hocket

In music, hocket is the rhythmic linear technique using the alternation of notes, pitches, or chords. In medieval practice of hocket, a single melody is shared between two (or occasionally more) voices such that alternately one voice sounds while the other rests. History In European music, hocket or hoquet was used primarily in vocal and choral music of the 13th and early 14th centuries. It was a predominant characteristic of music of the Notre Dame school, during the ars antiqua, in which it was found in sacred vocal music and string compositions. In the 14th century, this compositional device was most often found in secular vocal music. Although the term is in reference to this secular music of the 13th and 14th centuries in France, the technique under other names can be heard in different types of music across the world. The term originated in reference to medieval French motets, though the technique remains in common use in contemporary music. Examples include Louis Andriessen's Hoketus; some popular music of the United States (funk, stereo panning, the guitar duos Robert Fripp/Adrian Belew in King Crimson, and Tom Verlaine/Richard Lloyd in Television); the Indonesian gamelan music (interlocking patterns shared between two instruments—called imbal in Java and kotekan in Bali); Andean siku music (two panpipe sets sharing the full number of pitches); Ukrainian and Russian kuvytsi (panpipe) ensembles, Lithuanian skudučiai (panpipe) ensembles, handbell music (tunes being distributed between two or more players), rara street processions in Haiti, as well as in the gaga in the Dominican Republic. Hocket is used in many African cultures such as the Ba-Benzélé (featured on Herbie Hancock's "Watermelon Man," see Pygmy music), Mbuti, Basarwa (Khoisan), the Gumuz tribe from the Blue Nile Province (Sudan), and Gogo (Tanzania). It is also evident in drum and bugle corps drumline music, colloquially known as "split parts" or simply "splits". Segments of the trombone ensemble in Duke Ellington's "Braggin' in Brass" are a rare jazz instance of hocket. The use of hocketing is in reference to a broken melody line between two or more instruments or vocals, many contemporary artists freely integrate hocketing techniques with other composition devices such as alternating melodies, trading multiple melodic sections, or translating them between instruments or switching intervals of melody, or composing interlocking melodies shared between instruments.