See Ancient Greek Music Accurately Reconstructed for the First Time

in History, Literature, Music | August 10th, 2018

Imag­ine try­ing to recon­struct the music of the Bea­t­les 2,500 years from now, if noth­ing sur­vived but a few frag­ments of the lyrics. Or the operas of Mozart and Ver­di if all we had were pieces of the libret­tos. In a 2013 BBC arti­cle, musi­cian and clas­sics pro­fes­sor at Oxford Armand D’Angour used these com­par­isons to illus­trate the dif­fi­cul­ty of recon­struct­ing ancient Greek song, a task to which he has set him­self for the past five years.

The com­par­i­son is not entire­ly apt. Schol­ars have long had clues to help them inter­pret the ancient songs that served as vehi­cles for Home­r­ic and Sap­ph­ic verse or the lat­er dra­ma of Aeschy­lus, almost all of which was sung with musi­cal accom­pa­ni­ment. In a recent arti­cle at The Con­ver­sa­tion, D’Angour points out that many lit­er­ary texts of antiq­ui­ty “pro­vide abun­dant and high­ly spe­cif­ic details about the notes, scales, effects, and instru­ments used,” the lat­ter includ­ing the lyre and the aulos, “two dou­ble-reed pipes played simul­ta­ne­ous­ly by a sin­gle per­former.”

But these musi­cal instruc­tions have proved elu­sive; “the terms and nota­tions found in ancient sources—mode, enhar­mon­ic, diesis, and so on—are com­pli­cat­ed and unfa­mil­iar,” D’Angour writes. Nonethe­less, using recre­ations of ancient instru­ments, close analy­sis of poet­ic meter, and care­ful inter­pre­ta­tion of ancient texts that dis­cuss melody and har­mo­ny, he claims to have accu­rate­ly deci­phered the sound of ancient Greek music.

D’Angour has worked to turn the “new rev­e­la­tions about ancient Greek music” that he wrote of five years ago into per­for­mances that recon­struct the sound of Euripi­des and oth­er ancient lit­er­ary artists. In the video at the top, see a choral and aulos per­for­mance of Athanaeus’ “Paean” from 127 BC and Euripi­des Orestes cho­rus from 408 BC. D’Angour and his col­leagues break in peri­od­i­cal­ly to talk about their method­ol­o­gy.

In the 2017 inter­view above from the Greek tele­vi­sion chan­nel ERT1, D’Angour dis­cuss­es his research into the music of ancient Greek verse, from epic, to lyric, to tragedy, to com­e­dy, “all of which,” he says, “was sung music, either entire­ly or part­ly.” Cen­tral to the insights schol­ars have gained in the past five years are “some very well pre­served auloi,” he notes, that “have been recon­struct­ed by expert tech­ni­cians” and which “pro­vide a faith­ful guide to the pitch range of ancient music, as well as to the instru­ments’ own pitch­es, tim­bres, and tun­ings.”

Deter­min­ing tem­po can be tricky, as it can with any music com­posed before “the inven­tion of mechan­i­cal chronome­ters,” when “tem­po was in any case not fixed, and was bound to vary between per­for­mances.” Here, he relies on poet­ic meter, which gives indi­ca­tions through the pat­terns of long and short syl­la­bles. “It remains for me to real­ize,” D’Angour writes, “in the next few years, the oth­er few dozen ancient scores that exist, many extreme­ly frag­men­tary, and to stage a com­plete dra­ma with his­tor­i­cal­ly informed music in an ancient the­ater such as that of Epi­dau­rus.” We’ll be sure to bring you video of that extra­or­di­nary event.

via The Con­ver­sa­tion

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Ancient Greek Music Sound­ed Like: Hear a Recon­struc­tion That is ‘100% Accu­rate’

Hear Homer’s Ili­ad Read in the Orig­i­nal Ancient Greek

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Leonard Bernstein: The Greatest 5 Minutes in Music Education

in Music | August 9th, 2018

We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly writ­ten about one of Leonard Bernstein’s major works, The Unan­swered Ques­tion, the stag­ger­ing six-part lec­ture that the mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary artist gave as part of his duties as Har­vard’s Charles Eliot Nor­ton Pro­fes­sor. Over 11 hours, Bern­stein attempts to explain the whith­er and the whence of music his­to­ry, notably at a time when Clas­si­cal music had come to a sort of cri­sis point of atonal­i­ty and anti-music, but was still pre-Merzbow.

