This week in Music History, Culture, and Creativity, our students must compose, record, convert to mp3 and upload their compositions to the class website. Their compositions are to feature a drone (a sustained bass note throughout a section or an entire piece of music), or pedal (as in when an organ holds down a PEDAL, a low note, while other music happens on top) with a melody. It may be for any instrumentation and in any style.
For inspiration I played several music videos from YouTube illustrating a wide variety of musics that use drones or pedals.
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In Stevie Wonder’s “Too High” both the opening tonic vamp and the dominant pedal are short drones.
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Influenced by Ravi Shankar and Indian ragas, the Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows” lays down a complicated drone thoughout.
The Habanera from Bizet’s Carmen has a bass line ostinato that changes chords throughout, but the bass line refuses go anywhere.
“Scotland the Brave” is a perfect example of a memorable melody over a drone. But, to paraphrase Stravinsky, the monster never breathes.
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Some of you may remember Moondog. I saw him both performing in the streets of Manhattan, but he came to the UW Madison School of Music and had an all-day residency. He wrote a round called “N-O-S-I-D-A-M” which is Madison backwards. I still remember the tune if anyone needs it. I may have a copy somewhere as well. But this is an example of an invention with one note, played by several instruments.
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Here, John Coltrane tells the bass player in “Giant Steps” to sustain an E flat pedal. I don’t get it but this video/transcription is maddeningly brilliant.
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Here Seal whoops up the audience over his drone song “Crazy.”
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These songs represent a wildly diverse range of music inspired by drones and pedals.