mystery tune

Here's a little quiz. Recognize this?

mystery tune, pretty good transcription

Here's a "field recording" I found. The tune occurs at 0:39.

mystery tune field recording

I haven't actually heard this in a while. These machines must be mostly outdated by now.

Bring On the Edge of the Night, or "Having only one wing makes it exeedingly [sic] difficult to fly"

This has to be obvious to anyone that knows both of these songs, and I can't believe I didn't notice it until this week: "Edge of Seventeen" by Stevie Nicks uses elements of "Bring On the Night" by The Police in a very literal way:

  



The Wikipedia entry for "Edge of Seventeen" seems to suggest that it was session guitarist Waddy Wachtel's idea, while Wachtel claims ignorance in the interview that is cited on Wikipedia:

"I had never heard "Bring On the Night," and at that session they told me they were going to do this song based on this feel. I had heard something about the Police, but I didn't know what they were talking about. Then about two years ago, I had the radio on, and on comes what sounds like "Edge of Seventeen"-and all of a sudden, there's Sting's voice! I thought, "We ripped them off completely!" I called Stevie that night and said, "Listen to me, don't ever do that again!" "

I think the truth is in the middle somewhere. And I also think this may be an instance of the producers mishearing the Police track. Here's what I mean. First, the intro to "Bring On the Night" can be reduced as follows:

Lots of Police hallmarks here: a syncopated single-note guitar riff (which is picked up later by the bass, more or less) with wide, slow flanger (so clear with that constant, "lift the fretting hand ghost note" technique), bass drum on 2 and 4 (also seems to be running through a flanger and lots of reverb--synched with the guitar?), and hi-hat accents on the "ands." All of this adds up to a typical "Where the hell is 1?" Police intro. It's quite possible to mistakenly hear the accents on the hi-hat as downbeats, which in turn puts the bass drum on the "ands." Which brings me to the verse of "Edge of Seventeen":

It's "Bring On the Night" with a more consistent guitar part (borrowed later for this?) and a drum part that has been shifted by an eighth note (the same can be said for the bass line to the first verse). That brings me back to the producers. Was this a deliberate change or did they mishear/misremember the groove from the Police track?

Either way, it's nearly identical stuff. And for the record, I always thought the first line to this song was "Just like the one we knew," or something like that. I guess "white-winged cockatoo" has too many syllables. "One-winged dove" is good, too.

ZZ Plant

Today I made a discovery: the ZZ Plant.

I had never heard of such a thing. It also made me think: "ZZ Plant...that would be a frickin' AWESOME supergroup!"

It would sound something like this:

Or maybe like this:

Frickin' awesome.

Elliott Carter's impact on the music of Lionel Richie

Just kidding about the Elliott Carter bit.

But I did realize something great today: there's an out-of-nowhere metric modulation in the Lionel Richie song "Say You, Say Me" (here's another totally rad movie montage video for an Oscar-nominated song from a Taylor Hackford directed flick from the 80's--see this). Isabella is SO PRETTY.

                           

I digress. I never thought much about the tempo change. Figured the bridge was just...faster. Not metrically related to the original tempo in any way. But I heard the song today and had one of those "Wait a minute..." things that keeps me from doing anything at all productive until I find the answer. Sure enough, I was right.

Here's what happens at the transition into the bridge:
To clarify--the single eighth note triplet "becomes" the eighth note, increasing the tempo by 1/3. I found sheet music online that uses this notation:

Allow me to bitch about this editorial choice for just a moment. How useless is THAT?! If something like this is happening, I want to know what the NEW tempo is. This is not a transition to compound meter--it's 4/4 moving to a faster 4/4. I need information that will help me count the NEW tempo. If I didn't know the song and was trying to figure out this tempo shift, the dotted quarter is just confusing. True, telling me what the "new quarter" is in relation to the old tempo is tricky, but the triplet eighth/new duplet eighth relationship is a piece of cake.

