Jack Anderson, University of Richmond Class of 2021, Summer 2020
Note on attribution and privacy:
Regardless of jail policy, we believe that the artists themselves are the full and sole owners of their intellectual property as well as the recordings themselves. All references to specific tracks on this site are fully anonymized and excerpted, even when residents indicated on their consent and release forms that they could be named in the archive. They remain anonymized, and our examples restricted to very short excerpts, because incarcerated individuals do not have the freedom to truly give voluntary consent and because we do not own or have the right to freely distribute their compositions. All audio clips are restricted to short excerpts.
If you are the creator of one of the tracks mentioned on the site, and would like to have references removed, to be fully attributed, and/or to publish your work here in its entirety, please email amcgraw@richmond.edu.
Abstract
This paper explores musical characteristics of tracks from an archive created by residents of the Richmond City Jail. Specifically, I will focus on “flow” and timbral aspects of the selected tracks. I will also explore differences in flow between tracks representing carceral and non-carceral perspectives. I will also compare timbral characteristics in archive tracks representing different musical subgenres, specifically mid-80s to early 90s boom bap and 2010s trap music.
Introduction
In 2013, a music program was started at the Richmond City Jail to provide residents with opportunities to create, record, and perform their own music. This was an outgrowth of Open Minds, a program that is sponsored by Virginia Commonwealth University and the Richmond City Sheriff’s Office and allows residents of the jail to participate in university classes. Over the past seven years, residents involved with this music program have produced over 800 tracks. The growing number of tracks are housed in an archive curated by Dr. Andrew McGraw. The music includes a variety of genres and subgenres ranging from Hip-Hop to Country. Transcriptions of several of these tracks will be archived at the American Folklife Center, the music division of the Library of Congress. This paper will focus on specific musical characteristics in a number of these archived tracks. Specific characteristics include timbre, a term used to describe a sound’s tone quality and color, and flow, the elements (i.e. placement of accented syllables, placement of rhymed syllables) of a rapper’s delivery of the text.
Differences in Flow: Inside vs. Outside the Carceral Space
The residents at the jail rap from different perspectives, some rapping from “outside” the carceral space and others from “inside.” “Outside”, in this case, means the rappers are describing their life outside the jail while rapping from the “inside” speaks to their experiences within the jail. While these particular tracks have both lyrical perspective differences, they also differ in how their flow works with the backing track. While the lyrical differences can be heard and rationally realized, differences in flow must be analyzed.
Kyle Adams defines flow as “rhythmical and articulative features of a rapper’s delivery of the lyrics.”[1] More specifically, flow includes some other techniques such as the placement of rhymed syllables as well as the placement of accented syllables. Accent or emphasis can be given to a word or syllable by changes in dynamics (usually making the syllable louder than the syllables around it), by pitch inflection (making the syllable higher or lower than the syllables around it), or by a combination of those changes.
This section will focus on two eight-bar verses taken from the tracks “PAVE” and “RUN IT BACK.” “PAVE” here serves as an example of the “outside space” while “RUN IT BACK” will represent the “inside space.” The example from “PAVE” comes from the second verse, performed by “Sky” and from the first verse of “RUN IT BACK.” I have outlined the metrical, articulative, and rhyme placement differences between the two pieces in Examples 1a and 1b. Each row of text represents one measure and is divided into sixteen separate subdivisions (these are equivalent to 16th notes in standard Western notation) to show where each syllable lies within the measure. I have also color-coded prominent rhymes to show where they lie within the measure. Accented syllables are represented in bold text.
In this verse from “PAVE”, we see a clearly linear representation of how the syllables, accented (emphasized) syllables, and rhymes match up with particular beats within each measure. We can see and hear a consistent trend in how each of the accented syllables line up perfectly with beats 1 and 3 in each measure. Along with one of the accented syllables in each line falling on beat 3, this is also where the most prominent rhymes in the verse happen. If we were to split this verse in half, we could see how they are almost parallel, as both the 3rd and 7th measures start the pickup to the next bar on the eleventh sixteenth note, while all of the other pickups begin on the 4th beat of each measure. Every syllable in this verse lines up perfectly with a sixteenth note hi-hat in the backing track.
[1] Adams, Kyle. “On the Metrical Techniques of Flow in Rap Music.” Music Theory Online 15, no. 5 (October 1, 2009). https://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.09.15.5/mto.09.15.5.adams.php.
In contrast, the first verse of “RUN IT BACK” shows a lack of rhyme and articulative consistency. I have indicated microtiming by moving the syllable to the end of the box. The term microtiming here refers to timing offset from the rational subdivisions implied by Western music notations. This is when a syllable does not line up exactly with either a down beat or a beat subdivision in the measure. This concept is especially prominent in the sixth bar of the verse. A rapper would not necessarily ‘use’ this concept of microtiming, but rather it is a result of how their flow works with the backing track. We can see that the first emphasized syllable in the sixth bar does not fall on the downbeat but rather after the downbeat but before the 2nd sixteenth note. It is difficult to hear this while the track is playing at full speed, but it is important to the flow of the track, nonetheless.
