Clay MUS 116 Blog

Imagine that a ghost arrives on Earth who erases all music of the past. Every score, every recording, every history book, every performance of every single piece of music written in the past is suddenly and mysteriously vanished. You can recall names of great composers (e.g. Mozart, Handel) but you can recall nothing of their artistic contributions. What is now available is only music of the present day in October 2020.

First, discuss any ethical implications of playing music exclusively of the past. Then please write about the music you would then perform on your instrument and include any links to this music, if possible. Why are you including the music you select? Finally, offer your cogent opinion on this quote from Nietzsche:

If you are to venture to interpret the past, you can only do so out of the fullest exertion of the present. Only when you put forth your noblest qualities in all their strength will you divine what is worth knowing and preserving in the past. Like to like! Otherwise, you will draw the past down on you.

A lot of people do play exclusively music of the past, and this has made a sustainable lifestyle for many people. But I think the consequences to exclusively doing it would just mean for music to not progress. Musical ideas are always being copied, interpreted in different ways, and progressing through time. So if past music was to vanish from us, it’s hard to say what would happen to  our music other than we’d have to start all over again. Also I don’t understand if you mean all the music of the past regarding to every genre? or do you mean just Western Classical music? But i’m  with going every genre. So with that, I would perform this song I enjoy called “going out” by Role Model, I’m including this because I think it would be fun to interpret in my own way, and its one of the only songs I know that came out this October.  It’s definitely a different type of singing that i’m used to, but I think singing in this pop style would be really fun to try out. Lastly, what I got from Nietzsches’ quote was basically to not copy music of the past. What that means for my major (voice) is to not resort to a recording of someone singing the piece i’m about to learn. Not portray what I think the poet felt in that moment they wrote the poem, but to learn the music with nothing but the sheet music in front of me, and reflect my own substituted thoughts and experiences as to why I might feel a certain way in the piece. This doesn’t mean to not listen to any recording at all, but make it original in my own way first before listening to other interpretations.

To reflect on what I wrote before, I’d also like to throw into the question, would we still know how to be an artist? If all the music of the past was to vanish, does that mean everyone who knew how to play piano, guitar, sing etc would still know how to do it? You say only the music in October 2020 onward would be remembered.. so my guess is that we would still know how to do our art, but without remembering all the music that got us to the position we are in. Which is weird to think about because that means all those licks people know on the guitar, vocal styles people sing would all still be there, so just through muscle memory, people would probably be recreating a lot of old music without knowing, in their own interpreted style of course, but I could see a lot of famous melodic and rhythmic lines coming back. Also some cool songs I would also sing that just came out would be “LA DON’T LOOK GOOD ON U” by ASTN and “Dream” by Shawn Mendes. I enjoy this style of music and would go into it if I wasn’t pursuing classical voice right now. Thank you so much for this wonderful class and I will hopefully see you around sometime Mr. Boyle.

Participatory discrepancies in music

I searched for three pieces myself that I believe include “participatory discrepancies” in the music. I thought it would be fun to identify the discrepancies in the music I looked for myself as well.

I noticed in this piece there was a continuous cymbal or pan sound in the drums causing  intonation while it plays on each strong beat. The cymbal sound plays through rests sometimes, really combating itself with the other rhythms going on in the melody line and bass, though still feeling in agreeance with each other. It’s not bad to listen to several times and pick out different parts to follow.

I don’t even know, but I went into the depths of youtube and found this interesting piece. The guitar plays an ostinato line throughout the song and the band plays everything else around it, even tho its really hard to put that guitar line into the piece, it feels left out and conflicting to what everyone else is doing, like also in my first example. The intonation is off but they purposely do it and it makes for a cool sound once you get used to it.

This songs got a lot going on with it, I had to listen many times to pick it apart. It starts with sounds you’d hear in the wild, giving off an outdoor vibe to the music, starting with a very impulsive drum followed by a combatting woodwind. The drums and woodwind are totally off doing their own thing but it sounds very cool. I notice the woodwind sound at the end actually gets response from a bird that is also in the mix. So either they got an actual response from a bird or the woodwind heard the music before and tries to imitate the light, fluctuating bird sounds being heard, something to pay attention to.

