tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20711084984808003362024-03-17T19:32:53.747+00:00if i thought you were listening, i'd never say a wordSeven Dialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02847038833093526984noreply@blogger.comBlogger1502125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2071108498480800336.post-5175593503370494752024-03-14T20:00:00.000+00:002024-03-14T20:00:00.234+00:00The Real Reason Why The Pros Like Amp Sims (and you should too)At some point in any review of any guitar amp, no matter if it’s a 1 watt Marshall or a 100 watt Fender, the reviewer will say something along the lines of “this thing can get real loud”. <i>Every amplifier, every review</i>. Maybe there’s a reason?
<br /><br />
There is. Guitar amps have Celestion speakers, or something very similar. These have sensitivities around 100 dB / watt at one metre for a 1kHz tone.(1) That’s eight times louder than you play your stereo just before someone else in the house asks you to turn it down.
<br /><br />
At <i>one watt</i>. Never mind five, ten, or twenty-eight watts.
<br /><br />
It’s not the guitar that’s loud, it’s the speakers.
<br /><br />
What everyone wants is a) a decent amount of sound with a “clean” tone, followed by b) that magical edge-of-breakup as the valves start to run out of headroom and clip the output waveform.
<br /><br />
However, in a conventional valve amp, achieving the first means that the second is only available at ear-damaging sound levels. Conversely, getting edge of break-up at practice volumes almost ensures that the clean sound isn’t that consistent.
<br /><br />
So the world is full of guitar enthusiasts, and indeed professionals, with wonderful valve amps that are forever on 2 and never reach break-up, which is daft, because the point is the edge-of-breakup tone.(2)
<br /><br />
Except…. I mean, I can play <i>Band of Gypsies</i> on my hi-fi and hear that tasty Hendrix tone at sensible volumes - granted that the excitement from higher volumes is missing. What’s going on?
<br /><br />
The edge-of-breakout tone needs the valves in the power amp to be driven hard, which produces a powerful output. Is there a way of sending the <i>waveform</i> to the speaker without sending all the <i>power</i>? It’s usually called <i>attenuation</i> and can be done in a number of ways, and usually, the cheaper the way, the more that lovely hard <i>crunch</i> turns into an irritating <i>fizz</i>.
<br /><br />
At least for analogue methods. Using a decent ADC -> DSP -> DAC sequence may be better, but this starts to turn the amplifier into a hi-fi amplifier, with consequent costs and development programs that only the larger companies can even consider. Guitar makers are old-school electrical engineers unused to the delicate touches required to keep ADC / DAC chips running well, and DSP algorithms are still “secret sauce” even in hi-fi.
<br /><br />
The result is that we have amp-simulation software, developed by computer-centric companies. Kemper, Helix, and others.
<br /><br />
The idea is to record an amp doing its thing as its designers intended, and then throw some kind of wavelet analysis at the input and the output.(3) This provides a description of the change from before-to-after which can be summarised by a mathematical model, which can be turned into fast algorithms run on multi-core chips in specialised computers disguised as multi-button pedals. The required tone is now available independently of volume levels.
<br /><br />
It’s not perfect (though neither is the manufacture of valve amps) but it’s a process that can be iterated for improvement.
<br /><br />
So we have a gadget with an ADC at one end, a bunch of algorithms running on fancy chips in the middle, and then a DAC to provide an analogue signal to an analogue amp, or a USB connection to a laptop running a DAW.
<br /><br />
And not a speaker to be seen, let alone heard at intolerable volumes. <i>This is why the professionals jumped at using the computerised stuff</i>, despite already having a studio with selection of valve amps and speakers. It was much quieter and much less temperamental (just listen to engineers talk, for instance, about how mic placement changes from speaker cab to speaker cab, even when both cabs are the same make and model).
<br /><br />
This also changes the role of the amp / speaker for live listening. We’re not looking for it to provide the tone - clean or beak-up - but to be as neutral or flat as a hi-fi system.(4) Right now the guitar business doesn’t have too many of this so-called FRFR (full-range, flat-response) kit, and what it does have is often described by the familiar phrase “this thing can get real loud”.
<br /><br />
Which really does bring us back full-circle.
<br /><br />
(As you can tell, getting a Helix LT is now my current first step on the gear-upgrade path.)
<br /><br /><br />
(1) Hi-fi speakers are often in the 83 - 90dB / watt range. Which is somewhere between half and a third as loud. <div>(2) Unless you’re Tim Pierce and have your speakers in a soundproofed basement, played as loud as you need with only microphones to hear it. </div><div>(3) It probably is wavelet analysis, but it might be something else with the same result. </div><div>(4) Yes, I know. But in comparison to guitar amps, decent hi-fi’s are pretty neutral.</div>Seven Dialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02847038833093526984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2071108498480800336.post-12555863371186904212024-03-11T20:00:00.000+00:002024-03-14T19:30:58.355+00:00Health Report<p> I have another cold. I am sure I caught it on an over-crowded train from Waterloo to Twickenham Saturday afternoon. I gather the match was quite spectacular. My head feels like it’s stuffed with cotton wool.</p>Seven Dialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02847038833093526984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2071108498480800336.post-81697673458702237532024-03-08T02:00:00.000+00:002024-03-08T02:00:00.475+00:00Up Close and Personal With Valve Amps Recently I visited a friend from back in working days. He has a number of Real Guitars and three Real Amps: a Fender Deluxe Reverb, a Fender Vibro-King, and an Orange Rockerverb. We had a good time trying each one and I did a lot of hard listening. (Because mostly when we hear amps, it’s at 85+ dB and with a lot of distortion, and to repeat, six rubber bands across a dustbin would sound good at 90dB with distortion.)
<br /><br />
I learned a number of lessons:
<br /><br />
If you’ve never heard a valve amp up close and personal, you’re going to get a shock. Even at low settings, it has a clarity and punch that makes it sound much louder than the dB meter would say it was.
<br /><br />
An electric guitar played through a decent valve amp has a heft of sound that is lost in the recording-mixing-mastering process, and it’s pretty much smoothed out by the live mixing desk as well. Raw electric guitars do not sound like processed ones. (As I’ve said before, a lot of what a contemporary guitarist does is produce electronic sounds to enhance the song soundscape.)
<br /><br />
There’s a Rock Music Zone of guitar and amp dial settings and volumes at which Rock / Metal tones exist. Below that, the magic vanishes.
<br /><br />
Especially a Les Paul (or any double-humbucker) can sound fierce if wound up to 9 or 10, but
below that it cleans up to a “jazz sound”, no matter what you actually play and which pickup you’re using.
<br /><br />
Strats sound like quieter versions of themselves.
<br /><br />
Dedicated pedals sound way richer than the on-board effects in the Katana.<br /><br />
Of course I spent the next couple of days trying to reproduce, however approximately, the clean tones of the Fenders on the Katana.
<br /><br />Eventually I found that the trick is to use the Crunch channel and to keep the volume down, set power selector to 0.5W, with the Pre-Amp and Master volumes set to 100. Add Spring Reverb to taste. I’ve set the Booster Effect Level so that bringing it in or out doesn’t change the volume, and use the Blues Drive and Centa OD to provide a bit of flavour, and the Clean Boost to leave the tone unchanged. I’ve also set the EQ to dampen the 4kHz, 8kHz and 12kHz bands, which can create a shrill tone, especially on the bridge pickup.
<br /><br />
Flip the channel from Crunch to Clean and put the power selector at 25W. The result is just as loud, but not as vivid, as the Crunch channel. <br /><br />
The result has a similar sound, but not the physicality, of the valve amps. The result is far more in-your-face than I would have ever devised if I had never heard the originals.
<br /><br />
Am I sold on “upgrading” to a valve amp? Not quite. But that’s another discussion.Seven Dialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02847038833093526984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2071108498480800336.post-6719571063182307042024-03-05T02:00:00.000+00:002024-03-05T02:00:00.133+00:00Wim Wender’s Perfect DayI’m trying to remember when in the last twenty years I must have met Wim Wenders and why he would have been interested enough in my life to listen to me describe it. Up to some details - I have never cleaned up-market Tokyo toilets for a living, and I don’t have any relatives who have chauffeur-driven cars - the life his central character Hirayama leads is very close to the one I lead for a decade or more. The moments when Hirayama (aka, me, played by Koji Yakusho, who is far more distinguished than I) stops reading and turns the light off get the feeling wonderfully. Wenders understands it as the ultimate expression of the autonomy of the single: we decide when our day is done, we end it quietly, and sleep. No-one can suddenly start talking, arrive home late, fidget, throw a mood, or otherwise mess with our final waking moments.
