Introduction

The purpose of this article is to describe how to objectively evaluate a piece of music from the standpoint of how well the music was written. There are many people that reject the notion that it is possible to objectively evaluate a work of art, such as music. Many people want to relegate artistic evaluation to the totally subjective - "I like it", or "I don't like it". I believe it is imperative to strive for objective, reproducible, analytic parameters for music.  If we don't have such parameters, attempting to improve the art form will be nothing better than hit or miss.

This document will eventually be accompanied by some type of audio media or images. It will be very helpful to have audio examples of some of the things that will be discussed.  Perhaps in the future this article might include images of music tablature such as the conventional lines and spaces, or perhaps some type of midi note on/note off notation. However, at this particular writing this document will attempt to stand-alone as just an article with no audio or otherwise images.

There is a music evaluator checklist at the end of this document to be used when evaluating music composition. The text of this document describes how to use that check list.

This document will not discuss issues such as performance or recording quality to any great length. While it is possible to take a song that has been brilliantly written and botch it in the performance or recording phase, it is rarely the case to salvage a poorly written song. This article will therefore deal primarily with issues of composition.

When objectively analyzing a piece of music, one should evaluate the following five parameters:

First, the topic or effect.
Second, the melody .
Third, the rhythm .
Fourth, the arrangement .
Fifth, the timbre or sound of the music.

It is not necessary to think of these parameters in this order from the standpoint of relative importance. For instance melody is the most important part of music but it was listed second. Timbre or the sound of the music was listed last but often that can be the most prominent aspect of a piece of music. This particular sequence of parameter analysis is merely for the purpose of being consistent and methodical when analyzing music.
 

The Topic or intended effect.

What is meant by topic or effect? Every piece of music should have a definitive and specific effect on the listener. This effect should be clear and well thought out. If the piece of music you are analyzing has lyrics, frequently the lyrics will determine whether or not the song is happy, sad, or is to be used for a specific type of situation.

Here are some examples of the different types of effects music can be intended to have: Music can be intended as dance music. Music can be intended to be sorrowful. Music can be intended to be thought provoking. Music can be intended to have the effect of giving joy and happiness. Music can have the effect of being soothing. Music can have the intended effect of being relaxing background ambiance. Music can have the effect of giving soldiers something to march to as they go to war. Music can be motivational. You can listen to it when you're on your exercycle! There are probably many other examples of types of effects or intent that music would have on the listener but when evaluating of music one should decide what was the intended effect and how well did the piece of music accomplish that effect.

Simply write down one word you feel best describes the intent of the piece of music as you are analyzing it. Granted, at this point, the analysis of the intended effect is somewhat subjective. The purpose of making this determination will be more clear after we have analyzed more mechanical aspects of music.  After you have determined the intent, now select a number, 1 through 5 (1 is worst, 5 best) to describe how well the composition achieves that effect.

If the piece of music has lyrics, you now have a huge and completely separate set of evaluation parameters. This document is going to focus primarily on musical and not poetic content. There are libraries full of books written about how to evaluate both prose and poetry. However, here are some general guidelines for evaluating lyrical content of music: Is the topic new and unique, or is it old, worn out, and cliché? Is the topic well focused, or does it seem to ramble? Is the topic aggressive, controversial, and timely or does it seem to be banal and just a rehashing the same old stuff we have heard time and time again? Probably the single biggest technique when evaluating poetry is the concept of using images. The old saying in poetry writing is, "show, don't tell".

In general with each of these parameters listed the more creative you can be - the better. Therefore, if the piece of music has lyrics try to evaluate the lyrics from the standpoint of being either new, unique, timely - or are they cliché, passive, and worn out.

The topic or intent might actually be best evaluated last! The only reason this parameter is listed first is to try to get the "big picture" of the music before engaging in the more technical analysis of the composition.

The melody

MELODY IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF MUSIC!  It is difficult to overemphasize the importance of the quality of the melody to a piece of music. A melody can be defined as one single tone evolving over time. Melody separates music from ambient noise and sound effects. If a sound does not have a discernible melody, the sound, is not, by definition music!  That is not to say the sound is not interesting, enjoyable, or exciting, but if the sound does not contain melody, it is not music!

