The comment after that one is also informative.
I was thinking about posting this in comments. Sloop John B is amazing too.
Hey, it turns out there are lots of interesting cover tunes on mefi music, e.g. this droney Hallelujah or this I'm Waiting For My Man.
This is just weird, though.
Both of the songs linked in 4.1 are by the same guy, who in his lower registers sounds kind of like M. Gira.
Talk of tempered scales makes my head hurt.
Is the bottom line of the comment simply that barbershop quartets sound cool because they are not singing in the modern even temperament, which all our instruments are tuned to, but a different temperament that comes naturally to the human voice with a distinctive 7th, and which has its origins in Africa, which was not influenced by the Pythagorean effort to create a perfect temperment?
They are good songs! and thus pretty.
Because the Pythagoreans stayed away, in Africa A^2 + B^2 = C^3.
It would probably be deceptive to say that that seventh has its origins in Africa.
Rather than in the timeless nature of NUMBER, that is!
What I mean to say is, it's probably rediscovered quite often.
(Because of NUMBER!!!)
They are good songs! and thus pretty.
Good songs in the direction of prettiness, I suppose I should say. That conclusion is not supported simply by "they are good songs." But good they are.
Are you talking about barbershop tunes, or the beach boys?
The Beach Boys.
I'll try to make more puerile and obvious, yet labored, comments later in the thread as well.
Rather than in the timeless nature of NUMBER, that is!
The slow descent into Gene Ray-ism begins something like this.
The slow descent into Gene Ray-ism begins something like this.
Forgive them, Father; they were educated stupid.
9: Nosflow Eupompus gave splendour to art by numbers
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This video is miraculously gross. Not safe for work or lunch.
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Pretty wild, Lyndie Bird. But off to The Decembrists.
Huh. That was a surprisingly informative Fark comment. Is the internet going to implode now, or something?
It's very comical to me that the Fark guy thinks that I can hear any of this, much less "hum a "C" then go up a Perfect Fifth to a "G" then down a Perfect Fourth to a "D" then up a Perfect Fifth to an "A" and finally down a Perfect Fifth, you'll be at "E"."
It's stuff like this that makes me realize just how desperately tone-deaf I am. I'm fairly confident that I can't do "Do Re Mi" with anything approaching correct pitch, much less bounce around the scales the way he proposes.
The Beach Boys harmonize nicely, but I'm not sure it's prettier than the Beatles' a capella "Because."
Forgive them, Father; they were educated stupid.
Educated? No.
Stupid? Yep.
If you go down a perfect fifth from A, you'd be at D, not E, wouldn't you?
Yeah, that was presumably a typo for 'fourth'.
Aristocrat vodka is an example of an imperfect fifth.
ogged isn't here anymore
I'm still here, nosflow.
I haven't taken the trouble to find the video of the specific performance he's writing about, but I dispute the Fark commenter's apparent contention that barbershop singers sing in pure intervals. Unlike the Africans he mentions, they learn to sing in the same harmonic framework we're surrounded by all the time, and they use pitch pipes tuned to equal temperament; it's pretty hard for a trained chorus to sing in just intonation. I could perhaps be proven wrong by pitch analysis of barbershop performances, but unless he means very specific performances in just intonation, I doubt it.
17: Wait, what video? I didn't see a link. Not that I really want to, given the warning, but I hate to feel left out.
Also, Bach's system of temperament (apparently his own, and the subject of several attempted reconstructions) was one of many intended to expand the harmonic range of the keyboard while preserving what was called the "variegation of the keys", which is a nice turn of phrase.
The clip reveals to me what I've long suspected. My primary dislike of the Beach Boys stems from just not liking their voices, particularly whoever it is singing the honk honk falsetto line.
||
I find the tone in the third theory here very strange. Chinese people have "certain ideas" about Americans, including that our tastes are narrow? Our tastes are narrow. How many honkies really want to eat pig ears? There seems to be little more disgusting to several of my acquaintances than the thought of eating tongue (something my sainted mother used to prepare not so long ago), and that's a muscle.
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I miss my old barbershop quartet. This reminds me that I've been meaning to call up SPEBSQSA (which, wait, they've changed their name? that's not nearly as awesome an abbreviation) to find some folks to sing with.
