Jonathan Kramer - PoMo music theory

 

A very interesting aspect of postmodern music theory. This will help you with your next essay.

Media Theorist Jonathan Kramer says "the idea that postmodernism is less a surface style or historical period than an attitude. Kramer goes on to say 16 "characteristics of postmodern music, by which I mean music that is understood in a postmodern manner, or that calls forth postmodern listening strategies, or that provides postmodern listening experiences, or that exhibits postmodern compositional practices."
According to Kramer (Kramer 2002, 16–17), postmodern music":

1. is not simply a repudiation of modernism or its continuation, but has aspects of both a break and an extension
2. is, on some level and in some way, ironic (e.g. an animal rights person, being trampled by animals)
3. does not respect boundaries between sonorities and procedures of the past and of the present
4. challenges barriers between 'high' and 'low' styles (low = x factor; high = written own songs)
5. shows disdain for the often unquestioned value of structural unity
6. questions the mutual exclusivity of elitist and populist values (once everyone's heard of it... it's no longer 'cool')
7. avoids totalizing forms (e.g., does not want entire pieces to be tonal or serial or cast in a prescribed formal mold) (all the same = tdcc, ed sheeran, etc. all different = kasabian...)
8. considers music not as autonomous but as relevant to cultural, social, and political contexts (statements e.g. Rage Against the Machine, against X Factor)
9. includes quotations of or references to music of many traditions and cultures (intertextuality: Mumford and Sons quoted Shakespeare)
10. considers technology not only as a way to preserve and transmit music but also as deeply implicated in the production and essence of music (e.g. T-pain is autotuned)
11. embraces contradictions (e.g. Madonna, Nicki Minaj, and M.I.A)
12. distrusts binary oppositions
13. includes fragmentations and discontinuities (pastiche / homage)
14. encompasses pluralism and eclecticism (e.g. Blur, Vampire Weekend)
15. presents multiple meanings and multiple temporalities (e.g. The Greatest Man Who Ever Lived)
16. locates meaning and even structure in listeners, more than in scores, performances, or composers

Jonathan Donald Kramer (December 7, 1942, Hartford, Connecticut – June 3, 2004, New York City), was a U.S. composer and music theorist.

Active as a music theorist, Kramer published primarily on theories of musical time and postmodernism. At the time of his death he had just completed a book on postmodern music and a cello composition for the American Holocaust Museum.

Flow chart

From Miss Abrahamson's blog

Question

"How have you combined the 'same but different' (N.Lacy 1999) and the 'familiar and unexpected' (G.Burton 2000) in your final piece?" (A2)

'same but different' - i.e. real media conventions and your ideas/creativity.

150 words.

In our final music video we took ideas from a few real media conventions, such as 'Vampire Weekend - A-punk' and 'The Maccabees - First Love'. We took Vampire Weekend's ending of their video and created our own version of it for our ending. In the original all the band members run off of the set on a particular beat, in our version the band members slowly leave the set and leave one band member remaining, playing the last few notes on the guitar. This is an effective ending for our choice of song as the pace slows down towards the end, so it would look odd if the band members ran out of the shot - whereas the Vampire Weekend ending is still fast paced so it suits the beat of the song for the band members to run.
We also took inspiration from The Maccabees - First Love video as they use many random objects to represent how strange or random a 'first love' could be. We changed the idea of this and the objects we used are mostly relevant to the settings they are in: for example we used inflatables in the pool; mugs in the garden with hot chocolate; although there was one random use of a random object, when one of the band members wears a colander on her head whilst skateboarding.
These two examples show how we have taken existing media and developed it to make it different. However because we chose to use the theme of disjuncture, there were no real familiar traits to our video and the majority of the video is unexpected.

Using conventions from real media texts:

Magazine:

Front cover – masthead at top of magazine page; colours used; fonts; sizes of fonts; cover image – midshot;

Contents page – columns; colour scheme; font

Double page spread – image layout; article style

Other – NME; Kerrang!; Q; The Rolling Stone

General (i.e. all pages) –

Music Video:

Intertextuality – Vampire Weekend (ending of A-punk); The Maccabees (random objects); Innocent Smoothies (stop motion)

Digipak/Poster

Cover/Poster – The Automatic (This is a Fix album cover)

Main theme – black object from The Automatic’s album, the black object used on each photo panel

Back panel – white on black writing: easily legible

1980's

Music:

The 1980's, from what I can see, is the beginning of the transition from Rock style music to Pop music. A lot of the music still features traditional instruments such as the guitar, like 'Joe Esposito - You're the Best Around'. However 'Phil Oakley - Together in Electric Dreams' has a more techno edge.






