Tree rings, artificial wonder, and big farts: UPDATE 12/17/14

Here are two things that bother me more than they probably should.

         

And this:

         


It seems that the general reaction to this nonsense is "Ooo my, how grand nature is! The wonder! Music is EVERYWHERE!"

I'm sorry. But birds and trees don't give a fuck about music. And if they did, they certainly wouldn't give a fuck about this bullshit.

Two big points here:

1) These things have absolutely nothing to do with nature.

They are all about a human being placing some sort of careful filter on nature.

OH I'M GETTING WORKED UP AGAIN!

I have an idea. Let's take a walk. We'll bring calipers. We'll measure the diameter of every piece of dog shit we see. Then we'll use the following table:

.5-1cm=C
1-1.5cm=D
1.5-2cm=E
2-2.5cm=G
2.5cm+=A

Then we come home and write some bad music! It'll likely be garbage. Dog shit, for sure. But since we've chosen a nice, lovely, pentatonic filter it'll be pleasant enough. And depending on the breeds that are common in your area, it'll either sound like C major or A minor. Like dog turd wind chimes.

2) Nature is amazing enough without our bullshit observations and extrapolations.

Birds on a wire. Treble clef. Stupid. An interesting exercise, maybe. But all this "oo ah music is all around us" nonsense is outrageous.

And trees rings. Tree rings are amazing enough! Don't get me wrong, the technology is VERY cool. But I don't need someone's vague minor chord rambling to tell me Nature's Hidden Secrets. I'll just look at some goddamned tree rings.

Someone did make the comment "Sounds like Chopin," which wins big points with me.

I had to get this out. If you've endured this post 'til this point, I'm sorry. But seriously. Go look at some birds. They're amazing. They don't need any of our nonsense. Then go home and write some music. How about that? With some work, your music won't need any sort of help from trees or birds.


UPDATE 12/17/14:

After months of searching and failed attempts, I finally got the chance to make my own bird music. I hope you enjoy it. Pardon the windshield wipers. It was raining.

Modal mixture and power chords in Nirvana's "In Bloom"

My ability to "hear" music, both during performance and as part of the creative/composing process, developed in tandem with my progress as a player. I would even say that at some point my "ears" lagged behind, since at some point my initial "talent" was overtaken by my ability to play things that were more complicated melodically and harmonically--stuff I couldn't "hear."

(Quick note: I put all of those words in quotes because I find them contentious and problematic. It often seems that people use "hear" and "ear" as if "thinking" wasn't a part of the process. And I also think "talent" is used far to often. As if playing music is not work and that it's always just super wicked fun for us. Please.)

But back to my story. Kurt Cobain was a different sort of musician. His melodic and harmonic IDEAS (or the stuff he "heard") were far ahead of his facility on the guitar. He was terrible at the guitar. But what he was able to write in spite of it is often remarkable, especially when you consider that most of the songs consist of chords without 3rds.

"In Bloom" is a great example of how to project tonality through what is nothing more than a bass line (power chords are simply reinforced bass notes, in my book) and a melody. Not only that, this two-part construction manages to project a sort of modal mixture: B flat major and B flat minor. And this is NOT a "bluesy" sort of minor inflection, for the most part, but actual B flat minor, with G flats and everything.

                       

Here's a reduced version of the intro/interlude/ending:

Please note that even though there are no 3rds, I am using the labeling protocol for B flat MAJOR. I don't care how many other flats I hear in this--the reference point is B flat major. I, vi, and V put the song firmly in B flat, and the A flat chord functions, as flat VII so often does, as a sort of stand-in for the V. However, the verse quickly makes things a little more interesting:

Yeah, that's right. I said C flat. Here's my take on this. The melody explicitly outlines a B flat minor triad, but even more jarring is the G flat in the bass, since a G NATURAL is heard in the intro. The really fun bit is the B (or C flat) to A natural. I could call the C flat a sort of Neapolitan in root position, or maybe a tritone sub for V. I think the A power chord MUST be heard as a surrogate V chord. That's its job,and that's what it sounds like. But no matter what you name it, it boils down to a two-note idea: half step above the tonic, half step below. And if you look at the whole line, the bass outlines a C flat 7 chord! Maybe it is just a big tritone sub...except for the G natural in the melody. Man, that G natural is nice!

