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Understanding Through-Composition in Post-Rock, Math-Metal, and other Post-Millennial Rock Genres
Osborn, Brad
Osborn, Brad
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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.
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Date
2011
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Society of Music Theory
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Keywords
Form, Through-composition, Rock, Experimental rock, Post-millennial rock, Art rock, Post-rock, Math-metal, Progressive rock, Radiohead, Animal Collective, The Beatles
Citation
Osborn, Brad. 2011. "Understanding Through-Composition in Post-Rock, Math-Metal, and other Post-Millennial Rock Genres." Music Theory Online 17, no. 3.