Coming of Age: Teaching and Learning Popular Music in Academia

Analytic Framework

In order to analyze the multimodal content of a music video, the proposed framework offers a method for distinguishing the expressive and structural content in the domains of words, music, and images according to five interpretive parameters: norms and values, storyworld and plot, space and time, subjectivity and address, and gesture and activity (see Figure 2).[7] As I discuss each of these parameters, I will identify specific connections to genre, discourse, and narrative theories, relying on leading authors in those fields of inquiry. In order to constrain what could be an extensive interdisciplinary task, I turn primarily to literary theorist John Frow’s work on Genre (2010), critical discourse analysts David Machin and Andrea Mayr’s work on How to Do Critical Discourse Analysis (2012), and narrative theorist David Herman’s work on The Basic Elements of Narrative (2009). Illustrating the common ground to these approaches, I suggest ways to transfer the analytic and interpretive concepts to the realm of the music video. As Mieke Bal has explored in Travelling Concepts in the Humanities (2002), the task of applying theoretical concepts from one domain to another is not scientific or absolute but rather open to creative interpretation while the analyst reflects on what aspects of the theoretical construct are appropriate to the new domain. To be sure, a qualitative and interpretive approach is a crucial aspect of multimodal analysis as scholars work toward analytic methods for the interpretation of texts that rely on language, music, and images to communicate meanings.[8]

To begin, the parameter of norms and values is of foundational importance to the interpretive process. I would go so far as to suggest that this parameter lies at the very heart of any interpretation of genre, discourse, or narrative, for it asks us to reflect on the ideologies that underlie a particular text and to discern what Michel Foucault would refer to as the “regime of truth” that is suggested by the text.[9] Machin and Mayr express this concern as follows: “Texts will use linguistics and visual strategies that appear normal or neutral on the surface, but which may in fact be ideological and seek to shape the representation of events and persons for particular ends.”[10] The concept of meaning that resides beneath the surface is also addressed by Frow to explain how genre-based texts operate to shape cultural understanding. In this regard, he defines “inferences” as “the interpretive actualization of textual implications.”[11] Asserting the importance of the interpretive act for genre study, he declares, “This is where the real complexity of texts lies; if we are to read well, we cannot but attend to those embedded assumptions and understandings which are structured by the frameworks of genre and from which we work inferentially to the full range of textual meaning.”[12]

It is important to acknowledge that the reader’s (or listener’s) social and ideological orientation has an impact on his or her awareness of embedded belief systems. For instance, Herman understands such orientations to yield sensitive and nuanced interpretive insights: “Worldmaking practices are of central importance to narrative scholars of all sorts, from feminist narratologists exploring how representations of male and female characters pertain to dominant stereotypes about gender roles, to rhetorical theorists hypothesizing about the kinds of assumptions, beliefs and attitudes that must be adopted by readers if they are to participate in the multiple audience positions required to engage fully with fictional worlds.”[13]

In the analytic model presented here, the parameter of norms and values asks the interpreter to unearth the assumptions that underpin the text—that is, the social and cultural ideologies—and the suppositions of “truth.” For musical analysis, this perspective would emerge when considering the concepts of genre, style, and production values, specifically as these elements have the potential to invoke social and cultural contexts. In the visual domain, the analyst could reflect on elements of style, including costumes and props, which have the potential to communicate social contexts and cultural assumptions. The suggested applications for analysis and interpretation are not meant to be fixed, nor are they limited. In applying this model to a chosen example, the analyst would be free to extend and elaborate the details of the analytic process.

The parameter of storyworld and plot invites the analyst to reflect on the specific situations, social contexts, and events that shape a given story. In the field of narrative theory, Herman treats the storyworld as a “global mental model of the situations and events being recounted” and understands narrative artifacts (a text, film, song, etc.) to “provide blueprints for the creation and modification of such mentally configured storyworlds.”[14] Connecting his idea of storyworld to an understanding of genre, he indicates that “part of the meaning of ‘genre’ consists of distinctive protocols for worldmaking.”[15] I interpret Herman’s comments to mean that individual genres can be distinguished based on their unique strategies for storyworld creation. This notion is supported in genre theory when Frow identifies thematic content as an important dimension of genre, defining thematic content as “the shaped human experience that a genre invests with significance and interest.”[16] This theoretical understanding supports the view that creators within a given genre will invest in those human experiences that pertain to the worldview of the cultural group from which the genre has arisen. In the proposed model, the parameter of storyworld and plot transfers quite coherently from the events and situations—the “state of affairs”—conveyed by the lyrics to the musical form and structure and to the sequence of images as well as the visual composition and design.

The parameter of space and time owes a debt to literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of the chronotope, a concept that is used to explore the interrelationships of time, space, and place in a text.[17] We see Bakhtin’s influence in Frow’s inclusion of formal features (comprising time, space, and enunciative position) as one of three parameters that contribute to the expression of genre.[18] In the context of narrative theory, the model that Herman proposes might be understood to distinguish the concepts of space and time, as he discusses spatial dimensions in relation to storyworld building and temporal dimensions in relation to event sequencing.[19] In the domain of critical discourse analysis, Machin and Mayr examine how space is discursively created and expressed in order to signify values, identities, and actions.[20] With these theoretical concepts in mind, Figure 2 elaborates how, for each expressive domain (words, music, and images), the analytic parameter of space and time might be applied. With respect to the lyrics of the song, we would look for references to space, time, and place. In order to transfer these concepts to the domain of music, we could consider the textural arrangement and sonic space of the music as well as the temporal features of the song. Finally, as we would apply this parameter to the video images, we might examine the setting and lighting as well as the framing and editing of the visual images.

