Recent perceptual research addresses how timbre can function as a structuring force in music (McAdams, 2019), and scholars are developing new methods for timbral analysis. Yet, relatively few studies apply such methods in order to critically evaluate ways in which timbre structures musical experience in particular pieces, limiting our understanding of how timbre functions in common practice. Here, I use spectrogram analysis, functional layer analysis (Moore, 2012; Lavengood, 2020), timbral motivic analysis (Reymore, 2021), and orchestral grouping effects (McAdams, Goodchild, & Soden, 2022) to investigate timbre as a primary parameter in the 2019 hyperpop album 1000 gecs by the duo 100 gecs. I argue that complex orchestration is the principal mechanism for organizing musical experience and generating meaning in the album. Yet, even as timbre affords enormous constructive possibilities musically, it also deconstructs culturally- and historically-embedded conceptions of genre, gender, and the artist-audience relationship.

I begin with two readings to demonstrate how timbre fuels formal processes. In “ringtone” (Figure 1), shifting orchestration both reinforces formal sections and scaffolds nested phrase structures. Timbral motives interact with the lyrical narrative, first reinforcing and then undermining the text. “I Need Help Immediately” is an eccentric timbral pastiche, mostly without key or meter; yet, formal analysis guided by principles of auditory scene analysis reveals a surprisingly regular pattern of mid- and large-level hierarchical structures (Fig. 2). I then discuss how timbre deconstructs socially-circumscribed distinctions within genre, gender, and artist-audience relationships through the unapologetic integration of diverse timbral signifiers, electronic manipulations of the voice, and open-source release of the album stems.

This work demonstrates how timbre can be critical for structure and meaning in a contemporary popular music practice, aiming to maximize the potential of timbrally-focused analysis by assimilating acoustic, perceptual, music theoretical, and musicological methods. Such integrative approaches can be productively adapted in analysis of music across styles and historical periods.

Despite having won a Pulitzer Prize, David Lang–a founding member of Bang on a Can along with Julia Wolfe and Michael Gordon–is a composer whose works seldom appear in the analytical literature. This paper undertakes an analysis of David Lang's I fought the law (1998), a post-minimalist process piece written for small ensemble. In his paper discussing issues with formalist analysis of process music--a form of minimalism in which musical surfaces are determined by underlying, regular processes--Ian Quinn (2016) writes, "if we are to get anywhere, we will need to fantasize." In this paper, I undertake such an analytical fantasy by incorporating the processes described in my formalist analysis into a hermeneutic analysis, layering different interpretive considerations into one another. These considerations include the musical processes themselves, the work's paratextual and intertextual relationships, and readings of power dynamics expressed by musical agents, performers, the composer, and listeners. This hermeneutic process, while idiosyncratic, draws on methodologies and practices described by Monahan (2013), Gopinath (2005), and Hepokoski (2014). The result is an interpretive reading of I fought the law as engendering layers of oppressive relationships, which I relate to a police state enacting violence on its citizens--a relationship suggested by the work's title and para-/intertexts. Through this analytical interpretation, I hope to demonstrate a viable analytical potential for Quinn's call to fantasy as well as draw attention moments of the analyst's agnecy in the creation of such a fantasy.