<br /><br />
We older single men have our routines, we take small pleasures in some of the moments of our days, we may read, listen to music and watch movies, go to the gym (Hirayama goes to a public bath) and have regular places to eat and drink, and from the outside it looks like a life, and on the inside it can feel like a pleasant routine, <i>but it is paper-thin, and we have no links with the people in it other than our habitual economic relations</i>. I do recall Wenders giving me an ambiguous look when I described it like that, and here we are those years later, and it’s clear he got the point perfectly.
<br /><br />
The film is not a portrayal of the joys of the well-organised single life. The repeated morning- and after-work routine sequences create the sense that Hirayama is in some kind of emotional stasis. (See also <i>All That Jazz</i>.)
<br /><br />
The film ends with Hirayama being asked, by her former husband, who has cancer, to look after the lady who runs his favourite bar. When asked, he demurs, and the husband, says that he is counting on him. The last we see of Hirayama, he has a tearfully smiling face, intensely staring through the windscreen of his van at the future. He has found, as far as Wenders is concerned, the chance of a connection with another person, and that is a source of both happiness and sorrow.
<br /><br />
I do remember Wenders suggesting that maybe I might find a relationship even in those my later years. He seemed to think it would be a Good Thing. Hard to explain the draw of bachelorhood to a man on his fifth marriage, so I didn’t.
<br /><br />
“Perfect Day” is the most-misunderstood song. The day isn’t perfect because of what the singer does, or who he does it with, but because he is able to forget what a lousy person he is, or perhaps, what a rotten opinion he has of himself. (I think it’s a drug song, but then I would. Others think it’s a song about being with another person.)
<br /><br />
This is where it gets interesting. Perhaps all Hirayama’s “perfect days” are a way of forgetting something that he did, or how he was, at some time in the past. In which case, we have a movie about a man hiding from his past in work, culture and routine.
<br /><br />
Which would mean Wenders really did understand my life back then.
<br /><br />
Leaving only the question of when and where we met.Seven Dialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02847038833093526984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2071108498480800336.post-90219242988616412352024-03-01T02:00:00.002+00:002024-03-01T09:22:06.912+00:00Hypergamy aka The Servant Takes The Money…The concept of hypergamy originates in India: the word was introduced in a nineteenth-century English translation of Indian law. It referred to marriages where the partners did not come from the same caste, and hence (since the caste system is linear) one had a higher caste than the other, and the other had a lower caste than the one. The concept made sense because the caste system was codified and widely understood in Indian society.
<br /><br />
That the translators had to invent a word suggests that there wasn’t already one in English, and so the behaviour had not been identified as a thing-in-itself. Possibly because there wasn’t a defined social hierarchy in English society at the time. This doesn’t mean that some groups of people didn’t think they were better than other groups of people, it means the law or some other institution didn’t codify and enforce those judgements.
<br /><br />
Applying the idea of hypergamy without referring to an established social hierarchy is a tricky bit of concept-stretching. There’s a temptation to define it in terms of the economist’s generalised “value”, which might include anything, and which, crucially, depends on each person’s evaluation of whatever it is that carries the “value” - money, status, kindness, influence, social skills and so on. Two people may agree on the facts, on the things to be valued, but assign different values to each of the things. For example, social skills that are valuable to one person, are useless to another.
<br /><br />
This makes arguments using the concept of hypergamy tricky. One partner in a relationship may think of it as having an equal flow of value, and hence assortive, while the other sees a consistent net transfer of value from them, and hence sees their partner as hypergamous. At this point, the concept ceases to be useful, because it has dissolves into unresolvable disputes over evaluations, rather than facts. Transfers of “generalised value” are not matters of public fact: the <i>what</i> of the transfer is, but the value each person places on it is not.
<br /><br />
So to define hypergamy, we need a bunch of resources that can be publicly observed and measured (in some equally public) way. Typically this would include wealth, income, social standing, political influence, and similar. Secretaries marrying bosses and nurses marrying doctors used to be the romantic staple. This can’t include everything, for a reason we will see shortly.
<br /><br />
A question is whether the consistent net transfer of hypergamic resources from A to B, creates an obligation on B to balance it by doing things outside the hypergamy-criteria, that A finds valuable on a personal level. For instance, a man with money, reputation and social standing may have a partner who provides a sunny attitude, support, loyalty and a splendid cooked breakfast. That’s what’s been missing from his life, and that’s the balancing personal value she provides.
<br /><br />
Answers can be argued in all directions. We might say that the institution of marriage puts men under an obligation to provide a net flow of resources without thought of “reward”: ask not what your wife can do for you, but what you can do for your wife. We might say she was being a free-loading ingrate if she didn’t provide a balancing personal return. We might say that relationships are not supposed to be zero-sum transfers of resources and favours, but opportunities for each partner to show their love by selfless sacrifice to the needs of the other. And other such sophistries to support our chosen side of the argument. This is a dead end.
<br /><br />
The attitude of the partners is important. If she chooses to be a sourpuss to demonstrate that she damn well feels no hypergamy-induced obligations, that’s her decision. She might have chosen to be graceful instead. If A is domineering because “it’s his money”, that’s also his choice: he might have chosen to be gracefully generous instead.
<br /><br />
As I understand <a href="https://youtu.be/1ZG74YSHBZM?feature=shared" target="_blank">Dr Orion Taraband’s discussion of hypergamy</a>, his claim is that a) hypergamy is a feature of female nature (and indeed “female nature” may shape the list of hypergamic resources), b) the net transfer of hypergamic resources from him to her effectively makes her a servant (because <i>in all societies, the servant takes the money</i>), and c) women don’t like being in that position, so they turn into sourpusses. Unless they decide to be graceful, and since Dr Taraban practices in the San Francisco Bay Area, he doesn’t see much of that.
<br /><br />
There is no causal link between being a (hypergamic) “servant” and being a sourpuss. It’s an understandable consequence, but it’s not inevitable. It shows us that the key question to ask about a possible partner is: <i>will this person turn into a sourpuss if she thinks she’s being paid</i>? To see that question is to see that the real questions is simply: <i>will this person turn into a sourpuss given the way I think I’m going to be behaving in this relationship?</i>, because my behaviour is a factor as well. Some of you can do relationships, and some of us can’t.
<br /><br />
The moral of this tale is that men and women need to know <i>what a good partner looks like</i>, and whether they are one themselves. Men need to understand that she’s a good partner because she had (by today’s standards) an exceptional father and mother, and if he doesn’t match up to Dad, she’s going to get upset and leave, or stay and turn into a sourpuss. Women need to understand that he’s a good partner because he had (by today’s standards) an exceptional father and mother, and if she doesn’t match up to Mom, she’s going to feel very out-of-place around him, and will get upset and leave, or stay and turn into a sourpuss.
<br /><br />
I can’t stress this last point enough. Men who want “good women” must be “good men” themselves, and women who want “good men” must be “good women” themselves. How likely is this in a society in which forty per cent of sixteen year-olds are not living with both their biological parents?
<br /><br />
A large proportion of the population simply has no idea what a “good partner” looks like, or how a “good partnership” works. They never see it.
<br /><br />
A lot of people make lousy choices of partner: always have, always will. If they didn’t have hypergamic criteria to help them make those lousy choices, they would invent others. If they didn’t make lousy choices, around half the population would wind up single and childless. That’s what is starting to happen now, but not because people are making better choices or preferring to go without. It’s because they can’t find a hypergamically-acceptable partner who makes them think a bad choice might be a good idea.Seven Dialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02847038833093526984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2071108498480800336.post-19236871329573683742024-02-23T20:00:00.001+00:002024-02-24T21:11:09.067+00:00Electric Piano + Boss Katana - With Added Sound<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">(Now updated with sound file)</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Plug one end of a guitar (or other male-male) cable into the Katana input. Connect the other end to the Headphone socket of your electric piano (a Roland FP-10 in my case). You may need a 6.35mm to 3.25mm adapter. Turn on the Katana. Select the Clean channel, turn the Pre-Amp Gain to zero, and also turn off any boosters / drives. These don’t work so well. Modulations, reverb, echo and delay all work really well. Adjust volume and power level to taste.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dxj2IDQrP_wpSf7KJmEkHUFViIEMN1G8gbQfCnF0zVQ080PjMhmMDHRfqzrZ53y7csmmW-YcVAc4Jbn5nrR3w' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><br />(Blogger doesn’t seem to want to embed audio files on their own, there’s some complicated business with links to upload sites instead. So I put it in a movie file. This was played through the FP10’s internal speakers and recorded on my iPhone.)<br /><div><br /></div><div>You’re welcome.