If you’d like to see my original prompt on this discussion click here:

https://cb-blog-116.opened.ca/2020/11/03/blog-prompt-8/

The grey text is what I wrote up originally. Most of the ideas in that paragraph I still believe in, but I decided to look more into Philip Ewell’s discussion on confronting the white racial frame in music theory, and try to make my own opinion. In my search, I found 6 blog posts Ewell put together taking about these 6 topic discussions that came from his work. These topics in order include;

1. The Myth of Race and Gender Neutrality in Music Theory
2. Race, Gender, and Their Intersection in Music Theory
3. Music Theory’s Quantitative and Qualitative Whiteness
4. Beethoven Was an Above Average Composer—Let’s Leave It at That
5. New Music Theory
6. Music Theory’s Future

Though It didn’t read all these posts because just the first ones an essay by itself, I read the introduction ideas and summary of each topic to get a basic understanding. What I noticed in the first topic, is how Philip realized he was sought out negatively in his line of work as an ascending music professor for not being white, and how he used the term “white rage” to portray why he was gratuitously disliked by some co-workers. It was only triggered by his advancement as a person of colour (POC), and this drew him to the idea of achieving a more equitable anti-racist, anti-sexist, style of musical teaching.  

He talks about the required languages in American music theory: Ancient Greek, Latin, Italian, French, and German being the only theoretical works worth studying, and coincidentally, these are all predominantly white languages. Even though there is slight dispensation on these rules, making it possibly to study Russian,  Spanish, and maybe non-European tongue, the five original languages still reign supreme due to the deeply embedded existing structures. His solution, either make any language acceptable with exception to one of the five originals, or to dismantle foreign language requirement in general, this anti-racist discrimination acts to cancel out the racist policy in place.

He also talks about maleness and sexism in PhD programs and seminars, and how “Seminars featuring 100% white-male music theorists create hostile environments for POC and non-males and, especially, non-males of colo[u]r”.  This can evidently harm the minorities psychological health, being intimidated and outcast by the overruling majority. Whether its a POC or a non male student in this class, they both have to adhere to the white-male frame that surrounds music and either push through it, or fall to the pressure of the passive aggressive hierarchy. It’s such a deep topic to get into, digging out how white women are able to be more successful at making a career for themselves to due having one “correct” <–( barf) thing going on, their skin colour, but in some places still not getting the same respect as a man would. A short term solution for Ewell would to make these PhD programs flexible, theory being optional since so many already come in knowing what they need. But what about undergrad and masters degrees?? He wants the solution to be as easy as dismantling whiteness and maleness, but that doesn’t seem super easy to tackle. 

This discussion is getting super big and I’m not even a quarter of the way through his material. Also, don’t forget the world is going through a massive race moment in 2020, and this massive blog i’m talking about is just one mans opinion on how he is going to dismantle racism and sexism and other issues in MUSIC. Yeah music is kinda big and done globally, but there is so many other places racism and sexism is seen.

I think its wonderful, but also saddening to realize this video and Philips blogs is the first I’ve really seen people talk about the racist teachings of music theory, that this discussion came to my ears through a very “out of the box”<– (good thing) history class,  in 2020! I don’t know if its cause we’re Canadian or what it is, because I am thought to believe I wasn’t raised with racist ideals, so I would notice racism if it came across to me in situations, but it slips under my nose all the time. I never thought it existed in music theory, I never thought it existed in the community I live in, I realize its so foreign to me because no one talks about it. So i’m glad to be able to look into this situation further, especially for my class since it’s part of the problem we’re discussing.

Igor Stravinsky was known to be one of the last “high-art” composers  to receive such worldwide recognition during his lifetime, and the piece he is most known for today is The Rite of Spring (1913).  Stravinsky, as well as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Debussy, Ravel, and others introduced us to what we call the era of Modernism. Craigs definition of Modernism was simply “a movement in the arts between  1900 and 2000 that promoted a bracing, progressive style antithetical to the traditional values of Romanticism”. Basically they were just braking rules that were often seen in the romantic style, again dismantling the norms of music and art to suit their new desires.

