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!)
17 Comments
Ah dreams, especially Nyquil enhanced dreams.
Matt, are you suggesting that your songs, and even your musical career, can be explained as a series of cycles? If so, I’d like for the period between the peaks and valleys of the sine wave that is the function of your album output to be compressed a bit. I have a patience deficit.
Perchance, did you go to bed after reading about the golden mean and Fibonacci sequences?
Tell us more about the Princess negotiations and record re-release.
-psh
Posted by psh
I’m wondering if Matt, you could back up your nyquil induced rambling with specific examples in songs, especially instances where Dan’s gentle criticisms apply…
I will try to find examples of these breaks in the system on my own as a way to further my musical education, although I must admit that my eyes start to glaze over when reading about these musical theories…maybe if I take some of my very own generic brand of cold medicine I will be successful in identifying these glorious breaks in the regulated nesting composition…
Perhaps that one new song “Flying” that never made it to the record had more breaks than actual nested cycles and thus doomed it from the start…?
Posted by Kara
I loved reading this, Matt. Please take more Nyquil and post more musings.
This explanation helps me to see why I’ve always found your music both deeply pleasurable and highly interesting. A lot of music brings pleasure, but not all music remains interesting. I see now that it’s very likely the departures that prompt this. (And I’d say that’s true lyrically as well as musically).
I’m grateful for musicians and writers who dare to depart from the promise of the expected (or the expectation of the promise)—it’s what leads to innovation. And great, great art.
Now, let’s here more about this Princess business. Is the princess the daughter of the One-Eyed Lady in France? Is she related to the Queen of Tomorrow?
Posted by ss
And if you are asked to re-work the Indie album to more stringent Princess standards…I would like to suggest adding a bit more time between the end of Yes and the beginning of Alone….I have hardly enough time to take a breath….
Here’s a joke…and I don’t know what the punchline would be…What do you get when you cross the King of the Blimps with the Queen of Tomorrow?
Posted by Kara
I distinctly recall my first efforts to get an analytical grasp on the universality of music, first year college music appreciation course. The prof would play all but one note of a scale, and the dangling tension would be infuriating. That’s when I understood my attraction to jazz, the ultimate rule breaker appeals to my unending defiant nature, and my attraction to Matt’s music must resonate with the terminal romantic optimist in me (aka sentimental soul balm).
Posted by Spike
The appeal of repeating patterns within systems goes far beyond music though, apparent in so much of nature and human experience… but especially intriguing to me, our individual cycles within family systems. Seems all of these are analogies of, or reflected and expressed by, music. Which is why it seems so archetypal. Dude. Speaking of disrupting cycles, the etoh in nyquil will actually knock you out, and then prevent your brain from cycling through the natural sleep stages, preventing restorative sleep, causing even more fatigue. Dude.
Posted by Spike
But I really thought this whole “breaking contracts” metaphor Matt-a-logue was just an indirect vague apology for scheduling and then canceling shows, a “contract violation” with the fans that causes more “outrage” than “delight”, not to mention plan changing and plane ticket eating. In fact, I had considered flaming Matt about that with a thread titled “Matt Wilson is the Brett Favre of the Mipolis Scene”, pointing out that even though he’s a gunslinger of magic verse, he needs to quit saying he’s gonna play somewhere, and then change his mind. But I changed my mind. I’m tactful like that.
Posted by Spike
As for the expected patterns of shows and albums, etc., we’re never satisfied, as evidenced by the threads on this site. We want the oldies, the newbies, the covers, the other versions, the liner notes, not the liner notes, blah blah blah. But that makes us all part of the system, or “family”. It’s all cool, I promised no more petitions, and only to ask for liner notes 7 more times. I forgive you, you forgive me… right?
Posted by Spike
Right on, Spike. I couldn’t read music, so I was never allowed to take a music theory class at my school. That will be a point of lifelong frustration, but so be it.
In any case, you are so right about music and how it can create surprise and tension and then sublime happiness. And, as is so right, it circles back to jazz, America’s great, original contribution to the arts. I think of Louis Armstrong or Billy Holiday and how they would wait a half beat too long to drop into a vocal phrasing. It can almost create a sort of syncopated weaving between the band and the vocals. Louis could make it funny, Billy could make it so beautifully sad—a drunken, tragic stagger. And then as they bring the vocals back into line with the charts, it just seems so right.
