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Archive for August, 2010

Day 142. Nono.

Tuesday, August 31st, 2010

Tonight I wound up looking for more discs to rip on my own. I’ve been under the weather the past few days (almost completely lost my voice yesterday) and decided I would take tonight mostly off and get some music onto the server. I discovered that I haven’t even touched my Nono discs (from the looks of it), so I grabbed the whole collection and got to work. It looks like a stack of twelve CDs or so.

Pretty early on in grad school, I discovered ‘Fragmente Stille… An Diotima’, Nono’s string quartet. I heard about, described as 35 minutes of mostly silence, punctuated by mostly soft, slow activity. Occasionally, bright flourishes would appear. I had to hear the piece. At the time, the ‘suggested’ La Salle Quartet recording was out of print (only recently showing up again as a digital download) but I was able to find a disc with the Arditti Quartet performing the piece. If I had heard the piece a month earlier, I probably wouldn’t have appreciated it. A month later and it might have been too late. It is one of those pieces that you really need to be prepared to listen to, and I imagine you need to be in a place where you are receptive to a piece like this. If the world of modern classical music is small already, I imagine the number of people that hear this piece and enjoy it is really small. Your body has to slow down to hear it, and if you can find a time and place to do it, I think what you get back from the experience is one of the masterpieces of the 20th century, perhaps the most significant string quartet written after Beethoven.

I did an analysis of the piece as one of doctoral exam topics, and I learned an amazing amount about music, composition, and about what music analysis can and can’t do. While the analysis I did was (and I think still is) pretty stunning, it also showed me that it isn’t what I want to do. If there was any question in my mind before this process about whether I would be a better music theorist or a better composer, this work showed me it was the latter. And it really comes down to one chord. In the Arditti recording, a chord comes in at about 25:28, and lasts for about 30 seconds. It is rich, warm and shimmering, and in the context of the first 25:30 of the piece, that chord is like a warm bath for your ears. The structure of it is interesting, but to only look at the intervals that make it up doesn’t really show you anything. It doesn’t really matter if it comes from melodic material in other parts of the work, or appears in other disguises elsewhere. The only thing that actually matter is that after almost half an hour of sparse texture and occasional string chattering, this chord is an anchor of wonderful sound. Out of context, it sounds nice. To just skip ahead and play it though is a cheat to you, the listener. It’s just a chord. But to have it appear suddenly, and last for so long, it brings your attention which has certainly started to wander by this point back into focus. It is an amazing trick Nono has pulled, and it is a treat for those that have made it that far on the journey through his quartet. It also helps propel you through the rest of the piece.

This moment, so magical, told me that if I was going to be spending my time with music for the rest of my life, then I wanted to spend it creating these moments rather then explaining them.

Day 141. Elvis Presley, Andrew Hill, Red Garland, Herbie Hancock and Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd.

Monday, August 30th, 2010

With colds going around there wasn’t much disc ripping going on this week. I finally grabbed a stack last night in an attempt to broaden some night music choices and to make sure Tamiko had Elvis for the first day of school. Some jazz piano found its way into that stack (Andrew Hill, Herbie Hancock and Red Garland) as well as the Stan Getz / Charlie Byrd samba precursor to the Getz/Gilberto recordings.

Tamiko was teaching a poem by her colleague Hans Ostrom today in her ‘Literature and Music’ class. The poem is Emily Dickinson and Elvis Presley in Heaven, and she wanted to have some Elvis playing when the students shuffled into class. She has this wonderful memory of her first semester at Berkeley and the Introduction to Astronomy class she took with Alexei Filippenko. On the first day of class, she walked into a huge auditorium with pictures of the solar system playing on a slide show along with ‘Dark Side of the Moon’. She loved how the music set such a mood for the rest of the course for her, and she wanted to try and create a similar situation with today’s class. We talked about what a good Elvis song to walk into class would be. Of course, the beginning of ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ is probably the thing that would work perfectly. The problem there though, is that you can’t have music playing when people walk in AND have them hear the beginning of that song (and really, you HAVE to hear the beginning of that song). So I suggested that she have ‘Viva, Las Vegas’ playing as they walked in, then follow it up with ‘Heartbreak Hotel’. Maybe sandwich in ‘Don’t Be Cruel’ if there are still people coming in after ‘Viva, Las Vegas’.

