A cen­tu­ry ago, the great French com­pos­er Claude Debussy sat down at a con­trap­tion called a Welte-Mignon repro­duc­ing piano and record­ed a series of per­for­mances for pos­ter­i­ty.  The machine was designed to encode the nuances of a pianist’s play­ing, includ­ing ped­al­ing and dynam­ics, onto piano rolls for lat­er repro­duc­tion, like the one above.

Debussy record­ed 14 pieces onto six rolls in Paris on or before Novem­ber 1, 1913. Accord­ing to Debussy enthu­si­ast Steve Bryson’s Web site, the com­pos­er was delight­ed with the repro­duc­tion qual­i­ty, say­ing in a let­ter to Edwin Welte: “It is impos­si­ble to attain a greater per­fec­tion of repro­duc­tion than that of the Welte appa­ra­tus. I am hap­py to assure you in these lines of my aston­ish­ment and admi­ra­tion of what I heard. I am, Dear Sir, Yours Faith­ful­ly, Claude Debussy.”

The selec­tion above is “La soirée dans Grenade” (“Grena­da in the evening”), from Debussy’s 1903 trio of com­po­si­tions titled Estam­pes, or “Prints.” Debussy was inspired by the Sym­bol­ist poets and Impres­sion­ist painters who strove to go beyond the sur­face of a sub­ject to evoke the feel­ing it gave off. “La soirée dans Grenade” is described by Chris­tine Steven­son at Notes From a Pianist as a “sound pic­ture” of Moor­ish Spain:

Debussy’s first-hand expe­ri­ence of Spain was neg­li­gi­ble at that time, but he imme­di­ate­ly con­jures up the coun­try by using the per­sua­sive Haben­era dance rhythm to open the piece–softly and sub­tly. It insin­u­ates itself into our con­scious­ness with its qui­et insis­tence on a repeat­ed C sharp in dif­fer­ent reg­is­ters; around it cir­cles a lan­guid, Moor­ish arabesque, with nasal aug­ment­ed 2nds, and a nag­ging semi­tone pulling against the tonal cen­tre, occa­sion­al­ly inter­rupt­ed by mut­ter­ing semi­qua­vers [16th notes] and a whole-tone based pas­sage. Debussy writes Com­mencer lente­ment dans un rythme non­cha­la­m­ment gra­cieux [Begin slow­ly in a casu­al­ly grace­ful rhythm] at the begin­ning, but lat­er Tres ryth­mé [Very ryth­mic] in a bright­ly lit A major as the dance comes out of the shad­ows, ff [Fortissimo–loudly], with the click of cas­tanets and the stamp­ing of feet.

Debussy was 52-years-old and suf­fer­ing from can­cer when he made his piano roll record­ings. He died less than five years lat­er, on March 25, 1918. Since then his beau­ti­ful and evoca­tive music has secured a place for him as one of the most influ­en­tial and pop­u­lar com­posers of the 20th cen­tu­ry. As Roger Hecht writes at Clas­si­cal Net, “Debussy was a dream­er whose music dreamed with him.”

Note: This post orig­i­nal­ly appeared on our site in Jan­u­ary 2013.

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Relat­ed con­tent:

Rare 1946 Film: Sergei Prokofiev Plays the Piano and Dis­cuss­es His Music

Hear a 1930 Record­ing of Boléro, Con­duct­ed by Rav­el Him­self

Watch 82-Year-Old Igor Stravin­sky Con­duct The Fire­bird, the Bal­let Mas­ter­piece That First Made Him Famous (1965)

Watch 82-Year-Old Igor Stravin­sky Con­duct The Fire­bird, the Bal­let Mas­ter­piece That First Made Him Famous (1965)

Leonard Bern­stein Intro­duces 7‑Year-Old Yo-Yo Ma: Watch the Young­ster Per­form for John F. Kennedy (1962)

“Video­tape” ends Radiohead’s 2007 album In Rain­bows, and like many of their albums, it tends towards the fune­re­al. (Think of the drunk­en “Life in a Glasshouse” from Amne­si­ac or “Motion Pic­ture Sound­track” from Kid A). And at first, it does sound very sim­ple, four plain­tive descend­ing chords and Thom Yorke’s high melody over the top of it.

