Patrick poses a really interesting question that never occurred to me. As a guitarist and from talking to other guitarists about artists like this (I'm thinking also of musicians like Antoine Dufour and Andy McKee who do something similar but not quite the same) I've never really come across someone who didn't admire these kinds of guitarists. But when I stop and think about it, it probably does bother some people. Although, I would argue, there's a basis already in Metal for a lot of right-hand tapping techniques, and as for people who lay the guitar across their laps, there's already the lap-steel guitar.
I think somehow, too, the guitar is a little be exempt from this kind of thinking, since at its roots the guitar is a sloppy, all-over-the-place instrument. Think about the variety of modes it works in: metal, folk, jazz, punk, blues... I don't think there's this very classical association with the guitar (though that's not to say there's no place for guitars in classical music). What I mean is the guitar is treated in a different way than, say, the violin, since the violin has such strong roots in classical music, which is seen as quite formal from a contemporary perspective. So guitarists seem more willing to mess with the instrument.
But you bring up some really great points; I bet you could find plenty of guitarists who object to this style of playing. For me, though, the technical skill involved is unbelievable.
Playlist for this topic:
1. Antoine Dufour - Memories of the Future
2. Andy McKee - For My Father
3. Eric Mongrain - Equilibrium
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Friday, November 14, 2008
Paul Simon's "Surprise"
I've always been a big fan of Paul Simon's work, in particular is solo stuff (although the Simon and Garfunkel album Bookends is one of my favorites).
His latest album, release in 2006, really turned me onto electro-acoustic music. I suppose in some ways, my interest had been percolating for a while. I think it first cropped up when I was listening to a lot of Herbie Hancock, but Hancock's mission seems to be different from someone like Brian Eno (who I will get to in a second).
When I came to PS's Surprise, I was, as the title suggests, surprised in some ways. In other ways, not at all. PS has been experimenting with music for a while. Here's the trajectory of his solo career:
Paul Simon LP: acoustic blues
There Goes Rhymin' Simon: hot New Orleans jazz
Still Crazy After All These Years: folk smooth-jazz?
One Trick Pony: latin
Hearts and Bones: more folk smooth-jazz?
Graceland: Catchy African
The Rhythm of the Saints: Experimental African
Songs from the Capeman: Doo-Wop
You're the One: Folk
While he's kept a focus mostly on jazz and folk, he's certainly dabbled in other music. I think what sets me up for this album is mostly The Rhythm of the Saints, which uses a lot of electro-acoustic music while remaining somehow tribal.
Surprise, like all of Paul Simon's work, has a thick texture to it. Brian Eno adds this electronic wall behind the tracks. This is not the wall of sound Phil Specter added to Let It Be that made it sound trite, this is like water. The songs seem to be floating in a basin downstream. What strikes me is that for all the electronic instruments, I'm not thinking about them. They create a meditative backdrop that suit the lyrics, which are as cerebral as ever. The opening track is most likely my favorite, since it seems to accomplish what each song ultimately wants to accomplish but doesn't as poignantly as "How Can You Live in the Northeast" does. The lyrical mode--mostly questions--seems to fit this album. The music seems to ask: how can electronics be used in music? I think anyone from a modern perspective, especially someone who's a Paul Simon fan and who does not come in contact with a lot of electro-acoustic music, asks this question.
The track also manages to capture something rather poetic. The song begins "We heard the fireworks and rushed out to watch the sky." Somehow, the music fits this. It occurs to me when I watch fireworks that it's, like many themes on this album, ruminative.
It's this cogitative mode, this watery texture, that I think I need to capture in my exploration of the lullaby. It's possible that anything with such a texture could lull someone to sleep, almost, I want to argue, regardless of what's happening on top of it. But that might be going too far. If I were asleep in our basin (to go back to that metaphor) as the basin started rocking, I would awake. But maybe not if it happens gently. And that's what I want from my longer piece: A gentle capsizing.
Track List:
1. How Can You Live in the Northeast?
2. Everything About It Is a Love Song
3. Outrageous
4. Sure Don't Feel Like Love
5. Wartime Prayers
6. Beautiful
7. I Don't Believe
8. Another Galaxy
9. Once Upon a Time There Was an Ocean
10. That's Me
11. Father and Daughter
His latest album, release in 2006, really turned me onto electro-acoustic music. I suppose in some ways, my interest had been percolating for a while. I think it first cropped up when I was listening to a lot of Herbie Hancock, but Hancock's mission seems to be different from someone like Brian Eno (who I will get to in a second).
