Proof of the Universality of Music – Bobby McFerrin

This video was brought to my attention last week. I know Bobby McFerrin (yes, of “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” fame) is involved in worldwide and unique music education, and this is pretty cool. I guess it also helps explain the popularity of “Wake Up” by Arcade Fire.

Things I Learned Recently About Records

I am old enough to remember having a record player as a kid. While some thought vinyl would remain a distant memory, it has made quite a comeback in recent years (and I have a record player again). There are some issues related to records that we don’t need to think about anymore in the digital age, but these are interesting technical aspects that I never considered before, which I learned about in the last few weeks and wanted to share.

When artists made records, they had to deal with a physical limitation in the number of minutes of music they could put on each side, which is much less information than a CD can hold, not to mention the hard drive of a computer. There is also a small, finite amount of information that can fit in the grooves. As the needle moves from the larger outer rings of a record to the smaller inner ones, the angle of the needle on the grooves changes as the rotations become progressively smaller, so the sound quality is diminished as the record plays.

This means that artists and engineers had to consider the order of the songs, not just for timing and flow of an album, but for the quality and sonic requirements for each song. It’s also part of the reason why singles from albums were usually put in the first or second track position on each side of a record. That’s where the sound quality is best since there is the least distortion from the angle of the needle. The longer grooves can hold better mixes of those songs.

Turns out, Peter Gabriel‘s landmark album So suffered from this problem, which I learned about while watching that episode of Classic Albums. Gabriel wanted to close the record with “In Your Eyes,” but the complex mix couldn’t go on the smaller inner rings of a record. To solve this problem, that song opens the B-side of the album. On the remastered CD of So, the tracks are re-ordered the way Gabriel wanted them in the first place, and it apparently changes the experience of the album because you walk away with a completely different feeling.

Next, think about what this means for a single. In theory, with a record that only needs to play one song on each side (yes, if you didn’t know, there were two songs on singles because why would you put out only one when there’s another side physically available anyway), you would think you could put a better mix on the single than on the record. Well, not necessarily.

Since singles only had to hold one song on each side, they were smaller in size, which means a smaller circumference for the needle to travel. Also, radio used to broadcast in mono (actually, AM and talk radio still do), and stations tended to play songs off the singles, not the albums (if you’ve ever tried to perfectly cue up a song in the middle of a record, you’d understand why). When you take away the stereo, some of the sound waves cancel each other out while others are amplified. This resulted in a different sound that sometimes required a totally different mix for the single than for the album. A friend shared some mono mixes of Simon & Garfunkel with me recently after reading my previous post, and I have to say, while some of the tracks don’t change much, some of them sound amazingly different (in both good and bad ways, depending).

Record pressings also sometimes differed from country to country. For example, some versions might have a more balanced sound mix that is generally set at a lower decibel level, while others have some tracks (like the bass) turned up louder with the rest of the tracks lower in the mix. In theory, this was related to the aesthetics of what people wanted to hear and what equipment they had to listen on, but it also had a bit to do with record label interference, as in the case of The Beatles.

A great story I heard and confirmed is that The Beatles’ records, aside from label issues that added and subtracted songs solely for sales purposes, have differences in which tracks were released in stereo and which in mono. Also, quoting from Wikipedia’s page on Capitol Records, “Capitol’s producers significantly altered the content of the Beatles albums and, believing the Beatles’ recordings were unsuited to the US market, modified them. They added equalization to brighten the sound and piped the recordings through an echo chamber located underneath the parking lots outside the Tower.” (See also on that page: Recasting albums for domestic consumption. Yay record industry….) Until The Beatles were able to renegotiate their contract as well as re-release their albums on other media platforms, not everyone heard their music as originally intended.

So crazy, right?! You learn something new every day.

Watch and Learn – Sean Nelson reads Leonard Cohen on Reading Poetry

Warning, this is a post that is not all about music. I knew it would come to this at some point….

Leonard Cohen is an incredible songwriter (inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008), but he is also an accomplished poet. Sean Nelson (formerly of Harvey Danger) is a songwriter and a writer of other work as well.

