Non-Duple Elements as Compositional Strategy in the Music of Led Zeppelin

Peter Martens, Texas Tech University

Duple beat divisions and groupings are standard characteristics of popular music since 1950, and especially that of the 1960's and 1970's pop/rock Top 40. Overriding metric consonance was challenged and even abandoned by various strands of the progressive rock movement during those years, but was never displaced as a paradigm of rock music. This paper explores ways in which songwriters, in particular the group Led Zeppelin, used non-duple elements for local rhythmic interest and as structuring principles, while remaining acceptably within the pale of conventional "four-square" metric and phrase structure.

One such compositional strategy makes use of dissonance and consonance analogues between the domains of pitch and time. A positive correlation between the two involves pairing tonic harmony with a stable, unchallenged meter. More common in popular music (and not uncommon in sectional common practice music) is a pairing in which the initial, tonic-oriented section of a piece contains patterns that dissonate with the primary meter, and in which a subsequent, metrically stable, section or sections are oriented around non-tonic harmonies. This simple staggering of resolutions in the different domains, in the abstract not unlike fourth species counterpoint, helps create forward momentum and a sense of expectation in music that may contain limited harmonic and formal resources.