Tag Archives: Music

1 - Your Musical Taste Matters

Your musical taste matters

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This blog is set up for you the reader to select what topics or genres of music that you would like to learn about and discover. I was keenly aware when I was teaching music to kids about how some students were turned off from learning about music because of the sometimes strict and rigid guidelines of the curriculum, especially in classical music and the constant repetition of scales and rudiments.

I changed my teaching habits to adhere to the interests of the pupil. If the student was turned off about classical music and say the Hannon exercises and variations, I would ask “what type of music do you like?”

Many times the reply would be a current song on the radio like Billy Joel or Metallica, Jay Z or Taylor Swift or Miley Cyrus. I would take the opportunity to teach them the aspects of their favorite music, no matter what it might be, even Hip Hop to the frantic rhythms of Death Metal. As the lessons progressed, I would make subtle suggestions of other artists, songs and eventually genres unknown to the student, which led to fantastic results.

With music I have found that many people have very specific tastes and likes. They would tend to stick with specific genres and would consider other genres pure noise. Some people would only listen to the music of their youth and what they grew up on and would resist newer music. Some people would be multi-genre, such as myself, and would be hungry to discover newer and/or older music than the contemporary.

As a child of nine years, I remember disliking Swing Jazz or say the music of Frank Sinatra, in favor of the rock group Kiss or some rock group marketed to young kids. I have since changed these prejudices. I would remember at first disliking a form of music like Country & Western music immensely only to later fully embrace and enjoy the previously hated music.

Now, not everyone can change their tastes and there is nothing wrong with that in my opinion. To this day, there is still some music and specific songs that I cannot enjoy as well as some music that has fallen out of my favor over the years. You like what you like and that is that. It would be unfair for me to consider you uncultured, rigid or lesser of a person just because of your musical tastes.

This blog is set up for you to start with what you like, because of space and scope of study, I am focusing on the Rock Era which is roughly the late 40s to the mid 0’s and the myriad of genres and sub-genres in between these 50 plus years. I have divided up the genres to appeal to the readers’ and listeners’ distinctions between these genres such as differences between Disco and Heavy Metal, Country Rock and 80’s Pop and/or the subtle (or not so subtle) differences between say 50s Rock & Roll and Rock Music of the 60s.

I have subdivided the genres into categories that you can easily find in this blog. I have also included a page of detailed charts of all the genres I intend to cover and where you can find other eras and scopes of study like the Jazz Era of the early 20th century (1890s to the 1950s) or what I am calling the Hip Hop Era (mid 1990s to the present).

I hope to give you the details of the music and genres you love, the stories of your favorite artists, detailed discussions on the genres you may or may not already know and to perhaps turn you on to genres you may not be familiar with at all. Again the choices are up to you, I am merely writing it all up to gear it to your tastes. I will also like to teach you the very basics of music theory and rhythm, specifically catering to the lay person or non-musician using my experience as a music teacher to very young kids and to beginner adults.

I have also teamed up with music providers like iTunes to give you links to go straight to the songs being discussed which you can sample and buy. I can also give you advice on how to get rarities and give you insight on collectibles in other formats like old 45’s and LP’s. I am here for you took pick my brain, so I encourage you to contact me to ask anything you’d like about music.

So dive right in and check out this wonderful and vast array of music that has shaped and changed the structure and social constraints of America in the 20th century. I hope to hear from you!

Pulse

 

2 - The Nature of Music

The Nature of Music

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In the beginning, there was the word, a wave, a frequency, a sound, an utterance, some kind of movement or motion out of a total vacuum or the word is God. Or is it just the way it seems to us humans with limited senses? From a scientific point of view, what is the word but a sound, a vibration, a frequency.

Sound to me is more mysterious when talking about it in relation to music. There is something about music as a language, a conveyance of information or feeling of some sort. This language has structure that can be expressed mathematically in sonic physical terms yet music seems to hold more. More in terms of its philosophical and dare I say spiritual complexity over and above the cold mechanics of mathematics.

A sound can be represented as a sign wave and modulated and combined with other waves thereby creating new waves and sounds of distinct timber.

Chords, melodies, harmonies, beats per minute, the written “word” otherwise known as music theory has continued to enhance  and inspire humanity. A vastly spectacular record of written music has amassed in the past 600 years, and now recorded in the last 100.

