Great musical ideas from YOU

[weekender]

Jason Pierce from Spiritualized should release a monumental, emotional, raw, heart-string-tugging B-Side called "I Have A Cold".

What other great musical ideas do you have?

_{Weekender does not have a cold, but is merely multi-dimensional in his emotional approach to life.}

[Backstage With Slowdive]

In 1991 I really did have the idea that Blur should cover This Charming Man, so was very disconcerted when years later they did their own composition Charmless Man.

The Fall to write and perform the next UK Eurovision entry.

Pet Shop Boys to cover I Bloodbrother Be by Shockheaded Peters.

[Danger Man]

Pet Shop Boys to cover I Bloodbrother Be by Shockheaded Peters.

Nice.

Perhaps it's time for an el records thread.

[DJ One Record]

I used to really, really want Tom Waits to collaborate with Amon Tobin. However, since Tobin has since gone into a Matthew Herbert-esque project to sample and überedit the entire universe, I would instead like Orbital to get back together so that Waits can collaborate with them instead.

Also, I'd like to see Burial unplugged.

[Backstage With Slowdive]

Steve Albini to produce Girls Aloud.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Scott Reeder, the bassist from Kyuss, should work on a record with Scott Reeder, the drummer from Fu Manchu.

[Marvin]

Thom Yorke should cover It's Not Easy Being Green.

[Ginyard]

Tony Hadley should cover himself in petrol and set himself alight.

[rudi]

As I wrote elsewhere, the snare drum should be banned from all recorded music for a period of not less than twelve months.

[NoSleep]

As I wrote elsewhere, the snare drum should be banned from all recorded music for a period of not less than twelve months.

A century would be more of a challenge. Actually, remove all drumkits (including drum machines and emulation) and see if people can rediscover the actual concept of rhythm apart from having it shoved down yours ear with a loud banging sound.

I blame Norman Cook.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

No drums is what led to Larry Graham inventing slap bass.

[boki]

As I wrote elsewhere, the snare drum should be banned from all recorded music for a period of not less than twelve months.

rudi should be buried alive in a huge pile of snare drums and - for all you students out there - COWBELLS!  There will be a scintillating account of the sound of this happening in next month's issue of The Wire.

[rudi]

Hoo! I want to come to Bangface with you; I'm very jealous.

[NoSleep]

No drums is what led to Larry Graham inventing slap bass.

As an emulation of the sound of the snare: banned.

[Artemis]

As an emulation of the sound of the snare: banned.

Hahahaha, this really tickled me. I feel overwhelmed with a desire to point out the great tunes we'd be without it this was put into practice, but recent reaction to comments I've made of a musical reaction further compel me to avoid the hassle that would ensue. Suffice to say, despite these losses, I'm inclined to agree with you.

[Howj Begg]

A century would be more of a challenge. Actually, remove all drumkits (including drum machines and emulation) and see if people can rediscover the actual concept of rhythm apart from having it shoved down yours ear with a loud banging sound.

I blame Norman Cook.

YES. LAURELS FOR THIS POST.

[Nik Drou]

Well then, as a counterpoint I feel compelled to say that you're all fucking nuts.

[rudi]

Heh, a century would be madness. I watch a lot of new bands, produce them occasionally and review new music, and the ubiquity of the backbeat really depresses me. It's no great surprise that a number of my favourite albums of the past couple of years eschew the "bum BAH" rhythm - it has become horribly monotonous.

Note: 1. This isn't a retrospective ban - just on music to be made in the next 12 months. 2. I'm a huge lover of electronic dance music, a heavy user of the snare, but am willing (and interested) to see where ridding that music of the snare would take it too (I'm guessing it'd get more tribal, like early prog house and that suits me fine!).

[Backstage With Slowdive]

All 80s music should be re-recorded to sound like The Smiths.

