[Harp-L] Re: Harp-L Digest, Vol 25, Issue 47

[Richard Hunter <turtlehill@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

"Chris Michalek" wrote:

<These days I mostly channel guitar tone, violin tones, vocal tones,
<saxaphone tones etc... I can sound like anyone of them when I want
<to. This technique is used to such great effect in my trio that we
<have absurd requests - play Jimi Hendrix, Play Bach, play Michael
<Jackson, play some Coltrane....
<I find this particularily strange because there is no guitar or
<keyboards, there are no vocals, just harmonica, bass and drums. This
<tells me above all that people listen to tone, shape and rhythm. 

And yet, amazingly enough, if you listen to pop radio for 1,000 hours
straight, what you hear over and over and over is people singing
melodies, or just talking over a groove.  You hear the human voice
singing or speaking recognizable words.  If you hear 15 minutes during
those 1,000 hours that are devoted to explorations of tone, shape, and
rhythm, it was a pretty unusual period in pop radio. 

People's ears are tuned first and foremost to the sound of a human
voice.  If the voice is singing a melody that they can remember, with
words they can remember, they listen harder.

Tone, shape, and rhythm matter -- they all convey an emotional message. 
But they are not what distinguishes one piece of music from another in
the minds of the audience. Melody and lyrics are what does that.  That's
why tone, shape, and rhythm are key elements in film music -- they set
an emotional context without demanding complete attention, supporting
the action and dialog onscreen without dominating it.

If you doubt the above, take any 50 songs in the genre of your choice:
rock, country, whatever.  The chord changes, tones, and ryhythms for
those songs are all probably very, very similar -- that's what clues the
listener to the fact that the song is part of a style that the listener
likes.  What distinguishes the songs from each other?  Melody and
lyrics, mostly, and the sound of the lead singer's voice.
  
Thanks, Richard Hunter
hunterharp.com