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1996
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 TAGMEMIC PRINCIPLES AND MUSIC ANALYSIS

Thomas L. Avery

Summer Institute of Linguistics

1. ETHNOMUSICOLOGICAL BORROWING FROM LINGUISTICS.

1.1. SEARCH FOR A UNIVERSAL ANALYTICAL PARADIGM. Ethnomusicologists have

made numerous attempts to devise analytical systems which would have at
least wide if not universal applicability to music systems around the world.
Many ethnomusicologists have despaired of finding an all-encompassing
framework for the understanding of music styles (e.g. Blum in Myers
1992:165).

1.2. TWO ESSENTIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF A UNIVERSAL PARADIGM. Such a para-

digm, first, should enable us to understand a previously unanalyzed alien
music system (as opposed to one that can only help us understand our own
music systemi.e. that presupposes insider knowledge of the system). It must
provide a framework for effective discovery procedures, a paradigm that is
heuristically useful. Second, it should allow us to understand a music system
in its own terms, and not impose an external order which skews or obfuscates
inherent patterns. It must not be rigid, but flexible so that systemic structures
can emerge.

1.3. LINGUISTICS AS A PARADIGMATIC SOURCE. Some ethnomusicologists have

looked to linguistics as a potential source for an adequate framework for the
analysis of musical sound. Steven Feld (1974) correctly points out the dangers
of thoughtlessly borrowing concepts and terminology from linguistics for use
in musical description and analysis. Some of these problems, however, are not
so much due to the differences between music and human speech, but result
from a borrowing of linguistic terms without a thorough understanding of the
concepts behind them. Mantle Hoods misapplication of the linguistic con-
cepts of phonemic and phonetic in his otherwise excellent book, The Ethno-
musicologist, is a troubling example of Felds concern (Hood 1971:5461).

1.4. TAGMEMICS AS AN ANALYTICAL PARADIGM. Despite legitimate objections to

borrowing from linguistics there are two reasons why I believe tagmemics to
be useful. First, tagmemics is not only a theory for the study of language but
550 Thomas L. Avery

one which is based on general principles of human behavior and therefore

should be useful for studying many types of behavior, including music.
Second, tagmemics has been shown to be a powerful heuristic tool. This lat-
ter quality bodes well for the frequent ethnomusicological task of analyzing
music systems which are foreign to the researcher.
It is important to note that I am not a linguist and therefore am not conver-
sant in competing linguistic theories. I seek here to illustrate the usefulness of
tagmemics for music but do not address the question of whether or not
tagmemics is the best linguistic paradigm from which to borrow for musical
studies.

1.5. PARALLELS OF LANGUAGE AND MUSIC. While it is possible to overemphasize

the similarities of speech and music, significant parallels do exist. Foremost of
these is the fact that both language and music are semiotic systems which de-
pend upon the auditory channel for transmission. Tagmemics success in the
description of human languages gives hope for similar felicitous results in the
description of human musics. By placing both music and language in the
same theoretical framework, essential differences between the two systems
may be clarified.

1.6. APPLICATIONS OF TAGMEMICS TO MUSIC. The most important and extensive

application of tagmemic theory to musical analysis is the work of Vida
Chenoweth in numerous publications, but particularly in The Usarufas and
their Music (1979). My first training in ethnomusicology was under Dr. Cheno-
weth in a course on music analysis using a tagmemic approach. Second only
to Chenoweth in the application of tagmemic principles to music is the work
of Simha Arom as exemplified in his African Polyphony and Polyrhythm (1991).
The emic-etic distinction is the element of tagmemics which has received
the most attention. The International Institute for Traditional Music pub-
lished an issue of The World of Music with the theme Emics and Etics in
Ethnomusicology (Baumann 1983).
The purpose of this paper is to reaffirm the use of tagmemic principles by
these scholars and to illustrate how tagmemics deals with issues of concern to
ethnomusicologists in general. Tagmemics organizes and validates existing
fruitful lines of ethnomusicological analysis; it challenges biased or otherwise
flawed approaches; and it suggests techniques for dealing with phenomena
which up until now have been troublesome to analyze. I would like to suggest
the utilization of tagmemics as an over-arching theoretical framework for all
aspects of musical analysis at all hierarchical levels, from the largest imagin-
able scale (whole repertories and even the totality of human musical activity)
to the smallest unsegmentable sub-note structures. Amazingly enough, (to
me, at least) tagmemics can handle all this quite well.
 Tagmemic principles and music analysis 551

