Form as Rhythm

[Ed Sharpe]

Rhythm


Working Definition: The occurrence of musically events in time. (In this context silence (rests) will be consider a musical event.) "Rhythm is the timed sequence of sounds in music."ⁱ

Music can consist of three basic elements (building blocks): Rhythm, Melody, and Harmony.

Of these three harmony in not required can be dispensed with. In fact in much of the world harmony is not a part of traditional music and only became part of Western European tradition in the middle ages.

As for melody, I am unsure if it is always required. Is a (un-pitched) drum solo music? Does a drum solo have a melody?

The one thing all music has is that what we call Rhythm. Now not all music has a discernible regular pulse (or beat). In some music the pulse (beat/tempo) is not perceptible (or barely perceivable) to the listener but is know the the performer(s). In other music the rhythm of the piece is based not on a regular (metrical) pulse/beat, but the rhythm of the language being sung or placement of musical events within a given time frame.ⁱⁱ There is also the use of two or more simultaneous tempos in the same piece id est polytemposⁱⁱⁱ.


The problem we run into is that when we use the word rhythm we can mean one of many aspects that comprises rhythm. When one says "rhythm" are they talking about the pulse or tempo of the piece? How about the meter? Or the feel of the piece (swung eight notes, shuffled, slightly elongated down beat, et cetera); what one could call the "clave".


One aspect of rhythm that is occasionally discussed is Harmonic Rhythm^iv. This is the "speed" at which the underlying harmony changes. In pop music is this often once per bar. In many standard Jazz pieces the Harmony changes every two beats. [In the ubiquitous 'Rhythm Changes' the A section changes chords every two beats, but in the B section the chord changes come every two (or in some variations one) bar.] In Bossa Nova^v it is not uncommon to have the harmonic change before the down beat, id est syncopated harmonic change. In Miles Davis' "So What"^vi the harmonic change occurs every eight bars. Thus the harmonic rhythm of a piece might differ from the melodic and accompaniment rhythms of the piece. One can have a "slow" harmonic rhythm within an otherwise rhythmically fast piece or via-a-verus.


What is form? Form is the arrangement of musical events in time. The arrangement or order of one or more themes, transitions and other sections (interludes, preludes, coda's, cadences, improvisations, et cetera). And rhythm is "the occurrence of musically events in time". Form is rhythm at a higher (more abstract) level.

---

i Oscar van Dillen: www.oscarvandillen.com/outline_of_basic_music_theory/concerning_rhythm_melody_harmony_and_form/

ii "the darkness between the stars": www.scoreexchange.com/scores/35987.html ,"The Heat Death of the Universe": www.scoreexchange.com/scores/38070.html

iii Polytempo: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polytempo

iv Harmonic rhythm en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic_rhythm

v Bossa Nova en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bossa_nova

vi So What en.wikipedia.org/wiki/So_What_%28composition%29

[wizzarts]

Hi Ed,

thanks for sharing this... I used this in "Tarots" where most cards are hidden in rhythimcal and/or melodical themes.

This made me digging a bit deeper into this...

thanks

[ceg]

Fascinating stuff, but I'm not convinced that you can't have music without rhythm. For example, Cardew's Paragraph 7 of the Great Learning.

[wizzarts]

Well, it depends on the definition of rhythm....

events over time... when you play 2 notes you already have a "rhythm".

You can expand it over a given form or you can focus on the micro-cosmos like the waving overtones that occur when playing a triad.

It is really a thing of how far you will go...

I once wrote a piece for detuned guitar and filtered the overtones to create a pulse.... fun stuff as usual but it shows that even a less-expensive tuning fork has a rhythm...

But I agree. We should not overdo this. I common musical sense a melody is a melody, rhythm is rhythm and form is form...

[Ed Sharpe]

Jan 26, 2014 23:15:21 GMT ceg said:

... Cardew's Paragraph 7 of the Great Learning.

I am not familiar with Cardew. Can you elaborate?

[Joseph]

Jan 27, 2014 2:47:45 GMT Ed Sharpe said:

Jan 26, 2014 23:15:21 GMT ceg said:

... Cardew's Paragraph 7 of the Great Learning.

I am not familiar with Cardew. Can you elaborate?

a starting point:

[Joseph]

Jan 26, 2014 23:15:21 GMT ceg said:

Fascinating stuff, but I'm not convinced that you can't have music without rhythm. For example, Cardew's Paragraph 7 of the Great Learning.

are you suggesting there is no rhythm in this?

[Ed Sharpe]

Sorry, but I do believe this piece has "rhythm".

[ceg]

Hi Ed,

What sort of rhythm do you hear here - and is it due to the performance choices made by the performers, rather than inherent in the piece itself (the video above is actually two individual performances overlaid, which to some extent defeats one of the purposes of the music)?

The score for the piece can be found here: www.newmusicnewcollege.org/Cardew.html.

To me, the only rhythm possible to discern is the way that people decide to spread the syllables out over the length of a breath, and the alternating pattern of (a) breathe in and listen to what is around you and (b) sing a note for a breath's length - both purely at the whim of the performers, and not contained in the music.

