Elements of Style in Three Demo Recordings by Stevie Nicks

[1.1] Stephanie "Stevie" Nicks (b. 1948 in Phoenix, Arizona) is one of rock's best known female performers of the last fifty years. Despite her many decades of fame, investigation into Nicks' work as a composer remains scarce. This is perhaps not due to a lack of interest; her close association with numerous collaborators-most notably, guitarist Lindsey Buckingham and other members of the band Fleetwood Mac-often makes pinpointing Nicks' individual compositional traits difficult. As released to the public, Nicks' songs invariably contain significant contributions from these collaborators in the form of instrumental or vocal arrangements and production. Recently, examples of Nicks' unreleased demo recordings have begun to appear on YouTube and various file-sharing sites. In many of these recordings, Nicks is heard singing and playing a keyboard instrument without additional accompaniment. The present study examines elements of Nicks' compositional style as expressed in her demos "Gypsy" and "I Sing for the Things" in relation to conventions of rock harmony.(1) I also examine a demo recording of Nicks' "Dreams" containing a guitar part in addition to Nicks' voice and keyboard. I discuss compositional organization in passages from these demos and Nicks' use of a "leading instrumental line": a single, structurally important melody in the accompaniment that operates in place of a harmonic progression. I then discuss Nicks' approach to text setting in these demos as it relates to her lyrics. I go on to describe elements of tonal, harmonic, and cadential normalization(2) in the transformation of two of these songs from demos into publicly released versions. Finally, I present compositional applications for stylistic elements found in these demo recordings by Nicks.[1.2] My interest in the present study began after encountering the following exchange between Nicks and a fan, published on Nicks' official website The Nicks Fix:(3)Susan: What role do you play in the final arrangement of songs, as far as guitar parts, vocal harmonies and any other instrumental parts? Do you write the actual parts yourself?Stevie: No, I don't. However, when I make my demo's [sic] if there is a musical part that I want in the final song, I make sure it's in the demo.It is reasonable to conclude from Nicks' above response that her demos, while not intended for commercial release, accurately represent her compositional intentions and are worthy of study.(4) Unsurprisingly, Nicks' demos are of great interest to her fans, as evidenced by the many views these demos have received on YouTube.(5) Many of Nicks' listeners praise the virtues of these demo recordings and proclaim them to be of equal or greater artistic value than the commercially released versions.(6)Melody, Harmony and Structure"My songs aren't complicated, to say the least."-Nicks (Jackson 1981)[2.1] Nicks' music is rooted in the rock, country and R&B styles of the 1950s and 60s(7) and often exhibits the condition of "melodic-harmonic divorce" as described by Moore (1995, 189) and further developed by Temperley (2007). Temperley deems this phenomenon "frequent" in rock and describes it as follows:the pitch organization is stratified: there are different frameworks for the melody and accompaniment . . .the melody framework features only a pentatonic scalar level, with no harmonic level. The melodies . . .seem quite independent of the local harmony. (2007, 328)Some sections of music in Nicks' demos drive toward tonally closed cadences, while others avoid such direction, instead operating via what Middleton calls "riff-based circularity" (1990, 195). This lack of harmonic directionality is not atypical of rock, as evidenced in De Clercq and Temperley 2011 (67).(8) Nicks' demos sometimes depart from statistically predominant modes of presentation in rock in structuring of passages around a single melodic line in the accompaniment which operates in lieu of a harmonic progression. …