Reading through Hein’s tweets made me think of Lerdahl and Jackendoff’s preference and well-formedness rules in their groundbreaking book A Generative Theory of Tonal Music (1983). It seems to me that if any kind of pitch-based activity that sounds over a looped breakbeat “sounds good” (according to Hein), and rhythmic/metric placement can make just about any chord sound like the tonic:
I would say that “like the tonic” is doing a lot of work here: I would argue that there’s a big difference between THE TONIC, a chord that functions like the tonic, and a chord that sounds like the tonic. This might seem like splitting music-theoretical hairs, but it’s important to distinguish among the three. In the first case, if a chord is the tonic, we are talking about a very specific set of relationships among triads and seventh chords in a functional diatonic universe: this is the music of Bach, Mozart, Schubert, et al. In the second case, a chord that functions like the tonic could be a few things. It could be what the neo-Riemannian crowd calls a “tonic substitute” (like vi in a deceptive cadence) or it could be some kind of “tall tertian” chord (i.e., a ninth, eleventh, or thirteenth chord) that behaves in a quasi-functional way—think jazz, blues, or maybe impressionism. The third case—a chord that sounds like tonic—is to me the most abstract of the three. There’s no clear functional harmonic universe that ascribes this particular role to the harmony—nothing specific that it’s in relation to—but rather a convergence of other musical features that result in our hearing that particular chord as somehow more important than those around it. I like Christopher Hasty’s notion of musical domains—these are characteristics of musical sounds like pitch, intensity, duration, and timbre. When there is a break in continuity across some musical domain (i.e., a change in register, or density, or length) that change is marked for our attention.
I don’t want to get too deep into the weeds with Lerdahl and Jackendoff, but want to highlight how their theories might be useful to us in understanding what kinds of factors are at play in this third case. Lerdahl is a composer/theorist and Jackendoff is a linguist/cognitive scientist, and the main goal of their approach was to develop a model for how our brains process (mostly functionally tonal) music that has roots in the generative grammar and cognitive scientific principles associated with Noam Chomsky. Central to their theory are a few sets of preference rules and well-formedness rules; that is, our brains “prefer” to group things according to these circumstances, and these structures that we’re encountering are well-formed if they exhibit these qualities.
While these theories were very much not developed with rap music in mind, many of the rules are fairly easily adaptable (and Lerdahl and Jackendoff go so far as to suggest some of them may be universal). For instance, many of the Grouping Well-Formedness Rules (GWFR) and preference rules (GPR) make pretty good sense: contiguous segments of music constitute groups; large groups may contain smaller groups; a change across some domain (to borrow Hasty’s term) often indicates a grouping boundary; and favor symmetrical and parallel group construction. The technologies of early rap music, like the turntable and the TR-808 drum machine (and others like it) lend themselves readily to creating these kinds of well-formed groups: if you’ll pardon the wordplay, a loop is a well-formed group.
Among the Metric Preference Rules (MWFR), here are a few that I think are germane to the question of tonic-sense in rap (these are quoted directly from their presentation in the appendix to the book):
MPR 2 (Strong beat early): Weakly prefer a metrical structure in which the storngest beat in a group appears relatively early in the group.
MPR 3 (Event): Prefer a metrical structure in which beats of level Li that coincide with the inception of pitch-events are strong beats of Li.
MPR 5 (Length): Prefer a metrical structure in which a relatively strong beat occurs at the inception of either
a relatively long pitch-event
a relatively long duration of a dynamic
a relatively long slur
a relative long pattern of articulation
a relatively long duration of a pitch in the relevant levels of the time-span reduction, or
a relatively long duration of a harmony in the relevant levels of the time-span reduction (harmonic rhythm)
MRP 6 (Bass): Prefer a metrically stable bass.
MPR 10 (Binary regulation): Prefer metrical structures in which at each level every other beat is strong.
Taken together, these metric preference rules encourage us to interpret the interaction of pitch and meter such that salient pitch events coincide with salient rhythmic/metric events: the two are mutually reinforcing. To me, where things start to fall apart is when we start considering how GWFR/GPR and MWFR/MPR inform time-span and prolongational reductions. I would contend that for the most part, time-span and prolongational reductions are moot in rap music because of the repetitive nature of the the loop (engaging with Tricia Rose’s ideas about flow, layering, and rupture would further support my hypothesis here, I think); however, in the next post in this series, I’ll talk a little bit about how repetition works to legitimate a set of sounds.
In summary: the repetitive nature of the loop in rap music overdetermines the grouping structure and thus the metrical structure, which is to a large extent dependent upon pitch material. (It is important to note that by “pitch material,” I am not necessarily referring to notes that vibrate at specific frequencies—like notes on a piano—but the fact that the hi-hat has a higher pitch than a bass drum, even though both are fairly indeterminate.) Generally speaking, the loop also negates the formation of any kind of functional tonal hierarchy that would precipitate time-span or prolongational reductions. I would argue that this is a useful way to think through some of the questions that Hein raises in the Tweets shown above—it’s useful for looking at a lot of “golden age” sample-based rap music.
A few parting thoughts: Loren Kajikawa mentions that one of Dr. Dre’s contributions was taking longer samples—four or eight bars instead of one or two. How would the change in sample length push the boundaries of our well-formedness and preference rules? Also, while Hein doesn’t talk about the impact that lyrics and a rapper’s flow have on our perception of harmony over a loop, it’s important to consider. Lerdahl and Jackendoff have a chapter at the end of their book that looks at speech prosody and how their system of rules can be used to understand the rhythms of speech—might be an interesting add-on to the current explorations of how rap music works.