Inmusic,hocket is therhythmiclinear technique using the alternation ofnotes,pitches, orchords. In medieval practice of hocket, a singlemelody is shared between two (or occasionally more) voices such that alternately one voice sounds while the other rests.

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 theNotre Dame school, during thears 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 Frenchmotets, though the technique remains in common use incontemporary music. Examples includeLouis Andriessen'sHoketus; somepopular music of the United States (funk,stereo panning, the guitar duosRobert Fripp/Adrian Belew inKing Crimson, andTom Verlaine/Richard Lloyd inTelevision); theIndonesiangamelan music (interlocking patterns shared between twoinstruments—calledimbal inJava andkotekan inBali);Andeansiku music (two panpipe sets sharing the full number of pitches); Ukrainian and Russiankuvytsi (panpipe) ensembles, Lithuanianskudučiai (panpipe) ensembles,handbell music (tunes being distributed between two or more players),rara music inrara festival street processions inHaiti, as well as in thegagá in theDominican Republic. Hocket is used in many African cultures such as theBa-Benzélé (featured onHerbie Hancock's "Watermelon Man," seePygmy music),Mbuti,Basarwa (Khoisan), the Gumuz tribe from the Blue Nile Province (Sudan), andGogo (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 inDuke Ellington's "Braggin' in Brass"^[1] are a rare jazz instance of hocket.^[2]

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. Hocket technique typically implied sharing a vocal on the vowels or having a sequence of notes spliced between instruments or vocals with certain notes in the melody being the moments of exchange. Interlocking notes are not a phenomenon in music unique to hocketing, alternating melody techniques have many uses through composition such as enabling certain vocals or instruments to become more audible than others, or effectively combining into a sequential chord, or by splitting the vocals or instruments between audio sources. While hoquet is an antiquated term and in contemporary practice is usually used alongside other melodic compositional devices and experimentation, it has found use infunk, andstereo panning, among other modern techniques typically used in similar style, and in multiple track recordings is often used artificially while editing arrangements of the song.

The groupDirty Projectors have used hocketing and other antiquated techniques prominently as an element of their music, experimenting with instruments as well as vocals in the style of hocketing or melodic intervals, particularly with interlocking or alternating melodies, though not all these techniques are explicitly the "hoquet" method. The group's frontmanDave Longstreth has expressed his interest and surprise in the medieval origins of the experimental techniques in use by the band.^[3]

The term comes from the French wordhoquet (in Old French alsohocquet,hoket, orocquet) meaning "a shock, sudden interruption, hitch,hiccup",^[4] and similar onomatopeic words in Celtic, Breton, Dutch and other languages. The words were Latinized ashoquetus,(h)oketus, and(h)ochetus. Earlier etymologies tried to show derivation from Arabic, but they are no longer favored.^[5]

• Bigwala, ceremonial music from Uganda^[6]
• Kecak, Balinese performance piece also known as theRamayana Monkey Chant
• Klangfarbenmelodie
• Melodic fission

• Tagg, Philip."Hocket",Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World
• Musical example fromCent Motets du XIIIe Siècle, vol. I, Paris, 1908, 64–65.
• "The Gumuz Tribe: Music of the Blue Nile Province" –Anthology of African Music (1980) – Reference D8072, Reissue (text by Robert Gottlieb)