I came across this video a while ago and thought of it again recently, so I wanted to share it with you. One of my heroes reading the work of another one of my heroes on the subject of reading poetry – brilliant!

Quote to Note – Pete Seeger

Pete Seeger‘s banjo head, on display at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum, reads:

“This machine surrounds hate And forces it to surrender.”

I think that’s pretty groovy.

Recommended Viewing – Simon & Garfunkel “The Harmony Game”

If you are a fan of Simon & Garfunkel, or if you are a songwriter, or if you are interested in studio craft, I recommend finding “Simon & Garfunkel – The Harmony Game – The Making of Bridge Over Troubled Water,” which I watched on VH1Classic last weekend. Through interviews and archival footage with those two gents, their producer, their manager, and several of their studio musicians (many of whom were part of The Wrecking Crew), it documents the making of their last studio album for Columbia Records. You will learn a little about their process, their friendship, the meanings of several of their landmark songs, and many interesting facts about the recording process of brilliant producer and engineer, Roy Halee.

The documentary also includes a bit about Simon & Garfunkel’s 1969 TV special, Songs of America, which I really want to see now that I’ve found it on YouTube. Directed by Charles Grodin, it was not what the sponsors were expecting, including footage of the assassinated Kennedys, Martin Luther King Jr., and protest marches. It also contained footage of their previous tour, both onstage and backstage, but that’s not really what it was remembered for. (Oh, it looks like you can buy both movies on iTunes if you are so inclined.

Getting back to “Harmony Game,” there were some specific highlights for me. First and foremost, Halee’s process and his ear make him a rare talent. He was very sensitive to sounds and spaces, especially when dealing with echo. Apparently, he would walk around the studio snapping his fingers or clapping his hands and tell the musicians which instruments to set up where based on the nuances of what he heard. Sometimes they wouldn’t even use the studio but find a location elsewhere that was to his liking. He also thought the vibrations of Simon’s and Garfunkel’s voices came through better when they shared a microphone as opposed to when they were tracked separately, so he recorded them both ways to get the final stereo mix. There are some other really great stories about how specific tracks were recorded and where, but I have to leave something for you to watch!

SPOILER ALERT – I have to caution you against reading further if you want the duo’s magic completely intact. These two tidbits were really crazy to me, and I’m not sure if I wanted to know them or not, but now that I do, I’m compelled to share them. Paul & Artie, as they refer to each other in the doc, have known each other since they were eleven years old growing up in Queens. Their nicknames as boys were “Tom and Jerry,” like the cartoon. Before “Bridge” was recorded, Garfunkel went to Mexico to film Catch 22. This made Simon feel like “The Only Living Boy in New York.” Get it now?! Also, “Cecilia” refers to Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of musicians. The basis for the unique percussion jamming came from Paul, Artie, and some friends recording a several-hours long jam one night (likely while high) with a reverb effect turned on that caused a quarter second delay. They picked their favorite groove and looped it in the studio. Now you know.

And you’ll know much more if you watch it.  🙂

Know Your History – Bruno Bartoletti (Conductor)

Today I learned that Italian conductor Bruno Bartoletti, who for many years was the artistic director and principal conductor at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, passed away. You can read the Chicago Tribune obituary here.

When I was a kid, I sang in the Lyric Opera Children’s Chorus. I learned so much from watching Maestro Bartoletti conduct. His motion was circular, full of concentric circles, so as he waved his arms and baton it was like an elegant dance. I’ve realized that this is how I keep time when I play percussion – constantly in motion, feeling the music with my whole body, attending to the movement between beats as well as on them (something I recently learned Freddie Gruber taught Neil Peart).

I am so grateful I got to work under Maestro Bartoletti on several Italian masterpieces, which were his forte. I’m glad to have the memories of my sister and I watching him in the pit and on the monitor backstage, pretending to conduct like him on the car ride home. But right now I am very sad for his loss, both personally and for the world of classical music. Nobody conducted Puccini like him, and there is music I will always hear with his tempos in mind.