The controversy of the premiere for The Rite of Spring was thought to be due to the modernistic approach, and thats true in a sense. The new “heavy metal” percussive orchestra,  irregular accentuation, polyrhythm, polymeter, dissonant polychords, and excessive multiple ostinatos definitely threw off the audience, and were just heard as horrible, displeasing sounds: so the traditionalist, conservative supporters shouted their outrage once hearing this new work. But it was believed that some of the audience were anti-russian, anti-Diaghilev, and anti-Nijisky factions at work in Paris,  and they were determined to disrupt the performance before the music even started. Others joined in once hearing the “unbearable” music, riot broke out, people fought and people were arrested.

Another situation like this happened at Carnegie Hall in 1973, when the Boston Symphony Orchestra played the standard fare by Mozart and Liszt, and also Steve Reich’s minimalist classic Four Organs. The audience, just like at Stravinsky’s premiere of The Rite of Spring, “expected elegant, gorgeously upholstered traditional music, but instead received [modernized], amplified rock organ music.” said Micheal, one of the other organists. So this shocking shift in style, and also repetitive music outraged the audience, and at one point Micheal had to forcefully mouth which measure they were on so they could continue the music. Also don’t forget, these organists” could scarcely hear [them]selves playing ” said Micheal, and the organs were amplified.  Somehow they got through the piece and at the end there was a moment of silence, followed by an avalanche of noise booing and congratulating these men on their performance. Micheal told Steve Reich, since he was also playing that this was a moment in history to be remembered, and just like Stravinsky, due to the outrage and commotion this piece caused, it came to benefit Steves popularity and recognition as a composer.

https://www.gramophone.co.uk/other/article/video-of-the-day-reich-sparks-a-riot-at-carnegie-hall

In consideration of the whole point of Session 11, discuss how a musician can succeed in Covid times. What adaptations can they implement? What specific challenges do they face? Incorporate specific examples.

This is a very challenging time for most people and artists to adapt to, just like it’s hard for kids to suddenly switch to online schooling. All these online resources more or less existed before, same with online schooling, but because everyones been used to consuming art and education in live performances and schools their whole lives , online consumption for these areas were never the go-to option. Now that the most of the world is forced to stay home, online buying and streaming has become dependable for artists to make money through it, and heres what they’re doing. First off is performing, how are musicians going to perform live online for people and demand pay for a performance people usually would witness in-person,  which often sounds and looks much better? Answer is, prices are going to drop, and that sucks, but also… people just don’t care about contributing as much. But we know this already, and unless you’re Ariana Grande or Joji, charging around $25 bucks for a livestream “seat”, most artists are relying on online tips, bundles, subscriptions for their music. With online streaming services like Spotify, Soundcloud, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Bandcamp, Bandzoogle, some just now including contribution options, this is more possible for the “struggling artist”. But it takes more than just streaming a show and hoping people tip through Paypal or Cashapp, to make some actual money you gotta advertise on social media, start selling merchandise, and get people to subscribe to your creation which is what the company Patreon does. This is a lot of work to make sure you get out there and people see what you create, and my best advice is to just make sure it’s easy. You gotta make sure people can see where the “tip jar” is, make sure donating doesn’t take a long time because we’re all 100% more impatient online since we have no responsibility to be formal, be present in the moment, or any of the stuff you’d do in person. Lastly, make it personal. Nobody’s in the audience, nobody’s at the actual venue to raise the energy, raise the stakes, make it so the camera audience experiences the performance like its in person, not like they’re watching on TV. We’ll have to direct the attention to the camera so it’s more appealing and personal, and hopefully we’ll figure this online performance aspect out soon to get the best results.

The participatory discrepancies I noticed in Polacca, was the addition of instruments and sounds. The song seemed to have a solid beat to it from the drums that stayed similar in the beginning of the song, but then there was guitars making random lines that did not participate to anything that the other guitar was playing and thats where a lot of discrepancy was heard. Also once the song hit around 5:30 It got to the point where I wanted to shove knives into my ears, because at that point it was just noise colliding with one another and not actual sound or melody. It also felt as if it had fighting rhythms, it was truly haunting music.

Spaced Cowboy had the least musical discrepancy in my opinion. The only feature that offset me was the vocals, which was his yodelling in regard to the funky style he was playing. It didn’t fully fit the same style with the drums and other instruments in the track, but overall wasn’t a hard song to get my head around.

