Fair warning: this article contains music theory terms. You do not necessarily need to know what these terms mean in order to understand the article.
Introduction:
According to Oli Freke of Plus Magazine, the number of unique melodies composed of ten notes is an astounding 8.25x10^19. Additionally, there are a total of 648 unique chords, excluding power chords and microtones. In spite of the perplexing mathematical possibilities of music, humans still feel restricted by the finite limitation and continue to proclaim that we are “running out of music.” Pop music is recyclable. Modern producers have certainly taken advantage of this quality.
Humans generally enjoy music. Simultaneously, humans like to feel the sensation of familiarity that comes with the satisfaction of an expected pattern, the shell of which resides in the echo chamber of the brain. This means that pop music succeeds simply because of its lack of originality and color. Pop tracks so prevalently replicate one another due to their popularity, which is a direct result of their success. A study published by PLOS ONE demonstrates a dark cycle of modern music. A greater amount of unique musical artists entails a greater instrumental variety and therefore more complex, nuanced sounds and subgenres. Within this range of variety, many compositions are bound to sell and are sequenced into albums. Album sales are inversely proportional to instrumental variety, resulting in the common Top 40 algorithmic pop track. This track is spread across the airwaves of radio, television, and the Internet and soon becomes so marketable that its conceptual skeleton inspires more musicians to mimic it. The cycle loops ad infinitum, at least in theory. A report from the Spanish National Research Council supports this theory. None of the pop tracks which were played most often during the 2000s contained an amount of unique pitch transitions remotely comparable to that of the other songs analyzed for the study which were pulled from between 1955 and 1999.
Although it appears as if music is limited by the simplistic desires of the human mind, which finds comfort in familiarity and questions revolution, of course it does not have to be this way.
Inspiration: The famous infinite monkey theorem explains that in theory, a universe full of monkeys in front of a typewriter, given an infinite amount of time and ample food and water, will eventually type out a legible transcript, whether it be a work of William Shakespeare, the common example, a book by Kurt Vonnegut, or a poem by e.e. cummings. It is much more likely that before any of those are produced in full, the universe itself will burn away. However, the spirit behind the theorem suggests that, in this context, sooner or later, all pieces of music have a nonzero chance of being produced amid haphazard input, albeit an extremely slim chance. Perhaps there is no foreseeable end for music as we know it; perhaps there will be innovations that can stimulate creativity further.
This theorem applies in the same manner to prose and poetry, and to creative writing in general. Although there is no noticeable endangerment within this field as there is within that of music, originality can be difficult to perfect when it comes to writing stories. The saying goes, “Good artists copy; great artists steal.” True originality is hard to come by; every story has been and always will be inspired by some other piece. One may even conclude that there is no true originality at all and that every story contains a bit of unintentionally stolen material. No matter what, the key word is “creative.” This means that it may not matter how much is truly original as long as it is not plagiarized, and that as long as one puts passion into the narration and articulation of events, dialogue, character development, setting, et cetera, one makes it their own; that is where the “creative” comes into action.
Recently, an idea came to me almost out of the blue. At Fairfield University, I majored in Creative Writing and minored in Music Theory and Composition. Naturally, content from both areas would reside in my mind at the same time. Occasionally, one area would inspire the other in a creative pursuit. The inspiration for this article sparked as I was outlining my latest piece, “33 Lincoln:” a chord.
This idea, I realized, can possibly resolve this illusion that when it comes to music composition and creative writing ideas are quite limited. This concept, the chord, can be used as a schematic for a short story outline, and in turn the structure of the completed story can be used as a schematic for future ideas for original music compositions, the home of the chord in the first place being music theory. I realized that stories have progressions just as chords do. Each element of the chord plays a role in the color of the music just as each element of a story plays a role in the tone and pacing of the narration.
Explanation:
The following is a demonstration of this concept, using a simple chord progression in the key of C major (C, E, G.) Refer to the figure below.