That being said … there’s no sound in a vacuum, is there? Just like with light, humans can only pick up a limited range of frequencies which is part the whole grand electromagnetic spectrum. Did you hear the tree fall in the woods?

Some sounds are so high we cannot hear them, conversely some sounds are so low we can’t hear them, yet we sometimes can feel them. Our touch picks up the rumblings that we can only feel but neither see nor hear except with scientific equipment.

 

With some music, you can physically feel it like the sound of an amped 808 drum kick. However, music can convey another usage of the term “feel”. Music can convey the psychological aspect of feeling or feelings. It can mimic complex emotions, it can goad on, it can inspire, it can mesmerize, it can depress, it can conjure. As the saying goes music soothes the savage beast…but it can also rattle the domesticated.

I have always been very sensitive to music ever since childhood and had a wide range of influences. In the beginning I mostly embraced the popular music of the time. I grew up in the album era, so I was listening to long playing albums very early on and found that there were certain songs I would skip. Sometimes I skipped songs out of boredom or sappiness, but other times because the music scared me, it was foreign, in a minor mode or dissonant and discordant to my undeveloped and uncultured ear.

There were boundaries that I at first didn’t cross for many years. As I went on I began to embrace a lot of the music I initially deemed boring, sappy or scary to a fault. I have been accused of now being eccentric in my tastes of music, which is a kind way of saying downright strange or weird.

 

Throughout a lifetime of music I have always been mystified by music and its many features and anomalies. One aspect is the many different perceptions by different “ears” of the same piece of music. The differences in perceptions of meter, pitch, tonality, timber, chord color, expression and overall conveyance by all of us in certain degrees.

I have noticed patterns of people’s predispositions or predilections to certain types of music and types of voices. People stick hard to their boundaries and stay out of certain territories.

These personal musical preferences in music can tell a lot about a person in many ways. There seems to be patterns or stereotypes of people and their likes and dislikes. The stereotypes such as metal headz, disco boys, jazz cats, folkies, funk soul brothers & sisters, etc. but then there are people who like multiple forms of music as well, like me. Another great aspect of music is in its communal nature within and amongst different fan groups.

 

In Quantum physics, time is said to be an illusion yet music cannot exist without the progression of time or is it rather motion. Music cannot make sense without the movement of time, music is a trick of time and yet time is supposedly illusionary on a subatomic level.

From the rhythms of the spheres, the frequencies of their electromagnetic tones and the rhythmic rumblings of the physical tectonic plate shifts. Spheres that are in constant motion, nothing in this universe is standing still there is constant motion. There is no such thing as rest. Music seems to play or is sensed because of this motion.

What is music really? You can’t hold it in your hand, it’s devoid of substance, it’s just vibrations effecting molecules. We all know it exists. Going beyond judging whether a type of sound art is good or bad, we all hear and are affected differently by music which, in some cases, penetrates deep into the psyche. This being said, almost every person is effected by music and these effects are all together different from person to person, whether it’s to turn it up or turn it off.

 

3 - Music Theory for the Lay Person

The Back Beat Revolution

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The Back Beat Revolution

From a drummer’s perspective, “Rhythm & Blues” or “R&B” was a musical revolution. It was the revolution of technology and a trick of the rhythm, where the “back-beat” came about as the dominant rhythm in the last half of the 20th Century. Back when R&B was fresh and new, the “swing beat” derived from a lazy shuffle beat, had been the popular dance beat for more than 50 years, with its emphasis on the “down-beat”.

Recording equipment in the Jazz age was very delicate. It didn’t take much for the drums to get the needle skipping and jumping across the lathes. However, starting in the late 40s and the hi-fidelity of the early 1950s, the technology started to improve enough to be able to handle the high decibel snare rim shots from say Gene Krupa in the Benny Goodman band or Ralph Jones of Bill Haley & the Comets.

Previously, during the swing era of the 1930s and before, there was a great disparity between music that was “live” and therefore much louder than recorded music due to the limits of the technology involved. While the “live” bands it took a whole “rhythm section” of guitars, banjo, piano, bass/tuba, rhythm instruments and drums to keep up with the sheer high volume of the horns and reeds sections this made it necessary for equal stress to all four beats of the count in 4/4, “One, Two, Three, Four“.


