Nick Cave Answers the Hotly Debated Question: Will Artificial Intelligence Ever Be Able to Write a Great Song?

in Music, Technology | January 28th, 2019

Pho­to by Bled­dyn Butch­er via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Spike Jonze’s AI love sto­ry Her offered a sort of an answer to one of the crit­i­cal ques­tions posed about Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: Can machines feel love? Maybe, and maybe deeply, in a cer­tain sense, but maybe not for just one per­son and not for very long before they take off to explore lim­it­less oth­ers, which makes them sound like very seduc­tive but also very shal­low lovers.

Maybe it helps to keep that metaphor in mind when we read Nick Cave’s answer to a ques­tion a Sloven­ian fan posed in the Birth­day Party/Bad Seeds/Grinderman singer’s bru­tal­ly ten­der newslet­ter, The Red Right Hand. “Do you think,” asks Peter from Ljubl­jana, “AI will ever be able to write a good song?” Cave begins with a con­ces­sion: AI might “pro­duce a song that makes us feel,” and maybe “more intense­ly than any human song­writer could do.”

And yet, after list­ing a num­ber of human exam­ples, from Nir­vana to Prince to Iggy Pop to Nina Simone, Cave describes what makes their abil­i­ties alien to a machine mind:

We go to songs to make us feel some­thing – hap­py, sad, sexy, home­sick, excit­ed or what­ev­er – but this is not all a song does. What a great song makes us feel is a sense of awe. There is a rea­son for this. A sense of awe is almost exclu­sive­ly pred­i­cat­ed on our lim­i­ta­tions as human beings. It is entire­ly to do with our audac­i­ty as humans to reach beyond our poten­tial.

AI can­not die, at least in the sense we under­stand it. Nor is it con­strained by painful phys­i­cal lim­i­ta­tions, nor privy to fleet­ing phys­i­cal plea­sures. “Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence, for all its unlim­it­ed poten­tial, sim­ply doesn’t have this capac­i­ty. How could it? And this is the essence of tran­scen­dence.” The holy or har­row­ing knowl­edge of fini­tude and fragili­ty, love and death and grief.

Anoth­er way to state the case comes from the most mov­ing of Cave’s fan let­ter answers, in which he con­soles a bereaved fan in Ver­mont with a descrip­tion of his own grief over the death of his son.

Maybe AI could write the sen­tence, “dread grief trails bright phan­toms in its wake.” But it could not write it from the heart of a bereaved par­ent who learns that “grief and love are for­ev­er inter­twined,” or from a place where super­nat­ur­al beliefs may be untrue yet still have super­nat­ur­al pow­er. Cave’s descrip­tion of his grief is also a descrip­tion of tran­scen­dence, of going beyond what is pos­si­ble to find what is time­less.

Like ideas, these spir­its speak of pos­si­bil­i­ty. Fol­low your ideas, because on the oth­er side of the idea is change and growth and redemp­tion. Cre­ate your spir­its. Call to them. Will them alive. Speak to them. It is their impos­si­ble and ghost­ly hands that draw us back to the world from which we were jet­ti­soned; bet­ter now and unimag­in­ably changed.

In answer to Peter’s ques­tion, he con­cludes with the poet­ic author­i­ty of a writer of great songs: “AI would have the capac­i­ty to write a good song, but not a great one. It lacks the nerve.”

Read Nick Cave’s full response here. And while there, sign up for his free newslet­ter.

via Austin Kleon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Nick Cave’s Lec­ture on the Art of Writ­ing Sub­lime Love Songs (1999)

Ani­mat­ed Sto­ries Writ­ten by Tom Waits, Nick Cave & Oth­er Artists, Read by Dan­ny Devi­to, Zach Gal­i­fi­anakis & More

Nick Cave Nar­rates an Ani­mat­ed Film about the Cat Piano, the Twist­ed 18th Cen­tu­ry Musi­cal Instru­ment Designed to Treat Men­tal Ill­ness

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Scenes from Bohemian Rhapsody Compared to Real Life: A 21-Minute Compilation

in Film, Music | January 28th, 2019

Bohemi­an Rhap­sody, the 2018 bio pic about the British rock band Queen, had its fair share of fac­tu­al inaccuracies–all well doc­u­ment­ed by sites like The Wrap and Screen­Crush. But, here and there, the film paid atten­tion to detail. Wit­ness the scenes from Live Aid, and com­pare them to actu­al footage from 1985. Or sim­ply start at the 9:20 mark of the lengthy com­pi­la­tion above, which duti­ful­ly jux­ta­pos­es scenes from the film with the real life events…

