Coding OK Computer: Categorization and Characterization of Disruptive Harmonic and Rhythmic Events in Rock Music.

Abstract

The band Radiohead, while popular and highly successful, is known for writing “difficult” or “challenging” music. After making a name for themselves with their grunge-inspired debut, Pablo Honey (1993), and similarly mainstream-friendly sophomore album, The Bends (1995), Radiohead began a trend of experimentation, irony, and genre-shifting with 1997’s OK Computer. OK Computer, and most of the music Radiohead has written since, is characterized by musical events and techniques that challenge the normative expectations for rock songs, disrupting or ironicizing the listening experience. In this dissertation I develop a method of analysis that involves establishing a set of norms or expectations appropriate for the music in question and measuring the music against this set, making note of significant conformity and departure. This approach is ideal for the music of Radiohead, the interest and difficulty of which is due to the disruptive musical language the band employs. This approach also has potential for use in the music-theory classroom, as it does not at its heart rely on advanced theoretical concepts and analytical techniques, and is adaptable to a wide range of music, popular and otherwise. In Chapter 1, I will introduce the music and my approach. In Chapters 2–3, I will analyze the songs on OK Computer in relation to the listener’s expectations and in the context of Radiohead’s musical language. In Chapter 4, I will discuss the ways in which the events and techniques isolated in Chapters 2–3 evolve over the course of Radiohead’s following albums. Chapter 5 includes my closing remarks. My thesis is twofold: first, that Radiohead’s music is characterized by, among other things, a marked interaction between normative expectation and the actual realization of Radiohead’s songs (and the experience of their listener); secondly, that these characterizations, and further analytical observations of significant depth, can be isolated and identified through my approach, which does not require the student-analyst to have had extensive background in conventional music theory (beyond the knowledge of fundamental concepts and terminology, and a familiarity with the given idiom or style).

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