Posted by psh
cont’d
Of course, Thelonious is the grand master of that technique on the ivories. (I wonder what Steve Roehm thinks of the Monk/Milt Jackson recordings—that has become one of my favorite musical pairings.) Listening to Thelonious can literally make my back and neck muscles tighten and relax, at times. Dave Brubeck and his experimenting with fugues sort of reflects that pattern, too. And I think Wynton Marsalis regularly does this sort of thing, too—hitting an expected note flat or sharp and slowly dropping his horn into resolution with the “right” note. The fretless bass is perfectly constructed for that kind of slick manipulation of tones, too. Agony/ecstasy, surprise/calm, all in a note. What a miracle music can be.
-psh
Posted by psh
I haven’t read anyone else’s responses. So if someone already mentioned this, then forgive me. But if there are aspects of our music that are reflected in our “career” and that must be repeated, I’d like to say that I would like to opt for the more Trip Shakespeare-like arrangement in this case, going to yet another new section via a unique chicane, rather than repeating our disappearance and diffusion. What do you say?
On a slightly different topic: Have you ever thought about the title of the Thelonius Monk LP “Brilliant Corners?” I always have imagined that the title referred to a soloist navigating the pattern, and then surprising himself with his note choices and arriving at “brilliant corners,” or moments of supreme invention worked through spontaneously and demonstrating ingenuity and mastery not unlike what can happen in a more systematic compositional process.
Posted by John
John,
You ask how we’d respond to you and Matt repeating a “more Trip Shakespeare-like arrangement in this case, going to yet another new section via a unique chicane, rather than repeating our disappearance and diffusion.” I don’t want to speak for others, but I suspect you’d find some serious enthusiasm if you mine the Trip Shakespeare well and put a unique twist on it, following a Thelonious Monk-like chicane, rather than once again disappearing and diffusing. Just a guess, but I’m pretty confident in prognosticating that enthusiasm. Matt, are you on board?!
And, speaking of Mr. Monk, I’ve never thought about the “Brilliant Corners” title, but you must be right. Monk, as I imagine him, seems so aloof and academic. So I love the image of him surprising himself after following a spontaneous improvisation and discovering a pleasing musical fillip around the bend. “Eureka! I’ll call this “‘Epistrophy.’”
-psh
Posted by psh
hmmm..I kind of feel like a caveman with all this musical theory stuff going around that I don’t know anything about….
...me like Trip Shakespeare…:)
Posted by Kara
Maybe Matt and T.Monk have and intuitive understanding of a music in terms of fractal images. (Matt’s-“series of nested systems” and Monk’s-“Brillian Corners”)? A thrilling song extends, angles and curves upon itself. Eventually, a subtle shift or syncopation reveals the one pattern.
Posted by Aubrey
Listening to TS on my iPod in the car this morning, I came across a clear violator of the musical contract.
Exhibit A: Thief (appropriately named)
It all starts off pretty standard…
Intro
Verse 1
Chorus “Type A”
Verse 2
See? Easy.
After verse 2, we’re obviously expecting another chorus, but TS switches it up on us and we get Wacky Alternate Chorus “Type B”...it hits us out of nowhere and is a bit jolting.
Interlude
Verse 3
Chorus “Type A” again
OK, we’re back to standard stuff. Now we’re expecting either an additional verse or a type A chorus, but we’re smacked with…Wacky Alternate Chorus “Type B”.
The contract is broken….and we like it.
Posted by drneau
Another minor violator…
Unlucky Lady
Verse
Chorus
Verse
Chorus
Whack-a-mole chorus
Verse
Whack-a-mole chorus
But I love it, and it’s one of my favs.
Posted by drneau
Lulu
Verse (longer)
Chorus
Verse (shorter)
Chorus
Lonely-When-I-Hear-The-Band Interlude #1
Verse (longer)
Chorus with a break in the middle
Lonely-When-I-Hear-The-Band Interlude #2
Lonely-When-I-Hear-The-Band Interlude #3
Thumping, Rain and Feedback
Wouldn’t change a single note. It has just as many notes as I require. No more, no less.
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