ABSTRACT
The bulk of popular-music works are songs. While popular songs can sometimes be analyzed in the context of entire albums or old-fashioned LP sides, longer-range musical connections in general are more fruitfully pursued within the context of genre and style. The fundamental technological divide between popular and classical works reflects not only a general difference in compositional method and ontological status but also a logistical dissimilarity in their aesthetic analysis, namely the engagement of sound versus score. Pitch transcription can be a challenge vertically, as suggested by the "A Hard Day's Night" chord, or horizontally, in the form of "blue notes" and other intonationally unclear pitches. Since the advent of rhythm'n'blues and rock'n'roll in the 1950s, popular music has tended to feature a clear backbeat, a regular emphasis played on a snare drum that is typically interpreted by experienced listeners as beats 2 and 4 within a group of four.
