Category: Musing on Music

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now THIS is why I got a freeview box…

Before we upgraded our TV options from the regular 5 terrestrial channels to the greater variety of FreeView, I would regularly read about people watching Joni Mitchell live gigs on there, or Dylan documentaries, or jazz gigs or whatever, and that drove my resolve to get a freeview box in the place.

And now, after God-know-how-long, I’ve finally been enjoying the fruits of BBC4’s output – for some reason I’ve always missed their music output until this evening, but today have watched Liane Carroll live from Brecon Jazz, Oscar Peterson live (with the majestic Neils Hennigs Orsted Pederson on bass), a Johnny Cash documentary, and now Roseanne Cash in concert. What a marvellous evening’s entertainment!

Today’s been a fun day, recording Ruthie Culver’s voice for her album – the rest of it was recorded a while back in a studio, but thanks to a major technological breakdown in the studio, the vocals weren’t useable. So we’re redoing them in StevieStudio. Much fun! We’ll be spending a few days on this over the next couple of weeks…

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MOBO drops Jazz. Jazz not happy

The one downside to being at the Recycle Collective last night was that I missed the protests outside the MOBO awards at them having dropped Jazz as a category.

I mentioned this on the blog when the issue was first raised by Abram Wilson – it’s such a nonsense to have an awards show for ‘music of black origin’ and not have jazz, unless all you’re celebrating is Spirituals and Field Hollers. Hip-hop, soul, R ‘n’ B, reggae all trace a big part of their sound back to Jazz, and, Paul Robeson aside, jazz musicians were the first worldwide black music stars.

So last night, outside the Royal Albert Hall where the awards were taking place, about 100 people gathered to protest, 20 or so musicians played, including Soweto Kinch, a former MOBO winner, led by Abram Wilson. I saw some photos at the RC last night, as John L Walters came straight to the RC from the protest – looked like a lot of fun!

So, balls to the MOBOs and their hideous bling-fest. Support jazz in the UK, peoples!

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gigs where the act doesn't turn up…

Yesterday afternoon, Tony Moore at The Bedford send round an email saying that Tommy Sims was playing. Now, those of you with a memory for the credits on early 90s CCM albums will already know Tommy as the bassist on just about everything that Charlie Peacock produced around that time, but he went on from there to work with Springsteen and then to put out a stunning solo album called ‘Peace And Love’ – proper late-70s-Stevie-style soulful singer/songwriter stuff. A great record.

So naturally I was very excited to see him play, and changed plans to head to the Bedford.

But he didn’t show. Bugger. Got there, and the lovely Tony Moore was most apologetic, with a ‘he might turn up later, he’s got a session’.

So I stuck around, and watched the various singer/songwriters on offer. A couple of good ones, a fairly duff one, and Tony himself playing the best set I’ve heard him play. Some great songs.

The Beford is a fab venue, and Tony does an amazing job booking there. the quality is WAY higher than most venues where the bands are being paid, let alone a free-entry no-one-gets-paid gig. The problem for me is that there seem to be a lot of career song-writers there, who don’t seem to have much to say. Lots of songs written because the subject would ‘make a good song’ not because it’s something that stirs the soul of the writer. On some occasions this doesn’t bother me at all, and I just enjoy the skill of the songwriting. Other times it bugs the hell out of me and makes me resolve to make music that matters.

But it was a fun night out anyway, and at least one of the bands had a great lil’ bassist, who had seen Michael Manring and I do a masterclass at The Guitar institute a few years back, so that was a lovely conversation. :o)

I now need to find out what Tommy Sims is up to while he’s in London! Would still love to meet him and say hi.

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John Peel: A Life In Music

Just finished this book, by Michael Heatley and have come to the conclusion that, should the body of work exist to support such an endeavour, I could happily read about John Peel for the rest of my life.