The bridge is short and transitions back to the old tempo suddenly and rather awkwardly. It is, in fact, not a very good bridge. The song as a whole is pretty pedestrian. But Lionel Richie is cool as hell. And I give him (or producer X) credit for this very unusual metric modulation trick in an otherwise pretty half-assed ballad (He had a dream! He had an awesome dream! You are a shining star!).

I still love you, Lionel. "Dancing On the Ceiling" makes up for this and then some. And don't get me started on "Easy." AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW shit.

The vocal ad-lib so awesome he ad-libbed it twice

For Kelly Muse and Andy Robbins, Toto enthusiasts and discerning listeners. I owe this post completely to them. A dubious honor, no doubt.

Ok, so...this tune basically kicks ass, right? I mean come on. However. Check out the ugly vocal moment at 1:10, then AGAIN at 2:37. I decided that "Ooo" deserves its own sentence.

Hold the Line

"Ooooooo"? More like "EWWWWWWWW"! The ad-lib at 3:23 is pretty rough, too. "Love isn't always...love isn't always on tiii-iiime!"

But who am I to talk? HE'S SINGING HIGH C SHARPS IN HIS DAMNED CHEST VOICE!

And this video is fantastic. True, Steve Lukather is trying hard to look like Brian May, but his solo is great, especially the overdubbed harmony stuff at the end. Why is the bass player (David Hungate?) playing a double-necked bass/guitar thing in this video? I don't know. We do what we can to get attention. He was probably trying to justify the purchase. And I do love those old Yamaha electric pianos.

And vests. I love vests.

And the more I hear it...the more I like this little lick. Forget everything bad I just sad.

More flams than you can shake a stick at!

Plenty has been said and written about Stewart Copeland's playing with The Police, but I want to focus on a very small aspect of it--an astounding number of songs that The Police recorded have either very short or somewhat long drum solo introductions. Some are a full four+ measures long, some are just one beat. This is a catalog of all(?) 30 of them, taken from the Message In a Box four disc collection. ("Box set"...I almost don't remember what that even means...). I'm not sure when or why I became obsessed with these intros, but they're all such great little gems. All of these songs could have started with the full band on a downbeat. But I'm glad they don't.

After searching around online, I've decided not to worry about sticking to any notation protocol. Every chart I find is slightly different, so I just wrote something that seems passable, and the description should clarify any uncertainty. Drummers: feel free to let me know if anything is way off in terms of notation or what you hear.

I have included links to YouTube videos, all of various audio quality and some could be taken down at any moment. Spotify works great if you're really interested in checking these out.


The first two tracks were released as a single in the UK:

1. Fall Out
This gets us off on the right foot. Well. Literally. And with a flam on the snare. There are plenty more of those.

2. Nothing Achieving

Another flam, this time without the bass drum.

From Outlandos d'Amours

3. Next to You

Let's call this a modified "blackum": the typical snare flam followed by the bass drum, except with snare drum hits with the bass drum and toms at the end.

4. So Lonely
A single "blackum": snare flam followed by bass drum.

5. Roxanne
Just one eighth on the open hi-hat, then the guitar enters.

6. Peanuts
Tom pickups into two measures of driving, open hi-hat beat. There's a transcription online that has eighth notes in the hi-hat in measure 2, but I hear a closing hi-hat "shht" sound, not a stick sound.

7. Can't Stand Losing You
Maybe I'm hearing things, but I hear snare, crash, AND closed hi-hat on beat 4 of this intro. I think the cymbal was overdubbed.

8. Truth Hits Everybody
Another bass-flam pickup.

B-side of the "Message In a Bottle" single:

9. Landlord
Another snare flam on 4.

From Regatta de Blanc

10. Deathwish
This is classic Stewart Copeland shit: hi-hat and rim clicks with shifting accents.

11. Walking On the Moon
The drum track for this song is well-known for its use of a delay effect, but the intro is just the hi-hat (and guitar amp noise), no delay.

