Meyer's stated goal is to identify the sources of musical emotion and meaning, which isn't necessarily the same thing as my attempt to define perceived quality. I think we're on the same wavelength, though. I've described multiple ways in which I define quality based on the sort of points of craft and subtlety that also create emotional responses- minor chords on Justin Vernon's guitar, or the cracks in Freedy Johnston's voice. If we're not talking about the same thing, we're talking about close correlates.
Meyer's basic approach is to extrapolate a theory of musical emotion from a more general psychological theory of emotion, conflict theory. Meyer notes that divergent theoretical lines within the field still jointly accepted the basic premise of the theory, that emotions occur when a stimulus cannot be otherwise resolved physically or mentally. (At least he claimed this was a consensus at the time he wrote in the '60s; if there are any psychologists reading, please call me out if this is horribly outdated). He cites the basic example of smokers getting angry or depressed when they unable to meet satisfy their desire for the next cigarette; an opposite example could be feeling joyful when, say, the taste of food introduces a positive sensation that's not offset by a negative sensation.
In the musical context, Meyer suggests, the baseline- the equivalent to the point before the new stimulus is introduced- is musical "style": the instrumentation, rhythm, harmony and other basic musical characteristics we have learned and accepted as "normal." Those styles create "customary and expected progression[s]" of sounds that, upon being learned, lose some of their impact for the listener. At that point, it becomes the "deviations" from those styles that carry emotional impact by, in effect, serving as a new stimulus. Moreover, a given deviation can become part of a broader affective work because can "the listener will do his best to relate it to the style, to understand its meaning," and put it within the broader context of a whole musical work.
"In short," concludes Meyer, "embodied musical meaning...is a product of expectation," specifically the interplay of the expected and the unexpected. Which seems to fit with both of my criteria for identifying new music I like. My search for something "unique" within a still-familiar style has obvious parallels. And to the extent I've been able to define "good songwriting" or "craftsmanship" to date, it's also been in terms of adding something I perceive as "new" to the familiar- whether it's choices of instrumentation and arrangement that refresh so-called retro musical styles, or finding a way to do arrange something differently within a familiar pop song structure.
I'm therefore comfortable adopting the basic premises of Meyer's theory as a way to flesh out the vocabulary and the conceptual structure of what I'm already trying to do. And I think a good example that fits Meyer's particular emphases is my relationship with the Beatles and their musical followers.
Below is "Can't Buy Me Love," which to my ears, and I'm sure many others, sounds like a pretty clear and pure example of a familiar style. This is true in immediately identifiable ways: guitar-bass-drums instrumentation, verse-chorus-verse structure, guitar solo in the middle. But even though we may not process it as consciously, for me, and I suspect for many of you, the melodic and harmonic contours of the song sound familiar as well. The memorable musical components- the chord change under the chorus (first at about :06) the way the vocals change to a flatter, bluesier version of the melodic line in the second line the verse (i.e. at about 1:00), the structure of the three-part harmonies, and many more- are all, in Meyer's terms, "customary and expected progressions" for the pop-rock music we've been hearing for most of our lives.
The Beatles are legendary in large part because they had such a significant role in establishing those tropes as customary and expected- "Can't Buy Me Love" captures a style that didn't even exist 10 years before this song, but is still a big part of our shared musical experience 50 years later. And even though I was born long after they broke up, I maintain a lot of affection for them because they still played the same role in establishing foundations of my personal musical world; I listened to them a lot as a teenager, when my own musical expectations were still in the process of being formed.
Since the Beatles serve as such a core pillar of my musical taste, I'm still obviously interested in seeking out bands in the same vein. But those bands bear a different burden than the Beatles did in forming my taste. If the bulk of what they do is follow those same customary and expected progressions, the appeal is limited; it's probably just going to sound to me like something the Beatles did better (which may in part actually just mean that the Beatles, for me, did it first). It's the band that's able to consistently and effectively subvert some of those expectations that can continue to succeed.
