LR 11-15-2012 Interviews and quotes

Lunch: I don't know yet.

Hi Everyone.

For today's Lunch report, I like to talk about quotes that move you. And I also want to dive deep into the book
SongWriters on Sonwriting. http://www.amazon.com/Songwriters-Songwriting-Expanded-Paul-Zollo/dp/0306812657

First about a quote.
Of all the musicians and composers out there, funny how the best advice for me came from Bach
"Ceaseless work, analysis, reflection, writing much, endless self correction, that is my secret."

We know his secret, now we must implement.

Do you guys have any quotes/sayings/advice that stuck with you in music?


From the book Songwriters on Songwriting, Frank Zappa said this about today's music.
"So you start with a basic sort of fascist marching beat, and then you add a few parallel fifths to it and make sure
that your melodies don't have anything shorter than an eigth note. Make sure that there is an incredible amount of
repetition in the composition, because you're presuming that when people are out there semi-marching and pumping
their buttocks up and down that they couldn't really comprehend any more than a five note melody".

I'm almost done reading the book Songwriters on Songwriting. The 2 worst interviews were from Dylan and Paul Simon.
They just could not shut up. They kept rambling on and on. Surprisingly the older generation gave better advice
than the most,not all, of the 60's-70's drugged generation. Three I can think of were Lvingston & Evans, and Sammy Cahn.

As I was reading the book. I was writing down things I found interesting.

Pete Seeger
1. You have to assume that you write hundreds of songs and you’re lucky if one out of ten is worth singing a year later.

Jay Livingson & Ray Evans
2. To each his own. Write melodies in your head. When you’re at the piano, your hands follow old familiar patterns. If you’re away from the piano, you’re freer. Your mind goes anywhere you want. I have written better melodies that way.
[youtube]xD-DLb8llxA[/youtube]
[youtube]xZbKHDPPrrc[/youtube]

Willie Dixon
3. Blues are facts. Whether good or bad.
[youtube]dQm6wcafQwE[/youtube]

Dave Brubeck (take Five)
4. Follow the music first wherever it leads. All else is secondary.


Brian Wilson
5. Don’t drink coffee. Because caffeine screws up your mind. Don’t drink coffee for inspiration to write a song. Do it out of your own inspiration and the song will come more naturally. Caffeine screws with your creativity. A Lot of people who are creative – like writers, scriptwriters – use coffee and amphetamines to be more alert and try to see the bigger picture while they’re doing it. And I don’t agree with that philosophy at all. I say it should be done on the natch. Because you can get to that same place if you exercise. By running and swimming and working with weights, you can get to the same place that coffee or any of those amphetamines takes you. And you don’t get the jangles. And healthy foods.


P.F. Sloan
6. Three principles to a song: there’s the fantastic inspirational lyric that can take you over even if the music is nothing; then there’s something that is so musically divine that that takes you over, and there’s something with either the vocalist or the instrumental artist that is so divinely inspired that that takes you over.

Burt Bacharach
7. No. I think it’s a discipline. And I don’t necessarily go by this, but it‘s a rule I think I should go by, and when I’m right, I’ll do it , which is: music breeds its own inspiration. You can only do it by doing it. You just sit down and you may not feel like it, but you push yourself. It’s a work process. Or just improvise. Something will come. Or turn on the drum machine. Or turn on another stop on the keyboard. Or get away from the piano. But don’t sit around and wait for something magical to happen in your head or heart.

Laura Nyro
8. I think it’s important, sooner or later, to get on a disciplined schedule with writing


Van Dyke Parks
9. Music has to appear before me. Once it does, I try to find something in the melody that suggests a very specific place. An attitude, a feeling. No matter how ugly that feeling might seem.


After half the book, I stopped. LAZY. I wish
I kept going because people like Lou Reed are unique and I like what they have to say.

The book was interesting in the fact that I had home work. What is "take five"? I would then look it up in Youtube
and who-la. Now I can put faces on the music.
[youtube]vmDDOFXSgAs[/youtube]

I have absolutely no idea why the song "Alfie" was such a hit. To each his own, I guess.


What interview(s) did you like to read?


G&L Question:

What Chord do you like to play on your G&L? One that really rings out.

"Mu Chord"
Walter Becker:"It was kind of a joke, that name. In the late sixties when we first started writing together, we would write or play very simple tunes
and the way that we came up with hopping up major triads was to add a second, usually right under the third. This was
one of the few alterations that you could do to a major chord and still have it sound like a major chord and not a
jazz chord. I don't remember why the name "Mu chord". I am sure there was some very important reason at the time."

"The particular chord that people have mentioned to me is a chord where you have, in the key of C, an E in the bass, a D, a G and a C on top.
It's an extension of the "Mu chord," if you will, but you move the third, the E, into the bass. So it's a
C-Major chord with an E in the bass. As well as a major second. I've been told that in some circles this is known as the "Steely Dan Chord."

Thanks everyone who participates.

Hi Everyone.