I say happily – I get the most jumbled mixture of feelings when reading about Peel, ranging from nostalgia for the late 80s, gratefulness that someone like him ever existed and dread for what the music world could descend into in its post-Peel state, all underscored by an aching sadness that he’s gone, and disappointment that I never met him. (He did walk past me once, outside Broadcasting House – maybe I should’ve stopped and said something. I think I was probably lost for words though…)

I can’t think of the death of anyone else that I haven’t actually met that has affected me as much – the more I think about it, the clearer it is what an influence listening to his show had on me in Berwick in the late 80s/early 90s. You’d have to spend a good couple of years in Berwick, without the internet or freeview, to fully understand the significance.

And the weird thing with Peel – and a testament to his broadcasting uniqueness – is that they can’t rebroadcast his shows. It wasn’t about ‘legacy’ music, or playing ‘classics’. It was about playing what grabbed him now. As much as i’d love to listen again to those shows from the late 80s, filled with Cud and Bongwater, Napalm Death and the Bhundu Boys, The Pixies and Marta Sebastian, Kanda Bongo Man and BoltThrower, they aren’t what Peel would play now, and repeating them isn’t what he was about. When Ronnie Barker died, his legacy was palpable, celluloid, archived and repeatable. Peel’s is wrapped up in the experimentation of hundreds of thousands of bands through the last 50 years, inspired to say ‘bollocks to convention’ and try something new, something that mattered. You can’t turn that into a retrospective series, beyond getting endless bands to say ‘yup, without Peel, I’d be driving a van’. And they queued up to do so when he died. Genuine tributes to the man who handed them a career.

In this book, I’m reminded of how so many of those people that I listen to, so much of the music I love was launched on listener’s ears by Peel. Just about every non-jazz influence I have can be traced back to Peel’s patronage.

Anyway, it’s a fine book – read ‘Margrave Of The Marshes’ first, but get this one to fill in a lot of the geeky musical info.

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Making loops interesting…

There’s been a long thread over on Looper’s Delight about making loops interesting. A lot of the discussion has been around things to do to your loops, or ways of playing that will make them interesting. All good stuff, but missing something… Here’s my reply to the list of about 5 minutes ago –

“Some interesting stuff coming through on this topic (that which I’ve had the time to read, anyway).

My own way of dealing with this, philosophically is to not think about the looping aspect of it unless I have to, but instead to try and conceive the ‘music’ first in an of itself. Having spent a lot of years playing loop-based music, I already quite naturally hear form in a loop-influenced way, so don’t tend to need to force things. Occasionally I’ll be looking for a different kind of arrangement, and then I go to my tools at hand to see if it’s going to be possible… the ever-growing feature-list of the Looperlative certainly helps in this area.

But I have, for the most part, avoided self-consciously labeled ‘loop music’. There are some people who do much more ‘loop-essential’ music than I that do it incredibly well – Bill Walker, it seems to me, exploits his looping boxes in a more obviously loop based way (especially his ultra-rhythmic synced stuff), but his boundless musicality comes through in a way that makes it sound like the technology was made for him. Likewise Claude Voit – quite obviously loop designed music in the rhythmic/repetitive mode, but not even remotely ‘dull’ or ‘tedious’ – just great music making use of the arrangement possibilities of his chosen hardware.

What’s most notable is that great music is unhindered by tech or lack of. The great musicians are the ones who enslave the technology to their musical ends, but also allow it to liberate their musical sensibilities into otherwise impossible arrangement options, but still hear it and present it as music, where the fundamentals of music, be they melodic, rhythmic, textural, cultural or onomatopoeic, carry through to the audience, and the geekability of the loopage is an added bonus not a necessary diversion from the unsatisfactory listening experience.

just a thought or two… “

It’s all about the music, peoples. Experimenting with looping possibilities makes for a fun (and personally rewarding) science project, but those techniques then need to be forgotten and committed to the subconscious so that the music can flow unimpeded. It’s a constant struggle, especially when one gets new toys, but one that must be resisted.

