The Chris Thile Show!

A mandolin. Thile's, actually.

For my post this week, I'm doing something a little different. Tomorrow, I'm going to a concert by Chris Thile, a mandolin virtuoso (meaning he's very, very good player) and one of my favorite performers. As an assignment for one of my classes, I made a basic pathfinder or guide about Chris Thile and the concert, which you can find here. I hope you enjoy it.

A personal note: you'll notice Thile is quite accomplished for someone so young (he's 32); he's actually only four days older than I. I guess I've got a lot of catching up to do!

Vocab: mandolin, virtuoso

Birdsong and the Musician Wren

What are birds? We just don't know.

Birds of a feather sing together

Some of you may know that I like birding. Since I also like music, it may come as no surprise that birdsong is particularly fascinating to me. I'm not the only one; birdsong has intrigued and stimulated people throughout history. For example, in the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale "The Nightingale", a nightingale's song brings the Chinese imperial court to tears and later distracts Death, saving the life of the emperor.

Probably the best-known composer to use birdsong in music was French composer Oliver Messiaen. He wrote many pieces based entirely on birdsong. While I'm not a big fan of these pieces (to be overly simplistic, to me, they don't have direction or progression), I think it shows the fascination some musicians can have with natural sounds, especially something as ordered as birdsong.

While I'm not as knowledgeable as Messiaen about birdsong (and European birds are just different, anyway), I can tell a few birds just from hearing their song. One of my favorite common birds is the chickadee, which has several different interesting songs in its repertoire.

And your bird can sing

Yesterday, the blog The Presurfer featured a bird called the Musician Wren. Here's what it posted about the wren (http://presurfer.blogspot.com/2013/10/musician-wren.html):

The Musician Wren is a species of wren named for its elaborate song. It is native to the Amazon Rainforest in South America, and west and southwestwards into the Amazonian Andes. In Portuguese it is known as Uirapuru. Especially in Brazil, the Musician Wren is the subject of several legends and fables, most relating to its loud and beautiful song. One of these tells that when it starts singing all other birds stop their song to hear it.*

Here's an audio example of the bird's song, which has a very clear tone, with a picture of it:

But how does it work?

What's interesting to me about the Musician Wren's song is that it's beautiful without fitting into our normal common practice tonality, the system that Western culture has used for music for the past  three centuries. Yet, the music fits together as a whole because it is broken into phrases with a hierarchy, meaning some phrases feel more conclusive than others. There are really only three phrases in the example, which I will call (in the order we hear them): B, A, and B'. All three start with a similar melody, but the B phrase sounds like  a consequence phrase, or most conclusive, mostly because of the descending octave at the end. The A phrase, on the other hand, doesn't sound as final, perhaps because it ends on something close to a second-inversion triad. These two phrases alone would be enough for a complete song, but the wren also produces a variation on the B phrase (B'), which starts like the B phrase, but just kind of stops. These three phrases are different enough and mixed around enough (and their melodies complex enough, with unexpected jumps and clips), that I can listen to them for a while and not get bored. But they are similar enough to make this birdsong sound connected.

Now, do I hear these phrases in a hierarchy because of my musical training, or because nature's music really works that way? I think that's very debatable.

What do you think of the Musician Wren's song? Do you have any favorite birdsongs?

Vocab: common practice tonality, phrase, antecedent phrase, consequence phrase, second-inversion triad

* I think this blurb was summarized from another, lower-quality YouTube video of the Musician Wren, which you can find here.

I don't know how music works

What's with this guy, anyway?

A few weeks ago, I performed as a singer in four performances Beethoven's 9th Symphony. It's a long work, and the choir doesn't come in until close to the end, so I had a lot of time to sit and think about what was going on in the music. And with Beethoven, there's always a lot going on. As any regular readers of this blog know, I like taking music apart and analyzing it to see how it works. At the end of the four performances, what I decided was this:

I don't know how music works.

I know what pitches the open strings of a violin sound, how many times a second a string vibrates to sound an 'A' in Europe or the U.S., how to spot a second theme in the first movement of a classical sonata or symphony, how to lift my soft palate so that my vowels sound better, and how to sing beautifully in German.

But I don't know how this music made Beethoven, a middle-class German who lived centuries ago, a hero and household name for all the generations since.

I know how to analyze or write a four-part fugue, how to orchestrate, transpose, and balance a woodwind section, how to finger an Ab on a trumpet and what the same note would sound like if played on a bassoon. I know how to take apart a clarinet, how a baritone sax is different than a soprano sax is different than a bass clarinet. I know the German name for viola, how to dance an Irish jig, and the difference between a bulgar and a freilach. I know how to dampen an Javanese reyong, how to chant kechak, and how to count gong cycles.

But I don't know what about the music of 9th symphony made it a symbol of New Years in Japan or the reunification of Germany in 1990.

I know how to conduct music in 11/8, how to recognize a blues progression and improvise a solo over it, how to correctly voice and resolve a Neapolitan chord, how low a bass can usually sing and what happens to their tone above an 'A'.

