What is NOT music & What is just BAD music

If you covered your house with a coat of Sherwin-Williams would you call it art?

No.
You painted.
You didn’t create art.

If you closed your eyes and pecked randomly at your computer keyboard would you call it a poem?

No.
You typed.
You didn’t write poetry.

If you put a pair of shoes in the oven would you call it cooking?

No.
You ruined a pair of shoes.
You didn’t make a meal.

If you dropped a television on your foot and screamed in pain would you call it singing?

No.
You made noise.
You didn’t make music.

If you poured a bucket of golf balls on top of a xylophone would you call it a song?

No.
You made noise.
You didn’t make music.

If you took a group of college students and asked them to make sounds using items found in Busch Academic Center, Room 1423 on the afternoon of November 16th would you call it music?

I wouldn’t.
But still, it was fun.

.
.
.
.
.

Sound comes in waves
& so does light.
My desk lamp
does not sing to me.

Radiohead rules. Coldplay sucks. (or Why Contemporary Music Listening Tests Are Hard – Part Two)

Radiohead’s first album Pablo Honey (1993) was not groundbreaking stuff – some fuzzy guitars, puzzling lyrics sung with tortured emotion, a heavy reliance on the juxtaposition between soft verses and loud choruses – they easily could have been mistaken for a British version of Nirvana.

The Bends (1995) proved that Radiohead was not a one hit wonder. While Pablo Honey sounded very consistent, The Bends explored new sonic territory with the addition of samples, keyboards, and heavily modulated guitar tones. The songs were also more compositionally complex, exploring chromaticism, mid-song key changes, and alternate time signatures.

OK Computer (1997) went one step further. Building upon the progress of The Bends, Radiohead delivered OK Computer, which was amazing as a collection of songs, but even more impressive when viewed as a whole. The concept album – a concept which hadn’t been popular since Pink Floyd’s heyday [The Dark Side of the Moon (1973), Wish You Were Here (1975), and The Wall (1979)] was back. OK Computer was widely praised by fans and critics alike:

OK Computer is consistently featured on 'best albums' lists, and has been seen by some critics as one of the most significant rock albums ever recorded. It received a number one placing in a 1998 Q magazine poll in which readers were asked to name the "greatest album of all time", and achieved top placement once again in 2005. Critics at Q magazine also named it as the 2nd greatest British album of all-time in June 2000. It was nominated for the 1997 Mercury Music Prize. In 1997 it was placed at number 7 in a 'Music of the Millennium' poll conducted by HMV, Channel 4, The Guardian and Classic FM; while in 2003 the TV network VH1 placed it at number 94. It's often placed inside the top 10 albums of all time on the Rate Your Music: Top 100 Albums of All Time although this list changes regularly. Rate Your Music users also voted it as the greatest album of all-time in March 2006 .The Mexican version of Rolling Stone Magazine named it as the 4th greatest album of all-time in 2004. The album also came in at number one in Channel 4's 100 Greatest albums programme broadcast on Channel 4 on April 17, 2005 in the United Kingdom. In 2004 it placed number 5 on MuchMoreMusic's 40 Best Albums of the Past 25 Years. In 2003, Pitchfork Media placed it at number one in a list of 100 Best Albums of the 1990s. In June 2005 it was named as Spin Magazine's number one album of the years 1985-2004. And in April 2006 Irish musicians at Hot Press named it the 2nd greatest album of all-time. In 2003, the album was ranked number 162 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. The album ranks at #14 on The All Time Top 3000 Albums at Acclaimed Music.net (The Most Recommended Albums and Songs of All Time), and only second behind Nirvana's Nevermind for albums released in the 1990s. In December 2006, it was voted #3 in the My Favourite Album survey by Australia's ABC national media organisation, behind Dark Side of the Moon and Jeff Buckley's Grace.

So Radiohead had some big shoes to fill with their next album. But instead of delivering OK Computer, Part Two they completely changed their sound and put out Kid A – an album that eschewed multi-tracked guitars in preference of lush keyboard textures – moving away from alternative rock and towards electronica music.

And this brings up a common characteristic of great composers – they innovate. Great composers are constantly exploring new ground. Instead of playing it safe, they take risks. They may sometimes fail at their attempts, but when they succeed they have the potential to stumble upon unparalleled innovations.

