Peer-Reviewed Publications

Hannan, Calder. Forthcoming. “Temporal Parallax in Metal.” Accepted to Music Theory Spectrum.

Time, in music, may seem dramatically different to different listeners. This article collects instances of this observation in existing literature under the umbrella term “temporal parallax,” and analyzes examples from metal in which metric cardinality and/or phase, tempo, isochrony, and durational proportion may seem irreconcilably different depending on how one approaches the music, with the ultimate aim of both concretizing and pluralizing music theory’s “listener.”

Hannan, Calder. Forthcoming. “Guitar Techniques as Timbre, Form, and Speed.” In The Routledge Handbook of Metal Composition, edited by Lori Burns and Ciro Scotto.

Guitar techniques are foundational to metal because of the ways they implicate timbre, form, and rhythm. Academic work on metal has tended to bracket out instrumental techniques when discussing musical structure. The chapter draws on the author’s own experiences as a metal guitarist alongside analysis and research in music cognition to show that guitar techniques are integral to metal composition and inseparable from the genre’s central aesthetic concerns.

The chapter begins with an overview of the guitar techniques that are essential—and practically unique—to metal. This overview doubles as an exploration of the ways that technique has a reciprocal relationship with timbre, in that guitar distortion makes many of these techniques possible, and techniques in turn give access to novel timbres. Second, an analysis of Origin’s “The Aftermath” shows that techniques are compositionally generative and demonstrates how examining the ways they combine into “technique molecules” can lead to novel insights about form. Third, an analysis of Spawn of Possession’s “Scorched” is used to deconstruct the idea of speed in metal. Techniques contribute both to objective speed, by allowing guitarists to play notes more ergonomically and therefore more quickly, as well as to subjective speed—how fast the music feels.

Hannan, Calder. 2022. “Structural Density and Clarity, Technical Death Metal, and Anomalous’s “Ohmnivalent”.” Music Theory Online. 28 (1). https://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.22.28.1/mto.22.28.1.hannan.html

In this article I introduce the concepts of structural density and structural clarity, which describe how difficult or easy a given piece of music is to parse, and present an analysis of the song “Ohmnivalent,” by the technical death metal band Anomalous, as a case study. Because the song moves from high structural density at its start to structural clarity at its end, it allows for a nuanced discussion of the factors that contribute to these effects. I argue, drawing on the work of Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff, Dora Hanninen, David Huron, and Lawrence Zbikowski, that repetition, clear cues for segmentation, schemas, and clear categorical belonging all contribute to structural clarity, while their lack or ambivalence contribute to structural density. While my article focuses on the specifics of a single, extraordinarily complex technical death metal track, I close by suggesting that the concepts of structural density and structural clarity have wider potential applicability as ways of thinking about the experience of musical form.

Hannan, Calder. 2021. “Ghostly Longing: Tonality as Grieving in Bell Witch’s Mirror Reaper.” Metal Music Studies 7(2): 277-297. https://doi.org/10.1386/mms_00049_1.

Mirror Reaper, by the funeral doom metal band Bell Witch, is an immense 83-minute composition in which tonal organization plays an essential role in enhancing and creating meaning. Little analytical attention has been paid to doom metal; armed with a flexible conception of theories of tonal harmony and my full transcription of the album, I show that slow, repetitive music and rich engagement with musical details are not mutually exclusive. I present an analysis in which the tonal drama centers around slowly shifting bass support for a persistent melody F natural. At first, this F appears as a dissonant ninth over an Eb, then as a hollow fifth above a Bb, and finally as a consonant major third above Db. I understand this progression as a sonic analogue for the grieving process that, according to interviews with the band, is the album’s main focus.

Hannan, Calder. 2018. “Difficulty as Heaviness: Links between Rhythmic Difficulty and Perceived Heaviness in the Music of Meshuggah and The Dillinger Escape Plan.” Metal Music Studies 4 (3): 433–58. https://doi.org/10.1386/mms.4.3.433_1.

In this article I examine the nature and meaning of two different types of rhythmic difficulty – extreme metric malleability and non-metricism – in examples taken from the music of Meshuggah and The Dillinger Escape Plan, respectively. While the two bands have different rhythmic styles that create distinct rhythmic difficul- ties, I claim that in both examples the rhythmic difficulty enhances ‘heaviness’ through various enactments of sonic metaphors for size, weight, density, power, transgression and seriousness, characterizing the creation of rhythmic difficulty as simultaneously a transgressive practice that deforms metal’s technical boundaries and one that fundamentally reaffirms metal’s most central aesthetic.

Conference Papers

“Temporal Parallax in Metal.” Invited Colloquium talk at the Hartt School of the University of Hartford. 10 April 2024.

Time, in music, may seem dramatically different to different listeners. This article collects instances of this observation in existing literature under the umbrella term “temporal parallax,” and analyzes examples from metal in which metric cardinality and/or phase, tempo, isochrony, and durational proportion may seem irreconcilably different depending on how one approaches the music, with the ultimate aim of both concretizing and pluralizing music theory’s “listener.”