When I came to PS's Surprise, I was, as the title suggests, surprised in some ways. In other ways, not at all. PS has been experimenting with music for a while. Here's the trajectory of his solo career:
Paul Simon LP: acoustic blues
There Goes Rhymin' Simon: hot New Orleans jazz
Still Crazy After All These Years: folk smooth-jazz?
One Trick Pony: latin
Hearts and Bones: more folk smooth-jazz?
Graceland: Catchy African
The Rhythm of the Saints: Experimental African
Songs from the Capeman: Doo-Wop
You're the One: Folk
While he's kept a focus mostly on jazz and folk, he's certainly dabbled in other music. I think what sets me up for this album is mostly The Rhythm of the Saints, which uses a lot of electro-acoustic music while remaining somehow tribal.
Surprise, like all of Paul Simon's work, has a thick texture to it. Brian Eno adds this electronic wall behind the tracks. This is not the wall of sound Phil Specter added to Let It Be that made it sound trite, this is like water. The songs seem to be floating in a basin downstream. What strikes me is that for all the electronic instruments, I'm not thinking about them. They create a meditative backdrop that suit the lyrics, which are as cerebral as ever. The opening track is most likely my favorite, since it seems to accomplish what each song ultimately wants to accomplish but doesn't as poignantly as "How Can You Live in the Northeast" does. The lyrical mode--mostly questions--seems to fit this album. The music seems to ask: how can electronics be used in music? I think anyone from a modern perspective, especially someone who's a Paul Simon fan and who does not come in contact with a lot of electro-acoustic music, asks this question.
The track also manages to capture something rather poetic. The song begins "We heard the fireworks and rushed out to watch the sky." Somehow, the music fits this. It occurs to me when I watch fireworks that it's, like many themes on this album, ruminative.
It's this cogitative mode, this watery texture, that I think I need to capture in my exploration of the lullaby. It's possible that anything with such a texture could lull someone to sleep, almost, I want to argue, regardless of what's happening on top of it. But that might be going too far. If I were asleep in our basin (to go back to that metaphor) as the basin started rocking, I would awake. But maybe not if it happens gently. And that's what I want from my longer piece: A gentle capsizing.
Track List:
1. How Can You Live in the Northeast?
2. Everything About It Is a Love Song
3. Outrageous
4. Sure Don't Feel Like Love
5. Wartime Prayers
6. Beautiful
7. I Don't Believe
8. Another Galaxy
9. Once Upon a Time There Was an Ocean
10. That's Me
11. Father and Daughter
Monday, September 29, 2008
EA Artist Review
One band I've been listening to on and off since high school is acid-jazz trio Medeski, Martin, and Wood. The trio is made up of keyboardist/pianist John Medeski, drummer Billy Martin, and bassist Chris Wood.
They fall into the EA category for a couple of reasons. Firstly, although typically sporting a Hammond B-3 Organ, Medeski often plays around with several kinds of synthesizers.
But mainly their experiments with DJ Logic make them a good EA band to study. Jazz and EA seem related, as they are both integral to the development of new genres in American music, but somehow they have been rarely connected, at least in terms of mainstream attention.
EA isn't really their attention either. Actually, I would argue they are becoming a band more interested in the development of jazz in combination with other genres than in EA specifically. Rather, they frequently utilize EA in order to create these connections more effectively.
Little Playlist:
1. Pappy Check
- One of the most prominent uses of DJ Logic in their work.
2. The Lover
- A more typical MMW song.
3. Waking Up
- The opener from their kids album Let's Go Everywhere. A lot of really interesting arrangements being used here.
They fall into the EA category for a couple of reasons. Firstly, although typically sporting a Hammond B-3 Organ, Medeski often plays around with several kinds of synthesizers.
But mainly their experiments with DJ Logic make them a good EA band to study. Jazz and EA seem related, as they are both integral to the development of new genres in American music, but somehow they have been rarely connected, at least in terms of mainstream attention.
EA isn't really their attention either. Actually, I would argue they are becoming a band more interested in the development of jazz in combination with other genres than in EA specifically. Rather, they frequently utilize EA in order to create these connections more effectively.
Little Playlist:
1. Pappy Check
- One of the most prominent uses of DJ Logic in their work.
2. The Lover
- A more typical MMW song.
3. Waking Up
- The opener from their kids album Let's Go Everywhere. A lot of really interesting arrangements being used here.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
The Question of Staccato; Multi-Vocal Melodies
I started a few compositions this week.