Well, Tamiko got to the room and the computer didn’t start up (so she couldn’t reach the server) and she finally got the CD player up and running a little after class started. So she went straight for ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ (the perfect thing to do!) and what is the reaction she gets? ‘huh… Elvis???’. Come on kids! First day of school! Lit and Music class and ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ on the stereo to kick off the class! Oh well…

Music in class (even in music classes) is always a little tricky though. I imagine the bustle of a large Berkeley auditorium with Pink Floyd playing loudly would almost feel like you are showing up at a concert. But one of the difficulties with playing music in class has to do with the fact that everyone is sitting and being told to focus on the pressing of the play button. They sit quietly, still, not moving and maybe giving it full attention? But how do they show that they are giving it full attention? What can they say about how the air in the room is vibrating? It’s hard enough for musicians to talk about music, but ask your average intelligent college student about what they just heard and they can be thrown into a kerfuffle. One or two chime in with a comment on lyrics (if there are lyrics) or maybe something about instrumentation, but most wouldn’t know really how to describe a strong back-beat or why it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing. Or why Elvis crying out in a full voice ‘Well since my baby left me!’ veiled in studio echo just epitomizes loneliness, followed by the band’s one-two punch to his gut  that takes the left lover to the ground. And sure, Elvis has found the Heartbreak Hotel, but it isn’t until you hear his pathetic “I feel so lonely, I feel so lonely… I could die” that you really do think this poor guy may have had his last grilled peanut butter banana sandwich. He isn’t howling in anguish anymore, he’s pulling himself off the floor, and it has all happened in 30 seconds of music. Not to mention the heavy trudging implied by the bass, and the sparse instrumentation that shows how lonely this guy is at this moment.

But what I find most awkward usually is the sitting. I walked by a class the other day listening to Otis Redding at Monterey Pop singing ‘Respect’. This is a blistering performance. I won’t describe it… if you’ve heard it, you know what I mean, if you haven’t, you just need to find it. Anyways, this isn’t music that you sit still, listen to, then analyze. The students haven’t experienced it by sitting quietly at their desks. The problem is though, I don’t know if there is really an answer. You certainly can’t take them back to the late 60s to see Otis, throw them into the crows and let them feel the energy (but, wow, I so wish I could do that… it would be hard not to spend weeks in a place like that).

I have it lucky in some ways. Most of the music I play is concert music, and I can treat the session as though it is a concert listening experience. Listening to Xenakis in our music studio is different then hearing it performed in the concert hall, but turning the lights down and sitting back in that studio isn’t TOO far off. The disparity is certainly much less then hearing Otis Redding sing at Monterey Pop while sitting under fluorescent lights in a regular old classroom. But the problem is still there. Part of the blame is recordings… the fact that we can actually play this music out of the context in which it was created in means it will always be a sub-par experience if music is the focus. Tamiko was lucky walking into that astronomy class, it was part of an entire show that was there to wow students on the first day of school. Great soundtrack, great visuals and excitement in a room of several hundred. Well Prof. Filippenko, you don’t make it easy for the rest of us.

Day 140. Old And In The Way and Schütz.

Tuesday, August 24th, 2010

Just a couple discs tonight but quite a bit of fun. The first is a live Old And In The Way recording called ‘Breakdown’ (which seems a little odd to me now, since I think all the Old And In The Way albums were live), and the other a disc of Schütz’s Italian Madrigals.

Old And In The Way was actually mostly some younger guys in the early 70s (including Jerry Garcia, David Grisman and Peter Rowan) and finally Vassar Clements who was a bit of a seasoned bluegrass veteran. The playing is great, and it is nice to hear Jerry Garcia playing banjo. Jerry Garcia playing banjo is kind of like Steve Martin playing banjo. You don’t hear it too often, but when you do you realize how good they are in their ‘second gigs’. The other surprising thing to me is how much I tend to like banjo once I start hearing some banjo playing. So listening to this disc today was lots of fun, and made me miss playing bluegrass. I wasn’t ever great at it, but I learned more about guitar playing while trying to play bluegrass then probably any other style.

The Schütz provided a different surprise to me tonight. I put it on while I was getting a little work done while Celia was playing in her room, and when she heard it she completely stopped what she was doing. I think it was the first time I have ever seen Celia completely distracted by music, and the moment made me very happy. She asked if I could make a disc of it for her to listen to tomorrow. I can’t wait.

Day 139. Bach, Neil Young, Mahler, The Police, Brahms and Purcell.