2. MUSICAL TAGMEMICS

2.1. RESTATEMENT OF TAGMEMIC PRINCIPLES IN MUSICAL TERMS. There will be no

attempt here to outline tagmemics as either a general or a linguistic theory
before applying it to music. Rather, I will simply attempt to illustrate the basic
principles of the theory in terms of music.
The presentation of tagmemics as a general theory is found in Dr. Ken
Pikes Language in Relation to a Unified Theory of the Structure of Human Behavior
(1960) and those desiring a full exposition should refer to that work. For con-
venience, this presentation references tagmemic principles as outlined in the
introduction to Ken and Evelyn Pikes textbook, Grammatical Analysis, entitled
Universals in the Structure of Human Behavior (Pike & Pike 1982:16).

2.2. FOUR CONCEPTS OF TAGMEMICS. Pike and Pikes explanation of the under-
lying principles of tagmemic theory is organized under four general concepts:
Unit, Hierarchy, Context, and Perspective.

2.2.1. UNIT. Purposive behavior comes in chunks or constituents (ibid:

2). Units of music have long been recognized by theorists. Notes, phrases, and
movements are all examples of units of the musical stream. Tagmemics chal-
lenges us to make explicit the means by which musical units are determined.
Chenoweth, for example, suggests five principle criteria for the determination
of phrases in melody: recognition of terminal points, recognition of structural
pattern, recognition by song text, recognition by textural contrast, and recog-
nition by accent (1972:65ff).
Under the concept of unit there are four points: Contrastive-
Identificational Features, Variation, and Distribution.

2.2.1.1. CONTRASTIVE-IDENTIFICATIONAL FEATURES. In order to find and identify

any unit, one must find in it features (or elements, characteristics, compo-
nents) which differentiate it from all others. Once this has been done, the
same features can be used to recognize that unit when it occurs in other con-
texts (Pike and Pike 1982:2). For example, the contrastive-identificational
features of the two themes in the classical sonata form are the melodic, har-
monic, and rhythmic characteristics of each. These two themes are presented
in the first section, called the Exposition. The characteristics distinguish the
two themes from each other, and also from other material (bridges, codas and
so forth) in the piece. One of the primary interests of the second section of
the sonata, called the Development, is precisely the manipulation and
modification of these distinctive features, and the tension that is produced by
the resulting ambiguities.
552 Thomas L. Avery

Non-musical features may be definitive and must be explored in conjunc-

tion with elements of music sound. For example, Merriam cites a case from
the Solomon Islands and another from Mangareva in which new songs are
created by putting new texts to previously existing tunes (1964:181184).
Features function as contrastive within the musical system in which they are
found; different features are contrastive in different systems.

2.2.1.2. VARIATION. It is impossible for a human being to repeat any perfor-

mance exactly. If two musical performances (or parts thereof) are structurally
the same within the system, they are emically the same. Differences between
two musical performances which are emically equivalent are said to be etic dif-
ferences.
The degree of pitch variability tolerated (i.e., perceived as structurally
equivalent) varies in different musical traditions. George Herzog recognized
this problem in his comparison of Pima and Pueblo musical styles:

The tone itself, as a concept abstracted from experience and in turn as

an object of experience, does not exist for the primitive, whose analyti-
cal and technical interest in music, in our sense, is as a rule very slight.
The tones themselves are subject to more variation than ours, depending
upon the musical, textual and emotional context; especially since instru-
ments with fixed pitches, which would standardize musical pitch and in-
tonation, do not play an important role. Consequently, in musical
transcription of such melodies a note does not stand for an objective
unit, an ideally constant tone, but for a functional unit, a mere average
value around which the variations cluster. (Herzog 1936:286, 287)

