Last month I wrote about the very popular chord progression from the 50s: I vi IV V and played you a video of seven versions of that song. In case you didn’t read it:
Paul McCartney said that he and John Lennon always tried to make their songs “a little different” implying that they prefer to not repeat themselves. One of the most popular chord progressions of the time before the Beatles came on the scene was the I vi IV V chord progression (a common variant is I vi ii V). For you non-music theory nerds out there, think of the famous “Heart and Soul” song from the 50s.
Compare this looped chord progression to what Lennon and McCartney do here. Instead of the I vi IV V we get the almost-Russian variant: I vi iii V. And part of me wonders — the part of me that knows how to musically “push buttons” — is it that sexy and profound “iii” chord that is making those girls scream and cry? I think then answer is yes. But the fact that the Beatles were too poor to afford a third microphone for George, and so he always had to share with Paul. And that microphone sharing was just as sexy for those girls as the chords, and as the “oooooh”s and as those cute long-haired boys from England.
Here are the lyrics with the chords above them. I had never appreciated how sophisticated the progression is. And this EARLY Beatles. It was their interest in continuing to “make it different.”
Dean Christopher Waterman announced today that the Herb Alpert Foundation has given 30 million dollars to UCLA, specifically to create a synergistic relationship between the three (now) separate music departments: The Department of Musicology, The Department of Ethnomusicology, and The Department of Music. I am the Chair of the latter. Associate Dean Tim Rice has been appointed Director of the “school within a School.” Chris Pasles wrote a nice article about it today it the LA Times. The press release gives more details:
Aligning the university’s Departments of Ethnomusicology, Music and Musicology, The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music will be devoted to the performance and study of music in all of its global diversity, including world music, popular music, jazz and classical music. UCLA students will have the opportunity to augment their academic studies in music with such courses as the music business, music in the public sector, and music and health. This balanced approach to performance, scholarship and practical knowledge, as well as to the broad sweep of music in today’s world represents a significant departure from the emphasis in many U.S. schools of music on the theory, history and performance of European classical music.
Pasles adds:
Waterman expects the endowment, which will be given over three years, to generate about $1.4 million annually.
“A certain chunk of that will go for technology and equipment,” he said. “Another will be given to scholarships and trying to recruit the best students and faculty we can. I don’t think we’re going to have any problem spending it to achieve our aspirations.”
“Two things excite me about the possibilities here,” Rice said. “One is, from the inception this school will have the best balance between creativity and scholarship, and interesting new ways of thinking about music.”
After reading all this, you can imagine I have a pretty cool job ahead. It’s a fun time to be Chair.
Thanks to commenter yesmydog for pointing this one out. It’s from the Beatles film YELLOW SUBMARINE” I don’t think it had anything to do with the movie, but was a very cool song. It begins with a very butch guitar riff, in the line of “Paperback Writer” and “Day Tripper.” It slips back and forth between tonic major and minor in the blink of an eye. The verse oscillates between the tonic major and the dominant minor.
It’s one of those songs that is so infused with memories from my youth that I can’t hear it objectively. I remember what I was doing, thinking, smelling, learning, when this song came out.
I’ve isolated the two favorite exercising rhythms that our dogs thrive on:
running–whether it be a chase, or a run/walk with the pack–and
playing tug.
Running is aerobic, and it stimulates the cardiovascular system, and the other is tugging on a toy, a toy onto which they clamp their strong jaws onto and pull as hard as they can. These are two very different kinds of exercise, and I’m trying to transfer this to my own exercise schedule.
Tug, and run. That combination makes my dogs very happy.
With a few exceptions, the prevaiing harmonic progression in “When Doves Cry” is:
i bVII
What is odd is that there doesn’t seem to be a chordal instrument that fleshes out much harmony. The predominant timbre is the bass and the spectrum of the snare. The synth harpsichord vamps occasionally but doesn’t really help us out with this harmonic ambiguity. But then the harmonic sparsity is exactly what we love about Prince.
I learned to play Lady Madonna in high school and sang it with my old friend Todd Buffa. Todd’s voice did a perfect McCartney imitation for this song. I butched it up with the blue note grace notes in the opening piano figure. I’m fairly sure this is a McCartney song: couplet rhyme scheme, it features only him, great sense of functional tonality, and John and George are singing the parts he taught them — exactly what led to the end of the Beatles. The video is hardly a great video as we think of it today, but serves well as a music-delivery-system.
I’ve been working a big 12 minute scena for the dramatic musical that I’m working on (how’s that for a fusion between opera and musical?!). I’ve composed the score using Sibelius (music notation software) and am orchestrating it electronically using Apple’s LOGIC. The image below is a teeny tiny version of what I see on one of my 30 inch monitors. I color code the music depending upon sections, or colorist or style changes in the music so that when I sit down with Mel, we don’t have to talk about measure 237, he can say “in the orange section, there is a sound that…” and we can communicate efficiently. Mitchell asked me whether the color was coded so that related material is related with color. I disappointed him saying no.
All of the synthesizers, er, virtual instruments, are inside my computer. Gone is the wall of blinking lights and stacks of synthesizer modules. They’re all in the basement now. Sigh. The soundtrack for this project is all prerecorded. If it’s a hit, I’ll rescore it for live musicians, but in the meantime a small pit band of 3 or 4 will suffice.
Actually, this is the most stylistically out of control piece I’ve ever written. To me, evidently, writing a musical means I can draw on ALL of my influences: country, opera, rock, Stravinsky, recitative, arias, chamber music, electronica, Byrds, and tons of world music. This range of influences doesn’t really fit into any musical style I know, but as I said the other day, I’m not gonna worry about it.
Whenever I stretch out on the floor, my dogs assume that I’m dying and they immediately come and start licking my face. I’m not a big fan of getting licked in the face by my dogs, but I realize that this instinct could save my life some day, so I’ve learned from Daniel to thank them and gently push them away.
My aunt sent me a longer version of the following video where an Italian Greyhound, who looks very much like our Cody, is baby sitting. There is a long period where the two of them are just sitting there. Then the baby begins to cry for quite some time. Then this clip begins and you see the baby being “calmed” by the IG’s howling. Howling is what these dogs have to do from time to time (they ARE called HOWLNDS aren’t they?). Our dogs howl when intense fire alarms sound, and especially when old friends arrive. The more they love them, the more they howl.
Daniel Wolf found this questionable resource: The Blog Readability Test where you can enter the URL of your blog, and find what level of education is required to understand it. I blushed to see that mine was Junior High School. I immediately put in Alex Ross’s blog and was relieved to find that his was the same; aworks and Jeremy Denk’s required a High School level (I alway find Jeremy’s excellent posts too long to read at this point in my life); The Standing Room was the same as Alex and me. The Overgrown Path requires a genius reading level. I wonder if Shakespeare had a blog what his level would be?
Saxophonist Doug Masek has released a new record of new music for saxophone on Centaur recordings. Besides a terrific recording of my piece for alto saxophone and electronics entitled GLAMOUR AND EROS, there is music by Jane Brockman, Paul Cholicchio, William Haubrich, and Liviu Marinescu. The CD can be purchased from Centaur directly, from Amazon, or read about the CD and hear excerpts from Barnes and Noble. (This is the only place where my music has been referred to as “fusion jazz.”
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