Figure 1: C → E → G → G → G A → A → B → B → E G → F → E → D → C
Am7 (third inversion) → Fmaj7 → Em → G (second inversion) → C
The triad contains three voices. In your story, voices will become roles and/or tensions. The root is the bass voice of the chord. In a chord progression, the bass guides the melody and the harmony through the composition with a purpose and a designated destination, which is the cadence (conclusion.) This is done with voice leading as with the two other primary voices, the third and the fifth. The seventh chord adds the seventh to the mix; this is a tension. Voice leading for the seventh is generally faced with more caution due to its dissonance and, within a dominant seventh chord, its tendency to lead into the tonic triad. Then there are chords with supplementary tensions: ninth chords with the second scale degree note added (for the chord of C major, this would be D,) the eleventh chord with a fourth (F) added, and the thirteenth chord with a sixth (A) added. One must be increasingly wary of each additional voice for the purposes of retaining a smooth release of dissonance. That being said, my figures are not necessarily technically “correct;” they merely serve as visual explanations.
In Figure 1, there is a linear bass line with forward descending momentum toward the tonic of C; the notes are G, F, E, D, and C. Normally, G would be the root for the dominant of C major (G major,) F for the subdominant (F major,) E for the mediant (E minor,) D for the supertonic (D minor,) and C for the tonic (C major.) There is no need to know exactly what all of these terms mean; my point is to demonstrate that each of these chords has a specific role, namely the three primary harmonic functions. The dominant is strong and almost always tends toward the tonic; the subdominant tends toward the dominant or, for a plagal cadence, the tonic; the tonic is the “home” toward which all other degrees will almost always eventually tend. However, in my example, the G in the bass is a seventh and later the D in the bass is a fifth. While the G major chord is indeed a dominant chord in the progression, the D is not the root of the chord. Rather, it is the fifth acting as the bass in second inversion. Inversions arouse tension, as do seventh chords, yet as long as the progression and voice leading are smooth, it does not matter which note acts as the bass note.
In order to apply these musical functions as schematics for your story, you need to convert voices to roles and/or tensions. For the sake of differentiation, when the word that I use refers to the musical term, I will call it by its normal name, but when it refers to its complementary term in a creative writing situation, I will add the suffix “-prime.” This is the point at which the harmonic functions, the scale degrees, and the notes all translate into schematic forms of themselves for outlining your writing process. That being said, none of this will mean anything to your writing until you assign each note-prime a role in your story. Referring to Figure 1, say that you assign the note-prime C as the role pertaining to the actions and dialogue of a character named Kendra, E for Julia, and G for Rebecca. They are the main characters; they are roles of the “tonic” note-primes of your story, the core elements of the plot. Then, you may assign roles to the note-primes that started as sevenths, but in Figure 1, G is a tension yet a voice of the tonic. What does one do in this situation? In this story, Rebecca is G. As a tension-prime (the G in the bass of Am7,) Rebecca may argue with someone or otherwise do something which would be characterized as outside of her personality. In a primary role, which would be the translation of a third or a fifth, the G, Rebecca, can be shown doing more average things.
The note-primes are not only characters in your story. They can also be their own plot elements, for in music, abstraction is ascribed to every note while in your creative writing, the abstraction will be ascribed to your interpretations of each note-prime. A in this example may be another character, named Walter perhaps, while B, F, and D can be plot elements: a conflict, a dream sequence, a change in perspective, et cetera.