After all of the rogue flats in the verse, the chorus starts with B flat major:

 

Lots of parallel fifths between the bass and the melody (and in the verse, too, for that matter). The melody outlines a B flat major triad quite explicitly at first, and then B flat minor returns, but this time as a blues-type inflection, almost turning the E flat power chord into an E flat 7. The song never really has a dominant I chord, but it does have a dominant IV.

And of course I feel the need to jump in and say well, yes, of course. By "dominant" I mean a major chord plus a seventh that is a minor 7th above the root. Just trying to appease the one person that reads this and calls me out. That A power chord in the verse is more of a dominant chord in terms of function. And what I've labelled as "II7" (when the backing vocal has an E natural) could perhaps be thought of as V of V, which in turn makes the last 4 measures of the chorus a kind of prolonged ii-V (or II-V)--the C to E flat being, ultimately, a dominant move back to B flat.

So that's a quick outline of this song, in terms of harmonic implication and suggestion. You can do a lot with just a bass line and a melody. A lot of things float to the surface when you combine two lines. I only wish I'd appreciated this music more when it first came out--to hear the music rather than focusing on the technical shortcomings of the band. Maybe he didn't know what it meant. But I don't know where he got those melodies. Which is more important?

The two-note trombone solo in "Pennies From Heaven"

         

I really love the Sinatra/Basie stuff. As much as I love anything, I figure. Like dry martinis. Mahler. Slim Jims. Dames with gams for days.

I've heard this recording of "Pennies From Heaven" a whole bunch of times. But it's been in my car. I heard it on headphones today and found a wonderful little treat. It happens at exactly 1:43.

CLICK THIS. WHY IT DOESN'T DISPLAY CORRECTLY, I DON'T KNOW

Oh yeah, 'bone 1! Major boner!

boner

1: one that bones

2: a clumsy or stupid mistake

3: you know what defiition 3 is

"One that bones"! Ha!

Anyway. Trying to figure out how this mistake happened. How?! I can understand two measures ahead, but not two beats. Especially after playing that and-of-two part for such a long time. Unless the copyist for this session was especially shitty and forgot to put a half-rest in the part.

How do you skip two beats??!

I could listen to this all day. I did, actually, when I wasn't making photocopies. Here's my transcription:

I still can't figure how someone would skip two beats. But I do appreciate that they kept the take, boner and all.

These notes look so...MUSICAL!

This post is primarily for people that read music and cringe every time they see music-y symbols. But it's also for folks that see this junk and don't know the difference.

I just did a Google image search for "music notes." Let's start here:

Hot! Looks like trumpets to me!

Stirring! This example, more than any of the following, seems to actually follow some sort of protocol (the flat in the signature and the C sharp suggest D minor), and is maybe even taken from something. It sounds better with some low brass: 

Speaking of low brass:

 

Wait a minute...isn't that the Cheers theme song?

And my favorite is the one I used as a header. I think an orchestra hit with lots of reverb will do.

So stark! And mysterious! No time, no barlines, and that free-floating B, not tethered to the rest of that diminished arpeggio. Rogue! Do you think that Charles Street knows what this sounds like? (Click his name. Not sure why I can't get that to display properly.)

"Life is like the music notes of a song. There are three key notes; Family, Health and Finances. Just like music, these three will go up and down at different times.”

So true, man. So true. Family can be a real B. And F finances. But life is still simpler than "Mary Had a Little Lamb."

The "worst cover ever" of "The Final Countdown" and the resulting harmonic implications

You should watch and enjoy this gem first:

Now that you've watched it once, watch it again and listen to the first few chords. Oh man, so wrong, right? Funny funny ha ha. I felt the same, at first. But for me, something felt and sounded really good about those first few chords. But why? After a little thought I figured it out.

