Thanks Tom Moon for such a great verbalization of the circumstances, as we’ve come to expect from you. Here’s my long wind.
Like any working musician I’ve been thinking about this stuff a lot. We’re in a situation in which the chances of paying back recording costs for most artists has become near impossible when they have to rely on streaming royalties. I as a producer/studio owner can’t honesty encourage anyone to spend money making a recording unless they know it won’t get paid back.
So in this environment how does music keep evolving? Perhaps as ‘anonymous’ observed, through live music. But I think recorded music is huge in people’s lives.
I’ve got a teenage daughter and so I’ve listened a lot to pop radio. With a few exceptions (once last year a song had a 3 dominant chord I.e. E7 in key of C to move to F), every song is some order combination of I, IV, VII, V (in C major this would be the C, F, Aminor, and G chords), always in 4/8 bars phrases. The V dominant chord isn’t often used to resolve to 1, more often used as a axis to VII or IV.
Choruses and bridges have pretty much disappeared.
And every melody is V, III, II, I maybe VII (in C - G, E, D, C, maybe A).
So I think, why? It’s definitely a chicken and egg situation, musicians being the chickens I guess.
I think a simple major key melody is a very instinctive human preference. If you’re walking down the road and humming a tune, it won’t be 12 tone music. Musicians certainly will hum more complex tunes, but that’s because we know them and love them, not because that’s the natural thing to come out of our mouths.
On the simplest level, it’s harmonic or emotional gravity (and I mean weight, shifting). It’s like breathing - sing C, D, E, G and come back down again. Just feels good. The G always wants to come home to C in the end.
So all these endless empty songs use that premise for a melody, over top of another thing people like - periodicity. Repeating symmetrical shapes/phrases, the combinations of I, IV, VII, and V.
And that’s truly enough for some people, unfortunately for all of us who want to hear more. I’m just saying there are reasons for it.
This didn’t start recently. Most Dylan songs use that same melody, certainly most folkloric music does. Mozart and Beethoven could beat a major key melody on the head quite well, especially those endless V to I ‘last’ chords of Beethoven’s that would last 30 seconds, a minute? Shoot me please.
As a tangent, what happened between Bach and Mozart? Bach, whose understanding of the beauty of the diatonic melody is for me peerless, but who could pivot on a dime with his deep understanding of the diminished chord as a pivot hub and move seamlessly between keys, dominant chords as springboards, not reduced to mere stooges for the almighty 1 chord. Alright, a bit thick I know.
I’m someone who gets bored easily in music. My ears crave new sounds and constructions. Recently I’ve been doing a lot of electronic music, playing a lot with a module called a “Benjolin”. It uses a bit shift register to create somewhat controllable random, never repeating electronic music. I love it. Never gets boring to me, because it’s like nature - it’s so complex in it’s minutia. Have listened to it for hours.
I love lots of ‘new’ music, and there’s lots of it.
But the fact is there is no business for it. I understand that and why other people don’t like it (new sounds and structures, things out of the ordinary) - what I said above. New music is either done out of love by professionals, or by amateurs, skilled or otherwise.
I don’t think there’s any way around the basic fact that, if artists and composers can’t afford to do their work, they will at some point stop. There will always be people putting stuff out cause that’s the way of the world now. But excuse me if I sound elitist, the net result of this will be, already is, a decline in the quality of what’s out there.
DIY is great, but there’s a reason great records sounds like they do. A huge numbers of great studios have gone under because of all this, so it’s not just music, but the huge body of knowledge amassed in audio that is now being replaced by everyone who can do it in their living room but don’t know how a compressor works.
All of this is a very long way around to Tom’s question and his statistics. I’m not surprised catalog is such a high percentage for all the reasons we’re all talking about. I’m glad it’s all there. I listen to a lot of it. A huge amount of quality music. We’re so fortunate that it exists and we have such great archeologists as Tom Moon shining his flashlight around. Maybe when the electric grid finally goes out, we start again with sticks and logs.
Wow -- this is the most lucid theory breakdown of the stunted vocabulary that defines so much current music. Thank you. I wish I could say I was inspired but actually, seeing it broken down at this level of articulation has made me more depressed.
