This week's episode is the second of a two part series in which Tyler Howie and Matthew Chiu have a conversation about untangling and complicating generic boundaries in Post Millennial Punk.

This episode was produced by David Thurmaier, with additional technical assistance provided by Kaitlyn Norman.

SMT-Pod Theme music by Zhangcheng Lu; Closing music "hnna" by David Voss. For supplementary materials on this episode and more information on our authors and composers, check out our website: https://smt-pod.org/episodes/season01/.

[SMT-Pod Theme Music playing]

Welcome to SMT Pod, the premiere audio publication for the Society for Music Theory. This episode is a continuation of Tyler Howie and Matt Chiu's two-part podcast entitled "Analytical Frameworks for Post-Millenial Punk. To hear the first part, visit the episode page of our website SMT-pod.org.

Hi again, I’m Matt.

And I’m Howie.

This is the second of two talks on post-millennial punk—entitled “We still [speak/sing/yell] these songs well.” Even though you won’t need the first talk to understand this one, the context and history historical is useful and all of the theoretical material discussed here, is contextualized by the history, so we recommend listening to that one first.

Like in the first episode, we want to give a content warning—many of the songs we play here will swear, and may include triggering, explicit content.

So with that, let’s kick things off with an undeniably punk icon "We are never getting back together" by Taylor Swift, and then a pop-punk cover by YouTuber Alex Melton

[Taylor Swift, "We are never getting back together" playing]

[Alex Melton, "We are never getting back together" Punk cover playing]

This is one of the coolest things about genre-converting covers: there’s so much overlap between the examples, yet the changes musical parameters are the things that are hugely genre signaling to a listener. So, Howie, what sounds different between the recordings?

First things first, the drums man. The like tom-groove in the beginning. Yeah. The pop-punk breakdown drums. And then, definitely, you get the palm muted, distorted power chords in the guitar. That's a big one for me. And I know that you would like for me to talk about the voice. The vocals here definitely a lot different, right, especially in the chorus, we get a little bit of um, not vocal fry, but a harshness in the vocals that we also don't get in Taylor's version.

I was also going to ask, would you say Alex Melton is trying to emulate a particular punk band or style?

I would probably call it generic. With no negative valence attached to that term there. Generic meaning it sounds of the genre.

I’m going to play another clip from a recent, 2021 release from the Philadelphia indie-punk band by Carly Cosgrove—the song is called “Munk.”

[Carly Cogrove "Munk" playing]

So what's different about the vocal delivery here as opposed to Alex Melton or Taylor Swift's version of "We are never getting back together"?

I think an important thing going on in the cover, for it to work as a cover, especially since you said it's on YouTube, right? Yeah? Okay, so this isn't just for people who like whatever band, and they are going to listen to their cover of Taylor Swift. This is supposed to be like, "hey everybody, check out my cover of Taylor" and I think that might be a reason why the lyrics are a bit more easy to understand in the cover, right? Maybe less so than in Taylor's original version, right? Which is more pop-y. The the pop-punk cover is adding in that sort of yelling sort of thing without losing the lyrics, so that you can still tell what's going on lyrically. And this time, I'm gonna be real, first time hearing this song. I do love Carly Cosgrove, though. First time hearing this song, I don't know what those words are at all. So I think that's one of the biggest differences.

This is that time of the internet. I had to google the words when I was listening to this song. It's all sort of different embodied and physical sensation, to not understand the words that someone is singing or yelling. So this project is really probing the affect of vocal delivery and who it's used in this post-punk and indie styles. But first, we should discuss the concept of vocal delivery in other literature to situate it within the music theory community.

So vocal delivery is this nebulous region of how singers—and I probably shouldn’t say just singers—how vocalists, quote-unquote “sing.” All the parameters that contribute to a vocalists singing, or speaking, or whatever, is vocal delivery. So, as we heard in the hook, we know that vocalists alter the timbre of their voices to produce different affects, sometimes singers convey discrete pitches more or less, and, in another paper with Andrew Blake presented at SMT, we quantitatively showed that post-punk singers have looser rhythms than pop-punk ones. And even though genre is infinitely more complicated than a single parameter, as we talked about in the first of these sessions, vocal delivery situates artists amongst other bands, and, in that way, signal genre, at least partially.