But in this 10 minute video essay from Vox Pop: Ear­worm, the song’s struc­ture is peeled back to reveal a secret–that the chord sequence is not on the down­beat, but shift­ed a half-beat ear­li­er. Hence, it is a heav­i­ly syn­co­pat­ed song that removes all clues to its syn­co­pa­tion.

Advanced musi­cians out there might not be blown away by any of this, but for fans of Radio­head and those just com­ing to music the­o­ry, the video is a good intro­duc­tion to com­plex rhythm ideas. The fun comes from the back­wards way in which Vox and War­ren Lain–who devot­ed a whole 30 min­utes to explor­ing the song–came across the secret.

It starts with video of Thom Yorke try­ing to play a live ver­sion along to a click track, and then to Phil Selway’s drums. For some rea­son Yorke can’t do it. And that’s because his brain is want­i­ng to put the chords on the down­beat, the most nat­ur­al, obvi­ous choice. To play off beat, with­out fur­ther rhyth­mic infor­ma­tion, shows the band “fight­ing against not just their own musi­cal instincts, but their own brain­waves” as the Vox host explains.

There is much dis­cus­sion in the YouTube com­ments over whether these 10 min­utes are worth the analy­sis. It’s not that Radio­head invent­ed any­thing new here–check out the off-beat open­ing of some­thing like XTC’s “Wake Up”–but more that the band goes through the whole song (at least in the record­ed ver­sion) with­out reveal­ing the real rhythm, like play­ing in a cer­tain key and nev­er touch­ing the root note.

To sum up: Radio­head push them­selves in the stu­dio and take those exper­i­ments into the live expe­ri­ence and chal­lenge them­selves. Which is way more than the major­i­ty of rock bands ever do. And bless ‘em, Yorke and co., for doing so.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 10 Most Depress­ing Radio­head Songs Accord­ing to Data Sci­ence: Hear the Songs That Ranked High­est in a Researcher’s “Gloom Index”

The Hid­den Secrets in “Day­dream­ing,” Paul Thomas Anderson’s New Radio­head Music Video

Eight Radio­head Albums Reimag­ined as Vin­tage Paper­back Books

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.

You don’t have to be a gear­head to instant­ly rec­og­nize the sound of the Roland TR-808. Intro­duced in 1980, the leg­endary drum machine is all over the 80s, 90s, and the retro 2000s, from dance prog­en­i­tors like Afri­ka Bambaataa’s “Plan­et Rock” to for­ma­tive Def Jam releas­es like Run DMC’s debut and the Beast­ie Boy’s Licensed to Ill (one of the orig­i­nal machines used on such clas­sics recent­ly went on sale). The 808 pro­vides the back­beat for Mar­vin Gaye’s “Sex­u­al Heal­ing,” New Order’s “Shell­shock,” and LL Cool J’s “Going Back to Cali”… track after era-defin­ing track puls­es with the icon­ic drum machine’s deep, thud­ding kick drum and com­i­cal­ly syn­thet­ic con­gas, claves, mara­cas, hand­claps, and cow­bells.

The 808 inspired a trib­ute cel­e­bra­tion around the world on August 8th (8/08) and stars in its own full-length doc­u­men­tary, “a nerdy love let­ter” to the elec­tric instru­ment, writes Slate. You can buy 808 Adi­das that actu­al­ly play beats, play with a vir­tu­al TR-808 in your brows­er, and enjoy the sounds of Kanye West’s odd­ly influ­en­tial 2008 album 808s and Heart­break. With all this renewed atten­tion, you might think it’s a good time for Japan’s Roland to bring the device back into pro­duc­tion, just as Moog briefly reis­sued its Min­i­moog Mod­el D (since dis­con­tin­ued) amidst a swirl of renewed main­stream inter­est in ana­log syn­the­siz­ers.

