Bands that don't use melody in their music

  On 10/2/2014 at 9:12 PM, Ivan Ooze said:

Ae tracks:

 

sounds pretty to me

For me -

 

Gants Graf - The synth hit from 0:15 - 0:55 is one of the catchiest things they've done. Seriously had that stuck in my head one day

 

plyPhon - The alternating min/maj (I think) chords throughout hold the whole track together. There's a cool little menacing motive from 2 mins onwards too !

 

Lentic Catachresis - Surely you hear the melancholic chord/pad progression throughout this one ?

 

Fleure - The super dark bassline that slowly grows from being in the background to becoming the main focus of the track is just sublime :)

 

Not trying to be a contrarian dick - Just that they manage to do something with melodic elements that is flipping incredible. It's also why it's usually quite easy to detect Autechre fakes from the real deal

well i guess you could call devourment melodic then asswel

  On 10/2/2014 at 9:24 PM, Ivan Ooze said:

not really

 

are you actually serious?

Autechre fanboys are delusional!

@IOS - uh any song with a beat to it? Use your imagination.

this is probably one of the most pointless threads in here

 

rubin farr, king of pointless

 

sorry rubin farr, i didnt mean that,

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Edited October 3, 2014 by Deer

melody used to be one of the only things I would notice in music. Nowadays I'm all about riddim. Head boppin an booty shakin'. It's probably getting garder and harder to not recycle melodies.

 

The band Swans can have melody but I don't think its their main thang at all. They are Vikings of riddim.

 

Making your own scales - that's the way to go. The best way to make new tunes?

I used to get the melody toward the end of gantz graf stuck in my head all the time, catchy tune.

What a man

i still can't believe people are yapping about autechre not having melody. o p e n y o u r m i n d

 

also ivan every one of those tracks you listed had an element of melody to them.

 

#nolushpadsnecessary

  On 10/3/2014 at 2:36 AM, doublename said:

What a man

Oh wait, this isn't the Spaceape thread? Edited October 3, 2014 by doublename

  On 10/3/2014 at 2:40 AM, PhylumZunami said:

i still can't believe people are yapping about autechre not having melody. o p e n y o u r m i n d

 

also ivan every one of those tracks you listed had an element of melody to them.

 

#nolushpadsnecessary

who ever said that autechre has no melodies? IT indeed has really little melodic content most of the time.

 

I however yapp and say that indeed autechre is able to make good music without the use of much melodies, actually answering OP's question/comment.

 

A pad is not a melody okay.

  On 10/3/2014 at 2:53 AM, murphythecat8 said:

 

  On 10/3/2014 at 2:40 AM, PhylumZunami said:

i still can't believe people are yapping about autechre not having melody. o p e n y o u r m i n d

 

also ivan every one of those tracks you listed had an element of melody to them.

 

#nolushpadsnecessary

who ever said that autechre has no melodies? IT indeed has really little melodic content most of the time.

 

I however yapp and say that indeed autechre is able to make good music without the use of much melodies, actually answering OP's question/comment.

 

A pad is not a melody okay.

 

if i had a fat sack of coins for every time i've heard someone say autechre has no melody, i'd be a very satisfied pirate.

  On 10/3/2014 at 3:24 AM, PhylumZunami said:

 

  On 10/3/2014 at 2:53 AM, murphythecat8 said:

 

  On 10/3/2014 at 2:40 AM, PhylumZunami said:

i still can't believe people are yapping about autechre not having melody. o p e n y o u r m i n d

 

also ivan every one of those tracks you listed had an element of melody to them.

 

#nolushpadsnecessary

who ever said that autechre has no melodies? IT indeed has really little melodic content most of the time.

 

I however yapp and say that indeed autechre is able to make good music without the use of much melodies, actually answering OP's question/comment.

 

A pad is not a melody okay.

 

if i had a fat sack of coins for every time i've heard someone say autechre has no melody, i'd be a very satisfied pirate.

 

maybe, just maybe, if theres so much people saying that autechre has no melodies, maybe its because there's some truth in that statement?

no, its people who don't actually "get" what a melody is. they have a rough understanding of it. you can make melody out of banging pots and pans in your kitchen cupboard.

  On 10/3/2014 at 3:49 AM, PhylumZunami said:

no, its people who don't actually "get" what a melody is. they have a rough understanding of it. you can make melody out of banging pots and pans in your kitchen cupboard.

lol, I think its more you who dont get what people mean when they say that autechre has no melodies.

 

Its arguable to say that autechre has very little melodic elements.

  On 10/2/2014 at 4:06 PM, Ivan Ooze said:

 

I like to imagine you singing this to yourself while you wash the dishes in a cosy little sewer in a historic Brussels neighborhood. Jolly little tune!

 

Is he actually singing about anything or is that sort of missing the point? I can't really take death metal seriously though I like listening to Sunn O))) occasioanlly, but that's a bit more like dying in bed with lots of comfy pillows and maybe a cat or two to keep you company.

Edited October 3, 2014 by anigbrowl

If WATMM has taught me anything, it's that you can't convince someone you hear melody where they don't.

