Music Listening, Music Therapy, Phenomenology and Neuroscience

6 – Macrotemporal listening dimensions: Movement, Pulse, Rhythm and Melody

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Throughout the solo, the movement towards the final climax is a process

of spatial expansion.

Hawkins' solo displays freedom of spatial shaping as well as freedom of
temporal shaping. The melodic curves move in weightless fashion over the

regular pulse pattern, and the target tones of the curves are flexibly related

to the beat, sometimes hitting a beat, more often landing unconcernedly
and with ease somewhere between two beats.

Freedom in the shaping of melody is also heard in the variability of

pitch height, timing, timbral quality and vibrato shading which can merely
be approximated by the notated transcription.

The timbral color of the instrument can change from phrase to phrase,

within a phrase or from tone to tone. In the lower register, approximately
below C4, the tone quality is warm, sonorous and diffuse. In the higher

register, the tone is clear, bright and dense, or it may be given a sharp edge

as heard in the high-register leaps of the final section. In the swiftly rising
and falling melodic lines, the saxophone sound changes smoothly between

rich, diffuse sonority and luminous density. This is an imponderable

quality of the melodic flow.
Pitch height is not confined to the steps of the diatonic or chromatic

scale, it is subtly variable, gliding, bending and colored by vibrato. The

vibrato is a personal expressive feature in Hawkins' mode of playing,
adding a quality of breath and bodily presence to low tones and a sensation

of exhilaration to high tones.

Hawkins' solo is imbued with the quality of swing. Swing is a subjective
sensation of a regularity which is not strict or mechanical, but living and

flexible. The variations of timbre, pitch height and vibrato of each single

tone are essential contributions to the feeling of swing. Two other factors
are essential; the inherent flexibility of the underlying regular pulse

pattern and the variable relation and tension between the movement time

of the soloist and the pulse time of the rhythm section.

6 – Macrotemporal listening dimensions: Movement, Pulse, Rhythm and Melody

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Music is a multivariable complex of temporal and spatial relations,

movement and pulse, rise and fall, segregation and fusion of timbres,

similarity and dissimilarity

of harmonic color, regularity and deviation, continuity and interruption,

conflict and integration. These factors interact in the creation of a virtual

musical timespace which provides incessant stimulation of the listener's

attention and awareness, curiosity and interest.

Change and Regularity

The interaction and alternation, tension and balance between change and

regularity give rise to the variability of music.

The basic listening dimensions can be traced back to the fundamental

concepts of change and regularity. Movement and timbre are listening

dimensions related to the experience of change, pulse and pitch height are

listening dimensions related to the experience of regularity.

The nature of the macrotemporal dimensions movement and pulse is

described in chapter one, pp. 13-1 4. According to the origin of these

listening dimensions, the experience of musical movement is related to the

awareness of coherent change, and the experience of musical pulse is

related to the awareness of continuous regularity.

Movement represents macrotemporal change, and Pulse represents

macrotemporal regularity.

The experience of timbre is related to the rapid change of intensity and

energy distribution in a sound spectrum. Timbre represents microtemporal

change.

The experience of pitch height is based on the focusing at a particular

level of the pitch continuum, related to a regular distribution of

harmonic partials in a sound spectrum. Pitch height represents microtemporal

regularity.

The correspondences between listening dimensions, change and

regularity are shown in Fig. 6.12.