42 Years of Popular Music Analysis Teaching in 21 Minutes [2 years per minute] Philip Tagg Visiting Professor, Universities of Huddersfield and Salford (UK) www.tagg.org http://tagg.org/Clips/Nantes130531.mp4 or http://youtu.be/GbDG8ApNhRs must be accessible A short audit of a few problems in the denotation of musical structure, with suggestions for improvement Presentation at Popular Music Analysis Conference, University of Liverpool, 4 July, 2013 Previous versions ‘The Trouble with Tonal Terminology', ‘Too Important to Fail', etc. presented in Rome, Glasgow, Århus, Göteborg, Durham, Liverpool (2011); Newcastle, Lancaster, Nottingham, Berlin, Granada, London (City), Manchester, Granada, Cáceres, Huddersfield (2012), Cambridge (Anglia), Naples, Trento, Nantes (2013).
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42 Years of Popular Music Analysis Teaching in 21 Minutes [2 years per minute]
42 Years of Popular Music Analysis Teaching in 21 Minutes [2 years per minute]. A short audit of a few problems in the denotation of musical structure, with suggestions for improvement. Presentation at Popular Music Analysis Conference, University of Liverpool, 4 July, 2013. - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
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42 Years of Popular Music Analysis
Teaching in 21 Minutes [2 years per minute]
Philip TaggVisiting Professor, Universities of Huddersfield and Salford
(UK)www.tagg.org
http://tagg.org/Clips/Nantes130531.mp4 or http://youtu.be/GbDG8ApNhRs must be accessible
A short audit of a few problems in the denotation ofmusical structure, with suggestions for
improvementPresentation at Popular Music Analysis Conference,University of Liverpool, 4 July, 2013
Previous versions ‘The Trouble with Tonal Terminology', ‘Too Important to Fail', etc. presented in Rome, Glasgow, Århus, Göteborg, Durham, Liverpool (2011); Newcastle, Lancaster, Nottingham, Berlin, Granada, London (City), Manchester, Granada, Cáceres, Huddersfield (2012), Cambridge (Anglia), Naples, Trento, Nantes (2013).
• Don’t confuse TONE with TONIC. Tonal music without a tonic is ATONICAL, not ‘atonal’.• Don’t confuse TRIADs with THIRDS. If harmony
based on stacked fourths is quartal, harmony based on stacked thirds is TERTIAL.• Don’t propagate false contradictions like ‘TONAL v.
MODAL’. Please conceptualise all modes, including the ionian, as modes. Please also consider all modes as tonal.• Don’t use TONAL and TONALITY in a musically,
culturally and intellectually restrictive manner. Please consider the MULTIPLICITY of TONALITIES (tonal systems).
TIME
SORRY. NO TIME FOR TIME THIS TIMEexcept to mention just a few terms
What to do? (1)• Ostrich strategy. ‘Nothing is wrong’. Carry on as
usual. ‘We may be in the minority but we’re always right.’• Defeatist (‘realist’) strategy. Take note but no
action: ‘interesting; some valid points but we have to deal with music theory “as is”. You can’t change >100 years of dubiously ethnocentric labelling. Get used to it!’• Tokenist strategy. ‘We’re broad-minded and
modern. We have ethnomusicology and/or popular music studies and/or music technology on the curriculum but we see no need to change the basics of music theory.• Laissez-faire (‘anti-authoritarian’) strategy. New
terms are as bad as old ones. You’re forcing everyone to think like you. Let things develop organically, man!
What to do (2)?• Risk alienation from conservative musicology
(both ancient and modern) by making life easier for the popular majority of students through: - simple reform of a few basic terms; - recognition of vernacular musical competence; - reintegration of music as a specific form of symbolic production on a par with others.
What to do (3)• Establish a forum of interested parties
in music education, media education, etc.
• Get together to decide on priorities for a reform of music theory terminology.
• Involve experts from as many musical territories as possible so as to minimise risks of producing new ethnocentric concepts.
• Collaborate across cultural, disciplinary and professional boundaries to produce a music theory primer (max. 100 pp.) to take us into the 21st-century and the age of globalisation.
Further edificationMusic’s Meanings: a modern musicology for non-musos (2013) tagg.org/mmmsp/publications.htmll [710 pp.]Everyday Tonality (2009) tagg.org/mmmsp/publications.html [334 pp.]
Dominants and DominanceMusical Learning & Epistemic DiffractionScotch Snaps: the big picture
Troubles with Tonal Terminology (2011-13)—tagg.org/articles/xpdfs/Aharonian2011.pdf [32 pp.]
‘Not the sort of thing you could photocopy’ (2013)A short idea history of notation with suggestions for reform in music education and research [21 pp.]—tagg.org/articles/xpdfs/Frith1301.pdf