I notice right from the start the drums collide with the vocals in Agua que va a caer’s beginning. But the built up tension seems to resolve when the guitar I believe comes in and starts also playing the melody, which doesn’t seem to happen in the other songs. I notice its hard to find the strong beat in the song while listening, since the drums and bass seem to be playing different rhythms which is the discrepancy in this piece. But It works for me and I actually enjoyed listening to the song.

What should a university music school of the near future consist of? Think 3-5 years from right now. Be specific and boldness is encouraged. What would it include particularly towards the aim of dismantling the white racial frame of music theory and history? Consider the following quotation in relation to your work on your instrument:

The practice that neutralizes the common sense intuition of the most privileged members of society as objective knowledge.

To start off, we’d need to address the music and composers behinds these teachings of “music theory”, which would be dead white European men. Obviously we’re not trying to cancel them and never listen to Schubert again, as Adam and Phil Ewell states in their video of Music Theory and White Supremacy, of course not. But what needs to be addressed is the supremacy and racial ties these people had on our learning of “music theory”, and how we can fix the problem of thinking they are the only “geniuses” when it comes to the composition of music. This means adding more people of sexual and racial identification to music teachings, relating to other cultural forms of music from around the world, suppressing the stereotypical art forms not completely, but realize its not the only form of real and proper music, and drop that damned figured bass. That also answers how we’re going to dismantle this white racial framework we have with “music theory”, we’re going to make it KNOWN, we’re going to look at other music written by under appreciated artists, and we’re going hopefully start teaching curriculum that isn’t solely stuck in the past. Lastly, the quote  in regard to my instrument totally exemplifies our racial framework to music. I can tell you right now the only songs on my repertoire list that I have been given as a vocal student are written by white male composers. But due to the conventionalized way of learning music, my common sense intuition was neutralized, and I never thought what I was doing was ever racist or wrong, because that’s what I was told to believe and how I thought I was going to develop important musical skills. So this objective knowledge does identify us as privileged members of society I believe,  and as the people that originally supported this style of learning, are going to need to play a part in changing it.

MUS 116 Concert Response

Clayton Butler 

10/23/20

On October 23rd, I went to Herman’s Jazz Club in Victoria with some other students in 116, and we had the pleasure of listening to Diana Braithwaite and Chris Whiteley perform. Their bandmates included Ashley Grey on the piano, Damien Grey on the drums, and I never caught the bassists name. The concert was in the genre of blues and jazz style music, and their pieces, in order include:

• Struttin with some bbq – Louis Armstrong
• Every Times it rains it rains pennies – Frank Sinatra
• Little Sleepy Village – Diana Braithwaite and Chris Whiteley 
• September in the Rain – Andy Kirk and His Twelve Clouds of Joy
• Rum and GingerAle – ?
• I was telling him about you –  Diana Braithwaite and Chris Whiteley 
• hound dog – Little Richard
• Sweet Georgia brown – Ben Bernie
• Our love is here to stay – Natalie Cole
• Mystery train – Junior Parker
• Sure had a wonderful time last night – B.B. King
• Bye bye Bird – Sonny Boy Williamson II

The structure of the space was formed of: performance wood staging, brick and normal drywall enclosure, carpet flooring, about a fourteen foot ceiling, and plastic sheets hung up for COVID protocols. Appearance of the performers was formal, Diana was wearing a dress the same as the pianist, and the men were wearing suits.