But, as Bern­stein said “…the best way to ‘know’ a thing is in the con­text of anoth­er dis­ci­pline,” and these six lec­tures bring in all sorts of con­texts, espe­cial­ly Chomsky’s lin­guis­tic the­o­ry, phonol­o­gy, seman­tics, and more. And he does it all with fre­quent trips to the piano to make a point, or bring­ing in a whole orchestra—which Bern­stein kept in his back pock­et for times just like this.

Jok­ing aside, this is still a major schol­ar­ly work that has plen­ty inside to debate. That’s per­ti­nent a half a cen­tu­ry after the fact, espe­cial­ly when so much music feels like it has stopped advanc­ing, just recy­cling.

The above clip is just one of the gems to be found among the lec­tures, some­thing that one view­er found so stun­ning they record­ed it off the tele­vi­sion screen and post­ed to YouTube.

In the clip, Bern­stein uses the melody of “Fair Har­vard,” also known as “Believe Me, If All Those Endear­ing Young Charms” by Thomas Moore—recognizable to the young’uns as the fid­dle intro to “Come On, Eileen”—as a start­ing point. He assumes a pre­his­toric hominid hum­ming the tune, then the younger and/or female mem­bers of the tribe singing along an octave apart.

From this moment of musi­cal and human evo­lu­tion, Bern­stein brings in the fifth interval-—only a few mil­lion years later-—and then the fourth. Then polypho­ny is born out of that and…well, we don’t want to spoil every­thing. Soon Bern­stein brings us up to the cir­cle of fifths, com­press­ing them into the 12 tones of the scale, and then 12 keys.

Bern­stein can hear the poten­tial for chaos, how­ev­er, in the pos­si­bil­i­ties of “chro­mat­ic goulash,” and so ends with Bach, the mas­ter of “tonal con­trol” who bal­anced the chro­mat­ic (which uses notes out­side a key’s scale) with the dia­ton­ic (which doesn’t). (It all comes back to Bach, doesn’t it?)

And there the video ends, but you know where to find the rest. And final­ly we’ll leave you with this oth­er, more explo­sive, ren­der­ing of “Fair Har­vard.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Glenn Gould Plays Bach on His U.S. TV Debut … After Leonard Bern­stein Explains What Makes His Play­ing So Great (1960)

Leonard Bern­stein Intro­duces the Moog Syn­the­siz­er to the World in 1969, Play­ing an Elec­tri­fied Ver­sion of Bach’s “Lit­tle Fugue in G”

Leonard Bernstein’s First “Young People’s Con­cert” at Carnegie Hall Asks, “What Does Music Mean?”

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Frank Zappa’s 1980s Appearances on The David Letterman Show

in Music, Television | August 8th, 2018

I’ve nev­er been a huge fan of Frank Zappa’s music and grav­i­tat­ed more toward the bizarre yet bluesy son­ic world of his some­time col­lab­o­ra­tor and life­long fren­e­my Cap­tain Beef­heart. But I get the appeal of Zappa’s wild­ly vir­tu­oso cat­a­log and his sar­don­ic, even caus­tic, per­son­al­i­ty. The phrase may have devolved into cliché, but it’s still worth say­ing of Zap­pa: he was a real orig­i­nal, a tru­ly inde­pen­dent musi­cian who insist­ed on doing things his way. Most admirably, he had the tal­ent, vision, and strength of will to do so for decades in a busi­ness that leg­en­dar­i­ly chews up and spits out artists with even the tough­est of con­sti­tu­tions.

Zap­pa, notes the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in its pro­file, “was rock and roll’s sharpest musi­cal mind and most astute social crit­ic… the most pro­lif­ic com­pos­er of his age,” who “bridged genres—rock, jazz, clas­si­cal, avant-garde and even nov­el­ty music—with mas­ter­ful ease.” Record­ing “over six­ty albums’ worth of mate­r­i­al in his fifty-two years,” he famous­ly dis­cov­ered, nur­tured, and col­lab­o­rat­ed with some of the most tech­ni­cal­ly pro­fi­cient and accom­plished of play­ers. He was indie before indie, and “con­front­ed the cor­rupt pol­i­tics of the rul­ing class” with fero­cious wit and unspar­ing satire, hold­ing “the banal and deca­dent lifestyles of his coun­try­men to unfor­giv­ing scruti­ny.”

