funkamel
Some would think of camels, strutting across the desert, late at night, under a fool moon, with the gait of a pigeon.
Some would.
Daily Jam: How long can he last?
One man. A new composition every day. No matter what.
hey whaddya know
…a philosophical post.
Philosophizing out loud is like singing in public. It takes a certain sense of self-importance to execute well. Since I’m not important, I’m going to fake it.
I notice that my opponent is always on the go
-And-
Won’t go slow, so’s not to focus, and I notice
He’ll hitch a ride with any guide, as long as
They go fast from whence he came
- But he’s no good at being uncomfortable, so
He can’t stop staying exactly the sameFiona Apple - Extraordinary Machine
Growth can hurt. Ask my friend who grew six inches taller one summer.
People spend a lot of time trying to avoid discomfort, and sometimes that discomfort can be something as simple as a novel taste or sound. In music, I’ve found that going repeatedly into that discomfort — which in the beginning arose from dissonance or unfamiliar structures or unexpected patterns — was difficult. But I was intrigued by that discomfort. So I listened, and I listened and I listened. The more I listened, the more that discomfort became transformed; structures and patterns revealed themselves and became familiar. And with that familiarity came a new understanding of how to listen and how to hear. And more importantly, how patience with discomfort can be key to finding this wisdom. By expanding my palette, I’ve found the sense of discomfort has grown into more of a signal of opportunity — a chance to expand my ear, to grow my vocabulary, and to thereby grow the range and subtlety of emotion that music can evoke.
It is a strange irony with music that the more you go into it in this way, the narrower the common audience becomes (see most “serious concert music” in academic circles). If you want to speak to a wider audience (of course, not everyone would or should), and still satisfy your own subtleties, you need to find ways to keep coming back, bringing those things that are comfortable for you but not for much of your audience, and putting those things in service of your composition and expression.
I’m not talking about hiding broccoli in a brownie to get your kid some greens. I’m talking about making that broccoli an integral, and defining part of the piece. Like the Police putting Roxanne to a tango beat. Or the crazy textures and vocalizations in Michael Jackson’s “Beat It”. Or the olympian bass playing in Duran Duran’s hyper-melodic Rio. Or much of the Beatles’ catalog. Or pretty much anything produced by Quincy Jones.
Contrary to the sentiment common in some circles, the greatest popular producers, performers and composers, and the enduring works they’ve created, have succeeded precisely because of the broccoli, not in spite of it. A simple I/IV/V tune may get played a lot for a while, but it won’t last. But put something in there — a signature — a unique “voice”. Do it right, and you will have tapped into that timeless identity that makes a work a classic.
Moron Randomness
Addressing a comment from astute listener jimd in this post:
I think any piece can have emotional resonance if someone listens to it enough times. Eventually, one would succeed at integrating what is heard into a set of expectations and fulfillments, tension and release. I think it’s that movement — that fulfillment, and the manner in which it is delivered, which gives the emotional bite. Pop music succeeds because it can be integrated on the first listen without much effort on the part of the listener — the tension and release follows well-established norms. The fundamental difference along this axis between pop and random would be how many listens it takes and how quickly the listener can learn it. This, in turn, probably depends on how much varying music the listener has been exposed to or studied - and how willing the listener is to invest time listening to something which is initially quite sterile-sounding or even off-putting.
That’s just my guess. It would be interesting to try it out.
There is a gustatory analogy which fits well here. Studies have shown that anyone can learn to like to eat anything (unless it’s made them sick before) by eating moderate amounts, as much as 8-10 times. It’s unusual for someone to give up their hate of cilantro in exchange for 8-10 meals of suffering. This, I think, describes the eternal suffering of the exploratory artist, churning out cilantro by the pound. The context is so narrow; the air is so thin; the artist is speaking at an esoteric level to an audience of one. No wonder the dude is starving.
I got into Rush a long time ago, and Tool most recently, even though I first thought things like “this music is boring” or “it all sounds the same” or “it’s hyper” or “it’s over-complicated” or “where’s the melody?” or “that guy’s voice is annoying (no, not Rush, Tool!)”. But I worked away at that cilantro and found an amazing world of new and subtle tastes inside. Now I would say that there is very little music I don’t like; just music I don’t know.
It would be interesting to evaluate the impact of recorded music on the variance of music being produced. With recorded music, the number of listens your audience can choose is ominously large compared to the 18th century classical audience goer. It’s not too difficult for a schooled listener to differentiate between Bach and Mozart, Beethoven and Rachmaninoff. You can hear the rules being established, varied, and rewritten (expanded) through each period those artists represent. That took several centuries, and not because those artists were uncreative or unimaginative. I think it’s because there was no way to move your audience along very quickly, given that the live performance was your only way to expose them. They say Stravinsky’s premier of The Rite of Spring saw fist fights in the audience.
This last century accelerated that pace of change and saw music wildly diverging and evolving. Not just because the audience for music grew, but, I would think, possibly because the boundaries in which the musician could experiment exploded when the listener got the opportunity to listen to and integrate the experiments a hundred times.
who talks like that?
A decade past, Bill Berends once told a flashy young performer, “A melody should sound like somone talking. If they jumped all over the place like you do, they’d sound insane.”
I would add two things.
- A melody should be a caricature of speech - capturing the essence by amplifying its features.
- I am crazy.
breaking the rules
Fifteen years ago, Susie Miget told a musician who liked to get ahead of himself, “You’re not allowed to break the rules until you know the rules.”
nobody good loves me
A short I saw on Mtv a decade or two ago:
PERSON 1: “What’s wrong?”
PERSON 2: “Nobody loves me.”
PERSON 1: “I love you.”
PERSON 2: “…”
PERSON 2:”Nobody good loves me.”
It might be easy to write something every day. It’s not easy to write something good.
thanks
I want to give a quick thank you to everyone who has been listening to the Jams. I truly appreciate your notes and your ears.
As far as my muse goes, she seems to be flush with ideas. It’s amazing what you can do when you let up on the self-censoring. Knowing I’ll get to do another tomorrow makes today’s a little less all-self-defining. Or maybe it’s still all-self-defining, but I know I get to redefine tomorrow…
The funny thing is that some of the things I’d have censored I end up liking more as time passes. Kind of like beauty marks. Or anchovies.
fertilizer
Trey Parker said: “If you want to be an artist, you need to be doing art.” The problem is, of course, that in order to do good art, you have to do a lot of bad art first. And it isn’t enough to do the bad art in private. You need to have other people telling you how bad it is and why. Keep doing it and one day, maybe, it won’t always be bad. Sometimes, something good might even happen.
I guess you could say that bad art is the crap that fertilizes the field of creativity. Well, you could if you were a beginning aphorism farmer.
Welcome to my farm, the Daily Jam. Please don’t mind the smell.
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2 full years!
From 3/3/2008 to 3/2/2010
I posted a new composition every single day, no matter what.
Check back for more music projects currently underway!
