Im not a musicologist, Ive never taken music theory classes, I had four years of piano study and I can read music fairly well, and thats all -- but I have listened to a lot of popular music dating from the turn of the 20th Century to today, and it seems as though songwriters have forgotten how to write a melody. Yesterday a friend was showing a DVD screener of Into the Woods and the first song was driving me nuts because it was the same brief, choppy, tuneless phrase over and over again. The melody didnt tell a story, didnt go anywhere, just came right back to the home note almost immediately. Listen to Richard Rodgers melodies (Mimi, The Surrey with the Fringe on Top, Manhattan) and hear how long he takes before finally resolving the melody and getting back home at the very last note. Rodgers knew how to sustain the musical tension and interest. Those tunes go somewhere. So do Hoagy Carmichaels--a lot of times they meander, because they dont have traditional sequencing of musical phrases, as you would find with something like Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue or When the Red, Red Robin Comes Bob, Bob, Bobbin Along (Hoagys Stardust goes all over the place, then just repeats), but they have a sense of adventure, of taking you somewhere before you land back home. Id love to hear the comments of someone who actually knows about these things, like Peter Mintun or Loren Schoenberg or Vince Giordano or Bryan Wright or Scott Black -- Im not a musician, just a music lover, but the lack of melody in so much contemporary music breaks my heart and makes me even more grateful for my vintage records.....
Posted on: Sun, 14 Dec 2014 18:50:18 +0000