Need­less to say, Zap­pa him­self was not prone to banal­i­ty or deca­dence. He stood apart from his con­tem­po­raries with both his utter hatred of trends and his com­mit­ment to sobri­ety, which meant that he was nev­er less than total­ly lucid, if nev­er total­ly clear, in inter­views and TV appear­ances. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, David Let­ter­man, cham­pi­on of oth­er fierce­ly tal­ent­ed musi­cal odd­balls like War­ren Zevon, was a Zap­pa fan. Between 1982 and 83, Zap­pa came on Let­ter­man three times, the first, in August of 82, with his daugh­ter Moon (or “Moon Unit,” who almost end­ed up with the name “Motor­head,” he says).

The younger Zap­pa inher­it­ed her father’s dead­pan. “When I was lit­tle,” she says, “I want­ed to change my name to Beau­ty Heart. Or Mary.” But Zap­pa, the “musi­cal and a soci­o­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non,” as Let­ter­man calls him, gets to talk about more than his kids’ weird names. In his June, 83 appear­ance, fur­ther up, he pro­motes his Lon­don Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra album. As he explains, the expe­ri­ence of work­ing with cranky clas­si­cal musi­cians on a very tight sched­ule test­ed his per­fec­tion­is­tic (some might say con­trol­ling) tem­pera­ment. The album gave rise, writes Eduar­do Riva­davia at All­mu­sic, “to his well-doc­u­ment­ed love/hate (most­ly hate) rela­tion­ship with sym­pho­ny orches­tras there­after.”

But no mat­ter how well or bad­ly a project went, Zap­pa always moved right along to the next thing. He was nev­er with­out an ambi­tious new album to pro­mote. (In his final Let­ter­man appear­ance, on Hal­loween, above, he had a musi­cal, which turned into album, the triple-LP Thing-Fish.) Since he nev­er stopped work­ing for a moment, one set of ideas gen­er­at­ing the next—he told Rolling Stone in answer to a ques­tion about how he looked back on his many records—“It’s all one album.” See a super­cut below of all of Zappa’s 80s vis­its to the Let­ter­man set, with slight­ly bet­ter video qual­i­ty than the indi­vid­ual clips above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Frank Zap­pa Explains the Decline of the Music Busi­ness (1987)

Hear the Musi­cal Evo­lu­tion of Frank Zap­pa in 401 Songs

Hunter S. Thompson’s Many Strange, Unpre­dictable Appear­ances on The David Let­ter­man Show

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

A Modern Drummer Plays a Rock Gong, a Percussion Instrument from Prehistoric Times

in History, Music | August 8th, 2018

Rock Gong. It sounds like a B‑52s song. But a rock gong is not a New Wave surf-rock par­ty groove. It’s not a neo-syn­th­pop act, hip hop group, or indie band (not yet). It’s a pre­his­toric instrument—as far away in time as one can get from syn­the­siz­ers and elec­tric gui­tars. Rock gongs are ancient, maybe as old as humankind. But they’re still groovy, in their way. As they say, the groove is in the play­er, not the instru­ment.

Rock gongs, or “litho­phones,” if you want to get tech­ni­cal, have been found all over the African con­ti­nent, in South Amer­i­ca, Aus­tralia, Azer­bai­jan, Eng­land, Hawaii, Ice­land, India, and every­where else pre­his­toric peo­ple lived. Not the cul­tur­al prop­er­ty of any one group, the rock gong came, rather, from a uni­ver­sal human insight into the nat­ur­al son­ic prop­er­ties of stone. (One the­o­ry even spec­u­lates that Stone­henge might have been a mas­sive col­lec­tion of rock gongs.)

Though some schol­ars have sug­gest­ed that the term “rock gong” should be reserved for sta­tion­ary, rather than portable, rocks that were used as instru­ments, the British Muse­um seems untrou­bled by the dis­tinc­tion. In the video above, archae­ol­o­gist Cor­nelia Kleinitz explains the prin­ci­ples of rock gongs found in Sudan to mod­ern rock drum­mer Liam Williamson of the band Cats on the Beach.

You can hear one of those Nubian rock gongs in its nat­ur­al habi­tat, before it was moved to the British Muse­um, in the clip just above. The rock, the nar­ra­tor tells us, has been “worn smooth by the action of peo­ple play­ing it more than 7,000 years ago. Long before the Romans, long before the Pharaohs.” Ear­ly humans would have searched long and hard for rocks that res­onat­ed at par­tic­u­lar fre­quen­cies, for ring­ing rocks that could be com­bined into scales for ear­ly xylo­phones or pro­duce a vari­ety of tones like a steel drum.

