Atlantic Canticles: two outtakes for download
[photo © Rikky Rooksby 2013]
At last I’ve completed the recording and mixing of my album of guitar instrumentals Atlantic Canticles. It has 18 tracks, about 53 minutes of music. In part it is an exploration of altered tunings which I have often used in songs and were the topic of my book How To Write Songs In Altered Guitar Tunings which came out a couple of years ago. None of the tracks are in standard tuning. Many have additional instruments such as strings rather than being entirely solo guitar. I hope the album will be available for purchase online in a couple of weeks – however long it takes for the uploading / clearance process. There will be a separate page on the website which will have more info, including a set of short comments on the tracks.
In the meantime I have put two outtakes on Soundcloud. The links to these are:
They’re free download mp3s. I hope you enjoy them. The album will be available as mp3 and lossless.
‘Eleanor of Acquifer’ is a sort of companion piece to one of the tracks on the album, ‘Eleanor of Acetylene’. ‘Upon The Printless Sands’ is a variation on another album track ‘Mr Peggotty’s Rag’. For any guitarists reading this I should say that it provides an example of how to get a different slant on a piece by making a small adjustment to the tuning. ‘Mr Peggotty’s Rag’ is in an open tuning in which I left a blue note – a b6 – which then contributed to the ragtime sound by being an open string that could ring dissonantly through the progression. To create ‘Upon The Printless Sands’ I tuned this one note up a semitone to the ‘normal’ sixth. This changed many of the chords from bluesy sevenths into smoother major sevenths. I then slowed the tempo to make it more relaxed and re-wrote several short sections. The title is an allusion to a famous speech by Prospero in The Tempest fused with memories of the beautiful beach of Porthmeor at St Ives in Cornwall pictured above.
This woman’s work: the music of Kate Bush
I’ve been meaning for some time to write on the subject of British singer-songwriter Kate Bush. She may not be familiar to all visitors to this site. In the UK she has long since attained the status of a musical legend and was recently awarded a CBE for services to British popular music.
Born in 1958, she signed to EMI in the mid-70s when in her mid-teens. The label provided money and time to develop her music before she went into a studio. Her first single ‘Wuthering Heights’ drew lyrically on Emily Bronte’s famous novel and went straight to no.1 in the UK. She was about 20 years old. The single caught people’s attention with its dramatic and often stratospheric vocal and English orchestral backing, and her striking beauty and ability to act out her songs made her TV appearances instantly memorable.
The single (and a follow-up hit ‘The Man With The Child In His Eyes’) featured on her debut LP The Kick Inside (1978). A second album Lionheart was released not long after. Both drew on a pool of songs written before her public career. The songs on these albums are charming, innocent, and colourful in a number of ways, with above average melodies and harmonic progressions.
A third album Never For Ever (1980) showed her music in transition and with increasing ambition. She was now involved in the production and the arrangements became more adventurous. It seemed she wanted her songs to have an extra-musical dimension, so there is greater use of sound-effects, and she changes her vocal style / accent to fit the subject and / or the persona of a given song. This album included an impressive anti-nuclear song ‘Breathing’.
These trends continued on the darker, more troubled The Dreaming (1982) which has tracks that feature folk instruments and more aggressive use of drums and percussion. By this point Bush had abandoned the usual routines of the pop career, retreating into the studio to concentrate on her music, and shunning live gigs, fame and celebrity. Each of the songs has an arrangement which is like a soundscape for that lyric. The emotional content of the songs is deepening all the time, to the point where by now she is outstripping most of her contemporaries, male or female. Neither the emotion nor the music is ever formulaic.
A decline in her commercial fortunes was remedied by her fifth album Hounds of Love (1985) which yielded several hit singles including ‘Running Up That Hill’. The album was divided between a suite of five songs on side 1 and a concept song-sequence called ‘The Ninth Wave’ on side 2 which showed something of the influence that Pink Floyd had had on her youthful imagination. It doesn’t sound like them, but it is as if she had internalized a feeling that a group of songs could be more expansive and imaginative. Some of the songs on the album were written with a drum machine, as Bush hoped to increase the rhythmic assertiveness of her music.
A more delicate ‘yin’ strength dominates The Sensual World (1989) which is possibly her greatest album. Some of the songs on this album have a truly searing emotional intensity, with guest musicians such as Breton harpist Alan Stivell and violinist Nigel Kennedy playing on ‘Between A Man And A Woman’ and ‘Never Be Mine’, and the plangent harmonies of the Trio Bulgarka appearing on other tracks.
It was another four years before her sixth record The Red Shoes was released. Although this has some great moments, the album is over-long. It can be thought of as Bush’s Blood on the Tracks, a relationship break-up album where there is a slight sense of life experience out-stripping the ability to turn it into the best art at that moment.
Bush did not make another album until 2005, when the double Aerial appeared. This combines a miscellany of songs with another conceptual song-sequence. It has been hailed as her masterpiece, but I personally find some of the musical material uninspired and predictable in a way that the songs on her first album were not. I feel this more strongly with her most recent album 50 Words For Snow where a great idea for a set of songs (snow / night) is doing too much of the work the music should be doing. In these songs musical content is stretched to a point where the uneventfulness is painful. The album lasts around an hour. Debussy’s piano piece ‘Des pas sur la neige’ (Footprints in the snow’ from the Preludes) achieves more in two minutes.
There is no doubt in my mind that Kate Bush is one of the most significant singer-songwriters the UK has produced in the modern era. I see no reason why she should not have more great music in her. Given the importance of her childhood at East Wickham farm and the memories attached to that sense of belonging and inner adventure she could write one of the great albums about the lost domains of childhood. But I think that when she next finds a framework or concept that excites her imagination she needs to find someone who whilst respecting her musical identity can encourage her to re-discover her gift for memorable melody and harmonic progression.
