Though its name sounds deroga­to­ry, falset­to is not some kind of trick­ery but a tech­nique used by humans for as long as they have been singing. It has its his­to­ries in indige­nous, folk, and clas­si­cal music. Yet mod­ern ears prob­a­bly asso­ciate it most with pop music of all kinds—from the har­mo­nious vocal blends of Doo Wop to the oper­at­ic har­monies of Queen (espe­cial­ly Roger Tay­lor, below) to… well, vir­tu­al­ly every song from a male singer today.

Falset­to is dif­fer­ent from what’s called “head voice,” as many a vocal coach will point out. “Usu­al­ly found in the upper reg­is­ters of male and female singers,” writes one such coach, “the breathy qual­i­ty of falset­to” is often “used for effect to sound oth­er­world­ly and beau­ti­ful or young.” Need a fuller explo­ration of why falset­to has such pur­chase in pop­u­lar music? See the above Vox Ear­worm explain­er by Estelle Caswell, tack­ling “pop music’s falset­to obses­sion.”

Falset­to has had phas­es when women adopt­ed it to major­ly promi­nent effect (see the age of Julee Cruise and Mazzy Star). It has of late become a very clear trend among male pop stars, Caswell the­o­rizes: “Justin Bieber, The Week­nd, Bruno Mars, Drake, Char­lie Puth, Shawn Mendes, Adam Levine, Sam Smith… the list goes on and on and on.” What’s all this about?

Caswell decid­ed to “crunch the num­bers and quan­ti­fy” the use of falset­to in pop to see if her per­cep­tion of its cur­rent ubiq­ui­ty could be sub­stan­ti­at­ed. Enlist­ing the help of data sci­ence and detailed ana­lyt­ics from Pan­do­ra, she traced falset­to singing in pop­u­lar music from a yodel­er in 1911 to “the icon­ic voice of Thom Yorke.” The Bill­board Hot 100 is fed into the dataset, “fan­cy pro­grams” do their thing and humans try to cor­rect errors.

Opera singer Antho­ny Roth Costan­zo shows up to explain the dif­fer­ence between falset­to and vocal reg­is­ter, and we learn much more about what falset­to is, and isn’t, and how, and maybe why, it’s so pop­u­lar a style for male pop vocal­ists. Caswell also put togeth­er a Spo­ti­fy playlist of falset­to pop and rock, fea­tur­ing every­thing from the afore­men­tioned Queen and Radio­head to Cur­tis May­field, Frankie Val­li, the Bee Gees, and Child­ish Gam­bi­no.

What does the data say? Caswell is hon­est to a fault about the prob­lems with a sta­tis­ti­cal approach—there are too many hit songs miss­ing from the Pan­do­ra dataset, and the AI’s falset­to scor­ing sys­tem (yes, such a thing exists) has seri­ous flaws. Turns out it may take a human ear to rec­og­nize the tech­nique, and even then, there’s room for dis­agree­ment.

But to sum up: mil­len­ni­als might feel like they live in a gold­en age of falset­to male pop singers because it’s all they’ve ever known. But ask any­one who grew up hear­ing Queen, the Bee Gees, or Mar­vin Gaye, or The Four Tops, even the Stones’ “Emo­tion­al Res­cue,” or the yodel­er who had that hit in 1911….

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Mar­vin Gaye Sing “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” A Capel­la: The Haunt­ing Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track

How to Sing Two Notes At Once (aka Poly­phon­ic Over­tone Singing): Lessons from Singer Anna-Maria Hefele

Hear Fred­die Mer­cury & Queen’s Iso­lat­ed Vocals on Their Endur­ing Clas­sic Song, “We Are The Cham­pi­ons”

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

It’s one of the ironies of the mid-sev­en­ties that Pink Floyd became iden­ti­fied with the worst excess­es of pop­u­lar rock and roll. They were dis­missed by punk and New Wave bands as too slick and bom­bas­tic, but while they may have turned into a sta­di­um act after Dark Side of the Moon, they also deserved cred­it for pio­neer­ing the kind of avant-art-rock the­ater punk even­tu­al­ly nor­mal­ized. One ear­ly per­for­mance, for exam­ple, involved “saw­ing wood and boil­ing ket­tles on stage,” writes Mark Blake, of the album that was meant to be the fol­low-up to Dark Side of the Moon—an album called House­hold Objects, con­sist­ing entire­ly of sounds made on… house­hold objects.

The band was total­ly engrossed in this rad­i­cal­ly anti-com­mer­cial DIY project until 1974, “mak­ing chords up from the tap­ping of beer bot­tles,” remem­bers pro­duc­er John Leck­ie, then a tape oper­a­tor at Abbey Road, “tear­ing news­pa­pers for rhythm, and let­ting off aerosol cans to get a hi-hat sound.” Giv­en the incred­i­ble expense of spend­ing hours a day—over a peri­od of years—recording rub­ber bands and pen­cils at Abbey Road stu­dios, one can see the mer­it in charges of mean­ing­less excess.

