Bassmike has volunteered to curate this subset of the Art thread. Make some noise.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Bassmike has volunteered to curate this subset of the Art thread. Make some noise.
Excellent! I hope to read some interesting stuff, and find new stuff to listen to, as well.
Music performance dominated my middle school and high school life, and was still prominent in college. Then it diminished greatly, and when I stopped attending church, it vanished altogether. I keep thinking that one of these years I’ll have to make the time to get back into it.
I’m sure that everyone will agree with me that the high point of Western music occurs about half-way through the Credo of Josquin’s Missa L’homme Armé? (that’s sexti toni, rather than boring old super voces musicales: from then on, though there are minor successes for individual composers, the way for Western music is down-hill, the spark has gone, and there is a feeling, especially among the more gifted composers, that somehow—there is no point. Why else do you think that, once realization of this turning point had sunk in, composers started to have such a hard time of it, always searching for something new and way out, as though vainly and pathetically trying to believe that it had not happened. Things were slower in the sixteenth century so it wasn’t until around the beginning of seventeenth century that the message of the decline of music really sank in, and what do we see?
Gesualdo going ga-ga!
John Dowland, writing the most miserable songs in the history of the world – Flow my Tears, Lachrimæ Antiquæ, In Darkness let me Dwell!!
The invention of opera!—now there’s desperation for you.
They even tried forgeting about Josquin for a time, which is why Bach managed to escape the worst of the depression merely by indulging in (to judge by the number of his offspring) an inordinate sex life, though even he is supposed to have tried to knife a chorister who unadvisedly, though perhaps not inadvertently, walked past him whistling L’homme Armé. But they couldn’t forget, why else did Mozart spend all his time gambling and playing pool; why else did poor old Salieri die of a cold he caught while out one dark midnight pouring poison through a crack in Josquin’s tombstone; and why else in his portraits is Beethoven always looking so mad? Indeed how else can you explain Mahler or why there’s HipHop?
I read the blog often, and read the comments almost never. In the spirit of the grand experiment, here’s something completely different.
I’m looking for a more general name for this experience.
When you play jazz, it’s called the “being in the pocket”. It’s an occasional state of being that most jazz musicians experience where you become utterly absorbed by the process of creating music. Improvised melody seems “flow through you” rather come from you. Playing becomes effortless. You hear ever detail of what people are playing around you, and are able to respond to and feed what they are playing. You feel intimately connected with the people you are paying with, and with everything around you. Sense of self disappears. Pure bliss. If you were to go down the checklist of attributes of the Buddhist state of nibbana, you would check every box.
It’s as close to a mystical experience as this old atheist will ever get. Like falling in love, the temptation is to just do it, and not ask questions. But that’s not in my nature. I think it happens because, to play jazz well, you have to turn off the mental process that supervises and edits what you say and do, and just do it, since there isn’t time to think about what you’re going to play before you play it. And this has a tendency to trigger a rather remarkable altered state of consciousness. Turning off the supervisory editing process makes it feel like the music “comes through you”, and frees up attention to use on what’s around you rather than what you’re doing. And the bliss? No doubt a massive flow of the same hormones that drugs like cocaine or heroin co-opt for less useful purposes.
Other disciplines have similar altered states of hyper-awareness, with similar amounts of associated bliss. Programmers call it the “fugue state” — a state in you become entirely subsumed in the process of creating software, and your productivity goes through the roof. I’ve talked to elite athletes who have similar experiences, but don’t seem to have a name for it. I’ve also talked to a painter who says that she has the same kind of experience when painting. In fact, I’m fairly sure that any human activity that requires extraordinary mental effort has a corresponding state of being.
Were I less of skeptic, I’d find it all too easy to chalk this up as a religious experience. And I have, in fact, talked to theists who describe their own personal mystical experiences in ways that sound suspiciously like a variant of Jazz’s “in the pocket” altered state of consciousness. In William James’ series of essays, “Varieties of Religious Experience”, one of the more common forms of religious experience is triggered by having to take extraordinary action in the face of danger. People who have this experience describe having a vague sense of having been “in the presence of god”. Having personally experience the bliss of being in the pocket while playing jazz, I don’t find it a big stretch to think that people could attribute the intense bliss of the experience to “being in the presence of god” if they were so predisposed.
The problem when discussing this with theists is that, to the best of my knowledge, there isn’t a name for the general phenomenon. Is there?
@richardelguru, #3:
I’ve sung both of Josquin’s L’homme Armé masses, but you do super voces musicales a disservice. The mensuration canons are a compositional tour de force. I sing in an Early Music choir and have done for around 15 years, doing 3 major concerts a year = a lot of music sung including Gesualdo :) .
2 comments I would like to suggest to provoke discussion:
1. With the exception of tonality and being able to modulate among keys, I’ll make a very similar assertion – modern music (defined in this case as Baroque and later) is just rediscovering with instruments what the renaissance was doing with voices.
2. What is everyone’s take on an atheist singing explicitly religious music (eg: a mass)? Does it depend on context? Should an atheist sing in a church choir? How many atheists do you know who are in church choirs?
For example, in the UK, a great way to really learn to sing and be exposed to the whole English Choral Tradition is to sing in a cathedral choir. The sheer amount of music that is required to be sung trains your sight-reading skills incredibly and stands you in good stead for a career.
#4 – from what you describe, you’re talking about flow. here’s a wikipedia article, skim over that and check if it sounds like the experience you describe?
Flow is the best feeling. I love it. Hands down my favorite state of consciousness.
@ Sunday
I’ve sung both too and I do agree with you. My only excuse is that I felt I had to choose one for my ‘musical singularity’.
On your point 2. I see no problem, and if you love older music you have little choice but to perform religious pieces since they makes up so much of the surviving reprtoire (for some periods almost all of it).
I’d love to hear people opine about the state of classical music concerts today. Whenever I go to classical concerts, they’re kind of expensive and the audience is made of old white people. What will happen to these concerts in the coming generation?
My own problem with classical music concerts is that it involves sitting around quietly and doing nothing. And the classical music that I most want to listen to is late romantic or later, and that’s just not the classical music that’s popular. I prefer recorded classical music because it’s cheaper, I can listen to it while working, and I can choose the classical music that I actually like.
I play classical guitar in an ensemble of 10, and I enjoy listening to the music as well as playing it. We play in church reception halls, mostly. Classical guitar (or any single-instrument) music is a slightly different beast than what you’re used to, and can be much more approachable.
Folks (and their kids) seem like it when we play modern stuff (i.e., 20th century and later) that has been arranged in a classical style.
The closest to a “religious experience” I have ever had was when I was playing Renaissance music, on recorders, at an event with about 15 other SCAdians. Buzzed me in a way alcohol never has done.
(later)
Sounds like what you’re referring to, edrowland!
:)
I can’t improvise to save my life, though—but I can sight-read most excellently-well!
