Lately I’ve been reading an excellent book on film soundtracks, and it raised a point that I had given insufficient thought: that Tin Pan Alley musical forms perfectly matched the mass distribution that sheet music entailed, whereas the popular music forms that replaced it (jazz, rock, soul, etc.) perfectly match a mass reproduction that the record album and single represented. That is, elements like syncopation, blue notes, and rushed rhythms are more easily recorded than notated and played back. While it’s a stretch to say that the shift from sheet music to the vinyl record alone was responsible for the rise of popular music, it does seem to be an overriding determinant.
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