But as we’ve seen from Jimi Hen­drix, Bri­an Wil­son, The Bea­t­les, and the mad­den­ing record­ing process of Steely Dan, when tal­ent­ed musi­cians have the lux­u­ry to use the stu­dio as an instru­ment, the results can very well jus­ti­fy the cost­ly means. What did House­hold Objects yield? The haunt­ing crys­talline sound of the wine glass harp in “Shine One You Crazy Dia­mond Part 1.” Maybe not much else. Was it worth it? I think so. But how can any­one mea­sure such things?

Bet­ter to “go with the flow,” as David Gilmour’s wife Pol­ly Sam­son tells him in the video at the top—do what­ev­er seems like the intu­itive next thing and see what hap­pens. This is not a triv­ial state­ment. It was the guid­ing cre­ative prin­ci­ple of Pink Floyd’s most inspired work. Gilmour takes her advice, and invites wine glass play­er Igor Skl­yarov, whom he met that day on the streets of Venice, to per­form on “Shine on You Crazy Dia­mond” in St. Mark’s Square that very night. (You’ll see some footage of the show in the short clip.)

Of course, the wine glass­es have made it into many live per­for­mances of the song—see a trio of play­ers rehearse the part above, and play it live below. Sklyarov’s turn on the glass­es is just one notable demon­stra­tion of Floy­di­an spon­tane­ity. Gilmour’s ver­sion of “go with the flow” might always be more rar­i­fied than ours, but the les­son he and his erst­while Pink Floyd band­mates impart­ed remains rel­e­vant and acces­si­ble to every artist.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

When Pink Floyd Tried to Make an Album with House­hold Objects: Hear Two Sur­viv­ing Tracks Made with Wine Glass­es & Rub­ber Bands

Watch Pink Floyd Play Live Amidst the Ruins of Pom­peii in 1971 … and David Gilmour Does It Again in 2016

An Hour-Long Col­lec­tion of Live Footage Doc­u­ments the Ear­ly Days of Pink Floyd (1967–1972)

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

You’ll hard­ly ever run into a descrip­tion of Ger­man New Wave wun­derkind Klaus Nomi that doesn’t con­tain a ref­er­ence to Weimar Ger­many. It would seem like a seri­ous over­sight not to men­tion Nomi’s embod­i­ment of Weimar cabaret man­ner­isms, fit­ted for a space-age late-20th cen­tu­ry. But the influ­ence was far more than a styl­is­tic bor­row­ing. Nomi wasn’t just “the most Ger­man act ever,” as blog­ger Debris Slide writes; “Weimar Repub­lic comes to Dance­te­ria, except with space­ships” may also have been the most his­tor­i­cal­ly gay act in mod­ern pop.

The Weimar Repub­lic is well known as “a peri­od of remark­able artis­tic ener­gy,” writes Andrew Dick­son at the British Library, “a roar­ing surge of mod­ernist art, the­atre, design, dance and film.” It was also a time when “the con­straints of 19th-cen­tu­ry man­ners and mores were torn down.” Hid­den sex­u­al­i­ties could emerge in pub­lic in Berlin, thanks a relaxed polic­ing pol­i­cy, as his­to­ri­an Robert Beachy shows in his book Gay Berlin. The fine arts and cul­ture of Weimar flour­ished along­side the cabaret scene, whose camp showed up in every­thing from Ger­man Expres­sion­ist film to avant-garde opera.

“I think there prob­a­bly had nev­er been any­thing like this before,” Beachy tells NPR, “and there was no cul­ture as open again until the 1970s.” Klaus Nomi arrived in the 70s with his cabaret space alien act to announce that the cre­ative and per­son­al free­doms of Weimar had returned, and he was their avatar, freely mix­ing opera and pop with aston­ish­ing facil­i­ty, incor­po­rat­ing mime and vaude­ville. “The influ­ence of play­wright and the­atri­cal icon Bertolt Brecht would come to serve as a defin­i­tive touch­stone” for Nomi’s career, writes Evan Zwisler at Fly­pa­per.

“One of the ideas that Nomi incor­po­rat­ed into his own act was Ver­frem­dungsef­fekt (or, ‘the dis­tanc­ing effect’)”—drawing height­ened atten­tion to the per­for­mance as per­for­mance, a sig­nif­i­cant fea­ture of near­ly all avant-garde the­ater in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry. Klaus Nomi was also the most Mod­ernist act ever, at least in pop music. He would have fit in with a Dada cabaret revue of six­ty years ear­li­er. I’m not sure what it says about Berlin in the 70s that Nomi only tru­ly found him­self while onstage in New York. He moved to the city in 1972 after work­ing as an ush­er in Berlin opera hous­es, where his aston­ish­ing sopra­no went unap­pre­ci­at­ed.