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Queen’s Stun­ning Live Aid Per­for­mance: 20 Min­utes Guar­an­teed to Give You Goose Bumps (July 15, 1985)

Lis­ten to Fred­die Mer­cury and David Bowie on the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track for the Queen Hit ‘Under Pres­sure,’ 1981

Sci­en­tif­ic Study Reveals What Made Fred­die Mercury’s Voice One of a Kind; Hear It in All of Its A Cap­pel­la Splen­dor

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How Michel Legrand (RIP) Gave the French New Wave a Sound: Revisit the Influential Music He Composed for Jean-Luc Godard & Jacques Demy’s Films

in Film, Music | January 28th, 2019

When he died this past week­end, the pro­lif­ic com­pos­er Michel Legrand left behind a large and var­ied body of work, one that won him not just five Gram­my awards but, for the films he scored, three Oscars as well. Though he com­posed the music for more than 200 films and tele­vi­sion shows, many cinephiles will remem­ber him — and gen­er­a­tions of cinephiles to come will know him — as the man who gave the French New Wave a sound. Hav­ing appeared on cam­era as a pianist in Agnès Var­da’s Cleo from 5 to 7 in 1961, he went on to score The Umbrel­las of Cher­bourg, the beloved 1964 musi­cal (and a musi­cal with­out any dia­logue spo­ken at all, only sung) direct­ed by Var­da’s hus­band Jacques Demy.

Legrand also com­posed the music for Demy’s next film, the also-musi­cal The Young Girls of Rochefort, in 1967. That same decade, with­out a doubt the head­i­est for La Nou­velle Vague, he worked with no less a cin­e­mat­ic rule-break­er than Jean-Luc Godard on 1962’s Vivre sa vie and 1964’s Bande à part (also known as Band of Out­siders).

“I can’t help won­der­ing whether, since the music is dubbed in, so are the claps, foot-stamps, and fin­ger-snaps,” writes New York­er film crit­ic and Godard schol­ar Richard Brody of the well-known dance scene in the lat­ter, “or whether, for the take used in the film, there was no music play­ing at all, and the trio” — none of them trained dancers — “did their dance to the time of music play­ing in their minds.”

Brody names as “the great­est flour­ish in the sequence” the moment when “the music cuts out, and Godard speaks, in voice-over: ‘Now it’s time to open a sec­ond paren­the­sis, and to describe the emo­tions of the char­ac­ters.’ ” The way the direc­tor’s words inter­rupt the motion of the visu­als, and of Legrand’s score, “dis­tin­guish­es the scene from so many scenes in so many films where so many film­mak­ers are so con­cerned with bring­ing out their char­ac­ters’ emo­tions sole­ly by means of action,” the rea­son for the dull fact that “many movies — and many wrong­ly hailed — give a sense of being con­struct­ed as illus­tra­tions of script ele­ments, the con­nec­tions of dots plant­ed in just the right place to yield a par­tic­u­lar por­trait.”

Legrand did, of course, com­pose for a few such less artis­ti­cal­ly adven­tur­ous films as well, but that just goes to show how wide a vari­ety of cin­e­mat­ic visions his musi­cal aes­thet­ic could accom­mo­date. He scored such mem­o­rable and even influ­en­tial pic­tures as the orig­i­nal The Thomas Crown Affair and Sum­mer of ’42, as well as Orson Welles’ decades-await­ed The Oth­er Side of the Wind, which came out just last year as what Brody calls a “belat­ed mas­ter­piece” and “one of the great last dra­mat­ic fea­tures by any direc­tor.” Legrand’s music could fair­ly be called roman­tic, even sen­ti­men­tal, but like few oth­er com­posers work­ing today, he knew exact­ly what it took — and exact­ly whom to work with — to keep those qual­i­ties from turn­ing sac­cha­rine or banal.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Jean-Luc Godard Lib­er­at­ed Cin­e­ma: A Video Essay on How the Great­est Rule-Break­er in Film Made His Name

An Intro­duc­tion to Jean-Luc Godard’s Inno­v­a­tive Film­mak­ing Through Five Video Essays

How the French New Wave Changed Cin­e­ma: A Video Intro­duc­tion to the Films of Godard, Truf­faut & Their Fel­low Rule-Break­ers