Unfortunately, Herzog does not give the exact procedures he used to de-
termine the functional units of tone other than the hint that averaging was
somehow involved. Most transcriptions are published without even any men-
tion of the kind or range of variation which they represent.
Bruno Nettl is one of the first ethnomusicologists to suggest the use of lin-
guistic theory in musical analysis and in as early as 1958 discussed the possi-
bility of phonemic transcription. He continued this discussion later but felt
that little progress had been made toward developing a phonemic transcrip-
tion of music (1964:104, 105).
In 1967, John Blacking seemed to be striving toward some kind of an emic
representation in his transcriptions of Venda childrens songs. Unfortunately,
he does not state precisely the process involved in arriving at the generalized
norm.
 Tagmemic principles and music analysis 553

The musical transcriptions represent the generalized norm of the chil-

drens songs, and are derived from detailed transcriptions which in-
cluded the characteristics of every performance, which varied greatly
according to different performers. No excuse need be made for the
omission of these details, as this is a study of the childrens songs and not
of the numerous ways in which Venda children sing the same songs. All
common rhythmic and melodic variations are noted in the transcrip-
tions, but it must be appreciated that no two performers are likely to sing
exactly the same intervals on every occasion: even the same singer may
produce in one performance intervals of a major second that differ by a
number of cents. (Blacking 1967:35)

Among tagmemicists, Chenoweth has tackled the problem of emic tran-

scription in the most systematic and detailed way to date (1972).
Unlike Mantle Hood, who, as mentioned above, mistakenly equated
phonemic with less detailed and phonetic with more detailed, Bruno Nettl
understood properly these linguistic concepts. He noted the similarity of
phonemic and less-detailed transcriptions, but he always kept the distinction
clear (1964:105).
The difficulties involved in applying the emic-etic distinction to music high-
light an important essential difference between music and speech.

It should be possible to move from transcription of all musical phenom-

ena perceived by the transcriber to another transcription which gives
only the essentials. But one element of language which is a great aid to
the linguist is absent here: meaning, in the lexical sense. For in transcrib-
ing music, one can usually do little to persuade an informant to distin-
guish between (to him) correct and incorrect renditions of songs,
phrases or intervals. Nevertheless linguists can sometimes deduce the
phonemic system without recourse to meaning; they can identify parti-
cles of speech from their structure and distinction alone. Similar proce-
dures ought to work for music, at least to a degree (Nettl 1964:104,
105).

Vida Chenoweths approach establishes emic contrast in melody without

resort to referential meaning. Her work is a significant step toward making
emic determinations about the smaller musical units. She examines all simi-
lar etic melodic intervals to determine whether or not they contrast (in which
case they are considered emically different). If they never contrast but do fluc-
tuate they are considered etic variants of one emic unit (Chenoweth
1972:5357). I have used a similar method to try to determine emic units in
the scales (tonal inventories) of Mamaind vocal music (Avery 1977).
554 Thomas L. Avery

We must comment that Nettl is not accurate in his claim that music has no
referential meaning. There are many examples of music which do refer to
specific extra-musical items or concepts. In my opinion, the real difference
between music and speech in this respect is that speech is usually more con-
cise than music. For more on this see the section below on the referential hi-
erarchy.

2.2.1.3. DISTRIBUTION. No unit of purposive behavior can be identified or rec-

ognized in complete abstraction from other units; it exists only in reference
to them (Pike and Pike 1982:2).

2.2.1.3.1. DISTRIBUTION IN CLASS. A unit is a member of a filler class (a set) of

items which may appropriately occur (be distributed) in the same slot in a par-
ticular structure; each member of the class has the same function. Two units
substituting for one another in such a slot are analogous or may be said to be
in the same proportion in their relation to the containing structure (ibid:2).
The relationship between members of a filler class is usually described as par-
adigmatic. This can be illustrated by an example from common practice har-
mony. The filler class of subdominant harmony includes the members of the
chord built on the fourth degree in root position (IV) and the chord built
on the second degree in second inversion (ii6). One slot which either of
these members might occupy is that immediately preceding the dominant
harmony at a cadence.