The parameter of subjectivity and address allows for analytic reflection on the narrative subject and the subject’s expressive stance. In Frow’s framework for genre theory, this parameter is evident in both the “position of enunciation” that is indicated within the formal features of a text as well as the rhetorical structure of the text.[21] In the context of narrative theory, Herman identifies situatedness as his first basic element of narrative, by which he means the discursive context or occasion for telling the story.[22] This element allows us to reflect on the perspective of the storyteller and also on the subject who is featured in the story. In the domain of critical discourse analysis, interpreters would discern a speaker’s attitude by examining how his or her discourse is shaped, how his or her gaze or attention is directed and structured, and how he or she adopts a pose.[23] Figure 2 suggests how the parameter of subjectivity and address might be applied to the domains of words, music, and images. Beginning with the domain of words, the analyst might invoke the notion of identities, relations, and stance in the lyrics. In the music, this parameter transfers nicely to the quality, dynamics, and intensity of the voice and instruments in the recording.[24] With respect to the images, we could analyze the staging and focus of the subjects and the invocation of the subject’s gaze toward the camera as well as toward others.[25]

Finally, the parameter of gesture and activity allows for consideration of a subject’s actions and behaviors. In Herman’s conception of narrative, gestures would be considered marked events in the timeline, with some of these events disrupting the storyworld, since Herman understands event disruption to be an essential component of narrative.[26] Taking a critical discourse analysis perspective, Machin and Mayr would examine gestures to determine how the actions are represented, especially as these actions might situate one subject in a controlling or powerful role in relation to another subject.[27] For discourse analysis, every gesture is significant for our understanding of social relations. Similarly, within the field of genre theory, gesture and activity would be interpreted as actions with potential rhetorical power and social significance. Frow, for instance, understands an action within a text to have a specific rhetorical purpose, such as a questioning or assertive function.[28] These understandings of gesture and action are highly suggestive for the analysis of words, music, and images. Figure 2 proposes how the analyst might apply the parameter of gesture and activity to the three domains: the actions and gestures that emerge from the lyrical content, the musical patterns (gestures) and interactions between and among the performers, and the movement and choreography portrayed in the images.

The five analytic parameters can be applied as crosscutting axes of intersection for the domains of words, music, and images, allowing us to observe the textual strategies within an individual domain and across domains. With this framework in hand, we can gather data that will allow us to distinguish the content of the music video in each of its multimodal domains (words, music, images) and to reflect on how that content intersects to constitute meaning. As Machin and Mayr might suggest, we are concerned with how the text in question—in this case, the music video—creates meaning, how it does its cultural work, and how the resources of a discourse are used.

Steven Wilson’s “Drive Home,” The Raven That Refused to Sing (And Other Stories), 2013 (Kscope 240)

Steven Wilson released The Raven That Refused to Sing (and Other Stories) in February 2013 on Kscope. The album features live-band members Nick Beggs (bass), Marco Minnemann (drums), Guthrie Govan (guitar), Adam Holzman (keyboards), and Theo Travis (winds), with whom he recorded the six tracks in so many days. He describes his goals for the album as a series of live takes with analog recording and minimal digital editing, aiming to achieve a sense of logic and storytelling.[29]

Wilson considered the writing to be inspired by the ghost stories of nineteenth-century authors Poe and Dickens, which he valued for their use of the supernatural elements, not for their own sake, but as a dramatic device to amplify emotional stories.[30] The concept album is tied to multidimensional materials, including the artwork of Hajo Mueller and video treatments for two of the tracks by stop-motion animation videographer Jess Cope of Owl House Studios. The album and its materials have been well received by the critical press, with a celebration of the musicianship, the conceptual compositional work, the integration of songwriting and production, and the organic long-form approach reminiscent of the ’70s.[31]

The music video for the second track of the album, “Drive Home,” is remarkable for its seamless musical production and its smooth visual flow. The stop-motion animation delivers a powerful representation of human emotion, psychological development, and physical movement that knits together the lyrical story and the musical narrative. The song lyrics tell a story that Wilson describes as follows: “The idea is about a couple driving along in a car at night, very much in love; the guy is driving, and his partner is in the passenger seat, and the next minute she is gone. . . . The song is basically about missing time; it’s the idea of blocking out time because of something so traumatic that you literally remove it from your mind.”[32]

My application of the analytic framework begins with the song lyrics (Figure 3), which establish the norms and values to be revealing the truth of a terrible accident and the subject’s struggle with his feelings of guilt (e.g., “bear the blame” and “face the truth”). The parameter of storyworld and plot points us to a story of loss that opens with an upturned car in a storm. The lyrics do not offer an event-driven plot sequence but rather convey the pain of the experience and a psychological progression toward a release from suffering. With respect to space and time, there is a sense of disruption and suspense caused by the upside-down car (e.g., “wait on in vain” and “a pause without end”). The lyrics also convey the cyclic nature of time (e.g., “the darkness always ends”) and ongoing action (“drive home”). A sense of distance is evident in the subjectivity and address of the lyrics, as the story is told through an alternation between second-person (e.g., “you’re still alone” and “release all your guilt”) and third-person voice (e.g., “a car upturned in the rain”), offering imperatives and observations rather than first-person reflections. Following the accident, the gestures and activity emerge through verb choices that carry emotional weight. The acts of waiting in vain, bearing blame, dealing with pain, facing the truth, and making amends all connote burdensome tasks that require psychological effort until the final passage of the second verse, which features more positive actions: releasing guilt, giving up pain, holding up your head.

