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samatedeansbroccoli · 2 years

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hello. please do this. that is all.

OOOOHHHH okay!!! Thank you Ren!

The post being referred about music fading out at the end

A couple disclaimers, this story is mainly based around western music. I will add a bit about eastern music at the end, but rock music started out of western influence, hence why the focus. This is also written with the assumption you or anyone who sees it has no technical music background. I don’t want it to seem like I’m talking down to you in the slightest, I just want to share my interest to as many people of different musical backgrounds. ALSO this is very long, hence the break.

The short answer is it has to do with technology. At the start of the 20th century, technology became a vital part of music. It was how you spread music to the general public rather than requiring them to attend concerts or have street performances/bar performances, you get the idea. The radio stations were probably the biggest influencers of spreading music, although you could argue the microphone was more important.

Now as for music itself: up until the 20th century, music had various forms. These forms were meant to help create a world, tell a story, basically build up to a climax. For sonata form (one of the many forms), you would have three parts to it. The exposition, which set the stage and all the themes for the piece. The development, which took a spin on the exposition, and ran around with it. And the recapitulation, which was the exposition, but with everything the development had created.

If you don’t know much about sonatas, it’s like the hero’s journey in music. The exposition is your character and their normal world, the development is the mess they get into and have to fix, and the recapitulation is them returning to their normal world but with new changes to their life thanks to their adventure. Also, here’s Clementi’s Sonatina in C Major, Op. 36 No. 1, Allegeo for a listening example. It’s 2 minutes long (sonatina means mini sonata) and you can hear where it starts happy, becomes dark/kinda scary, then returns to happy but sounds different.

Western pop music doesn’t work like that. In the 1930s (1935-1946 more specifically), there was the Swing Era; the Dance Crazy. What was better than dancing? Having music to dance to. What was better than dancing to music? Having music to dance to until you dropped dead.

The Swing Era was also filled with jazz music. The cool thing about jazz is that it relies on improvisation. In other words, here’s the basic structure you follow, now make up the rest! It’s like if everyone got the same box of Legos to build with. No two builds will be the same.

The difference between the Legos and jazz is that the structure is “looping.” That way people know “okay we have our opening theme, then our next theme, then go back to our opening theme.” These were denoted by letters: the most popular structures at the time was an AAB blues structure, and an AABA Tin Pan Alley structure. Take a look at Bessie Smith’s St. Louis Blues’ lyrics:

I hate's to see that evenin' sun go down

Hate's to see that evenin' sun go down

Cause my baby, she done left this town.

If I feel tomorrow like I feel today

Feel tomorrow like I feel today

I'll pack up my trunk, and make my get away.

I colored the lines for easier viewing, but it should be obvious there’s the AAB blues form. So for musicians, you expect chords for the A theme, and chords for the B theme, and then you go around and around and around and around and—[fade out].

Lyrically, sea shanties do something like this too. Drunken Sailor has an AAAB form, which allows for people unfamiliar with the song enough time to learn the lyrics and sing along (“What do we do with a drunken sailor” 3x followed by “Early in the morning”).

These looping forms were super useful during the swing era because when people got really dancing, you would dance until you dropped dead. The musicians could change up the music all they wanted to keep from getting bored, or encourage people to do different dance moves, or both. Basically, music structure was built to loop so you had endless good times.

But we’re still off 40-50 years from the rock era. So here’s a brief summary of that: WWII happened, basically no music was produced during WWII due to a musician strike for being underpaid by records, the Swing Era died during WWII, new music started popping up after WWII, new technology to make recording easier, insert the Beatles, and now we’re at the rock era, aka the 70s.

Actually let’s back up for a second, Rock & Roll started in the 50s when the new “teenager” began (after WWII, children were no longer required to work) as a way for teens to have their own genre of music. During this time, R&R star Elvis Presley popularized the 8 bar blues structure (it’s 8 chords: I I I I V V IV IV (which may or may not mean anything to you, but it’s a chord progression and it’s good at looping)). That formed into an AA structure (just 8 bar blues followed by 8 bar blues), which is now the common baseline for today’s Rock.

Time jump forward to the late 60s/early 70s. Rock & Roll is now just called Rock to be taken more seriously by “adult”/“non-teenager” groups. BUT!! Rock is still pop music (stands for popular music; we kinda lost that meaning with today’s music thanks a lot Arianna Grande ). And like I said before, pop music is build to repeat. While there is more directed structure in terms of lyrics, the music is still that looping style. Meaning that bands could go on and on for as long as the crowd was screaming (think the end of Hotel California). Great for parties!

Not so great for the record companies! The vinyl could only handle so much music. But with a song that doesn’t have an end, how do you end it?

[Fade out]

And that’s why rock music especially in the 60s-70s-80s fades out. It doesn’t have an official end. What is heard at concerts is whatever the musicians decide. They really just improv the ending.

Today’s pop music and rock music still follow similar things as the past. think Vanessa Carlton’s A Thousand Miles:

Making my way downtown, walking fast, faces pass and I'm homebound

Staring blankly ahead, just making my way, making a way through the crowd

And I need you, and I miss you, and now I wonder…

Hey look! It’s out AAB! The piano instrumental does the same thing too!

I said at the start I wanted to touch on Asian music, so here’s that. They’ve been doing this looping style forever. It’s in all their ancient music. The most well-known is probably the Javanese gamelon (Indonesian orchestra). The gamelon is constructed of gongs which played in cyclical form called “gong cycles.” The musicians all knew what to do, because the fun part about eastern music is “how fast can you play it?” And when you know what you’re doing, it’s easy to play faster and faster. Classical Indian music (iirc Hindi more specifically) likes to add a layer onto this where the audience keeps time along with the music with hand gestures (music is regarded as an “everyone participates in it!” sort of thing). And if someone could keep up with the musicians, then they were heralded as a musically adept audience member.

SO TLDR: Pop songs are meant to never have an end, and technology limits lead to fade outs.

Wow. I wrote way too much for a simple concept.

I hope it was a fun read anyway! Thanks for asking! I finally get to use my music degree for something!

#thebroccoliresponds #thanks call me ren!#sadly I already have someone named ren so it’s kinda an awkward tag #but yeah! I’m so happy you asked!#music

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