"It's stuff like this that makes me realize just how desperately tone-deaf I am."
Me too. I'm better than my dad, who was told by a nun just to move his lips for the concert.
As long as it's admitted that the general Fark "form" is puerile, I'm okay with a once-a-decade reference.
Also, while that one comment is informative? It's excruciatingly long.
Yes, it manages to convey so much information in the bounds of a single comment by making that single comment long enough to hold the information in question.
It's amazing when you think about it, the range of sizes that comments come in. It's theoretically possible to size your comment to fit just about any quantity of information.
I heard somewhere that if you sample N comments the longest one scales like N*log(N).
Someone told me it would help me get chyx.
I've always assumed that I would like the Beach Boys, if I just gave them sufficient attention. This more or less convinces me that I don't like them.
It is obviously skilled and competent. It's even pleasing to listen to, but it just makes me want to listen to something else. Every time I hear something that I like I think, "hmm, this makes me think that I would like [foo] even better."
I don't know, I say that it's important to be able to take music, and in particular older music, on its own terms rather than wanting it to be something it isn't. But I'm having a hard time managing that with the Beach Boys.
And here I just started rebuilding my prog selection. Beach Boys can go between Glen Branca and Brast Burn. Err, not alphabetically.
The early surfer songs are perfection, and America's greatest artitic achievement. Or Not. No the "Help Me Rhonda" "Fun Fun Fun" is a good as it gets.
The later BW of PS and Smile and H & V have some good songs, but I admire the craft more than enjoy most of it. Feels like Brian is trying so hard to be an artist, and not having fun. Neither am I.
Hell, I think I like Free Design a little better. There's lots of good sunshine pop that doesn't make you feel like you need to doff your gimmecap.
Oh and I listened to John Cale last night and like Cohen's Hallelujah much better.
41: Yeah, I've tried several times to like the Beach Boys, but without success.
I can't believe people don't want to talk about temperament. It's fascinating! Here's something interesting, a National Steel neck fretted for just intonation. And here's one in performance.
I'd be down to talk about temperament, Jesus, but I don't know very much about it.
Are you familiar with the recordings of Rod Poole, by chance?
He was a guitarist who played in just intonation. (And also improvised in a variety of microtonal tunings, not just intoned.) The most digestible album of his of which I'm aware is Mind's Island w/ the vocalist Sasha Bogdanowitsch, released on his own Just Guitars (ha ha ha) label. He also has a few albums with much longer improvised pieces—I have The Death Adder and December 1996—and a shorter trio piece (~18 mins, the other two guitarists exclusively bow) called Iasis, and some other stuff; one of these albums, I think Iasis, has a little essay about his tuning. He used conventionally-fretted guitars; it was complicated.
Then he was murdered in a parking lot in LA.
Thanks. I knew about the murder, but not really anything about the music.
A while back I bought an oud, which requires playing in all kinds of weird intonations [used in the various maqam]. I've not practiced much, but I find it takes regular practice to even hear the pitches never mind get them bang on every time.
Guitar players use non-standard intervals a fair bit. The various 'blue' notes sich as the minor-third but sharpened a bit in blues [or major third flattened a bit], etc. But it's very crude and unsystematic.
That album with Bogdanowitsch is really very pretty.
Speaking of just intonation, the Warped Canon page is good for lots of fun.
They say that there's a secret dance that leads to tropical romance.
41: I find this surprising. My way in was hearing "Hang On To Your Ego" as covered by Frank Black, figuring out what it was, and then going from there. Macca was right: "God Only Knows" is the greatest pop song ever written.
What are the things you would rather be listening to when you hear the Beach Boys? I might like those things.
I have about a fifth of bourbon and a gallon of blueberries in various states of undress around my apartment, and am in the process of drinking the one and converting the other into cobbler (Becks' recipe, even though cookie type cobbler seems strange to me; we'll see how it turns out) and pie. Fortunately blueberry pastry does not require much use of peeler or knife.
You know what's really good? Bourbon with a squeeze of lemon juice; no sugar.
The very very best iteration of that cobbler I ever made (with peaches) was the time I made it when I was almost too drunk to see. Therefore I predict great things for 58.
