1.16.07: American Refugees

Went to K McK’s curated show of art by a group of artists associated with Wallace Berman’s Semina project. It was a limited edition publication in the early to mid 60s in LA that was pocket-sized and filled with poems, drawings, typings and collages. The show documents the project and a short-lived community that made experimental films and other work and lived on next to nothing — as K says, they didn’t care about money. Berman’s photos of his friends are interspersed with their work. Some of the Semina contributors went on to other things, some even becoming successful in some areas — as actors, filmmakers, choreographers or in the movie business. I say “even” because to judge by the photos they were not a hugely ambitious lot. Others hit bottom via drugs, inertia or poverty. They had a wide and secret influence, but many of the artists themselves sank into oblivion. There are parallels with the East Village scene in the mid to late seventies, but with the Semina crowd there was less press attention and scant documentation. The glare of publicity passed this crowd by. The show is combo of paintings, drawings, photos of the artists and some video projections of films. Some of the work is powerful, remarkable, and some isn’t. More important than the art though, the show documents a scene, a social utopia, and maybe a dystopia too — it’s more a social document than a collection of major works. A walk-in book. This is not a show designed for collectors. The photos that are interspersed with the work are of bohemians — bearded men and beautiful women living on the fringes of LA, cheaply, when such a thing was possible. They all seem to be living in a refugee camp — by choice. Post-war American alienation — the ubiquitous TV images of happy homemakers didn’t jive with this bunch. They wanted no part of it. They wanted real love, sex, passion, fear and danger. The media world seemed phony, as one famous fictional juvenile said. (That book was banned at the time.) Occasionally they would make things, but it seems most often their lives were their primary creative work.

[Link to New York Times review.]

1.14.07: New Science Terms

Breathers (AKA — discrete breathers): A phenomenon in which energy piles up in an irregular and non-linear fashion, rather than dispersing evenly, as one might expect it to do. Some scientists are now saying that non-linearity is the norm in nature, despite most physicists’ tendency to focus on linear phenomena. To me, not only is “breather” a cool and creepy sounding word, but the implied non-linearity around us seems like a potentially useful metaphor for all sorts of non-physical things.

The Local Bubble: A region of interstellar space (through which we are traveling right now) where, as a possible aftermath of a supernova, space is emptier than the space around it. A lacuna in space.

Heliosphere: A gigantic magnetic bubble around our sun, enclosing all the planets, made by the solar wind (a “wind” of charged particles streaming from the sun). This bubble “protects” the solar system, and us, from receiving an excess of cosmic rays.

Local Fluff: A cloud of interstellar gas and dust, much of which floats around inside the local bubble. We are traveling thought the local fluff now (bring your dustbusters) — and will be for the next 10 to 20 thousand years, a blink of the eye in space-time. Mutation rates of life could have been affected by the amount of cosmic rays hitting the earth, it is thought.

The Heliopause: The boundary or outer edge of the Heliosphere. A turbulent area. We can’t accurately measure interstellar space (or the “interstellar medium”) because the Heliopause is in the way. Voyager 1 and 2 are approaching the Heliopause — right now Voyager 1 is in the “heliosheath” — the thinning part of the Heliosphere just before you reach the boundary. It will cross into interstellar space in 10 years. Then The Fluff will have a chance to listen to Chuck Berry.

Lastly: There are 10 times more bacterial cells than human cells in the human body. That means we are basically a means for bacteria to become mobile, to complete their life cycles and to procreate. We think they are living off us, but it is we who are living for them.

1.9.07: Carnegie Snowball

Already I can sense I am being sucked into the prep for the four Carnegie Hall shows coming up in the first week of February. This week I’ve made the leap and have decided to add a small orchestra to the last 5 tunes of the Here Lies Love show. It’ll make a pretty spectacular last 20 minutes for that show, I think. Been thinking about adding these players for a while, but I needed to run the numbers and see if it was financially possible. Tony Finno is wrapping up some arrangements (some were already done for the German Century of Song dates in the fall.) We’re securing musicians, and my band is preparing for rehearsals beginning in about 10 days. I’m pretty excited about the show, as I am proud of the songs. They are also fun to play and sing — even though I’ll only be singing a third of them — Ganda and Joan will sing the 2 leads, which will be appropriate. I have already begun practicing the songs at home; some of the chords changes are tricky and I need to get comfortable with those. It’s a thrill to be able to do a whole concert of new material. Most of my life in concerts and tours I have gingerly mixed in new stuff with songs that are more familiar to an audience, which is what most bands and singers do. Occasionally we get overly enthusiastic and we play a whole new record, or most of it, on tour — our enthusiasm for the new material sometimes overwhelms practical concerns for the desires of our audiences. It’s a balancing act — we don’t want to give them only what they already know (and to be honest they’d get bored with that after a while, as would all of us) but one can only introduce new and surprising elements a little at a time so it becomes a mixing act. But in this case, as the material is all thematic, and it tells a story — of Imelda Marcos and Estrella, the woman who raised her — I might be excused for not playing the familiar favorites. Plus, if this ever gets produced theatrically there is no place for me performing in it, so this is a rare opportunity for me, too.