</div>Seven Dialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02847038833093526984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2071108498480800336.post-18521644795687543822024-02-20T02:00:00.001+00:002024-02-20T02:00:00.143+00:00The Lockdown Policy TestI propose the Lockdown Policy Test. A policy supported or promoted by anyone who also supported lockdowns, masks, social distancing, the Rule of Six, or other Covid measures, is most likely to be as economically damaging, and socially disastrous as any of the Covid measures. After all, if they were dumb enough, or weak-minded enough, to fall for the obvious stupidity of Covid policies, they will probably fall for other dumb policies as well.
<br /><br />
Since the House of Commons, the Civil Service and Local Government is still almost entirely populated with the people who voted for and imposed the Coronavirus Act, and the media is still populated by journalists who went along to get along, and the Universities are still full of academics who stayed silent rather than risk losing their grants…
<br /><br />
…we can dismiss just about any policy or issue that any of them are pushing, from the so-called “climate emergency” to sending illegals immigrants to Rwanda, and from Diversity and Inclusion to Low Traffic Neighbourhoods, electric cars, zero-carbon, and yadda yadda yadda.
<br /><br />
Judge the quality of a policy by the quality of the people, regimes, and societies that adopt it.
<br /><br />
Because now and for the next ten years, we will have a test to judge the quality of the people: did they go along with the Lockdown measures? Seven Dialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02847038833093526984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2071108498480800336.post-52972134765949870642024-02-13T20:00:00.003+00:002024-02-19T19:44:46.624+00:00London From Shooters Hill<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDGfS3pHvZSk3nLac44BO3r7Xy__oQRmThz5zfjENkKjbW0smR7_1wl0S1FjaUaGCVDpAjW9RBwKvoJdZauT37VBIyt_MiTvmuSPF8chaJemGFpAUAxgXgupeFhbHXQFWG8amPtzkkeulfjxEumQI9lZ3AZINJKsQsCiFuyX8-9Bmxw7iMpALHZtfEHIU/s4076/DSCF0646.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1894" data-original-width="4076" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDGfS3pHvZSk3nLac44BO3r7Xy__oQRmThz5zfjENkKjbW0smR7_1wl0S1FjaUaGCVDpAjW9RBwKvoJdZauT37VBIyt_MiTvmuSPF8chaJemGFpAUAxgXgupeFhbHXQFWG8amPtzkkeulfjxEumQI9lZ3AZINJKsQsCiFuyX8-9Bmxw7iMpALHZtfEHIU/w640-h298/DSCF0646.jpeg" width="640" /></a></div><br /> The Met Office changed its mind about Tuesday being sunny and decided Monday was going to be, so at the last moment Sis and I set out for Falconwood and points towards Greenwich. We found ourselves at the top of Shooters Hill - a high point on the old A2 - and saw this view over London. I may go back with a telephoto lens, but until then, cropping will have to do. Open up the original and zoom in on it. There aren’t many places where the whole length of the town, from Canary Wharf to Westminster appears in one panorama.<p></p>Seven Dialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02847038833093526984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2071108498480800336.post-6562212729878446992024-02-09T20:15:00.002+00:002024-03-17T19:32:21.867+00:00Guitarists and Triadic ChordsNot only can we not play full-fledged triadic extended chords on the guitar, but we can’t always play the notes of a special-effects chord in triadic order. (We can always do that on a piano.) So guitarists jumble the notes around the fretboard until they find a combination they can play and call <i>that</i> the “D♭13”. If they can’t manage that, they drop one of the notes and try again. This is why guitar chord books will show two different chords in different positions under the same name with nary a word of explanation.
<br /><br />
These variations are called “voicings” of the chord. Because that sounds like they meant it.
<br /><br />
What does it mean to say you’re playing B♭minor 7♯9 on the guitar, if there are three ways of doing it and each of them has a different set of notes in a different sequence (from the sixth to the first string) and each voicing may be a third or more higher than the next?
<br /><br />
It means two things: first that the triadic naming convention rapidly becomes unwieldy above sevenths; second, that <s>you’re hip to the tricks of the trade</s> you have the musical taste a) not to make a fuss about the ambiguities, and b) to know which of the “voicing” of an extended chord fits which situations.
<br /><br />
It’s even worse than that. Many guitar chords are “voiced” across all six strings. So we can strum an accompaniment easily.
<br /><br />
The strummer’s F-major chord in the first position is F-C-F-A-C-F. An F-major triad is F-A-C - in any key. The six-string chord has the 6-4 inversion (C-F-A), the fifth (F-A-C), and the sixth inversion (A-C-F). Two are major fifths (C-F-A, F-A-C) and a minor fifth (A-C-F). All in one chord. It’s triadic sludge. So are all the other cowboy chords (so-called because they can be strummed across all six strings in the first position).
<br /><br />
Classical guitarists don’t strum, so this mess does not happen in classical music.
<br /><br />
So does this mean (non-classical) guitarists are doing something wrong, or does it mean that conventional triadic harmony is not the best way of understanding what kind of harmonic contributions the guitar can make?
<br /><br />
I would say the latter.
<br /><br />
There’s a story about Joni Mitchell working with Tom Scott. She’s playing piano and Scott - a fearsome jazz session musician - is in the recording booth. Joni plays one of those “Joni Mitchell” chords, and Scott hits the mic and asks “Is that an A-flat 4th diminished 6th” (or some other such). Joni looks at him, then at her fingers on the keys, and then back again.
<br /><br />
“Tom. Ignorance is bliss.”
<br /><br />
I’d suggest that guitarist-harmony / chords is more bliss than book. The better songwriters find their “odd chords” by experiment as much as theory. The theorists then rave about so-and-so’s use of a minor ninth sus-2 (or whatever) as if so-and-so thought about it, when in fact, it’s a chord that results when playing something fairly ordinary and moving one finger forward a fret and another backward a fret. Experimenting. And do-able on stage.
<br /><br />
Every guitarist has to learn the cowboy chords in all the shapes. And the sevenths and major sevenths, and the sus-2’s and sus-4’s. After that, it depends on what genre they are aiming for. As for learning lots of arpeggios? <i>Only</i> be-boppers do that, and be-bop dominates (non-classical) music teaching, because it has rules. (Of course, classical guitarists learn arpeggios, but that’s because a) Bach, and b) treating a sequence of notes across the strings as an arpeggio - and therefore a “chord shape” - is a way of learning the piece.)Seven Dialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02847038833093526984noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2071108498480800336.post-12398136665544003662024-02-06T20:00:00.001+00:002024-02-11T19:34:26.523+00:00Extended ChordsNext up are the chords made up of four notes. These are <i>seventh</i> chords, because four notes each a third apart are a seventh apart from top to bottom. (Weird interval arithmetic again.) In D-major these are:
<br /><br />
D-F♯-A-C♯ I<sub>7</sub> <div>E-G-B-D ii<sub>7</sub> </div><div>F♯-A-C♯-E iiI<sub>7</sub> </div><div>G-B-D-F♯ IV<sub>7</sub> </div><div>A-C♯-E-G V<sub>7</sub> </div><div>B-D-F♯-A vi<sub>7</sub> </div><div>C♯-E-G-B vii<sub>7</sub>
<br /><br />
Look at the cyclic permutations of (say) ii<sub>7</sub> (E-G-B-D). These are: G-B-D-E; B-D-E-G; and D-E-G-B. These are a sixth wide, and have two notes next to each other, the D-E. The first is major, the second diminished (two semitones), and the third can be described as a sus2 (D-E-G) with an add 7 (B).
