Sep/090
Pomplamoose
I somehow stumbled upon this group on youtube. It is a wonderful testament to what you can do in your basement with a little knowhow and creativity. I love it!
Sep/090
Beatles Chords
I’ve often heard guitarists refer to something called a “Beatles Chord.” For those unfamiliar with it, a Beatles Chord is any chord that is used in a Beatles song deemed too difficult to understand. For some reason, many guitarists are under the impression that the Beatles used many difficult chords in their music. This is simply not true. The majority of their songs use simple major, minor, and 7th chords.
Perhaps this idea of difficult chords comes from the fact that many Beatles songs have modulations. These key changes introduce chords that move away from the tonic, but very seldom in unpredictable ways. Especially in their earlier years, it was typical to move to the key of IV (subdominant) or V (dominant). When they got a little more experimental they still didn’t change much, but occasionally threw in a modulation to the third.
Perhaps what people refer to is the fresh and unconventional approach to the chords. To a musician overly steeped in traditional blues progressions, a movement from iii to I (as heard in “I want to hold your hand”) may sound confusing.
Other interesting chords progressions can be heard in Do You Want to Know to Know a Secret. In this song we have a few interesting devices. The descending minor 7 chords Ab-G-F#, as well as a B6/F which functions as a sort of tritone substitution near the end of the verses. The bridge of the song uses an a-typical chord progression, I-vi-iii-ii in the key of A major.
Another song with an interesting progression is Strawberry Fields. This is another one that uses standard chords, but with the interesting effects and orchestrations that they weave into it, the final product proves to be more than the sum of the individual parts. A song like black bird doesn’t even uses traditional strummed chords, but a series of interesting finger-style arpeggios that imply the chords.
The final interesting chord that really does actually qualify as a “Beatles chord” is the infamous shimmering twang in the beginning of A Hard Days Night. That chord has been very hotly debated. Interestingly enough it seems like the mystery has been solved (spoiler alert!). It took nothing more than 35 years and a complex mathematical Fourier Transformation. After all this, however, the anticlimactic answer to the question of what the chord is is a simple F maj 9. The mystery was wrapped in the unique instrumentation. Georges’ 12-string, John’s acoustic 6-string, Paul’s D on the 12th fret of the bass, Ringo’s cymbals and producer Goerge Martin’s piano overdub.
Sep/090
New Poncho Sanchez album
I was just sent this story on the NPR site about a new album by world renowned Congueiro Poncho Sanchez. It’s available through streaming audio this whole week before it’s official release next week. Give it a listen, it’s quite good!
Sep/090
Quien sera? aka Sway
¿Quién será? is a classic of the Latin repertoire. This mambo was originally composed in 1953 by Mexican bandleader Pablo Beltrán Ruiz, the song quickly became popular. It was eventually translated into English. The song was sung in the 50s and 60s by many greats, including Perez Prado, Dean Martin, Julie London and Bobby Rydell, as well as more recently by Michael Buble, Jennifer Lopez, Bjork and Chinese superstar Aaron Kwok.
Here is an interesting rock version from 1978. at 00:43 it sounds like he says “Blow, you greasy wop!” ouch… ethnic slurs are not cool!
This last version is from another old movie, it isn’t filmed as well, but it’s still worth the watch. The dialog is so bad, it’s funny…
Sep/090
Set Theory Calculator
Here is a handy site for those of you interested in music theory. There are several pitch class set calculators out there, but this one is the most helpful. You can search by the Forte name, or input your own sets and matrices. I use it sometimes for composition and analysis. Hope you find it useful, too!
Handy table of the set classes
Note: this tool calculates normal form from RIGHT to the LEFT. I was taught at music school to pack from left to right. In most cases this doesn’t make too much of a difference.
Aug/090
Astor Piazzolla
Astor Piazzolla was an interesting musical figure. Exposed to classical music from a young age, but also active in the traditional forms of Tango from Buenos Aires, Piazzolla was split between the music of his homeland and classical music. It wasn’t until he traveled to Paris and studied with Nadia Boulanger that he changed direction and started to see tango through the eyes of a classical composer.
Born into an Italian family in Mar de la Plata, Argentina in 1921, his family moved to New York city and it was there that he started learning how to play the bandoneon. When he was 12 he met the “King of Tango” Carlos Gardel, who was impressed by his playing. Gardel invited Piazzolla to play with him on tour, but Piazzolla’s father forbade it, thinking his son was too young (it was on this very tour that Gardel and his performers perished in a plane crash).
In 1937 Piazzolla moved back to Argentina, where playing in night clubs and cabarets he met pianist Artur Rubenstein. Rubenstein suggest to the young Piazzolla that he study with Alberto Ginastera. With Ginastera, Piazzolla studied and absorbed the modern style of his teacher, as well as of other composers like Stravinsky and Bartok. After winning a composition competition he won a grant to study in Paris with Nadia Boulanger.
Neuvo Tango was born. Two years later, in 1955 Piazzolla moved back to Beunos Aires and formed the Octet. Being markedly different from traditional tango of the time, many purists rejected it. It was the beginning of a turbulent time for Argentina, as a military dictatorship was on the horizon. His fame and notoriety grew, and when he left Argentina and lived in Italy.
As a performer, Piazzolla was unstoppable, constantly playing concerts, composing new pieces– always allowing his style to evolve naturally. As far as the guitar is concerned, the electric guitar is a standard instrument from the days of the Octet, various quintets and the Conjunto 9. In addition, he composed several other notable pieces:
- Histoire du Tango, for flute and guitar
- Tango Suite, for 2 guitars
- Cinco Piezas, for guitar solo
Piazzolla’s music is very dear to me. I’ve always loved tango, and something about his music reverberates in me. The dramatic chords, the intense delivery, the shifting harmonies and melodies. Perhaps part of the reason is because Piazzolla’s music is essentially a true fusion of styles. Classical sensitivities as well as jazz and experimental attitudes are all equally necessary. A spirit of improvisation (and at times times, you need the chops for taking solos too!) is important too!
