Studio Fame

I've been listening to the Apples in Stereo a lot lately, and in reading some of the liners notes, I was reminded that a lot of the members of the Elephant 6 collective had their start in music just with four-track machines.  They would play all of the instruments and overdub them themselves.

And that's essentially the same thing that I'm doing now.  Technology has progressed, so I use my computer instead of a four-track machine, but it's still the same do-it-yourself feeling.  Often, I think about what difficulties would arise if I tried to perform my songs live.  Many of the songs I've written have three simultaneous guitar parts, which I obviously can't play live.  So for the time being, I've pretty much abandoned all hopes of playing live.  It's not really a thing I think I would enjoy very much anyway.

And yet, just because I can't play my songs live doesn't mean that success can't be attained.  The Alan Parsons Project - while it may have more of a cult following than mainstream success - were still received well despite their lack of any kind of live show.  They were based mostly on studio performances but still attained some level of success.  But what I can't figure out is how the Alan Parsons Project started.  Who came up with the notion that a band could be successful without that touring element, and how was that marketing plan drawn up?

I may be mistaken, but I believe that the Beatles were the first band to completely shun live performances and focus solely on studio work.  But even when they were doing things only in the studio, they had at least five years of live performances behind them.  They had built up their fame with those live performances, and their studio work needed only to sustain that attention.

The Alan Parsons Project didn't have that.  They just sprung up in the studio, and they had to create a following based only on records, not on live performances.  That's what I really need to figure out how to do because I doubt I'll be doing any live performances any time soon.

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Do The Best You Can

There's this song by the Hollies, which quite literally says, "Do the best you can."  Herman's Hermits have a song titled "Sleepy Joe," which contains the line, "Do the best things you can everyday."  And in their World Café appearance in November 2011, the Zombies said that they were just trying to do the best they could with what they had.

So there must be something to this.

Over the past year or so, I've been trying to do my best musically, and I realised recently that trying to do the best with what I have has pulled my music in a different direction.  In my poetry class, the discussion turned towards the blues, and the professor explained that modern drumming owes almost everything to African beats, which I've heard before and makes a lot of sense.  But then I started thinking about how that applies to me.  I can't play drums, and I have no way of even faking percussive elements.  (I suppose it's possible to do it with MIDI, but I'm averse to that.)

African drumming has influenced nearly all modern music, but there are still areas that retain their cultural influence.  A few weeks ago, I was listening to the Milk Carton Kids a lot, and their whole instrumental corpus is just two guitars.  Punch Brothers have some really great arrangements without any percussion.  Tommy Makem and the Clancy Brothers recorded traditional songs without any percussion.  But because percussion is so prevalent in the music I listen to, I felt that what I wrote was missing it.  Many of the songs on Newcastle City Gaol feel a bit empty without percussion, but because I had no way of doing it, I just left it out.

But more recently, I've been writing around percussion.  Instead of writing arrangements that are more rock-influenced, I've been writing with more classical influence.  Whether its because my English major has made lyric writing more of a chore than anything else or whether I simply have no-thing to say, I haven't written any lyrics since October.  So because I have no way to use percussion and I haven't been writing lyrics, what I have written has gradually shifted the genre that it belongs in.  (Even though I don't believe in genre, I've noticed this shift.)

So the media has changed the content.  Because I either can't or don't want to include certain musical elements, the classification of what I have been writing has changed.

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Alternate Audio

At the beginning of the year, one of the musical projects I started was Alternate Audio.  Along with a video with the processed, recorded audio, I would post a video where the audio was just what the camera picked up.  (My music videos are definition-scraping in that they are just my sitting there playing instruments.)

I did thirteen of those Alternate Audio videos, and not one of them was watched.  Yester-day, I was editing the organ piece I wrote, and I figured that the Alternate Audio was a bit redundant when the whole piece is just one instrument.

[And, of course, mere hours after I posted this, I re-wrote a section.  But I would have had to re-record it anyway because of some minor audio flaws.]

So since it's easier, no one will be missing them, and because it's a bit redundant for single instrument pieces, I'm discontinuing the Alternate Audio project.  I don't really expect anyone to care that much, but I felt that I should at least write something regarding its termination.

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Immersion

Over the past few years, I've noticed a lot of connexions between learning different instruments and learning foreign languages.  In general, each instrument or language is the same; they produce particular notes or particular meanings.  But each instrument and language does so in a particular way.

I'm sort of interested to see if immersion in particular music styles will have the same effect as immersion in a particular foreign language.  I've experienced this in more haphazard ways; during the past two summers, I went on a skiffle kick and ended up writing a skiffle song for 50/90.  But I haven't done it in a consistent way.

I've been listening to two albums every week this year - the Zombies' Odessey and Oracle and the Moody Blues' Days of Future Passed.  But I think I'm going to add more in the same sort of style and have an album (or an album's equivalent) for each day of the week.  And since one of my musical projects for 2013 is to increase the complexity of my arrangements, that's the central element I'm going to focus on.