Despite their antiq­ui­ty, the study of rock gongs is a rather recent phe­nom­e­non, part of the emerg­ing field of archaeoa­coustics. “Method­olog­i­cal­ly,” write the authors of a 2016 paper on the sub­ject, “this field of research is still  in its infan­cy,” and there is much researchers do not know about the uses and vari­eties of rock gongs around the world. As Kleinitz explains to Williamson in the video at the top, archae­ol­o­gists are try­ing to under­stand the con­text in which the Nubian gongs at the British Muse­um would have been played, whether as instru­ments for rit­u­als, sig­nal­ing, fun, or all of the above.

As for the tech­niques involved in rock gong play­ing, we can only guess, but Williamson does his best to adapt his drum chops to the ancient stone kit. One crit­i­cal dif­fer­ence between our mod­ern human musi­cal instru­ments and this ancient kind, Kleinitz notes, is that the lat­ter were inte­grat­ed into the land­scape; their dis­tinc­tive sound depend­ed not only on the rock itself, but on its inter­ac­tion with the wild and unpre­dictable envi­ron­ment around it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear a 9,000 Year Old Flute—the World’s Old­est Playable Instrument—Get Played Again

What Did Ancient Greek Music Sound Like?: Lis­ten to a Recon­struc­tion That’s ‘100% Accu­rate’

Vis­it an Online Col­lec­tion of 61,761 Musi­cal Instru­ments from Across the World

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Italian Street Musician Plays Amazing Covers of Pink Floyd Songs, Right in Front of the Pantheon in Rome

in Music | August 7th, 2018

Before Pink Floyd, rock and roll was all about atti­tude. After Pink Floyd, it could be all atmos­phere. Though per­fect­ly suit­ed for head­phones and hi-fis, their sound is archi­tec­tur­al, and almost requires the grand­est of set­tings for its full real­iza­tion. The bom­bast of the band’s sta­di­um shows, with all their the­atri­cal excess­es, seems entire­ly jus­ti­fied by the music, unlike the Spinal Tap-like pre­ten­sions of many oth­er are­na rock bands. In 1989, Pink Floyd (sans Roger Waters) played for 20,000 Ital­ian fans from a mas­sive stage float­ing in the canals of Venice, a fas­ci­nat­ing con­trast to a 1972 per­for­mance, when the band played for no one but a film crew, in an amphithe­ater in the ruined city of Pom­peii.

Invok­ing these mag­i­cal moments, a street musi­cian named Serin plays the music of Pink Floyd in the streets of Rome, park­ing him­self right in front of the Pan­theon. With pre-record­ed back­ing tracks and a black Stra­to­cast­er rem­i­nis­cent of David Gilmour’s sig­na­ture instru­ment, Serin not only nails the songs, he gets the atmos­phere just right, an achieve­ment no doubt aid­ed by his choice of set­ting. At the top, see him play “Shine on You Crazy Dia­mond,” just above, “Com­fort­ably Numb” and, below, an excel­lent ren­di­tion of “Time” (on a white Strat this time). For comparison’s sake, watch Pink Floyd them­selves play “Echoes” at Pom­peii, fur­ther down. (Stream more clips of their Pom­peii con­cert film here).

For anoth­er ver­sion of the one-man-Pink Floyd-cov­er band con­cept, see 19-year-old Ewan Cun­ning­ham cov­er “Echoes,” “Com­fort­ably Numb” and oth­er songs, mul­ti­track­ing him­self on every instru­ment.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A One-Man Pink Floyd Band Cre­ates Note-Per­fect Cov­ers of “Echoes,” “Com­fort­ably Numb,” “Moth­er” & Oth­er Clas­sics: Watch 19-Year-Old Wun­derkind Ewan Cun­ning­ham in Action

Pink Floyd Plays in Venice on a Mas­sive Float­ing Stage in 1989; Forces the May­or & City Coun­cil to Resign

The “Lost” Pink Floyd Sound­track for Michelan­ge­lo Antonioni’s Only Amer­i­can Film, Zabriskie Point (1970)

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

How Zildjian Cymbals Were Created by an Alchemist in the Ottoman Empire, Circa 1618

in Music | August 7th, 2018

When it comes to musi­cal instru­ments, there are brands and then there are legacies—names so unques­tion­ably indica­tive of qual­i­ty and crafts­man­ship that play­ers swear by them for life. Mar­tin Gui­tars, for exam­ple, have inspired this kind of loy­al­ty among musi­cians like Willie Nel­son and John­ny Cash. Mar­t­in’s sto­ry—dat­ing back to 1833—inspires book-length his­to­ries and doc­u­men­taries. In the drum world, the longest-lived and most-sto­ried brand would have to be Zild­jian, the famed cym­bal mak­er known the world over, beloved by the best drum­mers in the busi­ness.