This is echoed in recent history: at the end of his dissertation Serge Lacasse, who set the stage for the study of vocal delivery—or vocal staging, as he calls it—he says, quote: “To consider vocal … staging from the perspective of stylistic analysis would therefore certainly help understand the intricate set of relationships maintained by a given style and its audience” end quote.

Maybe it’s because of this curious nebulousness, but there’s been a lot of music theory research on vocal production and delivery in the last few years or so. Some of the recent talks I’ve seen on the topic discuss vocal delivery conveys a singer’s egos, in the work of Hanisha Kulothparan; acoustic properties of vocal sounds in Tanya Tagaq’s music by Kristi Hardman; vowel delivery and prosodic dissonance by Eron F.S.; and vocal delivery in Florence and the Machine by Madison Stephenson.

I listen to a lot of punk, and I owe it to all these ongoing papers to make me think critically about what the role of the voice is and how I'm interpreting it in these works.

So after doing some research, I based my work here primarily on three sources: “A System for Describing Vocal Timbre in Popular Song” by Kate Heidemann, “Vocal Pitch in Rap Flow” by Robert Komaniecki, and A Blaze of Light in Every Word by Victoria Malawey.

In the first article, Kate Heidemann studies embodiment and vocal delivery. The article conceptualizes vocal production in terms of the body and vocal tract. For a few examples, Kate connects the position of the vocal tract and sympathetic vibration to what we often describe as a nasal production—so, like we heard in Alex Melton’s cover for pop punk. We could also say, when describe a singing delivery as breathy, that it could be attributed to vocal folds not being entirely closed, as if extra air was leaking through.

And we could also describe the nassalyness perhaps, like that of Alex Melton, as caused from sympathetic resonance singing kind of singing into the nose. So Kate Heidemann's approach gives a reflective, mimetic physicality to the sounds we’re hearing.

Okay, so, I’m going to play an excerpt, and I want us to think about our singing apparatuses while listening, and afterward I’m going to ask us to describe the physical sensation of singing the example. This is Radiator Hospital, "181935."

[“Radiator Hospital” playing]

Wow, I love Radiator Hospital. They were, not to plug any sort of evil streaming service that just told me all the things I've listened to all year long. But Radiator Hospital, they were up there as number three. Love it, love it.

Yea, so can you describe your sensation or like, what are you thinking physically in terms of how the singer is delivering that.

It feels sleepy, you know? Lazy. Like, alright, I am going to put just as much effort as I need to, to deliver these words on some sort of pitch and that is it. No more than that. Right?

Yea, I totally agree. And in terms of physical apparatuses we might describe that as the vocal folds are not all the way closed or open. There's not a lot of air support going on during that time. So to deliver the pitch, that kind of gives it a sense of sleepy or breathiness in addition

Oh. Cool. Interesting

Ok so onto the second article. Robert Komaniecki’s article approaches pitch techniques in vocal delivery. As opposed to the kind-of bottom up approach Kate takes in the initial article, Robert’s is top down: by that I mean, whereas Kate is examining the vocal tract and the result of different positioning of the vocal tract, Robert uses a spectrum from speech-like delivery to singing delivery and discusses how examples use various techniques that fit within that spectrum. I think the methodology is incredibly generalizable—it captures vocal delivery between speech and singing and can describe various musical styles as well. But one thing that sticks out to me is how certain vocal delivery styles in punk don’t fit at times. So let's listen to this example. This is " 5:45 AM" by Macseal.

[Macseal playing]

Howie, thoughts about the vocal delivery in the example?

Boy, ah, I love the voice crack at the beginning, right up front. Um it's classic and I will say if you enjoy this kind of music, you have not truly lived until you have yelled "5:45 AM" with a whole crowd at Macseal.

Oh yea. I mean, I'll talk about community and the participation later. But that's exactly what I'm trying to get at. The yellingness and the kind of non-pitched, yet not still singing directly is something I miss from the spectrum. So in this way, I sort of want to expand the heuristic. Specifically, I want to expand the spectrum to include yelling.

