For those of you with blogs or websites, or those who love to study logic structure, check out Websites as Graphs. This is what Red Black Window looks like. To put it in perspective, click here to see others. Here are some amazing ones.

Prof. Berlioz: For the next few sessions I will be introducing you to writing for the solo stringed instruments, and I don’t mean the guitar, bass and banjo, I mean the violin, viola, cello, and double bass. The first three instruments are tuned in 5ths; the cello is an octave below the viola; the viola is a perfect fifth below the violin. The bass, like the guitar, is tuned in 4ths where notes sound an octave lower than they appear.
Likening strings to a choir, the violin is part alto, part soprano, and then its upper register is unique and very high;

the viola is like a dusky tenor- alto that can also play fairly high;

and the cello can be a bass, a tenor, an alto and an really intense soprano in its highest range;

The bass is usually just the bass that can be bowed or plucked.

[These musical examples are from musicarrangers.com. Visit this site for succinct and simple explanations.]

Although there are concertos and sonatas composed for them I”m not going to tell you it’s my favorite music. Basses often sound “funny” when they play melodies.

At the beginning of a concert, you will hear the string section tune up. You will hear LOTS of 5ths. The oboe, which has the richest overtones and carries nicely, tunes the orchestra giving them the pitch “A.” The concert master, the alpha string player, tunes first, then stands up and tunes the section. You’ll hear all the orchestra play their OPEN strings. Open strings are more resonant. And because they are not played with the fingers, you can’t get a vibrato sound from open strings. But what you can do, and mountain music does this often, is to play a melody on one string while the other string is played like a drone. [Berlioz demonstrates this.]

There are many excellent books on orchestration, instrumentation, and music notation. I’d suggest a visit to Patelson’s Music Store and buy some. There are also some excellent resources online; Pete Thomas has a good site as does musicarrangers.com, and many others.

This week, let’s just concentrate about the instrument and how it’s played. The left hand presses down strings to produce notes. There are no frets on violins as there are on guitars; the player must know EXACTLY where to place their finger to obtain the correct intonation. String players practice scales and arpeggios as they are the bread and butter of the melodic material in classical music.

The bow has two main jobs: to play downwards, or a downbow, and to play upwards, or an upbow. The part next to your hand is called the frog, and the other end is the tip. The natural state of a downbow is a strong beginning, and as the string is sustained and the bow moves to the tip, the pressure is less: a down bow is like an exhalation, meaning a strong start, with a tapering at the end. The upbow is like an inhalation, starts softly and builds. Realize that string players learn to overcome this natural tendency in bowing and cover it up, but behind most up and downbows is an emulation of the breathing process. Add to that, a gentle shake in the tone, vibrato, and a sound that emulates the human voice.

Usually string instruments play one note at a time, but they are capable of playing more. When two notes sound simulaneously, this is called a double stop, with three notes, a triple stop, and all four notes, a quadruple stop. Also, unlike the ukelele, the banjo, the guitar, andthe mandolin, the bowed stringed instruments have curved bridges. Realize that their bows are straight lines, and they are supposed to play all four strings! As they play single notes far more frequently than multiples, an arched bridge makes playing single notes easier, and thereby, quadruple stops are more difficult. You have to “throw” the bow across the strings with force in order to get all four strings to sound like a simultaneity, or a chord. [He demonstrates.] A few other things you need to know: only write for adjacent strings, meaning strings IV and II can’t play together because III is in between! In music notation for bowed instruments, the phrase mark indicates the length that the bow will be held. Roughly speaking, the more notes you cram under one bow (the drawing of the bow across a string in ONE direction), the softer it will be; when you draw a full bow across the string per note, the overall sound will be louder. This is the importance of knowing how bowing works, how it feels, and how it emulates breathing and singing.

I’d like you to purchase the Dover Edition of Johann Sebastian Bach’s WORKS FOR VIOLIN. Henryk Szeryng has a good recording of it. (There must be a more up to date recording than this!?) Study carefully how every move is made. Listen to the music and follow along with the score. If you see something you don’t understand, hit the pause button, and look it up.

Here is what appears to be an exercise video that doubles as a prefab description of being robbed for Chinese girls who visit America. Yeah, weird premise: I thought so too. Now, what I don’t get is, if these girls actually DO get robbed, will they uncontrollably go into this dance routine in hopes of completely befuddling the attacker? Or could they just be reading the phone book and they just needed some cool sounding English text for a good workout? And they’re so, so happy!
[Thanks to Transbuddha]

I realized that one could probably start a religion by codifying the things that make us happy.