Now that you have assigned roles to each note-prime, you need to figure out the outline. This is where arpeggiation comes in. In music, chords can be played vertically or in arpeggiation; vertically, all notes are sounded at the same time, while in arpeggiation, each note is played in succession (in other words, C, then E, then G, as opposed to all three at the same time.) I personally find it easier to arpeggiate these roles. There are two options for arpeggiation: from the bass up, or from the highest note down to the bass. Referring to Figure 1, with all of those notes having been translated into note-primes which play roles in your story, the arpeggiation may align as follows:
Option 1: G - A - C - F - A - E - E - B - G - D - B - G - C - E - G
Option 2: C - A - G - E - A - F - G - B - E - G - B - D - G - E - C
The aforementioned musical roles of the harmonic functions (dominant, subdominant, mediant, supertonic, and tonic, along with the missing other two, the submediant and leading tone [or subtonic in minor keys,]) can be translated into sections or settings for your story which group together all of the assigned roles:
Option 1: {G - A - C} - {F - A - E} - {E - B - G} - {D - B - G} - {C - E - G}
Option 2: {C - A - G} - {E - A - F} - {G - B - E} - {G - B - D} - {G - E - C} {section}
The dominant is strong and must gravitate toward the tonic. The dominant-prime section or setting of your story contains literary elements such as character developments, plot twists, or conflicts that via the narration may stimulate the direction of your story in a manner expected by the reader, just as for the music listener the dominant tends toward the tonic. Therefore, the tonic-prime starts in your story as the beginning section or setting and repeats itself at the end as the concluding section or setting, just as the tonic typically starts and ends a song.
Of course, there are chords and sections in between the dominant [prime] and the tonic [prime] of the piece which may subvert the expectations of your audience when written wisely. The Fmaj7 and the Em from Figure 1, for instance, get in the way of the natural progression of tonic → dominant → tonic, the typical skeleton of a composition due to the inherent roles of each harmonic function (the Am7 has a destabilized tonic role as it contains C, E, and G, the notes of the tonic chord C yet with a minor feel.) In this case, you may assign each section a certain subjective mood. Since the tonic is the “home,” it is the least tense of the harmonic functions. In your story, the tonic-prime section or setting can have an air of confidence or happiness. A dominant-prime section can introduce more tension within that specific section and precede a tonic-prime section which works to relieve this tension. This is where the imagination enters the process since different people may have different subjective interpretations of Am7; some may call it mellow while others may call it sad.
Figure 2: C → D → Eb → F → G
E → E → G → G → E
A → A → Bb → B → C
G → F → Eb → D → C
Am7 (third inversion) → Dm9 (first inversion) → Eb → G7 (second inversion) → C
Figure 2 shows a more advanced rendition of the progression from Figure 1. It contains not only seventh chords, but also ninth chords and tension notes from outside of the key of C major, creating an emotional color while maintaining smooth voice leading. In your story, these sorts of tension-primes can equivalently affect the mood of your story. E is Julia in my example. Figure 2 shows that Eb has been introduced. Since this is a different variant of E, Julia’s characterization may temporarily become rotten or abnormal.
Finally, the way in which you handle inversions such as those of the Am7, Dm9, and G7 in Figure 2 is also a task for your imagination. You may choose to interpret an inversion-prime as a chance to scramble expected events in your story.
Conclusion:
Your completed story is essentially a literary chord progression, a series of notes translated into note-primes as characters, conflicts, plot twists, et cetera. Now, you may extrapolate from this a solution to the illusion that we are “running out of music.” You may pull out the schematic outline that you created for your story, transcribe the elements into musical notes and chords, and embellish from there. Only after you successfully do this can you come back and try to reiterate that humans are facing musical and prosaic crises. You will realize that that is truly not the case. Imagine all of the possibilities.
Works Cited:
Davies, S. (2008). Musical Chords and Scales. scottdavies.net. http://scottdavies.net/chords_and_scales/music.html.
Freke, O. (2014). How Many Melodies Are There?. Plus Magazine. https://plus.maths.org/content/how-many-melodies-are-there.
How Music Really Works!. (2015). CHAPTER 6: How Chords and Chord Progressions REALLY Work; 6.17 Chords and Chord Progressions: Maximizing Emotional Impact. https://www.howmusicreallyworks.com/Pages_Chapter_6/6_17.html.
Open Music Theory. (n.d.). Harmonic Functions. http://openmusictheory.com/harmonicFunctions.html.
Percino, G., Klimek, P. and Thurner, S. (2014). Instrumentational Complexity of Music Genres and Why Simplicity Sells. PLOS ONE, 9(12).
Thompson, D. (2014). The Shazam Effect. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/12/the-shazam-effect/382237/?single_page= true.
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