Composer, author, lecturer, guitar teacher

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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.

Posted by  |  June 14, 2012 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

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.

Posted by  |  May 15, 2012 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , | 1 Comment

Listen To This

I’ve just started reading Alex Ross’ Listen To This (2010), a collection of essays on music both popular and classical, that follows his widely-read The Rest Is Noise which was a survey of C20th art music. The Rest Is Noise is a good general survey which should make more people curious about a lot of terrific music. The essays in the second book wander very widely indeed, with chapters on Mozart, Schubert, Brahms, and John Cage rubbing shoulders with chapters on Radiohead, Bob Dylan, Bjork, Sonic Youth and Kurt Cobain, along with general essays on topics such as ‘How Recordings Changed Music’ . I particularly recommend the opening one, ‘Crossing the Border from Classical to Pop’.

Almost by accident I’ve found myself unexpectedly enjoying a trio of ‘late period’ albums which I’ve just got on CD having once owned as vinyl (I gave up on vinyl some time ago for want of space for a decent turntable, but not out of any dislike of the sound, and I still have a few vinyl albums).

The Jam’s Sound Affects (late 1980) was their 5th studio album (there was one more to come) and shows the trio trying to broaden their guitar-based power-pop with changes to production and arrangement with mixed results. The most well-known tracks on it are ‘That’s Entertainment’ and ‘Start!’ (sure to be enjoyed by anyone who likes ‘Taxman’) but my favourite is ‘Man In The Corner Shop’ with its lyric of urban mundane life and political idealism, and poignant swings between the keys of D major and B major.

The second of the trio is The Who’s last studio album with drummer Keith Moon, Who Are You (Aug 1978) which saw the band struggling to find a way to develop their post-Quadrophenia music further. If you can banish from your mind the archetypal power-chording, windmilling, stage-pounding, drum-thrashing, microphone-swinging Who, Who Are You is more engaging than I remember, with some effectively quirky arrangements that make good use of synths. The title track is the most famous song on it, memorable for the change from the bludgeoning main riff into the gently oscillating middle section with a piano octave melody over the top. I have a soft spot for ‘Love Comes Down’, an expressive ballad built on an Ebmaj7-F change and some other unusual key / chord changes, in which Roger Daltrey delivers a vocal which is more sung and doesn’t rely on his usual bark. In retrospect it is full of sunset colours, bringing the Who’s career to a kind of ending. Keith Moon died only a few weeks later.

Which brings me to Peepshow by Siouxsie and the Banshees from 1988, the 9th of the 11 studio albums they would make. The first three Banshees punk albums never registered for me. I climbed aboard the good ship Banshee in 1981 when Ju-Ju was released. Here was supernatural gothic rock with John McGeoch’s splintered guitar riffs inhabiting some distant guitar galaxy where pentatonic blues-rock never ventured, and Sioux’s wailing vocals sounding like the offspring of Grace Slick and H.P.Lovecraft. Live the songs were even stronger. With the next album A Kiss In The Dreamhouse the band swathed themselves in the sensuous eroticism of Klimt’s 3-D gold. Around this time critic Paul Morley was hailing the live version of ‘Nightshift’ as the closest you could get to the stomping epic of Led Zep’s ‘Kashmir’. Hyena was a slight dip in the magic, but they were back with a vengeance for Tinderbox mostly thanks to the brilliant guitar-work of John Valentine-Carruthers. And then came Peepshow …

Peepshow saw a change of personnel and a very considerable change in arrangements. Valentine-Carruthers left and the guitar played a smaller role. In came dance rhythms, keyboards, synths, accordions and studio trickery. At the time I thought it was okay and I went to see them at the Royal Albert Hall but it felt like the end of an era. Listening to the album now it seems to me full of delights, with very inventive presentations, and in ‘Rapture’ a song where certain aspects of the Banshees tendency to dwell on the darker side of things actually meets a subject that merits it – namely oppression in the U.S.S.R. (I vaguely recall reading somewhere that this song was inspired by elements of the life of Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich). Where before they could seem morbid, obsessive, cruel, or merely theatrical, in this song there rises a sense of grandeur and righteous indignation.

But before you explore these late period albums try these recommendations: All Mod Cons (The Jam), Who’s Next, Quadrophenia (The Who), Ju-Ju, Tinderbox (Siouxsie and the Banshees).

Chord for guitarists: 3×0202 which is Gmaj9. Try moving it up to the 8th fret.

Posted by  |  April 17, 2012 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

‘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.

Posted by  |  March 21, 2012 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , | Leave a comment

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.

Posted by  |  March 5, 2012 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , | 1 Comment

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.

Posted by  |  February 18, 2012 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

Notes from a composer’s journal

Last week I composed a new work for piano and viola. It’s called Three Yeats Poems and is in three sections, and lasts about 15-16 minutes. This is just a first draft. The three poems by W.B.Yeats are I – News for the Delphic Oracle, II – The Wild Swans at Coole, III All Souls Night. This is not a setting of the words, but purely instrumental music.

A couple of interesting points came up during the process. When I started it my intention was to sketch some music for a viola plus string orchestra piece. I chose viola plus piano staves to sketch on so I could focus on the musical ideas without worrying about what to do with five staves of string orchestra (violins I, violins II, violas, cellos, basses). The piano has often been used as a sketch-pad by composers trying out ideas, and I guess this continues to be so even if the piano is a virtual one (on a computer notation system) rather than a physical one. (The computer piano never needs a piano tuner …).

First thing that happened was that about 5 minutes of material in, a melody turned up which simply elbowed my previous structural aims out of the picture. As a consequence I saw that my sketch was going to break into three separate pieces and not be a single span.