But I don't know what about Beethoven's 9th (or any other piece of music) would make someone dedicate their whole lives (with minimal financial award) to studying a composer who died years ago. I don't know why some people decide to spend thousands of dollars on a music education with little hope of financial reward. I don't know why a few people spend millions of dollars to shore up the failing finances of symphony orchestras all over the world because those musicians hardly make enough money to buy their instruments.

Assumptions

When you get down to it, this symphonic performance is just a bunch of people waving their arms and moving their fingers and blowing, or shouting in a very specialized way, and vibrating strings and membranes and columns of air. And it's not just classical art music—all music is just vibrating air molecules that we pick up with some very small bones in our ear and transfer into electrochemical pulses in our brains. It's not like art or literature, where pictures or words can represent tangible things in our lives and relationships (and by the way, many critics think that the words to "Ode to Joy" by themselves are pretty much drivel). How can a vibration be a symbol for joy or anger or pain or group belonging?

So how does it help me to know what I don't know? It's important because we need to know what we are assuming before we can move on. Take science—it starts with assumptions, or postulates. For instance, in Euclidian geometry we have to assume that there's such a thing as two parallel lines that never meet. But we can't really prove that, and in fact on the Earth, which is not flat, Euclidian geometry doesn't really work on a large scale, just as Newtonian physics doesn't work in large-scale space.

In music's case, we take as a postulate the transformative power of music. This assumption helps us move on to make some conclusions that in practice seem to work out. But I think we should never forget that it's an assumption. We don't know how or why music is or can become such a big deal, such an important factor for change in the world. And our lack of answers is one of the things that makes music so intriguing.

Vocab: theme, sonata, symphony, soft palate, fugue, blues progression, transposition, gong cycles

Concert Review: Ani DiFranco, Queen of the Varied Vamp

Last week, I attended a live concert by the amazingly prolific artist and businessperson Ani DiFranco. Here's what I thought.

The opener: Pearl and the Beard—missing a mustache?

The opening band for Ani was Pearl and the Beard, an indie trio from New York City. I applaud their inventive song, their powerful unaccompanied voices, and their courage at creating unique instrumentation, but that choice of instruments (percussion, cello, and guitar) put most of their sound in the low-middle register. The cello and guitar players seemed to be having a fight as to who was supposed to play the bass and the harmonic accompaniment. I think the band would benefit from some more melodic instrumental thinking, either using the instruments they have differently, or bringing in something like a lead guitar (ukulele? mandolin? accordion? zither?). This would fill out the treble range and allow for hooks, or catchy melodic snippets that get and keep people's attention. Also, it was often difficult to understand their lyrics, often a problem for those not already familiar with a band's music (though it shouldn't be, in my opinion).

Guitars, words, and vamps

As for Ani, I was very impressed by her guitar skills. The range, volume, and variation of her guitar playing is breathtaking. Nobody really plays guitar like her. Though considering how much tension her playing style takes, I'm not surprised she's had to take career breaks for tendonitis. It's also impressive that she needs a new guitar after each song (we counted six or seven guitars that she rotated through). Despite her abilities, I was happy that she brought along a drummer and bassist  for this tour, because for me, even great guitar playing gets old after not too long.

Unlike Pearl and the Beard, Ani really does a great job communicating her words to her audience. I think besides good diction, she does a good job of composing music that highlights the meaning and sound of her lyrics. Most her songs come from a first person perspective. While I think in some ways that makes her songs more powerful, I think it's curious that she has a hard time writing songs about other characters.

As for the music, Ani's songs almost always follow a similar construction blueprint. She builds her songs over guitar vamps, or repeated patterns of a measure or two. How does she keep her songs interesting, despite this constant repetition? While, first of all, the vamps are usually quite complicated. Second, she's skilled at varying them, trimming them down or making them more complex as the song progresses. Sometimes she just stops playing for a few beats, especially if she wants to emphasize her lyrics. And speaking of her words, she has learned how to sing over, around, and through the vamps. Her words often carry their own interesting rhythms. The chorus melody will also be different, even if they are placed over the same vamp. And occasionally, she does throw in a few contrasting chords.

Stop being happy and play your angry stuff!

Though Ani was touring to promote her new album, it was obvious (even to herself, from comments she made) that the audience really was there to hear her classic music, not the new stuff. I could feel the excitement build in the hall the few times she gave in to audience requests to play an older song.*

What makes her old songs most exciting to audiences? I've got a few guesses. First, her emotions aren't as strong as they used to be and that plays out in the music. Second, many of her new songs don't really have a lyrical direction or an arc; they are more just a platform to broadcast her random thoughts. Third, her newer songs are missing choruses or anthems, fun and memorable phrases the audiences can grab on to and take the song upon themselves. Perhaps if she took on other people's stories instead of her own (especially with her cooler emotions), she might find a greater fountain of inspiration.

All in all, it was an enjoyable concert. There's a reason she has so many loyal fans. Oh, and (spoiler alert!) a great kazoo solo from her drummer.

What do you think about Ani? Do you like her new stuff better than her old stuff?

Vocab: hook, lyrics, vamp, instrumentation, harmonic, measure

*I witnessed the same thing a few years ago at a They Might Be Giants concert. It's apparently hard to keep coming out with more creative stuff after a long career. But it's a critic's job to complain about that, right?