Jacques Demy’s Lyri­cal Mas­ter­piece, The Umbrel­las of Cher­bourg

Watch the New Trail­er for Orson Welles’ Lost Film, The Oth­er Side of the Wind: A Glimpse of Footage from the Final­ly Com­plet­ed Film

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Hear Neil Gaiman Read a Beautiful, Profound Poem by Ursula K. Le Guin to His Cousin on Her 100th Birthday

in Life, Literature, Poetry | January 28th, 2019

It’s quite pro­found, isn’t it? — Helen Fagin, aged 100

Every time I open my lap­top to dis­cov­er a friend post­ing a vin­tage pho­to of their par­ent as a beam­ing bride or saucy sailor boy in lush black and white or gold-tinged Kodachrome, I know the deal.

Anoth­er elder has left the build­ing.

With luck, I’ll have at least two or three decades before my kids start sniff­ing around in my shoe box­es of old snap­shots.

In the mean­time, I’ll won­der how much of the emo­tion that’s packed into those memo­r­i­al post­ings gets expressed to the sub­ject in the days lead­ing up to their final exit.

Seems like most of us pussy­foot around the obvi­ous until it’s too late.

There are, of course, med­ical sit­u­a­tions that force us to acknowl­edge in a loved one’s pres­ence the abyss in their imme­di­ate future, but oth­er­wise, West­ern tra­di­tion has posi­tioned us to shy away from those sorts of dis­cus­sions.

Per­haps our loved ones pre­fer it that way.

Per­haps we do too.

It’s clear that author Neil Gaiman enjoys a spe­cial rela­tion­ship with his 100-year-old cousin, Helen Fagin, a Holo­caust sur­vivor and pro­fes­sor of lit­er­a­ture.

He has shared mem­o­ries of her with those attend­ing his pub­lic appear­ances and in hon­or of World Refugee Day.

His wife, musi­cian Aman­da Palmer, includ­ed a verse about Helen’s 98th birth­day in her song “A Mother’s Con­fes­sion,” below, flesh­ing out the lyrics with foot­notes on her blog.

In cel­e­bra­tion of Helen’s cen­te­nary, Palmer asked Brain Picking’s Maria Popo­va to rec­om­mend a poem that Gaiman could read aloud dur­ing anoth­er in-per­son birth­day vis­it.

Popo­va set­tled on “How It Seems To Me,” a late-in-life poem by sci­ence fic­tion writer Ursu­la K. Le Guin, a close friend of Gaiman’s who died in Jan­u­ary of 2018, 12 years shy of her own cen­te­nary:

HOW IT SEEMS TO ME

In the vast abyss before time, self

is not, and soul com­min­gles

with mist, and rock, and light. In time,

soul brings the misty self to be.

Then slow time hard­ens self to stone

while ever light­en­ing the soul,

till soul can loose its hold of self

and both are free and can return

to vast­ness and dis­solve in light,

the long light after time.

It’s a hell of a hun­dredth birth­day gift, though far from a one-size-fits all propo­si­tion.

Per­haps when you are a nona­ge­nar­i­an, you’d rather the young peo­ple err on the side of tra­di­tion with a com­fy new robe.

There are octo­ge­nar­i­an birth­day boys and girls who’d pick an African vio­let over the misty self, tricky to keep alive though they may be.

As filmed by Palmer, Helen seemed to receive the gift in the spir­it it was intend­ed. Life equipped her for it.

via Brain Pick­ings

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil Gaiman Presents “How Sto­ries Last,” an Insight­ful Lec­ture on How Sto­ries Change, Evolve & Endure Through the Cen­turies

18 Sto­ries & Nov­els by Neil Gaiman Online: Free Texts & Read­ings by Neil Him­self

Neil Gaiman Reads “The Man Who For­got Ray Brad­bury”

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  See her onstage in New York City in Feb­ru­ary as host of  The­ater of the Apes book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Watch Oscar-Nominated Documentary Universe, the Film that Inspired the Visual Effects of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 and Gave the HAL 9000 Computer Its Voice (1960)

in Film | January 25th, 2019

Before astro­nauts of the Apol­lo 8 mis­sion took the Earth­rise pho­to in Decem­ber 1968, the world had nev­er seen a clear col­or image of Earth from space. That is if we dis­count the stun­ning space pho­tog­ra­phy screened months ear­li­er to the tune of the “Blue Danube” in Stan­ley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. The film “used visu­al effects and imag­i­na­tion (both to a still-impres­sive degree),” as Col­in Mar­shall wrote here in a recent post, to make audi­ences believe that what they saw was indeed our blue mar­ble of a plan­et and oth­er col­or­ful points of inter­est in the solar system—on the way to a jour­ney into unchart­ed, psy­che­del­ic ter­ri­to­ry.

