Music ThatAccelerates From 0-60 p. 4

Postmodern music has a lot going for it. Its fresh because it avoids functional harmony without making that an unbreakable rule. People like Chick Corea, Allan Holdsworth and Frank Gambale among others expanded the palette of chord voicings thank you very much. One thing contemporary composers could do more of is cleanse the music of goal oriented progressions because in western musical practice the idea that one had to return to the tonic rose out of the unconscious philosophical orientation of the merchant classes who had become more wealthy even than the church and aristocracy.

They were unconsciously perpetuating the idea that one kind of person was more important than all the others. This created the necessity of the leading tone. Its necessity changed all the diverse modes into major and (harmonic) minor.

In my opinion and the opinion of knowledgeable others this represents big government with a lot of power in one person or group (capitalists/corporations) out of tune with the rest of humanity. Previously, in Gregorian chant, you could start in one mode and end in another on a different step of the scale. This implies local governance and control.

Postmodern music is unfortunately too improvisatory for mass consumption containing almost no examples of outstandingly composed melody whatever. The chords and key often hop around so fast (a skill in itself and not without its beauty) there's no time to state or develop a good melody. That's O.K. as far as it goes but I think even Methany is bored with it now.

Anyway, the microtonalists have alienated the audience completely but it is a direction with a lot of potential if used sparingly in the right hands.

Techno has shown its viability in the rave scene which is an effective use of ritual (usually in the wrong hands however) but it relies too much on technology. Its better if someone can be a musician first and a knob tweaker second.

One of the problems with new age and some world music is it's occasional rejection of everything western. Don't limit me please. And its placing on a pedestal everything foreign, seeing it all somehow as being more spiritual than our own.

Most people can't successfully graft themselves onto an alien religion plagued with all the same problems as our own after cutting themselves off from their own root. This is why the new agers hop around from tradition to tradition at the supermarket of religion known as the new age book store while they starve at the banquet. I like the new age book stores for the comparative religious smorgasbord they offer but, similar to commercials, we need to be media savvy about them. The same goes for the music store.

If a composer desires to illustrate thier philosophical orientation concerning a leader's correct relationship to the people he/she serves, the call and response between leader and chorus often used in African music is effective. To avoid a slavish brainwashed implication, the choruses response should be independent and overlap with the leaders. This reveals the peoples ability to interrupt the leader and speak while he/she is speaking.

To show the group's and leader's complete agreement, the last verse can be sung together. To give a strong expression to individual voices choir members can take turns responding after the leader.

Another trend in post-postmodern music is to use additive techniques. For starters, more extensive use of additive techniques is a fresh approach from what has been done in the past. However, We don't have to start with a tape loop or a melody and only play the first note, then play the first and second, next play the first second and third etc... Its already been done, isn't that effective and fractures the melody.

That method is mostly useful in recreating madness something to which I do not aspire.

Music That Accelerates from 0-60 p. 3

Serialism suggested new directions music could go but created slaves to compositional technique again and created a new form more rigid than the old one. Their call to greater chaos and complexity for no other reason than that seems to be the direction we are going is like stepping on the gas while approaching a fatal fall from a cliff. Serialism should only be one technique in an repertoire not an inflexible totality.

Minimalism started out all too formless, limited, repetitive, long and boring. However, it was good for getting more out of the traditional keys and showed that playing in the Major/minor/modal system wasn't dead yet. Minimalism has matured recently often having the flexible form I'm thinking about and not just a bunch of copy cats arriving too late to be respected minimalists.

Like minimalists, contemporary composers could also be working with limited pitch sets such as different forms of the pentatonic and diatonic tetrachords in the range of a perfect fifth. This serves two purposes. This eliminates some of the directionality and linearity of the western traditions and allows a composer to slowly reveal the scale as is done in India's classical music so as not to blow all their cookies too soon in the longer form we could be working in.

The one good thing about ambient music, which isn't much distinguished from minimalism by the lay populace, is bringing back composition for a specific purpose. The church provided this function before but its really a lost cause now. Music for airports fits the bill nicely much better than Muzak.

The minimalists have this down better. Music can be wallpaper until you pay attention to it and then discover its nuances. The way to do that is not through simultaneous keys or atonality which, though somewhat interesting for the musicians, alienates the audience.

The music can be challenging to musicians through simultaneous tempos and rhythms while saving the melody for the audience. The minimalists also broke out of the 31/2 minute radio format along with some rock bands like Yes and Pink Floyd. In fact, we can include the audience without pandering to the junior high school, Britney Spears, lowest common denominator.

Modal jazz artists like Miles Davis and John Coltrane among others had mastered playing over changes and were looking to move toward what they considered to be more spiritual in India's and Africa's music. They utilized a slower harmonic rhythm staying on the same chord for a longer period of time in order to prevent the harmony from controlling the melodic direction and to be given enough time to develop the melody similar to the Indian because India's (and the Middle East's) melodic sensibilities are far superior to the western.

However, the Modal Jazz school (and the New Age movement) are mistaken about Indian music's spiritual purity.

Be that as it may, modal jazz was abandoned because it had been done and it was time to move on because of the contemporary demand for originality and newness which is sometimes a mistake.