<br /><br />
For a long time classical musicians stopped at seventh chords, with an occasional foray into a ninth as a stunt. Jazz musicians, however, started with sevenths and worked upwards, notionally to five note chords (ninths), six note chords (elevenths) and seven note chords (thirteenths). A jazz pianist or guitarist thinks nothing of playing D♭13, which is
<br /><br />
Furthermore we can shift the fifths, sevenths, ninths and so on, up a sharp or down a flat, to get truly wonderful monstrosities such as D♭13: D♭(1)-F(3)-A♭(5)-C (7)-E&flat(9)-G♭(11)-B♭(13).
<br /><br />
We can’t play the full-fledged Triadic D♭13 on the guitar, or with a string quartet, and it would need some skilful orchestration to be heard if played by an orchestra. Even if we could, we would only do so very rarely. It’s a mess. As are full-fledged elevenths.
<br /><br />
Composers and songwriters know that chords extending above sevenths are a <i>special effect</i>. (Hindemith says as much in an aside in his book on Harmony.) They may want, say, the effect of the root and the eleventh (fourth an octave up), with the third to indicate that the chord is “really” a minor, and a flat (aka dominant) seventh, because that flavours the chord, but the fifth and the ninth don’t do anything musically useful, and are just clutter. So they write the root, third, seventh and eleventh, and everyone calls it an “eleventh chord”.
<br /><br />
Suppose we want the special effect of a sharp nine against the eleventh? Write the root, sharp nine and eleventh. How about the third? Sharp nines are flat thirds an octave up, and that sounds messy, so let’s leave out the third. Dominant sevenths are a special effect of their own that will distract from the one we want, so let’s leave out the seventh. Let’s put in the fifth so that the chord doesn’t sound too thin. So that’s root, fifth, sharp nine and eleventh. <i>Which is also called an eleventh chord</i>, strictly an “eleven sharp nine” chord.
<br /><br />
Nobody plays or writes full-fledged triadic extended chords. They play or write <s>random</s> carefully-chosen groupings of different notes spreading over two octaves. (Playing the same note an octave apart doesn’t “extend” the chord.) And no group of instrumentalists does this more than guitarists - and any other ensemble with less than five players.</div>Seven Dialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02847038833093526984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2071108498480800336.post-71107360708737070972024-02-02T20:00:00.000+00:002024-02-03T14:32:46.561+00:00Chords and Triadic HarmonyA tune is made up of a sequence of intervals.
<br /><br />
Chords provide a background against which the melody is set.
<br /><br />
Western chords start with Triadic harmony and get more complicated from there.
<br /><br />
We start with… Triads. A Triad is a three-note chord. The simplest are <i>fifths</i>: the base note, the one a third in the scale above it, and the one a third above that. The triadic fifths of C-major are <div><br /></div><div>C-E-G <span> </span> I<br />
D-F-A <span> </span> ii<br />
E-G-B <span> </span> iii<br />
F-A-C <span> </span> IV<br />
G-B-D <span> </span>V<br />
A-C-E <span> </span>vi<br />
B-D-F <span> </span>vii<sup>o</sup><br /><br />
Lower case indicates minor chords, upper case indicates major chords, the 'o' indicates a diminished chord. Minor chords have three semitones at the bottom (D-E-F is Tone-Semitone), and two Tones at the top (F-G-A is Tone-Tone). Major chords are the other way round. Diminished chords have two sets of three semitones (B-D-F is Semitone-Tone-Tone-Semitone). Augmented chords have two sets of four semitones (C-E-G♯ is Tone-Tone-Tone-Tone).
<br /><br />
What happens if we play (say) E-G-C (in that order on the piano)? Now the interval at the bottom is minor, not major.
<br /><br />
Flipping the notes of those triads around, we get the so-called <i>Neapolitan Sixth</i> chords
<br /><br />
E-G-C I <sub>6</sub> (minor)<br />
F-A-D II <sub>6</sub> (major)<br />
G-B-E III <sub>6</sub> (major)<br />
A-C-F IV <sub>6</sub> (minor / sort of diminished-ish)<br />
B-D-G V <sub>6</sub> (minor)<br />
C-E-A VI <sub>6</sub> (major)<br />
D-F-B vii<sub>6</sub> (minor)<br /><br />
Flip once more, we get the <i>6-4 triads</i>
<br /><br />
G-C-E I <sub>4</sub><sup>6</sup> (major)<br />
A-D-F II <sub>4</sub><sup>6</sup> (minor)<br />
B-E-G III <sub>4</sub><sup>6</sup> (minor)<br />
C-F-A IV <sub>4</sub><sup>6</sup> (major)<br />
D-G-B V <sub>4</sub><sup>6</sup> (major)<br />
E-A-C VI <sub>4</sub><sup>6</sup> (minor)<br />
F-B-D vii <sub>4</sub><sup>6</sup> (minor / sort of diminished-ish)<br /><br />
The 6-4 triads get their major or minor flavour from the top of the triad, rather than the bottom, as with the fifth and Neapolitan sixth triads. <br /><br />
All these chords have the property that adding another note a third above the top one just produces the bass note an octave higher. A-D-F goes to A-D-F-A. This is because in the weird arithmetic of notes, a sixth plus a third is an eighth. So these inversions are a Triadic dead-end - though we can add whatever note we want to any of them, and later on, we will.
<br /><br />
The idea of the <i>root</i> of a triad was invented to explain why it is that C-E-G, E-G-C and G-C-E are all I chords in C even though they have different <i>bass</i> (bottom) notes. The root of a chord is the note <i>that would be in the bass, if it was re-arranged as a series of ascending triads, filling in any missing notes and allowing for modifications</i>.
<br /><br />
Simple enough, surely?
<br /><br />
Bassists play the root note, so the rest of us don’t have to.
<br /><br />
Classical harmony theory loves these inverted triads, jazzers barely know they exist.</div>Seven Dialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02847038833093526984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2071108498480800336.post-66083983027770157692024-01-30T20:00:00.000+00:002024-01-31T16:53:07.319+00:00Roman Numeral NotationMost music is written in one of the twelve major scales, and the Major scale has a pragmatically-central position in a (western) musician's technique.
<br /><br />
Because all twelve major scales have the same intervals, anything we say about the musical properties of one scale will apply to any of the others. The Roman Numeral notation lets us do this: it abstracts out the tonic note, but fixes the Major scale.
<br /><br />
I (tonic, first) the note that names the <i>key</i><div>
♯I / ♭II (sharp first, flat second) </div><div>II (second)</div><div> ♯I / ♭III (sharp second / flat third) </div><div>III (third) </div><div>♯III / ♭IV (sharp third / flat fourth) </div><div>IV (fourth) </div><div>V (fifth) </div><div>♯V / ♭VI (sharp fifth / flat sixth) </div><div>VI (sixth) </div><div>♯VI / ♭VII (sharp sixth / flat seventh) </div><div>VII (seventh) leading tone to the...</div><div>I an octave above the start
<br /><br />Counting the semitones from the tonic, these are the same names (without the adjectives like “perfect’) as the musical intervals defined in the previous post.<br /><br />
All the other (equal temperament) scales can be described in terms of this one:
<br /><br />
Natural Minor / Aeolian Mode: I-II-♭III-IV-V-♭VI-♭VII<br />
Major Blues: I-II-♭III-III-V-VI<br />
Whole-Tone: I-II-III-♯IV-♯V♯VI<br /><br />
(The ability to recite any other scale or mode in terms of "sharp this, flat that" with utter fluency is an essential skill of any academic or jazz nerd. I'm not sure how much it helps, but it sounds impressive.)</div>Seven Dialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02847038833093526984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2071108498480800336.post-39666403248621605782024-01-26T02:00:00.007+00:002024-01-26T02:00:00.131+00:00Health ReportRegular readers will remember that about ten or so months ago I was having pains in my right shoulder and arm. I thought this was caused by bad posture playing guitar, but it turned out to be the bad posture of some of my neck vertebrae. Smart readers went long osteopathy and were not disappointed. <div><br /></div><div>I had a reasonably pain-free autumn and was okay until the end of December when I must have done Something Stupid which set the pains off again. I’m not getting the fizzing and buzzing down my arms, but I am getting persistent aches in my shoulder and neck, which are turning out to be so distracting that I can’t really focus on anything for long. I’m swallowing ibuprofen with intermittent paracetemol when needed, because the second time around a pain is much less bearable. </div><div><br /></div><div>I am long osteopathy again. With luck that will work, and isn’t a sign that my vertebrae have got worse.</div><div><br />
In the meantime, I will carry on with the music posts. The real world looks way too shaky right now and I can’t focus on it.</div>Seven Dialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02847038833093526984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2071108498480800336.post-16507680222723835762024-01-16T20:00:00.000+00:002024-01-17T18:57:12.442+00:00Interval Names(This is the first of two slightly dry posts on naming conventions.)