In Malawey’s book, they talk about vocal delivery in multiple terms: like Heidemann, they use Laryngal Mechanisms, but, like Komaniecki, they also use terms of quality, using words like “throatiness,” “roughness,” and “breathy.” Malawey’s book is a pretty broad overview of vocal delivery for pop music, and they also include a small section on yelling. So in this episode of the podcast, I want to use these vocal delivery techniques and build a heuristic specific for indie punk and emo music.

In discussing the following examples, I want to discuss things within a tripartite structure between spoken, sung, and yelled and then discuss how they’re used formally, and maybe even why they might be used in these punk songs.

So let's talk about these 3 categories.

First is singing–and by singing, I mean singing in a more traditional sense. To sing, the vocalist has air support, pitch stability, and usually prolongs vowels on the words. We know what singing is, but let’s hear an example in punk music.

This is Pet Symmetry "Please Don’t Tell My Father That I Used His 1996 Honda Accord to Destroy The Town Of Willow Grove, Pennsylvania In 2002."

[Pet Symmetry playing]

In a lot of ways, it is very similar to our traditional singing style. There are still differences being like the way that vowels and consonances are still distributed over the word. So “fine” is still distributed. It's not all on the vowel. It shifts the vowel from “fiiiiine” slowly over the word as opposed to what I think many of the classical singers are taught to do which to hold out a vowel until the very end. Or make that shift sort of jarring.

And that leads us right into the second corner of the triptych, which is the vocal delivery which is more speech like—I’ve been calling this orationality, as in, it’s delivered in a more speech-like or spoken manner. In punk, this is usually accompanied with a rougher timbre, this is less supported, and the durations of the words usually parallel spoken words. And by that last part, I mean, when many singers are taught to sing “I’m,” they usually try to avoid the dipthong by emphasizing one of the vowels. So rather than “Ay – yum,” singers often sing “ayyyyyy-um” and then tag that on to the very end of the word.

So let's hear an example of orationality used in an example by the band Dry Cleaning singing the “Magic of Meghan.”

[Dry Cleaning playing]

We might describe the band earlier Radiator Hospital as using a lot of orationality in some of their vocal delivery. So embodying any one of these orationality kind of imbues the music with a speech-like quality. For example, blink-182’s Tom Delonge usually splits the dipthong as opposed to stressing a single vowel.

So in this next example, even though Tom is singing in the following example, the fact that he splits the dipthong gives it an element of orationality. This is “I Miss You” by Blink-182

[Blink 182 playing]

Yeah, that example, [sings] "where are yaou?"

[sings] "Oi'm seew swahrry"

Laughs, yeah exactly. So I also chatted to a singer friend about this, and he said that this is colloquially known as “chewing your words.” So sometimes Broadway singers might “yaoaoao”- it kind of sounds like you're chewing your words, splitting the dipthong. Anyway.

In the last vocal delivery technique discussed here is yelling. It doesn’t have the nice buzz-wordy ring like orationality… and it’s also not a noun either. So, I mean, I guess we could call it yellitude, but I think that’s academia speaking. Anyway, it has a rough timbre, and is projected—in a way, it’s giving speaking more projection and adding an even rougher timbre. To project more, yelling usually stresses vowels as opposed to the fluid mix of orational delivery.

And, a reminder that everything here is located on a spectrum and these categories bleed into one another: using a supported delivery with sustained values might contribute to both orationality and yelling. Let’s listen to an example: this is "Welcome Mats" by Just Friends.

[Just Friends playing]

Since these techniques are situated at different sides of a vocal spectrum, changing vocal technique adds contrast, and contrast is really useful for helping listeners distinguish different parts of the form. Recently, Drew Nobile presented an SMT paper on vocal delivery in Alannis Morissette where he did just this and discussed the formal implications of vocal delivery in Morissette’s music. A music theorist might even say that vocal delivery techniques demarcate and have certain formal functions in a way... But I do want to make a distinction, like Kate Heidemann, I really don’t want to lose a sense of embodiment; this music is all about the listener and the affect it has on them at a show, and in a multivalent kind of way, I’m mostly interested in how these techniques interact with form. So, for a small semantic shift, I want to call these participatory functions as opposed to formal functions—that is, how do these techniques cue the listener to hear and participate with the music.

I’ll be discussing four particular participatory functions and how they interact with form: I’m calling them the “yell drop”; “story building”; “company”; and “winding down”. A lot of bands have the participatory functions in this order, so I’ll go in order.