Two things I've been playing with in them:
1. I've been playing a lot with staccato. It began as I tried to find a good Music Box sound/instrument, since those seem suitable for a lullaby. As I explored the various sounds I could find, I came across a sound effect of a wind-up toy. It led me to ideas about using any kind of childhood-related sounds in a piece. They are all interconnected. There is a comfort, I think, in being reminded of childhood toys.
But the quality of the music box and similar instruments is that they're staccato, which seems to have two attributes that have to be discerned in a piece: playful and abrasive. I'm thinking specifically of the soundtrack from Amelie. When Amelie discovers a little box from the child of a past tenant, the soundtrack begins playing the Amelie theme on a music box. It then progresses to strings by the end in a much more grandiose sound. Still, it's difficult to skirt the line between playful and abrasive.
2. I was writing a melody for one of my compositions, and I liked the melody but I felt it demanded some quirkiness. So I broke the melody up over four instruments. The first instrument took care of the four quarter notes on beat. The second instrument took care of all the 8th note off-beats, and so on. So I ended up with a melody that was playful, that sounded complicated, that your brain could more easily separate but also could hear the piece as a whole. I'm not sure it's quite hummable, which may just be do to the melody itself. But it was an interesting experiment, since I had to select four distinct instrument sounds, and those sounds made a kind of unique instrument. I was mostly overwhelmed and didn't know quite how to approach choosing the instruments. But I was also excited, since the possibilities were exponentially larger than choosing a single instrument for the melody.
Two things I've been playing with in them:
1. I've been playing a lot with staccato. It began as I tried to find a good Music Box sound/instrument, since those seem suitable for a lullaby. As I explored the various sounds I could find, I came across a sound effect of a wind-up toy. It led me to ideas about using any kind of childhood-related sounds in a piece. They are all interconnected. There is a comfort, I think, in being reminded of childhood toys.
But the quality of the music box and similar instruments is that they're staccato, which seems to have two attributes that have to be discerned in a piece: playful and abrasive. I'm thinking specifically of the soundtrack from Amelie. When Amelie discovers a little box from the child of a past tenant, the soundtrack begins playing the Amelie theme on a music box. It then progresses to strings by the end in a much more grandiose sound. Still, it's difficult to skirt the line between playful and abrasive.
2. I was writing a melody for one of my compositions, and I liked the melody but I felt it demanded some quirkiness. So I broke the melody up over four instruments. The first instrument took care of the four quarter notes on beat. The second instrument took care of all the 8th note off-beats, and so on. So I ended up with a melody that was playful, that sounded complicated, that your brain could more easily separate but also could hear the piece as a whole. I'm not sure it's quite hummable, which may just be do to the melody itself. But it was an interesting experiment, since I had to select four distinct instrument sounds, and those sounds made a kind of unique instrument. I was mostly overwhelmed and didn't know quite how to approach choosing the instruments. But I was also excited, since the possibilities were exponentially larger than choosing a single instrument for the melody.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
The Limits
Are there? Sleep is relative. There has to be someone who sleeps to The Number Twelve Looks Like You (try El Pinata De La Muerte for a good example of their work). Actually, in concert their drummer seems quite calm, rather than the typical head-banging shirt-not-wearing picture we typically have of hardcore bands. So if he's calm, conceivably someone must be achieving REM through the help of grind/mathcore.
There's also the idea of repetition. If you've heard a song, any song, enough, you will be so used to it that it can become part of the background noise, and you can therefore sleep to it. This isn't limited to just music: my roommate has a portable DVD player he uses to play Simpsons episodes while he sleeps. (By the way, I should probably look up some kind of sleep study to confirm these 'facts').
As I listen more and more to Explosions in the Sky, I feel this wall of sound behind everything, some light constant. I think that's a key. It's that constant that's related to repetition. The constant is that night-light, that fan or dehumidifier running while you sleep.
When I was seven, I couldn't sleep without socks on. That's what my music needs. Footwear.
There's also the idea of repetition. If you've heard a song, any song, enough, you will be so used to it that it can become part of the background noise, and you can therefore sleep to it. This isn't limited to just music: my roommate has a portable DVD player he uses to play Simpsons episodes while he sleeps. (By the way, I should probably look up some kind of sleep study to confirm these 'facts').
As I listen more and more to Explosions in the Sky, I feel this wall of sound behind everything, some light constant. I think that's a key. It's that constant that's related to repetition. The constant is that night-light, that fan or dehumidifier running while you sleep.