But Zild­jian is far old­er than Mar­tin Gui­tars, or any oth­er con­tem­po­rary instru­ment man­u­fac­tur­er. Indeed, the com­pa­ny may be the world’s old­est exist­ing man­u­fac­tur­er of almost any prod­uct. Though incor­po­rat­ed in the U.S. in 1929, Zild­jian was actu­al­ly found­ed 400 years ago in Con­stan­tino­ple by Armen­ian met­al­work­er Avedis, who in 1622 “melt­ed a top-secret com­bi­na­tion of met­als,” writes Smith­son­ian, “to cre­ate the per­fect cym­bal.” The short film above recre­ates in dra­mat­ic fash­ion the alche­my of Avedis’ dis­cov­ery and the glob­al his­to­ry of Zild­jian.

The brief Smith­son­ian his­to­ry can seem a lit­tle sen­sa­tion­al and may not be entire­ly accu­rate at points. Lara Pel­le­grinel­li, writ­ing at The New York Times, dates Avedis’ “secret cast­ing process” to four years ear­li­er, 1618. (The com­pa­ny itself dates its found­ing to 1623.) Pel­le­grinel­li notes that Avedis’ “new bronze alloy” pleased the Sul­tan, Osman II, who “grant­ed the young arti­san per­mis­sion to make instru­ments for the court and gave him the Armen­ian sur­name Zild­jian (mean­ing ‘son of cym­bal mak­er’). The fam­i­ly set up shop in the sea­side neigh­bor­hood of Samatya in Con­stan­tino­ple, where met­al arrived on camel car­a­vans and don­keys pow­ered prim­i­tive machines.”

Zild­jian cym­bals were admired by Mozart and his con­tem­po­raries, and “what came to be known sim­ply as ‘Turk­ish cym­bals’ were assim­i­lat­ed by Euro­pean orches­tras and, in the first half of the 19th cen­tu­ry, into new mil­i­tary and wind band styles” of the East and West. In 1851, Zild­jian cym­bals set sail on a 25-foot schooner bear­ing the fam­i­ly name, bound for London’s Great Exhi­bi­tion. Kerope Zild­jian intro­duced the K Zild­jian line of cym­bals in 1865, still in pro­duc­tion and wide­ly in use today. (The old K’s can still be heard in sev­er­al major sym­pho­ny orches­tras.)

As the jazz scene took off in the 1920’s, many music shops exclu­sive­ly car­ried Zild­jians, and drum­mers like Gene Kru­pa helped refine and devel­op the famous instru­ments even fur­ther, mak­ing them thin­ner, more respon­sive, and able to cut through the big band sound. The sto­ry of Zild­jian is the sto­ry of West­ern music and its unmis­tak­able East­ern influ­ence, an incred­i­ble his­to­ry four cen­turies in the mak­ing, full of intrigue and bril­liant inno­va­tion, and con­tain­ing at its heart an alchem­i­cal mys­tery, a secret recipe still close­ly guard­ed by the Zild­jian fam­i­ly.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vis­it an Online Col­lec­tion of 61,761 Musi­cal Instru­ments from Across the World

Watch a Musi­cian Impro­vise on a 500-Year-Old Music Instru­ment, The Car­il­lon

What Makes the Stradi­var­ius Spe­cial? It Was Designed to Sound Like a Female Sopra­no Voice, With Notes Sound­ing Like Vow­els, Says Researcher

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 6 ) |

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

in Music, Psychology, Technology | August 6th, 2018

In the age of Auto-Tune, it’s a plea­sure to have proof that cer­tain greats had no need of pitch cor­rec­tion.

Queen front man Fred­die Mer­cury’s leg­en­dar­i­ly angel­ic, five octave-range pipes deliv­er extra chills on the iso­lat­ed vocal track for “We Are the Cham­pi­ons.”