:) :)
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carlie:
Hey, me too! Band was the entirety of my social life, right through college; after college, I didn’t play any music at all, for something like 10 years. Then I started practicing up, because it significantly diminished the incidence and intensity of the music-deprivation nightmares; and when I found out that a nearby town had a Community Band—with, and this was important, no audition needed—so totally not a soloist!—I got into that. From there to the SCA, which unfortunately we no longer do.
Which puts me right back into that music-
depravitydeprivation zone, wherein I now reside.The painting helps.
Some.
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Sunday Afternoon:
I say—play or sing the music! It has merit on its own!
After all, are we to refuse to appreciate the aesthetics of, say, the Parthenon, for no better reason than that Athene has long since gone down to Disbelief? Is the temple of Amon-Re less impressive because we don’t believe in him?
I think not.
Of course, I am entirely an instrumentalist, which means that I don’t have to be concerned for, or distressed by, the words lauding god and the saints to the heavens. They are not coming from my mouth.
;)
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As for athletes, I’ve heard it described as being “in the groove” (which probably comes from music) or being “locked in” or “in the zone”. As for music, what do I know, I’m currently listening to the Babymetal CD. But I would say I enjoy attending live performances of classical music, especially Beethoven’s 9th, and Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto. Heck, I even enjoy Rave;’s Bolero (but not because of the movie “10”).
Okay, we’re talking music.
Does anyone want to **create** some?
I suggested doing so before, but didn’t get any takers. In this thread, are there people who would be interested in collective music writing?
I imagine someone picking a poem or writing some lyrics, then proposing that as a thematic gathering point. Future efforts could be wordless, of course, but until we get in the pocket having something to set the mood and inform our rhythms is useful.
Then that same person would suggest a key, or a pair of corresponding keys so we don’t fight in advance over whether it’s going to be in major or minor.
Next, a bpm rate would be proposed – this is the part that I think should be most open to change.
Key doesn’t matter as much – you can always play any note you want, and if later you prefer a different one shifting notes a few half-tones up or down the scale is no biggie smalls. Everything still stays essentially the same regardless of key. I tend to work in keys that challenge me to more frequently use chord fingerings I need to work on. Another song full of C, D, E, G, and A doesn’t push me to become a better guitarist. The bpm, though, well speed affects mood in a way that key doesn’t. At 200 bpm we might sound a touch like Bad Brains, at 135 more like Mannheim Steamroller, and at 70 more like bored beatniks [dibs on the band name].
So I argue that given its power to influence the composition process, we set an initial bpm but be open to change IF feedback indicates we need a different one to fit our feelings about the composition, where the key will simply stay set.
Anyone at any time can then e-mail a clip and someone using garage band will drop it in at the appropriate place in the music’s structure. We can have multiple files going without a clear idea how to connect them (e.g. “this is the intro, this is the chorus, but I don’t know if we’re going to have the first verse before or after the first chorus and we don’t have any music written for the verses yet, so let’s hold off on joining the two”).
We would TRY to work together to create a single composition, but there wouldn’t be rules against getting inspired and doing something in your own bpm or your own key or what have you. The point is to get to know each other, to build community through collaborative effort, and to end up with something slightly more attractive than a barn. If in addition to that we get others posting various things that relate in some way to the communal effort, that’s just lemonade.*
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*Yes: lemonade, not gravy. Haven’t you ever raised a barn?
@Forrest Phelps:
With athletics, I’ve heard “in the zone” more often than “in the groove”.
And as a separate FYI: “in the groove” doesn’t come from music. It comes from wagons on dirt roads and how easy it is to keep your wagon moving in the right direction when you’re in the groove as opposed to crashing back and forth over it. Musicians use it but it doesn’t come from music.
ceesays:
Ah, so it does have a name!
It also sounds like it describes the less intense feeling I get when planning—but not executing—a new painting project. Also familiar: hyperfocus. Oh, my, yes!
Great stuff, flow. Highly recommended.
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Hi, Crip Dyke!
*furtive pouncehug, inasmuch as this in not the usual venue for such off-topic actions*
Composition is one of those things that I do slowly and painfully, and seldom; not well suited to group-sporting. I don’t have the education in music theory to do much with it, and how-to books…haven’t helped.
What I love to play is something in an unusual meter. 5/4. 12/8. Fun!
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@8
A not so rhetorical first question is do concerts serve any purpose that isn’t served in listening to a recording and if so, what? It was really hard for me to admit that I actually do feel “No, actually not”. It seems so wrong and I’d really like to be convinced otherwise but …. (Before I even considered this question though I saw Yehudi Menuhin in concert and it was pretty freakin’ awesome.)
Local orchestras are trying to woo younger crowds with movie scores and interactive multi-media stuff. Makes me grouchy. Not for any good reason. I’m just a grump. It’s seems to much like trying to trick toddlers into eating their vegetables.
:does calvin roll backwards off the front porch: spits fur off tongue; stands up:
Hi cicely!
I explained myself badly. I wasn’t imagining anyone doing composition in public. At no time do I suggest that we put up some sheet music in google docs and publicly edit it collaboratively.
Rather, once you have the key and the time sig, you can record yourself playing 4 bars of glockenspiel and the volunteer sound editor inserts it where you say it fits [within reason].
The great part is that even if all your efforts fail and you’re convinced you have nothing to contribute, as the project nears completion you can always record seven separate tracks of you hitting something in a fairly simple rhythm and ask someone to add it to the percussion line at some point in the song and voila! you get just as much writing and performance credit for the track as someone who didn’t spend 9 hours at the piano hating hirself for failing to come up with anything that didn’t a) suck, b) sound like something someone else has already written and performed, or c) both a&b.
I guess I’ll be the philistine who starts the parallel subdiscussion on music written in the 21st century, and see if anyone else wants to play in that space. I mean no disrespect to those who’ve posted before and have found the discussion fascinating… it’s just not where I live.
Some of the most fascinating and ‘composed’ music being made now is in the progressive extreme metal category. Whether that’s Agalloch’s sweeping, meditative pastorales,Opeth’s metallic invocations of 70s prog, Ihsahn’s jazz-inflected black metal, Shining (the Norwegian one, not the Swedish one) black metal-inflected jazz, Devon Townsend’s joyous walls of sound or Meshuggah’s chugging complexity, there’s plenty of rich musical beauty just around the corner from the mainstream. The vocal style is an acquired taste for most, but the fruit is sweet.
@davidgeelan:
I hate the engineering too many boy bands use to produce a broad and throaty “roar” for everyday lyrics. If you emphasize everything, you emphasize nothing.
That said, yes, there’s a ton of good music writing going on today, and a fair share of that is being done in punk/alternative[for a definition of “alternative” that does not include top 40]/metal.
I tend toward lo-fi/folk-punk/dirty-lounge-music, but I need my politics expressed to really love the music. I can like, “Shut Up and Dance” and it’s not lyrically irrelevant to my life the way it encourages someone to stop worrying about destiny/eternity/70yearsfromnow if doing that worrying gets in the way of being present with the ones you love now.