Therefore, the first step in attempting to evaluate a piece of audio is to decide if the audio or sounds is music at all! If, as you are listening to the sounds, you cannot find a discernible melody (one single tone evolving overtime) then you are not listening to music. If the sound is not music, you should evaluate it using some other system.

If you have determined the sound that you are listening to has melody, and therefore is defined as music, it is time to determine what is the quality of that melody.

Again, melody can be defined as one single tone evolving overtime. Try to imagine the most basic (and probably unbelievably boring) melody. This could consist of, for instance, a single tone such as Middle C on a piano sounding uninterrupted for 10 seconds. Most people would find this sound to be extremely boring if not outright annoying. This is the sound that you typically here when you see the test pattern on your television after the station has signed off for the night. (Are there still TV stations that sign off for the night or are they all these twenty-four hour jobs? I guess that I am severely dating myself with questions of this sort.) Can this single unbroken annoying tone be classified as a melody? Unfortunately, it probably could. But this is an example of just about the worst melody that one could possibly "audiolize" or imagine. (Quick definition: When you imagine the way something will look before it exists, you visualize it. When you imagine the way something will sound before it exists, you audiolize it.)

Let's now make this "melody" a little bit more interesting. Instead of being one single unbroken tone let's now let the tone sound for one second, take the quick break sound for another second, take another quick break, etc. What you would now have would be a series of quarter notes (assuming that your tempo is 60 beats per minute) all on the same pitch all with the same duration. Does this sound like it is a heck of a lot more interesting than our first basic single unbroken tone melody? No, not really. Unfortunately, if you listen to a lot of music that is foisted on listeners the melodies are not much better than this most basic and primitive configuration.

Now, let's continue to "improve" this melody. Instead of every note sounding on the same pitch of Middle C let's have each note increase in pitch by one full tone. This progression of tones would sound something like the modern do, ra, mi, scale. (Actually, the do, ra, mi, scale has a few halftones instead of full tones in it's progression). Now once again, imagine a series of tones that are increasing in pitch all of them having the exact same duration, which is one second or quarter notes at 60 beats per minute. Is this melody starting to improve? Yes, a little bit.

Now, let's "improve" it even further. Let's imagine that we will now vary the duration of these tones. Let's have the first note sound for a quarter of a second the second tone sounds for a half of a second, the third tone sounds for a third of a second, the fourth tone sounds for a full second etc., etc., etc.. Now try to play this melody in your head. You will see that this melody is significantly more interesting than that most basic single unbroken tone melody.

Is this melody that we just created a great melody? Probably not, but this exercise points out some very important principles. The first principle is that the notes of the melody should change in pitch overtime. The notes should not ride the same tone or pitch repetitively. The second principle is that the notes of the melody should have varying durations. The melody should not consist of long strings of notes with the exact same duration.

On the other end of the extreme a imagine listening to a series of tones that are changing in pitch extremely fast, perhaps 10 to 20 times a seconds and having pitch changes that jump several octaves or more. This is what the little robot in Star Wars, R2D2, sounded like. Or imagine the sound of a dial-up modem. We might imagine that some Bird songs sound like this.

Once again the first principle of melody is that the individual notes should change in pitch. There should not be long stretches of notes with the exact same pitch. The same goes for the duration of the individual notes. In our first example we used percentages of a second for the duration of the notes but typically in lines and spaces type of notation the duration is represented by whole notes, half notes, quarter notes, 16th notes ,etc. (There are many other different types of musical notation. The old lines and spaces tablature has been around for some time and is readily recognized. However, to be more accurate as we now can be in this modern computer age, we do not have to use the constructs of quarter notes, half notes, eighth notes, etc. being played at a specific tempo. We can actually now say exactly when a particular note sounds on and exactly when that note sounds off in time. This of course is possible with midi technology.)

So once again, the most basic and important tool of the musician is the melody. The melody is defined as a single tone involving overtime. The first principle of melody is that the pitch of the notes should not stay the same. The second principle is that the duration of the individual notes should not be the same. The two extremes being represented perhaps by the single monotonous unbroken Middle C and at the other end of the extreme the sound of a dial-up modem.