I'll keep posting these links forever.
41 is surprising.
Those a capella Beach Boys vids are amazing. With close harmony singing there's some stuff with David Crosby and Graham Nash [with or without Stills] that is pretty amazing. For example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPvOTVVbMko
The improvised overdubbed harmonies that Crosby put together (solo) on his solo album If You Could Only Remember My Name* are great, too. Crosby's voice at that time was quite beautiful.
This is one of the harmony tracks from that album, but done live by Crosby and Nash:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdhSoPmnqI0&feature=related
* truly fantastic, which was a suprise to me when it was reissued/remastered about two years ago. There's a couple of tracks on it that are like nothing else I've ever heard.
64:Remember is a legendary, beloved, amazing album that appears to have crossed the generations. Trippy, ethereal. "Cowboy Movie" manages to be harsh and mystical at the same time. Excepting Neil Young and maybe Manassas the best side work from CSNY.
It was a peak of LA post-psych music. Garcia & Lesh & the Airplane crew (Casady, Freiberg) were working out the new styles and doing tons of session and side work, Mayall was doing the Turning Point, Geffen and the Laurel Canyon crowd. Parsons. For the Roses and Judee Sills' work, especially the overdubs in "The Donor". Sills was seriously into Bach, and her first, which even uses fugues, was recorded (partly produced by Nash) about the same time as Remember She toured that album as opener for Crosby & Nash.
Anyway, a productive party.
This is brand new. I have heard strong complaints about the Rhino remasters though. Compression?
Noticed Crosby did primary harmonies on Jackson Brownes's first two albums. Just an acknowledged genius at harmony.
62: Simultaneously hilarious and disturbing!
re: 68
Yeah, the loudness wars, etc. I was going to say that I don't think I've noticed any particular problems with Remember My Name, but then I opened the audio file for 'Cowboy Movie' in an audio editor just now and superficially the levels do look rammed right into clipping, and ditto the louder parts of some of the other tracks. But that might just reflect the original mix (and also the fairly crude visualisation the software generates_.
Sorry about the html above
Here is another thread about waveforms and Fragile. Scroll to the bottom to see a typical comparison. The engineers at various labels are known by name.
Not just for audiofiles. It's called "brickwalling." The dynamic range is completely flattened so that people in cars or using Ipods don't have to suffer through any quiet moments. The bass & treble are massively boosted in the studio, so you don't have to adjust the loudness control at home. It's so harsh & hard that listeners are just constantly edgy and nervous. Probably a cause of our nasty politics and crude comedy.
re: 68 and 69
Actually, the production notes by the original engineer say that 'Cowboy Movie' was heavily limited at the time of original recording, so it's not a loudness wars/remastering issue, that's the way it always was.
I of course know nothing about the bittorrent world, but I suspect there are good reasons for people to search out the original vinyl or the 1988 Japanese Black Label pressing etc.
The first generation of CD's were often better.
71:I am nowhere near a fanatic about it. Or even very knowledgable.
It is a reason I stick to indie and acoustic for contemporary muic.
re: 72
I don't re: first generation CDs. I gather that the first few years of CD mastering were often quite poor. I'm probably like you, I've done a fair bit of casual reading on the topic but, tbh, I don't really make any particular effort to seek out well-mastered CDs. I just buy whatever it is that I want to hear.
Last Link ...the really good short video on the "loudness wars" with a full page discussion
I'm not completely joking with the last sentence of 70.
41: I find this surprising. . . . What are the things you would rather be listening to when you hear the Beach Boys? I might like those things.
41 is surprising.
Sorry, for not responding, I've been away from the computer. My complaint about the linked Beach Boys songs, similar to that of Bob in 43, is that it's too mannered. It feels like they're trying too hard.
It makes me want to listen to something that's more live, and fun. I like music that sounds like the performer is enjoying it themselves, at the same time that they're directing it outward towards an audience. Those tracks just sound like they're completely directed outwards. I'm sure that the Beach Boys did have fun singing together, but those recordings don't sound like fun, they sound like someone trying to hit a specific mark that will sound good on the record.
So it mostly makes me want to listen to more casual folky stuff. Actually, k-sky, I think you mentioned that you have a copy of my "Woman and Men" compilation (assuming I remember correctly and that I've followed the name change correctly). That's a really good example of a cross-section of tracks that are full of the joy of making music.