Sunday, August 22nd, 2010

Tonight I have a nice mix of discs getting ripped. The Emerson String Quartet’s recording of Bach’s ‘Art of the Fugue’, a couple of mid 90s Neil Young and Crazy Horse discs, the live double disc of The Police along with some Purcell, Brahms and Mahler. The Neil Young and Police (especially the first Police disc from Boston, 1979) are pretty rocking. Even more striking about the Neil Young discs is how rocking it can be in one song, then how melodic and sweet it can be in the next. The funny thing (for me) about Neil Young is how little I think to listen to him. While he may not be in my top ten artists list, he is certainly pretty high, and when I think about the first time I heard ‘Sleeps With Angels’ (late at night at Tower, turned up really loud) I still think about how the sound on the record seemed just perfect. I listened to the whole album a few months ago (during a drive to Seattle to perform in a concert) and I was still struck at how well put together the disc was and how good the songs were. The jangly, saloon sounding piano that starts off the disc that leads into darker ‘Prime of Life’ with its haunting flute that weaves through most of the song, to the mellow ‘Driveby’ and finally into ‘Sleep With Angels’ which, while still slow, is grungier the grunge was in ‘94. And as awkward as it is to hear middle age guys bellowing ‘PIECE .. OF .. CRAP!’ in the chorus of a song, that song rocks pretty hard. And that goes a long way since my favorite part about almost anything Neil Young does with Crazy Horse is the sound of the band. They sound damn good on this disc. ‘Broken Arrow’, while it hasn’t had as many plays for me as most other Neil Young discs does have ‘Music Arcade’ on it. Charles placed this song expertly on his ‘Wood and Smoke’ mix disc 11 years ago. I’ve probably heard ‘Wood and Smoke’ more then any other mix disc I have, so there is some irony that the Neil Young song on the mix comes from the disc I have probably listened to the least.

Though not this specific recording, Bach’s ‘Art of the Fugue’ is, personally, a very significant work of art for me. My first memory of a piece of classical music really demanding my attention was in high school band. We played a transcription of the ‘little’ fugue in g minor, and I was amazed at how the counterpoint (though I didn’t know that’s what it was yet). I became fixated on the piece, and on the idea of fugue in general. The next day at work, I bought the first two things I found with the word ‘fugue’ in the title (Beethoven’s ‘Grosse Fuge’ and the Julliard String Quartet recording of ‘Art of the Fugue’). Though my appreciation of Beethoven’s great fugue is just about higher then anything else ever written now, at the time I thought it was a dissonant piece of crap that seemed completely non-sensical to me. Perhaps this made the opening of the ‘Art of the Fugue’ that much more special though. The opening D minor arpeggio was so refreshing, and the intricacy of the writing drew me in immediately. This was also the week I discovered Dover scores, and ‘Art of the Fugue’ was the first one I bought. And so I began my love affair with fugues and counterpoint that continues still to this day. I still get lost in them, and love how a person can focus their attention on a single part, as well as the whole. I love how we can aurally zoom in on a part of the piece, and back out again and hear the same thing in different contexts. And most of all, I love how it is music that still makes my brain tingle after knowing it for the better part of two decades.

Day 138. Elvis Costello.

Monday, August 16th, 2010

My friend Sean posted some Elvis Costello YouTube links earlier today, and we had a quick chat about the radness that is Elvis Costello. I had already ripped four early career Rhino re-issues so I went ahead and grabbed the rest of what I have on disc for tonight. Though the early stuff is still, I think, his best work, I really appreciate pretty much everything he’s done. ‘The Juliet Letters’ has some really beautiful moments in it, the Burt Bacharch disc is fun and I think ‘When I Was Cruel’ has a great feel to it. And while it is pretty much all written well and performed well, sometimes the production seems to get in the way… it’s just too clean.

But his singing has improved greatly. While there are moments in ‘My Aim Is True’ and ‘This Year’s Model’ that have a young punky feel, by the mid-90s Elvis’s voice really matured. As he started to sing with string quartets, Tony Bennet, and started to date then marry Diana Krall, he has been around more and more musicians with broader influences and training. In many of my music theory classes, I have told my students that one of the best things they can do for their musicianship is play in a garage band. Then play in a dance band, a jazz band, as many styles as they can with as many different ways of learning music as possible. In some ways, I think this is what Elvis Costello has done. His career has spanned over thirty years (and you should ask yourself, how many late 70s punks are still doing great creative work). While I don’t listen to everything he does with the frequency that I do those first four albums, there is little that he has done that I think is done poorly. In fact, there is little that he has done that I think is just good. I’d take thirty years of his good any day.