<br /><br />
The <i>intervals</i> of European Equal Temperament scales are defined by counting the number of semitones between the notes and applying the following names (see here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interval_(music) for a longer discussion, including diminished and augmented intervals)
<br /><br />
0 Unison P1<br />
1 Minor second m2<br />
2 Major Second M2<br />
3 Minor third m3<br />
4 Major third M3<br />
5 Perfect fourth P4<br />
6 Augmented fourth A4 / Diminished fifth D5<br />
7 Perfect fifth P5<br />
8 Minor sixth m6 / Augmented 5 A5<br />
9 Major sixth M6 <br />
10 Minor seventh m7<br />
11 Major seventh M7<br />
12 Octave P8 <br /><br />
The numbers 1,2,3... in the names are given by the number of lines and spaces ("staff positions") between the notes on the familiar five-bar stave. That method of counting notes will work for any scale with any number of notes in it.
<br /><br />
C-F is... Tone(D)-Tone(E)-Semitone(F) = 5 semitones = Perfect fourth.
<br /><br />
D-F is three semitones = Minor Third (D-E-F - D is on a line, E is in a space, and F is on a line, so an m3)
<br /><br />
B-G♯ is Semitone(C)-Tone(D)-Tone(E)-Semitone(F)-Tone(G)-Semitone(G♯) = 9 semitones = Major sixth (G♯ is the sixth note in B-Major).
<br /><br />
A♭ - E is Semitone(A)-Tone(B)-Semitone( C)-Tone(D)-Tone(E) = 8 semitones = Minor sixth (E♭ is the fifth note in A♭ and F is the sixth)
<br /><br />
(You can use any method you like to count the semitones. This is my method at the moment.)
<br /><br />
Since the number of semitones between any two notes is independent of the scale or key, <i>interval names are independent of the underlying key or scale</i>, since it depends only on the number of semitones. The same holds for staff positions, so the names of the intervals are also independent of the key or scale.Seven Dialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02847038833093526984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2071108498480800336.post-21724064876506097862024-01-12T20:00:00.000+00:002024-01-12T20:00:00.131+00:00Scales(We are now working in European Equal Temperament.)
<br /><br />
A <i>scale</i> is any sequence of <i>intervals</i> (notice: not notes) that adds up to 12 semitones. Think of any bonkers combination, and someone somewhere will have a guitar tutorial explaining why it should be the very next thing you learn.
<br /><br />
A <i>key</i> or <i>mode</i> is a scale plus a starting note (the "tonic") that then defines a sequence of notes. We say "the key of G-Major" scale or "the Major scale". (Musical speech is sloppy, so we also say "the Major key" or "the G-Major scale".) Two keys are <i>equivalent</i> if they have the same scale. “Scale” = intervals; key = notes.
<br /><br />
There are a number of well-known seven-note scales:
<br /><br />
Major / Ionian Mode: Tone-Tone-Semitone-Tone-Tone-Tone-Semitone<br />
Natural Minor / Aeolian Mode: Tone-Semitone-Tone-Tone-Tone-Semitone-Tone<br />
Harmonic Minor: Tone-Semitone-Tone-Tone-Tone-Tone-Semitone<br />
Lydian Mode: Tone-Tone-Tone-Semitone-Tone-Tone-Semitone<br />
Mixolydian Mode; Tone-Tone-Semitone-Tone-Tone-Semitone-Tone<br />
Dorian Mode: Tone-Semitone-Tone-Tone-Tone-Semitone-Tone<br />
Phrygian Mode: Semitone-Tone-Tone-Tone-Semitone-Tone-Tone<br /><br />
The Ionian, Aeolian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Dorian, Phrygian modes are often called <i>Church Modes</i>, as they were used in early choral singing.
<br /><br />
There are two well-known five note (pentatonic) scales:
<br /><br />
Major Pentatonic: Tone-Tone-Minor Third-Tone-Minor Third<br />
Minor Pentatonic: Minor Third-Tone-Tone-Minor Third-Tone<br /><br />
Two well-known six note scales:
<br /><br />
Major Blues: Tone-Tone-Semitone-Minor Third-Tone-Minor Third<br />
Minor Blues: Minor Third-Tone-Tone-Semitone-Minor Third-Tone<br />
(Minor Third = 3 semitones)
<br /><br />
Exactly one scale of only tones: Whole-Tone: Tone-Tone-Tone-Tone-Tone-Tone
(There are two keys: C and C♯. After that the notes repeat, so starting on D gives the same notes as starting on C.)
<br /><br />
Exactly one scale of only semitones: Chromatic: Semitone (x12)
<br /><br />
If you want to see something truly out of control, look at the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octatonic_scale" target="_blank">eight-note diminished scale</a>.Seven Dialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02847038833093526984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2071108498480800336.post-52181118510946623652024-01-09T20:00:00.001+00:002024-01-12T19:40:42.177+00:00IntervalsThis is the first of a series of posts about music notation and associated ideas. The world does not need this, but I do, to make my own sense of it. There is a lot of notation in music, and it's not all part of one coherent whole. It's a bunch of tools for specific tasks.
<br /><br />
Let's start at the beginning.
<br /><br />
A <i>note</i> is a name for a given frequency. The most well-known note is "middle C" (or C<sub>4</sub>) , followed by "A440", which is the frequency 440 Hz assigned to the A above middle C, A<sub>4</sub>.
<br /><br />
The human auditory system regards two notes whose frequencies are in the ratio 2:1 as very harmonious. This is because musical instruments do not produce pure sine wave tones, but a sound that is a mixture of the fundamental frequency and many others, called “overtones”. Playing A440 will usually also generate an "overtone" of A880, and so it sounds pleasantly matching when played against A880 as a note. This is so much so that two notes related by double frequency are regarded as "the same but higher".
<br /><br />
This splits the range of audible frequencies into ranges called <i>octaves</i>. Pick a starting position, say A<sub>4</sub> = 440, and we have octaves as follows:
<br /><br />
A<sub>7</sub> = 3620 (almost the highest note on the piano)<br />
A<sub>6</sub> = 1760<br />
A<sub>5</sub> = 880<br />
A<sub>4</sub> = 440 (“tuning A”)<br />
A<sub>3</sub> = 220<br />
A<sub>2</sub> = 110<br />
A<sub>1</sub> = 55<br />
A<sub>0</sub> = 27.5 (lowest note on the piano)<br /><br />
(Why is it the lowest? There are pianos which go even lower, but below about 25Hz, the human ear stops hearing a continuous sound and starts to hear the individual beats. The highest note on the piano is 4120Hz and it's very difficult to produce an acoustic instrument that can produce that with significant volume.
<br /><br />
The octaves are not the same size in terms of the <i>range</i> of frequencies, but the <i>ratios</i> of the frequencies are all the same. Each octave is double the previous one.
<br /><br />
Each musical culture picks a different number of different frequencies within an octave to be its "notes". European music eventually settled on a series of frequencies, each one related to the previous one by the same ratio, the 12-th root of 2 (roughly 1.05946). This is called Equal Temperament, and it makes manufacturing and learning to play musical instruments way easier than the other European system did.
<br /><br />
The "distance" between two notes is not measured in hertz (the ear doesn't work like that), but in powers of the 12-th root of 2 (roughly 1.05946). A power of the 12-th root of 2 is called a <i>semitone</i>. (Mathematicians can prove this is indeed a distance function as an exercise.)
<br /><br /><div>Given a note X, the note one semitone up is X♯ and the note one semitone below is X♭. Replacing a note by the flat or the sharp is called <i>flattening</i> or <i>sharpening</i> the note. Under Equal Temperament, (X-1)♯ is the same note as X♭ - these are called <i>enharmonic equivalents</i>.
<br /><br />
For more details, see the excellent and best-selling <i>Your Brain on Music</i>.</div>Seven Dialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02847038833093526984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2071108498480800336.post-20539109391654917252024-01-05T20:00:00.002+00:002024-01-07T15:30:17.718+00:00Ear TrainingOne of the many skills academically-trained musicians have is being able to identify an interval - the distance between two notes. There are twelve in an octave, from the minor second - 6% increase in frequency) - to the octave - a 100% increase in frequency.
