Totally incredible song recorded by Bon Iver, brand new haunting singer songwroiter
http://play.napster.com/track/22930993
Friday, February 29, 2008
Monday, February 4, 2008
Freddie King - King of the Blues
Just stumbled across a great Freddie King compilation called "King of the Blues" in my library. He's a blues singer and guitarist who is probably the single most significant influence on Eric Clapton (among other things, including being pretty awesome).
In listening to this disc, I think Clapton has covered literally most of it - Dust My Broom, Key to the Highway, Five Long Years - etc. Obviously King's covering a bunch of these himself, but Clapton's playing and singing just so closely emulate King that it's pretty interesting to hear.
King's fingers aren't quite as nimble on electric as Clapton's his acoustic guitar and back band make the music just groove. And his voice is Check out the songs Going Down and Dust My Broom for an electric and acoustic sampling.
In listening to this disc, I think Clapton has covered literally most of it - Dust My Broom, Key to the Highway, Five Long Years - etc. Obviously King's covering a bunch of these himself, but Clapton's playing and singing just so closely emulate King that it's pretty interesting to hear.
King's fingers aren't quite as nimble on electric as Clapton's his acoustic guitar and back band make the music just groove. And his voice is Check out the songs Going Down and Dust My Broom for an electric and acoustic sampling.
Saturday, February 2, 2008
Morton Feldman, "American Sublime" by Alex Ross
From the New Yorker on June 19, 2006, by Alex Ross, who recently published the (supposedly awesome, it's on my bookshelf and I can't wait to read it) book "The Rest Is Noise" which is a narrative history book of 20th century classical music.
Johann Sebastian Bach - Partita No. 2
Brace yourself for 12 minutes of reading (but trust me, totally worth). The text begins with a few paragraph description of Western classical music from its inception to the emergence of Bach. It describes one of Bach's main innovations to classical music and gives an amazing example of a solo violin piece he wrote in 1720. I would recommend not starting to listen until you reach the part where it talks about the violin partita because you'll want to really focus on the music when you listen.
You can stream the piece here, played by Shlomo Mintz.
So a bit about how classical music evolved. Started with one person singing one melody - no real rhythm, no harmonies, no instruments, just a haunting solo melody (1050-1200AD). Then, there was "amazing" innovation whereby two people would sing together - first, one guy would sing hum a bass note and hold that note for a while changing it occasionally, and the other would sing a melody above it (obviously, not too sophisticated) (1200AD). Then, the two voices started moving together at the same speed, hitting the same beats - think Lennon and McCartney harmonizing while singing "Two of Us." Now have them stop moving identically and have the notes and rhythms weave between each other (think all the voices in "The Longest Time" by Billie Joel) - different related rhythms for each player, rather than barbership quartet style where everyone moves together (1300-1500AD).
This movement reaches an apex, Renaissance period now, with a piece we listened to where there are 40 individual vocal parts (!!!!), all coordinated, each singing a different melody that harmonized with the others. Interestingly, they were arranged in an octagonal room, with 5 choruses of 8 (5 x 8 = 40 vocal parts) along each side of the octagon singing towards the audience who sat in the center of the octagon. The sound would be passed between the 5 man groups (all men, from super deep basses to little boys as the sopranos) in a circle or across the circle to create weird sounds - and sometimes all 40 people would be singing, and sometimes only 2 people - think of the volume dynamics!! With our stereos we unfortunately can't capture how that must have sounded, since we only have two speakers (the Flaming Lips incidentally have an experimental album where they recorded 4 separate CDs that you're supposed to arrange in a room and hear how the sound moves around the room as they're played together). Around this same time (1500-1600AD), instruments were introduced, and there were the first purely instrumental - no vocal parts at all - pieces. The harpsichord and lute were the main instruments at this time.
In response to this decadence of amazing coordination where sometimes it's hard to even hear what people are saying, opera was born (1600AD), marking the birth of the Baroque Period. Out of a desire to restore the glory of human emotion and experience (nostalgia for the ancient Greeks), intellectual circles in Florence (including Galileo's dad!) began to write music that emphasized the lyrics and meaning, trying to recreate the Greek Tragedies and Comedies. The backing music was very very simple at this time, just providing very modest backing to a highlighted vocalist.