Eight years ear­li­er, film­mak­ers Roman Kroitor and Col­in Low used sim­i­lar tech­nol­o­gy, “real­is­tic ani­ma­tion,” writes the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da, that takes us “into the far regions of space, beyond the reach of the strongest tele­scope, past Moon, Sun, and Milky Way into galax­ies yet unfath­omed.”

Their short doc­u­men­tary, Uni­verse, may not be much remem­bered now—and may have been far out­shone by both real and com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed footage—but in 1961, it claimed a nom­i­na­tion at the 33rd Acad­e­my Awards for Best Doc­u­men­tary Short Sub­ject. “Upon its release in 1960,” notes Liam Lacey at The Globe and Mail, “the Nation­al Aero­nau­tics and Space Admin­is­tra­tion ordered 300 copies.”

Anoth­er of the film’s admir­ers also hap­pened to be Kubrick. Biog­ra­ph­er Vin­cent Lobrut­to describes the auteur’s first encounter with Uni­verse:

Kubrick watched the screen with rapt atten­tion while a panora­ma of the galax­ies swirled by, achiev­ing the stan­dard of dynam­ic vision­ary real­ism that he was look­ing for. These images were not flawed by the shod­dy mat­te work, obvi­ous ani­ma­tion and poor minia­tures typ­i­cal­ly found in sci­ence fic­tion films. Uni­verse proved that the cam­era could be a tele­scope to the heav­ens. As the cred­its rolled, Kubrick stud­ied the names of the magi­cians who cre­at­ed the images: Col­in Low, Sid­ney Gold­smith, and Wal­ly Gen­tle­man.

The film was in black and white, not the eye-pop­ping tech­ni­col­or of Kubrick’s mas­ter­piece, but he saw in it exact­ly what he would need when he began work on 2001. “After study­ing Uni­verse for much of 1964,” writes Kubrick schol­ar Michael Ben­son, “ear­ly in the new year Kubrick decid­ed to repli­cate the film’s tech­niques.” He tried to hire Low, who declined because of his work on “his own ambi­tious project: In the Labyrinth,” Lacey writes. He did suc­ceed in hir­ing Wal­ly Gen­tle­man, the spe­cial effects artist who brought Uni­verse’s wiz­ardry to Kubrick­’s film.

Kubrick also hired Uni­verse’s nar­ra­tor, Dou­glas Rain, the Cana­di­an actor who passed away this past Novem­ber but who will live on indef­i­nite­ly into the future as the chill­ing, affect­less voice of the HAL 9000 com­put­er, ances­tor of Siri, Alexa, and the many voic­es of GPS sys­tems every­where. Hear Rain’s cool, detached nar­ra­tion in Uni­verse, above, and see why this extra­or­di­nary film—with the Richard Strauss-like pound­ing tym­pa­ni of Eldon Rathburn’s score—would have inspired Kubrick to make what may rank as the most mes­mer­iz­ing­ly cin­e­mat­ic, dra­mat­i­cal­ly com­pelling, of sci­ence fic­tion space films to this day.

Uni­verse will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1966 Film Explores the Mak­ing of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (and Our High-Tech Future)

How Stan­ley Kubrick Made His Mas­ter­pieces: An Intro­duc­tion to His Obses­sive Approach to Film­mak­ing

Stan­ley Kubrick Explains the Mys­te­ri­ous End­ing of 2001: A Space Odyssey in a New­ly Unearthed Inter­view

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Why Should We Read Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451? A New TED-Ed Animation Explains

in Animation, Books | January 25th, 2019

Ray Brad­bury’s Fahren­heit 451 envi­sions a future where “fire­men” are sent out not to put out fires, but to burn up any books they find with flamethrow­ers. To stu­dents assigned to read the nov­el today, the idea of an Amer­i­ca that has out­lawed books entire­ly might seem like an intrigu­ing if far-fetched notion, per­haps more suit­ed to the real­i­ty of the 1950s than the real­i­ty of today. Even if we’ve nev­er read Fahren­heit 451, near­ly all of us know the basic out­line of its sto­ry by now, so why should we still read it? In less than five min­utes, the ani­mat­ed TED-Ed video above by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin-Madis­on’s Iseult Gille­spie offers an answer to that ques­tion.