But I’m still going to feel left a bit short if your band is all Capri Pants and no Jet Ski.
@edrowland
Aside from what others have said, when I read this part you wrote:
I was reminded of what Brian Eno (who is an atheist and musician) calls “surrender”.
But ya, “flow” seems to be the general term.
@Crip Dyke
I should have said “in the groove” is most often associated with basketball. As for its origin being from wagon wheels . . . that sounds a bit like a folk etymology, to me.
woozy:
As long as people continue to play it, the tradition isn’t dying or being lost in the mists of time. Of course we already have recordings that you could listen to, of basically every older piece of music that’s had a fair amount of recognition, but we don’t just do music for you the audience member sitting in your comfy chair and waiting for the sound to wash over you. Some people very much like writing and performing; it’s a rare sort of work that doesn’t waste the precious time you have in your life which you’d rather spend doing something else.
Also, something new and different happens at every concert: they interpret a work. If we’re not satisfied with Wilhelm Furtwangler’s interpretation of whatever with the Berlin Philharmonic from way back when, we’re not stuck with that recording because we can try again. People learn how to play their instruments and play with a group, they continue to be made and the technology gets refined more and more, and people get together as a community to go to these events and have a shared experience of something happening right there and right now. It’s not all about you sitting alone in a dark room with your ipod, not that there’s anything wrong with listening that way.
Also, concerts generally don’t necessarily have only stuff that’s already been recorded. There is new music being made all of the time, which may or may not get recorded, and if it is recorded that often happens (especially for large ensembles) at these big concert halls, sometimes with live audiences, not in some tiny recording studio. If the concert halls were only operating for ensembles that are making recordings with no audience, they probably wouldn’t have enough business to keep running. And people like going to them (and sometimes the prices aren’t so bad), so it would be pretty stupid to not open the doors to the public and charge admission while you’re going to have people playing there anyway.
Plus, it’s good to prevent monopolization, by separating the theater businesses from the recording, production, distribution and other businesses — which you could imagine as similar to how the old Hollywood film studios worked until their trusts got busted (but not really, because they’re mostly still around and still dominant in the industry, both film and television). I mean, one corporation owned everything — not just the film and the cast/crew/sets, but also the theaters themselves which distributed the film and sold the popcorn. If your theater wasn’t part the network that corporation created, you couldn’t show their movie, for instance. But that’s not generally what artists or audiences want; they want some freedom to reach people everywhere and not have it limited by some greedy stockholders. Anyway, it’s good to have lots of theaters in locations all over the place which can run pretty much independently of the demands of a global distribution network.
@21
very good points and well reasoned and well stated.
This is the ideal but is it the practical reality? Many orchestras are struggling and are afraid of the new stuff which they fear would alienate the big money patrons. Others cater to young crowds who view traditional orchestras as boring (or at least the managers of the orchestras assume they do). Meanwhile is the individual music listener actually getting anything out of sitting in an overpacked, overpriced hall in the dark hearing an insipid interpretation by a timid seasonal director?
I dunno. I want to be convinced by you.
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BTW is anyone else having problems with the preview and post buttons not working today unless you constantly refresh? It’s weird. And irritating.
I think my ambivalence towards classical music concerts is due to sunk cost. I’ve spent money on those concerts, have friends who have performed in them, performed in some when I was younger, so I’m obliged to search for something of value. And I’m just not finding it.
I don’t have the same ambivalence towards contemporary rock/metal concerts. I don’t go to them, easy choice.
The fact that almost all classical music recordings were recorded during live performances works to their detriment. The volume compression that is appropriate to a concert hall isn’t the same as the volume compression that is appropriate to recorded music. I am not, after all, listening to the recordings while sitting alone in the dark.
I also don’t like live recordings of rock music, although usually that’s because the sound quality is worse and I don’t care for the applause and cheering. I’m glad this is not the norm in rock.
woozy:
University orchestras (and choirs, etc.) are in a different situation, of course. But I don’t see the problem with different professional orchestras focusing on different kinds of music or music from different eras (some “new stuff” is actually quite conservative or old-fashioned, but I get what you mean). There’s so much that’s piled up over the centuries that nobody has the time to do it all or treat it all indifferently, so some degree of specialization just seems practical and reasonable to me, whether or not there’s a lack of appreciation or fear or alienation or boredom or whatever.
If they’re overpacked and overpriced, that orchestra evidently isn’t struggling financially. The house might be as packed as priced as it needs to be. Is that bad?
Even when it is packed and the prices are relatively high, many would be more comfortable there and prefer that to the environment (and the music offered) at a packed and high-priced rock concert. There’s no reason why it can’t be a good performance, so I don’t see why they’re not getting something out of it.
Siggy:
I agree that live recordings are never as good as being there to hear (and see) it firsthand. Of course you have to compromise a bit to get the system to work at all. But whatever the case may be, that’s an argument for people going to the concert, so they can hear it without any of the practical limitations of recording technology getting in the way and diminishing the quality. A recording is a nice souvenir, or it’s the next best thing for people who don’t have the opportunity to actually be there (and nobody has the time/money to go to all concerts everywhere).
Doing a bit of a DDMFM except naming and quoting my blockquotes ;)
richardelguru, #3
I don’t think even Josse Leblotte himself had such an exalted view of his place in music, even if he reportedly composed only when he desired, rather than to order like almost everyone else. Anyway, in my view the highpoint of the Josquin generation is Antoine Brumel’s Missa Et ecce terræmotus, which is the Sinfonia Eroica of its day: a bold visionary leap into the future of the art with greatly expanded vocal, tonal, and technical resources. (Beethoven went on to greater things afterwards; Brumel’s mass is a one-off achievement a hundred years ahead of the late Renaissance developments.)
edrowland, #4
I sing and occasionally conduct stuff, and the repertoire I do is way more constrained (e.g. fixed notation) than jazz, but sensitivity and generating ensemble with your fellow performers is still part of making music as opposed to churning out notes, and you’re always aiming to be “in the groove” (nice long-playing record metaphor) of being in control of everything you can do expressively, without overthinking it and choking up. The self-critical aspect is in the background if you’re doing well. There was a sort of ‘self-help’ book for musicians published a while ago called “The Inner Game of Music”, which for someone who knows how to get “in the pocket” or “in the groove” is a bit like grandma being told how to suck eggs.
Sunday Afternoon, #5
Re: explicitly religious music, a performance is a performance – the music stands on its own and plenty of people sing masses without belief in the words (or in the case of the Latin mass, may not even think about the meaning of the words in a dead language). Likewise, you can sing Carmina Burana without believing everyone should get drunk in the tavern every night.
Re: context, do you mean concert performance versus performance in church?
Re: atheists in choirs. I’m a underemployed paid singer in a church choir that concentrates on Renaissance art music, and I enjoy receiving the money, but fortunately the particular church is social justice aware, has outreach to refugees and immigrants, has a daily breakfast for the homeless people in the city, has LGB parishioners (I think I’m the only trans person presently) and is welcoming to LGBT folks… as far as churches go it is a good place to work.