Let us now consider how these analytic parameters apply to the domain of music (Figure 4). To begin with the musical norms and values, the genre in which Steven Wilson works is received as “progressive” rock, owing much of its style and form to ’70s-era progressive rock. Wilson prefers the term “conceptual” rock; nevertheless, his work is certainly classified by many reviewers as progressive.[33] His choice to work with engineer Alan Parsons led to an atmospheric and crisply detailed style of production. His aim was to work with analog recording and digital editing and limit the number of takes in the live-performance capture.[34]

The storyworld and plot parameter leads us to consider the form and structure of the recorded track. Example 1 provides a summary of the form, aligned with the amplitude wave and peak-frequency spectrograph yielded by the Sonic Visualiser program.[35] The spectrograph reveals clearly how each section of the song is characterized by distinctive sonic values and how these distinct sections create a strong degree of dynamic contrast over the course of the track. The song articulates a well-executed and developmental form, beginning conventionally (intro–verse 1–link–chorus [with refrain]–verse 2–link–chorus [with extended refrain]), while the second half of the song departs from the verse-chorus structure with a return to the material from the instrumental introduction, followed by a bridge and an extensive guitar solo that leads to a final vibrant and densely textured presentation of the refrain.

The track is characterized by a sensitive treatment of spatial and temporal factors. The richly varied arrangement offers a breadth and depth of sonic field in which individual layers are clearly placed as well as a wide dynamic range.[36] In a more detailed analysis that follows, I will illustrate some of the unique aspects of the instrumental texture and arrangement, which includes acoustic guitar, electric guitar, flute, sax, keyboards, bass, and kit.[37]

The song varies in the levels of subjectivity and address—for instance, the vocal is treated to masking and filtering that indicate an internal rather than external process of communication, and individual voice tracks and instrumental lines are layered to create complex effects. The guitar solo passages have the effect of “speaking,” or voicing, the narrative.

A consideration of the musical gestures and activity reveals that melancholy melodic lines and delicate arpeggiation patterns predominate, with the exception of the soaring lines of the electric guitar solo. I will explore these summary claims about the musical content in greater detail in the sections that follow. But first, I will provide a few comments about the visual world that was created for the video.

Example 2 applies the analytic framework to the images of the music video and includes several stills in order to illustrate the video treatment for “Drive Home.” Videographer Jess Cope of Owl House Studios worked with the drawings of illustrator Hajo Mueller to create a vulnerable subject in a unique setting.[38] The norms and values of the visual world point us toward the visual style and genre as well as the costumes and props that convey the social contexts. The stop-motion animation genre takes the viewer into a materially fabricated world. Cope created the simple puppet design and the world in which he lives from torn-up paper. All the materials—with the exception of some special personal objects (glasses, hairbrush, necklace, typewriter)—are papered over with newsprint. This aesthetic effect is a material manifestation of the endless composition of letters to the lost loved one (02:12). Color and light are used to convey the emotional states, distinguish the stages of the narrative, and mark the supernatural effects: sepia tones color the postaccident timeline, during which the subject does not recall the events; shades of blue are used for the activities in the car and near the water’s edge; and red is used for the accident sequence once the subject experiences his memory recovery.

The storyworld and plot of the video give shape to the traumatic story of the accident, the loss of memory, and the progress toward recovery. The storyworld conveys the psychological journey of the subject as he experiences the accident (01:47) and then lives on in an injured state, unable to recall the events. A series of supernatural occurrences (e.g., 04:01) ultimately lead to a cathartic second accident—a fall into the water (05:10)—triggering the return of his memory (05:30).

The spatial and temporal elements are designed to communicate important aspects of the psychological journey of the subject; more specifically, the two-dimensional scenes represent the events in the past, and the three-dimensional scenes convey the present timeline. Adding further to this strategic use of spatial effects, the supernatural experiences in the present timeline feature transparent, two-dimensional “ghost” figures. The 2-D scenes of the video (e.g., 01:02, 01:11) were made from cutout puppets that were animated on a glass plane. Backlighting creates a perception of depth in the background. Some of the lighting and water effects were done in postproduction—for instance, when the light hits the subject’s eyes (01:02), leading to the accident. The story unfolds in a number of external and internal physical spaces: the car on the road, the pier at the water’s edge, the inside of the subject’s home, and—ultimately—under water.

Our first consideration of subjectivity and address in the music video must be given to the characteristics and communicative capacity that Cope has attributed to her puppet. The puppet’s oval head, which is disproportionately large in relation to his small body, is endowed with glasses and ears on which the glasses rest. The size of and focus on the subject’s head is a manifestation of the psychological emphasis that is accorded to this story. Although he has no eyes, Cope has managed to create the effect of a powerful and thoughtful gaze. Tragically, it is when he gazes at Lucy (00:55) that the accident occurs. The reflection of the shadow figure (01:09) and the fire of the accident in his glasses (06:01) signal to the viewer what he is seeing and experiencing. When he finally “sees” himself on the pier and realizes the truth (04:38), this moment launches the sequence of memory recovery.

The gestures and activities of the video communicate a story of accident, injury, stasis, a second accident, and memory recovery. The repetitive and insistent action of typing letters to Lucy represents the severity of his memory loss: he does not know what happened to her. A visit to the water’s edge in his wheelchair leads him to find Lucy’s hairbrush in the water (02:54), and this material object then triggers a series of supernatural confrontations that lead him back to the water’s edge (04:38). His fall into the water (05:08) is the action that induces the memory recall.

