Tunes

Geir...flashback...no...stop...gack.

Um, anyhow. I don't exactly have an answer for this for multiple reasons.

1) I don't think melody is any more important than any other element. They are all equal.

2) It really does depend on the song and genre. What makes an ace melody for the chorus of a rap song might not be a great melody when done by Pulp, for example. Although now that I think of it, I really think Jarvis needs to beg Jay-Z to guest with him on a re-do of I Just Wanna Love U (Give It 2 Me).

So. Melody is important because it's there. That's the best I can do. A bad melody is bad because it doesn't fit the flow of the lyrics, the style of the singer, the sound of the instruments...various reasons. It really has to do with the overall structure of the song itself, from the performer on down, to whether or not a melody is going to sound good. A "good melody" on paper might be a crap melody in practice because the wrong act is doing it. It's like lyrics, in a way, though lyrics are a bit more cut and dry as to whether they are crap or not in terms of pure poetry, but a really good lyric on paper might just be completely awkward and wrong given to a singer who can't put the proper feel and rhythm and cadence to it.

I pretty much agree with Ally here. You might as well ask why Aretha Franklin sounds great singing "Respect" and "Think", but is a screaming nightmare when she tackles Puccini.

Certain tunes fit certain ways of singing. Certain ways of singing fit certain tunes. An important aspect of melody is its internal logic: does it make harmonic sense? What chord progression (if any) is the musician trying to evoke with the melody? Is it suited to the lyrics being sung? Is it suited to the voice singing it? Does the person have the vocal training to pull it off? Does the person have too much vocal training to pull it off? Is the melody even in the vocal line of the song?

I'm gonna stop now before I wade out into theoretical waters that I shouldn't really be treading in.

Totally tangential, but thank god, I thought I was the only one who thought Aretha doing opera was a great big fat no-no.

hmmm - since you are talking 'pop' specifically, i would say a hook or something catchy as to remember the tune by is a main importance. No matter whether its musicologists listening to a tune or not, the average pop song can be determined a 'good tune' if it has a catchy element that can be reasonably easily defined. This 'hook' could be a vocal line, song title sung, guitar riff/drum loop or one phrase that just sticks in your mind. Now if you can get someone to remember your song, no matter how bad it is, through having a strong hook, then i think you have a better song overall rather than having an amazing melody, as some people may not be able to easily distinguish a real good melody as easily as a hook. But then i have to ask whether or not this makes a better 'song'... who knows everyones opinions are different in this damn thing we can a music industry, some of us call it the world, so i say whatever tickles your fancy then so be it.

Of course melody is more important in some genres than others. That's one reason why I (as someone who finds melody important) likes some genres more than others.

To say that melody shouldn't be taken out of context, can't be considered separately from performance, etc, sounds cogent. But isn't that what we do with all kinds of aspects of pop (not least on this forum)? 'Analysis' - dissection, breaking things down to their putative constituent parts - perhaps always loses us something ('the feel of the thing', 'the big picture' - etc) on the phenomenological swings; but may gain us something on the structural roundabouts.

I still feel that we lack a non-musicological vocabulary to discuss this incredibly central topic: as this thread has perhaps inadvertantly demonstrated.

What about the entire range of emotional vocabulary that we apply to music?

I find books on modern composers interesting on this point, as post-serialism, everything needs to be analyzed anew and the old forms cannot explain what is happening. In the conscious search for a new musical vocabulary, people turned to fancy-schmancy statistical analysis. And what do we learn? That, as always, there are not discrete componants, but powerful relational tools that can be brought to bear. Major key? Minor key? Inflected? Ascending? Circular? Octave intervals? Pitch range? Comparative -- does it sound celtic derived, nursery-rhymelike, classical? Instrumental -- is this something which sounds composed on a piano? A guitar? To be played with power chords? etc.

What 'range of emotional vocabulary that we apply to music'? Tell me more.

I don't mean anything fancy. Words, you know, that we use to describe emotions. We also use them to describe music. This melody is happy. Sad. Wistful. Angry. Forboding. Ecstatic. Cheerful. Grim. Bleak. etc. etc. You are familiar with some of these, right?

Oh, only 'wistful'.