To define it another way, we are working two opposite extremes against each other when attempting to create a melody. The first extreme being excessive repetition and the second extreme being no discernible pattern. There should be (and probably is) some sort of a mathematical algorithm or formulation that would express the degree of repetition as opposed to the degree of lack of pattern. Imagine that in this mathematical analysis that 0 would represent total repetition. In other words are most basic single unbroken melody tone of Middle C. The other extreme, perhaps 100, would represent a series of sounds that sound like a dial-up modem - that is with no discernible pattern. We could probably get a computer to analyze the "top 100" melodies of all-time and derive a number for each of these melodies based on the degree of repetition or randomness. This would no doubt yield some interesting results.

For example let's take (for arguments sake only) the top five melodies being first Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, second, Mozart's "A little Night music", third, "Yesterday" by the Beatles, fourth the old standard of "Happy Birthday", fifth "The Star Spangled Banner". (BTW, The melody for the SSB was originally an old English pub house drinking tune!) Let's now run each one of these melodies through this analytic protocol. Take a moment and think about these individual melodies. In each of these melodies the tones change to a degree both from the standpoint of pitch and duration. But there is not total randomness either. There are discernible patterns.

We humans naturally seek out patterns in the world around us. Whether in the habits of a herd of caribou, the cycles of weather, the prices of a commodity or stock, or whether we are finding patterns in the music and the art we enjoy. Patterns help us understand an otherwise chaotic universe. Something with out a perceivable pattern is amorphous and difficult to comprehend.

So now we have theoretically developed a mathematical number to express whether or not a melody has excessive degrees of repetition or is too random. The number would be somewhere between zero and 100. If anyone out there is particularly interested in finding this algorithm, please let me know. I guess I am just a little bit too lazy to formulate it myself and we will have to live with my thought experiment for the time being. I imagine that if we were to apply this analytic protocol to the "top 100" melodies of all times we would find that the melodies would not have scores close to zero nor would they have scores close to 100. They would all probably have some degrees of repetition but the melody would certainly change overtime. We would assume this number would be somewhere between 30 and 70. (You will note of course that a specific number between zero in 100 is not subjective in any way shape or fashion. A specific number is an extremely objective parameter.)

A few final things about melody. I believe it is the duty of the artist to push the envelope of perception a little bit with each successive generation. Assume for a moment that the current population of listeners would enjoy a melody with a score of somewhere between 30 and 70. I believe that musicians have a duty to push the envelope and to attempt to construct melodies that have less degrees of repetition and more complex patterns. Imagine sailors of ancient times. They would look out into the vastness of the ocean having no idea what lay beyond the horizon. But these ancient Mariner's somehow found the courage to go out and explore these unknown regions. We musicians (much to our discredit) have not even ventured out of sight of land yet! Most of us do not even venture into water that's up to our knees! There are an absolute infinity of melodies that are conceivable. I believe if we push the envelope a little bit with each successive generation perhaps in the future people will be able to better understand the melodic construction of complicated sounds such as bird songs, whale songs, and more complex types of melodies.

I occasionally hear people say that all melodies have already been done. Let's do just a little bit of easy mathematics to disprove this idea. Let's compose a melody that has a range of 12 tones above and 12 tones below Middle C on a piano. We can select any note in this range for our melody. This represents 24 possible note pitches. For the possible durations we are going to consider whole notes, half notes, quarter notes, eighth notes, 16th notes, and 32nd notes, with triplets for the quarter, eighth, 16th, and 32nd. This comes up to 10 possible durations of notes that we can choose from.  Let's use that basic old tempo 120 beats per minute. So we now have 24 possible pitches with 10 possible durations.  This means that our first note could be one of 240 possible notes/pitch combinations. For the second note we have another 240 possibilities to select from. So possibilities for our two note melody are now 240 times 240 which comes up to 57,600 possible combinations of a two note melody. For the third note we would have another 240 possibilities to choose from. What we are doing is called mathematically "240 factorial". In other words we multiply 240 times itself however many times we are making a note selection. According to a little quick math that I'm doing on my wristwatch calculator, by the time we have selected our third note we have 13,824,000 possible melodies! When I multiply this number times another 240 my wristwatch wigs out and says that it is something exponential. (I did the math on my computer and it turns out to be over 33 billion possibilities just four notes into our melody!) Once again a simple four note melody with a relatively constricted range yields over 33 billion possible combinations.  Extend this to an average 16 note melody and now we are looking at numbers that if not absolutely infinite, for all practical purposes might as well be. (For example, the number of possible combinations of human DNA is has been estimated to be around 10 to the 89th power. This number of combinations of human DNA is assumed to be more than all of the atoms in the observable universe.) Therefore if the possible number of combinations of human DNA is not infinite, it might as well be. The same goes for melody.

