I learned the terms “beginning-accented melody” and “end-accented melody” from The Musical Language of Rock by David Temperley. The terms mean what they sound like: a melodic phrase whose accent is either at its beginning or its end. This seems like the definition of a purely academic theory concept, but it turns out that end-accentedness is a good predictor of whether I will like a song or not.
Here’s a little ditty I wrote that explains the concept:
Beginning-Accented and End-Accented
Beginning-accented phrases don’t have to have their accent right on the very first syllable, there might be a little pickup. That accent will fall on or near a hypermetrical downbeat. End-accented phrases start after a rest on the hypermetrical downbeat, and their accent will fall on or slightly before the next hypermetrical downbeat. If this is too jargon-y for you, it should make more sense if you consider some real songs.
“Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees is beginning-accented all the way through. Here’s my transcription.
Well, you can tell by the way I use my walk…
Music loud and women warm…
And now it’s all right, it’s okay…
But we can try to understand…
Whether you’re a brother or whether you’re a mother…
Feel the city breakin’ and everybody shakin’…
Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin’ alive…
Stayin’ aliii-iii-iii-iii-iii-iii-iii-ive…
“Life on Mars?” by David Bowie is end-accented most of the way through. Here’s my chart.
[rest] It’s a God-awful small affair[rest] to the girl with the mousy hair[rest] but her mummy is yelling no[rest] and her daddy has told her to go
“Billie Jean” by Michael Jackson combines beginning- and end-accented phrases. Here’s my chart. The verse is end-accented:
[rest] Uh, she was more like a beauty queen from a movie scene
[rest] I said, don’t mind, but what do you mean, I am the one
The prechorus is beginning-accented:
People always told me, be careful of what you do
Don’t go around breakin’ young girls’ hearts
The chorus is end-accented:
[rest] uh, Billie Jean is not my lover
[rest] she’s just a girl who claims that I am the one
Why are end-accented melodies so cool? David Temperley has a theory: “[A] strong beat is a natural point of stability, and it is satisfying for a melodic phrase to end at such a point: end-accented groups have a goal-oriented quality that beginning-accented groups do not.” That makes sense, but I also like the tension you get from that empty space on the hypermetrical downbeat where you were expecting a big obvious note to occur. It’s the same thing that makes unexpected silence so effective in drum patterns, like the one drop in reggae.
Why are some tunes so much more memorable and enjoyable than others? This is mostly an unanswered question, but for my own tastes at least, the presence or absence of end-accented phrases has a lot of explanatory power. In class the other day, we were talking about “Mamma Mia” by ABBA. We noticed that all of the phrases in the verse and prechorus are beginning-accented.
I’ve been cheated by you…
Look at me now…
Just one look and I can hear a bell ring…
However, the chorus is end-accented.
[rest] Mamma mia, here I go agai-ain…
[rest] Yes, I’ve been broken-hearted…
[rest] Mamma mia, now I really kno-ow…
It is no coincidence at all that the chorus is the part of the song that really slaps. It’s also no coincidence that it’s the part that stays with you.
It would be too simple to say “beginning-accented phrases bad, end-accented phrases good.” But as I look at more songs through this lens, the pattern holds steadily. Consider “Stayin’ Alive” again. It’s a banger, no doubt about it, but that’s mostly because of the production, that guitar riff, the unearthly timbre of Barry Gibbs’ falsetto. If you were to take all that away from the song and just sing it with a strummed acoustic guitar, it wouldn’t have the magic. “Life on Mars?”, on the other hand, works fine without David Bowie’s voice or Mick Ronson’s string arrangement and guitar solos.
The starting and ending point of phrases is only one aspect of melody out of many. It’s a high-dimensional problem. But it’s nice to have a conceptual handle on one aspect of it.