Nice essay, Tom. It's something I've thought for a long time. Record companies stopped being visionary a long, long time ago. But relying on public performance now to pull musicians and audiences out of the musical doldrums is a bit too cheerful in our present pandemic situation. Oh, I know, I know, people say, the pandemic will end and we'll be back playing live again all the time. Nope. With the world not addressing climate change, the novel viruses will continue to buffet the population and keep listeners home enjoying music made in earlier times. The musicians I've talked to are afraid it's not just the death of their recording careers, but the death of new music itself.
Thank you Suzanne Cloud....I have heard many people advance this thinking and totally get where it's coming from. We have to hope it's at least partly wrong. Sigh.
We are observing the end of music history. First it was the gradual simplification of harmony, then rhythm, and then even top 10 songs with only a single chord and primarily a single note. It's time to start over, but where? Either the catalog is preserving the lost wisdom, like the monks copying texts through the middle ages, and nourishing a handful of good young ears able to appreciate music or we have to return to the foundations of modern music perhaps like the folk revival. It will take a long time to reconstruct the ability of the average man to enjoy melody, harmony, and rhythm. I think music appreciation is a bit like language acquisition and past the age of 8 or so, most people are unable to learn a new language to fluency. Don't expect a 25 year old who grew up with trap music to ever sing along with a Stevie Wonder tune.
Live performance is the key to the rebirth of music. Depending on your perspective, you might say "fortunately" or "unfortunately", without significant income from recordings, musicians will have to perform live more often, and there will be a gradual resurgence in live performance and local music scenes. A small but growing community of "superfans" who appreciate music will be carefully cultivated and musicians will establish more personal connections with their small groups of fans. They will have to "perform" and not just display technical proficiency. We're going back to that more primal, person to person connection, the solo artist or duo playing at the bar.
Meanwhile, some truly great cover bands will tour playing the catalog until a new generation of artists begins producing new music worthy of the ears of the new generation of listeners. The end of music history is also the beginning of its rebirth.
You are scarifyingly inside my head Great Composer Anonymous. I believe that the capacity to follow a melody that doesn't repeat within 4 measures (2?) is endangered. can it be taught/rekindled? I wonder. Think you are right about a "reset" in terms of scale and intimacy with live performance. we're seeing it already, and this personal connection link you're describing seems much more "real" than the social-media connection links that dominate currently. Thank you for sharing this.
Thanks Tom Moon for such a great verbalization of the circumstances, as we’ve come to expect from you. Here’s my long wind.
Like any working musician I’ve been thinking about this stuff a lot. We’re in a situation in which the chances of paying back recording costs for most artists has become near impossible when they have to rely on streaming royalties. I as a producer/studio owner can’t honesty encourage anyone to spend money making a recording unless they know it won’t get paid back.
So in this environment how does music keep evolving? Perhaps as ‘anonymous’ observed, through live music. But I think recorded music is huge in people’s lives.
I’ve got a teenage daughter and so I’ve listened a lot to pop radio. With a few exceptions (once last year a song had a 3 dominant chord I.e. E7 in key of C to move to F), every song is some order combination of I, IV, VII, V (in C major this would be the C, F, Aminor, and G chords), always in 4/8 bars phrases. The V dominant chord isn’t often used to resolve to 1, more often used as a axis to VII or IV.
Choruses and bridges have pretty much disappeared.
And every melody is V, III, II, I maybe VII (in C - G, E, D, C, maybe A).
So I think, why? It’s definitely a chicken and egg situation, musicians being the chickens I guess.
I think a simple major key melody is a very instinctive human preference. If you’re walking down the road and humming a tune, it won’t be 12 tone music. Musicians certainly will hum more complex tunes, but that’s because we know them and love them, not because that’s the natural thing to come out of our mouths.
On the simplest level, it’s harmonic or emotional gravity (and I mean weight, shifting). It’s like breathing - sing C, D, E, G and come back down again. Just feels good. The G always wants to come home to C in the end.
So all these endless empty songs use that premise for a melody, over top of another thing people like - periodicity. Repeating symmetrical shapes/phrases, the combinations of I, IV, VII, and V.
And that’s truly enough for some people, unfortunately for all of us who want to hear more. I’m just saying there are reasons for it.
This didn’t start recently. Most Dylan songs use that same melody, certainly most folkloric music does. Mozart and Beethoven could beat a major key melody on the head quite well, especially those endless V to I ‘last’ chords of Beethoven’s that would last 30 seconds, a minute? Shoot me please.