And of course if no-one else is willing I’m happy to volunteer …! 🙂
February news
I can’t believe how the time has flown by since I last posted. First, an update on my guitar album Atlantic Canticles. I’ve almost completed the recording. I’m going to have 21 tracks to choose from because another idea turned up a couple of days ago and that turned into a piece which is titled ‘Upon the Printless Sands’. I’m aiming to finish and make available the album by the end of the month. Whether I can do it we shall see …
News in the past few days of the death of Reg Presley of The Troggs. Their hit ‘Wild Thing’ 1966 gained additional fame when it was taken over by Jimi Hendrix (it was the last song he played in his set at Monterey in 1967). It’s quite possible that the song is now more associated with Hendrix than The Troggs. Hendrix’s version may have been more amped-up, but in the context of the chart pop in Britain in 1966 The Troggs’ version did startle by seeming so primitive. Its charming slightly-out-of-tune recorder solo was an early hint of the fey bucolics of the approaching Summer of Love (the recorder in popular music signalling the pastoral).
Another big Troggs hit was ‘Love Is All Around’. I’ve always been immune to this song, regardless of who does it. If you want to hear an infinitely more expressive use of a I-II-IV-V chord progression try R.E.M.’s ‘Fall On Me’.
On the subject of Hendrix it has been frustrating to read news reports of the imminent release of his ‘new’ studio album in March. In fact, almost all these songs have been issued before, if perhaps not in these exact mixes or takes. The 12 songs belong to the album Hendrix was working on at the time of his death which has been released before under the title First Rays of the New Rising Sun. Approach with caution …
King Richard III has been in the news too, since it was confirmed on Monday that DNA testing had demonstrated that the bones found under a Leicester car park were his. A cue for Supergrass’ Britpop hit ‘Richard III’, which has some unusual chord changes.
On the classical front I’ve been enjoying exploring previously unfamiliar music by the Finnish composer Aare Merikanto. I started last year with an Alba SACD of Symphony 1 and 3 (3 is superb and very accessible). I then got hold of two Merikanto discs on Ondine – Piano Concertos 1 & 2, and Works for Orchestra. The slow movements of the piano concertos are very lyrical. The latter disc has the attractive 4 minute ‘Andante Religoso’ which might make a great download if it’s available as such.
It seems that Chandos may have abandoned their cycle of Weinberg symphonies, which is a pity. Some of the missing ones (he wrote at least 22) are appearing on Naxos but not as SACDs. Another label Neos is six CDs into a Weinberg edition but some of those are live recordings and therefore vulnerable to hall noises, coughs, etc. Weinberg is not the most approachable of symphonists, and given the awful life experiences he endured in the USSR, it is not surprising that his music is often bleak. But it has a certain strength and endurance and a feeling that it is made to last, and I’ve enjoyed persevering with it even if the rewards are not immediate. He has been described as one of the three most important Russian-associated composers along with Shostakovich and Prokoviev. If you’ve not heard him the third symphony is a good place to start, along with the cello concerto, both on Chandos.
A new David Bowie single
Last Tuesday around 7.30 am I heard Radio 4 talking about a new single from David Bowie and what a surprise this was. It was apparently making digital waves across social media. They played a snippet. Bowie has never been a central musical figure for me, though I like his glam period, so I haven’t followed his career for sometime. My first impression was how fragile Bowie sounded, and that it was a slow ballad with seemingly nothing out of the ordinary going on. But something about the fragility of the voice piqued my curiosity to hear the song in full and watch its video. A few hours later I found ‘Where Are We Now’ on the web. It was an unexpectedly moving experience.
I haven’t had the opportunity to fully analyse the chord progression, but a couple of listens have made it clear that the verse is in F major and the chorus in C, so there’s a key contrast. This is achieved in a smooth and seamless manner. It’s only when the chorus drops to Em (second chord) from F that you realise it must have changed. The chords of the verse are more complex than first hearing suggests. It is also clear that slash chords and inversions are also playing a part in the expressive effect. The song also makes a seamless transition to an emotional last section which is also a surprise climax. Bowie could easily have milked this, go on repeating it and added more and more to the production, but he shows great taste in just singing this section twice and then backing off. It’s under-stated.
It’s a song soaked with elegiac feeling, as Bowie recounts fragments of his life in Berlin 30 years ago, a Berlin which itself has changed greatly. The video is haunting too. It’s a song that feels like a generational milestone. For people who were teenagers when they discovered Hunky Dory or Ziggy Stardust or Aladdin Sane it seems almost unbelievable that Bowie can be in his mid-60s. As he once sang, time is waiting in the wings …
New Year, new Borgen
I’d like to wish everyone a very Happy New Year. Apparently people from 93 different countries visited the website last year. If you want to receive a notification of my blog please register.
My first task of the 2013 will be to complete the recording of my acoustic guitar album Atlantic Canticles. I’ll be choosing probably 16 out of the 20 tracks I’ve written, so there’s likely to be a free download track.
On Saturday night the 2nd series of the Danish drama series Borgen started transmission on British TV. This reminded me how much I enjoyed the combination of music and graphics on the opening titles. I thought there might be something in the music to comment on from a composer’s point of view. The theme moves through the following chord progression: Cm-D/C-Gm/Bb-C/Bb-Ab-Eb/G-Bbsus4-Bb-Bbm-Abm-Db-Ebm-Cb/Eb-Db-Fm9-Csus4-Cm/maj7-Cm. That’s an approximate description because the rapid keyboard arpeggios add various harmonic colours to these chords every couple of beats. The progression is about 20 bars with mostly one chord to a bar except for Bb-Bbm and Ebm-Cb/Eb which are two beats per chord (a split bar).
The first thing to notice is the number of inversions or slash chords. These keep the progression moving forward and prevent it having the stability of root chords – which is fitting for the fluid world of politics it describes. The second point is the fine temporary key-change that comes into play for the Abm-Db-Ebm-Cb/Eb-Db section, where the Abm is a bit of a shock. The music here is moving into Eb minor or Gb from its home key of C minor which it quickly finds its way back to. The melody is initiated by a powerful motif of an octave leap from G up to G, down to D and then Eb, over a chord of C minor.