12. On Any Other Day
I've included Stewart's spoken part with the snare drum intro. It flows pretty well.

13. No Time This Time
Choo-choo train intro. He kinda muffs the fourth bass drum hit.

B-side of the singles "Don't Stand So Close to Me" (UK), and "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da" (U.S.):

14. Friends
This one took me awhile. I kept hearing it an eighth-note off with the splash cymbal on the "and" of 3 instead of on 4.

From Zenyatta Mondatta:

15. Driven To Tears
A modified "blackum," with hi-hat closing in place of bass drum.

16. When the World Is Running Down
Double flam! Flam it good! Flam it right! Flam it TWICE!

17. Bombs Away
One tom and the snare. This project has reinforced something I already knew but had never paid such close attention to: drums can sound really different depending on how hard they're hit.

18. Man In a Suitcase
More signature stuff: splash cymbal and a really high-pitched tom.

19. Shadows In the Rain
Hi-hat alone.

B-side of the singles "Invisible Sun" (UK), and "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic" (U.S.):

20. Shambelle
Another boom-flam. These are technical terms.

From Ghost in the Machine:

21. Spirits In the Material World
This was another tricky one, mostly due to the synth.

22. Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic
A simple hi-hat intro made more intricate with a stereo panning delay effect. Repeats are at the 1/16 note. This is the sounding intro--he probably played half as many notes.

23. Hungry For You
A single snare hit. No flam.

24. Demolition Man
This one is tough for me. Honestly I can't make out nine individual attacks. But I saw it written this way online and I'm going with it. In some ways the strangest of all the intros.

25. Rehumanize Yourself
Flam it. Flam HARDER. FLAM AGAIN!

26. One World 
I found a transcription of this that notates it in 4/4 with a lot of triplets. It's a tough call, but I like my way better: a modified shuffle with straight elements. Really cool feel. Stupid lyrics, but rhythmically very interesting.

From Synchronicity:

27. Miss Gradenko
This intro features a high-pitched octoban.

28. Every Breath You Take
This quarter-note pickup features another non-standard addition to the kit: gong drum.

29. Wrapped Around Your Finger
This is either a splash cymbal or some other small metallic thing-a-ma-jig.

30. Murder By Numbers
This is perhaps the drum intro. My transcription is only the first two measures, but it shows several Copeland hallmarks: the off-putting splash cymbal downbeat, the cross-cutting rim clicks, and the strong two and four on the bass drum. I actually found a transcription of this that put the bass drum on one and three at the beginning of the verse, then turns it around with a 3/8 measure. Which...makes no fucking sense. (Must be getting to the end of the post...he's cursing!) The whole point is that the verse is a modified one drop/shuffle pattern and the chorus shifts to a heavy shuffle with a backbeat. Anyway. Great tune. Great drumming.

cheese+cheese=GOLD

I'm a sucker for drunk, lonely single guy songs. Hm. But anyway. Frank Sinatra's are my favorites. The more over-the-top, the better. In fact, sometimes I think that if your starting point is corny, all you need to do is lay it on really, really thick and it comes back around the circle to the amazing point. Take this song, for example:

"A man who knows love is seldom what it seems, only other people's dreams." Oh YEAH! But what really makes it is Don Costa's string arrangement, especially at 2:25:

I can't tell you how many times I've listened to this in the car in the past week, and each time I've said, out loud, something like AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW YEEEAAAAAAAHHHH! HOLY SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!"

What a great six measures of music! It begins with a simple statement of the tune, then all of those sixteenth-note triplets, then the completely out of hand counterpoint to Frank...in three octaves at the end of it! It "should" end when he comes back in, but no, it keeps going, and goes HIGHER! Oh, oh, oh. Such good writing.

Let's not forget the celeste at 2:52 Sometimes...all your cheese needs is a little more cheese. This is GREAT cheese.