Mobius Music

I just finished a fascinating book by Clifford Pickover about the Mobius strip.  A Mobius strip is a loop that has only one side.  They are really easy to make: simply tape together the two ends of a strip of paper, after first giving it a half twist.  The two-sided-ness of the paper disappears and you are left with a one-sided object.  You can test this by coloring the paper.  Try to color one side green and the other red.  It can't be done on a Mobius strip, because there is only one side to color.

The Mobius strip was discovered by August Mobius in 1858, and it's remarkable that it wasn't discovered sooner.  Studying the strip is a great introduction to topology, the study of surfaces and spatial relationships.

Topology doesn't really have anything to do with music, but it is possible to write music that can be adhered to a Mobius strip.  Music played on such a strip will result in music that can be played forwards and backwards, and upside down and right-side up.  Our good man J. S. Bach wrote something like this, called the Crab Canon from the Musical Offering.  This piece can be performed forward, then the musician can turn the page upside down and play it again.  Plus, the musician can read the music backwards to produce a different melody.  Then, using both hands, the player can perform the piece as a two-handed duet, with the canon flipped over and reversed in one hand and right-side up and forward in the other hand.

Bach wasn't the only musical genius to experiment with these musical puzzles.  Arnold Schoenberg (I've talked about him recently.  Remember Schoenberg?) also wrote canons, that he called "mirror canons" that could be flipped over and turned around.  Schoenberg was also interested in "twelve-tone music", which uses the same one-sided idea as the Mobius strip.  With the 12-tone rows, the composers would assemble all 12 pitches in a row, sometimes at random, but only using each pitch once within the row.  From here, they can reverse the pitches, invert them, and invert and reverse them.  The result can be applied to atonal music.

I know.  Just accept the fact that you are going to learn more about atonal music than you thought you wanted to this year.

:-)

H2O

I'm around water a lot now (with the new job.  It's going well, BTW).  So, it isn't too much of a leap to start thinking about music and songs about water.  After some thought, I realized that there are less songs about water than there are about songs about activities on or in the water.  Let's dive right in, shall we?

Starting on the west coast: try Surfin' USA with the Beach Boys.  Or, if you aren't a very good surfer, you can Wipe Out with the Surfaris.  If are prefer to stay on dry land, you could just practice the different swimming strokes to Bobby Freeman's C'Mon and Swim (1964).

But why stay out of the water, landlubber?  Join Ariel the mermaid and her aquatic friends in a cheerful Caribbean calypso rendition of Under the Sea.  This song was featured in Disney's 1989 The Little Mermaid, in which Sebastian the crab tries to convince the finned girl to stay in the sea where she belongs instead of trying to sprout legs and run off with some land prince she just met and barely knows.

Water music isn't such a new thing, though.  Just ask England's King George in 1717.  He wasn't doing so well in the popularity polls, so his advisers suggested to him that he throw a boating party on the Thames River.  The King's composer, George Frideric Handel, was given the task of writing the music for the party (all good parties need music).  When Handel's Water Music was ready for performance, the King and his buddies listened from one barge, while the musicians performed from another.  It was a huge success, and Handel's watery suites are still recognizable and popular today.

At the end of a long day of swimming, surfing, and boating the Thames, you can relax with Otis Redding, just (Sittin' on) the Dock of the Bay (1967), wasting time.  Watching the boats cruise in and out of the harbour and hearing the seagulls shriek.  Redding wrote the song while literally sitting on the dock of a bay (well, maybe a houseboat).  I've read that the whistling at the end was an impromptu addition at the recording session; apparently, there was some time to fill.  Sadly, Redding died in a plane crash in Lake Monoma, (near Madison, WI) shortly after the song's release.  He never saw his song become a hit.

And with that, I'll leave you to swim around in your own thoughts. 

Nuts and Bolts

Wow.  Do you ever go back and re-read stuff you wrote a long time ago?  Kind of embarrassing.  It probably means nothing to you, my loyal Zombielets, but I have updated/edited/made less dumb-sounding the "About this Blog" and "What is a Music Zombie" pages.

