CONCEPTS, THEORIES, AND RELATED STUDIES
2.2 Part 2: The Process and Strategies in Creating Songs of the NCPO
2.2.3 The Concepts of the Process and Strategies of Creating Songs of the NCPO as a Communication Process
genres, i.e., Rock and Roll, Jazz, Blues, Heavy Metal, etc. In summary, they were developed from all types of music and possessed no fixed style or no particular style.
In other words, they were unlimited in adopting all kinds of music.
In short, a pop song or music is a kind of music containing various music genres: Folk, Blues, Rock, Heavy Metal, etc., without limits as it will be adapted to respond to the listeners‟ preference in each period. Once the listeners prefer to listen to it until it becomes predominant popularity in a society, it can be called as a pop song that means popularity among listeners.
Accordingly, the study of the background of its meaning and evolution helps to point out that pop music emphasizes young listeners with easy-to-listen, relaxing, and enjoyable rhythm, which is the style of the NCPO‟s patriotic songs aimed to reach these groups with this preferred style.
2.2.3 The Concepts of the Process and Strategies of Creating Songs of the
1) The melody needs to be sweet-sounding and pleasant to the ear, which means the song must be well composed, harmonized, and contain proper rhythm and lyric or content.
2) It contains proper meaning, especially the sense that satisfies listeners.
3) It has a good singer and good musician to transmit the beauty of the song to be perceived by listeners well and thoroughly. It means a singer must have a good voice while a musician must be skillful.
4) Before playing or singing to the listeners, it must be rehearsed, adjusted, and tuned in harmony, and by a united play. Self-Discipline is needed.
Therefore, it must be a performance created from unity.
5) The song must stimulate emotion and can serve society or individuals, i.e., patriotic songs should be compelling and make listeners feel vigorous, patriotic, and also have a passion for that song. The song must give tender love appeal and make listeners go along with the song.
Sugree Charoensuk (1996) proposed a model displaying the roles of all involved with the song.
Figure 2.1 Illustrates a Model with all Persons Involved with Songs
From Figure 2.1, Sugree Charoensuk (1996) explained a song‟s components as following:
1) Rhythm. Rhythm is a matter of slowness and quickness that influences physical Responses. Rhythms will stimulate the body to express something towards the pace to be heard, i.e. an excitement or a desire to dance upon hearing or to show some body language, etc. which means that an exciting rhythm can stimulate listeners‟ desire to dance, to tap along the rhythm, to move their feet, to nod their head, etc. However, a steady rhythm should make more valuable music. Too heavy rhythms can cause listeners uncontrollable emotions, overwhelming enjoyment, and aggressive fun.
2) Melody. Melody is a matter of low and high, short and long, and light and loud sound. It involves emotion. The beautiful melody should be smooth, lively or not too redundant, encouraging listeners to follow, lead to continuity, and end with enlightened feeling, comfort, and happiness.
3) Text. Text is a matter of meaning conveying, which may be storytelling, historical information or news, a revealing of inner feeling, or a meaning interpretation. A good text should contain useful content and meaning; induce love
Music/Song
Unity of a Song The Impact on Listeners
and Society Composer
Rhythm Melody Text Harmony
Form
Critic
Listener Interpreter
Tone Color
and understanding; encourage good deeds, and be filled with optimistic expectation.
The language used in a version should be polite, not rude, not sarcastic, and not obscene.
4) Harmony. Harmony is a synchronized or organized sound by combining sound in compliance with music rules. The right balance will buoy up the musical tone to be robust and enhance the beauty of a song. It should be a similar sound arrangement but also a balanced differentiation.
5) Tone Color. Tone color is a matter of sound quality affected by either a singer or musical Instrument. The quality tone color can be created by two factors: music‟s potential and an artist‟s competence. Music‟s potential means perfectness or completeness of musical instruments, i.e., having clear sound, etc. An artist‟s capability means an artist or a singer with good quality of voice, proper use of vocal apparatus, etc. Many proverbs are saying about the excellent view, such as clear as glass, soft as cotton, sound like dew, etc.
6) Form. It is a form or pattern of a song, i.e., having single or one passage, 2 or 3 Passages, etc. For general pop songs, their structure or form is not complicated. Mostly, artists will inherit styles of music or songs similarly in each period since pop songs are determined and limited by time and listeners, including the limited scope of interest. Still, most pop-song production will base on the questions like, “how to make it simple, to get balanced or reasonable production costs, to gain maximized profits, etc. All of these are factors affecting the creation of the form of a song.
7) Unity. No matter what kind of outcome of production will be, either in the form of the performance or in the form of tape cassettes or Compact Disc (CD), all from no 1-6 as the abovementioned need to be united.
8) Impact on Listeners and Society as a Whole. Some produced songs lose their aesthetic Value by ignoring the impact on listeners and society, i.e., introducing wrong values to listeners, especially children and teenagers.
From the concepts of songs‟ components and attributes in relations to a communication process, a song‟s components used in the creation of patriotic songs of THE NCPO can be displayed by applying a model of the communication process
of David K. Berlo as a framework. Berlo views a communication process as a two- way communication comprising five elements:
1) Sender 2) Receiver 3) Message 4) Channel
5) Context/Environment
Figure 2.2 Illustrates a Model of the Communication Process of David K. Berlo Source: Patchanee Cheyjunya, Tiranun Anawasiriwongse, and Metta Vivatananukul,
1995.
From the abovementioned communication elements of David K. Berlo, the researcher used them to apply in this study to explain a song‟s components and agents of music as follows:
Sender means a composer who transmits a story through his or her media in the form of a song. A composer may compose both lyrics or a text and melody, or only lyrics or melody. Besides, communication through a song, a composer needs to communicate with a singer or an artist, musicians, and a music arranger to make these involved people understand the concept of the song and can transmit a song as a composer wishes.
The message means a Song created by a composer. A song‟s fundamental components are rhythm, melody, text, and form.
Channel/Media means a person who conveys a song from a composer to listeners. Personal media can be divided into two kinds:
1) Interpreter: a person who interprets a song composed by a composer to transmit to listeners directly through vocal music, music, or via mass media through personal media, i.e., arranger, singer, musician, etc., who creates supplementary components into a song, i.e. an arranger creates harmony while a singer and musician creates tone color.
2) Publisher: a person who disseminates a song to listeners widely, i.e., radio, television, films, producers, and a distributor of records and tape cassettes.
The receiver means a Listener or the recipient of emotion, feeling, and narration from a song.
Context/Environment means social and cultural context, i.e., economics, society, technology, etc. in which a communication process through a song occurs, which affects the relations with people involved and songs‟ attribute
From combining all related concepts, the following model is proposed:
Figure 2.3 Illustrates a Model of a Song‟s Components and Agents of Music Agents of Music: 1) Composer 2) Interpreter 3) Publisher 4) Listener
Source: Kajohn Fyeted, 1997.
In summary, the song’s elements are 1) rhythm 2) melody 3) lyric 4) pattern or style 5) harmony and 6) vocal tone
The components of songs and agents of music can be applied to analyze the process and strategies of the creation of The NCPO‟s patriotic songs and to analyze the elements of each song in the studied series to see their roles in such products and strategies.
2.3 Part 3: Tactics in Transmission and Persuasion Used in The NCPO’s