<br /><br />
There is of course an app for that. Several. I tried Earpeggio, which offers a wide range of tests. I passed the test of identifying which of two intervals was greater, and I can reliably spot a unison (same note, no difference) and an octave.
<br /><br />
You’d think anyone could tell the difference between a minor third and a major sixth, seeing as how they are different ends of the octave, but nope. Major thirds went unidentified. If I’d been guessing, I would have got about two out of the twenty examples right, so even 50% isn’t awful. I noticed that as soon as I had two succeeding intervals close together, I was much more accurate, since I was relying on the memory of the previous note. But an interval on its own… ouch.
<br /><br />
However, I’ve never done this before, so it’s not hopeless.
<br /><br />
My quick foray into identifying chords was much less impressive.
<br /><br />
It’s a neat thing to do when you have twenty minutes to spare in a quiet place, or with headphones.Seven Dialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02847038833093526984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2071108498480800336.post-61230220149525726742024-01-01T02:00:00.001+00:002024-01-01T02:00:00.124+00:00Happy New Year and A Prosperous 2024 To You All<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8CD9OhLsRDCetHuyy7GkH9XfsbqVf4sxoL1YjQE-in18t9eGkzuGelZBz1_PutzX1l-a3ZQcaAGSq6604ce9LfpQtFc53XM5VNw6zDyTVCGi2E4jfMYwV7ej6YveU0Yr1vYBNwRYGmI_uEtEmpXixXeL5229kF6eG6SswWk3S0SDPh35lpIz8N02i724/s1280/DSCF0501.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="854" data-original-width="1280" height="428" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8CD9OhLsRDCetHuyy7GkH9XfsbqVf4sxoL1YjQE-in18t9eGkzuGelZBz1_PutzX1l-a3ZQcaAGSq6604ce9LfpQtFc53XM5VNw6zDyTVCGi2E4jfMYwV7ej6YveU0Yr1vYBNwRYGmI_uEtEmpXixXeL5229kF6eG6SswWk3S0SDPh35lpIz8N02i724/w640-h428/DSCF0501.jpeg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Nothing says "Happy New Year" like three abandoned boats on Dungeness beach.</div><br /><p></p>Seven Dialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02847038833093526984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2071108498480800336.post-76154065166079678032023-12-22T20:00:00.000+00:002023-12-22T20:26:39.593+00:00Cafeteria<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9yyagQOWQVRRZWz7p1YSriIQPwir9qczKhcT0f82pCK-a6b_lVFYJEGUoy2aK-nH-JXxs4jncKBc0WEbVu13qxDTYJLntf9SYinDPOUbLRFrksTv8S-lTgZ1fp91Ujwzc5zsrzcHxc1YRHK5CyEpS78nIuofbk81p05GBaW7gOtvUREIp7o40dlLR2-s/s1280/DSCF0606.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="916" data-original-width="1280" height="458" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9yyagQOWQVRRZWz7p1YSriIQPwir9qczKhcT0f82pCK-a6b_lVFYJEGUoy2aK-nH-JXxs4jncKBc0WEbVu13qxDTYJLntf9SYinDPOUbLRFrksTv8S-lTgZ1fp91Ujwzc5zsrzcHxc1YRHK5CyEpS78nIuofbk81p05GBaW7gOtvUREIp7o40dlLR2-s/w640-h458/DSCF0606.jpeg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>Charing Cross Road. Do not ask the price of egg and chips and a cappucino. It's not 2015 anymore.</p>Seven Dialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02847038833093526984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2071108498480800336.post-21911834591607849772023-12-19T20:00:00.001+00:002023-12-22T19:56:45.354+00:00People Who Need To Feel... AnythingThere are two views of the Good Life.
<br /><br />
The first is that a good life is full of <i>good works</i>: what matters are the kind, useful, constructive, healing, things we <i>do</i>.
<br /><br />
The second is that a good life is full of <i>feelings and relationships</i>, and it does <i>not</i> matter what those feelings and relationships are: what matters is to feel and relate intensely.
<br /><br />
It's binary: your temperament is one or the other.
<br /><br />
You may, however, believe one, while living the other. Believing that life is for the feeling, but living sensibly, is very common amongst former drunks, junkies, coke-heads, divorcees, and the like, not all of whom enjoyed the ups and downs of their chaos. Chaos is not emotion. You can have emotions and still have a clean and neat kitchen. People who live for feelings often do good works, but for them it's a by-product not a goal.
<br /><br />
The people who live for feelings don't just want rainbows and candy-floss. Emotions need to be sweet and sour. Anger, disappointment, frustration, grudges, revenge, contempt, resentment, are just as good.
<br /><br />
Football fans are like this. They would like their team to win, but what they really don't want is a nil-nil draw after ninety minutes of faultless defensive play on both sides. They want the roller-coaster. It's the same as gambling: losses work the emotions as much as wins.
<br /><br />
Any emotion is better than no emotion. Any relationship is better than no relationship.
<br /><br />
This is only dysfunctional from the point of view of Stoicism, Protestantism, and other such fun-sucking approaches to life, many of which on closer examination turn out to be associated with aristocracy and established wealth. In many societies, vigorous, engaged, volatile, emotion-based action and reaction is prized and honoured by the masses, and is thus highly functional, providing the emotional roller-coaster ride that makes living, well, Life.
<br /><br />
Therapists who emphasise having "good" emotions and "good" relationships , or at least removing the bad stuff, dumping the users, losers and abusers, are in fact closet Good Works people. Emotions and relationships can only be "good" and "bad" relative to some goal or purpose. Whereas to the emotion-centric emotions and relationships have intrinsic value for good or ill.
<br /><br />
Understand that "sour" emotions are as satisfying, if not more so, than "sweet" emotions, and many puzzling things become clear. Especially why people stay in so-called "dysfunctional" relationships, or take stupid risks, or believe daft things: it's all about the emotions. Take away those and their lives become empty, no matter what good things they may also be doing.
<br /><br />
When emotion-centric people get older they can often seem to flip. Suddenly they don't like drama, and aren't interested in people who cause problems. This isn't because they have suddenly acquired a goal in life: it's because the rewards they get from the emotions are not worth the energy it takes to create and maintain those high-cost emotional states. The same cost-benefit calculations that kept them in and around chaos, drama, users and losers, now make them choose to live a quieter life, because the costs don't go down, but the benefits do.
Seven Dialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02847038833093526984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2071108498480800336.post-8002553171646278692023-12-15T20:00:00.001+00:002023-12-16T16:24:54.051+00:00Decisions, DecisionsSo here I am at the wrong end of the age range, seemingly attempting to do something I don't really have the temperament to do. Which means, I need to adjust what it is I think I'm going to be doing and expecting of myself, if I'm not going to be wasting my time. If such adjustments are possible.
<br /><br />
At this point, I want to remind you that I totally do not mind doing spider-walks (look it up on You Tube) for minutes on end. I have something to build on.
<br /><br />
Most people studying music academically pass the next Grade, then the BMus, or whatever, then to get a gig somewhere. Others may want to find a bunch of guys to play with, and then get a gig somewhere, while picking up what they need to know along the way. It's the gig somewhere that's the end goal. These days, that "gig" might be a TikTok channel on which they demonstrate preposterous virtuosity.
<br /><br />
Here's what I could aim for: be able to create a loop of chords that have a sense of direction and some harmonic spice, and solo over it.
<br /><br />
Creating a loop with a Looper pedal is nowhere near as easy as people make it look. Putting together some chords isn't just some random thing either. Neither is soloing, if it's done with any taste. The chords could come from other people's songs.
<br /><br />
In support of this, there is...
<br /><br />
Musical Literacy: reading music, making sense of what is in the score, identifying chords etc
<br /><br />
Sight-reading: a) connecting the notes in the score with the notes on the instrument; b) playing those notes in a musical and fluent manner. (if the notes come from a bunch of Miles Davis solos, so much the better!)
<br /><br />
Basic Composition: how do chords go together? what creates a sense of direction? How do solos fit over the chords (aka "playing the changes")?
<br /><br />
Familiarity with the instrument: where are the notes? Where are the chords? (Electric: where are the tones and effects?)
<br /><br />
And in support of that, there is...