Sting, The Last Ship: an album, or a musical?

Sting, a working man again. See the album on Amazon.

It's here! Sting's first album of all-new material in 10 years! But wait…it's a celtic-folk musical?

Ever since the difficult, but eventually rewarding Sacred Love (2003), the last all-original studio album Sting produced, in which he tried (and failed) to produce more radio hits, Sting hasn't seemed interested in hits. Instead, he's tackled whatever his musical whimsy has caught: lute songs from 400 years ago, re-imagining his own works with symphonic accompaniment (to help financially failing orchestras?), and "Winter" songs (not Christmas, mind-you; or only Christmas, anyway). In the booklet to The Last Ship, Sting himself characterized these intervening 10 years as a "fallow" period, meaning he agrees he's let his creative powers rest, but only in order make the next harvest that much sweeter.

But those of you expecting a harvest akin to the Sting of the 80s or 90s might be disappointed. Sting, not to be predictable, has planted a new crop, and the corn is as high as an elephant's eye, so to speak. That's right, The Last Ship is basically a pre-release cast recording with a cast of mostly one.

But don't let the singular album cover and vocal credits fool you. The Last Ship is more collaborative than other Sting albums, though the musicians are always working for Sting. At the back of the album, there is a note that reads: "All songs written by Sting…except those noted below," followed by a full page of exceptions. If you examine those exceptions closely, it turns out that 5 out of 12 tracks (10 out of 20 in the premium version) are coauthored by at least Sting's producer, Rob Mathes, and some of these credit as many as 7 people total. Not that I think this collaboration is bad; large projects like musicals take more than just one creative mind, and actually, I think some of the more interesting tracks are not written solely by Sting.

Words, words, words...

What does the musical theater focus mean for the content of the album? Well, it mostly means that these songs are not very meaningful by themselves. We don't really grasp the whole story from the selections we're given in The Last Ship. The focus also means that the songs are more character- and exposition-driven than in a normal rock album. Character-driven songs are not unusual for Sting, who is used to writing about fictional people, but rock albums usually don't focus on exposition.

What kind of people is Sting writing about for The Last Ship? He's astutely writing what he knows, drawing from his experience growing up in Wallsend in northern England in the shadow of a shipyard. He's also throwing in a little of his proletariat championing from "We Work the Black Seam" from Dream of the Blue Turtles (1985). Sting is revisiting themes and images from his earlier work, like the island of souls and the soul cages from The Soul Cages (1991). I wouldn't be surprised if the songs "The Soul Cages" or "Island of Souls" were included in the full musical (though, I have a feeling that The Last Ship turns out to me more hopeful that The Soul Cages).

Even for a Sting album or a musical, though, The Last Ship is very wordy. Sacred Love was notoriously wordy, and many songs and verses were cut from the final product. The Last Ship seems the next step in that progression, as verses pile on top of other verses. I suspect, too, that the album's collaboration was more musical than textural—I think most if not all of the words are Sting's. In some ways, though, he's more direct about his song's subjects than he has been in the past, as in his title "I Love Her But She Loves Somebody Else" (which could be the title of 25% of Sting's songs), but he takes a boatload of words to say it. There's still plenty of Sting's trademark literary references—biblical, mythological, and other.

Let me sing you a new ballad of times past

So how does the focus on telling a theatrical story affect the music? Well, Sting lets it influence the music a fair amount. There's some smattering of Celtic dance throughout (I suspect some of the musical collaboration in these). Sting also decides to follow English folk music models to fit in with the working class setting. There's several long ballads, an old folk musical form with many verses that instead of a chorus, usually has some key phrase in each verse. Sting also employs some musical theater standby forms like AABA. These two forms serve to pack a lot of words with only minimal repetition, as he seems to want to do here. Sting and Mathes manage to make the ballads the most compelling songs by varying the verses's melodies, making the songs build gradually, and telling a great story.

But there are some musical aspects in The Last Ship that are un-Sting-like. The range of Sting's voice is not large, and we hear little of his trademark high voice. Sting seems less interested in experimenting with form and meter. Also, there's no radio hits here, no break-away single, which is surprising because that's usually an asset in a musical.

"What Have We Got?"

Still, there's a lot of emotion and thought and stories. There may not be a radio hit, but the title track "The Last Ship" could be show-stopper. And I'm a sucker for Northumbrian pipes and the Celtic-style fiddles. Sting + Celtic = perfection? Maybe not, but I'll take it.

And once again, Sting is going someplace completely new. He can do lute songs from the 1600s, and he can do musicals, too. Not just a review-style rock musical made up of unconnected songs from the same artist, or a musical based off a movie or a comic book, but a brand-new, original musical. Who does that, anymore? The Last Ship might end up similar to Kinky Boots: a rock musician writing music about working class people trying to get out of a ditch. I guess it might be meant to get Sting's career out of ditch, too, if I thought he cared about his career. Mostly, I think he just wants to tell a good story and help change some lives.
 
From The Last Ship, "we've got nowt else." But I'm okay with that.

What do you think about the album? And what genre do we file it under? Any ideas?

Vocab: ballad, AABA