Introductory notes to the Semiotics of Music - Philip Tagg's home page

38 P Tagg: Notes on Semiotics of Music Musematic analysis
The second reason for underlining the importance of interobjective procedures in the
semiotic analysis of music is that the establishment of structural recurrence leads to the
collection of a body of structurally similar musical works, some of which may share
common traits other than structural similarity. Such a collection of structurally similar
musical works is called Interobjective Comparison Material (IOCM for short) and the paramusical
similarities between them may be demonstrably related to particular words,
movements, moods, sensations, sounds, sociocultural functions, historical or ethnic locations,
etc., in fact to any of the ‘simultaneous paramusical forms of cultural expression’
listed above (p. 31). It is in these ways that interobjective procedures do not so
much avoid the vicious circle of musical ‘absolutism’ as use music’s self-referentiality
as a means of strengthening semiotic argumentation according to the conditions of musical
cognition rather than those of (verbal) language.
The initial stages of interobjective comparison are best carried out without too much verbalisation,
i.e. by racking your own musical memory for pieces containing sounds similar
to those in the music you are trying to analyse. The checklist of musical parameters
(p. 31) will help you focus on particular aspects of the sounds involved and may also
jog your musical memory to think of pieces containing a particular combination of
sounds: it could be a melodic turn of phrase, a particular type of instrumentation or
timbre, a particular vocal quality, a particular drum pattern at a particular tempo, a
chord progression, a particular type of spatial acoustics, etc., etc. After noting your own
intramusical associations, it is a good idea to rack other people’s tactile and gestural
memory for snippets they recognise and have played, sung, heard or danced to. Interobjective
comparison is in this sense an intersubjective process too, so that the larger
the number of people you ask for musical associations, the larger and more reliable
your IOCM will be.
As mentioned earlier, musicians’ memory of music is reinforced by the particular patterns
of gestural activity they use to produce particular sounds in a particular order and
manner. This aspect of musician memory can be used to great advantage in the collection
of IOCM. (If you are not a musician, perhaps the easiest way to understand this
type of tactile or gestural memory is, without thinking, to dial a familiar phone number
or to enter your personal ATM code in the palm of your hand. 55 If you have dialled the
phone number or withdrawn money often enough, your hand and fingers will remember
a shape and a gesture corresponding to the correct sequence of keys without your
having to recite the numbers in the right order.)
If you encourage musicians to play or sing along to an extract of music whose symbolic
value you are trying to establish and then ask them if they have played or sung anything
resembling that extract in any other piece of music, the gestural activity involved
in playing or singing along may then prompt them to recall a similar passage for which
a similar musical-gestural pattern was required in a different musical context. If you are
fortunate, the musicians may even identify other pieces of music in which that similar
musical gesture occurs. This procedure of asking musicians for their musical associations
should increase the size and structural viability of your IOCM.
The next stage of interobjective comparison entails checking whether the various pieces
of IOCM you have collected bear more than structural resemblance to each other. This
process involves looking for instances of paramusical expression (see p. 31, ff.) that different
pieces within your IOCM may share in common. Do any of the pieces have similar
titles? Are they associated with similar types of narrative or choreography? Do they
have similar lyrics or voice-overs? Do they appeal to similar types of audience? Are
55. UK readers please note that by ‘ATM’ (automatic teller machine) is meant a cashpoint and by ‘personal
code’ a PIN (personal identity number).