2.2.1.3.2. DISTRIBUTION IN SEQUENCE. Within any one extensive behavioral

event, some items occur before others. The units, therefore, occur in a se-
quence. Certain characteristic sequences are essential to rational behavior and
enter the description of every unit (ibid:3). This aspect has been emphasized
to such a degree in music study that it does not need to be illustrated. It in-
cludes such concepts as melodic and harmonic progression, the ordering of
movements or large sections of a composition, and even the appropriate
order of pieces to be performed at a recital or concert

2.2.1.3.3. DISTRIBUTION IN SYSTEM. Behavior is not merely a set of units or-

dered one after another; always, in the background, lies some kind of general
system within which the unit operates (ibid:3). For example, the significance
of the construction of any particular sonata can only be properly understood
in light of the ideal system of sonata form which is the conceptual background
of those who compose, perform and hear it.

2.2.2. HIERARCHY. The second major underlying principle of tagmemic theory

is that of the Part-Whole Hierarchy. Hierarchy is seen when small units are
 Tagmemic principles and music analysis 555

found within larger ones, and these in turn in still larger units... Note that
part-whole relations are an essential characteristic of each of the three major
tagmemic hierarchies. These part-whole relations are not to be confused with
the specific-generic relations which may be called taxonomic hierarchies, of which
there are many (ibid.:3). Three simultaneous but not structurally equivalent
hierarchies are recognized in tagmemics: Phonological, Referential and
Grammatical.

2.2.2.1. PHONOLOGICAL HIERARCHY. The relation of musical sounds to their

containing (including) units such as intervals, motifs, phrases, periods, and
sections comprises the phonological hierarchy.
Phonological rules operate on all levels of the hierarchy from, for example,
in Western European music of the Common Practice Period, the lower-level
rule governing the proper resolution of the leading-tone to high-level rules
concerning proper key relationships between symphony movements.
Researchers which concentrate on the structure of music sound are primarily
engaged in the formulation of phonological rules.
The value of the concept of hierarchy is that it clarifies how large a chunk
of the sound stream you are dealing with at any point in the analysis, and
how that chunk relates to larger and smaller chunks. This is vital to keep in
mind since meaningful variation is significant on a specific hierarchical
level. Figure 1, a phonological hierarchy of an Azorean cantoria (evening of
singing), illustrates an analysis of a musical event which lasts several hours. A
cantoria involves a series of desafios (song duels) between two singers. (Four
singers typically participate, pairing off in different combinations for the
four desafios presented during the course of the evening.) The duelists
argue back and forth in sung rhymed quatrains. Each song duel may last 20
minutes or more. (For more on the desafio see Avery 1984.) Due to space
limitations, only selected nuclear elements are shown.

2.2.2.2. REFERENTIAL HIERARCHY. Units of meaning combine to form larger

units which in turn combine to form still larger units. The referential hierar-
chy is composed of larger and smaller chunks of referential meaning. By mu-
sical meaning I am referring to the ability of music to bring to mind
extra-musical ideas, emotions or associations. The size of minimum segments
with referential meaning varies from culture to culture. Programmatic music,
of course, has extra-musical referents. The doctrine of affections of the late
baroque, employed specific musical structures to refer to specific emotional
states. Film music also communicates emotions and is so powerful that the
same footage with different music can have a totally different emotional im-
pact on the audience. The Hindu ragas are well-known for their extra-musical
referents.
556 Thomas L. Avery
Cantoria

P[erformance] 1 I[ntermission] p2 i2 p3 i3 p4

Spoken Intro[duction] Desafio Applause

Instr[umental] Intro Sung Portion Inst Closing/Applause

Quatrains (Sextains: Part 4 only)

Singer a Singer b Singer a Singer b Singer a etc.

