices and the overall "sound" of that song would definitely fit into the tiresomely lazy way many people describe Radiohead as being "a bit weird"...as if being weird is a negative! 😉
Why does 'Pyramid Song' straddle that for you?
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For me, my tastes have certainly developed in the last decade or so. Of course, as you know, there was a period in which my musical influences/surroundings were perhaps hiatused somewhat by some guys called Matt and Tim et al 😉
It's an extremely generalised thing to say, but I would certainly associate the development of my musical tastes and influences to more awareness of and exposure to music made in the Twentieth Century. Learning piano in the classical tradition (at least how I did) meant there wasn't a huge focus on music beyond the early-20th century impressionists and Russians synonymous with piano music. My (very small and well-mannered) teenage rebellion into jazz doesn't really count.
I'd say it's the slightly more weird and wonderful things like Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Ives, Varèse, Boulez, Carter et al which really put me in an interesting place between comfort and discomfort. I think this is probably because a lot of the above were writing orchestral-based music, and so I perhaps didn't "get into it" as much as the new approaches to piano music I enjoyed from a similar era (John Cage, Morton Feldman and later Steve Reich, Terry Riley etc).
It's funny though. I really like Ligeti, whose string and wind works are brilliant, and of course Stravinsky is often seen as the "weirder" guy who crosses over to a more mainstream (if such a term can be used for classical audiences) taste, and something of a genius.
The needle tips a little more towards discomfort when talking about people like Xenakis, Stockhausen and the Musique Concrète, although the movement into electronic music is certainly an important development, whilst Messiaen is probably the best example of someone who represents the centre of my musical comfort spectrum
I am not qualified to comment on the depth of these analyses. But this paragraph from The Song Beneath the Silence catches it for me…
“And when pain came, and it did come, as birth and death, as hunger and cold, it was not a punishment or a problem. It was folded into the music, like a minor chord that deepens the song. There was no shame in suffering. Only the silence that followed it, and the hands that reached into that silence with warmth.“
To respond to your question about Pyramid Song, there are some lyrical call-backs to a 60s/70s/80s childhood: Swing Low Sweet Chariot and The Clapping Song both get robbed and the melody feels like a minor fantasy on the former. Given the theme I don't think it's too far a stretch.
I love the fact that you feel slightly seasick due to the rhythm, yet underneath it's just a straight 4/4 reliably pulling us along (Myxomatosis uses the same trick).
Plus, I can't dance. So I love a good song no one can dance to.
One of the paradoxes about music is that as human beings we seem attunded to certain melodies and chord sequences. Even people who have no musical education can tell when music is left unresolved, changes key, is in an unexpected time signature or the melody takes an unexpected twist. Most people seem to dislike being discomfited like this. When I write songs, I disregard most of them as being 'too predictable', even though that is precisely what people are attracted to, particularly in pop music.
Where is your sweet spot between comfort and discomfort? (Pyramid Song by Radiohead would be a good example of my sweet spot)
There's so much interesting stuff in this! I reckon I could go on for hours about stuff like this - especially whether it's actually truly what a lot of people think/feel, or whether they've been conditioned to think about this sense of discomfort in a negative sense by all the classic elements of history, tradition, elitism etc.
This topic always reminds me of my uni days and our often intense discussions around Adorno and his critique of "low-art music", and the pseudo-individualisation and standardisation of music made "for the masses"!
Your example of Radiohead and 'Pyramid Song' in particular is excellent. The 'Kid A'-'Amnesiac' axis is often seen by most as the more-challenging area of the Radiohead discography for audiences to access, which in itself is interesting. Is this because they are less "songy" songs (perhaps as we hear on 'The Bends')? And what makes that so?
I could (very easily and happily) wade into the weeds of musical analysis as to why a song like 'Pyramid Song' might have this effect on people (I won't now, though). There's no denying that the chords, the uncertain rhythmical pattern/metre, melodic choices and the overall "sound" of that song would definitely fit into the tiresomely lazy way many people describe Radiohead as being "a bit weird"...as if being weird is a negative! 😉
Why does 'Pyramid Song' straddle that for you?
- - -
For me, my tastes have certainly developed in the last decade or so. Of course, as you know, there was a period in which my musical influences/surroundings were perhaps hiatused somewhat by some guys called Matt and Tim et al 😉
It's an extremely generalised thing to say, but I would certainly associate the development of my musical tastes and influences to more awareness of and exposure to music made in the Twentieth Century. Learning piano in the classical tradition (at least how I did) meant there wasn't a huge focus on music beyond the early-20th century impressionists and Russians synonymous with piano music. My (very small and well-mannered) teenage rebellion into jazz doesn't really count.
I'd say it's the slightly more weird and wonderful things like Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Ives, Varèse, Boulez, Carter et al which really put me in an interesting place between comfort and discomfort. I think this is probably because a lot of the above were writing orchestral-based music, and so I perhaps didn't "get into it" as much as the new approaches to piano music I enjoyed from a similar era (John Cage, Morton Feldman and later Steve Reich, Terry Riley etc).
It's funny though. I really like Ligeti, whose string and wind works are brilliant, and of course Stravinsky is often seen as the "weirder" guy who crosses over to a more mainstream (if such a term can be used for classical audiences) taste, and something of a genius.
The needle tips a little more towards discomfort when talking about people like Xenakis, Stockhausen and the Musique Concrète, although the movement into electronic music is certainly an important development, whilst Messiaen is probably the best example of someone who represents the centre of my musical comfort spectrum
I am not qualified to comment on the depth of these analyses. But this paragraph from The Song Beneath the Silence catches it for me…
“And when pain came, and it did come, as birth and death, as hunger and cold, it was not a punishment or a problem. It was folded into the music, like a minor chord that deepens the song. There was no shame in suffering. Only the silence that followed it, and the hands that reached into that silence with warmth.“
To respond to your question about Pyramid Song, there are some lyrical call-backs to a 60s/70s/80s childhood: Swing Low Sweet Chariot and The Clapping Song both get robbed and the melody feels like a minor fantasy on the former. Given the theme I don't think it's too far a stretch.
I love the fact that you feel slightly seasick due to the rhythm, yet underneath it's just a straight 4/4 reliably pulling us along (Myxomatosis uses the same trick).
Plus, I can't dance. So I love a good song no one can dance to.