With this summary review of the individual domains (lyrics, music, video images) in place, I now turn to a more detailed analysis of the song in order to integrate the domain-based analysis into a multimodal interpretation. Following the temporal order of the track and video according to the formal song sections, the following analysis is intended to illuminate how the model facilitates the interpretation of the word-music-image intersections. Example 3 summarizes the detailed analysis and clarifies the content that describes the music and the images; in addition, Example 3 reproduces transcriptions of selected passages.[39] The reader is strongly encouraged to watch the video clip, section by section, as the analysis follows. Ideally, each section should be watched twice—first to attend to the musical content and second to consider the connections between that musical content and the images.

INTRO (00:00–00:29). The song opens with a delicate texture featuring a guitar melody supported by piano chords; the third and final phrase of the intro closes with a gently falling and rising arpeggiation gesture (00:17–00:29). The warm jazzy tone of the LaRose classic jazz guitar is dry and forward as if in a small space, while the piano is further back (as if in a larger space) and supported by quiet bass tones. The depth of textural space in the music—forward guitar and distant piano—maps onto the depth of the visual space in the opening water sequence, followed by the car sequence. Jess Cope used multiplaning animation to create foreground, middleground, and background layers to suggest a 3-D texture. (We saw this visual layering in the video stills of the subjectivity and address parameter in Example 2: images 00:55 and 01:09.) During this introductory sequence, the necklace is attributed a 3-D design, giving it a particularly vibrant visual appeal. As we consider the intersections between image and sound in this passage, the warm guitar at the very front of the texture seems to trace the fall of the necklace to the water’s surface and then to convey us to the scene in which the subject and Lucy are driving in the car.

VERSE 1 AND LINK (00:30–01:23). The intro leads into the first verse, in which the third-person narrator describes the upturned car of the accident and then delivers a second-person imperative to deal with the trauma and start anew. The music features a bright, sparkling Octavian acoustic guitar, which is doubled by the electric guitar to give depth to the sound. The guitar, accompanied by piano and a stripped-down kit, support a filtered vocal. The voice is very dry and forward, while the guitar and kit occupy their own clear positions in the texture. At the vocal cadence (01:10), a brief instrumental link expands the texture with the toms and a bell-like keyboard sound overdubbing a guitar arpeggiation pattern. Wilson’s filtered vocal maps onto the 2-D visual presentation of the subject driving his car. The opening up of the musical texture and the motion of the guitar arpeggiation during the link supports the intensification of the subject’s emotion—he sees a shadowy figure at the water’s edge and the empty seat beside him where Lucy had been sitting—while his thoughts race to understand what has happened, and the car continues to move forward.

CHORUS 1 (01:24–01:55). The chorus ushers in a lush, broad texture, featuring a counterline in the upper strings and deep round bass tones. The kit has a more prominent role, with quarter accents on the ride cymbal and tom fills to mark the phrase endings. The voice is no longer filtered but has a clearer sound with a lush reverb. It is doubled at the upper octave, with the main vocal centered and the overdubbed layer sounding above and behind. In the video, this vocal conveys omnipresence, as the subject is encouraged to “face the truth.” Falling from the vehicle and calling for Lucy, the perspective broadens to consider the ominous water’s edge.

VERSE 2 AND LINK (01:56–02:49). The second verse features a heavier filter effect on the vocal with modulation, or phasing, of both pitch and time. Each phrase adds another layer of vocal harmony, such that the third phrase features three layers. Whereas the first verse was very transparent, the texture here is heavier and denser with the entrance of the strings and the greater intensity on kit and bass. In the video of this passage, now with the 3-D representation of the subject in a wheelchair typing his letters, we are evidently in a postaccident timeline, and we can now understand the previous 2-D sequence to have been a representation of the past. The filtered vocals suggest once again the perspective of the subject’s inner thoughts, but in a much more layered and complex orientation, potentially signaling his repeated efforts to remember the events of the accident. During the brief link (02:36–02:49), the enhanced guitar arpeggiation pattern with bell-like tones returns to represent his racing mind and his effort to understand what happened.

CHORUS 2 (02:50–03:20). The second chorus is marked by an even clearer and brighter vocal articulation, signaling sonically that the earlier chorus statement featured some masking or darkening of the upper frequencies. A slight left-to-right delay in the splitting of the vocal creates the effect of depth and layering. Against this more pointed and intense vocal presentation, the images emphasize the subject’s ability to “see.” The subject, now in 3-D representation and in a wheelchair, retrieves Lucy’s hairbrush at the water’s edge and is later awoken to the apparition of Lucy, a transparent 2-D figure.

CHORUS EXTENSION (03:21–03:51). The chorus is extended with a passage featuring a soaring line on the LaRose guitar, fitted with a Sustainiac sustainer circuit (pick-up), supported by added fills and crashes in the kit, a driving eighth pulse on the ride with quarters on the hat, and a very active bass. The voice repeats the chorus refrain, “drive home.” During the chorus extension, Lucy brushes her hair as the subject gazes at her. Reflecting on what he has experienced, he is visited by the shadowy figure. The slowly rising but intense line is bound to the image of Lucy reaching for the brush and combing her hair. When the light disappears and she is gone, the subject himself picks up the brush and holds it to his chest as the Sustainiac guitar line continues to climb. In this scene, the guitar solo marks Lucy’s gesture and the significance of a personal object to aid in the recovery of his memory.