First up is the “yell drop.” In punk and emo, yelling often encourages two listener actions: yelling along with it or going wild with the music. Going wild might be dancing, or moshing, or just… flailing your limbs. So, for example, “5:45 AM,” the yelling is a participatory function to get people amped or involved—yelling is visceral and high energy and it sets the tone of the rest of the song. Let’s listen to “5:45 AM.”

[“5:45 AM” playing]

It’s very nice because formally, right, they don’t kick it off right with yelling “5:45 AM.” They kick it off with “I hate that I still care,” to get you with, like, “Oh, that’s still the song that we are hearing?” Alright, next I get to yell “5:45 AM”

And I also heard some “twinkly” things in the beginning.

Hmm, yeah. I think we heard a bit of that in both the songs we just listened to.

Oh weird.

Perhaps a schema of some sort

How odd? Unexpected.

With this, I do have a question. If it’s a yell drop, when I think drop, like bass drop, I think of something that is later in the song that you, like, build toward. And these ones, we’re calling them yell drops, in the beginning. Do you have anything to say about that sort of relationship?

Yeah, I think it’s really interesting. It really works as some sort of cue. And I was going to get to this later on but I think the yell at the beginning is a sort of signifier for a listener. If you hear a yell at the beginning it kind of gives the energy for the rest of the song that you’re going to listen to. So, like, in other words, it’s kind of akin to a drop in EDM. And there’s very much a connection to what Alissa Barna, in an SMT video, calls the dance chorus. So the influence on pop and around 2013, makes it so that a lot of songs have drops right after a standard chorus. And Brad Osborne has remarked on this in a forthcoming article in Integral, in unpacking EDM’s influence on pop music.

So where as a dance chorus might occur as a section after the drop, the “yell drop” is a cue for listeners to engage with subsequent dancing. So it’s a kind of marker between sections that yelling builds up to and then cues higher energy.

So the story-building function is often conveyed with a more orational delivery. Perhaps more obvious, compared to choruses, verses usually have more lyrics. So if lyrics have1- more words , 2- faster-paced delivery to fit those words, and 3- lower pitch, verses are often more skewed towards vocal spectrum, and hence, more story-building. So, let’s listen to the second verse of the Front bottom song, “Flashlight.”

[“Flashlight” playing]

So we are talking about “if not every day then on an every other day basis”?

Yeah, it’s really misaligned. So you’re a drummer. What’s your metrical interpretation, how does that passage feel to you?

Oh, I love that. Um, it feels like it’s just stretching it out. To me it feels like it just like overflows the end of the phrase. And what’s cool is that the drums are keeping that groove going, so you really do feel that tension. It’s not the other instruments are going to go over the nice square phrase. It’s just the vocals there, and it really draws it out. Probably one of the reasons I got into the Front bottoms.

Yeah, definitely likewise. I think them using the word “uncomfortable” in that phrase is kind of like a direct parallel to my feelings about that passage. I’m like “what’s going on?” It kind of draws us into the lyrics. That’s the kind of story building I’m talking about. Usually during that part, you can synchronize to the drums but I think the vocal misalignment makes it a little difficult so therefore not everyone is going to be synchronized.

So the story building includes moments when people are moving their bodies a bit less and maybe a little less than the people around them due to this less metrical delivery.

Right, and Brian Sella’s voice and delivery is so particular. I don’t think you can ignore it and just walk into the group and the drums. And what’s fun is that it’s probably – and I haven’t seen the Front Bottoms in a long time – but it’s probably different every show, right? So there is a nice looseness there.

The company participatory function is cued by repetition of a memorable melodic line and often cues listeners to sing along with the music. So even if someone isn’t familiar with the song, by repeating the line, it allows everyone to learn the line and eventually join in with the kind of communal singing or yelling. So let’s listen to the middle of “Yeah yeah Utah” by Marietta.

[“Yea yea Utah” playing]

So I think hearing this kind of layered vocal texture, which is super common in this style, is a way of reminding us to participate at that moment.

Yeah

The reason I call it company or company function is due to the musical affect, since so much of music is about the physical experience of being at a venue, or being in a crowd, singing with everyone else serves as a community building and just as reminder that you are existing in a space with a bunch of other people.