[ceg]

An alternative performance of (most of) Paragraph 7 can be found here: www.ubu.com/sound/cardew.html - to my ears, far less rhythm

[Joseph]

IMHO, lest you artificially inhibit the sound (no modulation of any kind) there will always be rhythm. It is inherent in the universe. Winds blow, blood flows, there is a natural pulsing that is, rhythm. Is there a recognizably rhythmic repetition in the cited work? Is there a recognizable rhythmic modulation? Probably not as that was the composer's intent. He has placed no boundaries on the sound production in his "score." The fact that pitches are sounded in time indiscriminately provides rhythm. You can hear it pulsing. The pulsing, again IMHO, is in fact rhythm. Disagree? Tell me more . . . Joseph

(what I did find interesting as I plodded along learning a bit about the composer and this work is the oft noticed resolution of the ending coming down to a P5th before ending on a single tone - that necessitates continued reading)

[Joseph]

Jan 27, 2014 22:20:38 GMT ceg said:

Fascinating stuff, but I'm not convinced that you can't have music without rhythm. For example, Cardew's Paragraph 7 of the Great Learning.


An alternative performance of (most of) Paragraph 7 can be found here: www.ubu.com/sound/cardew.html - to my ears, far less rhythm

a contradiction?

[ceg]

A contradiction - maybe, but I don't think so. I still maintain that the piece has no rhythm, but I'm prepared to concede that the Bird on a Wire installation based on it could be considered to have some rhythm (e.g. the Scottish snap performance of the word "nothing") - but would argue that this is something that the performers have added over the top of the piece. The alternative I provided is far more homogenous (and here is another - www.insearchofsilence.co.uk/files/greatlearningparagraph7.mp3 ) Looking at the score, I don't think there is any rhythm there, or any implied rhythmic content.

Which is why I'm interested by Ed's comment

Jan 27, 2014 5:22:54 GMT Ed Sharpe said:

Sorry, but I do believe this piece has "rhythm".

Do you think the piece has rhythm, as if so, how?

cg

[Deleted]

But surely "something that the performers have added over the top of the piece" is precisely what turns a score (blobs on staves) into music (an attempt to express something or other by means of sound)?

[Ed Sharpe]

Jan 27, 2014 21:04:18 GMT ceg said:

Hi Ed,

What sort of rhythm do you hear here - and is it due to the performance choices made by the performers, ...

... both purely at the whim of the performers, and not contained in the music.

What you seem to be saying (and I do not think you mean this) is that since the rhythms are not notated, there is no rhythm. If we are to say rhythm only exists if it is "spelled out in the score" then we are saying the 90 percent of what John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Eric Dolphy, et cetera does not have rhythm.

[Ed Sharpe]

"Now not all music has a discernible regular pulse (or beat). In some music the pulse (beat/tempo) is not perceptible (or barely perceivable) to the listener but is know the the performer(s)."

Let me expand that last sentence: ... is not perceptible (or barely perceivable) to the listener but is know the the performer(s), or maybe dispensed with all together; that is,some mechanism other than a pulse is used to organize the musical events in time.

[Ed Sharpe]

Quick little quiz.

Take a listen to this piece.

Eous

www.scoreexchange.com/scores/89516.html

How many tempo changes are in it?

[Deleted]

Feb 12, 2014 18:45:21 GMT Ed Sharpe said:

Quick little quiz.

Take a listen to this piece.

Eous

www.scoreexchange.com/scores/89516.html

How many tempo changes are in it?

I think at least 18, not including the rain stick at the beginning and end.

[Ed Sharpe]

First:

Anne, thank you for taking the time to listen and respond to my question. I am sorry for the late reply but I was hoping for maybe one or two more answers.

As for the correct answer: You where both incorrect and correct at the same time. Since this piece was computer performed (in Sonar) the entire piece was notated (first in Sibelius) and in the notation there are ZERO tempo changes. All of the perceived tempo changes where achieved through changes in the notated rhythms. It is a bit hard to explain in words only but I will try (if you go to ScoreExchange and lookup my Morning Prayer the fourth movement is Eous with everything notated). One of the first tempo changes you probably heard the drum speed up; this was done by changing the drums basic temp reference from a quarter note to quarter note triplets. In other words the drumer began playing three bars of the drum pattern in the space of two bars. In the Bass solo I believe the bas begins to use dotted quarter notes as his base pulse reference. Other various similar “tricks” where used through out the piece so for that reason we can say that there was not tempo changes in the piece.

However: since music is ultimately an aural experience, the fact that we HEAR tempo changes makes your answer correct, the music does change tempo to our ears and in music the ear is the final judge.




(I do a similar manipulation of the rhythmic notation at the end of my Meditation on the Sierpinski Tetrahedron to slow the piece down without using a rit.)

[ceg]

Jan 28, 2014 4:35:08 GMT Ed Sharpe said:

"Now not all music has a discernible regular pulse (or beat). In some music the pulse (beat/tempo) is not perceptible (or barely perceivable) to the listener but is know the the performer(s)."

Let me expand that last sentence: ... is not perceptible (or barely perceivable) to the listener but is know the the performer(s), or maybe dispensed with all together; that is,some mechanism other than a pulse is used to organize the musical events in time.

I Presume that you mean "but is known to the performer(s)". I don't think that is always the case that even the performers know the pulse. But I think we are drawing closer together when you allow that for some pieces, something other than a pulse can be used to organise the musical events in time (which is what I would say is happening in the Great Learning paragraph 7).

I like Eous by the way - would "metric modulation" be a good term to describe some of the 'tricks' you used? One problem with not using tempo changes is that whilst going from septuplets to sextuplets to quintuples gives quite a good impression of a gradual rallentando (see the end of Villa-Lobos' Little Train for an example), going from triplets to duplets to single notes feels too abrupt.

[Ed Sharpe]

I would say it is related to metric modulation and but is not what is normally considered metric modulation. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_modulation is where one changes the tempo of the following section based on a division of the previous section. There is a change in the underlying BPM where as in my piece there is no change in the underlying BPM. Also in Eous there are times when only some of the players have effectively changed tempo while other players are still playing in the original tempo, so I have a sort of poly-tempo going on.