Roland has obvi­ous­ly felt the pop cul­tur­al winds blow­ing its way. Yes­ter­day, on 808 Day, the com­pa­ny announced a new iter­a­tion, now called the TR-08, as part of its Bou­tique line. (A pre­vi­ous revival, the TR‑8, saw Roland com­bine the 808 with the clas­sic 909, renowned in rave cir­cles.) The video at the top fea­tures some of the 808’s orig­i­nal adopters—producer Jim­my Jam, rap­per Mar­ley Marl, and DJs Jazzy Jeff and Juan Atkins—marveling over the new prod­uct. Just above, in case you’ve some­how for­got­ten, we have a demon­stra­tion of famous TR-808 beats from tracks like “Plan­et Rock” and Cybotron’s “Clear,” songs that made inno­v­a­tive use of sam­ples and which them­selves became choice mate­r­i­al for dozens of sam­ple-based pro­duc­tions.

The 808 was the choice of drum machine for tin­ker­ers. Its sound was “crowd-sourced,” writes Chris Nor­ris, “with artists build­ing on one another’s mod­i­fi­ca­tions of the device. One of the first major inno­va­tions came about in 1984,” with the “fine tun­ing of the 808’s low fre­quen­cies and fur­ther widen­ing of its bass kick drum to cre­ate the sound of an under­ground nuke test” heard on pro­duc­er Strafe’s club hit “Set it Off.” The new TR-08 has a much small­er foot­print and expands the machine’s capa­bil­i­ties with con­tem­po­rary fea­tures like an LED screen, con­trols over gain and tun­ing, bat­tery or USB pow­er, and audio or MIDI through a USB con­nec­tion.

Arguably “one of the most impact­ful pieces of mod­ern music hard­ware,” writes The Verge, upon its debut the 808 “received mixed reviews and was con­sid­ered a com­mer­cial fail­ure as its ana­log cir­cuit­ry didn’t cre­ate the ‘tra­di­tion­al’ drum sounds” most pro­duc­ers expect­ed. This meant that 808s could be picked up rel­a­tive­ly cheap­ly by bed­room pro­duc­ers and local DJs. As a result, “the trem­bling feel­ing of that sound,” Nor­ris writes, “boom­ing down boule­vards in Oak­land, the Bronx, and Detroit are part of America’s cul­tur­al DNA, the ghost of Rea­gan-era blight” and the renais­sance of cre­ativ­i­ty born in its midst. To get a sense of the breadth of the 808’s musi­cal con­tri­bu­tions, lis­ten to the playlist above, with every­one from Talk­ing Heads to 2 LIVE CREW, Phil Collins, and Whit­ney Hous­ton putting in an appear­ance.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

All Hail the Beat: How the 1980 Roland TR-808 Drum Machine Changed Pop Music

See the First “Drum Machine,” the Rhyth­mi­con from 1931, and the Mod­ern Drum Machines That Fol­lowed Decades Lat­er

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

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

Image by Zetkin, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

We’ve devot­ed space here before to leg­endary BBC DJ John Peel’s musi­cal lega­cy, from his for­mi­da­ble record col­lec­tion to his many hours of “Peel Ses­sions,” the record­ings he made in BBC stu­dios of artists like David Bowie, Joy Divi­sion, The Smiths, The Spe­cials, Siouxsie and the Ban­shees and so, so many more–usually when they were on the cusp of super­star­dom or endur­ing cult sta­tus. It was Peel’s par­tic­u­lar tal­ent for dis­cov­er­ing and pro­mot­ing such artists that set him apart from his peers. Rather than rid­ing the cul­tur­al wave of the moment, he lis­tened at the mar­gins, cul­ti­vat­ing and curat­ing what he heard. Whether punk, glam, new wave, hard­core, ska, tech­no, or indus­tri­al, it seems John Peel got there first, and the rest of the indus­try fol­lowed after him.

Peel did not approach his role in a crit­i­cal vein—sitting in judg­ment of the music around him. He approached it as an enthu­si­as­tic and obses­sive fan, which explains much of his appeal to the lis­ten­ers who loved his broad­casts. He hon­ored those lis­ten­ers each year by com­pil­ing a list of their favorites in what he called “The John Peel Fes­tive 50.” This end-of-the-year event “became a Christ­mas insti­tu­tion, writes the BBC, “more loved than fairy lights and Christ­mas crack­ers.”