Film/TV:

As for film, the 1980s style was preppy and often school-based; such as, 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off' and the famous TV series 'Saved By The Bell'.

- Ferris Bueller's Day Off -

- Saved By The Bell -

- Miami Vice -

Fashion:

Fashion in the 1980's also starts to make a transition through to 90's grunge, as stonewashed denim became extremely popular, but also the 1970's fluorescent craze still existed during the 80s.

- Saved By The Bell -

What to include in your exam:

                 

	Music Magazine (Main task & Preliminary task of college mag)	Music Video and Ancillary Tasks
Digital Technology	Online magazines Microsoft Word Adobe Photoshop Animoto Prezi Blogger Camera	Cameras Macbook Premiere Pro iDVD and iMovie Blogger
Creativity	Existing magazines Online fonts Photography images Adobe Photoshop – editing techniques	YouTube videos Existing bands Band styling Taking photos of the band
Research and Planning	Existing magazines/products Analysing products	YouTube videos Existing bands Existing bands websites e.g. Twitter Analysing bands/music videos
Post-production	Adobe Photoshop	Adobe Premiere Pro Adobe Photoshop iDVD
Using conventions from real media texts	Existing music magazines: NME, Kerrang!, Q, Rolling Stone,	Music videos Music Channels Band styling – fashion magazines/websites

Post-Mod Exam Question

Discuss why some people are not convinced by the idea of postmodern media.

Postmodernism was created in response to disagreements with the ideas of modernism. Jean-Francois Lyotard created the theory of ‘grand narratives’, and ‘little narratives’. He suggests that modernism is very much in the past as it revolves around three main themes: religion, politics, and science. In the present day Lyotard argues that people take the features that they like from each of the themes and combine them to create their own beliefs; this can happen in fashion, as well as media.

Modernism is built around things such as: romanticism, hierarchy, finished product, paradigm, and genital. This contrasts with the opposite features of postmodernism: paraphysics, anarchy, process of product, syntagm, and polymorphous. An example of postmodernism being more about the ‘process of the product’ than the ‘finished product’ is Dan Black’s music video, ‘Symphonies’, which is created by ‘addition, deletion, substitution, and transposition’ – Levi Strauss. ‘Symphonies’ is a remix of various songs/videos all combined together: there are imitations of ‘Thunderbirds’, ‘King Kong’, and ‘Goldfinger’. These three original medias are among many others used in Dan Black’s music video, as well as the fact the chosen medias are very famous. Black even used the backing track from Rihanna’s number one single, ‘Umbrella’, even though the backing track for the song can be found on Garage Band on Mac computers, although the tempo and settings are altered slightly.

Postmodernists argue that everything is a remix of something already created, nothing is original, and this expands into two types of postmodernism: pastiche, and homage.
A pastiche is an imitation or a copy of something that has previously been made without giving credit to the original creators; for example this was used in the TV series, ‘Family Guy,’ when they did an imitation of the original ‘Star Wars’ films. Homage is a remix of something originally created, but the end product of the homage pays respect to the original version. An example of homage is cover albums by musicians, Fleetwood Mac, for instance.

Modernists would particularly not be convinced by the idea of postmodernism as it rejects all of their views. For example modernists would design everything they product before they produce it; whereas postmodernists take more chances and produce things based on unplanned production. ‘Hobo with a Shotgun’ is a postmodernist film, this starts because it is a film created from a fake trailer; someone created a trailer for an imaginary film and then directed by Jason Eisener. Hobo with a Shotgun does not have a productive storyline like many modernist films, it is a film made for gore’s sake; some argue that it is ‘too good at being rubbish’ so it becomes a real/modernist film, but as it was based on a fake trailer it is solely postmodern.

