Drone (music)
Skye Boat Song
An adaptation of "The Skye Boat Song" for Great Highland bagpipes played by the Clan Stewart Pipe Band. A drone on the tonic (B♭) is heard throughout.
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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.

Musical effect

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.

History and distribution

The systematic use of drones originated in instrumental music of ancient Southwest Asia, and spread north and west to Europe, east to India, and south to Africa (van der Merwe 1989, p.11). It is used in Indian music and is played with the tanpura (or tambura) and other Indian drone instruments like the ottu, the ektar, the dotara (or dotar; dutar in Persian Central Asia), the surpeti, the surmandal (or swarmandal) and the shank (conch shell). In America, most forms of the African-influenced Banjo contain a drone string. Since the 1960s, the drone has become a prominent feature in drone music and other forms of avant-garde music.

In vocal music drone is particularly widespread in traditional musical cultures, particularly in Europe, Polynesia and Melanesia. It is also present in some isolated regions of Asia (like among Pearl-divers in Persian Gulf, some national minorities of South-West China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Afghanistan);[1] 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.

Part(s) of a musical instrument

Highland bagpipes, with drone pipes over the pipers' left shoulders

Drone is the name of the part of a musical instrument intended to produce the drone effect's sustained pitch, generally without the ongoing attention of the player. Different melodic Indian instruments (e.g. the sitar, the sarod, the sarangi and the rudra veena) contain a drone. For example, the sitar features three or four resonating drone strings, and Indian notes (sargam) are practiced to a drone. Bagpipes (like the Great Highland Bagpipe and the Zampogna) feature a number of drone pipes, giving the instruments their characteristic sounds. A hurdy-gurdy has one or more drone strings. The fifth string on a five-string banjo is a drone string with a separate tuning peg that places the end of the string five frets down the neck of the instrument; this string is usually tuned to the same note as that which the first string produces when played at the fifth fret, and the drone string is seldom fretted. The bass strings of the Slovenian drone zither also freely resonate as a drone. The Welsh Crwth also features two drone strings.

Melody to "Yankee Doodle" without and with drone notes as played on the banjo[2]  Play without  and  with drone .

Effect in musical compositions

Composers of Western classical music occasionally used a drone (especially one on open fifths) to evoke a rustic or archaic atmosphere, perhaps echoing that of Scottish or other early or folk music. Examples include the following:

However, drones are less often used in common practice classical music, because equal temperament causes slight mistunings, which become more apparent over a drone, especially when also sustained. On the other hand, drones may be purposely dissonant, as often found in the music of Phill Niblock. The best-known drone piece in the concert repertory is the Prelude to Wagner's Das Rheingold (1854) wherein the bass instruments sustain an Eb throughout the entire movement (Erickson 1975, p. 94). Later drone pieces include Loren Rush's Hard Music (1970), Folke Rabe's Was?? (1968), and Robert Erickson's Down at Piraeus.

Contemporary folk music uses the drone effect extensively. In much of Bob Dylan's early work he uses this effect with a retuned guitar, for instance "Masters of War" and "Mr Tambourine Man".

The song "You Will Be My Ain True Love", written by Sting for the 2003 movie Cold Mountain and performed by Alison Krauss and Sting, uses drone bass.

Contemporary classical musicians who make prominent use of drones, often with just or other non-equal tempered tunings, include La Monte Young and many of his students, David First, the band Coil, the early experimental compilations of John Cale (Sun Blindness Music, Dream Interpretation, and Stainless Gamelan), Pauline Oliveros and Stuart Dempster, Alvin Lucier (Music On A Long Thin Wire), Ellen Fullman, Lawrence Chandler and Arnold Dreyblatt. The music of Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi is essentially drone-based. Shorter drones or the general concept of a continuous element are often used by many other composers. Other composers whose music is entirely based on drones include Charlemagne Palestine and Phill Niblock.

Drones were virtually absent in original rock and roll music, but gained popularity after the Beatles used drones in a few popular compositions (for example, Blackbird has a drone in the middle of a texture throughout the whole song, Tomorrow Never Knows makes use of tambura). They also used high drone for the dramatic effect in some sections of several of their compositions (like the last verses of Yesterday and Eleanor Rigby). The rock band U2 uses drones in their compositions particularly widely. Also the avant-garde guitarist Glenn Branca uses drones extensively. In the Led Zeppelin song In The Light, a keyboard drone is used throughout the song, mostly in the intro.

A drone differs from a pedal tone or point in degree or quality. A pedal point may be a form of nonchord tone and thus required to resolve unlike a drone, or a pedal point may simply be considered a shorter drone, a drone being a longer pedal point.

Use for musical training

Drones are used by a number of music education programs for ear training and pitch awareness, as well as a way to improvise ensemble music.[3] A Shruti box is often used by vocalists in this style of musical training.

As an alternative to a music theory approach to interval analysis, multiple drones can be used in exercises that take a humanistic or experiential approach to musical intervals.[4]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Joseph Jordania (2006). Who Asked the First Question? The Origins of Human Choral Singing, Intelligence, Language and Speech. Tbilisi: Logos. ISBN 99940-31-81-3.
  2. ↑ Erbsen, Wayne (2004). Bluegrass Banjo for the Complete Ignoramus, p.13. ISBN 1-883206-44-8.
  3. ↑ Oshinsky, James (January 2008). Return to Child - Music for People’s Guide to Improvising Music and Authentic Group Leadership (Second Edition ed.).
  4. ↑ Clint Goss (2011). "Reference Drones". Flutopedia. Retrieved 2011-11-08.

References