Re: numbers of atheists? In the choir I sing in, out of sight in a gallery/organ loft, very few of us bother to take communion, and I presume most of the non-takers are atheist (whether they would say so openly is another matter). A sister choir in Sydney is in full view of the congregation so they both wear choir robes and take communion or a blessing en bloc. I don’t think I could say how many atheists there really are, but you find a surprising number in places where the musical tradition is excellent (e.g. we get undergraduate singers looking to polish their technical abilities while looking for professional work), or the choir is tolerant of LGBT folks (because you don’t treat talent like gift horses).
Crip Dyke, #12
Funnily enough, this is something I do on an intermittent basis, but I suspect my techniques are not well-adapted to working collaboratively! For one thing, while I might confine myself to one poem, there’s almost no way I could confine myself to a single key, tonality, tempo, or metre for an entire composition. I’m always doing stuff that makes things more difficult for people (principally myself). Sounds like a cool idea though.
I’m not up for the collaboration thingy, but instead of a particular key, it could be interesting/easy/flexible to make something modular if you specified a 12-tone row. Everybody would use the same predetermined row, and you do whatever you want with it in your part — those might be different phrases or sections, but it could also be different people assigned to melodic or harmonic parts (or multiple lines of counterpoint, etc.). And of course you could still try to emphasize some kind of tonality with the tone row if you like, as long as the row’s not cooked up in a very specific way to make that especially difficult.
If not that, you could also try to be a little less restrictive than predetermining a specific key, by coming up with some more general limits about the sort of modal or functional-harmonic content that you want (along with rhythmic constraints perhaps) to give a certain amount of continuity throughout the whole thing.
Before musicology and recording technologies were invented a century ago, almost all concert music (ie., classical music) performed was avant-garde. It was only at the beginning of the 20th century that large audiences became fixated on past composers and stopped progressing with the composers; it shouldn’t be a big surprise that performances of dead white men have audiences full of almost-dead mostly-white mostly-men.
If you look for performances of avant-garde music – and it’s not hard, in a decent-sized city – then you can find classical music that’s not dying out, because young people listening to classical music; you can find value in live music, because the works they’re performing often haven’t been recorded yet; you can learn new things in live performances, because avant-garde music plays with space more often than Romantic & older music (think of Stockhausen’s Gruppen or Ives’ Unanswered Question).
I can’t think of any reason an atheist shouldn’t sing/play religious music, or sing in a church choir. I’ve performed at United Church services several times.
I hope that atheists can sing/play religious music. Due to my upbringing, classic hymns are what I know and consider singable. (Much performance music and recorded music is kind of “professionals-only, look at me”, but hymns are designed to be sung by ‘most anybody.
When I started trying to develop some musical skill, a few years back, I learned “Silent Night” first on my ukulele (picking, not strumming). I should have started with “Amazing Grace”, which is still the only song that I can sing, solo. (“O Holy Night” is my ambition for playing, but I keep forgetting the last bits.)
@Consciousness Razor:
This is a completely honest question:
How is specifying a key limiting? If you feel like a perfect 4th up or a minor 6th down would make the right tonal change for you, why not work with the same root as everyone else, just so you know?
If you want to flat the 5th, flat the 5th. No one is asking you to write down musical notation, just come up with a bit and play it and contribute.
As someone not well versed in music theory, I need help explaining why having a common starting point is limiting.
As I understand it, it’s rather like specifying a start point for journey, but I don’t see how the key specifies the route. If it did, wouldn’t everything in C major sound just like Mozart’s Jupiter symphony?
I don’t mean to be flip, but seeing as how you can write an innovative, post-baroque symphonic piece and 3 or 4 Ramones songs (just off the top of my head) in the same key, what exactly am I missing?
I’ve never taken real music theory classes, so hey, I admit my ignorance, I’m just not comfortable with it and would like to understand what you’re saying.
As an example, what the hell is a 12 tone row? I really don’t know enough music theory to have the slightest idea what that means.
It’s been my understanding that playing “in the pocket” refers ONLY to the sense of rhythm. That every pitch is PERFECTLY placed, that they feel the beat intuitively, and are never off.
But I’ve used being “in the groove” or “in the zone” in my own playing.
Musicians and audiences used to never pay attention to non-current composers. This was changed by a handful of Bach fan-boys that you may have heard of: little names like Mozart and Beethoven. Actually, a solid rule of thumb is that everything regarding performance practice, reputation of composers, genres written, and audience expectations changed post-Beethoven. That’s how you have Brahms and Wagner squabbling over who is the proper heir to Beethoven’s legacy. But 100 years previous, no one paid any attention to a past composer.
I very rarely see men at concerts. Old women, yes. But less often men. And mostly white. Mostly WASPy. It’s a serious problem because as musicians we want to play interesting things, and we also need to sell tickets. It also means our pops concerts are tedious affairs.
A Jewish friend of mine who plays cello says that his father refused to allow Christian music in their home. He was in his 20s when he discovered that Bach wrote things other than the Cello Suites and the Brandenburg Concerti. :-P
@ #32 — OH PLEASE LET ME FIELD THIS!
So there are 12 tones in the commonly used Equal Temperament in Western music. The purpose of a tone row is to create a pattern using all 12 tones. When using this, you can’t reuse a pitch until you’ve been all the way through the row. Where the art comes in, is utilizing fugal techniques. Inverting the pitches, playing through the row backwards, inverting AND playing backwards, etc. Some really clever things have been done with 12-tone.
Whoops, that was directed at #30. Can’t count today.
edrowland @4
Are you able to get in the zone intentionally, or is it something that happens unpredictably? In other words, you know when it’s happening, but you don’t know ahead of time when it’s going to happen.
epikt #34
I know the conditions in which flow happens to me, but not whether or not any particular attempt will achieve it.
It’s a fragile mental state for me, one that can be inhibited by just about anything. Both internal: stress, hunger, lack of sleep, nervousness, and external: glitching gear, annoying/annoyed bandmates, climatic extremes and so on can put me off. I can most reliably get to it when practising alone, that being the place where I can closely control as many variable as possible.
I crave that state with a passion. My brain Never. Shuts. Up. Your internal dialogue is silent during flow, and silencing that nagging, negative, hostile bastard is a huge relief. I will go so far as to say that achieving it is crucial to my mental health.
I’ll also say that achieving it in a live performance setting while playing with others is the best drug I’ve ever experienced. There’s a euphoria that comes from it that would be dangerously addictive if the experience wasn’t so rare for me. I can think of only a handful of gigs where it happened for longer than a few moments at at time, and those memories are the best (and only lasting) payment I have from my decade or so playing in a band.