“Contextual Counting: An Insider Approach to Metal Analysis.” At Society for Music Theory Annual Meeting. Denver. 9 November 2023.

Earlier version also presented at Rhythm in Music Since 1900. McGill University, Montreal. 24 September 2023.

Metal’s rhythmic experimentation has proven generative for theories of musical time. However, a conspicuous set of voices is all but absent from the music theoretical literature on metal: with a few exceptions, the perspectives of metal musicians have been kept separate from formal music analysis. In this paper, I argue not only that responsible music theoretical exploration of metal should take into account the perspectives of its practitioners, but that techniques developed by metal insiders in writing and learning complex music can offer access to greater analytical efficiency and deeper musical insight.

Drawing on my own interviews with practitioners of complex metal, I explore an insider technique that I call cluster counting, which offers significant analytical leverage. Most musicians are familiar with both divisive counting, which construes rhythms in relation to a larger, steady beat, and additive counting, which construes rhythms in relation to a fast underlying pulse. Cluster counting does neither; instead, it reveals patterns by assigning numbers to salient musical details in contextually specific but internally consistent ways.

I point out that while cluster counting may seem to be a conceptual or visual technique, it is in fact an aural one, in that the relation between the numbers and the sounds of a passage will only be clear if you already know the passage well. Relatedly, cluster counting schemes are not deterministic: the same string of numbers may refer to dramatically different rhythmic surfaces. Both of these facts may seem to detract from the usefulness of cluster counting in formal music theory. However, I argue that they are precisely the technique’s strengths—their flexibility allows them to sidestep the obfuscations and inefficiencies of standard notation when representing this music, and their aural contingency and contextual nature reflect the predominantly sonic and embodied nature of metal composition and performance.

“A Different Type of Formal Function: Return as Form in Progressive Metal.” Poster Presentation at SMT/AMS/SEM joint meeting. New Orleans. 11 November 2022.

Progressive metal—a broad and diverse subgenre that mixes the characteristic sonic power of metal with self-consciously complex compositional techniques and virtuosic performances—is marked perhaps most conspicuously by the extreme length and intricacy of its song structures. These long songs overflow with densely packed, heterogeneous sections, and, as I will argue in this paper, can present exciting challenges for existing theories of form.

Several scholars have imported aspects of the formenlehre tradition to the study of form in metal (notably Hudson 2021), according to which individual songs are analyzed in reference to a formal archetype or default (such as Hudson’s “compound AABA form”), and song sections are analyzed in reference to “functions” (“bridge function,” “chorus function,” etc.). While these frameworks provide analytical traction in much metal, I argue that they have limited utility in understanding progressive metal’s extended, idiosyncratic formal designs.

Inspired by this analytical friction and by a desire to center the experiences of progressive metal fans (after Lowe 2007), I suggest two methodological innovations. First, I foreground the perceptual salience and attendant form-making importance of the return of previously heard material, by which I mean everything from short guitar gestures to entire song sections, and everything from contiguous repetitions of the same riff to album-spanning recapitulations of themes. Second, I analyze these moments, and patterns in their arrangement, according to a different interpretation of formal “function” than that operative in formenlehre-inspired theories: rather than asking what “function” a song section plays in an abstract formal logic, I ask what “function” an instance of musical recurrence has for fans: that is, what experiences and activities it makes possible. I believe that “cherrypicking” moments in which material recurs, and grounding my analysis of these moments in the experiences and practices of fans, presents an analytically practical and perceptually realistic strategy for making sense of progressive metal songs’ abundances of musical material.

“Diegetic Sound? Re-Thinking Musical Narrative through Experimental Hip Hop.” At Society for Music Theory Annual Meeting. Online. 7 November 2021.

Earlier version also presented at CUNY Graduate Students in Music Conference. Online. 19 March, 2021.

Fans of the experimental hip hop trio clipping. (sic) laud the intricately crafted sonic narratives that play out over the course of their songs and albums—so much so that their album Splendor and Misery received a nomination as a Dramatic Presentation for the prestigious Hugo Science Fiction Awards (2017 Hugo Awards). In this paper, I argue that existing approaches to narrative in music scholarship (e.g. Almén 2008) are insufficient for understanding the heritage and effects of clipping.’s musical narratives because of the group’s frequent use of production that includes diegetic sounds—that is, sounds that seem to occur in the world of the story portrayed by the lyrics. Instead, I theorize their use of narrative by putting ecological theories of musical perception (Clarke 2005) into conversation with the traditions of radio drama (Hand and Traynor 2011, Verma 2012), film music and foley, (Stilwell 2007, Slowik 2013), and hip hop sketch tracks (Rytlewski 2012). I then pivot from theory to analysis, offering close readings of two songs that create strange worlds by setting up, and then obfuscating or problematizing, relations between sound and narrative, and between non-diegetic and diegetic sounds. In both “Get Up” and “Run For Your Life,” sounds that function diegetically at the outset become increasingly untethered from narrative “reality.” After discussing the mechanics of these unsettling effects, I conclude by suggesting that these uncanny sound worlds problematize the easy, voyeuristic way in which listeners of this music might fetishize the violent stories being told.