The second result came after 6 days, when I had some material for all three parts. I wanted to try arranging the middle section for a small orchestra. The viola melody didn’t sound right on the new instrument I’d planned, and the accompaniment had become sufficiently pianistic that I realised it would take a long time to sort out a way of doing it with a string section. Not having the time to pursue these problems I decided to leave the piece as it started: viola and piano. Maybe I’ll try turning it into a piano quartet or quintet instead. Moral of the story: when sketching on piano beware of many arpeggio figures with the sustain pedal down!

As for the viola plus strings piece, the next step will be to have those six staves open and compose onto them from the start so as to keep the idiom in keeping with strings.

Posted by  |  February 9, 2012 | Categories: Uncategorized | 4 Comments

The chord that dare not speak its name …

… which is … D#m. I’ve been playing a couple of songs recently which feature this chord and it suddenly struck me what an odd case it is on the guitar. I decided to have a think about why this should be. It’s a chord which guitarists don’t use that often, and nor do songwriters writing on the guitar. Musicians who play and write on the piano may wonder what the fuss is – it’s just another chord, right? Well, on the guitar not all chords are equal. This is for a number of reasons – including the ease of playing, the number of open strings, etc. I discuss this in the early chapters of my book Chord Master.

D#m has the highest-pitched root note of any minor chord on the guitar. The root note is on the fifth string at the sixth fret – this is the lowest available D# – but this is also the 11th fret on the sixth string! Almost an octave higher than the guitar’s lowest note, E. When it comes to resonance, D#m stands at the opposite range of the spectrum to Em (022000) or Am (x02210).

[By the way, if you’re not familiar with this chord shorthand, x = a string not played, 0 = an open string played, and the numbers are then frets. It goes from the lowest pitched string to the highest 654321, EADGBE]

The usual way to play D#m is with an Am shape (x02210) turned into a barre chord and moved to the sixth fret (x68876). There’s nothing difficult about this, but it is unusual in placing you a fair distance from the comfort zone of the first position and all the easy open string chords. To get to an open string chord involves a significant change of position. The chords that D#m belongs with are likewise mostly barre chords in the middle of the neck.

D#m first appears in the key of B major as chord III, then in F# major as VI and then in C#major as II. Thinking about its enharmonic equivalent of Ebm (the other way of writing it) it first appears in the key of Db major as chord II, Gb major as chord VI and Cb major as chord III. You might also use it as a IVm in Bbm major and a Vm in Ab major. Most of these keys are extreme sharp or flat keys – and the guitar doesn’t like them because it isn’t at its most resonant in them – loss of usuable open strings, lots of barre chords. When guitarists write songs in these keys it is often by the default of either using a capo to get rid of the barres or by detuning a semitone. Detuning the guitar by a semitone gives you D#m with an Em shape. If you capo at the first fret you can treat D#m as a Dm chord and proceed from there; with the capo at the sixth fret it will be Am.

Its the very awkwardness of D#m which offers some interesting possibilities for songwriters on the guitar. Think of it as a jumping-off point that might lead to an exotic chord sequence, or a sequence in a difficult key that could be released into an easy key in going from a verse to a chorus. If you find ways of connecting it to freindlier open string chords you may stumble on an exciting progression.

Some songs that use D#m: George Harrison ‘Awaiting On You All’ (in B), David Bowie ‘Lady Grinning Soul’ (first chord of the chorus), The Jam ‘Going Underground’ (chorus), The Beatles ‘If I Fell’ (first chord).

Posted by  |  February 9, 2012 | Categories: Uncategorized | 5 Comments

Lost Bowie clip screened

Happy New Year everyone.

I was excited in December by the news that a copy of David Bowie and the Spiders from Mars performing ‘Jean Genie’ live on British chart music TV show Top of the Pops had been found. ‘Jean Genie’ had been released as a single and featured on Bowie’s 1973 album Aladdin Sane. It was thought that this clip – first broadcast on January 4 1973 – had been erased by the BBC many years ago. Many classic TV programmes met the same fate. It turned out that cameraman John Henshall had asked for a copy and kept it.

What was special about this performance was that it was genuinely live. Almost all Top of the Pops performances during its long history were either completely mimed to the original backing track, or part-mimed (i.e. lead vocal was live) to a backing track re-recorded by BBC TV musicians and the band. It has always irritated me the way the BBC have constantly devalued the meaning of the word ‘performance’ when describing old TOTP clips by applying it to entirely mimed or mostly mimed appearances – which of course were cheaper and safer for both the TV people and the singers / bands – but are not music-making.

In the case of Bowie’s January 3rd 1973 performance of ‘Jean Genie’ everything was live. If you look closely at the two half Marshall stacks the band are plugged into you can see their lights are on and there are tell-tale mikes in fromt of the speaker cabinets. The result is a glam-rock classic delivered deliciously raw and punchy, and conveys a thrill no mimed version could match. It departs from the studio version in various ways and has the odd mistake (Trevor Bolder on bass switches to the chorus too early toward the end), as well as a wilder Mick Ronson solo and more harmonica from Bowie – including what sounds like two blasts of the Beatles’ ‘Love Me Do’ harmonica riff toward the end.

You can see the clip on youtube.

Posted by  |  January 10, 2012 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , | 4 Comments

Free audio p.s.

I’m almost ready to send out the mp3 I promised to subscribers. I have a few people who subscribed anonymously. Without your email address I don’t think – as far as I’m aware – I can send you the mp3. If you want the mp3 please subscribe with your email address. Thanks.

 

Posted by  |  December 20, 2011 | Categories: Uncategorized | 1 Comment