As another example of very well worked-out (overworked) harmonies, however, this made me think of this track by the Mamas and the Papas.
Here is a group thread on Rhino remasters. Apparently hit-and-miss, but mostly good. I think the compression was a worse problem 1995-2005
I'm glad to hear that because, in general, I like Rhino's track selections, so I hope that they aren't doing harm with their re-mastering (my experience, in general, in the same. Sometimes remastered material sounds better, sometimes worse).
Last Link ...the really good short video on the "loudness wars" with a full page discussion
That is a fun little video. Thanks.
re: 76
I quite like that about those Beach Boys records. It's the sound of them really reaching. There's something both melancholy and slightly heroic about it.
The evolution of those 60s bands -- from sweet pop through to wild (sometimes hubristic) ambition -- just seems to unexpected now, when bands establish a single style at the outset of the career and then replicate it. I can't think of any modern groups who've made that same transition. Plenty of modern groups who start out with the hubristic ambition, and some who pull it off, but that idea of a band growing away from the mainstream and into something really ambitious, not so much.
It's also the case that, for the most part, these aren't fun tunes.
that idea of a band growing away from the mainstream and into something really ambitious, not so much.
Talk Talk?
re: 79
Yeah, I suppose. There's also quite a lot of bands that went the other way. Loads of early 80s UK pop groups had started out at the far edge of the avant-garde and ended up making top 40 singles. Simon Reynolds Rip it Up and Start Again is a fun read on that whole period.
David Sylvian might be another. Check out who's on his new album.
(Though I don't know how Japan's early stuff should be classed, is the thing.)
Japan were always 'arty'. It's not a similar comparison.
that idea of a band growing away from the mainstream and into something really ambitious
Does Radiohead count, in your view? I'm trying to think of examples.
As another example of very well worked-out (overworked) harmonies, however
Some time last night as I was reading this thread, a twofer (I merge songs) of M & P My Girl and Twist & Shout came up. Lordy. John Phillips was old enough to be influenced by doo-wop, and of course was in one the best folk groups, the New Journeymen.
Phillips is another part of that 60s LA scene which can be described as experimental and competitive in arrangements and harmonies. The Association was LA. Spanky and Our Gang took arranging to excess ("Sunday Morning", "Like to Get to Know You"). Producers like David Axelrod & Curt Boettcher. Sunshine pop. Baroque pop. Psychedelic pop. All sorts of groups I won't bore you with. Radically different from the SF sound. Neil Young's 2nd album was a departure in rock, but a freaking statement in the LA context.
that idea of a band growing away from the mainstream and into something really ambitious, not so much.
It was the times (~67-73), the market, that the labels were willing to give away studio time. It didn't last. Remember My Name is unique in forty years of Crosby's catalog.
re: 84
Yeah, possibly. They occured to me too as the closest. Not quite to the same degree, but definitely a bit.
re: 86
Perhaps, and also the marketing machine that surrounds music makes it harder for bands to break away from what's initially given them some success.
The evolution of those 60s bands -- from sweet pop through to wild (sometimes hubristic) ambition -- just seems to unexpected now, when bands establish a single style at the outset of the career and then replicate it. I can't think of any modern groups who've made that same transition.
This reminds me of the comment that I've seen about The Who -- that they had one of the most impressive learning curves of any band ever. They always had a rock and roll spirit, but they went from somewhat crude playing to being on of the greatest, and tightest, rock acts every.
It's obviously difficult to think of a contemporary group that either was a famous as the beach boys or that started out as conventional that had a similar progression, but you could think of someone like Bjork is an almost cliched example of someone with constantly evolving ambitions. Or look at Nick Cave, who has had a consistent aesthetic, but clearly evolved as a songwriter and performer.
Still, it is unusual and that period from the late 60s to the mid-70s clearly saw an unusual amount of musical growth from a variety of pop music acts.
Husker Du evolved a great deal over their career, and Bob Mould evolved further in his solo career.
90: The move from punk to varieties of ambitious, artistic pop isn't that unusual. It's not really like the move made by bands like Radiohead and all the pop bands of the 60s we've been talking about, who went from middle of the road pop to the most artsy ambitious stuff they could imagine.
