Drone music

Drone music,drone-based music,drone ambient,ambient drone, or simply drone, is a minimalist musical genre that emphasizes the use of sustained or repeated sounds, notes, or tone-clusters – called drones. It is typically characterized by lengthy audio programs with relatively slight harmonic variations throughout each piece compared to other musics. La Monte Young, one of its 1960s originators, defined it in 2000 as "the sustained tone branch of minimalism".

Overview

Music which contains drones and is rhythmically still or very slow, called "drone music", can be found in many parts of the world, including bagpipe traditions, among them Scottish pibroch piping; didgeridoo music in Australia, South Indian classical Carnatic music and Hindustani classical music (both of which are accompanied almost invariably by the tambura, a plucked, four-string instrument which is only capable of playing a drone); the sustained tones found in the Japanese gagaku classical tradition; possibly (disputed) in pre-polyphonic organum vocal music of late medieval Europe; and the Byzantine chant's ison (or drone-singing, attested after the fifteenth century). Repetition of tones, supposed to be in imitation of bagpipes, is found in a wide variety of genres and musical forms.

Drone (music)

In music, a drone is a harmonic or monophonic effect or accompaniment where a note or chord is continuously sounded throughout most or all of a piece. The word drone is also used to refer to any part of a musical instrument that is just used to produce such an effect, as is the archaic term burden (bourdon or burdon) such as, "the drone [pipe] of a bagpipe," the pedal point in an organ, or the lowest course of a lute. Burden also refers to a part of a song that is repeated at the end of each stanza, such as the chorus or refrain.

The term comes from the French bourdon, a staff; or a pipe made in the form of a staff. "The drone does not take its name from the bee. It is a far older word," sharing an Indo-European root ("dhran, to drone, to hum") with the Sanskrit "dhran", the Greek "thren-os", and the English "thrum", "drum", and "dream".

Musical effect

"Of all harmonic devices, it [a drone] is not only the simplest, but probably also the most fertile."

A drone effect can be achieved through a sustained sound or through repetition of a note. It most often establishes a tonality upon which the rest of the piece is built. A drone can be instrumental, vocal or both. Drone (both instrumental and vocal) can be placed in different ranges of the polyphonic texture: in the lowest part, in the highest part, or in the middle. The drone is most often placed upon the tonic or dominant (play "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" with a drone on the  tonic , on the  dominant , or on  both . Compare with  changing chords .). A drone on the same pitch as a melodic note tends to both hide that note and to bring attention to it by increasing its importance.