Day 137. Pink Martini, Xenakis, Lee Morgan and Mozart.

Saturday, August 14th, 2010

Grabbed the first Pink Martini album tonight (after I noticed my friend Leah listening to the later albums on the server the other night, and she really should hear the first one which is amazing) as well as the stereo release of Xenakis’ ‘La Legende d’Eer’, some Lee Morgan and Barenboim’s complete Mozart concert recordings. I doubt I’ll get through all of them tonight, but it sure is nice getting back to ripping discs rather then transferring gigabytes of MP3s.

Pink Martini has done a few good albums over the past decade or so, and I imagine they would be great to see live. What I would REALLY hope to do is see them perform in a dance hall… but they usually seem to play in symphony halls instead to audiences sitting in seats. This arrangement may work just fine for some of their most recent music, but one of the aspects I loved about the first record is how much it was ballroom music. It is also the only album the group did with Pepe Raphael as one of the vocalists, and I would say that his latin tenor is missed (his ‘solo’ album is OK as well, but his singing on this first Pink Martini record is so strong that the solo album sounds weak in comparison).

Sprinkled in with a few originals on the disc is an amazing version of ‘Que Sera Sera’, probably the second best version of this song I’ve ever heard (after the one that Sly and the Family Stone did of ‘Fresh’), a song (‘La Soledad’) written by Pepe that uses Chopin underneath the orchestra textures and a great re-working of Ravel’s ‘Bolero’. The last of these, I just saw on Wikipedia, has been removed from more recent releases of the disc. This is truly a shame, so if you go on a search for it make sure you look for it used and with ‘Bolero’ intact.

While I think the dance floor is where one should listen to Pink Martini, a large concert hall is the place to hear Xenakis’s ‘La Legende d’Eer’. I think this piece is one of THE masterpieces of late 20th century music, and probably my favorite piece by Xenakis. It may even be my favorite piece of electronic music. If you haven’t heard it though, you should know that it is not a piece that is necessarily enjoyed. It is a brilliant work of art, but it is hard to get through. I have played it for my computer music classes every year that I have taught the course, and a couple of years ago I programmed it on a DXARTS concert. We were able to get the original tracks (after WAY to much work – the first version we got from the publisher had all the tracks in reverse with lots of distortion and digital noise, the second try was better, but there were still problems with the transfer that I had to clean up). I created a spatialized version of the piece based on the original speaker set-up, and the result was amazing. The original performance featured lasers and timed lights as well (for which there is some photographic documentation), but just hearing the piece in Meany Hall in surround gave the work even more depth. The stereo recording of this piece that exist are well done though. If you ever see a performance advertised, I highly recommend you go hear it. But be prepared… this is music that was written by a man that saw some of the horrors that mankind is able to produce. Great art should move and physiologically alter you. There are parts of this piece that are terrifying, parts that wear you down physically, and by the end you are exhausted, while at the same time energized and shaking by the adrenaline that your body has produced over the 45 minutes of the piece.

Day 134… 135… 136 … (or Day 133 continued)

Thursday, August 12th, 2010

After about four days of work, I have finally finished transferring all the music that is on my main computer and NOT represented on disc over to the server. It was a huge task… almost four thousand items, thirteen and a half days worth of music that is represented by only 35 GB of data. Since these are mostly MP3s (even though they are high quality MP3s), it is amazing how little space these tracks take up compared to the lossless files. However, I still think the decision to rip the CDs as lossless was the right way to go (as the project so far is getting close to 400 GB with only about 1/3 of the CDs ripped).

The biggest annoyance (and it really is a silly one) is that I had let this much material accumulate without properly getting it organized properly. When I’m ripping a few CDs in a night, it takes maybe an hour and I am able to organize things as they are ripped. But over the past few days I think I had close to 400 albums to organize, and it really became quite tedious. I would say ‘this won’t happen again’, but I’m going to wait a few months to really see if that is the case.

Looking forward to getting back to actual discs tomorrow…

Day 133. Tons ‘o Stuff…

Sunday, August 8th, 2010

Tonight I am taking a break from CD ripping. Instead, I am preparing to do something that I haven’t done in a couple of years now… wipe out the iTunes library on my main computer.

