| In the cosmopolitan world of the later twentieth century, most people are hesitant to analyze popular music. Indeed, our society is hesitant to analyze any art or to suppose that artists think much at all about their creations and the creation process. In particular, our culture likes to imagine that the creation of rock is a result of unmediated genius and that the more thinking that goes into its creation, the more artificial and the less valid the product. Somehow, we cannot bring ourselves to imagine that these musicians ever think about music. Somehow, a musician like John Lennon can spend years playing guitar and singing without forming an internal conceptual framework that helped him make sense of what worked, and what did not. Some authors have even suggested that any musical training at all spoils a pop musician's ability to be innovative. And yet, we know from Paul McCartney that as teenagers, they would travel across town on a bus, simply to learn a new chord or that (presumably later) he and John would listen to Dave Brubeck's "Take Five" to learn something about asymmetrical meter. |