I feel better now.  Until I read them again in a year.

Writing is hard.

Haha!

:-)

I had better include something musical though, so your time reading this won't be completely lost.

Here ya go:

Beethoven composed 32 piano sonatas.

What do you mean "Is that all?"  How many piano sonatas have you written?!

It's fun to stay at the

Y M C A!!

I have started my new day job at the local YMCA.  A little over a week into my new schedule, and so far have had only one mild freak out session (lots of change is scary, unless it's the kind of change you find at the bottom of your bag, and then you're all like "Hey I can do laundry now!").

I'm working in the aquatics department, which gives me lots of time to stand at the side of the pool watching gym members swim back and forth, back and forth, back and forth....which gives me some time to think about my favourite topics: music, science, and the Titanic vs. Iceberg screenplay I am writing (it's going to be a hit!).

In honor of this new mode of accumulating enough money to pay my rent, I thought I'd look into that ubiquitous song about the YMCA.  You know it, you've sang it, you've even probably done the accompanying dance moves; it's that Village People hit: Y.M.C.A. 

The tune was released in 1978, and from a quick glance at the lyrics, the song is about all the great things that the Young Men's Christian Association has to offer.  The author, Victor Willis, insists that though there are numerous double entendre in the song, it was not intended as a gay anthem.  In 1979, the YMCA actually sued the Village People for copyright infringement (and concern over marring their reputation).  The suit was dropped, though, after an increase in membership (behold the power of a catchy hook).

Now, get some exercise and spell out the letters with your arms like I know you've done before. 

Off the Shelf: Away From the World

It is time to finally say something about the latest release from my dear Dave Matthews Band.  Away From the World follows 2009's send up to the recently deceased founding member LeRoi Moore (we miss you, bro), Big Whiskey and the Groogrux King.  Big Whiskey is great, incidentally, and proved to fans that Dave and Band hadn't lost their touch.  Though the true fans never doubted them.

Away From the World, released in September of 2012, was produced by Steve Lillywhite, who had been at the production helm through the 1990s.  Some of the sounds on this album echo back to those songs from that time, and a few tracks, such as Rooftop, carry the dark energy that can be heard in Before These Crowded Streets.

Listening (I mean really listening) to the CD on a recent lengthy drive around southeast Iowa, I came away with a few observations.  Even though the song style and direction the band has taken has been a bit of a turn from the "old" stuff, the music is still clearly stamped "Dave and Band Created This."  It isn't just the characteristic sound of saxophone versus guitar or busy drumming versus violin.  It isn't even Dave's unmistakable voice.  For me, a Dave song is always recognizable by the direction a song will take harmonically or lyrically.

The deluxe CD/DVD set I had ordered from the Warehouse came packaged with photo book, lyric cards, and this little assembly-required dude-in-a-box.

As an example, listen to If Only.  At the start, the song sounds like something John Mayer or Jack Johnson could do (not to belittle John Mayer, but his style different).  It's cool, relaxed, poppy, chillin' outside in the sun music.  I felt this way at the first listen.  The turn happens at the chorus, when he starts with "but I know you and you know me."  That harmonic shift out of a somewhat predictable progression makes the song all his.  Now that I've listened to it a few times, it sounds so inevitable, but the song could have gone in many directions.

Mercy was a track that was released as a single and previewed on tour.  It's a fragile, politically-charged song that reminds us in a gentle way that we're dealing with a thinking rock star.  It is ultimately a hopeful song, in true Dave fashion.  Mercy, will we overcome this?/ One by one, could we turn it around?

Of all of the tracks, the one I gravitated to first was Gaucho.  Flowing melody over a plucky guitar riff, before leading into the hook: "We gotta do much more than believe if we really want to change things."  This sentiment resonates with my own beliefs, which is probably why it grabbed me, but, more importantly, the horn parts on this tune are so well orchestrated.  If there were ever a song that so well features what Jeff Coffin and Rashawn Ross are capable of in a "back up" band setting, this is the song.  And it isn't really "back up" band in the traditional sense; it's so much better!