If you’re interested, the “Inner Game of…..” books are all about achieving flow in various disciplines. The Inner Game of Music was helpful to me. I won’t say how rational/scientific/evidence based it is because I read it long before I began to prioritise that epistemology. That said, I always had a “Prove it!” sort of attitude and I don’t remember anything that annoyed me, unlike many other books of similar ilk.
epikt @34:
It is intermittent and unpredictable. I’ve never met somebody who does it consistently.
It happens much more often when I’m playing at the very edge of my ability. Which I should be doing 100% of the time, I suppose. Hmm. And it does require the right circumstances: a group of musicians with whom you can feel that kind of connection; a locked and reactive rhythm section with great time sense; a tune that’s hard enough, and an audience that wants to listen to that. And more. I certainly cannot will it to happen.
In our local jazz culture, “in the zone” is not quite the same as being in the pocket. Being in the pocket is an intense ecstatic experience. I can more or less consistently get myself “in the zone” through effort of will; but the bliss and effortlessness of being “in the pocket” comes unexpectedly, on those rare occasions when it does come. It is possible that the two are the same thing but in different degree. There’s certainly plenty of bliss when I’m in the zone; but “the pocket state” thing is much more intense.
That being said, “in the zone” is definitely a term that I’ve heard athletes use to describe the athletic equivalent of “in the pocket”.
ceesays @6:
Yes. “flow” sounds pretty much exactly right. Thank you.
edrowland @ 36
I find that technical fuckups throw off my game more than anything else — when playing on the edge of your ability, do you find that more likely? Or is that less of a concern for your style of playing/music/etc.? And by technical I mean technique, not an electrical problem.
I used to be able to get into ‘the flow’ just from playing scales. Maybe that’s a slightly different thing, more of a meditative thing, but definitely a Thing for me. But I don’t play the violin anymore.
In choir, there have been a couple of occasions, and it’s interesting because in that group setting, either everyone gets into it, or nobody really does – we’ve had performances where everyone comes down off the stage practically in tears because we’re coming out of a ‘higher’ emotional state (I say ‘higher’ but to be honest I’m not sure exactly what I mean, hopefully y’all will understand), where the singing we just did was maybe not flawless, but perfectly in tune with each other and the conductor (this part is quite key, actually). It’s quite fantastic.
+++
I’m half-way interested in attempting music creation. But I don’t think I’m any good, and probably far too constrained in my musical thinking to be any good (as per comments from the last time I attempted). My brothers are the jazz musicians in the family; I couldn’t ever even come up with a good coda. So here’s to the sight-readers and music-followers!
I am, though, willing to sing out loud and in public, so long as you get a couple of drinks in me first.
IMPERATOR XANTHIOSA @ 26
Well it was primarilly a joke, but the reason I chose that piece, was that sometime in the middle of the last century (of the last millenium! :-) ), when I was so young that I new the song L’homme Armé well, but none of the masses based on it, I was concentrationg on some school work or the like and half listening to the Third Programme one evening when Missa L’homme Armé sexti toni was playing. It eventually hit me why there seemed something familiar about it, and that’s stuck with me for the last fifty-ish years!
Crip Dyke:
I didn’t mean to suggest there aren’t a lot of possibilities with tonal music, because there obviously are. However, even assuming you wanted to narrow things down to seven-note scales, there are quite a few others to pick from besides the diatonic scale. By “the diatonic scale,” I’m referring to any of the 12 transpositions of major/ionian, for instance, along with 12 transpositions each of the 6 other diatonic modes that are like rotations of that same sequence — 84 versions of it in total, but let’s agree that in an abstract mathematical sense those are all the same thing, because in fact that’s a true statement (I’m sure I could explain it better if you like, but take my word for it for now). Those are all flavors of one and the same set, and there are many other such sets besides that one. So, I’m not trying to criticize that one here, and like nearly everyone else I actually like it (although sometimes it isn’t what I’m looking for). I just mean that it is limited in the sense that it’s one tiny little region in a much larger space. Not that that’s a bad thing.
I know I’m a total geek about this, but to give some perspective, even in traditional tonal music, harmonic minor is another pattern that’s been common for a very long time. It sounds pretty close to the minor/aeolian mode of the diatonic scale because they have lots of features in common (you only raise the seventh scale degree), but it is a different pattern with its own unique family of other scales that are related by the same kind of rotation that gives you the diatonic modes. What about that one, or all 7 of that group, or all 84 depending on how you’re counting? I mean, it’s hardly a new or radical idea to expand the vocabulary a bit, beyond a single set which is supposed to have a particular kind of hierarchical structure (with a tonic, dominant, etc.), which implies specific sonorities and chord progressions are “legal” or should be expected instead of others, and so forth. Octotonic scales (specifically the “whole/half” or “half/whole” variety, not just any eight-note scale) are another sort that you’d probably recognize in a few pieces — they simply can’t have the same progressions or hierarchies that exist with a diatonic scale or any other one. You can still make familiar triads with it if you like, which I guess is part of the appeal for some, but otherwise it’s a different beast. Or you could use the six-note whole tone scale, another popular choice — that can’t make anything except augmented triads, if you’re going to make any triads with it, and naturally its behavior is also not like functional diatonic harmony because it’s symmetrical and contains other intervals. Or you could use quartal harmonies that may not have anything to do with one particular scale — some of them might superficially look like extensions of “normal” triads but are functioning very differently in relation to one another, because you just don’t need to presuppose any of that to make some kind of interesting music or another. I could go on like this for a very long time, and I haven’t even touched anything that’s not firmly planted in the European tradition and uses the same twelves notes you know and love….
But I’m not saying you need to do anything fancy or something you’re unfamiliar with. And you could organize or plan it in ways that have nothing to do with a particular note, a particular version of a scale, or an even more general set of those things. That opens the floodgates even more than considering various other scales that exist. Suppose everybody looks at a picture or reads a story, using that as their starting point, then connects the bits together after the fact (whatever key or tempo or style they might have, if any) in a way that makes some kind of sense, given the input and given the resulting bits that were inspired by it. Suppose you start with some bit of music in a more or less finished state, somebody else responds with another bit that may not have much in common with the first, and it goes on like that as a sort of dialogue, perhaps with people responding to whatever bits they want — and maybe the bits get rearranged when it’s all over, because you wouldn’t need to stick with the chronological order in which they were created. Suppose you start with rhythms or tone colors or lyrical content or whatever. As I’m trying to say, you could use lots of things for that, because pretty much anything can be (and has been) treated as an organizational principle. Some people have used random processes, which in a way seems like the least promising thing to act as a guide or a foundation to build upon, but it can work if you’re willing to think about it that way.
I was suggesting other possible starting points (which of course you may reject if you like, since it was only meant to be a friendly suggestion) that could also provide a sense of cohesion or continuity or whatever the concern is (but honestly, sometimes a little incohesiveness or discontinuity is nice too, if you ask me). Even if you’re writing something by yourself, it’s not like limiting your options is a bad thing. It’s helpful to have some sort of framework, and that seems even more useful when you’re working with other people who could have very different ideas that may not fit together with yours in a way that satisfies everybody. So hopefully it’s clear my point was not that doing that is problematic somehow, but that there are a mind-boggling number of other ways to accomplish that. It might be a good idea to combine many of those options together, to have an even more definite idea of what the project is like or what it’s about, so you’re all closer to being on the same page. I don’t know. Really, I’m just tossing out ideas here, and I can’t seem to get rid of them without infecting others.
