Music Composition DUMmIES

Exercises .......................................................................................................

1. Pick out five of your favorite pieces of music and determine their
   effort shapes.
   Which effort shapes from Exercise 1 show up the most within your five
   musical selections?


2. Search your music collection for effort shapes that are missing from
   your list from Exercise 1.


3. Compose an eight- to sixteen-measure melody using each of the miss-
   ing effort shapes from Exercise 2.

4 .If you have composed any music, determine the effort shapes you

used.

Chapter 11: Composing from the Void 135

Mods dab, rockers press

In the 1960s, during what contemporary musi-

cologists like to call “The First British Invasion,”

British youth formed two cultures. These two

youth cultures were known as the rockersand

the mods. The rockers might enjoy the music of

The Rolling Stones or The Animals, and the

mods might prefer The Beatles or Herman’s

Hermits. The cultures clashed in their interest in

music, clothing, their preferred uses of drugs

and alcohol to some extent, and their general

attitudes. There were occasional gang-like turf

wars between the two groups, as portrayed in

the classic film Quadrophenia. To a certain

extent, a similar division existed among young

people in the big cities of the United States

(such as between the Foamies and the Pot-

suckers on the East Coast in the 1960s.).

It is interesting to note that most of the music

that interested the mods can be classified as

dab/glide, but the rockers seemed to prefer

press/punch. Of course, there was music that

crossed these lines, and other effort shapes can

be observed in the music enjoyed by these two

groups, but the social implications of this clear

division of effort shapes between these groups

suggest that certain types of people might be

attracted to certain types of movement in their

music. Moreover, certain types of movements in

music may seem to fit with certain types of cul-

tural frameworks.

In 1967, the Rolling Stones, in an attempt to

make an album that spoke to the psychedelic

influence of bands like the Beatles, recorded

Their Satanic Majesties Request. It was deeply

disliked by most of the Stones’ rocker listener

base, but it did cross over into the realm of ten-

uous acceptance by many of the mods. People

expected the Stones’ usual punch/press rock

and roll, but got glide, dab, and float. It was the

Rolling Stones’ least successful album, from

which they were mandated to redeem them-

selves with their very next release.

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