INTERLUDE (03:52–04:38). Following the suggestive moment of memory and its sonic attachment to the Sustainiac line, the texture falls back to the sparse and transparent introductory material; however, there is more depth and layering than before. The guitar melody is joined by the sax in counterpoint, and here the spatial effects suggest three layers: the reverberant guitar; the sax, which is further back; and the piano, which is very distant in the mix. A sweep-arpeggio melody in the guitar traces the subject’s movement back to the water’s edge, where he now succeeds in encountering the figure.

BRIDGE (04:39–05:08). The bridge is a remarkable moment for the intersection of sound and images, opening with a transparent section in which arpeggiation patterns in the acoustic guitar present the harmonic progression of the chorus (Em-CM7-A-AM7). The texture is brighter and lighter, with no bass or kit in the first four bars of the section. As the bass enters against a rising flute line, the space opens up for the solo guitar to enter. The image sequence from this opening phrase of the bridge suggests a kind of suspended moment in time, the lightness and transparency of the texture allowing the subject to “see” that he is himself the shadowy figure. Shocked by his realization, he stumbles at the end of the pier and begins to fall—a second accident that will prove to be cathartic in the release of his memory.

GUITAR SOLO (05:09). The guitar solo that ensues is characterized by intensity and breadth of field. The Sustainiac provides a florid, legato, and blended sound without the characteristic decay and transients of the guitar. String bends and glissandi further contribute to the smoothness of the line. The eighth-note triplets and long-held notes create an open and soaring quality. The kit reenters with a cymbal roll into the first bar of the solo (05:09): we hear the strong kick on 1, the syncopated kick on 3, and a powerful reverberant backbeat snare that is right on the beat. In the video, the subject’s fall is timed very carefully with these musical gestures: the rising glissando emerges over the acoustic guitar, suspending our sense of time; the kick drum and guitar accentuate the downbeat when he strikes the water; and the powerful backbeat snare articulates the resulting splash. As the memory sequence begins, the Sustainiac gestures are timed to the images of the moments leading up to the accident.

The fourth phrase of the guitar solo (05:56–06:12) features another rise from the high E to G—this time in a deliberate stepwise pattern. In this passage, the string-bend approach is more heavily weighted and slower; faster pull-offs give a light, agile feel to the syncopated figure in bar 2; and a very dense passage (featuring what guitarists would refer to as “shredding,” which involves highly virtuosic fast playing) concludes the phrase, with muted strumming at the end adding to the cacophonous texture. The phrase begins by marking beats but progresses toward syncopation and more complex rhythms. The rising bass line (starting at 06:00) is prominent against the active guitar. Central to the memory sequence, this is the moment when the subject falls after trying to pull Lucy from the burning vehicle. Holding the necklace, he watches helplessly as the car is engulfed in flames. As the guitar moves into the shred passage, we return to the image of him falling through the water, where he has experienced the memory recall.

The guitar solo delivers a total of eight phrases that track the subject’s memory recovery of the traumatic accident while he falls into the water. Landing on the riverbed during the sixth phrase, he finds Lucy’s necklace and then recalls throwing it into the water the night of the accident. In the final phrase of the solo, now layered with the chorus refrain (“drive home”), he rises again to the surface with the necklace in hand. A final three-bar phrase, delivered on open, detuned guitar strings, creates the effect of unwinding after the intensity of the story’s climax. Our subject sits on the dock and holds the necklace to his heart as the final note of the guitar slowly bends and fades away.

Conclusions

My aim with this chapter has been to examine the aesthetic materials of “Drive Home” in order to understand how these are structured and designed to create meaning, communicate cultural messages, and shape a particular worldview. Figure 5 summarizes the analytic findings from the earlier examples (Figures 3 and 4 and Example 2), facilitating the interpretation of the multimodal materials. In this consolidated form, the analyst can reflect on the data in each crosscutting parameter to understand the conceptual transfer and multimodal integrations achieved by the artistic work. Using a cross-domain analytic methodology that is grounded in domain-specific content, the analyst is provided with coherent content from which to draw interpretive conclusions. In other words, by this stage of the analysis, each claim in the framework can be backed up by detailed analytic observations from the foregoing effort. I emphasize this aspect of the analytic process in order to illuminate the pedagogical potential of this method. Analysts can succeed in the rigorous gathering of domain-specific content, according to clearly defined crosscutting parameters, before attempting to assemble an explication of meaning. It can be challenging to identify appropriate content for each parameter in each domain, but the process of making analytic decisions by distinguishing content is vital to one’s understanding of how the expressive materials function and interrelate. Avoiding the rush to interpretation, this method looks first to the material content and secondarily to interpretive claims.

NORMS AND VALUES. At a foundational level, the “Drive Home” music video communicates a powerful message about a subject’s personal experience and feelings of responsibility for the loss of a human life. This profound struggle of consciousness is set musically within the genre of “conceptual” rock, allowing for an atmospheric and detailed arrangement. Visually, the vulnerable subject is placed within an animated and surreal world that allows for a representation of his harsh reality and his inner battle. The intensity of color and light, as well as the prominence of personal material objects, draw us into a dreamlike world in which his psychological development is the focus.

STORYWORLD AND PLOT. The narrative of loss leading toward release has a goal-oriented design that is crafted carefully in the developmental form and expansive guitar solo. The video images ground this narrative in the psychological consequences of the accident, the subject’s experience of loss, and his own stasis in the denial of that loss. The supernatural effects lead him to a second accident that serves as a cathartic moment of memory recovery.