[Kishi the Bad Lampshade]

All 80s music should be re-recorded to sound like The Smiths.

fixed

[Howj Begg]

I don't mind if people get their kicks from a banging beat, and can enjoy that myself.
But Mozart and Handel are more rhythmic than everything with a beat released in the last 30 years, and the rock and dance beat have stifled rhythmic invention in music.
They've taken us back to the pre-renaissance in that respect. The great adventure of experimentation in rhythm in western music that stetches from the baroque to the 1970s has been killed stone dead. I for one find it fuckiing boring, though easy to zone out to, which i guess is the point.

[rudi]

How do you define "more rhythmic"? After all, minimal techno is just rhythms, some incredibly complex, but welded to a predictable four four bar (after all, if you can't predict what's coming next, you can't dance to it: fact).

And this

The great adventure of experimentation in rhythm in western music that stretches from the baroque to the 1970s has been killed stone dead.

is patent nonsense. From Plaid, through Venetian Snares, via The Aphex Twin I'd have to disagree rather strongly.

[NoSleep]

Rhythm isn't about keeping the beat. Sometimes it's about defining the beat by actually avoiding the beat: listen to Tony Oxley's drum solo on the John McLaughlin track Pete The Poet. The tempo is perfectly maintained without any direct statement of the beat. It actually sounds, superficially, like it has abandoned any kind of adherence to a structure unless you listen that bit harder. But that's the problem: Pop music is most often produced as a consumer product that requires no effort on the part of the listener. There's no need for someone to engage with what they're listening to in any way dissimilar to the way they might drink a beer or smoke a cigarette. It's possible to learn how to get more out of what you're listening to, and once you engage in this you will want to hear more than what Pop can offer.

How do you define "more rhythmic"? After all, minimal techno is just rhythms, some incredibly complex, but welded to a predictable four four bar (after all, if you can't predict what's coming next, you can't dance to it: fact).

And this

is patent nonsense. From Plaid, through Venetian Snares, via The Aphex Twin I'd have to disagree rather strongly.

But it isn't that complex really. Most techno doesn't engage in anything other than a single tempo rigidly maintained from start to finish of a piece, however "complex" the rhythms are. It's all 16ths, 8ths, 32nds of a bar of 4/4 in 99% of cases, as well. All great for making one record blend into another in a DJ's mix, but that in itself is proof of its inherent simplicity.

Just take a listen to almost anything by Magma to hear the idea of changing tempo stretched to its limits. I really wish the makers of electronica would just try this kind of manipulation. Even checking the tempos of some old James Brown tunes you discover small changes of tempo between verse, bridge, chorus & middle eight, which makes the whole thing sound seamless: sometimes there's tempo changes built into each bar to up the funkiness of the beat. Without that kind of attention to detail it's more difficult to have a contrasting section in a piece of music. Rigid tempo will almost certainly lead to a more homogenous development of a piece. There's nothing wrong with that in itself, until you realise most composers of electronic music may not even be aware of how they're limiting themselves and their music by accepting the default of a single tempo throughout each piece of music (just because that's how modern sequencing software is set up).

Sorry, weekender. Damn me and this post.

[Howj Begg]

Nosleep is the man with the technical definitions, and genuine knowledge, I only know what my uneducated ears tell me. But I am uneducated so I appreciate your post, rudi. I checked out the first vid on youtube of Venetian Snares:

[youtube=425,350]http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=2PBeKzVhWHY[/youtube]

and thought I would put up alongside it one of the most exemplary pieces of what I was referring to:

[youtube=425,350]http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=8kLa1uaCRz0[/youtube]


The VS puts a rhythmic beat on a piece of music which has its own rhythms, in the manner of a lot of electronic music, producing a fit which is kind of postmodern in its disconnectedness. Nevertheless there's a sort of staticity about the result, despite the quality of the beats.
The Mozart to me is illuminated by rhythm in its entire being, its structure is not seperated from rhyhmic invention, the melody is rhythmic, the changes, and stops are unpredicatable (after all, if you can't predict what's coming next, you can't dance to it: fact).<----Exactly.