The quiet solo Sweet was nice to see on the album.  I remember hearing it live for the first time while at the Chicago Caravan show, played as an encore.  Someone had apparently gifted Dave a ukulele and with it he wrote a beautiful little song about his young son learning to swim.

In some ways, this album can be interpreted as an answer to the Band's earliest music.  When Dave asked "Could I have been anyone other than me?" in Dancing Nancies (from 1995's Under the Table and Dreaming), he replies now with this advice in Drunken Soldier: "Fill up your head and fill up your heart and take your shot. Don't waste time trying to be something you're not."

Well spoken.

Status Update

Hello Zombie-lets!

The Undead Maestro of All Things Musical is not for-real dead.  She's just working on a lot of different projects at the moment. Also, I've been gnawing on atonality lately (as you will recall from post-the-last) and it is considerably chewier than pop music.  In my college days of music history and contemporary music analysis, 20th century music was always a bit intimidating.  Not only because for most of our college lives, music majors are just trying to digest over 500 years of music theory and history in a tonal capacity.  So learning how to "break the rules," so to speak, is something that is sometimes approached with a bit of caution.  And, frankly, some modern music is scary sounding.  So, I am re-cultivating my ears to hear the merits of this music and dig into why it was an inevitable course for music to take.  You will hear all about it, I'm sure, given my tendency to make everyone around me learn whatever it is that I am currently learning.

Posts have also been sparse lately because, like some other bloggers, I don't like phoning in a post.  Unless I have something interesting to say or the topic really turns me on, I just can't make myself write something that I feel is worthy of being read.  Writing, like music, is hard work.

BRAAAAAIIIIINNSSS!

P.S. Your assignment is to go to YouTube or the library or iTunes, or wherever it is you locate and listen to new music and listen to a bit of Alban Berg's opera Wozzeck.  That is all.

Atonality

Okay. Pay attention.

I have been doing a bit of reading lately about "Twentieth century" music.  The Twentieth century title really describes music from the early 1900s to present day, so perhaps historians need to come up with a few new labels.  Anyway.

A big part of the Twentieth century revolution in music is something called atonality.  You may surmise, from the "a" in front of "tonality", that atonal music is not tonal.  You would be correct.  But, what does that mean?  Let's look a bit closer at atonality, because I don't want to you be lost later.

Tonality is what we understand best (or, at least, it is what we are most accustomed to hearing).  Pop music is tonal, folk tunes and nursery songs are tonal, much of the Classical genre is tonal.  By calling something tonal, we really mean that there is a pitch that the music centers around.  It is scalar and diatonic in derivation and harmonic function.  In short, stuff works in a fairly predictable way.  A V chord will typically make its way to a I chord, without much weird motion in between.  And even if there is some unusual harmonic motion, the resolution will arrive, even if it is delayed for some reason.

I picture tonal music like this:

The rest of the pitches within the scale gravitate to the tonal center.  The picture illustrates a regular, non-intimidating C major scale.  If you played or sang a major scale and stopped just before you reached the tonic (notice the root of that word is ton) you would have a feeling of unrest.

Try it now: Do re mi fa sol la ti 
If you grew up surrounded by tonal music, as many people do, you may experience a sensation of being unsettled.  We "want" that final do to sound.  You probably silently gave yourself the resolution anyway.  I always do, even if I don't vocalize it.  Tonality is like coming back home after a long vacation.

Atonality is different.  There is no tonal center.  No gravity.  It is kind of like this:

All tones are equal.  No tone in particular is given any sort of function.  Initially, this can seem like chaos, but some atonal music can be quite lovely.  Even listenable.  Arnold Schoenberg wrote some very interesting and listenable atonal music.  He was also one of the first Twentieth century composers to delve into atonality with any seriousness.  Schoenberg will show up again on Music Zombie later. Remember his name.