The drummer for The Knee Plays brass band playing on February 1st has just changed, so I’ll need to be sure he is up to speed. I’m going to begin speaking the texts for that piece around the house as well, as I haven’t performed the whole thing in many years.

Many of the acts for the February 2nd "Welcome To Dreamland" extravaganza happen to be touring together in the UK at the moment, so I will e-mail them and request that they think in advance how they might make an evening that will flow smoothly — ideally there won’t be any band or set changes, and each act will flow into the next with changing singers and rotating accompaniment. We’ll see. Good that a bunch of them are already traveling together.

I explained the concept of the final February 4th concert “One Note” to S&S last night over dinner. For non-musicians maybe it’s more confusing than I realize. I explained that an extremely wide variety of music has as its center a single tone or note. It could be an A or a Bb, but in many kinds of music — from Mississippi blues to contemporary classical — there is a constant tone, either played or implied, and all the other textures and melodies revolve around this tone. I used the example of Indian classical music, saying, “You know the guy that sits and plays the drone note and its harmonics on the tamboura? He never does anything else. He’s just there to provide the center point. It seems simple, but it’s not, and it’s critical that it be there. That’s the central tone and the soloist is free to improvise within the raga around that.” It apparently wasn’t a good example; maybe non-musicians — and S&S have seen and heard Indian classical music, I’m sure — maybe they don’t analyze what music’s made of when they listen the way musicians tend to do. Well, maybe this show will make that a little clearer. There are 3 acts in this high concept evening. Haale, a singer coming out of an Iranian tradition mixed with avant-post-rock stuff, has a central tone in many of her pieces, as does Camille, the French singer whose hit record Le Fil has a Bb going through the whole record, though you can usually only hear it in between songs, when it quietly connects them. Alarm Will Sound, an amazing local kind of chamber orchestra/band will round out that evening with instrumental pieces by G. Scelsi (Pranam II), electronica composer Aphex Twin (Cliff's) and a short drone-based early music work such as the Erart. So they’ll make a bit of a point with their contributions all by themselves. I’m hoping they can find a way to overlap with Camille and Haale, but we’ll see.

The late Italian composer Scelsi whose piece Alarm is playing is maybe the epitome of this one-note concept . He is most known for writing pieces in the 60s for orchestras and various ensembles that feel like giant single tones, cosmic emanations undulating and varying texturally. It’s far from static or boring — he does bend notes, add harmonics, and there are lots of dynamics. I’ve collected a few notes on this “outsider” classicist — thanks Alex Ross, Thomas B and LN. (LINK)

This has been an incredible opportunity to program this series of shows and be offered this kind of programming freedom. I sure hope I can pull it off. In the UK (Meltdown and All Tomorrows Parties festivals) and elsewhere in Europe these kinds of programming opportunities are not so unusual — but here, sadly, it is rare. This kind of risk-taking on this scale is exceptional. Ara Guzelimian is leaving Carnegie Hall soon, and he initiated some of the innovative programming changes there and at Zankel. I hope the creative initiative is carried on by his replacement.

1.2.07: Crappy Sound Forever!

Read a book called Capturing Sound by Mark Katz, which details how (mainly recording) technology changed music. Some of the information makes perfect sense in retrospect, but one often doesn’t ask oneself why or how music came to be the way it is, and his insights illuminate some of those mysteries.

He discusses vibrato in string players, which is a good example. Katz contends that in the pre-recording era vibrato added to a note was considered kitschy, tacky, and was universally frowned upon — unless one absolutely had to use it in the uppermost registers. As recording became more ubiquitous and common in the early part of the last century it was found that by using a bit more vibrato not only could the volume of the instrument be increased (very important when there is only one mic or a huge horn to capture an orchestra or ensemble) but the pitch, now painfully and permanently apparent on the recording, could be smudged by adding the wobble. The perceptible imprecise pitch of a string instrument with no frets could be compensated for with a little wobble. Soon enough, the conventional wisdom reversed itself, and now people find playing without vibrato to be painful, weird and unprofessional.

I suspect that the exact same thing happened with opera singers. I have some recordings made at the very beginning of the recording era and their use of vibrato is much much less that what is common nowadays. Their singing is somewhat closer to what we might call pop today — well, not exactly, but I find it more accessible and less weird that the fuzzy pitching of contemporary opera singers who sometimes exaggerate the wobble so much you hardly know what note they’re supposed to be singing unless you know the tune already.

Later Katz says that the length of 78s (and later or 45s) determined some changes in writing style. Those recordings, being limited to fewer than 4 mins (more like 3.5 for 45s) prodded songwriters to limit their composing to that length. To me a song length between 3 and 4 minutes seems natural, inevitable; I can hardly conceive that it could have ever been otherwise, but maybe it was. I dunno, though — even folk songs and blues, most of them don’t have too many verses — the old transcriptions and collected lyrics wouldn’t run much longer than that. So maybe this is an example where the technology happened to fit one existing form like a glove.