What is going on in this video? It's pretty simple, I think. The kid playing the synth lead is playing in F minor. The song is actually in F SHARP minor, which suggests that he is either playing it in the wrong key or, perhaps more likely, his guitar is tuned down a half step. The other guitar, in addition to being rather out of tune with itself, is tuned to standard tuning. She is also simplifying all of the chords to root-plus-fifth power chords. After two or three listenings I realized I was quite drawn to the sound of this. Here's a quick breakdown of this wonderful fiasco:

If you take the F minor line and turn the "horizontal" into the "vertical," you get some good sounds:

Interesting that some of the minor chords from the original become major, and the major chords become chromatic disaster chords (chords with three adjacent pitch classes, like C, Db, and D, that are hard to name with the standard symbols). All of this contains a lot of possibilities (if you're me). Here's a Bach chorale-style treatment:

  

Another possibility is a goofy bossa nova number, like this:

Love that F minor pentatonic shit over Gb major! Oh YEAH!

So anyway. My point is that sometimes you find "inspiration" (whatever that means) in the strangest places.

Train (wreck) kept-a-rollin'

I was working on a post about the bass playing on Aerosmith's "Sweet Emotion" and wasn't really satisfied with my writing. The tone was wrong. So I amused myself by finding "bass lessons" on YouTube. Hilarious, as always. But I also found this curiosity:

Ok, so...Tom Hamilton's bass sounds like ass. His tone, as it turns out, is also wrong. And he has phones on his bass. And the dude looks like a lady. (I'm sorry. Not that sorry, really.) BUT. What the hell happens at 1:31? The drums are a beat late! And any performer, musical or otherwise, knows that the next question...whether spoken or not...is...

(And I know, we're supposed to work through these moments together. As a team. Or as a family (barf). But come on. We all wanna point fingers. Don't deny it...)

Who is to blame?????????

NOT Tom Hamilton. He's a champ. Steady throughout this mess (other than the beginning, I guess--though I think Joey Kramer started too fast). And he quickly adjusts to this weirdness. So what is happening here? Here's my analysis.

0:26 Bass enters, considerably slower than the drums.

0:50 Joe Perry comes in with his Talk Box junk. But it sounds really weird, like something is wrong with the tube. Or his mouth.

1:17 Steven and Tom are staring at Joe Perry, like "What the fuck, man??" This is also the moment when Joey Kramer hits the bass drum on beat 2 instead of beat 1. So someone was trying to readjust the whole thing. I'm guessing Steven Tyler did this.

1:20 Steven Tyler is glaring at Joe Perry! Awesome rock star shit, here.

1:23 Joe Perry looks...really lost/confused.

1:31 This is when anyone that's paying attention has some real fun. WHOOOOOAAAAAAA, here we go!

1:38 Steven Tyler is...trying to settle/slow down the tempo? I'm not sure. There seems to be disagreement about the tempo from the start, actually. The best part is Brad Whitford noodling stage right the whole time, in the dark and shaking his head. I assume. I've always figured that was his role in a band led by a couple of clowns.

It's a harrowing minute and a half for me. Fascinating and uncomfortable to watch. So what happened? Here are my guesses.

-Joe Perry was out of it for whatever reason. However, Steven Tyler overcompensated by cuing the wrong downbeat after following Joe Perry's meandering Talk Box stuff. Gurgle Box, more like it.
-Joe Perry couldn't hear the bass in his monitor.
-Joey Kramer couldn't hear the bass in his monitor.

That was in order of likelihood. But I also think that Steven Tyler tried to be the boss and made things worse. Shame on Joey Kramer for taking orders when he had it right all along. And kudos to Tom Hamilton for hanging in there, junk tone or not. But wow, even after the botched intro, a muddled, TERRIBLE performance. And the Talk Box never sounds right.

And if you make it to 4:45...the burning speaker cab thing is the dumbest gimmick I've seen in a long time.

It's hard being an Aerosmith apologist. Very hard, indeed.

Apt to be pinched

I'm pretty good at writing for different instruments. I get it. How the different ranges work and sound. Especially winds. But I never knew...until today...how sexy orchestration can be.

This is from my Kennan/Grantham 5th edition orchestration book:

Oh my.

Weak, breathy. Stronger. Powerful.
Piercing. Oh dear.
Thick. Oh yeah.
Reedy, sweet, intense. Yeah, I don't know what "reedy" insinuates, either.

And my favorite..."Apt to be pinched."

Yes. Woodwind registers according to Kent Kennan. So damn sexy.