Nomi became “a qui­et­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ary part of the New York City art scene,” notes Zwisler, inspir­ing Jean-Michel Basquiat and Kei­th Har­ing. He appeared on Sat­ur­day Night Live with David Bowie in 1979 and in the 1981 doc­u­men­tary Urgh! A Music War. Had AIDS not claimed his life in 1983, Nomi’s fame may have spread even far­ther and wider. As it stood, how­ev­er, the year before his death, it had at least spread to his home coun­try, where he was wel­comed by TV host Thomas Gottschalk on the Ger­man pro­gram No Sowas!, per­form­ing with Kraftwerk, the biggest Ger­man pop cul­tur­al export to date.

See Nomi sing the aria from Camille Saint-Saens’ “Sam­son and Delilah.” Then, we have a rare treat: the very Cali­gari-like cabaret of Kraftwerk, at the height of their aus­tere synth pop fame. Nomi returns to sing “Total Eclipse” from his first album. You can read an Eng­lish trans­la­tion of Nomi’s between-song inter­view with Gottschalk here. The host wraps up this seg­ment by say­ing, “he is already a big name in Amer­i­ca, and now we present him here in Ger­many.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Enchant­i­ng Opera Per­for­mances of Klaus Nomi

Klaus Nomi: Watch the Final, Bril­liant Per­for­mance of a Dying Man

David Bowie and Klaus Nomi’s Hyp­not­ic Per­for­mance on SNL (1979)

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

Music video essay mae­stro Poly­phon­ic is back. What I dig about his videos is that he takes on some of the true warhors­es of mod­ern pop­u­lar music and man­ages to find some­thing new to say. Or at least he presents famil­iar sto­ries in a new and mod­ern way to an audi­ence who may be hear­ing ELO, Queen, or Neil Young for the first time.

His lat­est upload explores Dave Brubeck’s ground­break­ing jazz album Time Out. This is an album that reg­u­lar­ly tops best-of lists, gets reis­sued con­stant­ly, and is so ubiq­ui­tous in some cir­cles that it’s hard, like Led Zeppelin’s fourth album, to hear the album with fresh ears.

Poly­phon­ic touch­es on some­thing right at the begin­ning of the video that deserves a full video essay of its own–the State Department’s mis­sion to send Amer­i­can jazz musi­cians around the world as cul­tur­al ambas­sadors. This is a part of his­to­ry that has reced­ed from mem­o­ry, but had a major influ­ence not just on Brubeck, but so many records at that time. Brubeck joined Ben­ny Good­man, Louis Arm­strong, and Dizzy Gille­spie on a musi­cal tour that reached many coun­tries behind the Iron Cur­tain, and were able to cri­tique America’s racist his­to­ry while also pro­mot­ing its musi­cal cul­ture. (There’s a fine PBS doc­u­men­tary on the mis­sion avail­able here, if your region sup­ports the video.)

But for the pur­pos­es of this video essay, and regard­ing Brubeck’s career, it was the polyrhythms and folk music that he heard while trav­el­ing through coun­tries like Turkey (from which he devel­oped “Blue Ron­do a la Turk”) that remained with him on his return.

Time Out was Brubeck’s four­teenth album for Colum­bia Records, but his break­through. Up to that point he and his quar­tet had released a num­ber of live albums record­ed at col­leges (which pro­mot­ed a safe but hip stu­dious kind of jazz) and sev­er­al albums of jazz cov­ers, such as Dave Digs Dis­ney. But Time Out was a ful­ly formed con­cept album of sorts: an explo­ration into time sig­na­tures that jazz hadn’t real­ly touched yet.

As Poly­phon­ic points out, Joe Morel­lo, Brubeck’s drum­mer, was indeed well versed in com­pli­cat­ed time sig­na­tures from his clas­si­cal back­ground as a vio­lin­ist. It was Morel­lo who exper­i­ment­ed with a groove in 5/4 time that became the back­bone of “Take Five.” Brubeck knew a good thing when he heard it and gives Morel­lo one of the best solos of the entire LP.

Best of all, Time Out is one those clas­sic albums because of how it mix­es the exper­i­men­tal with the com­mer­cial, a hard feat in any era, but even more impres­sive in that best of all jazz years, 1959. (Brubeck con­tin­ued to explore time sig­na­tures on this album’s sequel Time Fur­ther Out, which is also rec­om­mend­ed).

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pak­istani Musi­cians Play an Enchant­i­ng Ver­sion of Dave Brubeck’s Jazz Clas­sic, “Take Five”

Louis Arm­strong Plays His­toric Cold War Con­certs in East Berlin & Budapest (1965)

Remem­ber­ing Jazz Leg­end Dave Brubeck (RIP) with a Very Touch­ing Musi­cal Moment

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.