The Instruments in this concert included: Grand acoustic piano, Drums, Upright bass, Trumpet, Electric semi hollow guitar, Resonator guitar, Harmonica, and Vocals. Dynamics I noticed between the two genres were that the blues were more energetic/louder sounding songs, and the jazz was mostly laid back and smooth/soft. The vocals sounded the exact same, so not much dynamics in them at all. The texture of the blues going off dynamics felt more full and beefy, but again energetic as to not weigh down on the heaviness. The Jazz felt light, cool in a sense, and It felt wrong I wasn’t enjoying a beer while watching. Rhythm and tempo varied in pieces, for example “Sweet Georgia Brown” it was more upbeat and bouncy, with compound and syncopated rhythm and a clear swing to it, whereas ‘Our love is here to Stay” was very slow and sway-y on a simple 4/4 beat. Forms and relationships were that blues seemed to all have the 12 bar blues progressions, and had a lot of solos. Jazz had a lot of the same vibes to it, doing a lot of soloing within each piece, and doing all the regular jazz stuff (I’m not too familiar with the form). The drummer was most extreme to me, his drum solos went off in rhythm and dynamics and I couldn’t help but watch him most often, even when the singers were singing. Also another extreme was when Chris started playing the harmonica with no hands. You heard me, he threw that thing in his mouth and played it like he was moving it with his hands, I was SHOCKED! Oh he was also playing blues guitar at the same time… All these elements work out to produce specific electrochemical impulses that then go through my ears that I process as music. I believe almost any kind of music relates to the music covered in class, because a lot of what we’re doing is learning how to listen and pull apart music. Of course we’re going into the history as well, but it’s a lot to do with the music we see and hear today too.

Damien Grey had my attention with his passionate drum playing whenever I wasn’t dosing off. He had a wide variety of drumming techniques used throughout; i.e. doing wirebrush circles on the snare, playing with a towel on the high hat and sometimes the snare, and he wasn’t afraid to hold back on his drum solos, it dragged me in. I was only attentive to Damien 50% of the time though. I was also intrigued to see all the instruments Chris could play, but other than that I wasn’t attentive to the slow jazz. It wasn’t because it was necessarily bad to watch, but that music makes me sit back and think, instead of having my eyes on the performers. My favourite songs were the blues songs, I enjoyed the upbeat stir, the pingy guitar with harmonica, and the drum beats. One in particular I liked was Rum and Gingerail, though I don’t think that is what it is actually called. The drums were most prominent in the song, and Chris played the harmonica without hands. I was shocked and felt a little anxious, because I have a harmonica and an electric drum set at home that I never really touch. It was the sound and performance that I reacted to, and my mood changed shortly after because I don’t like beating myself up over not touching those instruments. The concert went back and forth between jazz and blues songs, so it was more or less the same throughout. I sadly didn’t enjoy Diana’s voice too much. I think if she added more dynamics, passion and involvement to her lyrics the songs would have sounded one hundred times better. Her performance, if she was singing a sad song, or an ecstatic song, all sounded the exact same to me. The selections of pieces couldn’t have been to my taste because I’m only familiar with the famous compositions from that genre, so I have no complaints on their repertoire. It was sort of a familiar experience, I’ve seen a couple jazz performances, but the blues was totally new which is why I was more attentive. No theatrical dimension was portrayed to me, maybe a tiny bit in certain lyrics, she might do a gesture that corresponds.

Overall I enjoyed the experience a lot, especially right now since it’s very hard to witness any live performances. I had a lot of fun being able to watch with my friends too, since covid rules have messed up a lot of social activities. Yes, the performance could have been more exciting if Diana put some oomph into her singing and lyricism, but all in all it was just great to be out and listening.

For this prompt I chose to listen to Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau’s version of Erlkönig by Franz Schubert. I’ve heard of the piece but I never analyzed the singing or poetry in depth, so it was fun to sit back and absorb. My experience with this piece was all over the place at first, I was trying to figure out why the piano starts an sustains a very quick accompaniment all the way through, it feels as if it suggesting someone or something running, I also guess that because of the haunting way its sung by Dietrich, like someone running in a horror movie. In the voice, I believe Dietrich is singing as more that one character throughout the piece, I noticed this because one voice is noticeably frightening, another voice is singing “meine father” I don’t know how to spell in german but it might be some kid, then another voice sound like it is this persons “father”, manlier in a sense. It took a couple listens to pick up the different voices, but its noticeable that the voice just changes every stanza between them and the father and the kid talk half in half of each other. After noticing all this I looked into the poetry written by Johann Wolfgang Goethe, and the translations were really cool. The accompaniment is in regard to a running horse, and the characters are this Elf king (Erlkönig), the father, and the child. I also found a recording of Dietrich performing this, and it is unutterably amazing, you can physically see the different characters on his face, I recommend watching.