As a tangent, what happened between Bach and Mozart? Bach, whose understanding of the beauty of the diatonic melody is for me peerless, but who could pivot on a dime with his deep understanding of the diminished chord as a pivot hub and move seamlessly between keys, dominant chords as springboards, not reduced to mere stooges for the almighty 1 chord. Alright, a bit thick I know.
I’m someone who gets bored easily in music. My ears crave new sounds and constructions. Recently I’ve been doing a lot of electronic music, playing a lot with a module called a “Benjolin”. It uses a bit shift register to create somewhat controllable random, never repeating electronic music. I love it. Never gets boring to me, because it’s like nature - it’s so complex in it’s minutia. Have listened to it for hours.
I love lots of ‘new’ music, and there’s lots of it.
But the fact is there is no business for it. I understand that and why other people don’t like it (new sounds and structures, things out of the ordinary) - what I said above. New music is either done out of love by professionals, or by amateurs, skilled or otherwise.
I don’t think there’s any way around the basic fact that, if artists and composers can’t afford to do their work, they will at some point stop. There will always be people putting stuff out cause that’s the way of the world now. But excuse me if I sound elitist, the net result of this will be, already is, a decline in the quality of what’s out there.
DIY is great, but there’s a reason great records sounds like they do. A huge numbers of great studios have gone under because of all this, so it’s not just music, but the huge body of knowledge amassed in audio that is now being replaced by everyone who can do it in their living room but don’t know how a compressor works.
All of this is a very long way around to Tom’s question and his statistics. I’m not surprised catalog is such a high percentage for all the reasons we’re all talking about. I’m glad it’s all there. I listen to a lot of it. A huge amount of quality music. We’re so fortunate that it exists and we have such great archeologists as Tom Moon shining his flashlight around. Maybe when the electric grid finally goes out, we start again with sticks and logs.
Wow -- this is the most lucid theory breakdown of the stunted vocabulary that defines so much current music. Thank you. I wish I could say I was inspired but actually, seeing it broken down at this level of articulation has made me more depressed.
Nice essay, Tom. It's something I've thought for a long time. Record companies stopped being visionary a long, long time ago. But relying on public performance now to pull musicians and audiences out of the musical doldrums is a bit too cheerful in our present pandemic situation. Oh, I know, I know, people say, the pandemic will end and we'll be back playing live again all the time. Nope. With the world not addressing climate change, the novel viruses will continue to buffet the population and keep listeners home enjoying music made in earlier times. The musicians I've talked to are afraid it's not just the death of their recording careers, but the death of new music itself.
Thank you Suzanne Cloud....I have heard many people advance this thinking and totally get where it's coming from. We have to hope it's at least partly wrong. Sigh.
We are observing the end of music history. First it was the gradual simplification of harmony, then rhythm, and then even top 10 songs with only a single chord and primarily a single note. It's time to start over, but where? Either the catalog is preserving the lost wisdom, like the monks copying texts through the middle ages, and nourishing a handful of good young ears able to appreciate music or we have to return to the foundations of modern music perhaps like the folk revival. It will take a long time to reconstruct the ability of the average man to enjoy melody, harmony, and rhythm. I think music appreciation is a bit like language acquisition and past the age of 8 or so, most people are unable to learn a new language to fluency. Don't expect a 25 year old who grew up with trap music to ever sing along with a Stevie Wonder tune.
Live performance is the key to the rebirth of music. Depending on your perspective, you might say "fortunately" or "unfortunately", without significant income from recordings, musicians will have to perform live more often, and there will be a gradual resurgence in live performance and local music scenes. A small but growing community of "superfans" who appreciate music will be carefully cultivated and musicians will establish more personal connections with their small groups of fans. They will have to "perform" and not just display technical proficiency. We're going back to that more primal, person to person connection, the solo artist or duo playing at the bar.
Meanwhile, some truly great cover bands will tour playing the catalog until a new generation of artists begins producing new music worthy of the ears of the new generation of listeners. The end of music history is also the beginning of its rebirth.
You are scarifyingly inside my head Great Composer Anonymous. I believe that the capacity to follow a melody that doesn't repeat within 4 measures (2?) is endangered. can it be taught/rekindled? I wonder. Think you are right about a "reset" in terms of scale and intimacy with live performance. we're seeing it already, and this personal connection link you're describing seems much more "real" than the social-media connection links that dominate currently. Thank you for sharing this.