Lis­ten­ers of Peel’s show vot­ed for their three favorite tracks in Novem­ber. The fol­low­ing month, the high­est-ranked “Fes­tive 50” were all played on the air. He described the process as a tru­ly demo­c­ra­t­ic, crowd­sourced endeav­or, as we would say today.

It’s real­ly just me mark­ing every sin­gle vote down in a ledger. There is obvi­ous­ly the temp­ta­tion to slip some­thing in that I like, espe­cial­ly if it’s just out­side the 50, and some­thing crap has gone above it. But I have a very work­man-like brain so it just would­n’t be on to fix it.

Peel “wasn’t always hap­py with what the lis­ten­ers vot­ed for,” often feel­ing “there were too many ‘white boys with gui­tars’ mak­ing an appear­ance.” The pre­dictabil­i­ty of sev­er­al of the lists irked him, and seemed to work against the spir­it of his mis­sion to tire­less­ly pro­mote adven­tur­ous, exper­i­men­tal music. Peel may have been pop­u­lar, but in mat­ters of taste, he was no pop­ulist. For the most part, how­ev­er, he remained faith­ful to the fans’ picks, and not­ed that he nev­er would have been able to choose the top three songs of the year him­self: “I couldn’t get any few­er than a list of 250.”

The tra­di­tion, with a few hic­cups, con­tin­ued from its incep­tion in 1976 till Peel’s death in 2004, and the mas­sive Spo­ti­fy playlist above aggre­gates the hun­dreds of those picks—932 songs, to be exact, over 70 hours of music. From Dylan, Clap­ton, and the Stones to Neko Case—and along the way, no short­age of tracks from the punk and post-punk artists most close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Peel’s show. While the listener’s picks do fall heav­i­ly into the “white boys with gui­tars” cat­e­go­ry, there’s plen­ty more besides, includ­ing ear­ly tracks from Eric B. & Rakim, P.J. Har­vey, Stere­o­lab, 10,000 Mani­acs, Cocteau Twins, and many more. You can explore the tracks in Peel’s “Fes­tive 50” lists here. They’re sort­ed by decade: 1970s — 1980s — 1990s — 2000s.

Note: Here’s a direct link to the Spo­ti­fy playlist, and if you need Spo­ti­fy’s soft­ware, down­load it here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stream 15 Hours of the John Peel Ses­sions: 255 Tracks by Syd Bar­rett, David Bowie, Siouxsie and the Ban­shees & Oth­er Artists

Hear a 9‑Hour Trib­ute to John Peel: A Col­lec­tion of His Best “Peel Ses­sions”

Revis­it the Radio Ses­sions and Record Col­lec­tion of Ground­break­ing BBC DJ John Peel

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

Before the advent of dig­i­tal stu­dio tech­nol­o­gy, a degree of impre­ci­sion nat­u­ral­ly result­ed from the record­ing process. It may now be too easy to erase and cor­rect per­ceived errors. As Bri­an Eno has point­ed out, “the temp­ta­tion of the tech­nol­o­gy is to smooth every­thing out.” Per­haps that’s why so many of the famous songs con­tain­ing mis­takes in pop cul­ture lore come from a pre-dig­i­tal age. In any case, such lore abounds. Some of it spec­u­la­tive, some anec­do­tal, some apoc­ryphal, and much of it clear­ly evi­dent in close lis­tens and con­firmed by the musi­cians, engi­neers, and pro­duc­ers them­selves.

A recent Red­dit thread com­piled 500 com­ments worth of dis­cus­sion on the sub­ject. One promi­nent exam­ple is Ella Fitzgerald’s 1960 “Mack the Knife,” in which she for­gets the lyrics to the cho­rus and impro­vis­es. “Talk about fail­ing grace­ful­ly,” writes user Bleue22. The album, they note, went on to win a Gram­my.

But this exam­ple, you may object, comes from a live album—no sec­ond takes allowed. And Fitzger­ald sets up the error by say­ing before­hand, “we hope we remem­ber all the words.” (I’d guess she’s using the roy­al “we,” to which she’s ful­ly enti­tled.) Nonethe­less, her “Mack the Knife” may have no equal.

