Meta and Meta

Ma foi, je ne sais pas

My wife and I went to see Bizet's "Carmen" at the Hollywood Bowl Sunday night. In general, everything sounded as good as orchestral music amplified in the outdoors can sound.

The lead Denyce Graves, however, was bad. Truly bad. Weirdly bad. I don't think I've ever heard anything quite like it. When she sang the "Habenera" (the first we hear from her), I had to dip into the deepest wells of my own self-discipline not to laugh out loud. She sounded like a not-very-good amateur countertenor (albeit with an unusually big voice) in some cheesy cabaret. Ugly sound. No connection between registers. Serious problems with pitch -- I've never heard such consistently out-of-tune singing in a professional production. (As Mark Swed puts it, "[I]n a couple of places, she might as well have been singing Nono's atonal opera ['Intolleranza'].")

Graves is apparently a well-regarded mezzo-soprano, so I'm just left wondering what the hell went wrong. It was just...so weird.

Marketing Bliss

"[T]he more you know about music, the less qualified you are to sell Rock Band."*

Or rock, for that matter.

New Song

I put a new song ("Memories of You") up on my MySpace page a couple of weeks back, but forgot to mention it here. You've been served.

Error on a G String

This is a bizarre case. Former Procol Harum keyboardist Matthew Fisher sued for a share of the copyright to "Whiter Shade of Pale" based on his contribution as keyboardist on the recording and...won. I'm pretty sure that's unprecedented. Studio musicians routinely contribute key melodic hooks to songs for which they receive no copyright interest. It's just part of the gig.

Before I get into my criticism of the decision, I should mention I actually think the court here was aiming at something desirable, namely, rewarding such contributions with some kind of quasi-copyright protection when those contributions effectively become a part of the song. An example that comes to my mind is session guitarist Robert White opening riff to "My Girl", a lick that's so integral to the song you really can't imagine someone covering the song without it. I think most folks would agree that White deserved more thanks for what he contributed than his standard $20 song fee.

That being said, the legal mechanism established in this case is an impossibly blunt instrument to implement this kind of reward. And besides, I doubt anyone thinks even an original contribution like White's would be due a 40 percent share of the copyright (which is what the judge here awarded Fisher). So the court's decision is pretty bad even if you end the criticism there.

But the truly bizarre thing about this case is that Fisher's averred contribution isn't even original. Rather, it's a slightly digested rendition of Bach's Orchestral Suite in D (a/k/a "Air on a G String"). So whether or not it was Fisher's idea to play that melody on the organ on "Pale" is irrelevant: Bach's melody was in the public domain. For whatever reason, this point isn't made in the article, so thought I'd mention it.

BTW, I once did a quasi-surf-guitar version of Bach's "Air." Kind of fun. Just for kicks, I'll upload it to my MySpace jukebox for your listening pleasure and update here when it's ready to spin. Till then...

UPDATE: Okay, surf's up, so cut on over and catch some "Air," dude.

Yes, A Post About Britney

But only because her bizarre performance last night at the VMAs seems to confirm my earlier suspicion that Spears is suffering from serious mental illness. (My voyeur's diagnosis is incipient schizophrenia or schizo-affective disorder.)

This was a girl who, though utterly mediocre as a vocalist and pop artist, at one time had a significant degree of shit together in terms of her stage performance and visual image. Last night's uncomfortable spectacle made it clear that that girl, though she's left a few lights on, has definitely left the building. 

So the piling on won't seem very amusing when the nature of her problem becomes widely understood. (Not that it's all that amusing now.) And for her family and friends, having this person they love effectively dissolve in maximum view of the public is ineffably sad.

Doh!

This is a really goofy NYT piece on Pavarotti's high C, claiming that his ability to hit the note with excellent quality "played a role in projecting Mr. Pavarotti’s fame around the world."

Good grief. Pavarotti's high C's were great, but I doubt you could find an expert who seriously thought it would have made any difference in the effect of Pavarotti's voice on an audience had his range topped out at B below high C. (That's the highest note in his "signature" aria, "Nessun Dorma," after all.) The fact is that his entire upper register was spectacular and rarely matched in its quality (in large part a function of his distinctive formants) and facility. That, and not a half-step difference in vocal range, is what "projected" Pavarotti's fame around the world.

Still, the article does recount a cute joke about Placido Domingo's reportedly weak high C:

[Domingo,] who extended his voice up from the baritone range and who is widely admired for his musicianship and artistry, is also not known for pinging high C’s. An unkind joke among singers has him dubbed “Mingo.” “Where’s the ‘Do?’ ” someone is asked. “He doesn’t have one,” goes the answer, “do” being the singing syllable for C.

Max Respect

I never posted on Max Roach's passing, but I thought this Slate piece had a great example of Roach's incredible flexibility and inventiveness, and I had to pass it on:

His first real eye-popper—the track that has drummers shaking their heads even now, 56 years later—was "Un Poco Loco," recorded in 1951 with pianist Bud Powell.... The song [has] a crazy rhythm to begin with. But Roach adds a more complex layer that goes against Powell's rhythm, on a cowbell no less, while pounding a rumbling roll on the bass drum at a different tempo still. Simply jaw-dropping—and you can dance to it.

More remarkable, Roach clearly devised this approach on the spot. [My emphasis.] The album contains three takes of "Un Poco Loco," and the drumming is a bit different on each. On the first take, Roach hits the cowbell in a high-energy Latin rhythm that goes with Powell's rhythm; had he stopped there, it would have been impressive enough. On the second take, he tries a whole other approach, hitting only a couple beats per measure and altering the beats; it's very diverting. Only on the third and final take did he pull out the polyrhythmic marvel.

Diaboli in Musica

The Enchantress asked me about the musical significance of the backbeat and why the depth of its apprehension seems so apparently bound to culture.

As I was answering her, I got to wondering about its historical origins (we know with considerable certainty, for example, that it didn't issue from Germany; but whence, then?). My initial google query ("origins of the backbeat," what else?) led me to this unhelpful but moderately amusing discussion:

The argument that the backbeat "originated" in pagan Africa fails to consider where the Africans learned the beat from. We do not know whether they adapted it from Egypt, Summeria, Ur, etc. It is even possible that this beat was used to worship Jehovah when Noah and his family got off the ark.

In other words, we know it existed in Africa, but did they think up the beat on their own (possible), did Satan personally deliver this beat to them (possible), or did they adapt it from some other culture (probable)? If they did adapt it from some other culture, who is to say whether or not that culture was righteous, or what the "original" use of the backbeat was?

Good questions all. And here I'd thought it was only certain harmonic intervals that were diabolic. Next it'll be time signatures. (Thank goodness 6/6/6 is a theoretical impossibility...)

Better Than "Hit or Miss?"

Just to show the headlines at Yahoo! Deutschland don't shy away from controversial topics:

( Course, the one possibility isn't necessarily exclusive of the other.)

I' Hab' der Rhythmus

Some years ago I was living in Regensburg. One night, I went to see the World Saxophone Quartet perform at a local club. The place was packed.

At different points of the show, each member of the quartet would do an unaccompanied solo. When it came Julius' turn, he got the crowd clapping a simple beat, then started playing over the claps so that they came on beats two and four. And it swang.

But it apparently also confused the audience, and soon you could hear feet subdividing on one and three, with hands soon joining then supplanting the feet. Finally, the claps sounded all and only on beats one and three; the backbeat had been vanquished.

So, yeah, those Germans can be pretty square. Still, how cool is it that in a small town of 100,000 you could pack a house for the World Saxophone Quartet?