Why is this funny? I don’t know, but it is.
Here’s the background. It means nothing, is a reference to nothing. That is so much better than if it was an in-joke.
Does this have musical potential? I applied some Ableton audio-to-MIDI to find out.
Frequency and EQ
EQ (equalization) plugins are volume controls for specific parts of the frequency spectrum. Every DAW, mixing board and guitar amp has EQ controls, and they can radically transform your sounds. But while EQ is an essential part of audio engineering, it is also a source of confusion for beginners. In this post, I lay out some key vocabulary.
Why did 13th century Europeans think that major sixths were dissonant?
In Adam Neely’s new video, he responds to a question about how “the major sixth was illegal in the Renaissance.” This isn’t quite true, they liked major sixths fine in the Renaissance, but it is true that medieval theorists considered them to be dissonant.
Adam quotes an anonymous medieval music theorist who called the sixth a “vile and loathsome discord.” Another 13th century theorist, Johannes de Garlandia, had a more nuanced take; he defined the major sixth as an “imperfect dissonance”, explaining that a dissonance is imperfect “when two voices are joined so that by audition although they can to some extent match, nevertheless they do not concord.” This is weird! If you play C and the A above it on a piano or guitar, they will sound perfectly fine together, so what the heck are these medieval people talking about?
Adam attributes the idea that the sixth is dissonant to the arbitrary and ever-changing nature of musical aesthetic conventions. He also mentions changes in tuning systems, but brushes quickly past that as an explanation. I disagree about that; while cultural conventions are the major factor, I also think we shouldn’t discount tuning as a basis for those conventions. As 12tone likes to say: Fight me, Adam Neely! (No, don’t fight me, I like Adam, I was in one of his videos, he wrote the foreword to our book, he is good people.)
Continue reading “Why did 13th century Europeans think that major sixths were dissonant?”
St Stephen
St Stephen might be the most “Grateful Dead” of Grateful Dead songs, the one that (for better or worse) sounds the most like them and the most unlike anyone else. It’s a cliche with the Dead to say that the live version is better than the studio version, but in the case of “St Stephen”, it’s true. The version on Aoxomoxoa is too fast and has some awkward arrangement choices. The canonical recording is the one from Live/Dead.
This is a mess, but it’s a lovable mess. A few things I particularly enjoy: the feedback from (I think) the bass at 0:21; Jerry’s off-mic yell of satisfaction at 3:37; the crowd yelling “sing it!” and so forth at 3:59; the guitar/guitar/bass trio emerging out of chaos at 4:40.
A nice thing happened with my music theory songs
A Twitter acquaintance wrote me this series of DMs:
I am so glad he had that reaction. I haven’t been pushing my music theory songs too hard because I wasn’t sure about their value to anyone other than me. I did use some of them in my New School music theory class last semester, but I was hesitant about using the whole thing. This message was a helpful indication that I’m onto something and should lean into it.
Continue reading “A nice thing happened with my music theory songs”
Eye Know
Next fall, I’m teaching a class on musical copyright, ownership and borrowing at the New School. I will for sure be talking about De La Soul’s creative use of samples, including a deep dive into “Eye Know” from 3 Feet High and Rising.
This magnificent groove was stitched together from five different records. I list them here in their order of appearance in “Eye Know.” Continue reading “Eye Know”
The Man Who Sold The World
One of my older kid’s hipster friends introduced him to “The Man Who Sold The World” and he is super into it at the moment. I have been a Bowie fan since forever, but this song was slow to win me over.
I have learned to love the song, but I struggle to connect to the weirdly airless original recording. I originally connected more to the Nirvana cover, which I talk about below.
Life On Mars?
I’m writing about this song at the request of my friend Benjie de la Fuente, but also because my kids like it. (They have liked David Bowie since seeing Labyrinth, but now they’re getting interested in his non-Labyrinth music too.) It makes sense that this tune would seize my son’s imagination, because he likes classical piano, and this is the most classical-sounding Bowie song.
“Life On Mars?” is one of the coolest songs of all time, so it is very surprising that it shares an origin story with “My Way”, arguably the most uncool song of all time.
RIP Wayne Shorter
In 2013, Wayne Shorter said, “The word ‘jazz’ to me only means ‘I dare you.’” I love Wayne’s playing and writing without always understanding it. I got exposed to both via Miles Davis, who put Wayne’s tunes at the center of his late 1960s albums. Here’s “Orbits” from Miles Smiles.
And here’s an orchestral arrangement of the same tune recorded 36 years later on Wayne’s album Alegría. (It includes Brad Mehldau on piano.) Check out Wayne’s multiphonics at 1:55!
For No One
The Beatles were not always a rock band, especially not when it came to the Paul songs. This is a frequently cited example of baroque pop, a cousin of “Eleanor Rigby” and “She’s Leaving Home.”
Paul is playing piano and clavichord, Ringo plays drums and maracas, and the delightfully-named Alan Civil plays the French horn. (He also played in the orchestra on “A Day In The Life.”) John and George were not involved.