Systems within systems: Promises, expectations and violations
Posted by Matt
(Not long ago, John and I sat down to talk business with our label. Krista and Grant at Princess are the sweetest and gentlest, but when it comes time for an agreement, some contractual matters have to be addressed. There was talk of terms and percentages. Now you know I am a fragile flower, and this kind of subject matter starts to soak into my mind like blue food coloring into the petals of a carnation. Oh Lordy, forgive me! I woke up that night - perhaps a little buzzed on Nyquil - and this is the revelation I recorded.)
I just woke up in amazement at the way the songs I listen to are a series of nested systems: machines within machines, each system with an implied contract for repeated fulfillment. We revel in the patterns, the beauty of the mechanisms. And we take note and delight when the patterns are violated.
(Like I said, Oh Sweet Jeebus, forgive me!)
In the songs that John and I write, and in most of the songs we hear, there is a groove of some sort. The groove is a rhythmic system that becomes established. Once it is established, the groove becomes a promise of continued function that listeners come to depend on. They expect the rhythmic system to prevail. And usually it will. The rhythmic system has time-based rules and patterns, and we all perceive the rules that the song lays out and we enjoy the fulfillment of the promise of those rules. And we listen carefully to verify that the rules will continue to apply.
Then there is the system of the key, which is almost like the song’s constitutional document, a contract between the song and your ear. The musicians begin to work within a limited group of notes implying rules about the types of notes that will be allowed. And as listeners we expect some systematic law-abiding behavior. The rules of rhythm that have been established will be operating within the key system that has now been promised. When the song goes outside the promised notes, we all perk up and prepare ourselves for excitement or outrage. A key changed feels like revolution: some very basic laws have been violated, and we all understand that the contract has now changed.
(This post may actually be better at putting people to sleep than the Nyquil that caused it!)
Now layered over that groove, and within the key, is a system of chords is another system that needs to do a job. The chords, as laid out in the song, perform an operation within our mind, bringing us through a sequence of emotional colors that becomes another promised cycle. As listeners we follow and accept the first cycle of chords, and then we expect it to repeat. We learn the chords in the fist verse and now we expect, by convention, that the song will continue to deliver that contracted chord behavior on a faithfully repeated basis. The chord system is declared and the song and its listeners are now mutually committed to repeat that. And, of course, verses and choruses function as subsystems with their own promised sequences of chords nested within the larger structure of the song. We expect them all to perform reliably.
Once all these systems are established, part of our mutual fun is breaking the systems. If the song violates that chord sequence we’ve agreed on: whoops! That’s a violation, and we respond with delight or confusion at the departure.
My brother Dan used to gently criticize the songs of our band, Trip Shakespeare, for not delivering on the previously promised next section consistently enough. We would go from verse to chorus the first time, but then the next time we would finish a verse a different way and move on to some new section. He was really indicating that he would prefer if the system delivered more consistently on its contract. He wanted the system to be stronger, less riddled with violations. A perfectly valid suggestion: a preference for how the system should operate.
But isn’t it funny how songs, at least as we’ve come to expect them, are each a series of systematic and sequenced promises - structures - that we all intuitively accept in an instant. Then we revel in the ways that the little systems are violated. Wow. I’m sure that albums or song cycles work as systems in some way, too, just as somehow a whole musical career is a series of promised patterns and responses, show to show, album to album, the variations on which become interesting or notable to us as observers.
I should shut up and get back to my pillow and the marvels of Nyquil.
(That last paragraph is probably correct. Like I said: Sorry!)
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