Whoops! I’m the curator of this thread and I’ve been away for the last day and missed the start. Sorry!
Anyway, you appear to be doing just fine without me.
I would like to follow up Crip Dyke’s suggestion, because it intrigues me.
Does anyone have a poem of words that they’d like to use as a starting point? Or a chord sequence? I’ll try and find some time a do something myself too. I have the music software to coordinate it all. I’d love to see what we can come up with collectively.
Ska music. Not enough people listen to ska music.
Discuss.
Musescore https://musescore.org/en/download – can play a whole orchestra score – look for the Brandenburg Concerto it comes with.
Tuxguitar https://sourceforge.net/projects/tuxguitar/ Guitar tab player – can set it up for other instruments
IMSLP http://imslp.org/ – lots of free scores and MIDI’s
mutopia http://mutopiaproject.org/ a few hundred thousand free scores
These are all FREE things all schools should know about. If you are into classical guitar tuxguitar can read the MIDI’s on Mutopia and IMSLP and get you tabs or scores.
Once you have tabs and scores of out of copyright music share them – my daughters school was getting charged over $100 for a set of music sheets for simple old arrangements. Two scores would have paid for a new trombone!
I’ve got about 50,000 scores I’m working on getting online…
None of the above are a replacement for good teaching or talent (I have neither) but can reduce the costs enormously.
@Thumper, #42
I was in a Christian ska band for a number of years.
There is nothing to discuss.
Music is often regarded as capable of giving one a ‘religious’ experience. Yet another feeling hijacked by religion! Music came long before religion – whether just the simple rhythm of the march on a long migration or the social aspects of working together that require rhythm such as threshing grain. In all of these things music supersedes boredom and move you to trance like out of body states.
It also works well in war type situations overcoming fear – unless you are on the receiving end of a few hundred bagpipes and drums!
There is a close physical link between the 12 tones and the natural overtones found in resonating pipes.
But the most amazing thing I think you can do music wise is that strange synchronisation that a choir can achieve – where the voices cross ‘fertilise’ each other. It cant be achieved by multi-track recording but does sort of crop up in some pipe-organ playing. I’ve only ever experienced it a couple of times (before my voice broke) but I’ve heard it in my daughters choir a few times. Its something incredibly ‘community’ feeling and I can see why churches use it as a tool.
The other arts can tickle the brain nicely but music has the power to shake it to its core. In a good way.
Alteredstory @37
In jazz you embrace your mistakes, because they take you in interesting directions. You’re taught very early to play every mistake like you meant it. If you make a mistake, you try to follow the direction it’s taking so that it sounds like you meant it i the first place. And if that doesn’t work, heck, play the same mistake again. It doesn’t always work, but there’s really no time for regret when you’re improvising.
If I make a mistake, I’m a bum. If I make the same mistake three times in a row, I’m a genius. — Attributed to Charlie Parker.
If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not doing it right. Play harder. — Julie Michaels
Backing up to the discussion of “in the pocket”, “flow” and “surrender”–
Traditional Arabic music has this concept too, and a word for it. The word is tarab, and is sometimes translated as “musical ecstasy” or “performer’s trance.” This category of music is meant to be emotionally expressive and to bring the audience along for a journey, so the audience can experience tarab as well. And the belly dancer (that’s me) is there to interpret the sound into beautiful motion, so we can experience tarab as well. And it’s MUCH easier to achieve with live musicians than when dancing to recorded music.
All that said, the actual experience is pretty much the same as everyone else has described: timeless sense that everything is just happening without you planning it, that you know what is coming next and that it’s all going to be beautiful.
I have a differing perspective on “in the pocket”. My boyfriend is a rock and blues drummer, and works with the same bass player in two bands. These two guys use “in the pocket” to refer very specifically to the timing of their notes. If the note is at its loudest point right in the center of its allotted time, that’s “in the pocket”. Usually that means hitting it right on the beat. If the notes come at the forward edge of their allotted time, that’s “ahead of the beat” and it’s an obvious bad thing. In between “ahead” and “in the pocket” we have “on top of the beat”, which just sounds like pushing the pace a teeny bit and adds a sense of extra liveliness. If the notes are toward the back edge of their allotted time, that’s “behind the beat.” There does not seem to be an “under the beat.”
Vi Hart has a good video explaining tone rows and the ideology behind them.
I have fantasies of a world where all pop music is atonal.
I’ve been playing the harp and pursuing a career as a harpist, too, since the early 90s’. But a majority of the time was spent struggling to raise $$ to buy a concert harp which I’ll use to continue with my harp study. I hope you don’t mind me asking you for help in raising money so I can afford to buy the concert harp and resume studying the harp. Here. For reference, I’ll share with you my Youtube channel where most of the videos I made are of me performing mostly church music on a concert harp I rented for a few years before I had to send it back due to not being able to afford renting it any longer. Hope you don’t mind listening to church music being played on the harp. Here’s the Youtube channel.
Owosso Harpist Fandalism Channel
If you want to help me afford a concert harp. Go to my GoFundMe page and help out.
Owosso Harpist GoFundMe Page
Correction: Here’s my fandalism channel containing my Youtube videos of my harp performance. My actual Youtube channel is here.
Owosso Harpist Youtube Channel
@Consciousness Razor:
thanks for elaborating.
You’re actually writing something that I imagine to be the way this might work:
I was suggesting that we do, in fact, do 3-6, but instead of starting with someone submitting music, we start with something to help create some initial ideas about mood. The number (1) I was suggesting was a poem or set of lyrics (personally created or just something you absconded with, the internet being the internet and knowledge being knowledge and language being language).
Your (2) seems just like your (6).
People would, on a practical level, create much of what they record as part of a musical dialog feeding off some bit of music someone else in the thread records. One recorded bit of sound would be the first to be submitted, the only difference is that I was thinking of providing poetry/lyrics to help inspire people, and a key and a bpm to serve as a jumping off point for those of us too unskilled to look at a completely blank page and jump into composition.
=============
On one level, I think you’re talking about a problem of the competent.
I’ve often stated that limitations (like keys/scales/tone rows in music, or like 3 lines of 5-7-5 syllable structure/7 rhyming couplets where each line is made of 5 2-syllable feet/etc in poetry) are terribly useful for duffers, are the scourge of the competent, and are the ultimate challenge and showcase of the greatly skilled.
You are way beyond me in your understanding of music. WayWAY beyond me. But I’m not so incompetent as to make it impossible for someone reading this thread to have less understanding.
