Peas in an i-Pod?

Tonight I'm listening to a musical genius who is a complete master of melody, harmony, chord stuctures, dynamics and lyrics.  He´s also a wonderful vocalist and guitarist. 

I'm talking about the great Todd Rundgren.

Years ago, my cousin insisted I borrow a horrible album. I dragged it home, gave it a listen and thought what a pile of trash.  But Rudgren was using typical pop and rock progressions fused with jazz-influenced movements and blended with clever, and sometimes complex, vocal harmonies.

This was one clever dude (that I probably hated for it). 

(Thanks John, for forcing bands on me).

I´m lucky to have great ears and a mind that can judge for itself.  While I didn't like everything I was hearing, I knew that I was listening to someone with great musical talent and  who was writing from the heart. 

So I have a question.

Why is the melody being erased from music? 

We press buttons to function from day to day.  Our sense of melody and  harmony – that we´re born with -  is slowly decreasing.  We can't survive without sound. We are sound. Like the atoms of which we´re made, we vibrate to stay together. Vibration is sound.

Now, we hear about good and bad vibrations. What are they?  It's quite simple. Good vibrations resonate with our bodies in a good way (make you feel good) and bad vibes are the opposite. So imagine what happens when something fools you into enjoying bad vibrations. Imagine we only listen to synthetic drums and synthetic (by definition, non-natural) sounds.  A drum has indefinite pitch (bad vibrations) and is never in tune.  So what if you make the drum the strongest part of the music then add an unresolved (no resolving cadence) robotic loop.

You get continuous, robotic bass drum, low end bass loop with no groove or ebb and flow - and don't forget that the vocals are often rap with no melody.  Ebb and flow, rhythm, is good for us because our heart beat actually flows (look it up, it´s true).  Take that away by using computerized drum loops and we´re left with a monotonous, static unnaturally bad vibe.  An invisible musical cage.  And as we all know, or perhaps have forgotten, expression can't exist in a cage. But that´s the kind of music with which we´re swamped daily.

Canned carrots, canned peas, canned music. 

As most good musicians know, melody is nothing without harmony. When we hear a melody with no harmony our ears have nothing to relate to, so they can't sense the harmonic stucture. But when we put harmonic structure (chords) behind the melody our ears can make more sense of it.  When we hear a song our brains automatically absorb both the melody and the harmony. Even though you might not understand this interplay, you can hum the tune and get a sense of the movement behind the melody. 

Rundgren's melodies, on the other hand, are strongly enhanced by contrary and oblique motion within the chord structures with the vocal harmonies giving a feeling of depth and breadth.  And so we´re taken on a musical journey with unexpectedtwists and surprises.

We need to follow Rundgren´s example and bring back the Music Grocery where we could pick something fresh.

Not some pre –cooked, tinned peas in an iPod.