The formal analysis with accompanying transcriptions will be drawn from his career at Motown Records, with mention of his session work for other labels, illustrating both the development of his style and explaining how his recorded output virtually created the model for contemporary electric bass guitar performance. Biographical information and excerpted transcriptions of his bass lines will inform my analysis of Jamerson’s musical style and evolution. My objective with this thesis is to investigate and document the extent to which Jamerson appropriated the skills he acquired in jazz and blues environments into a popular music context, arguably transforming the role of the bass guitar. Based on the concepts of groove and flow established earlier, this four-chapter discussion explores Wonder’s particular version of the “robustly collective” grooves that are essential to funk, demonstrating vital musical processes and accounting for some of the unusual power and life of this music. Each song is analyzed separately but in a similar fashion, allowing for depth of analysis without sacrificing detail.

I then analyze “Superstition,” “Higher Ground,” and “You Haven’t Done Nothin’,” focusing on the interactions of rhythm and meter. Chapter 3 outlines the primary musical characteristics of funk and how Wonder’s style grew out the specific approach to funk developed by the house band and producers at Motown Records. Chapters 3 through 6 constitute a single, in-depth discussion of Wonder’s distinctive brand of clavinet-based funk music, divided into four parts. Chapter 2 is an analysis of “Golden Lady” that demonstrates groove and flow operating in areas other than rhythm and meter, in scales beyond the merely local, and in a compound, multi-dimensional manner. It also demonstrates for the first time how Wonder uses repetition of musical elements to create a sense of flow-simultaneously on several different structural levels and in many different ways-and then manipulates that flow throughout the course of the song. Chapter 1 is a general analysis of “Living for the City” that is primarily concerned with form-the shape of the song over time-and the way in which that form interacts with the text and generates meaning(s).

I begin by introducing the primarily African-American musical paradox of collective individuality and the musical concepts of groove and flow that are central to soul and funk. The essays focus on two interwoven aspects of soul and funk music, as they are employed by Wonder: the use of repeated musical figures, particularly grooves, to generate a sense of forward motion, or flow and the use of flow in a variety of ways and on many levels to give songs both shape and life. This dissertation is a collection of analytical essays on songs made by Stevie Wonder between 19.

Stevie wonder transcriptions pdf