Examples Of Tonal And Atonal Music

[nineofkings]

Ok, I suppose by "you" I was assuming "relatively passive music listener." Starbucks or car radio is a fine analogy. "Music that one hears." Listening to Ligeti as a matter of course would imply some element of having sought it out at some point - "mainstream" media channels don't usually serve up things like that.

If we want to get didactic, sure, blues and most of the jazz and rock and pop that comes from it isn't strictly tonal or functional in the common practice sense. But most of it's not atonal. It generally uses triadic harmony and has a tonal center in a major or minor key. I guess I'm trying to refrain from strange vague goalpost-shifting that can lead to the idea that if the big cadence is IV-I instead of V-I it's suddenly atonal.

So, 99% of the music an average person in the 21st century western world is exposed to is not-atonal.

[jancivil]

Jimmy Reed!
Apparently there's a Neil Young one same title
yeah, no, I wouldna know this usually but the grammy for R&B record was Bright Lights by... l had to look for it
Gary Clark Jr. I took notice because while the song in itself seemed innocuous to me the guitar sound jumped out, kind of shocking next to everything else

https://youtu.be/CFjMeOnqAPI?t=2m34s

[jancivil]

If we want to get didactic, sure, blues and most of the jazz and rock and pop that comes from it isn't strictly tonal or functional in the common practice sense. But most of it's not atonal. It generally uses triadic harmony and has a tonal center in a major or minor key. I guess I'm trying to refrain from strange vague goalpost-shifting that can lead to the idea that if the big cadence is IV-I instead of V-I it's suddenly atonal.

So, 99% of the music an average person in the 21st century western world is exposed to is not-atonal.

Well, this is exactly what I'm saying: 'not atonal' as a definition for tonal does not work. It's identifying by opposition to its supposed opposite.
Tonal can have a definition, and for instance the Gary Clark Jr number sits on 1 (it isn't even really a chord), except for another "power chord" at 'b3'. It isn't tonal, tho. It's modal.
James Brown Say It Loud I'm Black and I'm Proud sits on 1.
There's a lot of music like this I only ever heard on the car radio or maybe from the TV.
Miles Davis So What, isn't tonal.
I don't care if someone has their definition different from that, but that's what I have.

So, I sure do want to be didactic, here in 'Music Theory'. I established a 'goalpost', a real V-I, I mean a real dominant needs tonic and we know it, it's tonal. A bunch of IV-I, no dominant-tonic, not so much.

SO the whole reason I've been verbose is, there is a whole lot of music that is neither. Not to create a fishy dichotomy, but the words tonal and atonal have meant specific things to me as a musician. I haven't made a tonal track, I have made 2 atonal tracks, on purpose. (I think that method can result in something funny, not grave just because of the weight of history.)

[jancivil]

"Music that one hears." Listening to Ligeti as a matter of course would imply some element of having sought it out at some point - "mainstream" media channels don't usually serve up things like that.

Sure, and listening to Björk as a matter of course means you want to. I heard Ligeti in the film 2001, A Space Odyssey and like anything else you went to the record store. Nowadays you can just go to Youtube.

So sure, the passive listener that doesn't have a lot of interest and relies on the car radio or so passive that music is always a background like in Starbucks will not have to deal with any 'atonal' music. There is pop music that absolutely is tonal and evidently there's a whole thing that's all in C major and exactly the same things are done. And it's All Four On The Floor All The Time.
This hurts me more than any atonal is gwyne hurt them!

[SJ_Digriz]

One of my favorite bands ... This moves between tonal, tri-tone futzzing about mixed with some atonal meanderings. Just when you think they are falling into a progression, they don't.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBKnYrwIP0o

[rp314]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRJ-3sLVPl0

[MadBrain]

I subscribe to the broad meaning of "tonal" (basically meaning "not atonal"). Yes, that includes practically all music except for the avant-garde styles descending from Schönberg & co's dodecaphonism (and closely related early atonal styles such as free atonality). Yes, using "tonal" for this even includes Arabic and Indian classical music. Yes, this is NOT the same meaning as "tonal" in renaissance music when discussing the shift from modality to tonality (which I think is more a shift in analysis than in the actual music but that's a discussion for another time).

I'd use other more specific, less political terms for narrower meanings. Such as "harmony-based" or "chord-based" when I want to exclude music that isn't based on multiple overlapping note lines and that doesn't really have chords and chord progressions (like Arabic or Indian music). Considering the explosive arguments over what "modal" music is, I would not use that term (because it has at least 2 different and somewhat incompatible meanings, making it hard to convey what you mean when you use it).

