The Popular Music Analysis and Semiotics: Applications and Perspectives

Jacopo Conti

doi:10.21697/zk.2020.7.09

Published: 2020-12-31

No. 7 (2020)

Popular Music Analysis and Semiotics: Applications and Perspectives

Jacopo Conti

Cultural Studies Appendix

Section: Artykuły

https://doi.org/10.21697/zk.2020.7.09

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to introduce just a few of the characteristics of popular music analysis that can assist further development of the discipline even for non-musicologists. After an introduction on why music analysis and popular music analysis – considering music as ‘humanly organized sound’ – are not popular in popular music studies and why contemporary popular music scholars tend to concentrate more on paramusical and extramusical issues, this presentation will concentrate on: song structures – or, as Philip Tagg calls it, the diataxis – comparing the structures most used by the Beatles; the sound of voices; the sound-box and the aural staging; the musical synecdoche. The final aim of this paper is to state the importance of music in music studies: paramusical and extramusical aspects are essential to understand how music works and communicates, but music is important as well.

Keywords:

music analysis, popular music, music semiotics, song analysis, sound-box

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Conti, J. (2020). Popular Music Analysis and Semiotics: Applications and Perspectives. Cultural Studies Appendix, (7), 211–224. https://doi.org/10.21697/zk.2020.7.09

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