Now, into this world, Bach is born (starts writing music in early 1700s). Bach popularizes a new priority for how music is arranged - where there are many voices (voices being literally vocal parts or sometimes instrumental parts) moving together, but there is a clear priority. Often the melody at the top is most important, the bass is very unimportant, and the the middle ground is sorta in between these in priority. This is an interesting development because this is the basis of and structure of all rock, jazz, soul, etc. - a melody at the top (usually vocals or a soloist), a very subdued bass, and then the guitars in the middle.
Then Bach begins passing around the emphasis between players, where the focus might shift from melody down to the bass and then get passed back up to the middle. Now it's really cool because you have everyone playing a really cool melody and passing it around - everyone's part, if listened to by itself, would sound cool. The harmonies they generate (have I lost you???) when you listen to them at the same time are really interesting too - Bach is a genius! So this is like if you had three people individually playing a cool guitar solo, each in their own separate rooms. Then you opened the doors between the rooms, and together they were somehow actually playing together, and the combined sound sounds amazing for a zillion new ways.
Ok, so this is all very cool. And think how easy it would be for someone to play a piece like this, solo, on the piano. Their right hand would be the high notes and melodies, their left hand would play the bass, and occasionally the middle of the two hands would provide the harmonies. Now think, how the hell would you do that on a solo violin? You can really only play one or two notes at a time because of the realities of the way a violin is designed to make sound??!!
Bach has done this in the second partita. He has managed to create multiple voices on the same violin - remember only one person playing on this recording. If you listen carefully you can hear the multiple parts. For example, in the first 30 seconds, you'll "hear" three violins. The highest voice harmonized with a middle voice, and the occasional gruntings of the lowest one. For the second thirty seconds, you hear the middle one take the lead with the high one harmonizing and again the bass just hitting the occasional rhythmic beat. Listen to all the ways the notes are passed between parts and how you hear (sometime just implied) how each part moves individually and is beautiful on its own, but how together they create something truly amazing.
Now read on slowly.
Listen starting at about 9:08 or so to 9:38. This just defines beauty, just the melody by itself. Just listen to it, who cares why it's beautiful in any music theory sense, it's just incredible.
Now, don't read the next part until you've finished listening to it!!!
Okay, now you've finished listening to the piece. Now go back and realize why I all the parts I told you to listen to were 30 seconds long. He's repeating the exact same chord pattern every 30 seconds or so, but with a completely different layering of the parts. Every time they seem to be playing the same chords, but just with a different rhythm, emphasis, and melody so it sounds new. See how many times and how drastically he changes it up, but yet always beautiful.
I have never heard anything so amazing in my entire life - I am prone to serious exaggeration, but I mean it (probably). I can't believe this exists and I heard it just now for the first time.
You can stream the piece here, played by Shlomo Mintz.
So a bit about how classical music evolved. Started with one person singing one melody - no real rhythm, no harmonies, no instruments, just a haunting solo melody (1050-1200AD). Then, there was "amazing" innovation whereby two people would sing together - first, one guy would sing hum a bass note and hold that note for a while changing it occasionally, and the other would sing a melody above it (obviously, not too sophisticated) (1200AD). Then, the two voices started moving together at the same speed, hitting the same beats - think Lennon and McCartney harmonizing while singing "Two of Us." Now have them stop moving identically and have the notes and rhythms weave between each other (think all the voices in "The Longest Time" by Billie Joel) - different related rhythms for each player, rather than barbership quartet style where everyone moves together (1300-1500AD).
This movement reaches an apex, Renaissance period now, with a piece we listened to where there are 40 individual vocal parts (!!!!), all coordinated, each singing a different melody that harmonized with the others. Interestingly, they were arranged in an octagonal room, with 5 choruses of 8 (5 x 8 = 40 vocal parts) along each side of the octagon singing towards the audience who sat in the center of the octagon. The sound would be passed between the 5 man groups (all men, from super deep basses to little boys as the sopranos) in a circle or across the circle to create weird sounds - and sometimes all 40 people would be singing, and sometimes only 2 people - think of the volume dynamics!! With our stereos we unfortunately can't capture how that must have sounded, since we only have two speakers (the Flaming Lips incidentally have an experimental album where they recorded 4 separate CDs that you're supposed to arrange in a room and hear how the sound moves around the room as they're played together). Around this same time (1500-1600AD), instruments were introduced, and there were the first purely instrumental - no vocal parts at all - pieces. The harpsichord and lute were the main instruments at this time.