It would be really fun if something happened in the music industry to push people toward that kind of change again. Like, five years from now, Miley Cyrus could release a rock opera about the 1848 Seneca Falls, Women's Rights Convention.
Chris Connelly has changed musical styles quite dramatically.
I think it's not just the PR but also the critical discourse around bands that prevents this sort of thing. Groups get classed into those that are allowed to be artistically ambitious and those that aren't, and if someone in the latter category tries to cross over it'll be denounced as pretension.
Then The Jonas Brothers get heavily into Indonesian music and produce an album backed by a full gamelan.
It could work for film, too. Imagine: Nic Cage getting hit by a bus. An improvement!
Yeah, I think 93 is right.
Solo artists are a bit different, though. I think the comments re: Bjork, Nick Cave and others are right, and even in mainstream pop there are probably more examples these days of ambition from solo artists than from bands. People like PJ Harvey and Josh Homme get to change styles and slip between pop/rock and not-pop/rock in a way that ensembles seem to struggle with.
Husker Du evolved a great deal over their career
They really didn't start from a mainstream pop position, though.
Look, we also shouldn't overestimate the "radical change" of 60s pop artists by mistaking what was considered "radical" during the era.
"Thick as a Brick" was number one on the Billboard charts for two weeks.
Did someone delete all my unsigned comments?
99: Did you throw anti-semitic insults at people using grade D hip hop spelling?
Like, five years from now, Miley Cyrus could release a rock opera about the 1848 Seneca Falls, Women's Rights Convention.
That would be funny.
I feel like one other factor at work is that it may be harder to keep a band together. I don't know that much about the music industry, but when I've read about athletes from the 60s, there's a sense that, on one hand careers were shorter because people didn't take care of themselves as well but, on the other hand, the sense of camaraderie, and the chances for teams to play together for an extended period of time were greater.
I would imagine that something similar would happen in the music industry. As the amounts of money involved go up, the stakes are raised for everyone's decision making about their careers, and it makes it more difficult to keep a group of people together. If someone has a slightly different sense of what they want out of their career than everyone else in the band, they have more of an incentive to act on that (and more ability to act on it) the more money is involved.
Briefly then:
1) Beastie boys, and to a lesser extent The Prodigy.
2) Doesanyone knowany good fictional or nonfictional depictions of low gravity enviroments, in spaceships and the like? A friend wants inspiration for his SF novel.
103:Didn't Varley write a story about swimming in a sphere of water?
From my old old copy of Nichols I get "The Beat Cluster" by Fritz Leiber "a delightful account of the attractions of weightlesness" and Islands in the Sky by Arthur C Clarke.
2) Doesanyone knowany good fictional or nonfictional depictions of low gravity enviroments, in spaceships and the like? A friend wants inspiration for his SF novel.
Gosh, I feel like I should be able to help you, but nothing is leaping to mind.
I see that librarything has a tag for, "science fiction in the Solar System" but it doesn't look like it's been used much. I don't know if any of the transhuman space sourcebooks would be useful. The one's I've looked at have been of mixed quality, but it's entirely possible that one of the supplements would contain a well written description of low-G life.
Thx! Specifically lowgravity and not weightlessness.
There is the Larry Niven short story "Spirals" which is entertaining, but probably not helpful (the title is taken from the idea that in a rotating structure things would appear to fall in spirals).
If you're just putting together a bibliography I believe that Outland takes place in low-G, but I'm not sure I'd recommend it as a novel.
In Hal Clement's Mission of Gravity, the questing aliens travel to a zone of their world which is low gravity for them (though merely normal for us). Your friend should read it anyway, because it's terrific.
Several of the stories in Larry Niven's Neutron Star are peripherally gravity-related.
Several of the stories in Larry Niven's Neutron Star are peripherally gravity-related.
Checking to see whether "There Is a Tide" is in Neutron Star caused me to stumble across this amusing comment by Isaac Asimov about "Neutron Star."
I'm surprised no one's mentioned Ender's Game yet.
Took a look at Heinlein's Red Planet juvenile but I can't tell. The pet is a "bouncer". I don't remember much in the PKD Martian Time-Slip or Bradbury.