Str[ophe] 1 (Instr Inter[lude] 1)

Phrase [1] R[est] Phr 2 r2 Phr 3 Phr 4

N[ote] 1 n2 n3 n4 n5 n6 n7 (n n)
Figure 1: Part-Whole Phonological Hierarchy of an Azorean
Cantoria (simplified). Bold items are nuclear, others are marginal.
Items in parenthesis are optional. Bracketed elements are full
spellings of abreviations. Items numbered n indicate an indetermi-
nate number occuring.

Note that I do not use the term musical meaning in the same sense as
Meyer (1956), who employs it to refer to structural expectations in music.
The important role of structural expectations is more analogous to poetics
than semantics in linguistics. Vital differences between music and language
can only be understood if by meaning we mean the same thing for music
and language.
For example, musical meaning is much less concise than meaning in
speech. It is not uncommon for a whole piece (or even a whole stylistic cate-
gory) to convey only a single meaning, frequently the social context in which
that piece (or style) is usually heard. In other words, the minimum musical
unit which can be identified to have an extra-musical referent usually occu-
pies a larger space in real time than most words in human speech. I suspect
that even an apparent exception to this rule, the Tepehua Thought Songs as
described by Boils (1967) may not, in fact, be so exceptional in their con-
 Tagmemic principles and music analysis 557

ciseness. Though Tepehua is not a tonal language, the Tepehua do use a type
of whistle speech the pitches of which reproduce sentence intonation (Cowan
1972:695). One wonders if the presence of whistle speech among the
Tepehua is a factor which makes it possible for Tepehua thought song to dis-
play such unusual conciseness and such speech-like structures.
There are at least three factors which make music less concise than speech
in the transmission of meaning: greater redundancy, more time needed to re-
alize distinctive features, and, possibly, greater syntagmatic length.
Most music systems require considerable redundancy in order to conform
to norms of style. This may be in the form of the exact repetition of a melody,
motif, or phrase. Alternatively, it may be some type of variation on the origi-
nal musical material. There are many methods of variation including, to name
a few, augmentation, diminution, fragmentation, elaboration, ornamenta-
tion, modulation, inversion, and reharmonization. Of course not all music sys-
tems use all of these resources, but the fact remains that both exact and varied
repetition are a part of every music system that I have analyzed.
Unlike every-day utilitarian speech, music is valued for its form per se as
much or more than the information that it transmits. In this way, music is
much more like poetic speech which also is frequently more redundant than
every-day verbal communication.
Music makes up for its low information load by transmitting its limited mes-
sage with great power and richness, often by evoking vivid memories of the so-
cial occasion in which it usually occurs.
A second reason why speech is more concise than music is the difference
in the amount of time taken for the realization of the features of each. In
speech we find that consonants are pronounced in a very short amount of
time, especially the stops. Consonants like fricatives, and vowels, take slightly
longer to realize. Distinct pitch in music takes relatively longer to establish, as
does rhythm which is dependent upon relative lengths of time. Song is a good
illustration of the relative speed at which verbal and musical utterances can be
made. Only rarely does vocal music proceed at anywhere near the speed of
the song text if spoken. Recitativo secco approaches this.
I suspect that the principle of syntagmatic length also has a direct relation
to this issue. It seems that speech has a relatively larger number of elements
in paradigmatic contrast available for each of the positions than music, and
therefore can produce a greater number of contrasting higher level units
while still using fewer positions.
The fact that we can sometimes recognize a whole melody (and therefore
the meaning associated with it) from a very brief musical portion would per-
haps argue against syntagmatic length as a necessary factor in the long-wind-
edness of musical communication. If I hum the first six notes of the birthday
song most people will recognize it as belonging to this important rite of pas-
558 Thomas L. Avery

sage and may even think of party hats and cakes with candles. In the actual oc-
casion of a birthday party, however, the whole song, with all its redundancies,
must be sung or something will be wrong. Also, if I changed one of those
first six notes, (e.g., by lowering the final note a half step), it would not
change the meaning from birthday to christening or anything else. My per-
formance would either be taken a flawed attempt to sing the birthday song, or
carry no meaning at all since the new phrase would not be recognizable.
The bottom line is that, for many if not most music systems, the phono-
logical hierarchy extends to a much lower level than the referential hierarchy.
This makes it much more difficult to determine small phonological emic units
and it has implications for the nature of the grammatical hierarchy.