For today's Lunch report, I like to talk about quotes that move you. And I also want to dive deep into the book
SongWriters on Sonwriting. http://www.amazon.com/Songwriters-Songwriting-Expanded-Paul-Zollo/dp/0306812657

First about a quote.
Of all the musicians and composers out there, funny how the best advice for me came from Bach
"Ceaseless work, analysis, reflection, writing much, endless self correction, that is my secret."

We know his secret, now we must implement.

my interpretration:
"We" ; ...don't include me
"know" ; ...hardly
"his secret" ; ...doesn't sound secret to me, definitely time and labor intensive ( that's music for ya )

"now we must implement" ; ...you can do what you like, I don't feel much different about what I have to do.

Do you guys have any quotes/sayings/advice that stuck with you in music?

"Confusion will be my epitaph"
" I talk to the wind, the wind does not hear"
"God must be a boogie man"
and
" I need a dirty woman ..." are some that come to mind fir now.

"Mu Chord"
...." I don't remember why the name "Mu chord". I am sure there was some very important reason at the time."

"The particular chord that people have mentioned to me is a chord where you have, in the key of C, an E in the bass, a D, a G and a C on top.
It's an extension of the "Mu chord," if you will, but you move the third, the E, into the bass. So it's a
C-Major chord with an E in the bass. As well as a major second. I've been told that in some circles this is known as the "Steely Dan Chord."[/i]

Thanks everyone who participates.

Have you read 'Godel Escher Bach' ? ...it's a doozie of a book.
Here's a possible explanation for someone contemplating a MU chord:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MU_puzzle

Ew

my interpretration:
"We" ; ...don't include me
"know" ; ...hardly
"his secret" ; ...doesn't sound secret to me, definitely time and labor intensive ( that's music for ya )

"now we must implement" ; ...you can do what you like, I don't feel much different about what I have to do.

You are correct sir. I should not include everyone in that statement.

" I talk to the wind, the wind does not hear"

Elwood your quote reminds me of "Wind, dust, dude" from Bill and Ted's excellent adventure.

Meow,
One of my old clients told me something that I'll never forget because it is mostly true even though it seems a bit derogatory.
" Jazz musicians talk about music, Rock musicians talk about equipment".

Elwood,
Always good to hear a little King Crimson quoted.
Fred

poetics of music by stravinsky is still one of my favorite books.

other than that, there is 4 of the happiest days in a man's life. the day he buys his boat, the day he sells his boat, the day he marries his wife, the day he .... his wife.

Do you guys have any quotes/sayings/advice that stuck with you in music?

" I talk to the wind, the wind does not hear"

The first quote that came to mind for me was also from Mr. Fripp:

[youtube]kJ0_IlD7c14[/youtube]

Go to 1:14 for the start of the quote. My favorite is his comment about public performances at 1:24 - "If you're a turkey, and we're all turkeys, then it's fairly obvious to everyone else that we're the turkey we are, and it's humiliating.".

Another favorite is from Nicolas Slonimsky: "There are 479,001,600 possible combinations of the 12 tones of the chromatic scale...There is no likelihood that new music will die of internal starvation in the next 1000 years."

What is "take five"? I would then look it up in Youtube and who-la. Now I can put faces on the music.

Paul Desmond made that album. The tone he could get out of his horn was amazing. Fifty years later, I'd bet that most of the stars of "smooth jazz" wish they could even come close. His take on "Imagination" on his album "Late Lament" is still a favorite 25 years after I first heard it.

What Chord do you like to play on your G&L?

I like G. Sometimes I also like E.

Actually, I play a lot of three-note voicings (usually root-third-seventh) or four-note voicings (adding a ninth), and work them into scale runs.

In the spirit of the Mu Chord, here are two from Slonimsky's Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns:

Mother Chord: Chord, introduced by Fritz Klein in 1921, containing all 12 tones and 11 different intervals. This chord starts an octave below the A below the low B on a five-string bass, and ends at the 15th fret on the high E string of a normally-tuned guitar. It would take a five-string upright bass, a bass guitar and two electric guitars to play this chord.

Grandmother Chord: Chord, invented by Nicolas Slonimsky on February 13, 1938, containing all 12 different tones and different intervals symmetrically invertible in relation to the central interval, the tritone, which is the inversion of itself; the intervallic structure being a row of alternatingly odd and even intervals (counted in semitones), the odd-numbered series forming a diminishing arithmetical progression, and the even-numbered series an increasing progression. This one would only require a detuned five-string bass guitar and two electric guitars to play.

Ken

http://youtu.be/H-owTb1fdlo

"Music is One" - Nicolas Slonimsky

- ed

Meow, thanks for the entertaining week. I am loaded up and heading out for a gig.

Take 5 is a masterpiece and is timeless. That is true of a lot of songs. I think that music production tools are in use so much today that it can take away from the content of the songs. I believe that songwriting is an extraordinary talent and some writers seem to have many songs that become hits. That is why we are a cover band as we do not have this to deal with. As for quotes, I have none to quote. The only thing that I will say is that if it sounds good, it probably is.

I do not have a favorite chord as such but I do listen closely to the lead guitar and try to compliment the lead work with what I do on bass. See you all next week.-- Darwin