“Fahren­heit 451 depicts a world gov­erned by sur­veil­lance, robot­ics, and vir­tu­al real­i­ty, a vision that proved remark­ably pre­scient, but also spoke to con­cerns of the time,” says Gille­spie. “The nov­el was pub­lished in 1953, at the height of the Cold War.  The era kin­dled wide­spread para­noia and fear through­out Brad­bury’s home coun­try of the Unit­ed States, ampli­fied by the sup­pres­sion of infor­ma­tion and bru­tal gov­ern­ment inves­ti­ga­tions. In par­tic­u­lar, this witch hunt men­tal­i­ty tar­get­ed artists and writ­ers who were sus­pect­ed of com­mu­nist sym­pa­thies. Brad­bury was alarmed at this cul­tur­al crack­down. He believed it set a dan­ger­ous prece­dent for fur­ther cen­sor­ship, and was remind­ed of the destruc­tion of the Library of Alexan­dria and the book-burn­ing of fas­cist regimes.”

These con­cerns, though rel­e­vant to the era in which Brad­bury wrote Fahren­heit 451, are essen­tial­ly time­less. As with all dystopi­an fic­tion, the nov­el “ampli­fies trou­bling fea­tures of the world around us and imag­ines the con­se­quences of tak­ing them to an extreme.” Some of the trou­bling fea­tures of the world 65 years ago have dimin­ished, but some have great­ly increased, and we would do well to bear in mind that in Fahren­heit 451 “it was the apa­thy of the mass­es that gave rise to the cur­rent regime. The gov­ern­ment mere­ly cap­i­tal­ized on short atten­tion spans and the appetite for mind­less enter­tain­ment, reduc­ing the cir­cu­la­tion of ideas to ash. As cul­ture dis­ap­pears, imag­i­na­tion and self-expres­sion fol­low.” Cul­ture may take many more forms now than it did in the 1950s, but with­out our con­stant vig­i­lance, all of them could still be extin­guished, just as eas­i­ly as paper goes up in flame.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ray Brad­bury Reveals the True Mean­ing of Fahren­heit 451: It’s Not About Cen­sor­ship, But Peo­ple “Being Turned Into Morons by TV”

Father Writes a Great Let­ter About Cen­sor­ship When Son Brings Home Per­mis­sion Slip to Read Ray Bradbury’s Cen­sored Book, Fahren­heit 451

An Asbestos-Bound, Fire­proof Edi­tion of Ray Bradbury’s Fahren­heit 451 (1953)

New Edi­tion of Ray Bradbury’s Fahren­heit 451 That’s Only Read­able When You Apply Heat to Its Pages: Pre-Order It Today

A Teas­er Trail­er for Fahren­heit 451: A New Film Adap­ta­tion of Ray Bradbury’s Ever-Rel­e­vant Nov­el

Hear Ray Bradbury’s Clas­sic Sci-Fi Sto­ry Fahren­heit 451 as a Radio Dra­ma

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Watch the Meditative Cinepoem “H20”: A Landmark Avant-Garde Art Film from 1929

in Environment, Film, Nature | January 25th, 2019

We all stand to ben­e­fit from a bit of hydrother­a­py, but in these hec­tic, try­ing times, it’s chal­leng­ing to find the time for a bath, let alone come up with the dough for a trop­i­cal vaca­tion or sooth­ing spa expe­ri­ence.

Giv­en the cir­cum­stances, the near­ly hun­dred-year-old exper­i­men­tal film above may be your best option.

In 1929, pho­togra­her and film­mak­er Ralph Stein­er turned his cam­era on a num­ber of watery subjects—hydrants, water­falls, streams, rain­drops dis­turb­ing placid pud­dled sur­faces.…

The result was H20, an 11-and-a-half minute cinepo­em, con­sid­ered by film his­to­ri­ans, The New York Times not­ed in Steiner’s obit, to be “the sec­ond Amer­i­can art film.”

(Have a look at James Sib­ley Wat­son and Melville Webber’s impres­sion­is­tic 1928 adap­ta­tion of Poe’s The Fall of the House of Ush­er if you’re curi­ous about the first.)