And this can make the work of great composers difficult to identify. The consummate example of an innovative composer has to be Igor Stravinsky: neoclassicism, primitivism, nationalism, serialism, as well as the use of ostinato, musical quotation, and folk material. The scope of these innovations is beyond the scope of this blog (and frankly beyond the scope of my understanding) but they served to solidify Stravinsky as a major part of the musical canon.

Let’s contrast this with Coldplay. Coldplay is a second rate copy of Radiohead at best. (Even their name is similar – two short unrelated words merged into one new compound word.) Coldplay cribbed the sound of “Fake Plastic Trees,” the biggest single from The Bends, and adopted it as their blueprint for their entire repertoire. Coldplay has never produced one innovative musical idea, and it is doubtful that they ever will.


"Fake Plastic Trees" by Radiohead (1995)
"Yellow" by Coldplay (2000)
"Blue" by The Fruit Guys (2006)

Personal Timbre – The Missing Element (or Why Contemporary Music Listening Tests Are Hard)

In the 1990s Johnny Cash’s career was revived by legendary producer Rick Rubin, best known for working with acts such as The Beastie Boys, Slayer, and The Red Hot Chili Peppers. These American series albums (as they became to be known because they were released on Rick Rubin’s own label American Recordings) are haunting and sparsely arranged. Most tracks are simply Cash’s voice and acoustic guitar and when other instrumentation is used it takes a backseat to the output of Cash himself.

A striking aspect of this collection is the large volume of cover songs and the variety of the covered material:

“Hurt” by Nine Inch Nails,
“Rusty Cage” by Soundgarden,
“Personal Jesus” by Depeche Mode,
“One” by U2,
“In My Life” by The Beatles,
“Desperado” by The Eagles,
“I Won’t Back Down” by Tom Petty,
...and on and on and on

However, what is even more interesting is how Johnny Cash makes these songs his own. Without changing much from the original structure of the songs, Cash delivers these tunes in such a way that they all sound like Johnny Cash songs. He manages to turn everything from grunge to industrial to synth pop to classic rock into a Johnny Cash style country dirge. I’d venture a guess that listeners unfamiliar with the original tunes would not even question whether or not Cash wrote these songs. I’d hypothesize that this is mostly due to the timbre of Cash’s voice.

With the majority of music we’ve experienced this semester, in determining a piece of music’s composer we are left to guess from a list of clues – amount of chromaticism, instrumentation, genre, etc. However, these generalizations can prove to be misleading. Schoenberg did not always write atonally, Wagner did not only write operas, and Varèse didn’t just write percussion pieces.

Timbre is an especially sticky subject. A piano is a piano is a piano. (unless John Cage has instructed you to fill it full of erasers, tacks, and spoons) And I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. (Maybe some people could, but I couldn’t.)

Many of the advances in timbre are related to new technologies – Steve Reich’s tape loops, George Crumb’s amplified string quartet, and the Moog synthesizer. The electric guitar has become an enormous source of timbral variety. There are so many different combinations of guitars, pick-ups, amplifiers, and effects available that the possibilities are practically limitless.

However, the most instantly identifiable timbral element in modern music is the human voice. In contrast to operatic singing in which it seems there is an ideal tone which all opera singers strive for, early on rock ‘n’ roll accepted the individuality of the human voice. Artists such as Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, and Jerry Lee Lewis probably wouldn’t have made the cut on American Idol (the nadir of contemporary music) but, what they lacked in technical proficiency, they more than made up for in sweat and soul. Thankfully this acceptance of individuality continues to thrive to today and provides us with a rich diversity of performers from which anyone should be able to find something they enjoy.

Six Little Piano Pieces in a Three Room House

“There must not be any preconceived notion or design for what the poem ought to be… I’m not interested in writing sonnets, sestinas or anything… only poems. If the poem has got to be sonnet (unlikely tho) or whatever, it’ll certainly let me know.” – Amiri Baraka
(click here for bio)

“I’m serial. I’m super serial” – Al Gore
(click here for funny video)

I have a problem with serialism, twelve-tone technique, dodecaphony, atonality or whatever name you want to call it. It seems to take the emotion and creativity out of music and reduces composition into the solution of a mathematical equation. All twelve tones must be represented equally? Ridiculous. I tried to think of parallels in other art forms, but couldn’t really find anything to adequately compare. Can you imagine writing a poem in which all 26 letters must be used an equal amount of times? How about painting a picture in which all the colors of the rainbow must be represented – and in equal amounts. The closest metaphor I could find are some of the buildings of architect John Hejduk. Just as the serialists of the Second Viennese School (Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, and Alban Berg) worked within the confines of rigid twelve-tone structure, Hejduk also experimented with the confines of simple geometric shapes. One series of his explored the use of three shapes (circle, square, and diamond) – and fractions of these shapes in the design of a single-family home. *The pictures below are from “Mask of Medusa”.

