Formalizing Chunks
In the introduction to this chapter, we explained the importance of “chunks.” Anytime you’re thinking of music in groups of notes, rhythms, articulations, etc., you’re chunking. Chunking is relevant anytime we think about music, whether we are improvising, reading from notation, or listening.
There are many ways one could approach chunking in music, and they are all potentially useful! But in this section, we’ll define some common specific chunk types that many musicians find helpful. You may or may not find these easy to spot/hear at first, and that’s ok—as we work with the various parameters of music throughout the text, this should get easier.
One more note before we get into the chunk types: there is always more than one way to describe/think about a passage of music. Sometimes we may focus on a repeated rhythmic chunk; the next time through the music we may be drawn to a melodic pattern; then later, we may notice how harmonies are implied in the melody in standard ways. Embrace, and experiment with, different ways of understanding music.
A proposed short list of important common chunk types:
- Rhythmic cells. Whenever we notice common/familiar rhythms, we can understand them as “chunks.” We’ll focus explicitly on these most common rhythms in the chapter on rhythmic cells. In addition, you might find that a given piece of music has a rhythmic pattern, likely short (2–4 beats), that comes back over and over (often called a “rhythmic motive”). This, too, is a great opportunity to consider that a chunk whenever it returns.
- Scale fragments. For example, such a chunk might be “a stepwise run from scale degree 1/do up to scale degree 5/sol.”
- Non-chord tone formulas. If you’ve studied non-chord tones such as neighbor tones, double-neighbor tones, and suspensions, you can use your knowledge to group these as chunks. (Passing tones can be useful, too, but they also fit into the larger category of “scale fragments.”)
- Harmony-based chunks. If you’re able to identify chords, you’ll notice that there are certain ways that they tend to be reflected in a melody. This is true whether there is an accompaniment that clearly defines chords or whether the harmonies are merely implied by the melody. For example, some melodies are actually simple arpeggiations of chords. Others may require some interpretation (say, noticing non-chord tone formulas and how they relate to the implied chords). Regardless, seeing a large group of notes as tied together by a single harmony or common harmonic progression can be a very powerful way of chunking music.
This list is a good starting point, and we’ll work with identifying these, but remember that any pattern or group that you notice is valid in “chunking” music.
Activity: Chunk improvisation
Goal: Get used to thinking of musical materials in chunks. Optionally, apply thinking in chunks to your primary instrument.
Instructions:
- Verbally describe a series of chunks, based on the types listed above (if