No, just kidding, but if we cut to the chase in life, isn’t it happiness that gives us that little internal buzz that make life so fucking fabulous?

Speaking of which, take a look at Citrus’s wise post on Happiness.

And lest you think that I sit around deliriously happy all day long, such is not the case. Not that I’m UNhappy. It’s just that there are some very special moments that stand out that are truly enjoyable. Little golden moments that can be triggered by a memory, an activity, a smell, a sound, and so on. Like an orgasm, one couldn’t probably sustain such joy for long periods of time. But who knows: I’m working on it.

For some strange reason, Grotrian has made available a cyber-piano-composition doohicky called a PIANOLINA that you can click on and drive everyone in your house crazy. It takes a piece of preexisting music and processes it one way or another, depending upon what it is that you do to it. I find it analagous to audible Brownian motion, or imagine taking the notes of an Erik Satie piano piece (which this does) and put it inside one of those little shakeup winter scenes where the snow falls slowly down, well, they would be notes instead of snow.

The elements you get to play with are TONE (good thing), CHORD, COMPOSITION, and TEMPO. You can just “drag” these parameters onto the gameboard, er score paper and the things take on a bouncy bouncy life of their own, and begin to make a windy obnoxious wind chime sound like rain. I confess I didn’t give it a chance: I’m a control freak when it comes to which notes go when and where.

Here is the original video of “Once in a Lifetime.” It’s great fun and interesting to see where some of David Byrne’s bizarre body gestures come from. For me, the piece really comes into its own in the live performance on the movie, STOP MAKING SENSE, which I hope to find, post and present a textural analysis for later.

While you are listening to this song, try to identify the verse, chorus, and any other sections that are prominent. How are these sections musically defined? By the melody? By the chords? By the words? And one more thing: listen to the jingling musical sound at the beginning? Is it a melody? A rhythmic pattern? A random musical element?

[I'll revisit these questions next week in "Talking Heads: Once in a Lifetime (live from STOP MAKING SENSE)]

Musicologist (or not?) Arthur M. Abell chats with many of our favorite turn of the [last] century composers in his book “Talks With Famous Composers.” I bring this to your attention not so much to endorse whether this guy was a charlatan or not, but some of the things Brahms supposedly said are quite interesting.

The part that struck me in the Brahms section, was not so much the “I’m channeling God” stuff, but rather the “[I] lose consciousness” part. Sometimes when I’m composing, and the music is really flowing, my head plops down on the paper and I fall asleep. I hear psychologists refer to that as the brain generating alpha waves. Whatever: I get sleepy when I compose and it’s the darndest thing.

(I’m also a hard-core nap taker (as is most of my family), and I will take 4 to 7 naps a day in the summer or on sabbatical ranging from 1 minute to 20 minutes. The day starts over each time; morning being my favorite time to compose, I have as many mornings as I have naps!)

The book is an interesting read whether these conversations really took place (which would be really significant) or whether the book is a complete fabrication, and then it’s amazing that this man seemed to have respect and an “in” to the musical society of his day but was in reality a complete phony. Somethings never change.

After a lofty conversation about omnipotence, deity, spirit, and so on, he discusses the effect of being in touch with this divine essence as a composer.]

I immediately feel vibrations that thrill my whole being. [...] Straightaway the ideas flow in upon me, directly from God, and not only do I see distinct themes in my mind’s eye, but they are clothed in the right forms, harmonies and orchestration. Measure by measure, the finished product is revealed to me when I am in those rare, inspired moods, as they were to Tartini when he composed his greatest work –– the Devil’s Trill Sonata. I have to be in a semi-trance condition to get such results –– a condition when the conscious mind is in temporary abeyance and the subconscious is in control, for it is through the subconscious mind, which is a part of Omnipotence, that the inspiration comes. I have to be careful, however, not to lose consciousness, otherwise the ideas fade away.

Sketch of Igor Stravinsky by Roger Bourland (1971).

One cold, rainy November night in Madison Wisconsin, I decided to listen to an LP that I took from my parents before leaving home: Igor Stravinsky’s “Petrouchka.” I didn’t know the music at all. I knew my Dad listened to the FIREBIRD from time to time, and I heard lots of Shostakovich, but not much Stravinsky. I sat and listened to it with my headphones, looking out at the falling rain from my window on the 13th floor of my dormitory. I got it. I seemed to understand what was going on and thought: “if THIS is what is going on in contemporary classical music, I want to be a part of it.” Two months later I changed from being a poet (i.e. an English major) to a music composition major, although I was a year behind in my studies. I auditioned by playing a movement from a Bach lute suite on the guitar and a piece by Thelonius Monk (”Ugly Beauty”) on the piano, and two of my own compositions (one on the guitar and one on piano). To my sheer joy, I was accepted as a composition major at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and would be studying with Randall Snyder (now at U. Nebraska, Lincoln) and Les Thimmig.