Half House

One Quarter House


Three Quarter House


To my knowledge none of these houses were ever actually built. This is most likely because they are impractical. I personally have enough trouble arranging furniture in a room while worrying about where the electrical outlets are and which way the door opens. Can you imagine trying to put a bookcase against a circular wall? Or figuring out how to decorate two walls which meet each other at a 45-degree angle? I think these buildings are interesting to look at, but they are best left in the hypothetical world.

In the same way I think that serialism was a revolutionary idea. However, the questions it forced composers to ask were much more important than the answers which those composers provided.

(a joke inspired by) “Ionisation” by Edgard Varèse

Q: What do you call a drummer who has lost one of his sticks?

A: A conductor.

My Response to John Cage’s 4’33”

.

A Study in Narcissism: Dmitri Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 8 in C Minor (Op. 110)

I shall write a twenty-minute electric guitar opus

prominently featuring a melodic ostinato of J-E-F-F.


Now if I could only find where the J is on my fretboard?

“Margaret, you’re so hot. I want to wrestle."

Many consider ‘Wozzeck’ by Alban Berg to be the greatest opera of the 20th century.

I am keeping my fingers crossed that the 21st century will turn out better.

(a poem inspired by) “Six Little Piano Pieces op.19” by Arnold Schoenberg

Cat scurries
a...c......r..o....s.....s
piano keys.

Cat is frightened.
So am I.

Percy Grainger “The Hunter In His Career” (Theme and Variations)

I find this boring.
Boring find I this.
Find I boring this.
This I find BORING.

Mikrokosmos #148 (or 3X3=maj/min7)

"According to Wikipedia, Béla Bartók's composition for piano Mikrokosmos Sz. 107, BB 105 consists of 153 progressive pieces in six volumes written between 1926 and 1939" is not a very creative way to begin a blog, but it is helpful in analyzing "Six Dances in Bulgarian Rhythm". See, it turns out the "Six Dances" are not a complete work in themselves, but merely the columniation (pieces 148 to 153) of a larger work. "The individual pieces [of Mikrokosmos] progress from very easy and simple beginner etudes to very difficult advanced technical displays, and are used in modern piano lessons and education."

The first dance (148) starts off as an E major scale: E - F# - G# - A - B - C# (oops) D and D# together. We expect the scale to resolve an octave above the beginning E, but Bartók stops short. In addition to not completing the scale, he also creates tension by resolving on the major 7th and the minor 7th together, which when combined form the dissonant interval of a minor second. As the entire series served as content for piano lessons (some titles in volume one include "Dotted Notes," "Repetition," "Syncopation," "With Alternate Hands," and "Parallel Motion") I have to believe this broken scale is a deliberate attempt at irony. It is a parody of the basic scales which every beginning piano student is forced to learn and it may even be a parody of an earlier piece in Mikrokosmos itself.

Wikipedia also tells us that, "Bulgarian rhythm is one in which the beats in each bar are of unequal length. For example, the first dance (148) is grouped into 4+2+3 quavers in each bar." I can't hear that. I hear a compound rhythm of three beats per measure with each beat dividing into three, leading me to conclude the piece is in 9/8 time. Either way, it's an irregular meter for sure.

After three repetitions of the mutated major scale we discover that what we first thought was the melody takes a backseat to a higher register and more rhythmically prominent melody. The first three repetitions have already firmly established E as the tonic and as the higher melody takes over it starts on an E. However, the two voices collide as the new melody moves in a descending motion and even more significantly, it moves within the E minor scale. This struggle between a minor key melody and a major key harmony lasts ten measures (or more specifically a five measure unit which is repeated once) of 9/8 time.

And this is what Bulgarians dance to???

The left hand then shifts its rising major scale down a major third to C as the minor melody rises a minor third to G. This cacophony of sound and fury lasts for four measures, signifying nothing.