It’s not quite as impressive as the theme song of The Bridge, which I discussed last year, but good nonetheless.
December news
The Christmas holiday is fast approaching and the opportunities for recording are getting fewer.
Here’s an update on my acoustic guitar album project. I had hoped to have started recording by now but technical challenges have slowed things down. However, I can report that I have about 19 tracks written, with about 10 or so with additional arrangements. Some of the tracks will be solo guitar, but others have additional instruments such as violin, viola, cello, double bass, woodwind, vibraphone, celesta, chamber strings, and light percussion. None of the tracks are in standard tuning. There’s quite a bit of lyrical music, several more uptempo pieces, including a ragtime piece.
The album title is Atlantic Canticles.
Track titles are : ‘Ticking’, ‘Zennor Knights’, ‘Salt Doll’, ‘Eleanor of Acquifer’, ‘Gull Grey Town’, ‘Sloop Roger B.’, ‘Starlight Dancer’, ‘Postcard From St Ives’, ‘Written On The Roads’, ‘Atlantic Nocturne’, ‘Eleanor of Acetylene’, ‘Mr Peggotty’s Blues’, ‘The Night Above St Ives’, ‘The One Summer’, ‘Rainbow Hunter’, ‘At The Chime Of A Harbour Clock’, ‘Postcard To Denys’, ‘Querulous III’, and ‘Atlantic Canticle’.
I think most of these will be included, depending on running time. More details in the New Year.
While I’ve been re-engaging with various bits of recording equipment I’ve been reminded of past musical song projects which may yet see the light of day, notably an album of songs written in the style of The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, a John Barry / rock album called A Kiss In Berlin, and an album of English-themed songs Spitfire Summer. These need re-mixing and possibly a few additional overdubs.
Time to dig out the Christmas music. I’ll be listening to Vaughan Williams’ Symphony 8, Fantasia on Christmas Carols and cantata ‘Hodie’, Prokoviev’s ‘Lieutenant Kije’ suite, Britten’s ‘Ceremony of Carols’, Tveitt’s Piano Concerto no.4, and Peter Warlock’s great carol ‘Bethlehem Down’. And there must be some Sibelius that will suit the season too.
Thanks to everyone who visited the site this year and posted comments. It’s always great to hear from people who have come across my books. I hope you all have a great Christmas holiday and best wishes for the New Year.
P.S. [Christmas Cracker]
If you didn’t see it last year you may find this spoof amusing, which I posted over at the Vienna Symphonic Library: http://community.vsl.co.at/forums/p/30750/196567.aspx#196567
Brubeck and the Stones
The Rolling Stones have enjoyed much coverage recently with the band’s 50th anniversary being marked with concerts and a documentary film Crossfire Hurricane shown on BBC2. I must confess that I have never been much of a fan of the Stones. I enjoy many of their mid-60s-early 70s singles (always had a soft spot for ‘Let’s Spend The Night Together’), and was very impressed with the guitar interplay on ‘Start Me Up’ when that came out, but never cared much for the dark and decadent vibe the Stones projected, which always struck me as joyless. I also feel that the emotional range of their music is considerably narrower than say the Beatles, too earth-bound and self-obsessed to match the sublimer moments of the Who. But they had their moments: any 1968 compilation that wants to reflect that year has to have ‘Street Fighting Man’, for instance, and the fabulous groove of ‘Tumbling Dice’ seems to translate emotion into rhythm.
The documentary reminded me of one of my favourite Stones songs – ‘Moonlight Mile’, the closing track on 1971’s Sticky Fingers. Guitarist Mick Taylor apparently had a big part in its composition, which may explain why it goes into very different expressive territory for the Stones. It’s a haunting nocturne with an oriental feel created by the open G tuning and the pentatonic major melody. Piano and strings add to the atmosphere, and like ‘Tumbling Dice’ it has one of those wonderful build-ups starting around 3:30 before the song climaxes on one last extended chorus. If you don’t know it, seek it out.
I must also note the death a couple of days ago of the pioneer of 1950s cool jazz man Dave Brubeck. Jazz really isn’t my thing; I only own a handful of jazz albums. Among them are the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s Time Out and Time Further Out from around 1960, the former containing the hit single ‘Take Five’. These albums have a melodic sunny inventiveness, as the four musicians play with various odd time signatures, which always lifts the mood.
Symphony as landscape
It has become a common sight in the last few years to see people walking around with ear-pieces / headphones listening to music. I usually only do this if I’m in a train or coach for several hours, but the other day I decided to try headphones during the 45 minute walk into the city centre. For playback I took a Sansaclip device. This is a portable music player only a little bigger than a matchbox. What’s great about it is that it will hold and play FLAC files – much better quality than mp3. There’s about 50-60 hours of classical music on this device. I left the house and started playing Moeran’s [1st] Symphony in G, a very attractive English work from the late 1930s with a strong Sibelius influence in parts. I was intrigued and surprised to find that I found the experience disconcerting, as though there was a cognitive dissonance between the music and the external world I was seeing on the walk. I thought about it afterward and decided that for me the experience of a symphony is like an inner landscape and I can only satisfactorily respond to one landscape / journey at a time. Physically moving through another at the same time is too much. Perhaps it would be a less dissonant experience with songs only.