“Circular Telos: Hearing Form Through Motivic Return in Between the Buried and Me’s Parallax II.” At Progect “Toward a Contemporary Understanding of Progressive Rock and Metal.” Online. 26 May 2021.

In this paper, I explore the details of motivic reuse in the 2012 album Parallax II: Future Sequence by the American progressive metal band Between the Buried and Me. The album is long, complex, and overflowing with material, and this paper seeks to begin to engage with ways of hearing form on the scale of individual riffs, across songs, and over the course of the whole album (and, in one case, beyond). I begin with the centrality of the recapitulation of material to this music, survey how this happens in the album, and posit that recognizing and listening for the return of previously presented material (from short guitar gestures to full song sections), across various scales of time, is fundamental to hearing this music. Taking Gregory McCandless’s idea of the ABAC Additive Metrical Process as a starting point, I then explore two more specific trends in how musical materials are reused. First, I theorize a more general way of thinking about these constructions, based on rotations through cycles of material with static and variable parts, which is ubiquitous in the album and progressive metal more broadly and extends the concept’s usefulness. Second, I look at a more specific case, what I call the ABABB additive formal process, and its loose extension, the concept of expanding repetition. My broader claim is that material on this album, when it returns, tends to be expanded in some way.

“Video’s Saving and Destabilizing Power for Music Theory.” At Society for Music Analysis’s Teaching Music Theory in the Digital Age. Online. 26 March, 2021.

What can video—particularly analytical visualizations of various kinds synchronized with sound—contribute to music theory pedagogy and research? And why is its use so rare in institutional academic settings? Inspired by and extending the work of visual studies scholar Gunther Kress (2014), especially as Dora Hanninen (2018) has leveraged his work to discuss (static) music theory diagrams, I explore the ways in which video has communicative potential different from that of words or static diagrams. I ultimately argue that the net effect of video for music theory is one of democratization, both because it allows complex, canonical concepts (about form, rhythm, and harmony) to be communicated without recourse to notation or technical language, and because it allows insightful treatment of topics not normally considered to be central concerns for music theory (such as analysis of non-canonical music, performance, and elusive musical aesthetic effects). While there has been an explosion of interest in music theory videos on YouTube in the last decade, the medium has been slow to catch on in academia. I close by arguing that this lag is not entirely explained by the challenges directly associated with video. Instead, it points to a self-perpetuating institutional de-incentivization of video creation, which, I suggest, is partially rooted in the threat posed by video’s ability to erode traditional disciplinary boundaries.

“Tempo, but for Whom? Rhythmic Parallax in Car Bomb’s ‘Blackened Battery.’” At Society for Music Theory Annual Meeting. Online. 15 November, 2020.

The music of the math metal band Car Bomb gives rise to multiple, often incommensurate rhythmic realities for different listeners. I call this phenomenon “rhythmic parallax.” Even basic rhythmic features—such as pulse and tactus—are often radically different depending on listeners’ purposes. I explore four perspectives on various moments from the song “Blackened Battery,” those of (1) a casual listener, (2) the band members while composing, (3) the band members while performing, and (4) a transcriber using software that measures the recording against clock time. Examining the different interpretations that arise from these perspectives provides a novel method for rhythmic analysis, one that cuts across habitual boundaries between metric analysis, microtiming analysis, and discussion of embodiment. I suggest that an analysis that focuses on rhythmic parallax reflects the difficulties, complexities, and apparent contradictions of music temporality.

Theses

Hannan, Calder. 2024. “Tactus Transformations in Metal.” PhD Dissertation. Columbia University. Advisor: Mariusz Kozak.

Hannan, Calder. 2019. “Hearing Form in Progressive Metal: Motivic Return, Genre Borrowing, and Sonata Form in Between the Buried and Me’s Parallax II.” Masters Thesis, New York, NY: Columbia University.

Hannan, Calder. 2017. “Discordant Systems: Uses and Meanings of Rhythmic Difficulty in the Music of Meshuggah and Related Extreme and Progressive Metal Bands.” Undergraduate Thesis, Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia.

Other

The Bridge with John Lamberton podcast interview. 5 March 2022.

Lamniformes Radio podcast interview with Ian Cory. 26 July 2021.

What, Like It’s Hard? Podcast paper presentation and interview. 26 April, 2020.

Xpol Podcast interview with Baptiste Wattiez. 24 January, 2020.

“Disconnected Layers of Meter in Inter Arma’s ‘The Atavist’s Meridian.’” Metal In Theory (blog). June 29, 2019. http://metalintheory.com/disconnected-layers-of-meter-in-inter-armas-the-atavists-meridian/.

“Metrical Complexity in Car Bomb’s Lights Out.” Metal In Theory (blog). November 17, 2017. http://metalintheory.com/car-bomb-lights-out/.

See also my YouTube channel, Metal Music Theory.