Then the left hand moves to A for a measure or two, after which all sense of a tonal center leaves the building. The beautifully complex rhythm also falls apart, as if the dancers need a minute to catch their breath. I lose all interest in what Bartók is doing at this point because I can't make heads or tails of it. It's a shame that I can't wholeheartedly endorse this piece (especially since it's only one minute and forty-four seconds long) but I do enjoy the first twenty-seven seconds.

Eventually the E tonic is reestablished (through much E octave banging by the left hand in the low piano register in the last ten seconds of the piece) but it's too little, too late.

Too bad.

Vibrato, Trills & The Mariah Carey Syndrome

Something that bothered me from the ‘Symphony A to Z’ concert I attended last week (see previous blog) was the amount of vibrato used by the string players. It was so prevalent and relentless; the effect lost all meaning for me.

I imagine keeping your fingertip anchored on a string while violently shaking your hand is one of the most difficult things for a string player to do. It made me wonder if the Saint Louis Symphony audition process contains a vibrato portion in which all of the violinists compete and the last one left vibrato-ing gets first chair.

I wonder if the vibrato was so noticeable just because I was watching them perform? I wonder if this effect is present on all of the class recordings? I must investigate this further.

The same musical excessiveness could be found in the trills from both Beethoven’s “Theme & Variations” and Stravinsky’s “Adagietto.” Although the former was Classical and the latter was Neo-Classical they both poked fun at the ridiculous embellishments of opera singers which has continued to this day in the mutated form of:

American Idol. Why is cramming as many notes into one syllable as possible while singing considered to be a valuable skill? Does it make for a more pleasurable listening experience? I don’t think so.

Does the best musician always make the best music? How many Yngwie Malmsteen albums do you own?

Everything in moderation. Even Eddie Van Halen (who arguably invented the two-handed tapping technique) knew to use a combination of techniques in his guitar solos. And without solid songwriting (and in my opinion without charismatic front man David Lee Roth) Van Halen wouldn’t have made such a lasting impression on the pop music culture.

The United States has always been a ‘bigger is better’ culture. The majority of Americans don’t buy lottery tickets when the jackpot is a mere 5 or 10 million. They wait until it’s up to 200 million – then it’s worth their while. Beverages come in large, extra-large, and super-large sizes. Buy in bulk, drive a Hummer, and sing the National Anthem with as many notes as you can manage.

Symphony A to Z Introduction (something by Rachmaninov in G minor)

- live performance September 25th, 2006 featuring:
Peter Henderson, piano
Kristin Ahlstrom, violin
Anne Fagerburg, violoncello
(AKA The Ilex Trio)

I go out to see live music an average of once a week. It's what I do for fun.
I don't go to movie theaters.
I'm not a fine dining connoisseur.
I don't hang out at the mall.
I'd rather watch sports on TV, if at all.
Cicero's, Blueberry Hill, The Pageant, Mississippi Nights, Off Broadway, Venice Café, The Hi-Pointe: these are my sanctuaries.

There's something about live music that just can't be captured on a CD. It doesn't even have to involve the elaborate stage show of a Flaming Lips or the choreographed dance routines of a Jessica Simpson, usually it's just the pure energy of a group of musicians gelling on stage together.

I can't remember the last time I saw classical music (maybe that's not the right term) – symphonic music performed live. It might have been on a grade school field trip to Powell Hall?

Rock shows are electric – and by that I mean plugged in. There are cables and cords and power strips strewn all over the place. The singer sings through a microphone, the guitar cabinets are miked, the drums are miked, and the bass and keyboards are fed directly into the PA, which spits out all this sound in a thick paste. What you end up with is a wall of sound (intentional Phil Spector reference), but it loses that intricacy of stereo sound that The Beatles first started experimenting with in the mid 60's.

Sidebar:
(from Wikipedia)
The Beatles' album Let It Be was produced by Phil Spector and is cited as a famous example of his "Wall of Sound". Paul McCartney claimed that the production had ruined the work, particularly McCartney's composition "The Long And Winding Road", and a 'de-Spectorised' version of the album was released as Let It Be... Naked in 2003. George Harrison and John Lennon not only favored the production style but they continued to use Spector on various solo projects. George Harrison's All Things Must Pass and John Lennon's Imagine and Rock 'n' Roll albums featured the production sound; each musician would later have similar misgivings over the style.