13 strings for Christmas
This is by way of a footnote to the post about John Doan and the harp guitar. There are other guitars made with more than the conventional six strings. Today I had a newsletter from the Swedish record company BIS advertising new releases. One is a disc (SACD hybrid that will play on standard players) of Christmas instrumentals played on 13-string guitar by Anders Miolin. I haven’t heard this but it seems like it would make an unusual and attractive present if you’re thinking about music gifts for friends to play at Christmas. Here are some links:
http://www.miolin.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=48&Itemid=75
The CD info from BIS is:
Christmas Dreams on 13 Strings BIS-2026 | SACD EAN 7318599920269 TT: 72’22 Fantasies on Christmas songs, composed and performed by Anders Miolin on 13-string guitar
Stille Nacht (Fr. X. Gruber); Good King Wenceslas (trad.); Lulajže, Jezuniu (trad.); Noël nouvelet (trad.) / Un flambeau, Jeannette, Isabelle (trad.); V lesu rodilas elochka (L. K. Beckmann) / Nu tändas tusen juleljus (E. Köhler); Es wird schon gleich dunkel (trad.) / Adeste fideles (J. Fr. Wade); Convidando está la noche (J. García de Zéspedes); Les Anges dans nos campagnes (trad.); Maria durch ein Dornwald ging (trad.) / Canzone d’l zampognari (trad.); It came upon the midnight clear (Arthur Sullivan); In dulci jubilo (trad.) / I Saw Three Ships (trad.); Baloo Lammy (trad.) / Balulalow (Peter Warlock); Azure Christmas (Anders Miolin); Stellæ nocte hibernali somniantes (Anders Miolin).
November news
I recently mentioned that I had been working on some guitar instrumentals. This project first came to my mind about a year ago and then got pushed aside by work. In the past couple of weeks I’ve managed to write another six pieces, so I’m a fair way now toward having the 12-14 pieces needed to make an album. Talking to John Doan was certainly an inspiration. They’re not particularly difficult to play but explore the resonance of certain altered tunings on acoustic guitar. I hope to post a couple on youtube, and then record them with a few overdubs.
I recently recorded a set of video clips for my publishers to promote my songwriting books. They should be posted at some point on the Hal Leonard website.
I’ve completed a 5,500 word essay on the Led Zeppelin O2 Arena gig that will be published in book form next year as a contribution to the book Dave Lewis is working on (details on the tightbutloose website). There may be more writing to be done on Zeppelin next year following the announcement that Jimmy Page is currently working on remastering the albums with additional tracks. What exactly these turn out to be we will have to wait and see. I’ve come across some suspicious-sounding tracks in connection with other bands’ archive releases, which have been offered as alternate takes when they sound like mere remixes or monitor mixes. I hope the Zeppelin catalogue is treated to some SACD / 5.1 high-definition audio treatment.
Anyone who had a harp … guitar
A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of interviewing American guitarist John Doan. John is one of the world’s leading exponents of the harp guitar. He’s been studying and playing it since the mid-1980s. We first met in the late 1990s when he was touring in the UK. The main focus of our talk was the signature harp guitar which John is involved with that will be available (for about $1500) in 2013. This is the first such affordable instrument – previously you would have to have one hand-made. Simply put, the harp guitar is a six-string guitar with an additional set of sub-bass strings and ‘super-trebles’ which extend the range of the guitar in both directions. If you search youtube for ‘john doan harp guitar’ you’ll be able to watch him play. It’s an impressive sound. It’s always great to talk to John because his thinking about the guitar is always subservient to his musical commitment (not always the case with guitarists). The short version of the interview will be available on guitarcoach, the download for the iPad. I hope to publish a longer version elsewhere.
I had a couple of concert experiences last weekend. I saw John Williams and John Etheridge play in the Sheldonian Theatre. A day or so later I saw the Led Zeppelin Celebration Day film on the big screen. Whatever one thinks of the band’s performance, this has to be one of the best ever shot rock concerts. If you like Zeppelin you have to see this.
I’ve recently been reading Pink Moon, a book of miscellaneous writings about Nick Drake which is enjoyable. If you don’t know Nick Drake’s music go and order Five Leaves Left or Bryter Later from somewhere. I’ve also read Leslie Ann-Jones’ new biography of Marc Bolan which, despite having some new information (especially through some new interviews) is poorly written and unsophisticated. It is also amazingly uninterested and uninformed about the actualities of Bolan’s music. I can’t see the point of writing biographies talking about musicians if you’re not going to talk about the music. There are more lines in the book about the 1966 World Cup Final or the JFK assassination or personal stuff than Beard of Stars! The book doesn’t even tell you what songs are on each release.
On the personal front, I think I have a green light now for the next songwriting book, although it seems it won’t appear until 2014. I’ve also written a number of acoustic guitar instrumentals which will go toward an album of such.
I’ve acquired a few more symphonies and enjoyed them very much. In addition to still investigating different recordings of Nielsen, I’ve been delighted to hear the Finnish composer Merikanto 3, along with George Lloyd 8, Riisager 1, Atterberg 6 in another recording, and Tubin 2 – one of those symphonies which is brash and noisy with a sublime pay-off at the end which makes it all worth it. There’s also a very pleasing disc of minor Vaughan Williams on Dutton Epoch called Early and Late Works.
Led Zeppelin’s Last Stand
News has just been released that the official DVD film of Led Zeppelin’s performance at the O2 Arena in December 2007 is to be available from mid-November. There will be cinema screenings of the two-hour film all over the world in mid-October. The release has been keenly anticipated by the Zeppelin fraternity for a number of years, and there have been periods when it has seemed that it might not appear. This was not of course Led Zeppelin mark 1, since mark 1 finished on the death of drummer John Bonham in September 1980. Mark 2 did however have another Bonham on the drum stool – namely, John’s son Jason – who acquitted himself extremely well.
Over the years the surviving members of Led Zeppelin have reunited on a handful of occasions, and the results have been often underwhelming – notably at Live Aid in 1985 and the Atlantic Records 40th Birthday concert in 1988. The O2 gig, properly planned and rehearsed, was leagues ahead of those earlier efforts. It was also the most over-subscribed concert in musical history with millions of people trying to get one of 18,000 tickets (nope, I didn’t get one either).
