Registered: 08/28/01
Posts: 259
Loc: Too close to Nashville
Originally Posted By: Timster
Well you know that country songs are different than western songs. Western songs are West coast.
Don't confuse Western songs with Western Swing. The Western genre is more like Cowboy songs. More like the Sons of the Pioneers. Instrumentation is sparse, like maybe one acoustic guitar. Maybe a harmonica or a fiddle. The instruments you might take with you in a Conestoga wagon when you left St. Louis to cross the great plains...
Western Swing is more a combination of that, PLUS Swing, Blues, Jazz, Pop -- no restrictions on the genre -- well, other than the restriction that it was music for people to dance to.
And Western Swing, back then, had no restrictions on instrumentation. The Texas Playboys, at their peak, were a Big Band with trumpets, trombones, saxophones, dual electric guitars, steel guitar, drums, piano, upright bass, three fiddles, a male singer, and a female singer. And Tiny Moore's electric mandolin.
Today's Western Swing is locked into that old time instrumentation (but no more are horns allowed, except one lone muted trumpet is still allowed.) Whereas, originally Western Swing welcomed all instruments, the modern version of Western Swing prohibits the use of modern instruments like a synth or a Hammond organ. Western Swing got frozen in time.
About what? I'll take counter to your "melodies are weaker in those genres"...I'd start with asking What "genre" do you consider the Beatles AND the "Great American Songbook" to be part of? It's popular music of a PERIOD in time with the Beatles ending that.
If you have time and want to better understand modern music...have you seen Hamilton? It's streaming on Disney Plus...or I'm sure there's audio on YouTube of the cast recording...he pretty elegantly combined hip hop and what I'd call traditional meldocism. Given when you stopped listening to new music--you might hear King George's songs as being very Beatles...despite it being directly lifted from late 90s BritPop...ala Robbie Williams...but, he does that specifically to make the king sound, well--british...most of it is more old school Broadway...modern broadway...and hip hop all mashed up. It's MS Pop's fave album of this century, I think, so...Um--I'm familair. We went to see the touring company when they came to TPAC. More than once.
But, also some homework...how much of what you're hearing as "weak melody" is actual less sophisticated HARMONY? This sticks pretty close to the original melody, sans some scatting bits:
...suddenly, for ME...I "hear" the melody very very differently than I ever did with the horrible deadpan flat power chord punk pop version that sailed up the charts in the 90s.
Further example of melody vs harmony that just popped into my head...since Blackbird.
"Take these broken wings and learn to fly"...you can't GET a simpler more country music melody. But, I for one "hear" the chords he's moving through underneath during that line. So, maybe you nee to play it without those. That's country music now, same melody:
(G)Blackbird singing in the dead of night
(C)Take these broken(D) wings and learn to (Em)Fly
(D)All my (C)life
(G)You were only (C)Waiting for this (D)Moment to a(G)Rise
Now, in reality...that's OVERLY simplified for any country I'm going to listen to, who would be fine with the five of the five A7 in the last line...and probably the same leading to the Eminor...but, once you add the spinning chromatic walk up chords of the second line...the first inversion G chord and C over D dominant of the last line, it makes it decidedly no longer "country". Flatten the fifth of the Emin...walk BACK down those chromatic leading chords...now this has no chance of making country radio.
Same melody.
YMMV. I just point that out...because that's how I hear melody differently than some. You can play me a reharmonized instrumental with a different groove...and very often I can't even tell you what the song is. Unless the melody has some very specific interval leaps...that might make me go "oh--is this? Oh--it IS..." Meanwhile, Ms Pop can hear that same instrumental reharmonized and go "isnt' this X?" within one or two lines.
I think it's more accurate to say that "modern" music has gotten tangibly less sophisticated in it's harmony than in it's melody.
Registered: 11/27/01
Posts: 2303
Loc: Minneapolis, MN, USA
Originally Posted By: The Vampire Lestat
I'm a big Dwight Yoakam fan, but there's alot of rockabilly in his music.
Whatever his "genre", that dude fucking rocks.
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“I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” ― James Baldwin
95% of all music is usually kind of dull, but when you listen to Pandora of 1950s country, 80 percent of that will be fantastic. Sure, they've weeded out most of the junk, but anyway, you can dig that on for quite a long time.
I really like the recording style, the singing styles the band swing. Just all so good.
Modern country has very little for me. Dwight is about as far as I go, and he was a throw back in the 80 already.
But once in awhile something will come on modern country that's not bad.