The sound from the Ilex Trio in the Maryville Auditorium was different. Although the three musicians were seated very close to each other, there was a sense of separation between the sounds. I believe I heard the violoncello performer most prominently because she was pointed directly at me. I have a feeling that every seat in the auditorium offered a little bit different listening experience.

That being said, I found the violoncello part somewhat unnecessary. The piece was at times homophonic – when one of the strings would drop out and the other would take the lead, or when both strings rested and the piano carried the tune. But when it morphed into polyphonic melodies the violoncello seem to occupy the same frequency spectrum as the piano part which was predominantly in the lower registers. I think the melody would have been less muddled if it had been composed as a piano/violin duet.

As a listener of popular music I'm used to choruses and verses that bang you over the head with their repetitious melodies. Many symphonic pieces to me seem to deviate so far from where they started; it's hard to see how the composer justifies it as still being the same song. This piece, however, had a 1-2-3-5 melody pattern that kept reappearing (sometimes in a highly modulated form) that held the composition together.

This Rachmaninov piece also held my attention by swerving back and forth between tonality and atonality. Stately melodic sections would deviate into tension filled atonal romps and then resolve back into the safe arms of tonality.

It was particularly interesting to watch the body language of the performers. When the piece entered its most tension filled moments the string players used so much vibrato I thought they were going to snap the necks off of their instruments. Dr. Henderson was especially interesting to watch – flailing his arms, banging his head, and at times leaving his piano bench entirely.

I always thought of symphony performers as a strict and rigid breed. I imagined they ate their candy bars with a knife and fork, only watched foreign films with subtitles, and ironed their undergarments. I figured they'd have to be a bitter bunch, forced to spend their lives performing tunes written exclusively by dead guys and taking direction from a dude in a tux waving a stick. Tonight I saw a performance filled with intensity and passion.

"Transfigured Night" by Arnold Schoenberg, or [if you force me to I guess I'll try to fake it]

This piece makes me feel...

NOTHING.

I've tried. I've played the whole thing through numerous times: while sitting on the couch, while making dinner, while on the treadmill, while in the car, while waking up in the morning, while drifting off to sleep at night. It just does nothing for me. Usually I get distracted and start cutting my toenails or pondering over how much my next Discover Card statement is going to be. It doesn't hold my attention. It's not that it's bad; it's just nothing.

Maybe it's because the song is composed entirely of strings. (There's my timbre analysis) The sound of strings just doesn't move me. It reminds me of a sketch from the Dave Chappelle Show:

here

First Dave visits a business meeting in an office building and proves (with the help of John Mayer) that white people can't resist dancing to the sound of electric guitar. He gets similar results in a fancy restaurant full of white people. As a control he then has Mayer play guitar at a barbershop in Harlem. No one dances. In fact they tell him to, "shut the f@#$ up." Then he gets Questlove to play a drum kit and all the African Americans start dancing. With the addition of an electric piano he gets the Latin Americans dancing too.

So string ensembles don't get me dancing. I'd argue that it's due to my gender, race, age, and/or socioeconomic background, but I'm guessing I'm not that different than Dr. Henderson in any of these regards and he goes gaga over this stuff. Perhaps Dr. Henderson is the exception to the rule.

Here's my THRMFT+ examination of the fifth section, Adagio (2):

Texture = Homophonic
Harmony = From the supplemental reading I've gathered that it has a high degree of atonality, but personally having trouble recalling any memorable melody it's hard to tell when the piece diverges from the tonic. It seems that the fifth section is less atonal than some of the previous sections.
Rhythm = This piece needs some rhythm. It seems completely random to me.
Melody = Unmemorable
Form = The reading says its ABACA.
Timbre = String Orchestra
+ = I gather this is the conclusion of the story when the guy who has discovered his gal has been knocked up by another guy decides to forgive his gal and raise the child as his own. So I guess I'm supposed to feel happy for them? (I thought the poem was awful. Maybe it lost something in translation.) The music does suggest that things are calmer or that some crisis has been resolved, but frankly I think this section of music could be used with any sappy Hollywood film with a predictable happy ending. It's my belief that if you want to tell a story using music you're going to need to have some lyrics. It's also nice if you can wrap it up in around three minutes, instead of a half-hour. I'm curious whether each member of the symphony audience is given a copy of the poem and, if so, whether or not they are told when transitioning from one stanza to the next?

In conclusion, if I never hear this piece again for the rest of my life that would be fine with me. And if I do hear it again I probably won't even recognize it.

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