The actual delivery of it, I often hear it used, accompanied by yelling. But often times it can be singing too. And we’ll talk about another example later.

No definitely. Another band this is big in is Select a Bonus, my Texas emo guys. I’ll always bring it back to them. But, I actually I’ve gotten to interact with them a little bit on Twitter and stuff. Where they have a few of these sections especially on their most recent EP. They have a couple. And some of the themes on the record have to do with religion and American southern church experience. And I’ve talked to them a little bit about those company parts. And they said they’re influenced by church and stuff, to do those sorts of things, but on the record, they use it to refute church so you keep the participatory function, which is a solidarity building experience, but you flip it. You use those techniques.

That’s really interesting. And also nice to get the band’s perspective. Do you have an example off the top of your head that you might wanna share?

Oh off the top of my head, yeah man. It should be part of, it’s on the 2019 EP “Were it so easy.” In the bridge, right, so it is after the chorus. You might consider it the dance portion. Here we go, let’s listen.

This is “The Pit” by Select a Bonus.

[Select a Bonus playing]

Alright so. That’s that one there. But one thing I’d like to say about it is you also get a little bit of what we just talked about with the Front Bottoms. That one line, “What about my family? They say Jesus Christ.” A thing that would totally fit there and line up the syllables would be like “What about my family? They say that Jesus Christ is ashamed of everything about me.” Or something. Instead, they stretch it out and they make it not rhyme, so it sticks out a bit. You get the “What about my family? They say Jesus Christ is ashamed of everything that I have become.” Right? And then you get the nice breakdown. And also, you get that kind of fading out thing toward the end there. Where it is a yelling break and then it slowly dissipates. And I believe you are going to be talking about that.

Yeah, I think that’s a pretty Segway. So yeah, I would definitely say it’s company, but as opposed to some of the yelling that we’ve heard earlier. This is definitely lower energy. The next participatory function that I was going to talk about is winding down function. It’s usually cued by more breathiness. Sometimes it’s cued by less yelling and support. And it’s often cued by longer durations. So this function lets us know that the music is kind of coming to an end. In this case, that we just heard, there’s much less energy too. So the rhythmic activity is died down, so it’s signaling that it’s ending. But simultaneously, as we just talked about, this was also company. One example that I wanted to talk about is Modern Baseball’s “Everyday” at the very end of it.

[Modern Baseball playing]

Iconic ending. So the music here embodies the physical conveil of winding down as well. There are longer durations. And those longer durations conveys lower energy. It requires less energy to be singing less supported and longer durations emulates a kind of lengthier breath or energy-wise, we are kind of coming to a rest. So I think that the physical embodiment there of musical durations embodying our breathing patterns is very appropriate.

Yeah, and the lyrics there are perfect for that sort of musical vibe. Waking up every day is about doing things you don’t want to do.

One thing I did want to highlight that these participatory functions are not mutually exclusive with traditional formal labels. Even though the winding down example in Everyday was never sang throughout the rest of the song, it doesn’t mean that it can’t be implemented during the repetition of say, a chorus or something. For example, bands frequently repeat the chorus at the end of a song and cut the other instrumentation. Here’s an example from Arm’s Length “Garamond.”

[Arm’s Length playing]

So I’ll say anecdotally that when I saw Arm’s Length in concert recently, they did end with this song “Garamond.” So it’s this kind of, even though the chorus is used throughout as a kind of build-up of energy, in the end of the song, they use it to wind down their whole set. So by cutting out the instrumentation, we kind of know that the whole set is ending. It’s a good cue for us. But even during that show, everyone was still yelling along, so the repetition of the chorus also acts as a sort of company participatory function.

So it's both company and winding down. Which brings me to the final section that I'm gonna talk about which is there are also situations in which participatory functions are used simultaneously. And in the context of rock, Trevor deClercq calls the mixing of formal parameters, “blended sections.” So we might call this blended participatory functions. For example, “winding down” and company often mix together in outros like the one that we just heard. In “Never Saw it Coming” we shift from a steady, upbeat acoustic guitar pattern to something much slower and with a heavily reverbed voice in the background. Let’s listen to "Never Saw it Coming" by Tiger's Jaw.

