2022 SMT PMIG Schedule

Friday, Nov. 11, 12:30–2:00pm 

Chair: Matthew Ferrandino; Secretary: Emily Milius; Webmaster: Jacob Cupps 

12:30–35 – Intro/Welcome

12:35–1:35 – Presentations (details below)

1:35–1:50 – Q&A

1:50–1:55 – Trevor de Clercq, PMIG “Splinter Groups”

1:55–2:00 – AK and OP award recipients 

Interpreting and Analyzing Timbre and Production in Popular Music 

Richard Ashley, “Timbral contrast, space, and trajectory:  An approach in popular music drum parts”

Madison Stepherson, “Sounding Country: Timbre and Texture in Post-Millennial Country Music”

Drake Andersen, “When the Earth Split in Two”: Timbre and the Cyclic Concept in St.Vincent’s Masseducation (2017)

Emily Milius, “Bikini Kill’s “Liar”: Trauma, Screams, and Embodied Confusion”

Cory Hunter, “Gospel Love Albums: Sex, Eroticism, and Spirituality”

Timbral contrast, space, and trajectory:  An approach in popular music drum parts

Richard Ashley

I first present results from perceptual experiments with drum kit sounds and more diverse instruments.  These timbres populate perceptual spaces which maximize contrasts in some dimensions, affording continuities in others. These perceptual spaces provide what is needed for musical patterning:  perceptual contrast between, hierarchic organization of, and connection across sound events and categories. I then investigate several recordings of Peter Gabriel’s “In your eyes,” finding acoustic similarity and continuity within segments and contrast at segment boundaries. The relationship of these timbral structures to other acoustic and musical parameters, including grouping and metric structure, texture, dynamics, and harmony, is briefly engaged.

Richard Ashley is a faculty member in Northwestern’s Program in Music Theory and Cognition.  He is a founding member of SMT and also one of founders of its Music Cognition Group;  he has served SMT in various capacities, including Chair of SMT’s Publication Awards Committee.  His research area is music cognition, focusing on the relationship between musical structure, memory, and expressive performance;  he is a former President of the Society for Music Perception and Cognition.  His publications deal with a range of topics, from expressive performance over many repertoires–Handel, Brahms, jazz, and funk–to the perceptual and neurophysiological processing of consonance and harmony.  His edited volume, The Routledge Companion to Music Cognition,  was awarded SMT’s Citation of Special Merit in 2019.

Sounding Country: Timbre and Texture in Post-Millennial Country Music

Madison Stepherson

This lightning talk offers a description of the sonic markers of current ‘hot country’ songs. Based on a corpus study of the top 10 charting annual songs from 2012-2022, I examine the common instrumentation of country bands today. Studying the presence (or absence) of instruments marked as signifying the country genre (such as the banjo or violin) reveals the roles of timbre, texture, and instrumentation in the modern country sound and emphasizes the differences from country music in the twentieth century. Country vocality—particularly the use of twang, timbral blending, and prosodic elements of the voice—impacts the soundscape of country as well. Employing methodologies from Victoria Malawey and Kate Heidemann, I analyze the number one hit from each year in this decade, respectively determined by the highest cumulative weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot Country chart. Considering today’s hot country vocality (as distinct from that of past country styles) in tandem with the instrumental norms reveals some of the sonic markers that make country sound country.

Madison Stepherson is a second-year PhD student in music theory at the University of Oregon. She received her master’s degree in music theory from the University of Minnesota. She has presented at regional and national music theory conferences and has served as the social media assistant for the South Central Society for Music Theory. Her research focuses on the voice and vocal timbre in popular music of the 21st century, narrative in song, and music by women.

“When the Earth Split in Two”: Timbre and the Cyclic Concept in St. Vincent’s Masseduction (2017)

Drake Andersen 

While existing scholarship on cyclic elements in popular music recordings primarily emphasizes musical elements associated with the concept album (e.g. Kaminsky 1992, Letts 2010), growing recognition of the producer’s role in the creative process (e.g. Blake 2009) has emphasized how production elements such as timbre and instrumentation can unify the sound of a record. Most recently, scholars such as David Blake (2012) and Megan Lavengood (2019, 2020) have examined how the systematic treatment of timbre can intersect with larger questions concerning genre and musical function. Taken together, these trains of thought prompt a reevaluation of the role of timbre in hearing an album as cyclic. In this paper, I examine how the juxtaposition of contrasting timbres contributes to a larger cyclic concept in St. Vincent’s Masseduction (2017). I argue that the frequent opposition of unreconcilable timbres within functional layers reinforces the more conventionally cyclical aspects of the record. Among the most distinctive examples on the record is the melodic layer of the song “Los Ageless,” in which two contrasting guitar tones play the main riff in unison, but nevertheless remain aurally separate. My findings emerge through recording analysis, marshaling Allan Moore’s (2012) functional layers and Lavengood’s (2020) timbre classifications.    