Therefore, there is no excuse to use anyone else's melody. There should be no excuse for using a bad excessively repetitive melody. Finally, multiply this (infinite) 16 note melody times the numbers of different instruments sounds that can be used such as the human voice, a trumpet, a piano, a guitar, etc. and the true infinite nature of music comes better into focus.

Rhythm

The rhythm of music has two components. The first component is that of the tempo track. The second is that of the accents.

The tempo track can be defined as all of the small (and sometimes large) tempo changes that occur during a performance. If you evaluated a score of music from 200 years ago written in the conventional lines and spaces tablature, the durations of the notes would have been specifically listed by the composer.  The composer also would have given a general idea of the overall tempo of the piece. Typically they would have mentioned something like largo, moderato, alegro, . which basically means slow, medium, fast, etc. The composer knew that during the performance of the music the musician would add their feel to the music which would in effect be a series of small tempo speed ups or slowdowns. This tempo track is really a performance level issue and will not be dealt with specifically in this document. Larger significant speed ups or slow downs (accelerando, ritardando) ARE issues of composition. (These accelerations or decellarations actually change the duration of the notes.)

A few words about tempo are in order. First, good tempo is probably not click track or metronome type tempo. A drum machine will play perfect tempo all right, probably too perfect! Imagine a drummer playing a conventional modern kit (Bass, snare, high hats etc). What happens here, for example, is to have the kick, snare, kick, snare, on the 1-2-3-4 beats with the closed high hats clicking away, all in perfect time, right on the beat. Something very subtle which took me years to figure out was what musicians were always calling the "groove". An example of a groove could be: instead of being right on the beat, the kick drum (for example) may be ever so slightly ahead of the beat and perhaps the snare would be ever so slightly behind the beat. There are infinite combinations of this push and pull, but that's generally what drummers and musicians called the groove. And yes, this typically does make music a little bit more interesting.

You can visualize this groove two different ways. First, like the way I mentioned, where you have perfect tempo but you're pushing and pulling certain notes. Second, you can assume that all the drum strikes are perfectly on the beat but there are minute tempo changes occurring around these beats which caused these strikes to happen either early or late.  Either way, you can develop the groove.

However, very few pieces of music stay at the same tempo all the way through. Typically (for example) the chorus might be one percent faster than the verse, or the bridge steadily speeds up a couple of percentage points, or the outro is slower or faster than the rest of the song.

Using this line of logic, if you need dynamic tempo in a song, you might as well use dynamic tempo change to achieve the groove also.

(By the way, multiply our infinite melody times the 180 or so "usual" tempos -40 BPM to 220 BPM- and you've now got infinity times 180. Bigger infinity!!)

A couple of words are in order about the difference between a tempo track and a drum track. Frequently we use these two terms interchangeably, but there really not the same thing. It's possible to have a tempo track, (all a tempo track is the overall tempo and this series of little tiny speed ups and slowdowns), without having anything else.  It might be a little weird to think of silence changing tempo, but technically that would be possible. (Woh, silence changing tempo!!! That sounds like a 1950's drug influenced jazz album). But now imagine we've got a dynamic tempo track, and a melody of some sort on top of this dynamic tempo track.

