ABSTRACT
With knowledge of the shape and content of voice, Chapter 5 analyses the absence of sound in relation to stop time and pause in song interaction. Stop time – a centuries-old technique that is prominent in Chuck Berry’s music – is a vocal alternant. Stop time and pauses are affected by breathing control, tempo, missed beats, and stressed and accented beats. Initial instances in The Beatles’ songs have a structural function that gives rise to aural tension and release: ‘Love me do’, ‘Any time at all’, ‘There’s a place’, and ‘She loves you’, and their cover of The Shirelles’ ‘Baby it’s you’.
The Beatles develop their use of stop time into a narrative marker in ‘Wait’, ‘I want to tell you’, ‘I need you’, and ‘Long, long, long’, and their cover of Larry Williams’ ‘Slow down’. Other non-lexical sounds, such as ‘ow’, ‘ah’, ‘woo’, and ‘ooo’, combine qualifiers and alternants in song. Vocal alternants are shown to be affected by intensity and duration, which is evaluated in terms of Danielsen’s ‘beat bins’, a term coined by Eric Clarke, and rhythmic tolerance. The results demonstrate three uses of time: explicit reference to time, stop time, and time-defying moments.