[jancivil]

Yeah, I like useful definitions of things. Confounding modal with tonal isn't that, but you do what you want. You might expect to be countered in any didactic setting.

[jancivil]

I Considering the explosive arguments over what "modal" music is, I would not use that term (because it has at least 2 different and somewhat incompatible meanings, making it hard to convey what you mean when you use it).

Explosive? Hey, POLITICAL. No, there is a useful meaning, it's not difficult, and there's muddy waters where people won't recognize.

NB: I'm not even remotely intimidated by this type of comment. "Not harmony-based" or "chord-based"; so now you have two "definitions" which locate the meaning by opposition to the negation of the thing. That's fundamentally, wholly illogical.

[jancivil]

Yes, this is NOT the same meaning as "tonal" in renaissance music when discussing the shift from modality to tonality (which I think is more a shift in analysis than in the actual music but that's a discussion for another time).

Oh good grief. Such a broad brush, vague, yet so bold! Why bring it up if you aren't going to discuss it?! What music is not noticeably one or the other and only 'analysis'... does what? Creates this shift? What music specifically did you actually study where this distinction will be, what, artificial as though analysis for the sake of analysis? Which analyses don't work for you exactly. What does this mean, exactly.

[SJ_Digriz]

Yeah, I like useful definitions of things. Confounding modal with tonal isn't that, but you do what you want. You might expect to be countered in any didactic setting.

It's funny how so many want to have an academic discussion up to the point the academics compete with their ability to comprehend and/or competes with their biases.

I just accept the fact that there are many people who do this stuff full time academically that know 10000x more than I do on the topic. And, it's necessary to defined concepts so that you can have a consistent frame of reference for further study and communications.

Anyhow, atonality does not necessarily mean without tone. I think that's the thing that confounds most people when they hear the term. And curiously enough, I often perceive a tonal center in many songs that are defined as having "no tonal center". But it's more of a single note that all the other notes spring from and move around. In fact that center tone often becomes monotonous to me and gets irritating.

[jancivil]

Yeah, I like useful definitions of things. Confounding modal with tonal isn't that, but you do what you want. You might expect to be countered in any didactic setting.

It's funny how so many want to have an academic discussion up to the point the academics compete with their ability to comprehend and/or competes with their biases.

I was thinking pretty much the same thing. I can't let those remarks go as long as I'm here.

[SJ_Digriz]

I think a lot of people inundated with western music from birth have a hard time with atonal concepts from a listening standpoint. At least I know I do.

A great example ... I can listen to rhythmic music (tabla for example) for hours enjoying interplay of patterns, plosives and ask/answer stutters all day. Even the semi-singing that goes on top I like. However, as soon as they start the drone, string and wind instruments I can't stand it. I seem to hear that NOTE and can't focus on the rhythm, which is of course is what the song is in that context. I think my ear is so biased to find note structure from specific instruments, it's very difficult to not find them even when they aren't there. And of course it sounds wrong .

[jancivil]

Please note that I am not an academic. We were subject to two trimesters of the Church Music where this shift to tonality from that type of modal counterpoint was kind of the point, and even as I don't really go for too much of this music I followed up in the library some, "Modal Counterpoint", a workbook.

We had to write essays on why this composer's madrigals or what-have-you sounded different than the next composer's. Frankly I found this truly boring. I was young. I was essentially booted out of Honors Music History.
But, let JumpingJackFlash or fmr in here who are or were academics with expertise and expect to be countered.

This word 'renaissance' is a broad term (~200 yrs worth).
This subject is not really suited to glib overview. I'm not really qualified to go much into it. But while writers may say 'major mode as opposed to the theoretical church modes' per this or another piece of music... 'key' gets to be definite after a point. It didn't happen overnight

When did modal music give way to the modern key system?

<My own answer would be "sometime in the later 17th century, roughly around the time of Corelli (1680), or maybe a bit earlier with someone like Stradella (say 1660-1670)."

Of course, as someone attuned mostly to modal music (or at any rate to pre-key music, since the question of whether and how "mode" should be applied to medieval polyphony, for example, is an open one), I may tend to hear things in early 17th-century music as an expression of "modal fluidity," while someone oriented mainly to key-based music will hear the same music in terms of an "emerging key system."> - John Howell

[jancivil]

I saw this film when I was, I dunno, 14 or 15, heard this and was home.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lk60ObnbIOk