I used to wipe the library out every six months or so. It was a way to keep new music coming on and rotating off anything that I had gotten a little stuck on. But this slowed down a couple years ago when I joined eMusic. Before eMusic, everything on my computer was represented with an actual physical disc in my house. I never got into the torrent / file sharing thing, so I was never in a situation where there were gigabytes of music on my computer that I didn’t actually have. So a couple times a year, I would just erase everything and have a good time going through the CD shelf and finding music I hadn’t heard for some time. But with months and months of purchases on the computer that I hadn’t burned to disc, a simple ‘select-all – delete’ wasn’t really possible. So I have spent a good chunk of time tonight going through my main computer’s iTunes library, and copying files over to DAC. 10 gigs down, about another 30 to go.

One thing I noticed quite quickly while doing this is how much classical I have purchased over the past two years. Especially early music from the ars nova and renaissance. Luckily eMusic sells pretty high quality VBR mp3s, but as I look at what I have been purchasing, I really wish they had a lossless option. At the same time, this is also music that has been very difficult to find otherwise. Even online, getting outside the late baroque / classical / romantic repertoire is tricky to find. Especially at a reasonable price. I think it is great that Harmonia Mundi and a number of other specialty labels have found their way to online distribution. My guess is the amount of physical inventory that they press now is starting to dwindle, but hopefully they find life in what is looking like this next arena of distribution.

The other category that is well represented is folk and blues. So lots of Peter, Paul and Mary tonight, some Richie Havens and some discs from Aarhoolie are finding there way onto the server finally.

The biggest downside is categorizing. This is a massive amount of music that I am suddenly throwing on in one night. It really locks the computer down during the initial import (on the one hand), then afterwards I have to go through and trick iTunes into putting this music into the right place on the server. I discovered that using the ‘Album Artist’ field in the tracks info boxes, that this will control what folder something shows up in. Since Subsonic sorts according to directories, this has been my main way of organizing things (while also making sensible playlists within iTunes for home streaming). The way tracks are labelled is not standardized at all, especially with classical music. Sometimes the composers name won’t appear anywhere relevant. If I had my way, I would ask the organizing powers that be to give me the job of controlling ‘cddb’, correcting the decades worth of poor organization and wrong information. If someone knows how this job can be given to me, please drop me a line.

Day 132. U2, Pink Floyd, Arvo Pärt and The Ventures.

Saturday, August 7th, 2010

Finished up a few Dylan discs this week, and ripped some discs here and there as the week went on. Tonight was the first night in a week though that I made a more focussed effort in ripping discs though. Celia picked out ‘Meddle’ by Pink Floyd as well as compilations by U2 and The Ventures, and I also grabbed a stack of Arvo Pärt.

Like a lot of people my age that grew up or went to college in the Bay Area or Sacramento, Laser Floyd is probably a shared experience. Though complete playings of ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ was a popular playlist at these shows I preferred starting that disc up while watching ‘Wizard of Oz’. The Laser Floyd I saw was more of a career overview that jumped from ‘Meddle’ to ‘The Wall’ back to a track for ‘Dark Side’. I’m not sure if this was a good experience or a bad one (not being into hallucinogens)… but I don’t like that every time I hear a Pink Floyd song I think about laying on my back in Morrison Planetarium watching lasers draw patterns on a ceiling. I don’t think I ever ‘got’ the rock laser show. The only laser / rock show experience I ever was amazed by was the great use of lasers one time at a The Might Be Giants show, and I think seeing something done in a live performance was more impressive to me then something put together to a CD being played loudly.

The Pärt discs were mostly choral works tonight, including ‘Miserere’. I bought this disc one day when Tamiko was out of town. When she is gone, I have a hard time falling asleep, and thought some nice calm Arvo Pärt would be good going to sleep music. Wow, was I wrong.

The first part of the piece is stunning. Organ, voices and a very pointillistic and bell-like texture. Started off pretty good. Then the full force of the choir and ensemble blasted force in a rather violent fashion. At the moment, it scared the crap out of me and I think it took me an extra hour to get to sleep. In hindsight, it is one of the most well prepared moments in his music. Not only had the texture of the piece set me up to be blown away by this moment, but the cliches of his own style had. There is quite a bit I liked about Pärt before this, but after this moment I had a much higher respect for his work. I listened to it again the next day and while I was expecting it, I still appreciated how well this piece is written.