In response to this decadence of amazing coordination where sometimes it's hard to even hear what people are saying, opera was born (1600AD), marking the birth of the Baroque Period. Out of a desire to restore the glory of human emotion and experience (nostalgia for the ancient Greeks), intellectual circles in Florence (including Galileo's dad!) began to write music that emphasized the lyrics and meaning, trying to recreate the Greek Tragedies and Comedies. The backing music was very very simple at this time, just providing very modest backing to a highlighted vocalist.
Now, into this world, Bach is born (starts writing music in early 1700s). Bach popularizes a new priority for how music is arranged - where there are many voices (voices being literally vocal parts or sometimes instrumental parts) moving together, but there is a clear priority. Often the melody at the top is most important, the bass is very unimportant, and the the middle ground is sorta in between these in priority. This is an interesting development because this is the basis of and structure of all rock, jazz, soul, etc. - a melody at the top (usually vocals or a soloist), a very subdued bass, and then the guitars in the middle.
Then Bach begins passing around the emphasis between players, where the focus might shift from melody down to the bass and then get passed back up to the middle. Now it's really cool because you have everyone playing a really cool melody and passing it around - everyone's part, if listened to by itself, would sound cool. The harmonies they generate (have I lost you???) when you listen to them at the same time are really interesting too - Bach is a genius! So this is like if you had three people individually playing a cool guitar solo, each in their own separate rooms. Then you opened the doors between the rooms, and together they were somehow actually playing together, and the combined sound sounds amazing for a zillion new ways.
Ok, so this is all very cool. And think how easy it would be for someone to play a piece like this, solo, on the piano. Their right hand would be the high notes and melodies, their left hand would play the bass, and occasionally the middle of the two hands would provide the harmonies. Now think, how the hell would you do that on a solo violin? You can really only play one or two notes at a time because of the realities of the way a violin is designed to make sound??!!
Bach has done this in the second partita. He has managed to create multiple voices on the same violin - remember only one person playing on this recording. If you listen carefully you can hear the multiple parts. For example, in the first 30 seconds, you'll "hear" three violins. The highest voice harmonized with a middle voice, and the occasional gruntings of the lowest one. For the second thirty seconds, you hear the middle one take the lead with the high one harmonizing and again the bass just hitting the occasional rhythmic beat. Listen to all the ways the notes are passed between parts and how you hear (sometime just implied) how each part moves individually and is beautiful on its own, but how together they create something truly amazing.
Now read on slowly.
Listen starting at about 9:08 or so to 9:38. This just defines beauty, just the melody by itself. Just listen to it, who cares why it's beautiful in any music theory sense, it's just incredible.
Now, don't read the next part until you've finished listening to it!!!
Okay, now you've finished listening to the piece. Now go back and realize why I all the parts I told you to listen to were 30 seconds long. He's repeating the exact same chord pattern every 30 seconds or so, but with a completely different layering of the parts. Every time they seem to be playing the same chords, but just with a different rhythm, emphasis, and melody so it sounds new. See how many times and how drastically he changes it up, but yet always beautiful.
I have never heard anything so amazing in my entire life - I am prone to serious exaggeration, but I mean it (probably). I can't believe this exists and I heard it just now for the first time.
iConcertCal - stay up to date on concerts in your area
Just got this amazing new plugin to iTunes which searches your iTunes library for artists and then posts a calendar of all of their upcoming concerts in your area. Just go get it and try it out, pretty awesome.
http://www.iconcertcal.com/
http://www.iconcertcal.com/
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Awesome instrumental new band, Ratatat
Totally digging Ratatat's "Lex", of their 2006 album "Classics." The band is just two guys with their guitars and a drum machine, but they just manage to create an unbelievably intricate, multi-layered sound. Really worth a listen to both this album and the album "Ratatat" and admire how they manage keep your interest with no essentially no vocals.
Monday, January 7, 2008
Norwegian Space Disco
This article "From our Bay to Norway" from the San Francisco Bay Guardian turned me on to a whole new world of music. It's about this very cerebral DJ culture with incredibly esoteric (often pretentious), but highly refined musical tastes who weave these styles through their own music. I'm not even going to try to describe it more, just listen to "Slow Burning Hands" or "Surf Wax", by The Sorcerer, here. The rest of the album's pretty crazy awesome as well.
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