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Why is western pop music more melodically repetitive than eastern pop?
For example, compare this song from Lana Del Ray with this song from Minami Kuribayashi.
Both songs have relatively limited melodic range (lowest to highest notes, and how frequently each note comes up). However, the first song has substantially more repeated notes and repeated small patterns, while the second exhibits more melodic variability.
Comments
You got me.
because glorious Nippon
actual answer: probably just the way things turned out.
because glorious Nippon
actual answer: probably just the way things turned out.
Gonna need more examples than that, Glenn.
I couldn't tell you for sure, but it does seem that the Japanese have an affinity for strong melody. It's not just popular music, but in general composition and arrangement across genres and applications. Compare Western and Japanese game music, for instance; for the most part, Western game music aims to be part of the environment rather than its own entity, whereas its Japanese equivalent would rather be an additional experience on top of the rest of the game. There are exceptions to each, such as Silent Hill in Japan's case, but this is my general experience.
My best guess? Listen to how each style of melody relates to the language it was composed in. Many European languages, definitely including English, are full of slurred sounds that meld into one-another. Japanese is a language not measured in individual letters, but in syllables, and I find that their music has the same syllabled quality. Western legato is excessive compared to its use in Japanese music, which seems to aim for higher aural definition on its individual sounds in line with the qualities of the language of its composers.
There's also the apparent fact that both Celtic folk music and heavy metal are highly popular amongst Japanese musicians. Celtic music is probably the most elegant and advanced folk music of the West, and it competed successfully with a range of contemporaries in different eras, always defined by its strong, expressive simplicity and emphasis on defined melody. Early heavy metal, like Iron Maiden and Judas Priest, runs very much along the same conceptual lines when it comes to melody and sometimes even harmony.
So I can definitely see how these influences, combined with the qualities of the native language, ensures that contemporary Japanese music has its own melodic and harmonic identities. Without a black culture of their own, they were never mesmerised by many of the techniques that would become the core of rock and pop music, sending them along a different path. In fact, by the time Japan was both stable and in legitimately peaceful relations with the West, rock music had become fully-formed as a genre and had separated itself from simply being the white man's blues. So they missed out on the interim -- everything from the blues to early rock and roll.
Of course, none of that prevents my thoughts on this from being conjecture, but I've often thought about this.
You, too? Are you a musician? (just curious)
I'm not sure I can really proffer a bunch of examples without introducing bias, unfortunately. But as Alex put it, it's sort of a trend I've noticed. And I think it might have to do with why I like eastern pop more.
Though on the other hand it might just be related to greater harmonic mobility in eastern pop music, which would justify the melodic mobility. That might explain why I've never really warmed up to Celtic folk--its harmonic style is noticeably different from western classical harmony. And I already know that I'm a harmony and chord progressions person.
I think Alex is onto something with the contention that even though a lot SH's music is atmospheric, a lot of is still really solid music all by its lonesome.
I could try to find something in contemporary hispanic music, but nowadays all that plays is repetitive reggaeton and shit. The era of Salsa and Merengue, those were the times.
Yep.
One thing I've heard about Japan's professional music scene is that everyone, honestly, wants to be in a metal band but takes the work they can get. This is from the mouth of Marty Friedman, former Megadeth lead guitarist gone Japanese citizen. This sounds sensible to me, because a lot of Japanese pop has a lot more to do with the core compositional stylings of melodic metal (which in itself is almost a modern answer to Western folk music in many respects) than the more blurred influences of Western pop. I suppose you could say that Japanese music, in general, has more focus and consistency within itself. Western pop is more diverse by a long shot, though.
Also, I am definitely more of a melody person. All respect to harmony -- no melody is ever half as good without an appropriate harmony to contextualise it -- but I always shoot for a strong melody. Although, funnily enough, I often begin with a chord progression I like and build from those foundations. One approach I like is to have a chord progression, and then just fill out appropriate melody notes at certain places in the rhythm; from there, I find the most pleasing way to connect those melody notes.
I would post some K-pop, then I remembered that K-pop is just American pop in Korean and with idols.
R&B and hip hop are things in Japan. Hell, leading songstress at the moment is Amuro Namie, who purposely sings exactly like an American just cause.
I don't mean "everybody" literally, but there's a very significant portion of professional musicians (and I don't just mean in terms of "artists") that want to do metal. A lot of musicians who do scores, arrangements, session work -- the ones you may not know by name -- started with a passion for heavy metal. And it definitely shows throughout many forms of Japanese media, especially anime and video games.
Idols, pop musicians and such are a minority of working musicians, most of whom don't get much recognition or a particularly large pay to do what they do. The names of the musicians escape me right now, but did you know that one session group was responsible for many, many of the recordings of popular Western bands during the 80s? They were asked to tone down their work by some of those bands, because they took the songs to a level that the actual bands couldn't pay live. And I don't even know their names. It sounds like a conspiracy theory nutjob thing, but it's true and makes a staggering amount of sense from a business perspective. Of course, these guys were the minority -- while they didn't get much recognition from the public, obviously, they made obscene amounts of money.
Can't disagree with that. I think that there is a significant portion of people who start out as idols on their path to being in a band but lose hope once they examine those idol contracts they signed, this never ends well.
I can think of a couple off the top of my head, Saori Codama (Who tried her hand at a career but had to tone down excessively, you can feel her metal inspired stuff from her earlier years but now she's mostly settled down into producing ballads and recently made a comeback, she did do some lightly rock and metal songs for ChouCho though), RAM RIDER (Started as a rock producer, now does lots of techno) and NAOTO of ORANGE RANGE (Who started as thrash rock and still does perform as such, now produces a significant amount of idol rock). Not to forget the 90s bands like Do As Infinity, the up-and-coming Leo Ieiri and LiSA (Who can't seem to stop moshing in her music videos and has a not as successful metal band).
True.
An interesting thing to note is that the majority of pop artists aren't produced/written for/arranged for by Japanese people but by Americans.
Here's a bit of an extreme example of melodic range and variability: "Nemuri Hime" ("Sleeping Beauty", lit. "Sleeping Princess"), sung by Asami Imai (as Chihaya Kisaragi), from the iDOLM@STER series.
Then again, this is Chihaya. For those unfamiliar with iM@S, Chihaya basically has god-tier singing ability.
Contrast, say, "First Stage", sung by Azumi Asakura (as Yukiho Hagiwara), which has more repetition and less range. (This isn't anywhere close to Yukiho's best songs, in my opinion; I much prefer "Little Match Girl" and "Kosmos, Cosmos".) That said, it still exhibits some variability in line dynamics (as in, up/down, not loud/soft).
I don't think this is such a bad thing. I've never been someone who favours complexity if it's not necessary; sincerity is the most important thing to me when it comes to the actual music. It's lyrics I get tough on, and even then, I was raised on Motown - Please Mr Postman is never going to win a Pulitzer.
I can get why metal and traditional orchestral music have to be so focused on intricacy, but pop is for singing and dancing without feeling like an enormous fart monster, ultimately. Talented people making it the focus of their careers is just a lovely bonus.
I'm not sure the theme songs from series that sell about 10000 copies countrywide and have a pretty specific niche are representative of Pop Music. They could be, sure, but it seems unlikely.
^^ I wouldn't say that a song like River is especially complex, but I certainly find it more tuneful than, say, Single Ladies.
Better-choreographed, too.
In what is probably vaguely related news (forgive me, I'm tired). I don't understand why people can't seem to appreciate a good rhythm.