 

  On 10/2/2014 at 11:59 PM, murphythecat8 said:

Autechre fanboys are delusional!

What is this, the youtube comments section?

  On 10/3/2014 at 5:05 AM, murphythecat8 said:

 

  On 10/3/2014 at 3:49 AM, PhylumZunami said:

no, its people who don't actually "get" what a melody is. they have a rough understanding of it. you can make melody out of banging pots and pans in your kitchen cupboard.

lol, I think its more you who dont get what people mean when they say that autechre has no melodies.

 

Its arguable to say that autechre has very little melodic elements.

 

 

It's more the case that Autechre are so very good at what they do, they use sound-organising methods (such as rhythm, melody, harmony) however they please, whenever and wherever they please, to deliver their personal aesthetic approach in music. On the one hand they make tracks like Gantz Graf that place emphasis on harsh, percussive timbres; on the other they make stuff like Left Blank which has a twisted melodic line using an FM synth that makes it hard to distinguish clear pitches; then there's Pir and St Epreo, which both have insanely beautiful melodies, masked behind a wall of liquidised drums and acidic basslines; and then there's M62, a beat-driven track with at least 4 individual tracks of melodic/harmonic lines.

 

The other thing about 'noise': it looks like some posters here perceive 'noise' as the opposite to 'melody'. But Xenakis had said something along the lines of "noise is a melody too fast for our ears to analyse". I like that definition, personally.

  On 10/2/2014 at 3:52 PM, Rubin Farr said:

So as we all learned in band class, music has 3 basic elements (layman's def) Rhythm, Melody & Harmony. Melody is what almost always attracts me to an artist, it's not an easy thing to master. So I'm wondering how do some peeps here listen to bands with no melody? That's what always rubbed me about Autechre, they can do it, but don't seem interested most times. I mean just a drum machine isn't what I'd call "music", and I hear new records all the time now with just a relentless beat. Opinions, assholes?

 

If you think of music as being some kind of sonic expression or communication, or as some kind of sound for people to enjoy or respond to in some way - melody is by no means an essential part of it. Sounds can evoke emotions in lots of other ways - rhythm, ambience, samples of different kinds can all evoke emotions and memories. Sometimes music can challenge you - by frustrating your expectations, you can become familiar with what your expectations are and how they might be colouring your perception (of music, of the world..) Or sometimes, atonal music can be meditative for people - by focussing on non-affecting(?) sound, one might be put in the moment of pure experience, and be able to experience their senses at work in a more intense way (which might then affect how they experience life, or other music)

 

And sometimes melody might be more illusive (for some) - like mcbpete said about Gantz Graf it has chord stabs throughout and then the tune towards the end for me draws out all the feeling in the earlier parts of track - it becomes the key turning point for the whole composition. Sometimes, the melody might be in the drums (like Snares does all the time), or sometimes it might be something you find in a looped sample for example.

 

By the way, why do you think Autechre don't use melody most of the time? If you think of most melodies in music as being in some way representing a human voice or relating somehow to tone of voice, for me with Autechre, I often get the sense that it's more like the vocalisations of something half way between a creature and a physical space - like some kind of half sentience, or sometimes like creatures embedded in a space.

 

Maybe the thing that actually is different is the rhythm - because a regular beat can often give a melody points of meaning - a conclusive note, a change on a significant beat, and so on - these kinds of things add sense to a melody - where Autechre rhythms can morph and can be irregular - making the sense more ambiguous or changing. It's one of the things I like about how Snares uses odd time signatures - it means that the melody can avoid things like conclusive notes (you know, the note at the end that sort of implies 'the end') - though there are many other ways he bends the rules of melody.

 

Theeeeeeee Eeeeeeeeeeeeeennnnnnnndddddddddddddddddd.

 

. . .

 

Dumph-dum.

Edited October 3, 2014 by hoggy

  On 10/2/2014 at 8:37 PM, mcbpete said:

 

  On 10/2/2014 at 3:52 PM, Rubin Farr said:

That's what always rubbed me about Autechre, they can do it, but don't seem interested most times. I mean just a drum machine isn't what I'd call "music"

Think you might need to listen to more ae sir, can't actually think of a single track of theirs without a melodic element to it !

 

 

only autechre track worth mentioning that doesn't have a melody.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHMe1YE3zGQ

 

gantz graf totally has a melody. it's subtle but its there. the melody is made up of big powerful synth chords. I can sing it in my head. it gets stuck in my head sometimes.

https://amhain.bandcamp.com/album/benacah-drann-deachd

 

Dalglish's stuff sometimes strikes me as not having a melody/structure. it's like, the songs are made up of rhythms and melodies but they're all sort of mooshed together into this big swampy blur of sound.

  On 10/3/2014 at 1:00 PM, bitroast said:

only autechre track worth mentioning that doesn't have a melody.

First time I've ever heard this ! Though you could argue the incredibly downsampled pitched clonky sound (that becomes less and less downsampled) is quite a melodic motif

 

Brian (from FSOL) made a kind of similar sounding track that oddly has a very similar name (conc3) -

 

Extract-

http://www.yage.co.uk/newtesting/audiosamples/concsmall.mp3