<br /><br />
Technique: a) getting the fingers where they need to be when they need to be there, and no more (no going down shredding rabbit holes); b) learning to use a Looper pedal, and how to set up the gear to do so.
<br /><br />
What about genre?
<br /><br />
Classical / Flamenco / Folk / Acoustic Blues / Jazz Solo. Fingerpicking is beyond me.
<br /><br />
Metal. Horrible un-musical shredding.
<br /><br />
Rock / Funk / Soul / Jazz-funk. The guitar is basically an accompanying instrument. I'd need to be in a band.
<br /><br />
Jazz. I'll have a post about jazz, but in summary: chord-scale is no more musical than shredding; cocktail / lounge jazz is cringe; Older styles, fine.
<br /><br />
Ambient. Possible, but as a secondary subject.
<br /><br />
Noise (Sonic Youth etc). Pass.
<br /><br />
Playing classical pieces for solo cello and violin: do-able, but short on self-expression!
<br /><br />
Electric Blues / Blues-Rock. This is what I imagine myself playing to an audience if I imagine myself playing to an audience.
<br /><br />
So, yeah. Looks like I'm going to learn to play the Blues.
<br /><br />
And you will get progress reports.
Seven Dialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02847038833093526984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2071108498480800336.post-34862127034773050432023-12-12T20:00:00.002+00:002023-12-18T22:13:06.776+00:00Making Music Needs Commitment90% of all the guitars sold in a year are bought by people who give up playing in the first year.
<br /><br />
Learning to play music is hard work. In the case of stringed instruments, it is literally painful, since you need to grow hard fingertips on your string-stopping hand.
<br /><br />
Learning to play a musical instrument is physical training in the way that gymnastics, ski-ing or skateboarding are. Except all the physical movement is in the hands. The pianist Leon Fleisher describes musicians as "athletes of the fine muscles". An instrumentalist needs to be able to do things with their hands that is as far away from anything an ordinary person can do as a 10-second 100m sprint.
<br /><br />
Different types of music require different movements of those fine muscles. Classical is its own regimented thing: the aim of classical training is to make everyone sound the same. So they can play in orchestras. Outside that discipline, where individual style and sound are an asset, in Rock, Indie, Jazz, Folk, Blues, Funk, Prog, Flamenco - all the details are different. Leave Europe and try to jam with a band playing "African" genres and you'll be lost: those styles require totally different fine muscle movements and sense of rhythm.
<br /><br />
Learning those fine movements takes time. Learning how to use the stylistic gestures of a genre takes time. Learning how to play with "feel" takes time. Working out how to do all those things <i>your way</i> takes time - and classical guitarists are rigorously trained to sound almost identical.
<br /><br />
This variation of fine muscle movements, and the time it takes to learn everything, means that, at the start, a musician has to commit.
<br /><br />
The people who make some kind of success at music <i>choose</i> a genre (which might be "classical music") and stick with it. Sure, a lot of players can play party pieces in other genres, but they don't <i>live there</i>. They live in their chosen genre. Just like the Baroque musicians did. They had to commit at the start or they couldn't learn enough in the time.
<br /><br />
Nobody drifts into playing classical guitar. They may have done it as a child, but as they go through adolescence, they may realise they don't have what it takes (as some of the other pupils they have seen obviously do) to be successful and they don't want to be a guitar teacher for the rest of their lives, so they need to get a "useful degree", or they realise that they aren't nerds, but career and long-term hobbyist musicians are. If someone is playing classical guitar for a music degree at 21, they <i>chose</i> that. The same applies to kids who form bands when they are teenagers.
<br /><br />
Musicians are called, the lifers feel that nothing else is worth doing, and the most important thing is to play. Because that's the only thing that counts: <i>extra musica non vitam est</i>. They may need to hold down a day job, and it doesn't have to be something precarious and part-time-y (they are musicians, after all, not actors), but it's a day job for money. Not a career.
<br /><br />
I can't do commitment (a philosopher who commits is an activist or an ideologue, not a philosopher), and I cared about what kind of life I lived 'outside'. This is also philosopher thing: philosophers who go into business have to do as well as the rest of their character will let them.
<br /><br />
I do have the ability to stick at something once I've decided to do it. Philosophers are allowed to have temporary enthusiasms.Seven Dialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02847038833093526984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2071108498480800336.post-14966304215896881432023-12-08T02:00:00.001+00:002023-12-11T21:37:19.714+00:00My History Of Playing Music (Short Version)Let’s go back to Junior school (7-11 in the UK). In those days <i>everyone</i> played the recorder in Music lessons, and Music lessons were as compulsory as maths. Our Music teacher was Mrs Poole, and she was the second most-feared teacher in the school (the most-feared was Mrs Toombs). She wasn’t scary, but she was firm. In a class of twenty, she could hear one descant recorder playing the wrong note. She knew what she wanted from the class, and we were under no illusions that anything less would do. The handful of us who showed any kind of ability at all got to play the coveted treble recorder, and the real virtuoso got to play the tenor.
<br /><br />
Everyone in the school could sight-read simple decant recorder pieces. It wasn’t even regarded as a thing. It was the minimum ability required not to feel hopeless.
<br /><br />
I went one better. I could play a new piece by ear, as long as someone next to me was reading. Either that or I was following their fingering from the corner of my eye. My sight reading declined as a result.
<br /><br />
I tried playing guitar in junior school, and have memories of my mother taking me to a house heaven knows where in south-east London with a guitar teacher in it. The only thing I can remember is making a mess of sight-reading <i>Little Brown Jug</i>. That’s it. It didn’t last long.
<br /><br />
Then I went to the Big School and that was the end of playing music.
<br /><br />
I bought a guitar in, let’s say 1970 because I can’t remember the exact year. This time round, I practiced my scales and learned some cowboy chords (though we didn’t call them that then), but my left hand was not up to barre chords on that instrument, and right-hand finger-picking was… I tried, I really did, but you know when you’re trying something that your body just isn’t equipped to do? I played through the blisters, the hard skin on the fingertips, the disappearance of my finger-prints and their re-appearance again. I went from barely being able to co-ordinate my left hand with the plectrum in my right hand, to being able to rip out strings of notes almost as fast as John McLaughlin on <i>Bitches Brew</i>.
<br /><br />
And there I halted. Metro Bulo Bouvo Dodo. Commute, work, drinking, sleep.
<br /><br />
I had a steel-string acoustic guitar I played with a plectrum, and I listened mostly to electric guitarists. That doesn’t work very well. I was not playing for an audience, I was not aiming to play Bach, nor was I aiming to learn to play songs. At one time I had a Joni Mitchell songbook, and a Steely Dan one, and I could play those chords (not knowing that such books bear only a passing resemblance to reality), but it never left me feeling smug with satisfaction. Occasionally I played rambling single-string extemporisations which would engage some of my more tangled emotions.
<br /><br />
I would play along to tracks I liked - as long as they didn’t change keys too often. Sometimes I’d have good ideas, other times I’d play some routine licks, and occasionally I’d barely be able to find the key. There was no purpose behind this, just entertainment. I was the very model of a home noodler.
<br /><br />
Then came the Lockdowns, when you’d think I’d be playing every day. I didn’t. Weeks would go by without me even picking the guitar up.
<br /><br />
Which is more or less where I was eighteen months ago.
<br /><br />
For some reason I think playing or learning the guitar is going to be my Next Big Project. I will finally learn all the things I should have learned right back in the day. Minor 7 sharp third chords. The Phrygian Armenian scale. How to play “rhythm changes". Passing tones on a III-VI-IX blues shuffle. Getting enough strength in my left hand to play barre chords on the acoustic. Learning to stretch out my fingers to get those chords that spread over five frets - in the first position. Picking up a working familiarity with DAWs and hence composition. All that good stuff.
<br /><br />
That music students spend <i>years</i> learning.
<br /><br />
As if I have anything else to do with my time.
<br /><br />
There’s a BUT isn’t there? You can hear it.
Seven Dialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02847038833093526984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2071108498480800336.post-746359859438497382023-12-05T20:00:00.002+00:002023-12-07T20:59:36.623+00:00One Journey Ends, Another BeginsI've spent a couple of months thinking that I'd gone as far as I could with the Katana and the Les Paul, and needed some new gear to improve things. Who isn't tempted by a nice shiny white Jazzmaster with a red flecked pickguard? And of course, Valve Amps. And pedals. Lots of pedals.
