Conference Agenda

Attas (2015) and Spicer (2004) have examined buildups at the starts of popular songs, and Nobile (2022) looked at teleology in the verse-prechorus-chorus cycle. But many songs have a breakdown and rebuild in the middle of the song, the combination of the two serving in a bridge role in de Clercq’s sense even when there is no “bridge” per se (2012). Artists with songs that make use of this technique include Florence + the Machine (“Hunger”), the New Pornographers (“Mutiny, I Promise You”), the Rolling Stones (“Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow?”), and Tom Petty (“American Girl”). De Clercq discusses how breakdowns are often formal blends of bridge quality and some other role previously established in the song, like verse or chorus. In this paper I apply de Clercq’s notion of breakdown as blend to instances where the breakdown is combined with a rebuild, a dynamic action usually played out in stages, building tension in order to return to a full texture. The blend partner of the rebuild affects the selection of section before and after the rebuild. In these rebuilds, material that has previously been the basis of a “tight-knit” section in Caplin’s sense (2009) is repurposed to take on a (re-)transitional, “loose” function. I also draw on literature regarding retransitions in sonata form developments, particularly Shamgar (1984), as well as Temperley 2018’s discussion of means of increasing energy (141-42). Combining Temperley’s and Shamgar’s lists of parameters provides five ways that rebuilds increase tension: 1) rhythmic density; 2) texture and orchestration; 3) register; 4) dynamics; and 5) timbre. These increases can be terraced or continuous. The use of a breakdown and rebuild closely resembles a common practice in electronic dance music, and the influence of EDM on pop music of the past 20 years can be detected in bridge blend rebuilds in increased use of techniques like low-pass filters and four-on-the-floor kick drums. Study of rebuilds offers a chance to further examine connections between mainstream pop and EDM.

Scholars in popular music continue to wrestle with phrase segmentation, harmonic function, and cadential boundaries. Most rely on a modified view of Rothstein’s (1989) approach to phrase boundaries based on directed tonal motion. In modern loop-based music, directed motion is often absent, forcing scholars into alternative methodologies to define formal boundaries and cadential function. For example, Nobile (2015) relies on Everett’s (1999) SRDC patterning to support his readings of tonal closure and argues (2016) for a syntactical approach to harmonic function based on form.

This paper presents a methodology for identifying formal function in popular music based on the metric placement of melodic repetition. This approach provides a systematic way to address closure and allows for nuanced interpretations of formal boundaries in popular songs. This methodology is rooted in Caplin’s (1998) approach to phrase segmentation and harmonic function, Rothstein’s (1989) work with phrase rhythm, and informed by a variety of approaches to segmenting modern musical styles (Stephenson 2002, Attas, 2011, Callahan, 2013, Richards, 2016, Duinker 2021).

In the presentation, I will show examples demonstrating various melodic patterns with an emphasis on unusual patterns, patterns that have multiple layers of ending function, and nested patterns. This approach provides a systematic way for scholars to discuss segmentation, closure, and formal function without relying on traditional tonal models.

Improvised popular music is about the journey and not the destination. Rather than base live performances on a fixed, teleological goal-based form, jambands, a popular-music subgenre, regularly reimagine and reconsider teleology through live-performance improvisation, known as “jamming.” Songs that rely on a classical conceptualization of the telos-principled studio album as a definitive Urtext form present a problem for formal analysis: how can we discuss telos, energy gain, goal direction, and expectation when it constantly changes? Current methods for analyzing form in popular music, following Nobile 2022, treat teleology as popular music’s structural foundation (Covach 2009; Osborn 2013; de Clercq 2017, Doll 2017). However, this approach proves insufficient for improvised live-performance jamming, where the telos principle, at best, provides a snapshot of the song’s proposed form and, at worst, is nonexistent.

In this paper, I offer a new conceptualization of form in jamband music that accounts for the music’s teleological fluidity through an examination of late 20th and 21st-century jamband performance practice. Based on Robert Fink’s conceptualization of recombinant teleology (Fink 2005), my case study analyzes the music of three jambands: Phish, the String Cheese Incident, and the Dave Matthews Band. I posit three distinct ways in which teleology is manipulated, usurped, and abandoned through live-performance jamming.

To start, I introduce three recombinant teleology subsets: the Recombinant Pause, the Sectional Telos, and the Anti-Telos Process. The Recombinant Pause defies the formal trajectory provided by the telos principle, instead delivering a vehicle for exploration and unplanned discovery through jamming. Sectional Telos accounts for small-scale closure but thwarts any large-scale connections to a final goal by injecting improvised structures whose open-ended forms render large-scale goals obsolete. Anti-telos process resists establishing a goal-directed formal path by subordinating its role to an introductory gesture for large-scale, discovery-based improvisation (Shelley 2021).

Jambands are the confluence of teleology, improvisation, and formal fluidity. The conglomeration frequently calls into question our methods for prediction and the ethics of musical aesthetics. Through the provided recombinant teleology subsets, jamband music opens the doors to better position similar open-ended processes in non-improvisation-based forms of popular music.

Chuck Berry, the inaugural inductee of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, has long been considered a seminal figure in American history, cast by one prominent critic as having invented not only rock’n’roll but also the occupation of the singer-songwriter and even the societal category of the teenager (Christgau 2017). Yet despite this acclaim, there is little scholarship that engages with the formal features of his music. The current paper, part of a larger project studying multiple musical parameters within Berry’s 91 officially released singles, seeks to remedy this relative lack of analytical attention by surveying Berry’s assorted approaches to sectionalization (form).

In the brief entry on Berry in Grove, we are told bluntly that “Berry’s songs were based on 12-bar blues progressions, with variations ranging from 8 to 24 bars” (Taylor 2019). The 12-bar blues structure is certainly dominant in the catalog, but it is not omnipresent; many significant songs show no sign of the pattern—e.g., “Thirty Days,” “Brown Eyed Handsome Man,” “Memphis, Tennessee,” “You Never Can Tell.” When Berry does employ the 12-bar structure, several distinct sub-patterns emerge with respect to lyrical complexity, sectional/sub-sectional size (i.e., length in bars), and integrations with other formal types—most notably, verse-chorus form. Cases include everything from pure 12-bar refrain-less a/a/b strophes to verse-chorus forms with independent (and sometimes doubly long) 12-bar verses and 12-bar choruses that each offer multiple sets of rhyming couplets. Ultimately, I argue that identifying such formal features will help sharpen our historical picture of the traditions behind, and innovations established by, rhythm and blues, rock’n’roll, and Berry himself. Even when we tread the familiar ground of the 12-bar blues, there are many subtle distinctions awaiting taxonomical identification and analytical engagement.