Atonal Rock

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Does it exist? Is it worth listening to?

― Steve Reich, Wednesday, 20 November 2002 14:10 (10 years ago) Permalink

Not sure if I would describe it as atonal rock, but U.S. Maple is A-something rock. Ahole rock, maybe.

― Mark (MarkR), Wednesday, 20 November 2002 17:47 (10 years ago) Permalink

No, U.S. Maple is Ahoyhoy Rock!

― C. Montgomery Burns, Wednesday, 20 November 2002 17:56 (10 years ago) Permalink

many people use the word 'atonal' when they really mean 'dissonant'. can hardly blame em what with atonal being such a tuff word n all. bet one of those bands The Wire magazine's covered has actually tried Webern covers tho.

― Paul (scifisoul), Wednesday, 20 November 2002 18:55 (10 years ago) Permalink

Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd had plenty of passages with no clear key center, though the songs always had tonal beginnings and endings. There are a couple later tracks that are fully atonal, though not in a structured (12-tone/systemic) way -- "Quicksilver" comes to mind, as do parts of "Sysyphus". However, whether they could be called atonal rock is an open question.

Other than that, your best option is probably James Blood Ulmer.

― Phil (phil), Wednesday, 20 November 2002 21:03 (10 years ago) Permalink

Lungbutter, from St Catharines, ON, go into total atonal arhythmic breakdown sections/jams. I'm not sure if some of their songs ever really reach a clear tonal centre. Also 5UU's and U Totem have atonal, arhythmic passages even using classical strings and winds. Henry Cow, too, though you'd probably be better off with the Fred Frith Guitar Quartet. (If you're willing to consider this other stuff rock, you might as well check them out too.) I think there are some atonal moments in the Van der Graaf Generator's "A Plague Of Lighthouse Keepers".

― sundar subramanian (sundar), Wednesday, 20 November 2002 21:27 (10 years ago) Permalink

''many people use the word 'atonal' when they really mean 'dissonant'.''

what's dissonant? (this is a genuine q as I know almost no music theory).

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Wednesday, 20 November 2002 21:32 (10 years ago) Permalink

according to webster's:

dissonance
n 1: the auditory experience of sound that lacks musical quality; sound that is a disagreeable auditory experience; "modern music is just noise to me" [syn: noise, racket] 2: disagreeable sounds [ant: harmony]
Source: WordNet ® 1.6, © 1997 Princeton University

atonal
adj : (music) characterized by avoidance of traditional Western tonality [syn: unkeyed] [ant: tonal]
Source: WordNet ® 1.6, © 1997 Princeton University

― hstencil, Wednesday, 20 November 2002 22:22 (10 years ago) Permalink

The Shaggs = atonal rock
Jad Fair = dissonance

― Curt (cgould), Wednesday, 20 November 2002 22:27 (10 years ago) Permalink

The musical defn of "dissonance" would be basically the use of non-traditional/non-standard harmonies, I think. There's no hard and fast rule re which harmonies are dissonant. It's changed over the centuries. Harmonies that were considered dissonant in the Middle Ages are totally standard now. What's important is that the term only really means anything in a tonal context - if there's no tonal centre, there's no consonance or dissonance.

― sundar subramanian (sundar), Wednesday, 20 November 2002 22:29 (10 years ago) Permalink

thanks :-)

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Wednesday, 20 November 2002 22:44 (10 years ago) Permalink

jandek?

― electric sound of jim (electricsound), Wednesday, 20 November 2002 22:55 (10 years ago) Permalink

The Shaggs = atonal rock

What? The Shaggs are totally tonal.

The 5UUs, yes, good call.

― Phil (phil), Thursday, 21 November 2002 00:21 (10 years ago) Permalink

your best option is probably James Blood Ulmer

Though actually, the accompaniment is usually pretty tonal even when he's playing out, so never mind.

― Phil (phil), Thursday, 21 November 2002 00:31 (10 years ago) Permalink

Shaggs comment wasn't meant to be technically accurate. Just that they "avoid tradition", whereas 1/2J make "disagreeable sound". Carry on.

― Curt (cgould), Thursday, 21 November 2002 00:42 (10 years ago) Permalink

It does sort of bring up something interesting, though, in that by far the biggest part of the Shaggs' distinctive sound is the rhythmic element. If you take away all the unusual rhythms, their harmonies and melodies are actually quite straightforward major-chord stuff.

I don't know if I'd call Jandek atonal -- he's more microtonal (except on the tracks where he plays something like straight blues guitar). I haven't heard his solo piano performance from The Beginning, though -- what's that like?

― Phil (phil), Thursday, 21 November 2002 03:25 (10 years ago) Permalink

Actually quite tonal, Jandek is. All about long meandering runs up and down the keyboard, with the "how to improvise" shtick of keeping to the pentatonics on the black keys to ground himself then flipping to major chords and triplet arpegiations (sp?). It feels like he even has a set key (probably C).

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Thursday, 21 November 2002 05:44 (10 years ago) Permalink

Lungbutter are from Stratford, ON, sorry.