I’d like to start a list of peoples’ favorite recordings. There are so many! Let me know who the performer is, the album name (if there is one), or an address with a video or audio sample and I’ll upload them to the site.
Piazzolla.org is an excellent site with many details and very interesting links.
Aug/090
“You perform the way you practice”
My old guitar teacher Pablo Cohen once presented me with some food for thought: Performance, he suggested, was not a separate thing that happened when you play in front of people. Instead, performance is an extension of practice. The reality is that you will perform a piece the way you practice it. If you don’t bother to shape a phrase, for example, how can you expect it do it effectively during performance? This sentiment I heard echoed by David Russel during a master class. A show of hands demonstrated that the majority of the people shared one practice habit, that interpretation came after learning the notes. David suggested that interpretation and phrasing should be present right from the first notes learned off the page.
The long term effects of this mindset according to him are two fold, first, constantly thinking in terms of expressive lines eventually makes you associate the music with sounds, not with movements of your fingers. You mind will subconsciously react to your wanting to hear the notes, and the movements will follow.
The second effect is an interesting idea and requires some explanation. A problem to overcome when playing is that by the very nature of learning for the first time, we must, among other things, stop, learn notes, play a fragment, make mistakes, change the interpretation, play below performance tempo. While this is all unavoidable, we are at the same time ingraining the tendency to interrupt our performance. If it takes 100 hours of practice to learn a piece, for example, it will be difficult to unlearn the bad habits picked up during your practice. It may be that only after 101 hours of good performances will the tendancy to make the old mistakes start to disappear.
Another thing that often trips us up during performance is how to handle inevitable mistakes. Wrong notes, undesirable tone and other distractions may snap you out of “the zone.” Unless you can leave it behind and move along in the music it may even ruin your performance! It is only natural to be practicing a passage when an unexpected error occurs. Your natural instinct during practice may be to stop, analyze the problem and solve it, perhaps repeating it a few times correctly before moving on. During a performance this is not an option. You have to trudge ahead, unless there is a colossal break-down or epic failure and the only way to get back on track is to either start over or just try again. Neither is very desirable and can be pretty embarrassing when all eyes are on you.
To help prevent this from happening it is good to develop a “performance attitude.” When you play something in performance mode you have to make it your intent to play it without stopping, from one point to another as if you were on stage. In the beginning the chunks of music will have to be very short, perhaps even focusing on groups of two or three notes. This is ok, the important thing is to build good habits and not get thrown off by mental hiccups, or dwelling on little mistakes. Eventually as you learn more of the music the chunks your should be practicing will get longer, until eventually your intent will be to play the entire piece start to finish. Being realistic is crucial, however. It gets you nowhere to knowingly bite off more than you can chew. That’s not to say you shouldn’t challenge yourself, just don’t set yourself up to fail!
Almost all athletes will tell you that strength of mind is just as important as the strength of their bodies, and this is equally as true for us musicians. It can be difficult and even mentally tiresome to constantly give emotional “performances” during practice. That also is part of the practice session, however. The playing conditions during concerts and other public performances are rarely ideal, and you will always have to deal with your fingers being cold because of temperature, your fingers being sluggish because of heat and humidity, being tired from the flight you took the night before, or even feeling emotionally disconnected from the recent death of your dog.
Epic Fail anecdote:
During my time at college I was once asked to fill in on bass guitar playing the root notes of a chord progression with a small steel drum band for a student run television program. During filming a cable suspended from the ceiling holding a frame for lamps and lighting unexpectedly broke causing it to fall directly on one of the members of the ensemble. He was crushed and fell down under the weight of the beam, and his instrument was knocked over. Needless to say everyone stopped and rushed to help him. Fortunately nobody was hurt! He was a trooper, though, because after taking a few minutes to gather himself, we rerecorded the song. I can’t imagine a bigger mood-wrecker for playing a piece than being flattened under a pile of steel, but he managed to pull through and perform the piece. Not so funny in the moment, but it certainly made a good story to tell later.
Aug/090
Bill Evans interview
The following is an old video interview of Bill Evans talking about the creative process in jazz. Though Evans is a pianist, the ideas he and his host present can be applied to any instrument. Unfortunately the videos aren’t synced perfectly, but it’s ok, the audio is the important thing…
That was video 2/5, the rest are here:
1. Part one
2. Part two
3. Part three *
4. Part four *
5. Part five
At the end of part three and the beginning of four Bill Evans talks about his first experiences playing classical music and how he started playing jazz. Lucidly put, “To be able to play a masterpiece intelligently and musically and still not to be able to be creative and understand music enough to play a simple thing like ‘My Country tis of thee’ without having the music in front of you.”
Aug/090
In Memoriam Les Paul
Les Paul, the the inventor of the electric guitar and an important figure in the recording world died yesterday at the age of 94. He will be remembered!
The following are three clips from a television show Les Paul and his wife Mary Ford had. Each episode basically showed Mary happily doing some sort of dull household chore like shopping, cleaning, polishing the candy dish, or running an errand while Les appeared out of nowhere with his guitar and proposed to sing a song. Marital roles have certainly changed since then– by the way, have any of you tried the new Listerine antiseptic product? It sure is swell!
I can’t give you anything but love
This last one is Vaya con Deus