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Sunday - Brian Wilson's SMiLE

I was really behind the crowd in discovering SMiLE.  Rumours about it have abounded since recording started on it in 1966; I didn't hear about it until the box set of those recordings was released in 2011.  I found the 2004 version at Half Price Books back in January, and I think I've listened to it every week or every other week since then.  I sort of think that SMiLE has unfairly eclipsed Pet Sounds for me just because I've listened to it so much more.  Brian Wilson's productions are always interesting because they have complex instrumentation and complex vocal parts.

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Monday - The Zombies' Odessey and Oracle

Naturally, I'm biased for this one.  The Zombies have been my favourite band since the end of 2008.  I heard their version of "You've Really Got a Hold on Me/Bring It on Home to Me" back to back with the Beatles' version of "You Really Got a Hold on Me," and there was no contest.  Before I looked at the artist, I thought the Zombies' version was a live recording of the Beatles because their version is just so much more energetic than the Beatles' plodding.

Then I started going through their back catalogue, which consists basically of two albums.  And since Odessey and Oracle is the one that they had the most control over, it's the better of the two.  They have a lot of interesting harmonies and a fair amount of mellotron overdubs.

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Tuesday - The Moody Blues' Days of Future Passed

I had the idea to listen to this every Tuesday just because it's set on a Tuesday ("Tuesday Afternoon") and 2013 started on a Tuesday.  But shortly before the year began, I decided to add Odessey and Oracle, and the two complement each other well, mostly because they both have a lot of mellotron parts.

Days of Future Passed is also significant in that it combines more traditionally symphonic elements with the rock band paradigm, which - granted - the Moody Blues are probably not the best example of, since they included keyboard instruments and flute.

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Wednesday - Emerson, Lake, and Palmer's Brain Salad Surgery

ELP are usually pretty broad in their scope, and I had to decide between this and Tarkus.  I think I like some of the individual songs on Tarkus better, but the songs on Brain Salad Surgery seem more consistent.  Also, the total running time of the different impressions of Karn Evil 9 is longer than the Tarkus medley.  Not that length is a definitive indicator of quality, but since my goal is elaborate and consistent production, it's a useful metric in this instance.

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Thursday - Delicious Pastries' Pretty Please and Will Dixon's This Upward Curve

Both of these are different from the other albums on the list because A) they're both shorter and B) they're indie releases.  Pretty Please has some clear influence from the sort of baroque pop that I'm fond of, and it includes string arrangements along with electric guitar.  And that bending of traditional instrumental corpora is a thing that I'm interested in.  This Upward Curve also has that to some degree; the songs are more folky, but the instrumentation is more rock-based.  It's like Simon & Garfunkel's electrified version of "The Sound of Silence" turned up a few degrees.

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Friday - Argent's Nexus

Argent is becoming my new favourite band.  It's the same kind of direction that the Zombies had (both were bands with Rod Argent, so that similarity is not a surprise), but the themes are beyond simple love songs and the musical scope is larger.  On All Together Now, there's about six minutes of just Rod Argent's organ playing.

I had to choose between Ring of Hands and Nexus (those two are my favourites), and I chose Nexus mostly because of the instrumental songs based on Kohoutek ("The Coming of Kohoutek," "Once around the Sun," and "Infinite Wander").  Lately, all of the songs I've been writing have been instrumental, and for the time being, I don't see that changing much (I have an-other post about this in the works), so I felt that listening to instrumental rock songs would have a greater influence.

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Saturday - The Alan Parsons Project's Eye in the Sky

The only reason I started listening to the Alan Parsons Project is that Colin Blunstone from the Zombies sang on a few of their tracks, including "Old and Wise" from Eye in the Sky.  The production on Eye in the Sky is perhaps less aggressive than that on Brain Salad Surgery or Nexus, but it's still complex - the instrumental part in "Silence and I" in particular.

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So I'm going to listen to these eight albums on these seven days of the week starting this week and continuing until the end of the year.  Hopefully some of the complexity of the arrangements and/or the production will rub off on me.

If you'd like, you can see exactly what I'm listening to by following my music journal blog.

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Opportunity Cost of Practising

I've been playing guitar for four years, and I think part of the reason that I've progressed so far in learning it is the guitar's particular characteristics.  Unlike many percussion instruments or keyboard instruments, there isn't very much set up.  Unlike woodwind instruments and brass instruments, the guitar doesn't involve using your mouth.  And unlike smaller instruments, like violin and mandolin, it sits comfortably in your lap while you aren't playing it.

Because of all of those characteristics, it's been quite easy over the past few years to catch a few moments of practise while waiting for internet pages to load.

But recently, I started thinking about the opportunity cost of guitar practising.  Not in the sense that there is something I would rather do than practise, but rather that there is an instrument other than guitar I would like to practise.  Namely, piano.

I took a piano class in university back in spring 2011.  That's my only formal education for any keyboard instrument, and actually, it's the most recent formal music education I've had since 6th grade band (which - I feel I must note - I did not quit by choice, only by circumstance; we moved, and my new school didn't have a band).  But because I haven't practised a lot of stuff I learned in that class since it ended, I don't remember it.  I still know some fundamentals - the five-fingered position and some basics about scales - but because practising piano is something I have to put some extended and conscious effort into, I find that it's something I'm less likely to do.

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