There was some hope that the O2 gig would be a curtain-raiser to a bit more activity by the band, but this petered out in 2008 when attempts to find a replacement singer for Robert Plant failed. Plant had made it clear he did not want to do anymore. For him, singing songs from 30 years or more ago was a tall order. About one-third of the songs performed were actually played in keys one tone below their original pitch.
It raises an interesting question about what a re-united Led Zeppelin mark 2 might have achieved. Could they have produced new material? Could they have brought the band’s undoubted power to bear on lyric subjects suitable for an ageing audience and 3 out of 4 members in their 60s? I found myself thinking of Dylan Thomas’ poem about death ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night’ with its refrain ‘rage, rage against the dying of the light’. If ever there was a band that had the power to potentially rage against the dying of the light it was Zeppelin. Though much of their 70s output is a Dionysian celebration of the joys of the flesh, tracks like ‘When The Levee Breaks’, ‘Achilles Last Stand’ and ‘Kashmir’ ventured into more serious lyric territory. On that territory the age of the band would not matter. Sadly, it looks like we will never know.
I shall be writing some pieces about the O2 gig for a Tight But Loose special (Dave Lewis’ renowned Led Zep magazine) coming out at the end of the year. I’ve also recently written a couple of short pieces for guitarcoach, the downloadable guitar magazine for the iPad. Last week I taught my Beatles course once more at Rewley House in Oxford.
Back to mono? / Carl Nielsen
I recently had a conversation with a 20-year-old on the subject of explaining what an SACD was, and also what was a 5.1 mix. To do this you have to start from an understanding of stereo in order to grasp how a 5.1 mix pushes sound at you from five different directions rather than two. Like many young people, this person had an iPod and often listened to mp3s through ear-buds. To my horror, it became apparent that there seems to be a generation of music listeners who have always used iPods and similar devices, who think that the reason you have two ear-buds is because you have two ears and music needs to go into both of them! Furthermore, if you take one out you can hear what a friend / bus-driver / barista is saying to you and still have the music.
In other words, these listeners have apparently no conception of stereo! They don’t understand that the left signal is different to the right, and that both are required to create a stereo musical image whose centre is right in the middle of your head. I suspect that most have never owned a proper hi-fi system with a balance on the amp which lets you turn the left or right channel off – a trick which can be revealing on 60s tracks which were mixed oddly or were originally intended to be mono. (What happens in these cases is that whole chunks of instruments disappear or are muted, leaving you with a partial backing track you can sing over or play guitar over.) If you have tried to transcribe music for yourself you learn to use this balance alteration as a way of isolating the instrument(s) you are trying to hear.
They might as well be listening to mono, where everything comes from a single direction. In the early 1970s record producer Phil Spector led a brief campaign extolling the virtues of the mono recordings which dominated popular music until the late 1960s. I never understood the appeal of mono, because our ears naturally function in stereo, integrating sound from a wide range of left and right. I’m always disappointed to find on a remastered box-set of 60s material that a mono mix has been used instead of a stereo one. Give me stereo any day.
So the upshot was a feeling that as music technology develops (SACD, 5.1, etc) so people’s interest in really hearing music is, in some quarters, diminishing.
Aside from this I’ve been taking some initial steps toward putting some guitar-related videos on youtube. I’ll announce them when they’re done. I stumbled across the website bandcamp recently and thought that might be somewhere I can place some of my songs.
I’m getting music inspiration from the Danish composer Carl Nielsen at present. I’ve always loved his fourth symphony (‘the Inextinguishable’), but heard a Prom performance of the 5th which impressed me, and for the past week I’ve been starting most days in semi-darkness listening to his quirky sixth – the Sinfonia Semplice – which is quite a controversial work. It is only comparatively recently that criticism has started to appreciate this strange work. It is such a tragedy that he did not live to write another, because I’m sure he would have found a way to re-integrate his musical language after breaking it down in no.5 and no.6.
C over G
Today I was looking at David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’ and in particular the question of which shape to use for a C/G chord. This is a second inversion, the type of chord where the 5th is the lowest note rather than the root note or the 3rd. In traditional music harmony there are many rules about the use of second inversions; how they are approached and how quitted. Guitarists tend not to be much bothered about the special identity of second inversion chords. Instead, they tend to use them as a means to have more strings sounding.
Here’s an example. An open C chord in first position is usually played x32010. If it is turned into a second inversion – 332010 – the 6th string can be played. Bowie seems to have been fond of this way of playing a C in songs like ‘Queen Bitch’ and I think it was for the extra resonance. But it isn’t functioning as a second inversion, just a more resonant C chord.
For a C/G that sounds like a second inversion, especially in a sequence where the bass note was at A and is falling to F# or F, I recommend 3×2010. It’s a subtle difference, but the removal of the low root note makes the second inversion stand out with more of an identity.
Flowers for San Francisco
A couple of days ago the death was announced of singer Scott McKenzie. McKenzie is remembered in the history of popular music for his Summer of Love anthem ‘If You’re Going To San Francisco’. For people of a certain age probably few songs evoke a period, in history and in social myth, with such immediate and haunting power as this. The song itself was written by John Philips of The Mamas and the Papas. It reached no.4 on the U.S. Billboard charts but did even better in the UK, entering the Top 20 in mid-July and leaving the chart in mid-October, and spending 5 weeks at no.1 during August and into September.
According to the Telegraph’s obituary, McKenzie spoke of the song being more about an idea than a place. “My heart was in that song,” McKenzie agreed, “and I didn’t have to change my image. I already had a pretty loose life. I was wearing flower shirts, weird flowing robes and kaftans, and we picked flowers the day we recorded the song. One girl gave me a garland of flowers and my friends were sitting in the lotus position, meditating, while I was recording it.”
I have always suspected that true ‘heads’ / counter-culturalists of the time probably dismissed it as a pop cash-in on their roots movement. Certainly, the production tries to send the right signals (like the sitar noises on the bridge). But it never struck me quite as vulnerable to that charge as The Flowerpot Men’s ‘Let’s Go To San Francisco’ which was released, rather late for the Summer of Love, that autumn (Eric Burdon’s San Francisco Nights was another hit linked to the city). And I guess I should mention Joni Mitchell’s ‘Woodstock’ as a song that marked the culmination and the end of the 60s dream – a hit for Matthews Southern Comfort in 1970.