<br /><br />
A £3,500 Matchless combo with £1,500 of pedals on a board (more easily spent than you might think) would do the trick nicely. An £800 Tall Trees amp into a Celestion-equipped speaker cab, with the same £1,500 of pedals, would sound different-but-as-good, again, with the proviso about playing volumes. I heard a fabulous little vintage Fender amp in my last visit to Regent Sounds on Denmark Street, a snip at £4,999. They also have a nice 5W Cornell Traveller Combo for £695 (at time of writing). Lots of options, <i>but do they sound convincing at 60-75 dB?</i>. (Many of these amps have attenuators between the power amp and the speaker, but if it was easy, Ox Boxes would not sell for four figures.)
<br /><br />
That's the key. <i>if I want to hear what I'm playing through a loudspeaker</i>, playing at bedroom volumes may compromise the amp's ability to produce the sounds I'm looking for, so that there's no significant improvement over the Katana (or any other modeller). Which means I might wind up testing the patience of guitar shops around London, while I don't find anything in their stock that sounds worth-the-money better than the Katana 50 II at 60 - 75dB.
<br /><br />
(You Tube reviews are absolutely useless in this regard: the majority of them wind up playing distortion in the high 80's and low 90's, if not more, often displaying SPL meters proving how loud they are playing. I could stretch six rubber bands across a dustbin, mic it up, run it through a distortion pedal, and it would sound <i>amazing</i> at 95dB.)
<br /><br />
<i>If I'm content to listen over headphones</i> (wired, too much latency with bluetooth) then I have options based on Multi-FX / Amp Sim kit, DAWs and plug-ins. This is what the professionals do when they are playing in venues with built-in PA systems or recording studios: these take output direct from the electronics, while the band will be listening through in-ears (live) or headphones (studio). Professionals only need an actual amplifier for venues without a PA.
<br /><br />
Look at where a lot of those You Tube Guitar Gurus work: sitting on a computer chair, in front of an iMac running a DAW, surrounded by amps, cabs and other gear, with an extensive knowledge of how various computer programs - on the Mac or embedded in a piece of kit - work. Yep, in the digital world, everything becomes a computer, and everyone becomes a computer user.
<br /><br />
No thank you. I already did that for a great many years. (What about the BOSS Tone Studio? To me it does not feel like 'using a computer'. It feels like 'twiddling a lot of dials', which is an analogue thing to do.)
<br /><br />
So faced with the fact that spending money on gear might leave me right back where I started but a few quid shorter, I went home and had more serious attempts to get the two main tones - Marshall-ish and Fender-y - that I wanted at the volume levels I needed. (Yes, that amp is as good as everyone says it is. Somewhere in it is the tone you are looking for, though it may be the result of an odd combination of settings.) The details are in a previous post. Since then, that restless urge to upgrade or buy different gear has waned.
<br /><br />
The final touch was setting the Neck pickup height by ear. This will cause Techs to roll their eyes, but if it's what it takes, it's what you have to do.
<br /><br />
The Les Paul / Katana Journey is declared ended.
<br /><br />
Now I’m starting to think about <it>what</it> I play, and that's really baking my noodle. Seven Dialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02847038833093526984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2071108498480800336.post-81416579110324990142023-12-01T02:00:00.001+00:002023-12-01T02:00:00.138+00:00And In Other News... Society Has CollapsedYou are not crazy.
<br /><br />
This is f*****d up.
<br /><br />
Look at the idea of a society and somewhere near the centre is the idea of a bunch of people in the same geographical country, speaking dialects of the same language, using the same currency, paying taxes to the same Government, sharing often ineffable ‘values’, ‘attitudes’ or ‘behaviours’, and with some minimal idea of co-operating to make each others’ lives better. Add in some criminals, psychopaths, screw-ups, misfits, alienated souls, cheaters, grifters and shirkers, but not too many, and you have something we would recognise.
<br /><br />
Societies have a background level of dysfunction and cacophony, because people have conflicting aims, different abilities, diverse work ethics, and odd ideas about how much they need to work to pull their own load. Plus there's the class / caste stuff and the whole Us and Them thing which people seem to like, as well as behaviours and attitudes from dark corners of the human soul. Add in changes in fashion, technology, prices, salaries, and the blizzard of sales pitches and uninformed BS masquerading as advice and education, and there's enough to make anyone older than about thirty-five feel like the-kids-these-days... Most of that does not count as dysfunction, unless it actually interferes with the smooth functioning of the economy, or starts producing too many people with justifiable reluctance to take part in the institutions of the society. Too many tax-paying non-participants can skew a society the wrong way.
<br /><br />
How much dysfunction makes a breakdown?
<br /><br />
Some of the many ways a society can screw up are:
<br /><br />
Failing to provide jobs with a future for its young people <div>Putting the way of living of ordinary parents beyond the means of their children
An inadequate or overly ideological education system </div><div>Having rules that hinder the development of a thriving economy
Failing to take care of members of the Armed Forces (1) </div><div>Failing to provide an efficient and effective Police force and justice system
Allowing petty criminals to go un-punished (2) </div><div>Failing to keep its borders secure (3) </div><div>Having too much wealth accruing to too few people <i>at the expense of the ordinary worker</i> (4) </div><div>Failing to re-train its workers to keep up with economic change, and especially hiring outsiders in favour of re-training (5) </div><div>Allowing inflation to get too high for more than a year (6) </div><div>Raising taxes that are wasted by inefficient management and poor policy-making (7) </div><div>Being distracted by activists agitating for extreme policies that affect small proportions of the population (8) </div><div>A Civil Service that forgets it works for the taxpayer, rather than for another Civil Service (9) </div><div>Class warfare (10)
<br /><br />
And of course, the Big Three...
Attempting to invade Russia, occupy Afghanistan, or stem the spread of a virus by Lockdowns.
<br /><br />
(So-called 'Advanced Economies' can add: failing to get food on the shelves, petrol in the pumps, water from taps, gas from the Mains, electricity from the Grid, buses at the stops, trains in the stations, phone signals from towers, data down the Internet, GPs in the surgeries, doctors and surgeons in the hospitals, money from one person to another...)
<br /><br />
I'd say... four or more and your society has collapsed in a heap on the floor, and someone needs to call an ambulance.
<br /><br />
Was there ever a time the UK dodged <i>most</i> of these screw-ups? It wasn't bad between 1954 (when rationing ended!) to 1990, even if there was double-figure inflation in the 1970’s and million-plus unemployment ever since, but after the Maastricht and Lisbon Treaties, it starts to roll downhill slowly. After about 2010 the speed picks up, and by 2016 the cracks are spreading as the media / academic / activist / Human Rights Industrial Complex declared class war, in retaliation for the Brexit vote, on the ordinary taxpayers who paid their salaries.
<br /><br />
Four years of that, and faced with a bad case of the flu in February 2020, British society started to crack, and in March 2020 collapsed in clouds of dust. What we’re seeing now are people wandering around in the rubble, pretending that everything is OK because, well, they're still getting paid. And they have Mondays and Fridays <s>off</s> working from home.
<br /><br />
This is the aftershock of the collapse. Most of the same things are still wrong. Nothing much has changed.
<br /><br />
It is not some short-term temporary aberration. It was a long time coming, and it will be a longer time leaving.
<br /><br />
(1) The treatment of discharged soldiers with disabilities is a scandal. As is the accommodation they have while serving. </div><div>(2) Pretty much like a large Democrat-run city in the USA from 2019 onwards. </div><div>(3) Looking at you, Angela Merkel. Also the UK Home Office. </div><div>(4) This is a serious problem in the USA. Less so in the UK. </div><div>(5) Every company and government ever. On the other hand, workers need to be prepared to accept re-training. </div><div>(6) Weimar Germany and Zimbabwe at the top of the league, with the UK in the 1970's at the bottom. </div><div>(7) 40% of UK taxes goes to the NHS. We can't see our GP for four weeks, and unless you are actually bleeding out in front of the staff, the operation will be a year hence, and postponed twice. </div><div>(8) How the exact **** did Stonewall get to pronounce on the suitability of anyone for anything? </div><div>(9) For about thirty years, the British Civil Service thought it worked for the EU. It still wishes it did.</div><div>(10) This is a thesis in itself I will sketch in another post.</div>Seven Dialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02847038833093526984noreply@blogger.com0