Some thoughts on the difference between creative percussion tracks and "done to death" ones are in order.  Again, the rhythm track has 2 components. The tempo track and the percussive sounds or accents. The "feel" of the tempo track, as discussed, is just speed ups and slow downs. It should be organic and real, but is that creative per se? Who knows?  BUT, we can certainly make statements about how creative or not the percussive sounds and placements of thoses sounds are.  First, what would be dead center of "done to death"?  How about, time sig 4/4, kick on one, snare on 2, kick on 3, snare on four, with closed high hats at 1-2-3-4 on or about tempo 120. You can play that one in your head and damn, been there done that!  But how bout something more creative? Try time sig 7/4, on the 3 "and", a car door slamming, on the 5 and 6 beats rifle shots, with dolphin clicks (progressively increasing in pitch) on the 1 through 7? All with reverse gate reverb with flanging, oh, and tempo 40? Hmm, now were getting somewhere! When using the Music Evaluator check list, primarily evaluate the creativeness of the accent sounds and accent placements on a scale of 1 to 5.

Arrangement

The arrangement can be defined as how the sum totality of the melody rhythm and timbre all evolve collectively over time. Easy examples of arrangement could include: Imagine at the beginning of a piece of music you have only one instrument playing the melody. Then in the second verse another instrument starts playing the melody also. Then you start percussive accents. For the chorus part of the song you add a second melody. You continue to build the song perhaps using techniques such as increasing volume or increasing tempo etc. The key concept when attempting to evaluate the quality of the arrangement is that the music should constantly be moving somewhere over time. A listener should not have to listen to a piece of music for more than a few seconds before they get the impression that the music is developing or changing. A good quality arrangement will also have contrast between various sections of the music. On the evaluator, give a 1-5 grade on contrast between parts, development or "progression" of the music, nailing ends and transitions etc., for a total cumulative arrangement score of 1-5.

Melody by itself has elements of arrangement in it. The arrangement of a melody should have aspects of motion, of building to a climax (or anti-climax), of tension/release. Evaluate these aspects of melody on the Evaluator using a 1-5 range. This aspect reflects the patterns of the melody.

The Timbre or Sound

The timbre of music is defined by what particular instrument is playing the sounds you are hearing. For instance, most instruments can hit Middle C. Why does a piano hitting this particular tone sound different from a trumpet, violin, or perhaps some strange synthesized sound?  The answer is a complicated series of harmonics and overtones, but the collective name for the difference of the quality of the sound when different instruments hit the exact same pitch is called the timbre.

Different sounds and timbre's can be accomplished by using different instruments and or different combinations of instruments. Imagine just using the instruments that are in a symphony orchestra. This combination of about 20 or 30 instruments is several hundred years old. Putting together different combinations of these 20 to 30 instruments yields a very large number of possible combinations.

In this modern world with all our fantastic new and unique synthesized sounds that are available to the musician, timbre is probably just as infinite as is melody. It is of no small chagrin to me that in this modern age where technology has tremendous numbers of timbre's available to the average person, most of what we're hearing nowadays sounds very similar.  My assumption is that the infinity of available timbre's has blown every body away so badly that we need to hold on to something familiar. That something, unfortunately, here at the turn of the millennium is a kind of grungy, hyper-overdubbed, distorted, guitar sound.

Once again, I believe that it is the duty of the artist/musician to push the envelope. We should use as many and as creative of combination of sounds as we possibly can.

The easiest way to evaluate the creative quality of the sound of a piece of music is to simply ask yourself, "have I ever heard this sound before?" If the answer is "yes, I think I've heard this type of sound before" (or something that sounds similar to it) then you are not dealing with an extremely creative use of timbre by the composer. If, on the other hand the sound that you are listening to is new and unique, and has new and creative use of timbre's, it gives a piece of music significantly greater creative quality.

This is not to say that the combinations of instruments that we hear are bad per se.  However, to use new combinations of instruments and sounds is more creative, and therefore adds to the quality of the creative aspect of the art form.

Now, take this music evaluator check list and critique some music.

For better music....
Dave GD
 
 
 
 

MUSIC COMPOSITION EVALUATION CHECK LIST

IN MUSIC, EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED TO EVERY THING ELSE. HOWEVER IT CAN BE OF BENEFIT TO DISSECT AND ANALYZE INDIVIDUAL ASPECTS OF IT TO GAIN A BETTER APPRECIATION OF THE ART AND TO IMPROVE THE CRAFTSMANSHIP OF THE PRACTITIONER.