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Friday Random 10

today’s iTunes playlist of randomness –

  • The Kinks – I Need You
  • Steve Bell – My Lady And My Lord (a Bruce Cockburn cover, from his rather excellent album full of BC covers, called ‘My Dinner With Bruce’)
  • Nik Kershaw – Take Me To The Church
  • Randy Newman – Simon Smith and His Amazing Dancing Bear
  • Jonatha Brooke – New Dress
  • Kylie Minogue – Can’t Get You Out Of My Head
  • Ingrid Laubrock and Liam Noble – Duke Ellington’s Sound Of Love (OK, Kylie to Ingrd and Liam wins this week’s award for maddest juxtaposition!)
  • Kenny Wheeler – Kind Folk
  • Bruce Cockburn – Life Short Call Now (title track from wonderful latest album)
  • James Taylor – Highway Song
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Get some lessons!!!

The new series of X-Factor have just started. I’ve blogged extensively in the past about the tragic televisual car accident that is ‘reality’ TV talent shows. The thing that I think is most sad about this is that they never seem to say ‘go and get some sodding singing lessons, you moron!!!!’ to the losers that get up there and are rubbish.

Let’s put it simply – if you REALLY want to be any good at something, you need to study at it. Singing ability is VERY RARELY innate. instrumental ability never is. It requires practice, and the techniques involved in singing are just as hard as those involved in instrumental performance. If you want to be a singer – in fact, even if you’re already a singer – you SO need to get some lessons. They’ll protect your voice from the thrashing that bad technique will give it, they’ll give you better intonation, more control, better breathing. There are NO DOWNSIDES WHATSOEVER to getting singing lessons.

So why aren’t these cabbage patch kids-grown-up who come on TV claiming that ‘singing is their life’ getting any fucking lessons?? If I ever decide to launch myself as a singer as well as a bassist, I’ll get lessons. As a bassist, I went to music college for two years. It’s what you do when you want to get good.

Is it easy enough to understand?

And the same goes for those who can already sing but want to accompany themselves. In the right hands an acoustic guitar is an instrument of almost limitless beauty and potential. In the wrong hands it’s an out of tune cheese grater pouring red ants into the listeners ear-holes. So get some lessons! Again, it can only do you good.

I went to a really good gig on Friday night – Christine Collister has quite rightly been described as one of the best female singers in the country. She’s highly in demand as a session singer, and does gorgeous versions of other people’s songs. She’s also a reasonable guitarist. If she studied a bit, she’d be a fantastic guitarist, and would have the whole package. It’s not that she’s bad, it’s just that with a voice that good, it would be fantastic to hear it coupled with guitar playing to match. She can play, it wouldn’t take her long. She’s already come up with some pretty interesting arrangements, but the guitar is very definitely her second string.

So, you want to be the best? It does indeed take the dedication that the marvellous Roy Castle reminded us of on a weekly basis is our childhood. And the single best way to learn that stuff is one on one lessons. I don’t say this because I’m a teacher, I teach because it’s true.

Phew…

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Friday Random 10

Here’s today’s list…

Cathy Burton – Speed Your Love (need to get her new album soon)
Tom Waits – Ol’ 55 (what a FANTASTIC song! Not heard this for a while…)
Pat Metheny Group – Second Thought (from Quartet)
Hinda Hicks – If You Want Me (bit of a shock after the last tune! Don’t trust iTunes to generate radio playlists for you…)
Jaco Pastorius – Continuum (now THIS would’ve followed the PMG track perfectly… bloody iTunes)
John Martyn – Looking On (from the double version of Live At Leeds, and this clearly isn’t from the Leeds gig)
Paul Simon – Sure Don’t Feel Like Love (apparently he’s at Wembley soon – will have to find out about tickets…)
Gillian Welch – I Want To Sing That Rock And Roll
Iain Archer – Soul Cries
Evelyn Glennie – Battle Cry (Bonus Mix) (From the album Shadow Behind The Iron Sun, which is incredible – get it!)

another interesting mix of stuffs…

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Free music training software

I’ve not tried this out, as it’s PC/Linux only, and I’m on the Mac at the moment, but I found a link on a bass forum to solfege.org – a free downloadable music ear training package. Looks pretty good, well worth a ‘free’.

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