Anyway, it seems that ‘If You’re Going To San Francisco’ not only inspired people around the world, but continues to touch people to this day. It’s a beautiful melody and there’s a key-change to lift the later parts of the song and a very pleasing bit of re-harmonizing on the words ‘For those who come to San Francisco’. McKenzie sung it very well, in a cool, under-stated way which just made it more powerful, and thus gained immortality as the voice summoning the idealists and the innocent to a city which exists now as another vision of the celestial city – as much as the Byzantium of W.B.Yeats’ poems. In reality, the actuality of flower power in San Francisco was rather different. George Harrison has some interesting recollections on visiting it on the Beatles Anthology DVD. But the ideal will live on in the imagination.
Now if only John Philips had written a song for Yeats …
The Love Affair
So, for another year, as of last Friday night my teaching for the Oxford Experience is complete. Music featured strongly on my courses this year, with two out of five courses devoted to it, and will do so even more next year when three of the six courses I hope to teach will be musical (the third is a new one on Stravinsky). Now it is time to re-focus and think about my other work, including the next book.
In the meantime the Olympics have come and gone, with British popular music featuring in the opening and closing ceremonies. I will confess to being uneasy about the careless way in which some of the songs were used with an apparent disregard for their lyric content – The Jam’s ‘Going Underground’ being a good example (I can’t think of a song more in rejection of such a mass-participation event as the Olympics), not to mention ‘Pretty Vacant’ – and the use of bits of songs such as ‘Baba O’Reilly’ (teenage wasteland, anyone?). The description of the closing ceremony as a ‘symphony of British music’ will go in my book on the symphony as another classic usage of the word to eclipse an important concept.
I have managed to sketch a few musical ideas these past couple of weeks. It’s a good compositional discipline to try to write something as often as possible, regardless of whether you’re feeling inspired. I find it helpful to open a manuscript page in Sibelius for one or two instruments – harp or piano (both harmonic instruments which can play chords) and perhaps a single-voice melodic instrument like violin or flute. It’s a good way to think about melody or reaching for new harmony.
I’ve also re-visited and transcribed some late 60s British pop hits by a band called Love Affair, who were slightly associated with the Mod movement, though they came on the scene pretty late for that. This was sparked by hearing one of said hits on the radio: ‘Rainbow Valley’. The band had their run of hits between 1968-70. Their sound (rumoured to have been executed in the studio by session players) is a British take on mid-60s Motown: yearning romantic melodies (sung by Steve Ellis), big brass chords, high strings, great drum fills, and busy syncopated ‘click’ bass (the picked equivalent of James Jamerson’s Motown bass-lines). If anyone ever wrote a book on what made British pop at the time work and how it differed with the US they’d have to be in it. The four big hits were ‘Bringing On Back The Good Times’, ‘Everlasting Love’, ‘A Day Without Love’ and ‘Rainbow Valley’, with the second going to no.1. From a songwriting point of view, there are some interesting points about them, notably the use of first inversion chords in prominent positions, and in ‘Rainbow Valley’ a daring break in rhythm during the later verses. You can probably find old clips of them on youtube.
July on the Oxford Experience
It has been awhile since I last posted because of the run-up and start of the Oxford Experience summer school programme on which I teach. So far I’ve taught the courses ‘From a Blues to the Symphony’, ‘The Beatles, Popular Music and 1960s Britain’, and ‘The Romance of the Railways’, and everything seems to have gone fine so far. It was interesting to see the reaction Bruce Springsteen’s song ‘Stolen Car’ got on Day 1 of the first course. Several people were obviously quite moved by it, despite its simplicity (mostly two chords but haunting). It was released on his 1980 album The River.
The railways course is really about how they have inspired poets, writers, artists and composers. There are hundreds of railway songs, especially in the American tradition, but less familiar to my students were some of the classical pieces inspired by trains – notably Honegger’s Pacific 2-3-1 (1923), Charles Ives’ ‘The Celestial Railroad’, Steve Reich’s ‘Different Trains’ (1988) – something of a minimalist classic – and (a recent discovery of mine) a string quartet by the Danish composer Rued Langgaard, the second movement of which is a 2:15 evocation of a fast train ride, written for just the four strings.
I meant to blog about several rock documentaries shown on BBC4 recently. One was on The Who’s Quadrophenia album and the other on Bowie and Ziggy Stardust. Both were eminently watchable, but showed an alarming tendency to make highly uncritical claims. It is rare these days to get any contrary view on a music doc to take the heat out of the exaggerated praise. The world really didn’t change THAT much when Bowie put his arm round Mick Ronson on TOTP one June night in 1972. You would think it was the trigger for the reversal of the magnetic poles and the fall of various governments …
I’ve been listening a lot to various works by Weinberg, the Estonian composer Lepo Sumera, and the Swede Kurt Atterberg. This morning I had a blast of Nielsen’s third symphony, which I don’t know as well as no.4. The more I hear of Nielsen’s music the more I admire the positivity which much of it radiates – a fascinating contrast to another favourite of mine Jean Sibelius, whose music’s positivity is often harder won.
Speaking of Sibelius the man reminds me that for the past two weeks I have watched with horrified and avid (pun intended) attention the drama playing out over the Sibelius notation system’s future. Sibelius was sold by its originators the Finn brothers to the company Avid 15 months ago. Avid have announced that they are closing the London office of Sibelius. This apparently means the break-up of the very team whose skill and dedication have made Sibelius a world-beating notation software. It is unbelievably short-sighted. A campaign to save Sibelius has been launched. You can read about this over at the Sibelius forum. I’ve used Sibelius for 10 years now for my composing and it revolutionized my musical creativity.
