Form as Process: The Buildup Introduction in Popular Music

Attas, Robin

doi:10.1093/mts/mtv020

Cited by 22 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…6 Corpus studies by Jay Summach (2012) and Jeffrey Ensign (2015) study song form in a broader array of popular music-using Billboard charts as corpus sources-but such charts have traditionally excluded hip-hop music. 7 Scholarship on form in popular music has expanded to include specific formal paradigms (Spicer 2004, Osborn 2013, artist-specific research (Covach 2006, Stephan-Robinson 2009, song sections (Attas 2015, Summach 2011, and genres such as EDM (electronic dance music) (Iler 2011, Osborn 2019, and Barna 2020. Research on form in EDM sets important precedents for the present study.…”

Section: Song Sections and Their Functionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Song Form and the Mainstreaming of Hip-Hop Music

Duinker

2021

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Song form in North American hip-hop music has evolved along the genre’s journey from its origins as a live musical practice, through its commercial ascent in the 1980s and 1990s, to its dominance of mainstream popular music in the 21st century. This paper explores the nature and evolution of song form in hip-hop music and uses them as a musical lens to view the gradual and ongoing mainstreaming of this genre. With the help of a corpus of 160 hip-hop songs released since 1979, I describe and unpack section types common to hip-hop music—verses, hooks, and instrumentals—illustrating how these sections combine in different formal paradigms, such as strophic and verse-hook. I evaluate the extent to which formal structures in hip-hop music can be understood as products of the genre’s live performance culture; one with roots in African American oral vernacular traditions such as toasting. Finally, I discuss how form in hip-hop music has increasingly foregrounded the hook (chorus): the emergence of the verse-hook song form, an increase in sung hooks (often by singers outside the hip-hop genre), the earlier arrival of hook sections in songs, and the greater share of a song’s duration occupied by hooks. Viewing hip-hop music’s evolution through this increasing importance of the hook provides a clear representation of the genre’s roots outside of, and assimilation into, mainstream popular music; one of many Black musical genres to have traversed this path (George, 1988).

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Section: Song Sections and Their Functionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Song Form and the Mainstreaming of Hip-Hop Music

Duinker

2021

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“…On the other hand, authors take hit songs from the 21st century as representative examples to discuss new analytical conceptualisations regarding particular features of popular music. For instance, Robin Attas’ consideration of the buildup introduction process in popular music (2015) includes an analysis of Nelly Furtado's ‘Say It Right’ (2006). Attas hears the song's beginning, in which the stepwise addition of instruments increases the textural and metric density, as a typical example of a so-called ‘projection shift’; that is, an in-time musical process that offers listeners different metric interpretation possibilities depending upon their choice of focus (pp.…”

Section: Mapping the Fieldmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mainstream popular music research: a musical update

Steinbrecher

2021

Pop. Mus.

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This article reviews studies that examine internationally circulating music which has reached the upper echelon of all-genre single charts in the 21st century. The examinations will be used as examples for the analysis of sonic aesthetics that are embedded in a particular frame of cultural debate, which the article conceptualises as ‘mainstream popular music’. The research field is then mapped and discussed with regard to prevailing objectives, methods and findings, including elaborations on how future research might advance understanding of the aesthetics within the discourses of mainstream popular music and, thus, of contemporary culture at large. The literature review focuses on music- and listener-based analytical directions and critically reflects on the frequent absence of theoretically well-founded and empirically underpinned, context-sensitive music examinations, particularly with regard to quantitative and audience research. The concluding section calls for a more integrated perspective on mainstream popular music as a discourse and praxis formation.

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“…Other funk/rock studies in the 2000s somewhat informative to this study includes Becker (2000) and Martin (2006) on sociological issues of popular music, Zbikowski (2004) 19 on embodied funk/rock listening analysis, and Attas (2011) 20 on micro-structural time analysis. The field of psychology was still quite prominent within jazz improvisation research in the 2000s.…”

Section: Part Threementioning

confidence: 99%

“… 20. Attas (2011) suggest groove-based popular music analysis of meter in a broad range of popular music compositions through the lens of the processual theory of meter developed by Hasty (1997). …”

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confidence: 99%

Funk jamming in New Orleans: Musical interaction in practice and theory

Brinck

2018

International Journal of Music Education

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This article reports long-term fieldwork on jamming funk musicians’ interaction from a combined anthropological, ethnographic, and grounded theory perspective. The study draws from over 20 years of data collection through personal interviews with New Orleans funk musicians, personal experiences with jamming and second-lining, and participant observation of funk jam sessions and second line parades. Also the author’s personal funk jam teaching experiences are included. The article is in four parts to mark the historical phases in the longitudinal research process towards a theoretical, empirical argument for how funk musicians think and act when they jam. The final theory suggests funk jamming to be guided by overarching notions of “making the music feel good” and “making them dance” and in an iterative spiral process of “open approach,” “prioritized focusing,” “categorical reflection,” and “artistic realization.” Based on this, some educational implications for learning and teaching how to jam conclude the article.

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Form as Process: The Buildup Introduction in Popular Music

Cited by 22 publications

References 23 publications

Song Form and the Mainstreaming of Hip-Hop Music

Song Form and the Mainstreaming of Hip-Hop Music

Mainstream popular music research: a musical update

Funk jamming in New Orleans: Musical interaction in practice and theory

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