Music Theory behind Grunge Music

by Katharine Conory

Title of this Milestone

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Abstract

The objective of this Milestone is to take all that I have learned from my prior milestone and analysis the music under the lense of music theory. I hope to be able to see a defined pattern to creating a grunge song by analysis several grunge songs according to chord progressions, melody, meter etc. In the conclusion I hope to be able to produce a guide to writing a song with a grunge feel. past experience... (needs to be a lot more concise, still a work in progress)

Introduction

I suggest you save this section for last. Describe the essence of this project. Cover what the project is and who cares in the first two sentences. Then cover what others have done like it, how your project is different. Discuss the extent to which your strategy for completing this project was new to you, or an extension of previous HUA experiences.

As you continue to think about your project milestones, reread the "Goals" narrative on defining project milestones from the HU2900 syllabus. Remember: the idea is to have equip your milestone with a really solid background and then some sort of "thing that you do". You'll need to add in some narrative to describe why you did the "thing that you did", which you'd probably want to do anyway. You can make it easy for your advisors to give you a high grade by ensuring that your project milestone work reflects careful, considerate, and comprehensive thought and effort in terms of your background review, and insightful, cumulative, and methodical approaches toward the creative components of your project milestone deliverables.

PLEASE NOTE: this milestone template has only a few sections as examples, but your actual milestone should have many relevant sections and subsections. Please start to block out and complete those sections asking yourself "who, what, when, where, and why".

Remember, as you move toward your creative deliverable, you're going to want/need a solid background that supports your case, so you want it to paint a clear and thorough picture of what's going on, so that you can easily dissect your creative component and say "This thing I did is rooted in this aspect of my background research".

Section 1: Background

Grunge was a style choice, a cultural movement and most importantly a music style that appeared in the late 1980’s to the early 1990’s, which songs had focused on topics of a taboo nature such as alienation, depression, and suicide. The movement focused on using their music to enlighten those around them about the problems that they were suffering from, which resonated very well with the youth who were also facing many of those issues. Grunge music is considered to be a subgenera of rock with heavy overlap with other rock subgenres such as alternative, metal, and punk .The music contained a dirty and raw sound guitar sound, which gave grunge its name. This music has a significant effect on the culture of the Seattle area where is was started, which is no surprise due to the fact that music has always been a major component of cultural changes in society. There have been many scholarly articles citing its importance and during this time there was a major shift in attitudes towards the world and the people who lived in it, which emphasized the feelings correlated to alienation, depression, and suicide. However one may ask how music, subtracting the lyrics, could evoke such feelings, which in fact brings me to the focus of this capstone; the music theory behind grunge music that gave it its unique sound.

The music theory behind grunge music will explain how this music became so unique, but this calls into question of the definition music. In the most literal idea, one can see music as “vibrations in the air that are observed by us and then interpreted as sounds. These sounds play out over time, meaning that music is, therefore, sound over time” . However, that is way too literal and would infer that all sounds are music like all paintings are works of art. Music is way more sophisticated and can be seen as “multi-dimensional (and a) multimedia phenomenon’’ . Therefore music is grouped into seven different elements, which are rhythm, dynamics, melody, harmony, tone color, texture, and form to help identify the key differences between grunge music and say rap. Below I have chosen four elements that I feel are most important to distinguish this genera of music and create feeling that the artists want to portray.

Musical analysis of songs

Taking what has been learned about harmony, rhythm, dynamics, and form and its importance to grunge music now lets look at to songs created by two well known grunge artists. to find out more about grunge music and its history click here

Section 2: Elements to writing a grunge song

Additional Image

In this section, provide your contribution, creative element, assessment, or observation with regard to your background research. This could be a new derivative work based on previous research, or some parallel to other events. In this section, describe the relationship between your background review and your deliverable; make the connection between the two clear.

Melody

...use as many subsections or main sections as you need to support the claims for why what you did related to your Background section...

Chord Progression

...use as many subsections or main sections as you need to support the claims for why what you did related to your Background section...

Rhythm

...and so on and so forth...

Gallery

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Conclusion

In this section, provide a summary or recap of your work, as well as potential areas of further inquiry (for yourself, future students, or other researchers).

External Links

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Image Gallery

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