[NoSleep]

Despite the entirely unpredictable breakdown that occurs about midway(!?!? - is this part of the piece or a fuck-up on the part of the uploader?), and having a time signature of 7/4, that Venetian Snares vid exemplifies the rigid framework that I was speaking of before. The tempo is the same throughout and the development is cyclic. It would have been nice if they had put you down at the end in a completely different place, but we find ourselves back to where we started, as is the case with much techno. It's more about blindness to the default settings of the software used than anything else.

I liked it, though.

[NoSleep]

Here's that Tony Oxley drum solo:

Pete The Poet - John McLaughlin

[rudi]

OK one at a time.

NS: the rhythms within a lot of techno records I have are complex (or even post-complex in the vein of DBX or Robert Hood, say; they completely satisfy your definition of avoiding the actual beat. Dancing in the spaces is what minimal percussive techno is all about when done properly). The James Brown tunes you refer to are still welded to a predictable beat, it's just the tempo that wavers. You could argue that that's what makes the disco of the 70s more pleasing, more "organic" but any DJ worth his/her salt is able to vary the tempo of a set (bear in mind it's the set that's important rather than individual tracks (hence the usage of "tracks" rather than, say, "tunes" or "songs")), moving and affecting the audience through different "moods" as the set progresses.

Pop music is most often produced as a consumer product that requires no effort on the part of the listener. There's no need for someone to engage with what they're listening to in any way dissimilar to the way they might drink a beer or smoke a cigarette. It's possible to learn how to get more out of what you're listening to, and once you engage in this you will want to hear more than what Pop can offer.

True enough, but pop isn't the only music still being made, is it? Again, returning to techno, that's why my sister will listen to one of my records and declare, honestly, that it sounds like the same bar, looped repeatedly til the end whereas I (and my ex-wife, but not my current girlfriend) are attuned, and inclined, to hearing the shifting on the rhythm, the addition or subtraction of elements or the manipulation of either of the above. It's the subtle movement all hidden inside the thunderous beat that is so pleasing to my ear.

And, once again, remember that the tracks are, in the main, made for mixing rather than standalone records and the manipulation of the individual records results in some exciting journeys. It's improvisation in the hands of the user, the consumer, something never seen before in music's experimentation with rhythm.

The Mozart to me is illuminated by rhythm in its entire being, its structure is not seperated from rhyhmic invention, the melody is rhythmic, the changes, and stops are unpredicatable (after all, if you can't predict what's coming next, you can't dance to it: fact).<----Exactly.

But 'twas always thus. That's why you don't get waltzes in 4/4, that's why kids at indie discos only danced to songs they already knew (until the new electro-indie genre spawned quite recently - the change in habit at these affairs is remarkable). But then, that's why you don't tend to play some Aphex Twin at dance nights - they're different, unpredictable (have you tried dancing to Come to Daddy recently?). The drum n bass of Dillinja is mighty but, necessarily, within a predictable stricture; that of, say, Squarepusher, isn't (sometimes) making it rhythmically thrilling but utterly useless for dancing to. Y'see?

I can't listen to those vids you put up at the mo, by the way, so can't comment.

Moving away from strictly electronic music, you get enough pleasing approaches to rhythm from the likes of Mastodon too, let's not forget. But, again, that's why, until you know the tune, they're impossible to dance to.

TL;DR?

If you're going to discuss the death of experimentation in rhythm, dance music is an unfair target. Its predictability is what makes it dance music.

[NoSleep]

I was just challenging your definition of complex, rudi. Listen to that drum solo. It is possible to count the beat all the way through.

[rudi]

Soon as I get near a plugged in computer I will. I'm not sure I defined complex anywhere, mind...

[NoSleep]

Well, you described something as incredibly complex that was rather more straightforward.