ah well; actualy i am fascinated by hooks. I am not adverse to commercialism with taste. A great hook is a joy to behold. It's an 'art' thing i think, functionality & form. My dad was very interested in that topic so perhaps it rubbed off a tad? He was a supporter (or whatever the term is) of 'public art' - art which had functionality & accessibility within society/the community. The proposition being that 'art' once commonly had a tangible societal role rather than being a series of intellectual proposition.
initialy that would include 'jobbing' artists who documented via portraits of people, dogs, horses, houses etc. But also societal art as a vehicle thru which society celebrated or worshipped or just plain 'partied'. So i guess this would include stuff like Las Fallas in Valencia province, or the mexican festival of the dead, and even public monuments again serving to collectivise the experience or emotions of the society or community, Anywhere that local art was a functioning vehicle and accessible as opposed to being hi-brow, intellectual and inaccessible to the man in the street
In that respect i am fascinated by music and it's role, particularly dance music which captures the essense of public art probably more than any other genre, in that it primarily serves a societal function above any & all intellectual purpose (if any exists at all)
dance music has existed since caveman times, it's always been with us because it serves society/community; from worship to preparation for war, the celebration of collective communal experiences and just straight-ahead collective partying!
thats what i like about the genre. above everything else it is functional, and collapses without that primary functionality - it can be as clever as you like intellectualy, but if it doesnt 'get people up on the dancefloor' it's failed in it's primary role.
Hooks are similar i think, and thats why i love em. Hooks paint a backdrop to collective experience of times and eras; they define and act as containers for societal experiences in my opinion. We only have to hear a popular hook from history to conjour up images of that era, and hooks within cultural genres define emotional collective experience for different groups within society.
know what i mean? big hit hooks ... ok so say you play a popular glenn miller hook to people; instantly they think of the era, the imagery, mood, style, fashion etc of an era, even if they have zero interest in that era or knowledge of that era.
Play Abba hooks and we are whisked to the 70's etc (whether we like abba or not). Hooks serve that purpose in layers; starting at the top with global pop hits everyone knows due to sheer saturation, and working down thru genres which serve as vehicles for collective remebrance of social experience for social groups and ethnic communities etc. Of course there are also regional variations; every regional culture has it's own collection of hooks unique to their culture which binds that society to a collective experience distrinctly different to other locations.
it's fascinating to me anyway. You know i am always quoting william orbit on this.. when asked how he creates tracks he said he uses 'recognisable icons'; familiar objects around which he then builds new sounds, melodies, patterns. hooks etc etc. Every genre has the possibility to employ this technique & again it is defined by genre, regional & cultural variation
I mean just play an 80's 'sleng-teng' bassline to people and instantly it defines a collective experience for a social group within western society, to the point of stimulating strong emotional collective experiences, but is meaningless outside of the social group who functioned within the context of that bassline.
crafting a hook isnt always as easy as it seems as well, and hook techniques change from genre to genre.
i love all the various techniques of hook creation and the way we can store them as a kinda arsenal of techniques we take on board and can draw on for future creative purpose.
Like say "Something else" by Eddie Cochran.. i really really rate Eddie Cochran anyway btw, he wrote some phenomenal songs at such a young age, but Something Else has that technique of the hook working towards a stop where the final key 'hook' phrase is delivered in isolation, and absolutely this technique can be used and IS used in dance music... the main hook plays and the last bar is dropped out leaving just the main synth pattern in isolation before the main verse riff comes back in.
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I had an idea for a script once. It's basically Jaws except when the guys in the boat are going after Jaws, they look around and there's an even bigger Jaws. The guys have to team up with Jaws to get Bigger Jaws.... I call it... Big Jaws!!!