But Mars is 0.376g so works set there might be useful.
In addition to achieving zero gravity, G-FORCE ONE also flies a parabola designed to offer Lunar gravity (one sixth your weight) and Martian gravity (one third your weight). This is created by flying a larger arc over the top of the parabola.
Starting at a mere $4,950 per person...
You know for about a decade I heard people talk about "Hard Sci-Fi." I imagined that it was something really technical, where plot points depend on differential equations that are printed in the book, which a character thinks are correct, but the astute reader knows are faulty.
But in the last year or so, I've heard Larry Niven repeatedly described as "hard sci-fi." Niven? The guy I read as a kid in the 70s? That was hard?
I'm surprised that several of us have mentioned Larry Niven but we haven't thought of The Integral Trees. It isn't one of his best novels, but it all takes place in low-g.
"East takes you out, out takes you west, west takes you in, and in takes you east." (note)
I guess what makes Niven hard sci-fi is that the technological gimmick is the main character.
I am honestly not seeing much of a generational difference in the tendency or lack thereof of groups to evolve their sound. If the transformations that the 60s supergroups made were striking in retrospect, it's partly because rock music itself was only ten years old at the time, so 64-66 was the first time it started to incorporate influences from outside pop music. You saw similar things happen in miniature with digitally produced electronic music: a lot of the groups making the "abstract" music in the late 90s started from house-beat driven or four-on-the-floor dance music in the late 80s and early 90s.
Regardless, some individuals/groups that have undergone serious shifts of one kind or another:
Flaming Lips
Jason Pierce (from early Spaceman 3 to recent Spiritualized)
Tom Waits (from pre-Swordfish to after)
Michael Gira (from early Swans to late Swans to Brightback)
But in the last year or so, I've heard Larry Niven repeatedly described as "hard sci-fi." Niven? The guy I read as a kid in the 70s? That was hard?
This isn't a recent thing. Niven's been considered hard pretty much forever; or at least people have been arguing about whether or not he is for ages.
120.1: I think you have pretty much put your finger on it. Also, there are clearly a lot more avenues for people/bands to get their start and some distance into "being known" while playing more challenging, cutting edge or experimental music than back at that time (due to college radio, the 'net etc.). Through the '60s, I think most musicians, no matter what they really wanted to play, would need to go through a genre-specific "funnel" to even get into the public eye. After being established, then they could take it where they wished.
BTW, someone from the time who really went the other way (I know, a lot did, but this guy really did), Steve Miller, whose godfather was Les Paul, high school mate was Boz Scaggs and spent some time early on, well-immersed in the Chicago blues scene.
And not off-topic, Jeffrey Lewis's with a rapid fire overview of folks who did not go through the funnel even back in the day in his entertaining and provocative "Complete History of Punk Rock". Also a good argument starter.
Even though "Hard SF" purports to be hard as in science, it really is hard as in penis.
123: That was interesting. "England stole all the credit for punk" is probably the argument starter, though I'm no expert.
125: Yes. Nothing much before would be "controversial", although the connection to the folk stuff is iclearly detable, but then he throws that little zinger out at the end (and which I'm sure he doesn't totally believe himself). Creative guy; I really like this piece his Williamsburg Will Oldham Horror"".
126: The tone of that struck me as a sort of "fuck Williamsburg; I'm moving to Bushwick" sort of attitude I noticed last time I was up in Brooklyn. Comes off as a bit fey, but fun to listen to, I hasten to add.
England stole all the credit for punk
Thing is, British punk & post-punk is just more interesting than American punk.
</contentiousness>
127: The old guy in several shots with him is Tuli Kupferberg of The Fugs. Lewis is also a cartoonist and pages through these big-paged cartoon albums he has drawn while singing the stories.
re: 128
By so many orders of magnitude it's not even funny. But I wouldn't really have thought that or 'England stole all the credit ...' was contentious. Stealing US-originated musical genres and then doing something interesting with it is pretty much the British popular music modus operandi.
130: Yes, really not that contentious. Just somewhat baldly stated, I guess.
Foxy, science is hard as in penis.
Then he was murdered in a parking lot in LA.
The power of Big Temperament.