2.2.2.3. GRAMMATICAL HIERARCHY. When types of specific, dictionary (lexical)

items or sequences of items serve in parts of larger units made up of such
items, the relation of the included parts to types of including patterns (and,
through the including whole, to each other) makes up a grammatical hierarchy
(Pike and Pike 1982:4). Note the reference to lexical items in the definition
of the grammatical hierarchy. This use of the term grammar is different
from many writers who have referred to the grammar of music when dealing
with what I would call the phonological structure of music. This is the most
important divergence of the approach suggested here with Chenoweths
work. She defines the grammar of music in terms of sound structure: the se-
rial arrangement of intervals and their functional relationships to each other
and to the tonal center (1972:83). No extra-musical referent is involved. In
the system presented here, these relations would be considered phonological.
Grammatical function can be more easily illustrated than explained. This
is probably because it has not often been considered and no standard gram-
matical terminology (such as noun, verb, preposition) has been established
for music. The solo organ music in a church service may illustrate grammati-
cal function. Frequently there is a prelude at the beginning, an offertory
somewhere in the middle, and a postlude at the end of a service. Each of these
serves a particular grammatical function in this social event. The precise
phonological characteristics do not determine the grammatical function of
these units. (It is true that the postlude is frequently louder than a prelude or
offertory. But a too-loud offertory, though perhaps not appreciated by mem-
bers of the congregation, will not cause them to think that the service is over.)
Neither does the precise referential meaning of the music played determine
its grammatical function. The very same piece may conceivably be played for
prelude, offertory, or postlude. Nor is it necessary that an offertory piece be
based upon a hymn which exhorts people to give money to God. Thus, the
grammatical function can be viewed separately from its phonological or ref-
erential characteristics.
 Tagmemic principles and music analysis 559

A level on one of the three hierarchies may or may not have a correspond-
ing level on one of the others, but because of the close relationship of the
grammatical hierarchy to the referential hierarchy, the chunks in the gram-
matical can be no smaller that the chunks in referential. Thus we may note
that, in general, grammatical units of music are likely to occupy more real-
time than grammatical units in speech (in the same way that referential units
occupy more real-time as previously discussed).

2.2.3. CONTEXT. The analyst must, for some purposes, turn his focus away
from specific units-as-if-they-were-isolatable (or almost isolatable) and focus
instead upon the units-as-necessarily-in-context, since no unit is findable or
definable except as in relation to context (Pike and Pike 1982:4). The con-
text is not limited by size. It may be as large as the culture as a whole or as
small as the interval which precedes and the interval which follows a particu-
lar interval. There are three concepts which fall under the category of con-
text: form-meaning composite, change via a shared element, and universe of
discourse.
Space does not allow me to develop here this important concept in musi-
cal terms. It is an issue that has been of increasing interest to ethnomusicolo-
gists over the last twenty years (see Stone 1982). I know of no one, however,
who has dealt with it from an overtly tagmemic perspective. Perhaps the felic-
itous shift in ethnomusicology away from the view of music as artifact to music
as meaningful only in context would have taken place sooner had more eth-
nomusicologists read all of Ken Pike (1960) and not fixated on the emic/etic
distinction!

2.2.4. PERSPECTIVE. Tagmemic theory offers complementary approaches which

allow the researcher to analyze a phenomenon from different viewpoints thus
increasing the chances of observing patterns inherent in the data. The three
perspectives are the static, the dynamic and the relational.