When I was seven, I couldn't sleep without socks on. That's what my music needs. Footwear.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Lullaby
I installed an extension for the Firefox web browser called "StumbleUpon!" when I was a freshman in college. The concept of it is straightforward: you get a toolbar with a button that says "Stumble!" . There is an accompanying website that allows you to choose your interests, from things as vague as "comedy" to specific genres of music.
Part of me regrets it, since I have donated a solid chunk of my life to clicking that little Stumble! button and not knowing exactly what it would bring me. Once, it was a video of a prank a college student pulled on his roommate in which he basted the floor with a coat of butter and filmed the proceedings. One of my favorite websites was simply a kind of music-box drum-machine thing called tinydrum. [link]
Another of the more rewarding fruits is the website Bedtime Tunes. As you can see if you visit it, the website is dedicated to songs that can put you to sleep. Typically, these are rather mellow tunes. There's a good range of very well-known to "who?" kind of artists on there. And, the more I view the website, the thing that strikes me--other than the fact that there's probably some jail time awaiting the people posting copyright material without authorization--is that this is really a classification of music unto itself.
That's not to say it is a separate genre, but in fact a new way of thinking about genre. The "Lullaby" is not a term reserved for everyone's favorite Brahms piece.
A piece called (ironically) "Waking Up" by jazz trio Medeski, Martin, and Wood seems to fit this genre. So do slower Chopin piano sonatas. So does "Lullaby" by Ben Folds Five, which incorporates playful, often strange lyrics. So does The Beatles' "Golden Slumbers," though that song also builds to a crescendo that may or may not wake me up. The songs "Hearts and Bones" and "Train in the Distance" by Paul Simon either put me to sleep or make me think about whether or not I plan to get divorced some day.
But even more:
My cousin Steve, a man truly dedicated to music, played me an album by a band called Explosions in the Sky called All of a Sudden, I Miss Everyone. AllMusic.com classifies them as Post-Rock/Experimental. They have a slow, heavy sound. Sometimes there is quite a bit of distortion and noise to their pieces. Then there's the interesting part: my cousin said he goes to sleep to this.
The common purpose of a kind of music is what can unite several genres. Just look at dance music as an example. "Dance Music" is a vague term in some ways. Music you can dance to. This can mean music for a rumba dancers, music for break dancers, music for apathetic teenagers who just want to sway.
Lullabies are music for people who want to sleep. That is where I'm headed this semester. Naptime.
Part of me regrets it, since I have donated a solid chunk of my life to clicking that little Stumble! button and not knowing exactly what it would bring me. Once, it was a video of a prank a college student pulled on his roommate in which he basted the floor with a coat of butter and filmed the proceedings. One of my favorite websites was simply a kind of music-box drum-machine thing called tinydrum. [link]
Another of the more rewarding fruits is the website Bedtime Tunes. As you can see if you visit it, the website is dedicated to songs that can put you to sleep. Typically, these are rather mellow tunes. There's a good range of very well-known to "who?" kind of artists on there. And, the more I view the website, the thing that strikes me--other than the fact that there's probably some jail time awaiting the people posting copyright material without authorization--is that this is really a classification of music unto itself.
That's not to say it is a separate genre, but in fact a new way of thinking about genre. The "Lullaby" is not a term reserved for everyone's favorite Brahms piece.
A piece called (ironically) "Waking Up" by jazz trio Medeski, Martin, and Wood seems to fit this genre. So do slower Chopin piano sonatas. So does "Lullaby" by Ben Folds Five, which incorporates playful, often strange lyrics. So does The Beatles' "Golden Slumbers," though that song also builds to a crescendo that may or may not wake me up. The songs "Hearts and Bones" and "Train in the Distance" by Paul Simon either put me to sleep or make me think about whether or not I plan to get divorced some day.
But even more:
My cousin Steve, a man truly dedicated to music, played me an album by a band called Explosions in the Sky called All of a Sudden, I Miss Everyone. AllMusic.com classifies them as Post-Rock/Experimental. They have a slow, heavy sound. Sometimes there is quite a bit of distortion and noise to their pieces. Then there's the interesting part: my cousin said he goes to sleep to this.
The common purpose of a kind of music is what can unite several genres. Just look at dance music as an example. "Dance Music" is a vague term in some ways. Music you can dance to. This can mean music for a rumba dancers, music for break dancers, music for apathetic teenagers who just want to sway.
Lullabies are music for people who want to sleep. That is where I'm headed this semester. Naptime.
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