SPACE AND TIME. The disruption of physical space and linear time in the story are important bearers of meaning. It is this disruption that allows us to understand the subject’s psychological struggle, including his traumatic loss of memory. To convey this musically, Wilson creates a lush, detailed, and dynamic sonic space that allows for a full range of emotional expression and subjective reflection. Visually, the disruption is conveyed in the treatment of perspective and temporality. The viewer experiences the disruption of the temporal sequence in keeping with the subject’s conscious experience.

VOICE AND ADDRESS. The distant address creates the sense of a narrator who has the power to observe and comment on the subject’s situation. The voice is treated musically to a number of production effects: in the verses, the voice is filtered and phased to create a thin sound that is texturally distinct from the supporting instruments. This sonic separation of the voice connotes distance, which can be connected to the temporal distance of the present time and the events of the past. Although the voice-over delivery suggests a distance between the narrator and the subject, it is when the guitar “speaks” that the subject makes connections and comes to an understanding of his past experience. The intense guitar solo is strongly connected to the recovery of memory. Visually, the guitar solo is tied to images that invoke the concept of seeing or gazing; the subject is always preoccupied with looking—at Lucy in the car, at the image of the accident, at the shadowy figure who appears to send a message, at the water—to learn what happened. Ultimately, he sees himself in the shadowy image and then begins to see the truth.

GESTURE AND ACTIVITY. The weighty emotional actions of the lyrics are conveyed musically as melancholy lines and guitar arpeggiations that work visually with the long period of reflection and stasis following the traumatic car accident. In contrast, the soaring guitar (Sustainiac) lines seem to drive the subject into awareness and full memory recovery. The accident itself is revealed during the guitar solo, with Guthrie Govan garnering his incredible range of virtuosic expression to the purpose of conveying the tragedy. For this sequence, Jess Cope casts the angular movements of the car in an intense bath of red as it moves out of control, carrying the viewer to the peak of visual intensity as a pictorial realization of the accident.

Textual choices not only represent the world but also constitute it. In other words, cultural texts—including musical texts and visual texts—produce meanings that shape social understanding. Strategies of artistic expression are always grounded in ideologies and assumptions of truth about the world, and words, music, and images have individual affordances and attributes with the potential to connote meaning. By exploring this approach to cultural texts, we understand better the social world that is constituted by a given text and how the strategies and choices capture a worldview. Transferring the concepts of genre theory, discourse analysis, and narrative theory to the multimodal content of a music video, the interpretive goal is to reveal how expressive materials work together to communicate social values and tell powerful human stories.

Notes

1. Earlier versions of this chapter were presented at the Art of Record Production conference in Philadelphia (November 2015) and the Ann Arbor Symposium (November 2015). The research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

2. Stuart Borthwick and Ron Moy, Popular Music Genres: An Introduction (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004); David Brackett, “Popular Music Genres: Aesthetics, Commerce and Identity,” in The SAGE Handbook of Popular Music, ed. Andy Bennett and Steve Waksman (London: SAGE, 2015), 189–206; Franco Fabbri, “A Theory of Musical Genres: Two Applications,” in Popular Music: Perspectives, ed. D. Horn and P. Tagg (Götebord: International Association of the Study of Popular Music, 1982), 52–81; John Frow, Genre, reprint ed. (London: Routledge, 2010); Fabian Holt, Genre in Popular Music (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).

3. Norman Fairclough, Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research (New York: Routledge, 2003); David Machin and Andrea Mayr, How to Do Critical Discourse Analysis: A Multimodal Introduction (London: SAGE, 2012); Ken Hyland and Brian Paltridge, Continuum Companion to Discourse Analysis (London: Bloomsbury, 2011); Teun Van Dijk, “Aims of Critical Discourse Analysis,” Japanese Discourse 1 (1995): 17–27.

4. Van Dijk, “Aims of Critical Discourse Analysis.”

5. Mieke Bal, Travelling Concepts in the Humanities: A Rough Guide (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009); David Herman, Basic Elements of Narrative (West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009).

6. Herman, Basic Elements, 9.

7. This framework expands on a number of cross-domain analytic models that I have developed in several publications, beginning with one in Burns, Lafrance, and Hawley (2008), which was designed only for the analysis of lyrics and music. Subsequently, in developing models for videos and live concert film, I have developed cross-domain models for lyrics, music, and images (Watson and Burns, “Subjective Perspectives”; Burns and Lafrance, “Gender, Sexuality and the Politics of Looking”) and for lyrics, music, staging, and film mediation (Burns and Watson, “Spectacle and Intimacy”). Although the crosscutting parameters are subject to change depending on the objectives of a given analysis, what remains constant in these studies is an interest in understanding how the expressive content in individual domains (e.g., word-music-image) intersects across those domains to create multimodal meanings. See Lori Burns, Marc Lafrance, and Laura Hawley, “Embodied Subjectivities in the Lyrical and Musical Expression of PJ Harvey and Björk,” Music Theory Online 14, no. 4 (2008); Lori Burns and Jada Watson, “Subjective Perspectives through Word, Image and Sound,” Journal of Music Sound and the Moving Image 4, no. 1 (2010): 3–37; Lori Burns and Jada Watson, “Spectacle and Intimacy in Live Concert Video: Lyrics, Music, Staging and Film Mediation in P!nk’s Funhouse Tour (2009),” Journal of Music, Sound and the Moving Image 7, no. 2 (2013): 108; Lori Burns and Marc Lafrance, “Gender, Sexuality and the Politics of Looking in Beyoncé’s ‘Video Phone’ (Featuring Lady Gaga),” in The Routledge Handbook to Gender and Sexuality in Popular Music, ed. Stan Hawkins (New York: Routledge, 2017), 102–16.

