The first track "Everything In It's Right Place" not only paints a fairly good picture of what the rest of album is going to be like; but also kind of puts the listener on edge by incorporating several musical elements that almost seem to contradict each other. A 10 beat phrase is subtlety carried by a light 808 drum machine that is sort of drowned in muted piano chords that bounce back and forth from landing on the 4th and 6th notes. As well as going from a C to a D major to an E flat, which all serves to create a sense of dissonance. The major C and D major chords create a sort of warm atmosphere as the phrase loops, which is constantly being under-cut by the colder E flat which permeates the warmth of the major chords with a sense of unease. Or (if you'll forgive the pun) a sense that everything isn't in the right place. This flip from *ionian and *phrygian inflections is also prevalent in the way the lead singer Thom Yorke sings the the opening line "Everything In It's Right Place", and in the way the his vocals are chopped and dispersed intermittently in the beginning of the song before he sings the line proper. This is where the contradiction and irony of this song lies; between the title of the song and the songs structure. The songs stakes it's claim in the idea that everything is in it's right place before presenting the listener with skewed, seemingly random vocals a chord structure that doesn't follow a typical major or minor scale progression. A piano line that occasionally decides to land on the down beat; all above a steady 808 pulsing through 10 beat phrase. The final example of the song employing composition elements to create a feeling of disassociation can be found in the lyrics themselves. Of which include, "Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon" and "What was that you tried to say?" . These lyrics serve to paint a picture of natural situations but with the inclusion of an element that distorts it or makes it unconventional, i.e waking up with a lemon in your mouth. Or somebody asking someone else to repeat something, even though they didn't say anything.
I think this kind of light deconstruction of repetitive aspects of pop (which is usually associated with positive emotions) is used this way to great a sense of gnawing unease and sonically exemplify the feeling of emotional dissonance/ disassociation. This kind of structural dissonance reminds me a lot of abstract impressionist art work. As well as a specific quote from a book entitled "Nature of Abstract Art" by Meyer Schapiro (1937) that I had to read for my art history class last semester; which was, "In the 1880's there were several aspects of Impressionism which could be the starting points of new tendencies and goals of reaction. For classicist painters the weakness of Impressionism lay in its unclarity, its destruction of definite linear forms"-" If the Impressionists reduced things to the artist's sensations, their successors reduced them further to projections or constructions of his feelings and moods, or to "essences" grasped in a tense intuition." (pg 4) This specific part of the essay was arguing that the striped back more abstract and 'open to interpretation nature' of impressionism was a detriment to the medium of painting.
contrary to this I would argue that, in the same way that Radiohead's ability to convey dissonance with their musical arrangement does a lot in conveying a feeling that many can relate to, without outright saying it; I'd say that the same argument can be made for impressionist paintings, and the painters who made and continue to make them. So I believe there is ultimately a lot to be said about the positive aspects of abstraction's ability to convey dissonance in art.
*Ionian mode is a musical mode or, in modern usage, a diatonic scale also called the major scale.
*Phrygian is the mode represented by the natural diatonic scale E–E (containing a minor 2nd, 3rd, 6th, and 7th)
Phrygian dominant scale
A Phrygian dominant scale is produced by raising the third scale degree of the mode:
E Phrygian dominant Mode: E F G♯ A B C D E Major: 1 ♭2 3 4 5 ♭6 ♭7 1 Minor: 1 ♭2 ♯3 4 5 6 7 1 - Work Cited:
- Schapiro, M. (1937). Nature of abstract art.
- Ionian mode. (2018, February 28). Retrieved March 19, 2018, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionian_mode
- Phrygian mode. (2018, March 14). Retrieved March 19, 2018, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrygian_mode
I haven't listened to a lot of radiohead besides for their more popular song Creep, but I gave this a listen while reading you post and enjoyed it. The term for when music "doesn't follow a typical major or minor scale progression" is called "non-diatonic", I saw the use of the word in your post but didn't see non-diatonic when you were describing the vocals. Though I see in the music that his singing is in the key. he is singing an perfect 4th from the F to the C and back to and F on "Everything", and this sets up the song for the F major chord at the downbeat. It sounds dissonant against the Eb that is resonating in the accompaniment but he is actually anticipating the F chord with his vocals. I love the use of different modes in music, it adds a sense of randomness in the song even though it was done on purpose because people who have never studied music would know that to get this weird music, you just had to raise the third note in the scale a half step. I'm studying music by schoenberg right now, and his whole writing style is non-diatonic, he never rights in a key. His music seems to be completely random, but when you look at it using "set theory", which is a way to think about music mathematically we see that it was one purpose.
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Dude, this is all so brilliantly over my head, but it was a killer read, nonetheless. That is a really unique connection you made there between abstraction and dissonance. I don't really have anything of value to add, just really good stuff, man.
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