Postmodernists rely on the audience knowing everything about everything ever created, however at the same time they want everyone to know nothing so that everything is new; but if everyone did know everything, then everyone would know nothing, because everyone would know the same.

Postmodernism can play a part in all forms of media, as previously mentioned, Dan Black’s music video; but also postmodernism happens a lot in films. I previously talked about ‘Hobo with a Shotgun’, but there are other postmodern films as well that are not just based on a fake trailer. The ‘Scream’ films are postmodern films, there are multiple references to ‘if this were a scary movie’ and ‘how to survive a scary movie’ throughout the films, this tries to convince the audience that it is ‘real life’. In the very first ‘Scream’ movie, they introduce the series of films as being very gory and predictable. The film also contradicts itself as all the way through, the characters discuss the rules of surviving a horror movie, such as ‘never say “be right back” because you won’t come back’, and ‘don’t have sex because you will die’. The characters go against all of the ‘rules’ but most survive up until the ‘Scream’ murderer is revealed at the end of the film. 

(Still in progress)

Digital Technology - Example Exam Question

"Digital technology turns media consumers into media producers".
In your own experience, how has your creativity delevoped using digital technology to complete your coursework productions?

Software and digital technology has helped my progress in Media Studies from AS through to A2 as I have had the ability to improve my Adobe Photoshop skills, but also I have been introduced to new software on Mac computers, such as Premiere Pro, iMovie and iDVD. I feel that it is not digital technology alone that has improved my skills, I have also been determined to improve my knowledge and skills myself.

The Adobe programme, Premiere Pro, helped us completely with our A2 group music video; if we did not have Premiere Pro we would have struggled a lot with the editing section of the coursework. There were alternative programmes available on school Windows computers but as we had access to Premiere Pro, we took advantage of using Harry's MacBook Pro and completed our project using Adobe Premiere Pro.

As we had access to YouTube and the internet in general, we were able to research multiple existing products to take ideas to reproduce. We had to reproduce the scenes or ideas that we liked in simpler ways than the existing video or idea. We had two HD video cameras of the same brand and similar models, this was purely coinsidental but was helpful for the picture of our video to look the same quality throughout. We also had access to floodlights, an empty barn (owned by my Dad, not an abandoned barn), and many locations at Harry's house such as the swimming pool.

Technological hardware that made our video more successful are products such as, MacBook Pro; Windows computers at school; laptops at home; printers and scanners; and HD video cameras as well as an SLR Canon camera. Without all of these products we would have stuggled a lot more with our video; I feel that we were quite a lucky group in the equipment that we had available to use. If we were not able to use our own individual products, we would have had to make do with school hired-out video cameras and school Windows computers with Windows Movie Maker as the only possible video editing software; there are are a small number of Mac computers available at school with iMovie on them.

Hobo With A Shotgun

'Hobo with a Shotgun is a massive waste of time'
- it is gore for gores sake
- it is 'too good at being rubbish', in a sense the film becomes a modernism film; but because the film was originally based on a fake trailer for a fake film, it remains post-modern.


For post-modernism to be successful, it relies on everyone to know nothing about previous films; however they also rely on everyone to know everything so that the intertextual reference make sense. But when everyone knows everything... everyone potentially knows nothing, because everyone knows the same.


"The omnipresence of media output helps explain post-modernists' merging of all discourse into an undifferentiated whole."

Difference between Modernism and Post-Modernism

Modernism	Post-Modernism
Romanticism/symbolism	Paraphysics/Dadaism
Purpose	Play… Desert Bus, straw models
Design	Chance… CD cover (Mrs Abrahamson)
Hierarchy	Anarchy… Hobo with a Shotgun
Matery, logos	Exhaustion, silence… Desert Bus
Art object, finished	Process of art… Dan Black Symphonies
Word	Performance… ‘Do the daft’
Distance	Participation… Wii
Creation, totalization	Deconstruction… everything
Synthesis	Antithesis… ‘Where Is My Mind’
Presence	Absence… Desert Bus
Centering	Dispersal… Scott Pilgrim, Daft Punk
Genre, boundary	Text, intertext… intertexual reference
Semantics	Rhetoric… questions
Paradigm	Syntagm
Narrative	Anti-narrative
Grande histoire	Petite histoire
Genital, phallic	Polymorphous… Lady Gaga