2.2.4.1. STATIC (PARTICLE) PERSPECTIVE. The observer can look at the world as
made up of things (particles, elements, items). In some sense this is treated
as the basic, or normal perspective (Pike & Pike 1982:5). This perspective has
been adequately illustrated in the above discussion concerning the three tag-
memic hierarchies. It is important and basic to the theory. However, the pre-
cise point in a structure where one unit stops and another begins is not always
possible to determine. We refer to this characteristic as the indeterminacy of seg-
mentation. Nevertheless, for many purposes, segmentation is necessary and in
those instances may have to be made arbitrarily (ibid:26). To avoid serious
distortions in cases of segmentation indeterminacy, an alternative perspective
by be employed, the dynamic.
560 Thomas L. Avery

2.2.4.2. DYNAMIC (WAVE) PERSPECTIVE. The observer can look at a series of dis-
crete events and treat the whole as a single dynamic moving entity and any
single unit can be viewed dynamically, as having beginning (initial margin),
middle (nucleus), and end (final margin). In such an instance the unit is
viewed as a wave two adjacent units may merge or overlap, leaving indetermi-
nate borders, such that the two units cannot be segmented without doing vio-
lence to the data (ibid:5).
Although the particle perspective in ethnomusicological analysis has been
very productive, one of the reasons for its prevalence may be not only its use-
fulness but also the widespread use of Western music notation. As Seeger has
pointed out, Western notation involves a mixture of symbolic and graphic fea-
tures (Seeger 1958). One of the symbolic features is the note head, which
primarily functions to indicate proportional time but also, because of its form,
tends to fix the note onto one pitch during the course of its duration.
Graphic notations (often produced by machines such as the melograph) are
brutally frank in their reminder to those of us who use modified Western no-
tation for music transcription, that successive pitches are not as distinct as
they might seem to be, that they often merge in dips and glides. Of course,
there are a number of ways such slides can be approximated using Western
notation by the use of special symbols. But when one is actually transcribing
music, especially that which contains a great deal of sliding, one is forced to
make a decision as to where on the glide to put the note head. After this de-
cision is made, then (in most cases) the pitch on which the note head is writ-
ten is considered part of the tonal stuff of the music while the glide is usually
considered as some kind of ornamental feature or musical articulation.
Ignoring, for the sake of brevity, the implication of the term ornamental,
one must question the propriety of making a distinction that might not be
justified by the data just because our notation forces us to. On the other hand,
most of us do not know what to do with all those slipping and sliding curves
on the melogram (Merriam 1964:59). Because the most common traditional
analytical techniques are based totally on a particle perspective, it is much eas-
ier to force every melodic manifestation into a real or imagined note for ex-
pediency. Unfortunately, the notes are rarely as concrete in reality as they
seem to be on paper.
The melogram in figure 2 traces the gliding fundamental pitch of the be-
ginning of a Mamaind (Mato Grosso, Brazil) hunting song. Using traditional
Western notation to transcribe this would seriously distort the wave-like inter-
nal structure of many of the notes.
It is in dealing with machine-produced music graphs that the wave per-
spective can be especially useful. Boundary indeterminacies need not be
glossed over. They can be recognized for what they are and dealt with.
 Tagmemic principles and music analysis 561

Figure 2. First part of a Mamaind Hunting Song. Wavy line is the

changing fundamental pitch. Center line indicates 150 Hz. Bar
graph at bottom indicates loudness (amplitude).

2.2.4.3. RELATIONAL (FIELD) PERSPECTIVE. The observer can eliminate from the
center of his attention the form or content or extension of the units as such,
and focus instead on the relationships between them. The unit, in this case,
contracts to a point in a network (or field) of relationships (Pike & Pike
1982:5). To my knowledge this aspect of tagmemics has not been applied to
music, but I believe there is significant potential.
One such application of the field perspective would be for analyzing the so-
cial and musical interactions between members of an instrumental ensemble.
In the Azorean desafio, briefly mentioned above, a complex communication
network is established. There are the two dueling singers, usually two accom-
panists, and the audience members. The singers communicate with each
other, each responding to the others comments, but always for the benefit of
the audience. The accompanists must attend carefully to the singers in order
to follow the rubato tempo and listen for melodic clues by which a singer may
signal the use of an alternative chord progression which is occasionally used.
The singers may also directly address the audience. The audience, for its part,
communicates its admiration (or disappointment) for the performance by ap-
plause or laughter. The structure of these relationships can best be under-
stood from a field perspective.

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