― sundar subramanian (sundar), Monday, 25 November 2002 22:27 (10 years ago) Permalink

5 months pass...

I´d say Sonic Youth´s "New York City Ghosts and Flowers" is close enough to an atonal rock album...

― Martin Musacchio, Friday, 2 May 2003 18:22 (10 years ago) Permalink

9 years pass...

according to webster's: (above)

wow, worst definition of dissonance ever. sund4r shoulda wrote that entry instead!
gross oversimplification: think of dissonance as the harmonic spice that you add to agreeably bland consonance to make it interesting. (but extremes of all Marmite or all Hallmark can be great too)

― Paul, Thursday, 17 May 2012 23:35 (1 year ago) Permalink

I think it's problematic to try to define dissonance post-Stravinsky, let alone in an age where people grow up listening to Sonic Youth, Nirvanna, death metal, etc. Atonal has a much more fixed, technical definition, whereas "dissonance" is a floating concept.

― this guy's a gangsta? his real name's mittens. (Hurting 2), Friday, 18 May 2012 15:49 (1 year ago) Permalink

I feel like in casual conversation atonal is to describe the direction a piece of music is moving in, and dissonance describes any given moment in a piece that applies.

― Evan, Friday, 18 May 2012 16:05 (1 year ago) Permalink

Well that's not just casually true. "Dissonance" can happen at any moment in a piece or throughout. "Atonal" can only describe at very least a passage of a piece, because you can't really discern a tonal center or lack of one from a single moment.

― this guy's a gangsta? his real name's mittens. (Hurting 2), Friday, 18 May 2012 16:12 (1 year ago) Permalink

Right. I only meant casually because I always figure the technical definition in music theory has a more specific meaning than I perceive. I play it safe because I'm too lazy to cite my sources.

― Evan, Friday, 18 May 2012 16:19 (1 year ago) Permalink

i thought an 'atonal' piece couldn't really be 'dissonant' at any particular moment in a meaningful sense

― thomp, Friday, 18 May 2012 16:23 (1 year ago) Permalink

sund4r said that upthread. I think you could argue it both ways -- you could define "dissonance" in context of a piece, like if you're playing Cmaj, Gmaj, Cmaj, repeating and suddenly it an F# minor chord it will sound "dissonant" in context. sund4r is saying that once you lose that underlying sense of tonality, nothing is truly "dissonant" -- sort of like no up in space, I guess. But I think most people hearing atonal music would find most of it extremely dissonant.

― this guy's a gangsta? his real name's mittens. (Hurting 2), Friday, 18 May 2012 16:31 (1 year ago) Permalink

huh! sorry, i only looked at the post-revive stuff. he does a better job of making the point than i do.

i would quite like to understand the neurological/acoustic basis behind all this stuff. i sometimes wonder whether the strands of dissonance in 'arty' pop music (to speak v v broadly descending from the velvet underground and with sonic youth as most obvious / 'canonical' modern examplars) are something to do with selective breeding for tone-deafness. this point brought to you by i am listening to the velvet underground and nico right now and remembering not really processing how screechy john cale is meant to come across on 'venus in furs' as a kid.

― thomp, Friday, 18 May 2012 16:40 (1 year ago) Permalink

i think there's a thread where we talk about the gorguts record which is meant to be atonal. i don't know tho.

― thomp, Friday, 18 May 2012 16:40 (1 year ago) Permalink

I seem to remember reading that there's evidence that OOH people's ears get accustomed to "dissonant" sounds to the point that they no longer find them dissonant, but also that there are some limits to this process? There's a lot of research on this, neurological and otherwise, but I don't know a lot about it.

― this guy's a gangsta? his real name's mittens. (Hurting 2), Friday, 18 May 2012 16:49 (1 year ago) Permalink

aren't there pretty strict music theory definitions of what constitutes consonance and dissonance? I do think it is interesting whether or not our hearing has changed and affected our perception of dissonance.

― sarahell, Friday, 18 May 2012 16:50 (1 year ago) Permalink

The neuro-acoustic basis of all of this is the harmonic series (picture the E string on a guitar: the harmonic series is the set of notes you can play on that string without actually pressing it down onto the frets)

― Hierophantiasis (Jon Lewis), Friday, 18 May 2012 16:54 (1 year ago) Permalink

sarah: it's something that's evolved quite a lot historically, i am sure hurting is more qualified to answer than i am

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emancipation_of_the_dissonance

― thomp, Friday, 18 May 2012 16:55 (1 year ago) Permalink

The harmonic series is derived from mathematical divisions of a string and I don't think there's neurological evidence for that being somehow more "natural" to the ear than other systems.

― this guy's a gangsta? his real name's mittens. (Hurting 2), Friday, 18 May 2012 16:57 (1 year ago) Permalink

thomp, yeah. Dissonance is a shifting concept, it doesn't really have a "precise" definition in music theory. It was once thought to, but that's been debunked.

― this guy's a gangsta? his real name's mittens. (Hurting 2), Friday, 18 May 2012 16:57 (1 year ago) Permalink

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