However, with jazz and classical it made a huge difference. Jazzers obviously would stretch out a tune or theme, and had to then limit themselves in the studio — they became more concise and jazz became more “composed”. I’d offer that for some jazz musicians this was not a bad thing — it became a restriction that forced rigor and creativity.

Classical works persisted in being longer, for the most part, but the composers often wrote in intentional transitions at the points where one would flip over the 78s. Decrescendos at the end of one side and crescendos on the flip side — so that the transitions didn’t seem too awkward. Some composers had been criticized for writing graceless section transitions when actually they were merely guilty of not writing for the new medium.

Microphones enabled singers with quieter voices and less projection to simply get closer to be heard, or for other singers to adopt a more intimate vocal approach, something entirely new. From Frank Sinatra to Julie London, Chet Baker to João Gilberto, this intimate whisper-in-your-ear approach caught on, and soon changed the way singers and songwriters wrote and approached material.

Later on, with LPs, record companies encouraged artists to record long players, which could be sold for more money and profit than mere 45s, and some artists began to stretch out a little more. Thematic LPs emerged (Frank Sinatra again) and extended jams and side-length compositions from Miles and various rock bands. Artists began to use the studio as an instrument as well, creating compositions on multitrack tape that could never be reproduced live.

Later, with 12” dance and DJ singles, which I remember from the late 70s, the low end, the kick drum and bass, could be brought forward, made louder, and the disco became a world of throbbing pulsing low end which had to wait for the CD before it could be recorded and experienced in album format.

With CDs, it was rumored that the length of the disc was technically created to be able to hold the duration of Beethoven’s 9th. Or so the unsubstantiated story goes. But the low end, and the super high end, was practically unlimited, unlike LPs, and this extended audio range could now be available to everyone. Dance music, techno and hip-hop became music of physical sensation. Music was in your face and jiggling your butt.

There was definitely a change in composition with the advent of digital recording. Looping of rhythm tracks is now ubiquitous, and you can “hear” the ease of Akai, Pro Tools, Logic and other digital and sample-based recording in the music written in the last 10 years. Sometimes the uncanny perfection that makes all this possible is pleasing, while at other times it is audibly too easy to achieve, and that facility is obvious and boring. In hip hop, which might be the most radical popular music around, there is no relationship of the composition to live performance anymore — everything, every instrument, is processed or is shamelessly and boldly artificial. Most other pop genres retain some link to simulated live performance, but a song put together with finger snaps, super compressed vocals, squiggly synths and an impossibly fat bass doesn’t resemble a band at all.

What comes next, with MP3s and the solitary listening experience begun with the Walkman in the late 70s (it was that long ago!) —? Well, the cassettes that came with the walkmen were perfect for mixtapes. So albums began to be reconstructed, homemade compilations were passed around, and the mix tape as a personal statement, a thoughtful and considered gift and a journey came into being. This was a kind of composing. Or recomposing. None of that is new. It’s taken off with MP3s — it has exploded, it’s easier, but it’s not new. Now mixtapes (still called that though they are CDs) mainly feature new mixes and even brand new songs and there are “artists” whose talent and attraction is their skill at making these mix CDs.

What is also new and old is that MP3s return music to experience rather than being things, commodities. To some extent this technology also returns music to the social experience it always was, maybe not in the way Microsoft would like to link to in their ads for Zune, and not entirely about file sharing either, but somehow. It’s information, communication, as it once was.

Odd that the digitizing of audio was developed, I think, by Bell Labs, many years ago, as a way of squeezing more conversations over long distance cables. A telephone company, communication, service, not product, sort of. Seems we’re back to that. Music as conversations and communication.

But is there a composing response to the MP3 and the sound of digitized compressed and private music listening? I don’t hear it yet. One would expect that private listening habits would result in a different kind of music being written — maybe a flood of ambient moods as a relaxing way to decompress, maybe dense and complex compositions that reward many replays and close listening, maybe intimate and sexy vocals that would be inappropriate to blast out in public. If any of this is happening I am unaware of it.

MP3s, which is how many of us hear music now, are in a way like virtual music. The compression that allows their smaller file size eliminates what the software decides are redundant frequencies and sounds the ear probably doesn’t hear and won’t miss. Maybe. There is less “information” on an MP3 than on a CD, and less on a CD than on an LP. Where does this road end, and does it really matter that sheer information and recording quality is going down?

If, like the phone company, we’re talking about communication, information, then maybe some of that sonic richness is indeed redundant and is therefore superfluous information? Well, yes and no. Looking at a reproduction of a painting is certainly not the same thing at standing in front of the real thing, but an awful lot of the emotion, intent, ideas and sensibility is still communicated in the cheap reproduction.

There’s a point though, at which the richness of the retinal or aural experience is so diminished that it becomes irrelevant, but where is that point? I first heard rock and soul songs on a tiny crappy-sounding transistor radio, and it changed my life completely. It was sonic, but it was also a social and cultural message that electrified me. Now I’m not saying that tinny sound should be considered satisfying or desirable, but it’s amazing how lo-fi or lo-rez information can communicate a huge amount.

[Related posts: 6.5.05: Music Recording; 8.14.06: The Venue Shapes the Music]