[1] Many rock artists in the twenty-first century have moved beyond the compositional conventions of Top-40 rock and pop, yielding a meta-genre I have elsewhere deemed "post-millennial experimental rock" (Osborn 2010). While Top-40 artists are largely dependent on conventional song forms for their commercial success, groups outside of this category are freer to experiment with forms that rely less on choruses and recapitulatory endings-the staples of conventional rock forms. The subgenres within this experimental corpus are known by many names (post-rock, math-metal, art rock, and neo-prog, to name a few), but the compositions created by these artists can be grouped by shared characteristics. First, experimental rock compositions usually exhibit unconventional formal designs, and are frequently through-composed. Second, experimental ABSTRACT: Since the dawn of experimental rock's second coming in the new millennium, experimental artists have begun distancing themselves from Top-40 artists through formal structures that eschew recapitulatory verse/chorus conventions altogether. In order to understand the correlation between genre and form more thoroughly, this paper provides a taxonomic approach to through-composition in several post-millennial experimental rock genres including post-rock, math-metal, art rock, and neo-prog. Combining the presence or absence of two salient formal parameters (hierarchical grouping structure and thematic unification) generates four possible through-composed archetypes. Representative examples from the post-millennial rock corpus are provided for each archetype, and accompanying analyses identify the specific musical elements that engender such formal divisions. Included interviews suggest that this taxonomic model is congruent with the language musicians use to describe their own compositional strategies. Throughout the article, a case is made for the substantive link between specific types of through-composed forms and the genres in which those forms regularly appear, as well as for the difference between formal designs found in post-millennial experimental rock and those found in conventional rock music. Received February 20111 of 17 rock compositions are, by and large, performed on traditional rock instruments. This facet ensures their ability to be marketed and recognized as rock compositions despite their technical complexity and ambitious scope. (2) [2] My aim in this article is to examine the through-composed formal structures frequently used by artists in this post-millennial corpus, and to gain insight as to why a formal structure scarcely found in conventional rock music correlates so strongly with this experimental genre. Toward this aim, I have constructed a taxonomy that identifies four throughcomposed types based on two determining factors which emerge from the corpus as salient formal characteristics: the existence or non-existence of thematic unity, and the existence or non-existence of large multi-sectional units I call section groups. One of the strengths of such ...

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This article defines and demonstrates a formal type I call "terminally climactic forms." These forms, which appear frequently in rock songs after 1990, are characterized by their balance between the expected memorable highpoint (the chorus) and the thematically independent terminal climax, the song's actual high point, which appears only once at the end of the song. After presenting the rationale for such forms, including new models of rock endings and climaxes, the article presents archetypes for three classifications of terminally climactic forms: two-part, three-part, and extended. Each archetype is supported by analytical examples from the post-millennial rock corpus.In his primer on rock song form, John Covach writes: "In a verse-chorus [form] … the focus of the song is squarely on the chorus. … [T]he verse serves primarily to prepare the return of the chorus."1 Similarly, Walter Everett notes that " [t]he pop song typically alternates verses and choruses. These will usually be balanced by one or two statements of a contrasting bridge." 2 These commonly held axioms about rock song form represent an archetype I call the "verse-chorus paradigm," a perception that acts both as a methodological constraint on analysts, and as a compositional constraint on songwriters. While this paradigm faithfully models the music for which it was intended (that being conventional rock from about 1957 to 1990), many songs from the past 10 to 15 years are not structured in this way. 3 Rather than relying on a repeated chorus, these songs seem to be directed toward a single moment of new material at the end. This novel and refreshing model for organizing songs is what I call terminally climactic form (TCF), where not a chorus but a single, thematically independent section placed at the end functions as the song's most memorable moment. TCF's unique dramatic shape derives from tension between the expected highpoint (repeated chorus) and the climactic ending, the song's actual highpoint. 2In conventional rock song forms, there are, generally speaking, two ways to end a song: by recapitulating the verse or chorus, or by appending an outro or coda to the end of either section. By contrast, experimental rock artists regularly end songs with completely new material designed to be more memorable than anything previously presented-the terminal climax. Terminal climaxes often display chorus-like characteristics, though they are thematically independent sections distinct from the actual chorus, appearing only once at the end of the song, ex nihilo. 4 Usually, terminal climaxes present a repeated lyrical/melodic hook over a section that is marked by a dynamic, rhythmic, or harmonic change. 5 These dramatic endings come about through any combination of amplitudinal climax, harmonic modulation, and changing meter.Perhaps the most famous precedent for such an ending occurs in the memorable lyrical/melodic hook that closes the Beatles' "Hey Jude" (1968). 6 The song's first half can be heard as a traditional AABA form (with an added ...

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A great deal of the harmony and voice leading in the British rock group Radiohead's recorded output between 1997 and 2011 can be heard as elaborating either traditional tonal structures or establishing pitch centricity through purely contrapuntal means.1 A theory that highlights these tonal and contrapuntal elements departs from a number of developed approaches in rock scholarship: first, theories that focus on fretboard-ergonomic melodic gestures such as axefall and box patterns; 2 second, a proclivity towards analysing chord roots rather than melody and voice leading; 3 and third, a methodology that at least tacitly conflates the ideas of hypermetric emphasis and pitch centre.Despite being initially yoked to the musical conventions of punk and grunge (and their attendant guitar-centric compositional practice), Radiohead's 1997-2011 corpus features few of the characteristic fretboard gestures associated with rock harmony (partly because so much of this music is composed at the keyboard) and thus demands reconsideration on its own terms. This mature period represents the fullest expression of Radiohead's unique harmonic, formal, timbral and rhythmic idiolect, 4 as well as its evolved instrumentation, centring on keyboard and electronics. The point here is not to isolate Radiohead's harmonic practice as something fundamentally different from all rock which came before it. Rather, by depending less on rock-paradigmatic gestures such as pentatonic box patterns on the fretboard, their music invites us to consider how such practices align with existing theories of rock harmony while diverging from others.Functional tonal systems (FT), the first of three systems I will apply to Radiohead's voice-leading practice, will corroborate the observation made by such scholars as Walter Everett (2008) and Drew Nobile (2011): that many rock harmonic structures can be fruitfully understood as elaborating a highly functional tonal syntax which relies on descending-fifth root motions to harmonise2 and7 (leading note) converging on the tonic. Pitch centres that are not created through FT structures may also be established through relatively simple passing, neighbour and plagal motions and thus belong in my second category, contrapuntal systems (CP). In the wake of a rigorous definition and illustration of the first two systems, a clear niche emerges for functional modal systems (FM), in which the minor dominant is used to support2 and b7 (the subtonic) converging on the tonic. 5 Rather than identifying modes through mere scalar construction, this third system recognises modal syntax only in terms of Music Analysis, 36/i (2017) 59