In the world of specifically "Beatle-esque" music, I'm not the only one who thinks Sloan stands out as a band who's represented some of the best of the form for 20 years running. All the songs below are going to sound immediately familiar to you (and the album covers even look familiar, what with their penchant for the four-slightly-awkward-guys-looking-back-at-you picture.) But with Meyer's theory in mind, it becomes clear for me that Sloan's been able to build their deserved reputation in part on their ability to balance the pleasures of the familiar form with some subtle and clever subversions of the expectations that creates.
"Can't You Figure It Out," for example, shares some of the exact tropes of "Can't Buy Me Love;" listen to how the vocals repeat the melody line at :30 in bluesier fashion at :33, just like in the Beatles' verse. But the chorus sounds both memorable and fresh because they subvert the chord change the Beatles have also led you to expect. Stop the video at :41, right before the chorus hits, and see if you can envision how you think the musical aspect of the chorus is going to sound. If you've listened to enough of this sort of thing as much as I have, you may well be able to envision a harmonic chord that "resolves" the preceding chord progression in the way the Beatles have led you to expect. It's not what Sloan does, though- they move to a sharper, more dissonant chord that makes an impact in part because it manages to sound "correct" without being the answer we're (perhaps subconsciously) being led to expect.
"Coax Me" follows another familiar trope- perhaps less-used by the Beatles than fellow '60s-pop travelers like, say, the Byrds- of basing the song in large part on a winding, picked single-note guitar melody. Songs like that tend to be described as "jangly," in part because they tend to use light arrangements and pretty-sounding harmonies, as in "Mr. Tambourine Man":
In this case, Sloan subverts the expectations for such "jangly" songs by putting the melody in a particularly sad-sounding minor key. The rest of the arrangement is still very much in the Byrds' vein, but the harmonic choice achieves an air of melancholy that adds something "new" to the familiar form.
Sloan is also just as likely to subvert expectations through their song structures as their harmonic choices. Most Beatles songs, certainly from their "early" period up to 1966, follow a pretty tight verse-chorus-verse structure, with little variation. That repetitious structure can be incredibly effective for burrowing songs into the pleasure centers of your brain, especially when the melodies themselves are so strong, but it creates its own set of expectations- when the second verse ends, you know the second chorus is coming. "Another Way I Could Do It" has the sort of melody I'd probably still enjoy having repeated- but instead, Sloan cycles through numerous variations that find new, enjoyable angles on the underlying melody. After establishing the melody in the first minute, they repeat only the second half of the melodic phrase at 1:00; introduce a new guitar melody at 1:12; transition into an ascending bridge at 1:28; and repeat only the first half of the original verse phrase at 2:00 in order to transition to a new variation on the ascending bridge at 2:15; then they have a slow outro starting at 2:47 that inverts the arrangement that comes before by vocally harmonizing what used to be the guitar melody. That's five good spins on a strong melodic idea without a single full repetition, and that winding structure can still pleasurably subvert my structural expectations even after multiple listens.
Even much simpler structural variations can have impact. "Losing California" modulates the key upward on the final chorus, which I've already complained about as an overused trope. But while the standard pop songs does this by simply doing a chorus and then repeating it with the modulation, Sloan structures it in a different and clever way. After two verses and choruses, they plant the seed for the modulation through a short bridge at 1:17, which modulates upwards at 1:30 for just a second before dropping back to the original key. Then they follow through on the modulation at 2:20 by interposing the bridge between the final verse and the chorus- then following through on the modulation. It doesn't make the trope any less common- but I still find it quite enjoyable in this particular context because the song successfully subverts my expectations for when and how it's going to happen.
Now, I didn't even consciously notice most of these choices over a decade of listening to the band. I've just considered them good songwriters, good craftsmen, examples of Beatles-esque music still done well. But Meyer's vocabulary, integrated into my own more self-conscious criteria I've laid out in previous posts, provides a pretty persuasive way for me to better articulate what those general phrases mean.
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