I want this to be open to as many people as possible. By specifying a bpm, even without a key, an ambitious 2 year old can add a copper pot to our rhythm section with only minor help from an adult. Specifying a key gives a few less-than-competent dabblers who play for fun a place to start.
While it gives (to the uninitiated) the appearance of applying a constraint to the best musicians in this thread, I’ll say this:
I’m no musician, but I am a writer. Quite a decent writer. When I want to show off, when I want to blow the doors off someone’s impression of my capacity of write art, I reach for limiting forms and show everyone that I can express exactly the content I want to express no matter how many constraints of expectation you place on the form.
That’s the bad ass shit:
So…
I hope that makes clear that I don’t want to limit what the real musicians contribute. I want to use certain conventions to boost up us duffers: it’s up to you Charlie Parkers to break the form in only the most amazing ways.
edrowland @ 4:
The state you describe makes for a particularly loving, descriptive passage in Tad Williams The War of the Flowers. His main character, a musician and singer experiences it in an impromptu session with goblin musicians. I experience that state often myself, but I’m an artist, not a musician, so I’ll bow out now.
There is a very minimalist poem by Sidney Wade entitled Whimbrel which I don’t believe has been published in any collection. It was published a few years ago in The Nation magazine. In case you don’t know, a whimbrel is a shore bird. As I said, very minimalist, but beautiful. I have no idea if something like this could inspire a musical composition.
Kin to
the Limpkin,
she whimpers
when primping,
wears rimless
eyeglasses
for skimming
her primer
on swimming.
She splashes
through grasses
amassing
her ration
of shrimp,
and stands,
a fat ampersand,
on the sandpaper
strand
making eyes
at a snipe,
fanning
the passions
of the sandpiper
nations.
Two quick comments:
1. There is freedom in constraints. It’s much easier if someone says “Write a limerick (or haiku, or yes, even sonnet)” than if someone simply says “Write a poem”. It also tends to mean you get more actual poetry than doggerel that prizes rhyming above everything. So, for a communal musical project, some sort of starting point – and ideally one more like a limerick than a sonnet – seems like a worthwhile idea to me. Making art within the constraints…
2. I’m a ‘post-Christian’ in terms of (lack of) religious beliefs (plenty of social beliefs), but enjoy a wide range of music and lyrics, from overt Satanism to overt Christianity. There are a few things I don’t want to fill my head with – Cannibal Corpse’s sexual violence and Justin Bieber’s inanity, for example – but I think I’d impoverish my musical experience considerably if I listened only to music with my own (ir)religious views.
DavidGeelan @ 54:
Or an Alexandrine!
Baudelaire, Les Bijoux
I do attain that state once in awhile. The first time was in school; I was interested in free playing, but didn’t know how to do it authentically. I was listening to Coltrane’s “Sunship” when I had a lightbulb moment, and realized that the most important thing was to jettison all the self-censorship rattling around in my head. I’d been trying to make sense of the music using rules that it was never intended to follow. I started to play along with the recording, and after awhile, goosebumps happened. I think that’s similar to your description of it as “ecstatic.” It’s weird that it happened playing against a recording, but there it is.
When it’s happened more recently, it’s pretty much hit-or-miss, and I have no control over it. So I just enjoy it when it happens. At its best, it can happen when you’re in intimate communication with other people in the band, but in order to get there, you need to respect their musicianship and trust them explicitly.
“Embrace your mistakes.” I like that.
Like I said, I can pick “Amazing Grace” on my ukulele. One day I fumbled the fretting, and went a fret higher in pitch on one note. It sounded good. I had to figure out what I did, and experiment with making the same mistake other places, judging just by ear, ’cause I had no idea what was happening. It sounded kind of “blues-y” so I worked out different speeds of picking. Then I got my little amp and cranked in some distortion. Woohoo!
I had no words for what I had done, but I learned that other people could hear it, understand it and name it. One person even liked it. One guy seemed kind of offended.
So now I can finger-pick “Amazing Grace” all proper and churchly, or put some beat and some blues into it. All from embracing a mistake. “Play it like you meant it.”
Choir had a whole sheet of advice for singers (“If you sing a wrong note, give an evil look to the person standing beside you”) but I think my long standing favourite is:
:D Maybe I can improvise after all…
If anyone would care to try anything with the words from Morgan @53, feel free. Otherwise, I’m going to start the ball rolling with some old lyrics of mine. It’s called ‘This Chaos’:
Sitting in this chaos as the day turns into night,
With all your indecision creeping in,
Silent in the chaos you’re counting down the time,
Waiting for tomorrow to begin,
Wasting precious moments as the gentle darkness falls,
Contemplating calmness and goodbyes,
Watching as the second hand circles yet again,
And a universe of starlight fills the skies.
Chorus:
Chaos all around you, like an old familiar friend,
Fragments of your life lie everywhere,
Chaos all around you, drives you round the bend,
Cluttering your life without a care.
If anyone would like to add a chord sequence or a tune that would get us started. I’m thinking a medium tempo minor key, but I’m not hung up on it! Any contributions welcome.
(I’m a bit nervous baring my soul with the words, so please be gentle)
bassmike @ 59
I’m not very good at this, but I’ll suggest:
Lets go crazy with the chord structure in a-minor and power chords in the verse:
F5-D5-A5-A5/Am7
G5-E5-A5-A5
D5-C5-B5-A5
E5-D5-A5-A5/Am7
I see Am7s done as adding g:s and c:s between the chords (kind of arpeggio).
bassmike @ 59
Somehow, in my head the I hear the lyrics sung to ‘Hallowed be Thy Name’ by Iron Maiden. I hope the chords will lead us elsewhere. It’s a good song but it’s already made.
True story: This summer I ditched a melody and chord structure when it started to sound like Paradise City by GnR, or Lost in the City by Hanoi Rocks, also Zero The Hero by Black Sabbath. Not exactly the same, but I thought enough people had gone there already.
Those of you who are more experienced in composing: Does this happen often to you?
Is there a volunteer sound engineer to whom we could send our contributions & who has some ability to post them somewhere so we can listen to them in process – either separately, or, in some cases if its clear how 2 or more pieces should be mixed, together?
@62 Crip Dyke
I can put things together in Fruity Loops (and possibly make some other contributions). I can also post stuff on YouTube if that works :)
Aside: I keep getting a “request timed out” page when I try to submit comments to FTB these days :/
Not related to anything in this thread in particular (shameless shilling!) but everyone here who likes music, comedy, and left-wing/progressive politics should check go preorder Jamie Kilstein’s upcoming album. I know PZ has blogged approvingly of his older stand up work but now he’s doing music as well and it’s actually good! There’s not much online yet, but you can see one of his rants-set-to-music (most of the act now consists of actual songs) at funnyordie.com.jamiekilstein, and you can preorder the album at pledgemusic.com/projects/jamie-kilstein
I saw him live a few months ago with just an acoustic guitar (gonna see him again with a full band in september!) and he was brills. I promise you won’t be dissapointed. And if you are it’s because you’re an asshole with bad taste.
that first link should be funnyordie.com/jamiekilstein
*Though I should confess that I don’t really have experience de-essing, using limiters, and probably other things too. I’m fairly novice but I could learn things if needed.