And just to prove that rock music documentaries don’t have the monopoly on misleading claims, there have also been a couple of radio programmes about the alleged resurrection of Sibelius’ lost 8th symphony. All that has happened is that three tiny pieces of music – lasting about 3 minutes – have been transcribed from manuscripts in the University of Helsinki Library. They might have been intended for the 8th, but perhaps not. Again, they’re online if you google Sibelius 8.
June update
About a month has passed since my last blog. Since then I’ve been busy with getting the material together for my teaching on the Oxford Experience Summer School. This year two of my five courses are music-oriented. There’s the ever-popular ‘The Beatles, Popular Music and Sixties Britain’ and a new one called ‘From the blues to a Symphony’. I spent a few days gathering several hundred music examples for this course. It begins with a look at the simplest musical forms (folk song, blues, rock’n’roll), moves gradually through various examples of popular music, reaching long songs by Genesis, Led Zeppelin, Television and Pink Floyd by mid-week. At that point it switches into the classical field with solo guitar and piano pieces, then chamber pieces, then orchestra and finally looking at the symphony. Where else would Charles Ives rub shoulders with Soundgarden, Carl Nielsen with Radiohead, or Jean Sibelius with David Bowie?
I guess I should mention that the 40th anniversary Ziggy Stardust album reissue does include some 5.1 high-quality mixes – but not on SACD, rather DVD-A.
In the course of my guitar teaching I’ve been reminded of a couple of songs that make great use of triads and pedal notes – namely, ‘Turn It On Again’ by Genesis and ‘Everybody Wants To Rule The World’ by Tears For Fears. There’s nothing like it for instantly creating a dramatic element to a song. I’ve also been reminded of Jackson Browne’s 1976 hit ‘The Pretender’, which is a lovely song, though I always felt he took quite a risk in the lyric by using so many polysyllabic rhymes on the conspicious ‘-ender’ sound (fender, tender, pretender, vendor, etc). I can never quite suppress the impulse to add some irreverent extra line about ‘going on a bender’. I had the pleasure of interviewing Jackson Browne back in the 90s for Making Music magazine.
Another thing which has emerged from recent guitar lessons is the question of the relevance of much info deemed essential when you are learning how to play lead guitar. Tutorial books and guitar magazines often over-theorize this topic, implying you need at least half a dozen different scales and scores of fingerboard patterns before you can play a decent solo. This is, of course, untrue. Bringing some clarity to this guitar topic is going to be part of my (probable) next songwriting book.
In the meantime, here are some tips. First, don’t bother learning five sequential positions for a pentatonic starting on the sixth string. I recommend only the ‘first’ shape and the ‘fourth’ shape. For A pentatonic minor that means 5th fret starting on A and 12th fret starting on E. Second, learn a pattern that starts on the sixth string and one that starts on the fifth string for the same root note because they will always cover different areas on the neck. Third, when using scale patterns to play lead, spend most of your time on strings 1-4. Only occasionally do lead lines do much on the 5th and 6th strings because those notes will tend not to cut through the accompaniment (and the lower down in pitch the truer this is).
Chord of the month: x05587. Am9. Try lifting 8 and 7 off also.
I managed to get to London recently and paid a visit to Classical Music Exchange in Notting Hill. It is now above one of their other music shops rather than having one of its own, but is still worth a visit. Among my finds were an SACD of Danish composer Rued Langgaard’s string quartets (vol.1) on Da Capo. From the bits I’ve heard so far the sound is fantastic and the string writing a wonderful mix of styles. Langgaard is gradually building a posthumous reputation, with about 17 symphonies to his name, though in his lifetime he got very little attention and was often dismissed as too conservative and old-fashioned. It is a familiar story. I also made a discovery in a disc of Swedish composer Kurt Atterberg’s Symphonies 3 and 6. His idiom is melodic and very listenable. The slow movement on no.6 is quite haunting.
On the subject of symphonies I’ve recently been corresponding with critic and musicologist David Fanning who is a big enthusiast for Weinberg (mentioned in an earlier blog). He has written an excellent essay on C20th symphony that will appear in a Cambridge Companion to the Symphony due out later in the year. If anyone needs a book recommendation for the symphony get a copy of Robert Layton’s superb paperback A Guide to the Symphony (OUP, 1995). The various writers included do a fine job at evoking the inspirational and sublime potential of the form which makes exploring the symphonic repertoire such an amazing adventure.
From mid-August I hope to do some recording.
Not so hollow talk
A recent musical highlight has been the theme tune of the Scandinavian crime TV series The Bridge. Crime series / Scandinavian noir is not usually my thing, but The Bridge has been engrossing. However, long after I’ve forgotten the story I will recall the visual poetry of its opening sequence, starting with shots of the bridge that links Denmark and Sweden. It reminded me of the power of music to infuse visual imagery with a power it would not otherwise have, and how the very best theme tunes / songs to films create a magic which has a stronger hold on the imagination than the actual film’s story. I’ve always felt this was true of the early Bond films – the John Barry theme tune was always the best bit and the bit that transcends the chauvinism of the films. The Bridge is a case in point, though the creepy nature of the subject matter actually gives something to the music also.
The theme song is called ‘Hollow Talk’ by a Danish band Choir of Young Believers and was first released on their debut album This is for the white in your eyes (2008). Part of what hooks me about this song is the fact that initially it is difficult to make out what language it is sung in (it’s English but with a strong Danish accent and a deliberate blurring of the words). Language thus becomes something suggesting meaning rather than denoting it. (The Cocteau Twins did the same thing back in the late 1980s).
Musically the song is constructed from two sequences: D5-F-G-Bb/D with a piano D pedal note running through it. It is a good example of the power of a pedal note to create a hook. Later in the song when this is supplied a bass-line it becomes Dm-F-G-Bb(6). A second section goes Em-Dm-G-Dm/F, where the Em chord comes as something of a shock. The first couple of minutes are very quiet and ambient, with a cello supplying some mournful low phrases, and then the dynamic goes right up with a loud and forceful playing before sinking back down.