8. See David Machin, Introduction to Multimodal Analysis (New York: Bloomsbury, 2016); Carey Jewitt, The Routledge Handbook of Multimodal Analysis (New York: Routledge, 2013); G. Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen, Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication (London: Arnold, 2001).

9. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Pantheon, 1977); Clare O’Farrell, “What Is a ‘Regime of Truth’?” Foucault News, October 31, 2013, https://foucaultnews.com/2013/10/31/what-is-a-regime-of-truth-2013/.

10. Machin and Mayr, Critical Discourse Analysis, 9.

11. Frow, Genre, 81.

12. Ibid., 101.

13. Herman, Basic Elements, 106.

14. Ibid., 197n13.

15. Ibid., 112.

16. Frow, Genre, 75.

17. Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981).

18. Frow, Genre, 74.

19. Herman, Basic Elements, 75, 131.

20. Machin and Mayr, Critical Discourse Analysis, 52.

21. Frow, Genre, 63, 74–75.

22. Herman, Basic Elements, 9.

23. Machin and Mayr, Critical Discourse Analysis, 70–75.

24. In the field of popular music studies, this parameter connects to writings on persona and on musical voice. See Lori Burns, “Vocal Authority and Listener Engagement: Musical and Narrative Expressive Strategies in the Songs of Female Pop-Rock Artists, 1993–95,” in Sounding Out Pop, ed. John Covach and Mark Spicer (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010), 154–92; Allan Moore, “The Persona-Environment Relation in Recorded Song,” Music Theory Online 11, no. 4 (2005); Eric Clarke, Ways of Listening: An Ecological Approach to the Perception of Musical Meaning (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Simon Frith, Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998); and Philip Auslander, “Musical Persona: The Physical Performance of Popular Music,” in The Ashgate Companion to Popular Musicology, ed. Derek Scott (Abingdon: Ashgate, 2009), 303–16.

25. In the field of visual studies, it is important to mention here the work of Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Screen 16, no. 3 (1975): 6–18; bell hooks, “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators,” in Black Looks: Race and Representation (Boston: South End, 1992), 115–31; and Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright, Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).

26. Herman, Basic Elements, 133.

27. Machin and Mayr, Critical Discourse Analysis, 104–5.

28. Frow, Genre, 74–75.

29. Joe Bosso, “Steven Wilson Talks The Raven That Refused to Sing (and Other Stories),” Musicradar, February 7, 2013, http://www.musicradar.com, February 7, 2013, http://www.musicradar.com/news/guitars/steven-wilson-talks-the-raven-that-refused-to-sing-and-other-stories-570809.

30. Anil Prasad, “Steven Wilson: Past Presence,” Music without Borders Innerviews, 2013, http://www.innerviews.org/inner/wilson2.html.

31. See UG Team, “The Raven That Refused to Sing (and Other Stories),” UltimateGuitar, March 6, 2013, https://www.ultimate-guitar.com/reviews/compact_discs/steven_wilson/the_raven_that_refused_to_sing_and_other_stories/index.html; “20 Best Metal Albums of 2013,” Rolling Stone, December 11, 2013, http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/20-best-metal-albums-of-2013-20131211/steven-wilson-the-raven-refused-to-sing-and-other-stories-19691231; Bosso, “Steven Wilson Talks The Raven That Refused to Sing”; Dom Lawson, “Steven Wilson: The Raven That Refused to Sing—Review,” The Guardian, February 21, 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/feb/21/steven-wilson-raven-refused-review; Thom Jurek, “Steven Wilson: The Raven That Refused to Sing (and Other Stories)—Review,” AllMusic.com, accessed April 12, 2015, http://www.allmusic.com/album/the-raven-that-refused-to-sing-and-other-stories-mw0002475916; Jean-Frederic Vachon, “An Interview with Steven Wilson on His New Album, Success and Conceptual Rock,” Diary of a Music Addict, June 22, 2015, http://musicaddict.ca/2015/06/an-interview-with-steven-wilson-on-his-new-album-success-and-conceptual-rock/.

32. See Bosso, “Steven Wilson Talks The Raven That Refused to Sing.”

33. Vachon, “An Interview with Steven Wilson.”

34. Bosso, “Steven Wilson Talks The Raven That Refused to Sing.”

35. Chris Cannam, Christian Landone, and Mark Sandler, “Sonic Visualiser” (computer software, version 2.4.1., 2013), accessed October 28, 2016, http://www.sonicvisualiser.org/. The peak frequency settings in the program track the musical layers that emerge with the greatest intensity. Lower intensity is represented by green and yellow, while red represents the greatest levels of intensity. The individual layers are set out in logarithmic order so that space opens up easily between registral layers. As a tool, it is valuable for demonstrating the overall registral narrative of the song as well as the levels of intensity on individual lines within the texture.

36. The track has a dynamic range factor of fourteen, which is considered to offer a good level of contrast. Dynamic range is discussed in William Campbell, Rob Toulson, and Justin Paterson, “The Effect of Dynamic Range Compression on the Psychoacoustic Quality and Loudness of Commercial Music” (paper presented at the Internoise 2010 Conference, June 13–16, 2010, Lisbon, Portugal), http://repository.uwl.ac.uk/2068/1/IN2010%20The%20effect%20of%20dynamic%20range%20compression%20on%20the%20psychoacoustic%20quality%20and%20loudness%20of%20commercial%20music.pdf.

37. Wilson describes the specific guitar equipment in an interview with James Rotondi, “Steven Wilson—of Ravens, Revenants, and Creeping Things,” Premier Guitar, April 15, 2013, http://www.premierguitar.com/authors/560-james-rotondi.