Common_time_signatures

Counting Rhythms

In rhythm music theory, “common time” notated as 4/4, “four/four time” or “four/quarter time” or as a large “C” for common, is depicted to the right of the G-Clef above, also depicted are 2/2, “two/halves” or “cut time” (a “C” with a line through it), as well as “two/quarter”, “three/quarter” and “six/eighths” note time signatures.

Time Signatures

The bottom number tells you the type of note to play, in this case it is a “quarter note”; and the top note tells you “how many notes or pulses are in a measure” or bar of music (a measure or bar is a unit of music, in this case of 4 beats).

Top Number:                     3 – (Number-of beats in a measure or bar)

Bottom Number:             4 – (Use quarter notes to count out “one, two, three”)

                                                                     OR

Top Number:                     6 – (Number-of beats in a measure or bar)

Bottom Number:             8 – (Use quarter notes to count out “one, two, three, four, five, six”)

 

This time signature can be counted in several ways such as “One, Two, Three, Four; One, Two, Three, Four” stressing the One count of each measure. Another way to count in the time signature of 4/4, which helps with marching and dancing, is on the down-beats, “One, Two, Three, Four; One, Two, Three, Four” which has its accents on the down-beats  or the odd-beats of one and three. You can also keep time by saying or thinking “Left, Right, Left, Right” in marching or “Right, Left, Right, Left” in dancing.

 

Counting the Back Beat

The “Back-Beat” is counted as “One, Two, Three, Four” which has its accents on the up-beats or the even beats two and four, which at faster meters such as 116 to 120 beats per minute (bpm) or allegro moderato, is a very easy pulse for dancing. This “Back-Beat” pulse has been used in all of the modern R&B derived dance music of the late twentieth century including “classic R&B”, “Doo-Wop”, “Rock & Roll”, “Soul”, “Disco”, “House & Techno”, “Modern Dance Music”, “Electronica” and many other forms of dance music.

With a drum-set you can further subdivide the “back-beat” count as shown below, counted as “One-And, Two-And, Three-And, Four-And” or “Bass-And, Snare-And, Bass-And, Snare-And” where the bass drum gets the down-beats, on the one and the three, and where the snare drum hits the accents, defining the “back-beat” on the Two and the Four beats. The hi-hat cymbals keep a steady count of (8), eighth notes, counted as ” One, And, Two, And, Three, And, Four, And” as seen below.

350px-Characteristic_rock_drum_pattern (1)

Tempos

The tempo of a song is very important, it is not merely a question of fast or slow but all the variables between fast or slow and its extremes. Songs at 120 beats per minute is standard for a good dance beat, close to the human heart rate at exercise. At this rate, dancing is very healthy for you, many people use music in concert with their jogging and other exercise routines.

Slower tempos of andante (76 to 108 bpm) or andantino (80 to 108 bpm) were used for ballads and love songs in popular music and also in slow metered country & western songs, for dancing it was just a good excuse to get close to your partner. Then there were the mid-tempo songs of moderato 108-120 bpm, where the great radio friendly, storytelling, hook that would stick in your mind for hours, songs off the radio in the 1950s came of age.

 

Pulse and Meter

Some of the slower tempos had a triple meter “One, two, three; One , two, three” rather than the duple pulse of “One, two; One, two”. Another popular rhythm in R&B, derived from the Boogie Woogie beat in Jazz which is a triple meter counted either as “One-Trip-Let, Two- Trip-Let” or as “One, Two, Three; Four, Five, Six”, which basically takes a duple meter like the one below-left and subdivides it into a triple meter like the figure below-right.

250px-Simple_duple_drum_pattern

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now, remember, top note tells you how many beats, and the bottom note tells you which note to use. In the figures above-left, quarter notes are counted, in the figure on the right, eighth notes are used to count. Notice how these examples of a duple meter and a triple meter can be mixed and intertwined.

So, simply by putting an accent on the Two and the Four of a rhythm in common time, popular music was transformed. The philosophy of the heart, the Thub-Dub, Left-Right, binary in nature and syncopation, “If there is a boom, then there is a snap”.