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  3. Rock music has been accused of having a beat that is at once too strong and

Rock music has been accused of having a beat that is at once too strong and

游客2023-11-12  32
问题     Rock music has been accused of having a beat that is at once too strong and too simplistic. Let’s look at these issues individually, and see how they in fact contribute to the power of the music.
    If you look at the classic instrumentation of a rock group—drums, bass, electric guitar and piano—one inescapable fact is that they are all percussive instruments. There are no horns or strings, no instruments that are bowed or blown, whose notes smoothly move to the desired volume and then stay there. The musicians play all of these instruments by striking them with a stick, pick, finger or hammer. As a result, their characteristic sounds all exhibit sharply rising and descending volumes. The overall effect is to emphasize the rhythmic value of each note, to give the placement of the peak volume of each note, each chord, at least equal weight with its melodic or harmonic element. In earlier musical forms, the drums, bass, piano and guitar had sometimes collectively been referred to as the "rhythm section. " With rock instrumentation, effectively the entire group became part of the rhythm section.
    Part of the reason for increasing the strength of the rhythm in rock—for creating what became known as "the big beat"—was to increase the propulsive force of the music. This is essentially the same reason that regular meter is used in traditional poetry. In this sense, rock is to traditional pop music as poetry is to prose. The effect in both rock and metered poetry is to create regular rhythmic patterns that drive the listener along and amplify the energy of the words.
    This is why Phil Spector told David Susskind, when he was reading the lyrics of one of his songs on TV, that what he was missing was the beat. One effect of the strong rhythm is to increase the intensity and power of the communication. Listening to rock lyrics without the beat would be akin to paraphrasing Yeats as saying, "Going round in larger circles, the damned bird gets lost. " The meaning of the words is roughly the same, but my phrasing has none of the power of Yeats’: " Turning and turning in the widening gyre, the falcon cannot hear the falconer. "
    Another reason for increasing the strength of the rock rhythm was simply to make the beat an equal player in the resulting music. As suggested above by Robert Palmer, traditional pop forms had made the beat a poor second cousin to melody and harmony. Rock liberated the rhythmic component of the music, allowing it an equal footing with the other elements.
    The perception has sometimes been that the beat in rock music is so strong as to overpower the melody and lyrics, making the words unintelligible, for example. While this has no doubt happened at times, it is not an essential part of the music. On the other hand, ears that are used to rhythm being consistently relegated to the background sometimes perceive the beat as overpowering simply because it has been brought to the foreground. The result can be disorienting, because multiple musical components are all vying for equal attention in rock. The effect is akin to viewing modern art in which elements of form and color are no longer subordinate to the demands of strict representation. The result, though, is a much richer artistic experience, in which multiple elements of the music—thematic intent, meter, rhyme and alliteration, vocal shadings, melody, harmony and rhythm—are all working together.
    Rock has also been accused of having a simplistic rhythm, based on its consistent use of a 4/4 time signature, with the accents on the second and fourth beats of the measure(a "backbeat"). When used at its best, however, this basic underlying rhythm is just the starting point for many subtle rhythmic variations. After all, with so many instruments all playing a part in the rhythm, it is not necessary—and would in fact be distracting—to have the foundation time signature be calling attention to itself. The interesting part, overall, is not the time signature, which will repeat throughout the song anyway, but what you do with it, the variations laid on top of it, the larger reinforcing rhythms in the song structure. [br] Which of the following is NOT the classic instrumentation of a rock group?
选项 A、Bass.
B、Piano.
C、Guitar.
D、Violin.
答案 D
解析 细节题，从文章第二段第一句“If you look at the classic instrumentation of a rockgroup--drums，bass([A])，electric guitar([C])and piano([B])一one inescapable fact is that they are all percussive instruments．”可知，传统的摇滚乐多使用打击乐器，如鼓、电吉他等，而小提琴这样的弦乐器明显不是打击乐器，所以[D]是正确答案。
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