Speakers
Stephen S. Hudson
Stephen S. Hudson is a Visiting Assistant Professor in Music at the University of Richmond. His music theory research draws on cognitive linguistics, embodied cognition, and performance studies to understand our physical experiences of music, from baroque dance rhythms to headbanging in heavy metal. Much of his writing explores metal music, including forthcoming articles “Bang Your Head: Construing Beat Through Familiar Drum Patterns in Metal Music” (Music Theory Spectrum, May 2022) and “Compound AABA and Style Distinction in Heavy Metal” (Music Theory Online, April 2021). In addition to his music theory research, Dr. Hudson is a baroque cellist.
How Much Math is in Math Rock? Riffs, Progressive Rhythm, and Embodied Music Theory
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Stephen S. Hudson
This paper explores embodied experiences of “metrical constructedness” (Macan 1997) introducing a new theoretical tool called a “motional conceptual model” to analyze the motion experienced in progressive rock’s riffs. Prog rock/metal is often associated with “mathematical” complexity of odd time signatures and polyrhythms. But this genre rhetoric leaves some mysteries, including: the use of such rhythms by non-prog bands; or Meshuggah’s claim that “there is no mathematical approach” in their music; or persistent online arguments about whether Metallica’s …And Justice For All (1988) is “prog-ish” or “prog-influenced,” when the album is mostly in 4/4 or 2/4 and contains few polyrhythms.
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Riffs are not just sequences of notes, but motions experienced by listeners and musicians (Fast 2001). My “motional conceptual models” capture how a listener might experience and conceive of a riff’s motional shape, framing that shape as a prototype category to explain how the same riff/motion can be recognized even when the notes are altered (adapted from the “conceptual models” of Zbikowski 2002). This “motional conceptual model” can show how various manipulations of a riff could lead to fragmented or re-organized perceived motion—providing a unified theoretical perspective for “ABAC Additive Metrical Process” in Dream Theater (McCandless 2013), truncations and other “slight alterations” of riffs by Meshuggah (Pieslak 2007), Meshuggah riffs that begin “in media res” (Lucas 2018), and riff fragmentations I observe in Metallica’s …And Justice For All. These changes in motion can be experienced as interruptions of the normal looping of riffs, and this sense of artificial intervention is one possible explanation for Macan’s “constructedness.” This embodied cognition theory of riff shape explains how it might be possible to write rhythmically “progressive” rock and metal rhythms by feel, with no math required.
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Keywords: Rhythm, Meter, Music Cognition, Music Theory, Embodiment