Still, we don’t lack for stu­dio exam­ples of mis­takes in great record­ings. If you’re a met­al fan, Metallica’s “Seek and Destroy” from 1983’s Kill ‘Em All like­ly holds a spe­cial place of hon­or in your col­lec­tion. As Kirk Ham­mett revealed in a 2002 inter­view with Gui­tar World after his induc­tion into the magazine’s hall of fame, his solo on the track was only a sec­ond or third take, with lit­tle rehearsal. “There were no frills, no con­tem­pla­tion, no over­in­tel­lec­tu­al­iz­ing,” he says. The result? Amaz­ing, right? But, Ham­mett con­tin­ues, “On a cou­ple of notes in that solo, I bend the notes out of pitch; for 18 years, every time I’ve heard that gui­tar solo, those sour notes come back to haunt me!”

Every gui­tarist has suf­fered through this expe­ri­ence while lis­ten­ing back to their records. Few make Gui­tar World’s hall of fame. The point is that great­ness and per­fec­tion are not always the best of friends. Anoth­er exam­ple of the kind of thing that might only haunt a musi­cian: In Steely Dan’s “Aja” from the 1977 Gram­my-win­ning album of the same name, drum­mer Steve Gadd plays “one of the best drum solos ever record­ed,” writes Michael Dun­can as Son­ic Scoop. Drum­mers for decades have sought to repli­cate the moment, espe­cial­ly an idio­syn­crat­ic click at 4:57. Turns out, it was “actu­al­ly a slip of his stick; albeit a well-timed one.” The solo, Dun­can notes, was done in one take.

Oth­er exam­ples may have had life-chang­ing con­se­quences for the musi­cian in ques­tion. It’s rumored that David Gilmour’s faint­ly record­ed cough­ing on Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” both­ered him so much that he quit smok­ing. In some cas­es, the mis­take can turn into a hook or a musi­cal state­ment, such as Cindy Wilson’s shout of “Tii­i­i­i­i­in Roof! Rust­ed” in the B‑52’s “Love Shack,” appar­ent­ly a mis­take on Wilson’s part. The phe­nom­e­non, grant­ed, tends to man­i­fest in gen­res that accom­mo­date all vari­eties of looseness—rock, blues, jazz, etc.—and the great bulk of exam­ples in the Red­dit mis­take thread come from such record­ings.  I couldn’t say whether it’s pos­si­ble to com­pile such a list in music with far stricter arrange­ments or reliance on elec­tron­ic instru­men­ta­tion.

I also couldn’t say whether mis­takes in, say clas­si­cal or elec­tron­ic music, would pro­duce such desir­able results. What often emerges in these dis­cus­sions is the degree to which mis­takes, unplanned impro­vi­sa­tions, or hap­py acci­dents can become essen­tial fea­tures of a song. Take The Breeder’s “Can­non­ball,” which inten­tion­al­ly incor­po­rates a mis­take bassist Josephine Wig­gs repeat­ed­ly made in rehearsals, slid­ing to the wrong note in the solo bass intro, then cor­rect­ing when the gui­tars came in. “We all just thought it was hilar­i­ous and thought it sound­ed real­ly great,” she remem­bered.  “It was clear to us at that moment that that was the right thing to do, to keep the wrong note in there.” Does it mat­ter that some record­ed mis­takes are inten­tion­al and oth­ers are not? That ques­tion may be fod­der for anoth­er 500-com­ment-long dis­cus­sion. Or we could heed the wis­dom of Bri­an Eno or Miles Davis and just go with it either way.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bri­an Eno Explains the Loss of Human­i­ty in Mod­ern Music

What Miles Davis Taught Her­bie Han­cock: In Music, as in Life, There Are No Mis­takes, Just Chances to Impro­vise

Jump Start Your Cre­ative Process with Bri­an Eno’s “Oblique Strate­gies” Deck of Cards (1975)

John Cleese on The Impor­tance of Mak­ing and Embrac­ing Mis­takes

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