[ "Never Saw it Coming" playing]

Yea so we shift from this pretty steady, upbeat guitar to a slower section. And even though the energy seems to go up - it's a lot louder, the timbre changes - the actually rhythmic activity slows down. So, it combines a kind of company setting in which it's repeating this higher vocal line and inviting people to sing along with that looped section. But yet it's still winding down in a kind of rhythmic activity. It takes the long-winded and slow rhythm that’s essential to winding down but still imbues it with the repetitive “company” affect. This song is definitely a show ender. This is a pretty common blended affect—we can also hear it in "Travelers Insurance" by Their/They’re/There, with the classic shift to half-time.

["Traveler's Insurance" playing]

Another example of company blended is with a yell drop in "Sweaty Hamm’s" by Niiice. The line “I know you’re on the phone with your mother” is first sang quietly with limited accompaniment, but then it’s immediately repeated, signaling the company function. The yelling coordinates the repeat emphasizes the participation. Let’s listen to "Sweaty Hamm's".

As I pull it up, I'd like to specify that Hamm's the beer, not like a roast, or honey, or whatever. Yes, here we go.

["Sweaty Hamm's" playing]

So a lot of these functions we've been talking about I think are present in, once again I must bring up Origami Angel. In their first LP Somewhere City, a concept album, the last song is a medley of a bunch of the other ones on the record. It might be all of them, I'm not totally sure. And this is common, this happens a lot in pop-punk, The Wonder Years have done it on a couple albums, I'm pretty sure Fall Out Boy has done it back in the day too. Just taking a bunch of the choruses from the record and making a medley in the last tune on the record. What's cool about the Origami Angel one is that all of these voices are layered on top of each other - they're all singing different choruses, some of the choruses are augmented, some are faster to get them to line up in cool ways.

And then, eventually, all of the voices merge together in that they all start yelling or singing the same lyrics rather than layering a bunch of different choruses on top of each other. And the way that they all merge, Matt you may be better at discussing all of the functions, but I think we have a yell drop and a company and, by the end of the song, we are winding down. So let's give it a listen.

["The Air Up Here" playing]

And then that guitar just plays us out. Interestingly enough, it is the same way the album starts, so you could play it on a loop. So what did you think about Origami Angel?

Oh yea, this is like a culmination in some ways of what we've been talking about from the rest of the paper - we can throw all of our terminology at it. So, we start with a lot of more traditional type of singing, I'll talk about just the vocal delivery first. We start with a bunch of singing, and then we move into a more yelling texture - although that layered voice, there is a lot of singing going on, there's a lot of yelling above it. And on top of that, we have a bunch of the participatory functions. As you said, we have that yell drop leading us into the company, and then finally we get a winding down in the very end. So I think this is a great example - thanks for bringing it in!

Yea man, always happy to bring in more Origami Angel.

Yes, thanks for bringing it into "class" - wonderful.

It feels like we’re really just getting started here, and we've just laid some of the groundwork for more theoretical conversations in how voice plays into punk, and voice plays into punk in theory, specifically. But, I feel, by doing so we just get more questions: do certain bands evoke certain participatory functions more than others? Is there are consistent correlation between the participatory functions and standard formal analysis? Or between those participatory functions and vocal delivery? Which is, in some ways, what I was arguing before. My gut is to say some degree. So how might we find such functions? Could we perhaps use audio processing techniques?

And lastly, connecting with Howies talk: how does genre kind of predetermine or influence or expected participatory functions? Or, maybe the other way around: how do such calls for participation allude to a particular genre? So, by yelling in the very beginning of a song, maybe we're told what type of participation and what genre and community we are participating in. So perhaps the subtle, interactive musical gestures within vocal delivery help situate listeners within a particular operative body of music relations. Thank you for listening.

[closing music begins to play] We'd like to thank the SMT-Pod editorial board, especially Megan Lyons and Jennifer Beavers. And we also want to thank the outside reviewer Dave Easley, whose insightful comments really contributed to the project.

And, Matt and I would like to thank our friend, Jeff, who has spent hours talking to both of us about Emo. So thanks. Thanks Jeff!

Visit our website smt-pod.org for supplemental materials related to this episode. And join in on the conversation by tweeting us your questions and comments @SMT_Pod. SMT Pod's theme music was written by Zhangcheng Lu with closing music by David Voss. Thanks for listening!