Timbral Characteristics
This section explores the timbral characteristics of several tracks from the archive. The ANSI (American National Standards Institute) defines timbre as the “attribute of auditory sensation which enables a listener to judge that two nonidentical sounds, similarly presented and having the same loudness and pitch, are dissimilar.”[1] Pratt and Dock characterize timbre as an “attribute of auditory sensation whereby a listener can judge that two sounds are dissimilar using any criteria other than pitch, loudness or duration.”[2] Consider the sound of a cello: If one knows what a cello sounds like, no matter what note or how loudly that note is being played, the sound is distinguishable from any other instrument. For example, a trombone and a cello play in similar ranges and can play at similar dynamic levels, but one would not confuse the sound of the two instruments. While the majority of these tracks share similar synthesized instrumentation (i.e. hi hat, kick drum, snare drum, keyboard, bass, pad), they all display different timbral attributes that cannot be easily represented in Western notation. I will be focusing on the timbral characteristics of the hi-hat in this section, using as examples the tracks, “RUN IT BACK”, “PAVE”, and “Sky don’t be mad.”
What I’ve discovered from listening to these tracks and looking at their different spectrograms is that one must approach these instruments from many different pitch ranges, that is to say frequencies. The hi-hat in particular employs a wide range of frequencies on the spectrogram. Something I find interesting about the hi-hat is that, with its wide range of frequencies, it can be more difficult for older listeners to hear the higher frequencies of its sound. In fact, some of these hi-hats go above the range of any human’s hearing. We can see this in spectrogram images of “PAVE” and “RUN IT BACK” In “RUN IT BACK”, the spectrogram shows a particular intensity in the hi-hat between 9000 at 9500hz. Notice how all of the other frequencies throughout the hi-hat decay before reaching the next hi-hat, but that particularly intense hi-hat frequency remains prominent even after the initial attack. Compare this with the hi-hat in “PAVE”, which I think sounds similar to the one “RUN IT BACK.” Despite their auditory similarities, these two hi-hats’ visual differences are noticeable on the spectrogram. Notice how the attack of the hi-hat in “PAVE” does not have any noticeable intensities within the spectrogram.
[1] ANSI. American National Standard Psychoacoustical Terminology. New York: American National Standards Institute, 1986.
[2] Quoted in “Definitions of Timbre (by G. Sandel).” Accessed August 16, 2020. http://acousticslab.org/psychoacoustics/PMFiles/Timbre.htm#:~:text=%22The%20timbre%20of%20a%20complex,extent%20by%20its%20overtone%20structure.
What “PAVE” and “RUN IT BACK” do have in common is the “emptiness” (relative to hi-hat spectra in other sub-genres) between two hi-hat attacks, which indicates the time it takes for a hi-hat sound to decay. Another track from the archive that demonstrates this type of hi-hat is “Sky dont be mad.” This spectral “emptiness” is most commonly seen in the ‘trap’ subgenre. Trap music, which stemmed from the 90s and became more popular in the late 2000s and 2010s, is a subgenre of rap that most commonly uses synthesized instrumentals and focuses heavily on tuned kick drums and complicated hi-hat rhythms. Roddy Ricch’s 2019 track “The Box” and Drake’s 2018 track “Nonstop” serve as examples of this trap subgenre. We can see that these two songs also share this characteristic of spectral “emptiness” between two hi-hat attacks. Compare these tracks considered to be a part of the “boom bap” subgenre with The Notorious B.I.G.’s 1994 track “Who Shot Ya?” and Mob Deep’s 1995 track “Give Up the Goods (Just Step).” “Boom bap” is a subgenre that came out of the mid-80s and focuses heavily on both kick and snare drums. Notice how in these two “boom bap” tracks, the space between two hi-hat attacks is filled with the decay of the hi-hat.
Compare these tracks considered to be a part of the “boom bap” subgenre with The Notorious B.I.G.’s 1994 track “Who Shot Ya?” and Mob Deep’s 1995 track “Give Up the Goods (Just Step).” “Boom bap” is a subgenre that came out of the mid-80s and focuses heavily on both kick and snare drums. Notice how in these two “boom bap” tracks the space between two hi-hat attacks is filled with the decay of the hi-hat.
Conclusion
The lyrics in “PAVE” represent a perspective from outside the carceral space; the lyrics in “RUN IT BACK” represent a perspective from inside the carceral
Rhythmic and articulative differences in flow exist between songs being represented “inside” and “outside” the carceral space seen using examples “PAVE” and “RUN IT BACK.” Notable differences can be observed in the spectrogram for hi-hats between different hip hop subgenres (i.e. trap and boom-bap.) Investigating musical characteristics, such as timbre and flow, as well as experiencing or analyzing this music in other ways, are worthwhile exercises.
[1] Philip Ewell, “Beethoven Was an Above Average Composer—Let’s Leave It at That,” Music Theory’s White Racial Frame, April 24, 2020, https://musictheoryswhiteracialframe.wordpress.com/2020/04/24/beethoven-was-an-above-average-composer-lets-leave-it-at-that/#:~:text=Beethoven%20was%20undoubtedly%20an%20above.
References
[1] Adams, Kyle. “On the Metrical Techniques of Flow in Rap Music.” Music Theory Online 15, no. 5 (October 1, 2009). https://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.09.15.5/mto.09.15.5.adams.php.
[2] ANSI. American National Standard Psychoacoustical Terminology. New York: American National Standards Institute, 1986.
[3] Quoted in “Definitions of Timbre (by G. Sandel).” Accessed August 16, 2020. http://acousticslab.org/psychoacoustics/PMFiles/Timbre.htm#:~:text=%22The%20timbre%20of%20a%20complex,extent%20by%20its%20overtone%20structure.
[4] Philip Ewell, “Beethoven Was an Above Average Composer—Let’s Leave It at That,” Music Theory’s White Racial Frame, April 24, 2020.