TOPIC OR INTENT

TITLE (CREATIVE, NEW, SUCCINCT, GUTSY, ETC.) 1-5_______
FOR MUSIC WITH WORDS
LYRICS ARE-GUTSY, BALLSY, NEW, UNIQUE, CREATIVE, HUMOR, THOUGHT PROVOKING , HAVE STRONG IMAGERY, ETC. 1-5_______
AVERAGE OF ABOVE 2 RATINGS 1-5_______

FOR THE INTENT OF THE INSTRUMENTATION
(PICK ONE OF FOLLOWING)
BACKGROUND/AMBIENT,DANCE, MARCH, RELAXATION
MEDITATIVE, SOUNDTRACK TO VIDEO OR MOVIE, MOSH, FIGHTING,  EXERCISE, DRIVING, HORROR, HUMOR, OTHER (NAME IT!)____________________________
HOW WELL DID THE COMPOSITION ACCOMPLISH THIS EFFECT? 1-5______
TOTAL TOPIC OR INTENT RATING __________(1-5) (AVERAGE OF TITLE/LYRIC-INSTRUMENTATION SCORES)

MELODY

NEW UNIQUE__________________(1-5)
DYNAMIC RANGE NOT CONSTRICTED____________________(1-5)
NOTE PITCHES VARY_______(1-5)
NOTE DURATIONS VARY________(1-5)

ARRANGEMENT (PATTERN) ASPECTS OF MELODY

BUILD TO CLIMAX ( OR ANTI CLIMAX, --I.E., IT MOVES!)_______________________(1-5)
TENSION,RELEASE________________________(1-5)
TOTAL MELODIC SCORE __________(1-5) (AVERAGE 6 RATINGS)

RHYTHM

CREATIVE ACCENT PLACEMENTS____________________
CREATIVE ACCENT SOUNDS___________
TOTAL __________(1-5) (AVERAGE OF 2 RATINGS)

ARRANGEMENT

GOOD CONTRAST BETWEEN PARTS______________________(1-5)
BUILDS TO SOMETHING (MOVES OR PROGRESSES)__________________(1-5)
GOOD STRONG BEGINNING__________(1-5)
NAIL EVERY TRANSITION_______________________(1-5)
NAIL ENDING____________________(1-5)
TOTAL __________(1-5) (AVERAGE OF 5 ABOVE RATINGS)

TIMBRE

NEW UNIQUE______________________(1-5)
CONTRAST BETWEEN PARTS____________________(1-5)
TOTAL __________(1-5) (AVERAGE OF 2 ABOVE RATINGS)
GRAND TOTAL (CUMULATIVE SCORES OF EFFECT, MELODY, RYTHM, ARRANGEMENT, TIMBRE__________
(DON'T AVERAGE THEM, ADD THEM UP! 5 MINIMUM -25 MAXIMUM)
 
 

SONGWRITER'S TOOLBOX

USE THIS LIST AS SOME THINGS TO "THROW IN" AS NEEDED. USE AT LEAST "SOME" IN MOST SITUATIONS

ADD (DELETE) INSTRUMENTS AS MUSIC PROGRESSES
TIME SIGNATURES OTHER THAN 4/4
TEMPO OTHER THAN 120
LARGE SPEED UP SLOW DOWN (ACCLERANDO, DECELLERANDO)
LOUDER /SOFTER
CALL/RESPONSE
COUNTERPOINT (2 MELODIES PLAYING AT SAME TIME, USUALLY SHOULD BE IN DIFFERENT TONE RANGES)
THEME /VARIATION ON A THEME
TENSION RELEASE IN THE MELODY
BULID TO CLIMAX
NAIL EVERY TRANSITION/ENDING
USE VOCAL SYLLABOLY (DONT FIXATE ON USING WORDS ALL THE TIME)
FADE INS FADE OUTS
USE FULL DRAMATIC RESTS
SURPRISE ENDINGS
SOUND EFFECTS