Also, I see the “timed out” issue has already been reported.
In case there is any doubt, the fool posting above is not me, nor are they related to my blog. They are a troll trying to stir up shit, so please don’t listen to them. PZ will happily ban this latest fool posting where they know they are not wanted.
Hey Tony!
There was no doubt :)
Just been listening to Ancient Beatbox – a fusion of 80’s pop and hurdy-gurdy music with vocals by Sheila Chandra – a British/Indian singer/songwriter (one of the pioneers of Indipop)
Your world can be so small or so vast with music :)
Thank you for volunteering, Brian Pansky!
Should we e-mail recordings to you, or …?
Ya I have an email that should work for this, would it be a good move for me to post it here?
Oh, hey there…on line at a convenient time.
It’s fair to post the e-mail here, but I’m sure you know that automatic page readers look for strings of a type reducible to
text@domain.com
so anything that you can do to make the e-mail clear without making it readable by a bot who will add it to spam lists is a good idea.
Beg2differ, perhaps you should be looking at a different video?
Say, by the raincoats?
Ok, the email I’ll use is the first initial of my first name, my entire last name, 33, and it is a gmail dot com address.
bassmike @59
When there’s a bit more structure to the melody, I might be good for some background strings. No guarantees, though. :P
I’d be interested to hear people’s views on equality in music. I think that heavy metal and rap tend toward the misogynistic in a lot of cases. But does anyone feel that there are certain genres that are more equal than others? I can think of a number of atheist musicians who also tend toward the SJW camp (Ani DiFranco, Rush, Muse), but are there any others I should look out for?
@bassmike
Haha, ya, “The Resistance” by Muse is really in that territory.
Maybe you could check out the list of “leftist” music on Rationalwiki:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Fun:Greatest_songs,_liberal_and_conservative
bassmike
Stars may or may not fit your definition, as I’m only familiar with their 2007 album In Our Bedroom After the War. I have no idea about the state of their atheism, but they have a few SJW-theme-ish songs (Up In Our Bedroom After the War and The Barricade being vaguely in that vein).
The Decemberists might also possibly fit your description, though they take a decidedly historical bent – singing about historical events and such-like, though I suppose the link to SJW stuff is also very vague for that. It’s more of an awareness-raising of past conditions, so a very loose fit.
Then there’s Xavier Rudd, an Australian who is also an activist:
Though I don’t really think he’s atheist.
And Postal Service has one of my favourite songs about breaking up, which takes on both points of view, and I consider it to have a definite feminist leaning (it’s called “Nothing Better”). Again, though, can’t speak to the atheism.
I know of older bands that to SJW themes, mostly anti-war, like Dire Straits and Pink Floyd, but, once more, no idea about the state of their theism.
Comment posted in the spirit of participation rather than actual assistance, as I’m killing time at work.
bassmike
I missed Wintersleep. I can’t confirm if they are, but they do seem to bring up atheism (or at least questioning god in the face of science) in their music. See their songs: Astronaut, Miasmal Smoke and the Yellow-Bellied Freaks (full title), Belly of a Whale, etc.
I sent an audio file to Brian Pansky. It’s an mp3 demo for a comp (chords and drums) for bassmike’s This Chaos. It’s the first time I’ve tried to make music based on lyrics, so I’m not really sure if it scans at all. The chord structure is a bit different from my first proposal:
F5-D5-A5-A5/Am7
G5-E5-A5-A5
D5-F#5-B5-A5
E5-D5-A5-A5/Am7
The demo is 42 bpm and in common time (4/4). There is no bass line, just simple drums/percussion, synthesized Rhodes and two synth guitar tracks (clean and distorted).
I got it Ice Swimmer. I’ll also re-post your concern here:
I’m open to suggestions that will work for everyone. Usually I’d use Google Drive.
Though I’m confused, your sound file in its current form is only 1.4 MB. Did it really jump from 1.4 to 72? O:
Brian Pansky @ 90
The wav (16-bit integer samples @ 44.1 kHz), which I encoded to to mp3 was 17 MB which was enough to break the limit in Gmail. However the same music was 72 MB when I rendered it as a wav file with 32-bit floating-point samples at 96 kHz sample rate.
Brian some sort of access to cloud storage sounds like the way to go. We did it using dropbox for an old band of mine. I’d love to hear what Ice Swimmer has added, with a view to adding a bass line.
Now, we could each set up a shared folder or file in our dropboxes for the tracks we make and pass the links by email and if for example Brian would be able to put up mixes in his YouTube channel we could hear the progress of our piece.
Would this work?
Bassmike, if there’s something to fix in my comp, please let me know. For example is there enough “room” for bass or should we play the chords one octave higher or should I cut off some bass from guitars and rhodes, also will the rhythm work with the lyrics?
bassmike, I sent the file to you (just now), did you get it?
And yes dropbox sounds good, I’ll look into it soon. Feel free to continue sending me stuff by email in the meantime.
Hey, all. Sorry I went missing. Busy time at home, and I haven’t really been around the last couple weeks.
I’ll catch up reading what everybody’s been writing (haven’t even done that yet) but based on BP’s 94, I take it that creative endeavors continue. I’m happy about that! I’ll be glad to give a listen soon.
Me, I spent an hour this morning trying to learn the basic riff of “la bamba”. Yes, I’m that bad at guitar – I don’t play solos. I barely play the chords of the rhythm lines for many songs.
It’s funny, I’ve practiced interesting chord transitions like C#m => Cdim => E7 => Bmaj7 =>E7 = Bmaj7 => E7 =>Bm; and it doesn’t take me that much work to get it right. But actually moving my fingers one at a time independently? Ack.
I totally lose track of my fretboard that way. Somehow playing the chords I can keep my fretboard awareness, but break my finger groupings up into single finger-beings chasing each other around and suddenly I have no idea where I am.
Fortunately la bamba’s solo is all in C and I need to start practicing my scales at some point anyway, so it looks like once I get the main riff down, I might try to learn my first solo ever. Since most of it stays near the nut and goes up and down the C scale, I figure I have a fighting chance of learning it before January.
That is all. Further updates as events warrant.
Brian Pansky should now have access to a high quality (all the instruments as separate tracks, 235 MB zip file) version of my (dubious quality?) demo/suggestion for the comp to “This Chaos”.
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Now, for something a bit different:
This guy’s Youtube channel opened the world of lute music for me a couple of years ago:
Luthval playing What if a day
Ya I got it Ice Swimmer, I’ll have to figure out how to do this drop box stuff tomorrow.
This is fun to watch:
Björn Juhl talks sound of fuzz guitar
What do you think, musically knowledgeable people, is he making sense?
September Morn’.
Brian Got your emails. Thanks !
Now, I’m trying to find some time to work on them
For the 5th of November.