Listening to that piece on that night changed my life. I would not be here now, you would not be reading this had I not listened to that piece at that time and made that decision. I articulate this partially for my own benefit: I bang my head against the wall and shout “music DOES change the world, music DOES change the world!”

I was going through some old boxes and found a treasure trove of old abandoned cassettes (audio, remember?). One had Michael Tilson Thomas conducting the LA Philharmonic performing Stravinsky’s Agon, and the Huxley Variations. During that broadcast was an interview with Stravinsky that I never forgot. I’ve digitized it so that my students and readers can hear it. In this audio clip, Stravinsky is talking about his Variations for Orchestra (Aldous Huxley, in memoriam), which is one of his more far out pieces, and probably the most experimental. Beside his “Requiem Canticles” it is one of his last major works. There are bizarre little sound mosaics in the piece that he described earlier as “the sprinkling of fine glass” (from the original LP recording). He realizes that this piece is likely over the heads of most people, and admits that it mostly “for connoisseurs.” And then, at the end of his interview, he says: “Music is not always ‘to like’: music is also for something much more important than ‘to like’.”

MP3: Play audio file (stravinskyonhuxvar.mp3)

Interview with Igor Stravinsky recorded from a KUSC broadcast in early 1980s.

And finally, for you hard core Stravinsky fans, look what I found looking for pics of Stravinsky on the internet: a Swedish photographer just happened on this scene, not realizing it was likely the only meeting the two alpha-composers (Jean Sibelius and Stravinsky) ever had.

Igor Stravinsky meets Jean Sibelius; photo by Pertti Jenytin.

When I was an undergraduate at UW Madison, I teased one of my classmates by, after telling me that she was moving to California, warning her that she might fall into the ocean after “the big one.” She stared at me with this icy glare and said: “ROGER, YOU CAN’T LIVE IN FEAR.” Very good advice: fear causes cancer faster than cigarettes I would imagine. Living without fear has been a goal I’ve strived for, with a fair amount of success. I grant you that 21st century fear is very different than early hominid survival fear, but it is fear none the less.

All that having been said, and knowing that I’m really an optimistic fellow, here is a video that just might make you afraid about the possible impact of a meteor on the planet. I don’t speak Japanese, but you get the idea really well. Ursi made me do this. [Ursi Spaltenstein is one of my blog heroes.]

Sinéad O’Connor’s electrifying performance of this great song by Prince, “Nothing Compares 2U” is thrillingly captured in this video. The arrangement as well as the chord choices in this song are Neanderthal — I wish someone would remix it, cutting out everything except her voice, and start over. The sleazy ah-aaahhh-ahh in the background is just wrong. I can’t imagine it was her idea.

It’s really too bad she mucked up her career so badly. Some people should just keep their mouths closed. Just because you get famous does not mean the world REALLY wants to hear what you think — especially if you are a musician or a professional athlete (See my post, “Damage Control for Rufus” a few weeks back.). Bob Dylan got it right: keep a low profile, just keep writing and performing your music, or playing your sport, and shutup. (My philosophy used to be to not talk about religion or life philosophy unless someone asks you. I’m now revising that to just not talk about it at all. It’s so personal, it rarely serves much purpose except to make intra-personal walls even higher.)
Vincent Neville and weht.com (what ever happened to?) brings us up to date on Sinéad, or at least up to 2005:

• In 2003 she announced her departure from the spotlight stating “she no longer wanted to be regarded as a famous person.”
• In March, 2004 she gave birth to a baby boy in Dublin, Ireland. Her third child.
• In between 2000 and now also became a priest in a breakaway group of the Catholic church in Ireland. She wore a Roman collar and styled herself Mother Bernadette.
• Always controversial, she defended the IRA attacked compatriots U2, pissed off Frank Sinatra, declared herself to be a lesbian, and tore up a picture of the Pope on Saturday Night Live.

Over the past five years she has been bisexual, lesbian and now is back to heterosexual. SHe is pregnant with her fourth child. Her next album, “THEOLOGY” is scheduled for release in October 2006 and is supposed to be half with just voice and guitar, and the other half will the the same material but orchestrated. I look forward to hearing it. (I went on to amazon.com to listen to some of her most recent music and it crashed my computer. I won’t infer anything more than a confused computer.)