Reply To: JoCo Songs with frequent use of dissonance
Hey Khavall,
While what you're saying about dissonance is absolutely true, I think context is the deciding factor in teasing out the meaning of this slippery word (e.g., JoCo's soft-rock pop as opposed to medieval or world music). For better or worse, the term will probably be around for a while yet, even though it is losing its meaning as music continues to evolve. It's kind of like when I hear people use the word "sad" to describe minor chords. They're not sad, they're just minor! 
I also get upset when people distinguish "musicians" from "singers" (as if we aren't musicians), but that's for another rant…
Me, I'm a hard-core theory junky. I got all excited in music history class when we got to late Renaissance and very early Baroque music that had raised 7ths and proto-dominant harmony. (I nearly became apoplectic when we found examples of raised 4ths and early 2ndary dominants!) Funny how an interval that was disdained in medieval and Renaissance music (the tritone) became the cornerstone of common practice harmony. Woo-hoo! Of course, I grew up in a home full of Barbershop music, which is chock-full of non-functional dominant chords. I loves me some tritones.
I direct a children's chorus now, and I try to get them as excited about "dissonace" as I am (e.g., 2nds, tritones, 7ths). "Crunchy notes," I call them. Unfortunately, a lot of JoCo's stuff is not suitable for [other people's] children, or I'd play it for them. At some point, I should take the time to do some quick and dirty harmonic analysis of JoCo's stuff (or at least look at some tabs) and see if what I said above bears any resemblance to reality, or if I was just talking out my a**. 
On a related subject, you all might be interested in the work of Dr. Donald Brinegar, an LA-area choral conductor, singer and scholar who has done a lot of research into tuning systems, which heavily influences his pedagogy as well as his interpretations. I primarily know him because of his work with the choral composer Morten Lauridsen. This is an extremely gross description of his work, but he and Lauridsen tune in 5ths rather than 3rds, so that instead of a do-mi-sol chord as a foundation, you have a do-re-sol chord (re being a 5th up from sol – talk about redefining a dissonance as a consonance!). An interesting side-note, Lauridsen never doubles a vocal part's pitch in his piano accompaniments (at least, not in the same 8ve), because in even-temperament it sounds out of tune with the voices. I couldn't find any links that refernece Brinegar's scholarly work, but here's his group's site, http://www.donaldbrinegarsingers.org. You could certianly call him at the number on the contact page – he's very personable. Or contact him via Pasadena City College, http://tinyurl.com/36w3u2 .
Sorry for the URLs – I haven't yet figured out how to hyperlink on this forum.