A Non Structure
After all the different musical structures we've looked at here's a break
from that - a non-structure!
Indian classical music has incredibly involved scales and 'ragas' which
correspond to modes/moods in western music - however Indian music uses no
chord changes at all.
Everything is played to a backing ' drone ' of the notes C and G [ a C5
chord ]
With such a ' 5 chord ' backing drone any of the scales that root on C could
be played [ Indian classical music has lots of them ] plus modes of other
scales.
Jimi Hendrix used this technique by setting up a ' drone ' either by the
bass-guitar playing root and fifth or using an open guitar string and then
soloing through first one scale and then another - a great deal of freedom
of choice of notes is possible because there are no chord changes to follow
- the ' tonal centre ' remains constant.
Check out the Byrds classic ' Eight Miles High ' - the intro and the guitar
solo both use this ' drone ' style backing - whereas the vocal parts of
the song have standard chord changes.
The Beatles tune ' Tomorrow Never Knows ' is another classic example of
this style. [ This probably came from the influence of Indian music on 60's
psychedelia. ]
Another , slightly different , aspect of this style is to be found in some
forms of Blues music - a lot of early blues had no chord changes - possibly
the African antecedents of the music were monochordal and relied more on
rhythm for their effect.
Check out Howlin' Wolf's ' Smokestack Lightning ' for a great song with
just one chord throughout.
' Spoonful ' by the same artist or by Cream.
' You Need Love ' by Muddy Waters which was transformed into ' Whole Lotta
Love ' by Led Zeppelin .
' East-West ' by the Butterfield Blues Band and lots of great tunes by Bo
Diddley share this minimalist approach.
Hypnotic repetition for effect can also be seen as an aspect of this monochordal
style.
Many modern Dance/Trance music styles follow this pattern.
These are all perfectly valid musical techniques and so although this isn't
a structure as such , it is a part of the overall picture.
Exercise
Tune your bottom E string down to D [ dropped D tuning ] - this makes your bottom
pair of strings a D5 chord.
Then try to set up a drone with these two strings while
playing around with D scales on the other four strings.
e.g. D Major scale - different D minor scales - D Pentatonic - D based modes
of other scales ( G major from D to D for example ) etc.