38. The drawings are available in a 128-page, limited-edition hardback book that was released as part of the box set, deluxe edition. For more information on the release history of the album and the details of the box set (Kscope240), please visit https://www.discogs.com/Steven-Wilson-The-Raven-That-Refused-To-Sing-And-Other-Stories/release/4318160. Jess Cope describes her process of video composition in a behind-the-scenes video. See Owl House Studios, “Making Drive Home with Jess Cope,” Vimeo video, 11:41, posted by Owl House Studios, 2014, https://vimeo.com/80079268.

39. I would like to thank Craig Visser for his careful transcription of the guitar content of the song and Joshua Wynnyk for his thoughtful comments about the kit activities throughout the song.

Bibliography

• Auslander, Philip. “Musical Persona: The Physical Performance of Popular Music.” In The Ashgate Research Companion to Popular Musicology, edited by Derek Scott, 303–16. Abingdon: Ashgate, 2009.
• Bal, Mieke. Travelling Concepts in the Humanities: A Rough Guide. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002.
• Borthwick, Stuart, and Ron Moy. Popular Music Genres: An Introduction. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 2004.
• Bosso, Joe. “Steven Wilson Talks The Raven That Refused to Sing (and Other Stories).” Musicradar, February 7. http://www.musicradar.com/news/guitars/steven-wilson-talks-the-raven-that-refused-to-sing-and-other-stories-570809.
• Brackett, David. “Popular Music Genres: Aesthetics, Commerce and Identity.” In The SAGE Handbook of Popular Music, edited by Andy Bennett and Steve Waksman, 189–206. London: Sage, 2015.
• Burns, Lori. “Vocal Authority and Listener Engagement: Musical and Narrative Expressive Strategies in the Songs of Female Pop-Rock Artists, 1993–95.” In Sounding Out Pop, edited by John Covach and Mark Spicer, 154–92. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010.
• Burns, Lori, and Marc Lafrance. “Gender, Sexuality and the Politics of Looking in Beyoncé’s ‘Video Phone’ (Featuring Lady Gaga).” In The Routledge Handbook to Gender and Sexuality in Popular Music, edited by Stan Hawkins, 102–16. New York: Routledge, 2017.
• Burns, Lori, Marc Lafrance, and Laura Hawley. “Embodied Subjectivities in the Lyrical and Musical Expression of PJ Harvey and Björk.” Music Theory Online 14, no. 4 (2008). http://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.08.14.4/mto.08.14.4.burns_lafrance_hawley.html.
• Burns, Lori, and Jada Watson. “Spectacle and Intimacy in Live Concert Video: Lyrics, Music, Staging and Film Mediation in P!nk’s Funhouse Tour (2009).” Music, Sound and the Moving Image 7, no. 2 (2013): 103–40.
• ———. “Subjective Perspectives through Word, Image and Sound.” Journal of Music Sound and the Moving Image 4, no. 1 (2010): 3–37.
• Campbell, William, Rob Toulson, and Justin Paterson. “The Effect of Dynamic Range Compression on the Psychoacoustic Quality and Loudness of Commercial Music.” Paper presented at Internoise, Lisbon, Portugal, June 13–16, 2010. http://repository.uwl.ac.uk/2068/1/IN2010%20The%20effect%20of%20dynamic%20range%20compression%20on%20the%20psychoacoustic%20quality%20and%20loudness%20of%20commercial%20music.pdf.
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• Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: Pantheon Books, 1977.
• Frith, Simon. Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998.
• Frow, John. Genre. Reprint ed. London: Routledge, 2010.
• Herman, David. Basic Elements of Narrative. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.
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• “Making Drive Home with Jess Cope.” Owl House Studios. Vimeo video, 11:41. Posted November 22, 2013. https://vimeo.com/80079268.
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• Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen 16, no. 3 (1975): 6–18.
• O’Farrell, Clare. “What Is a ‘Regime of Truth’?” Foucault News, October 31, 2013. https://foucaultnews.com/2013/10/31/what-is-a-regime-of-truth-2013/.
• Prasad, Anil. “Steven Wilson: Past Presence.” Music without Borders Innerviews, 2013. http://www.innerviews.org/inner/wilson2.html.
• Rotondi, James. “Steven Wilson—of Ravens, Revenants, and Creeping Things.” Premier Guitar, April 15, 2013. http://www.premierguitar.com/authors/560-james-rotondi.
• Sturken, Marita, and Lisa Cartwright. Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
• “20 Best Metal Albums of 2013.” Rolling Stone, December 11, 2013. http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/20-best-metal-albums-of-2013-20131211/steven-wilson-the-raven-refused-to-sing-and-other-stories-19691231.
• UG Team. Review of The Raven That Refused to Sings (and Other Stories), by Steven Wilson. UltimateGuitar, March 6, 2013. https://www.ultimate-guitar.com/reviews/compact_discs/steven_wilson/the_raven_that_refused_to_sing_and_other_stories/index.html.
• Vachon, Jean-Frederic. “An Interview with Steven Wilson on His New Album, Success and Conceptual Rock.” Diary of a Music Addict, June 22, 2015. http://musicaddict.ca/2015/06/an-interview-with-steven-wilson-on-his-new-album-success-and-conceptual-rock/.
• Van Dijk, Teun. “Aims of Critical Discourse Analysis.” Japanese Discourse 1 (1995): 17–27.

Discography

• Wilson, Steven. The Raven That Refused to Sing (and Other Stories). Kscope. KSCOPE240, 2013, compact disc.