You can hear it on youtube where there is a studio version with a lyric supplied and also a live performance (featuring a turquiose Strat!) recorded in the U.S.
I’ve been busy recently with preparation work for the five summer school courses, so my musical work has been rather pushed to one side unfortunately.
I’ve posted before about Weinberg. I recently bought the Chandos SACD of his Symphony 20 and Cello Concerto. The latter is very good on first hearing; the latter will take some work.
‘Baker Street’ and the art of arrangement
A few years ago I published a book called Arranging Songs. Its theme was the art of finding the best method for presenting a song, in terms of instrumentation, etc. To readers of my earlier books, such as How To Write Songs On Guitar and The Songwriting Sourcebook, it might have seemed a more peripheral topic. But as time passes I incline more to the feeling that arrangement (along with melody) are much under-estimated in importance when it comes to writing songs that will reach a wide audience.
An example of this is Gerry Rafferty’s hit from 1978, ‘Baker Street’. A recent TV documentary about Rafferty, and a BBC radio series called ‘Soul Music’ which featured ‘Baker Street’, provided some interesting background to the song. There are at least two demo versions of ‘Baker Street’, one of which has the song in a different lower key, and the other has Rafferty playing the famous saxophone motif on electric guitar with a wah-wah pedal. These demos make it abundantly clear that ‘Baker Street’ would not have been an international hit without its final arrangement complete with declamatory saxophone, slide guitar touches, and a change of key. The arrangement changes were crucial. It is a salutary lesson every songwriter should remember.
‘Baker Street’ is also interesting from a lyric point of view, as an example of what I think of as ‘metro-pop’: a lyric bound to strike a chord in a vast urban audience who regularly travel to work in the world’s cities. If a songwriter ever gets stuck for a lyric subject suitable for a hit, something which evokes the routines, hopes and fears of these peoples’ lives is a good choice.
I’m making some progress with a new project – more on that when I can give it. I’m also planning an album of ambient acoustic guitar music.
Daydream Believer
Following the death of ex-Monkees singer Davy Jones last week a number of their hits from the mid-60s got airplay. One which was bound to be played since Jones sang lead on it was ‘Daydream Believer’, which was in the UK Top 20 from early December 1967 to mid-February 1968, reaching no.5.
I always thought this was something of a classic Sixties single, full of a certain innocence. Hearing it suggested a couple of songwriting points. The first is the way the verse melody moves through a number of peaks and dips, covering more than an octave. The chorus starts with the two highest notes of the song. The second point is that the chorus provides an example of what I call in my songwriting books ‘displacement’ – in this case, the positioning of the home chord, chord I. The song is in G major. The chorus sequence is IV-V-III, IV-V-VI, IV, I (C-D-Bm, C-D-Em, C, G). (I’ve stopped annotating when it reaches chord I just before the word ‘day’.) You can see that chord I is delayed until well into the chorus. I think this sequence illustrates the point about how displacing chord I can make a progression sound more mobile. The poignancy of the first two lines of the chorus owe something to the way chords IV and V end up landing on two minor chords (III and VI) rather than I.
You can hear a similar displacement in T’Pau’s 80s hit ‘China In Your Hand’ where the chorus starts IV-V and then (one beat to each chord) I iV VI V – and there chord I only gets one beat, followed by IV-V-III-IV-V, etc.
Here’s a guitar chord for you to try: x65046 (x = an unplayed string, other numbers are fret numbers). Hold down a standard C chord (x32010) add a G at the top with your little finger (x32013) and then move it up three frets to get this unusual Eb chord. I was reminded of it when looking at Big Star’s ‘The Ballad of El Goodo’. Guitarists don’t normally write songs in Eb without a capo or detuning by a semitone, but this shape might come in handy anyway.
A musical find
For a number of years I’ve been exploring the symphonic repetoire from about 1890 into the C20th. I think this was a golden age for the symphony, even if many of the composers are not as well known as C19th symphonists such as Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Bruckner et al. C20th composers who took up the symphony often did so with a new palette of harmony and melody, which enabled them to avoid repeating what the Austro-German composers had done with the form, and many of them were born outside that tradition (think of Vaughan Williams, Nielsen, Sibelius, Shostakovich). It is always exciting and satisfying to get a purchase on a new symphony which you know is going to give much pleasure for a long time.
This time it’s Symphony no.3 by Mieczyslaw Weinberg written around 1950, which I’ve listened to about half a dozen times in the past week or so (and I mean listened to, not ‘had it on in the background’). Weinberg (1919-1996) was born in Poland but lived much of his life in the USSR and was a friend of Shostakovich. His music is generally tonal from what I’ve heard, and this 32-minute symphony makes a very good starting point. Part of its accessibility is its use of some folk themes. I particularly recommend the first and third movements. The third movement has a very beautiful example of changing from a major chord to its tonic minor (i.e. G to Gm), this idea being used as an important musical idea in the movement. It’s very expressive.
The recording is on the Chandos label and is a hybrid SACD – so you can play it in standard stereo, SACD stereo or SACD 5.0. Chandos have recorded several other discs of Weinberg.
In the realm of popular music a recent project has set me thinking again about the importance of various different aspects of songwriting and recording. I’ve been struck recently by the way that the musical language of popular music does change over the decades. It might be assumed to be always the same, but there are trends for using certain chord changes or progressions or certain scales for melodies. I’m not sure if anyone has ever written about these per se.
My current research has made me feel more strongly the importance of arrangement in songwriting and recording. In many cases you can line up scores of songs with the same basic progression and structure and what distinguishes them (apart from lyrics and the character of the performer) is the arrangement. Sometimes the instruments you choose make all the difference. I dealt with this subject in my boook Arranging Songs and I may have to return to it.
I hope to have news of the next book project to share with you in awhile.
Rikky Rooksby's site 