Playback.fm, a free online radio app, stripped the beloved Queen hit of every­thing but the vocal wave form, then synched it to footage from four con­cert films and a rare record­ing ses­sion, above.

You’ll also hear back­ing vocals cour­tesy of gui­tarist Bri­an May, drum­mer Roger Tay­lor, and Mer­cury him­self.

Their prac­tice was to record two takes of each back­ground part—high, medi­um and low—in uni­son, yield­ing an eigh­teen voice back­ing choir. Bassist John Dea­con, inven­tor of the Dea­cy amp, left the singing to his band­mates, though he did com­pose sev­er­al of their top ten hits includ­ing “You’re My Best Friend” and “Anoth­er One Bites the Dust.”

Cow­ing though it may be, don’t let these accom­plished musi­cians’ abun­dance of tal­ent keep you from singing along. Remem­ber that in 2011, a team of sci­en­tif­ic researchers vot­ed “We Are the Cham­pi­ons” the catchi­est song in pop music his­to­ry, thanks in part to Mercury’s “high effort” vocals. As par­tic­i­pant and music psy­chol­o­gist Daniel Mül­len­siefen observed:

Every musi­cal hit is reliant on maths, sci­ence, engi­neer­ing and tech­nol­o­gy; from the physics and fre­quen­cies of sound that deter­mine pitch and har­mo­ny, to the hi-tech dig­i­tal proces­sors and syn­the­sis­ers which can add effects to make a song more catch­i­er. We’ve dis­cov­ered that there’s a sci­ence behind the sing-along and a spe­cial com­bi­na­tion of neu­ro­science, math and cog­ni­tive psy­chol­o­gy that can pro­duce the elu­sive elixir of the per­fect sing-along song.

When the audi­ence is allowed in at the three minute mark, you can pre­tend that that thun­der­ous applause is part­ly due to you.

Enjoy more Fred­die Mer­cury iso­lat­ed vocal tracks here and here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Made Fred­die Mer­cury the Great­est Vocal­ist in Rock His­to­ry? The Secrets Revealed in a Short Video Essay

Hear Fred­die Mercury’s Vocals Soar in the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track for “Some­body to Love”

Fred­die Mer­cury: The Untold Sto­ry of the Singer’s Jour­ney From Zanz­ibar to Star­dom

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

How Steely Dan Went Through Seven Guitarists and Dozens of Hours of Tape to Get the Perfect Guitar Solo on “Peg”

in Music | August 3rd, 2018

It’s easy to call the music of Steely Dan cyn­i­cal ersatz: slick, clin­i­cal jazz-rock, with nary a hair out of place on any of their nine stu­dio albums; soul­less soul music beloved by pre­ten­tious jerks like the duo in Nick Kroll and John Mulaney’s satir­i­cal Broad­way show Oh, Hel­lo, a com­ic play fea­tur­ing two sleazy 70-some­thing Upper West Side bachelors—failed artists, casu­al racists, long­time ben­e­fi­cia­ries of a rent-con­trolled apart­ment, and the two biggest Steely Dan fans you’ll ever meet. But theirs is a pure­ly affec­tion­ate homage.

“There hasn’t been any good music since Steely Dan,” Mulany half-joked in a recent inter­view. “The best music is pre­cise rock-pop-jazz in a stu­dio, on a mul­ti­track.” Every take that calls Steely Dan cal­cu­lat­ing hip­ster pre­tenders and stu­dio per­fec­tion­ists isn’t wrong, exact­ly, it’s only that the band already antic­i­pat­ed and sur­passed it by couch­ing know­ing inau­then­tic­i­ty and sub­ver­sion in the most fine­ly-craft­ed pop ever cre­at­ed. It’s hard­ly an exag­ger­a­tion to say that noth­ing in pop­u­lar music has lived up to their mas­ter­piece, Aja, so arch and shiny that it’s “also kind of punk,” argues Vari­ety’s Chris Mor­ris.

Gui­tarist Wal­ter Beck­er, “the Lar­ry David of Steely Dan,” approached every­thing with irrev­er­ence except the music, writes L.A. Times pop crit­ic Mikael Wood. The same could be said of his band­mate, singer and key­board play­er Don­ald Fagen. If you think you don’t know Steely Dan, you do, from the hun­dreds of songs that have sam­pled and copied them, most nick­ing beats and hooks from Aja. One of those most-sam­pled songs, “Peg,” also serves as a mini-les­son on the duo’s exact­ing work eth­ic and metic­u­lous com­po­si­tion­al meth­ods. (See Fagen explain and demon­strate the song’s com­plex chord voic­ings below.)