Drake Andersen (he/him) is Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Music at Vassar College, where he teaches composition and music technology. His scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in journals including the Journal of Music Theory, the Journal of the Society for American Music, Organised Sound, and Music Theory Online. In addition to popular music, Drake’s areas of research include the performance practice of experimental music, virtual scores, and open source software communities.  

Bikini Kill’s “Liar”: Trauma, Screams, and Embodied Confusion [CW: sexual assault, r*pe]

Emily Milius 

As the face of Riot grrrl punk, Kathleen Hanna (of Bikini Kill) sings about violence against women and sexual assault/rape. Using timbral and trauma studies, I examine the juxtaposition of Hanna’s “sweet” timbre against guttural screams in “Liar,” showing how embodiment of these sounds can mirror trauma responses. Trauma rewires the brain, hyperactivating the amygdala. Triggers can send survivors into a hyper-arousal zone, causing fight (rage) or flee (avoidance) responses, or a hypo-arousal zone, causing freeze responses (dissociation) (Mischke-Reeds 2018). The amygdala, and fear/danger processing, is also activated by screams because they indicate danger (Arnal et al 2015). “Liar” responds to Hanna’s friend’s rape. The song mostly contains aligned lyrical and musical intensities, yet in one section Hanna gently sings “all we are saying is give peace a chance” while guttural screams occur. These timbres clash, activating opposite embodied responses concurrently. When non-dangerous stimuli trigger survivors, it causes confusion and intense fear without logical reasoning. I argue this portrays both arousal zones, creating bodily confusion which does not operate between zones, but simultaneously at both extremes. In doing so, I emphasize how the voice’s power provides deeper understanding of vocal expression and trauma in popular music.

Emily Milius is a PhD candidate in Music Theory at the University of Oregon. Previously, she taught Music Theory and Aural Skills at Stephen F. Austin State University in East Texas. In her current research, she is particularly interested in vocal timbre and expressions of trauma in women’s popular music. Recently, Emily has also been drawn to music theory pedagogy, specifically in order to be more actively antiracist and trauma-informed in the music theory classroom.

Gospel Love Albums: Sex, Eroticism, and Spirituality

Cory Hunter

Gospel love albums reflect a growing commitment among gospel artists and Black conservativeclergy to be transparent about sexual desire. Although gospel artists have historically flirted with sexual expressivity covertly—as experienced in the music of gospel artists BeBe and CeCeWinans (Kernodle, 2006)—love albums engage eroticism in ways that are far more overt, setting them apart from any other moment in gospel music history. I examine the multifarious signifiers of gender and erotic expression that pervade Sacred Love Songs (1999), a gospel love album released by internationally renowned preacher, Bishop T.D. Jakes. I argue that Jakes leverages discourse, music lyrics, vocal timbre, and registration to critique and reinscribe theologically conservative ideals of gender and erotic expression. In so doing, he challenges the belief that eroticism and spirituality are irreconcilable, while also reinforcing a traditional heteronormative theology and stereotypical gender tropes. I draw upon feedback interviews with gospel consumers and personal interviews with producers of love albums to understand audience reception and the artist’s underlying motives. I reveal how love albums are not only intended to critique conservative theologies about romance, but are also structured to broaden the marketability of gospel music to consumers beyond the church.

Cory Hunter received his Ph.D. in musicology from Princeton University. He is AssistantProfessor of Music at the University of Rochester and Eastman School of Music. His recent article, “Thy Kingdom Come: Racial-Ethnic Oneness in African American GospelMusic” (The Musical Quarterly, Spring-Summer 2022), examines the ways in which gospel artists encourage racial-ethnic reconciliation through musical practice. His current book project, Spiritual Realism in Black Gospel Music Discourse and Practice, considers how contemporary Black gospel artists use music and discourse to accommodate the popular cultural infatuation with realness and to deconstruct conservative theologies that have circulated within conservative Black churches.