Pho­to­play mag­a­zine bestowed its first prize for ama­teur film­mak­ing upon H20, prais­ing Steiner’s pure abstract pat­terns and aston­ish­ing tem­po, and gush­ing that “the pic­ture is bound to attract wide atten­tion and a great deal of dis­cus­sion wher­ev­er it is shown.”

He revis­it­ed the sub­ject two years lat­er with Surf and Sea­weed, above, though his fas­ci­na­tion with move­ment was not lim­it­ed to the nat­ur­al world, as evi­denced by 1930’s Mechan­i­cal Prin­ci­ples.

The hub­bub may have died down a bit in the 90 years since H20’s release, though Steiner’s spir­it lives on in a num­ber of young exper­i­men­tal filmmakers—witness Nor­bert Shieh’s award-win­ning Wash­es, Dave Krunal’s Water­bomb, and Jaden Chen’s A Cup of Water, below.

H2O has been pre­served for pos­ter­i­ty by the Library of Con­gress’ Unit­ed States Nation­al Film Reg­istry. The orig­i­nal piano score in the ver­sion fea­tured on Open Cul­ture was com­posed by William Pear­son.

Down­load a free copy of H20 from the Inter­net archive for use in future try­ing times.

Stein­er’s films will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The First Avant Garde Ani­ma­tion: Watch Wal­ter Ruttmann’s Licht­spiel Opus 1 (1921)

Man Ray and the Ciné­ma Pur: Watch Four Ground­break­ing Sur­re­al­ist Films From the 1920s

The Hearts of Age: Orson Welles’ Sur­re­al­ist First Film (1934)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  See her onstage in New York City in Feb­ru­ary as host of  The­ater of the Apes book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Visualizing the Bass Playing Style of Motown’s Iconic Bassist James Jamerson: “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” “For Once in My Life” & More

in Music | January 24th, 2019

As part of Motown’s Funk Broth­ers house band, James Jamer­son was the bub­bling bass play­er behind hun­dreds of hit records from Ste­vie Won­der, Mar­vin Gaye, The Supremes, Martha and the Van­del­las, and plen­ty more. His licks duck and dive and weave like Ali but nev­er get in the way of the melody or the rest of the band.

Paul McCart­ney was an ear­ly fan, but for the gen­er­al pub­lic, Jamer­son was not a house­hold name for decades–Motown nev­er list­ed the Wreck­ing Crew in its credits–until much lat­er when music jour­nal­ists and film­mak­ers pushed him into the spot­light.

But his style is so iden­ti­fi­able that YouTube chan­nel Scott’s Bass Lessons has sev­er­al videos about the man, explain­ing in detail how Jamer­son pro­duced that sound.

Jamer­son used a Pre­ci­sion Bass made by Fend­er, heavy flat wound strings that gave it those thick tones, and a very high action (i.e. how tight the strings are). So high in fact, that many con­tem­po­raries said his bass was impos­si­ble to play. (The tight­ness had warped the neck of the instru­ment.) He also placed foam under the bridge, and played high on the body with only his index fin­ger, “the hook” as they used to call it.

The oth­er pecu­liar­i­ty of Jamerson’s record­ings it that he plugged straight into the record­ing deck, instead of record­ing his amp. (McCart­ney start­ed doing this in the mid­dle of the Bea­t­les’ career as well.) This led to a very com­pressed sound that helped his play­ing stand out in the mix.
These tech­niques are all easy to adopt, but one then has to add the tal­ent, and that’s the hard part.

As you can see from these visu­al­iza­tions, Jamer­son nev­er stays still. If he could play a note on an open string he would (instead of mov­ing over a fret), and that led to a flu­id jour­ney over the neck. On some­thing like “I Was Made to Love Her,” Jamer­son always makes sure to head up to dou­ble the sitar-like riff at the end of the verse:

While on “For Once In My Life,” he uses the steady groove of the band (not heard on the video, but lis­ten here) as a jump­ing off point of some very tricky rhythms. And though it’s com­plex, it nev­er gets in the way, nor does it feel flashy or indul­gent.

Jamer­son rarely changed strings, only if they broke, and he didn’t real­ly look after his “black beau­ty” bass.

Asked why, he said, “The dirt keeps the funk.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Car­ol Kaye Became the Most Pro­lif­ic Ses­sion Musi­cian in His­to­ry

The “Amen Break”: The Most Famous 6‑Second Drum Loop & How It Spawned a Sam­pling Rev­o­lu­tion

Every Appear­ance James Brown Ever Made On Soul Train. So Nice, So Nice!

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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