In a com­mem­o­ra­tion of Aja’s for­ti­eth anniver­sary last year, Newseek’s Zach Schon­feld described Beck­er and Fagen’s “odd, neu­rot­ic approach” to record­ing “that turned the cre­ative pair into musi­cal auteurs of sorts, but made fin­ish­ing a record near­ly impos­si­ble.” As you’ll hear musi­cians like drum­mer Rick Marot­ta explain in the “Peg” mak­ing-of video at the top, the duo would bring in a crew of top-notch play­ers for a ses­sion, then scrap every per­for­mance and bring an entire­ly new band in the next day, unhap­py with vir­tu­al­ly every take. “Every track, every over­dub,” says engi­neer Elliot Schein­er, “had to be the per­fect over­dub. They didn’t set­tle for any­thing. They were always look­ing for the per­fect.”

The almost unlim­it­ed pow­er grant­ed them by “guar­an­teed sales” may have been a “license for abuse,” as “Peg” rhythm gui­tarist Steve Kahn tells Schon­field, but it also meant they nev­er had to grudg­ing­ly set­tle for “good enough.” They act­ed as cura­tors for the best musi­cians in the busi­ness, fig­ur­ing out whose dis­tinc­tive style best fit which song, a process that involved a lot of tri­al and error. The approach is most evi­dent in the leg­endary sto­ry of “Peg”’s gui­tar solo, per­formed on the record by ses­sion play­er Jay Gray­don, who made the cut after sev­en pre­vi­ous gui­tarists, includ­ing Robben Ford and Beck­er him­self record­ed hours and hours of tape.

“I’m sure that each of us walked away feel­ing real­ly good about it,” remem­bers gui­tarist Elliot Ran­dall, who had played the solo on “Reel­in’ in the Years.” But each time, Fagen and Beck­er knew it wasn’t right. “We felt sil­ly spend­ing all this mon­ey for this one brief blues solo,” Fagen says. When they final­ly recruit­ed Gray­don, he was ecsta­t­ic, as he relates in the inter­view above. “Every stu­dio gui­tar play­er want­ed to be on a Steely Dan record,” he says. Final­ly, it was a match:

For about an hour and a half, I’m play­ing my hip, melod­ic kind of jazz style. Then Don­ald says to me, “Naw, man. Try to play the blues.” I’m think­ing, if I got­ta play blues in this solo, I can’t use a B‑flat. Because B is in that chord. I can’t use an F unless it’s run­ning through the chord… So I can make it be a believ­able sev­enth chord by using the sev­enth in part of the line. I play bluesy for a while. I get melod­ic for a while. I get bluesy again. Then I get melod­ic and bluesy.

The brief solo suits the song per­fect­ly, though we might say the same if they’d cho­sen one of hun­dreds of oth­er takes. We’ll nev­er know, though we do hear a few failed con­tenders at the top, and they’re all clear­ly infe­ri­or. After four or five hours of play­ing, Gray­don him­self left the stu­dio still not know­ing if “it was a keep­er.” Then he “turned the radio on one day, and there it is.” He’s since relearned it sev­er­al times to play for oth­ers, includ­ing a 2016 doc­u­men­tary about top ses­sion play­ers and rock side­men called Hired Gun.

As for all the Youtube videos float­ing around that claim to teach the solo (see one above), Gray­don says none of them get it right. But luck­i­ly for him, some­how, he did, a lucky break, he says, that eas­i­ly could have end­ed up in the bin with the oth­er hun­dreds of hours of tape cut from the Aja ses­sions, vic­tims of the ulti­mate jazz-funk-soul-rock auteurs.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Steely Dan Wrote “Dea­con Blues,” the Song Audio­philes Use to Test High-End Stere­os

Steely Dan Cre­ates the Deadhead/Danfan Con­ver­sion Chart: A Wit­ty Guide Explain­ing How You Can Go From Lov­ing the Dead to Idol­iz­ing Steely Dan

How Good Are Your Head­phones? This 150-Song Playlist, Fea­tur­ing Steely Dan, Pink Floyd & More, Will Test Them Out

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 6 ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.