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Post by millring on Feb 15, 2024 17:49:32 GMT -5
One of the most interesting music interviews I've ever heard.
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Post by Cosmic Wonder on Feb 16, 2024 0:46:53 GMT -5
John, thank you for posting this interview. It is special.
Mike
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Post by Cornflake on Feb 16, 2024 6:59:22 GMT -5
I watched part of it, then had to stop, but I'll be back.
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Post by Cornflake on Feb 16, 2024 10:57:40 GMT -5
I went back and listened to the rest. It's well worth listening to.
When I was writing songs I worked hard to improve what I was weak at, which was writing music. I read Webb's book back then and learned a lot. I'd had no idea how much you could do with chord substitutions. It was sort of funny in this interview to hear how James Taylor couldn't believe that Wichita Lineman was in F since that chord never appeared.
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Post by Russell Letson on Feb 16, 2024 12:06:35 GMT -5
The starts-on-the-IV pattern is pretty common--"Scotch and Soda," for example--and WL ends on a fade, without resolving to the tonic, which makes it tricky to hear the key. And the no-chord first line of lyrics could be sung against an F chord. Then there's the instrumental intro in this chart, which is a I-IV pattern, though I'd have to listen to the Campbell arrangement to check whether the recording opens with that rather than the unresolved outro.
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Post by martinfever on Feb 16, 2024 13:10:45 GMT -5
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Dub
Administrator
I'm gettin' so the past is the only thing I can remember.
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Post by Dub on Feb 16, 2024 14:05:23 GMT -5
This is really great.
I’m still in the middle of it but I had to pause to comment. Around 18 minutes in, Webb is talking about his piano teacher realizing that he was just hearing her play something and playing it back without any study or practice. That’s what my late brother, Paul, did when we were kids. He’d been taking lessons for quite a few years before his teacher realized he wasn’t actually sight reading the music. He’d just get her to play the week’s assignment and from that, he’d have it down and the next week he’d play it perfectly for her.
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Post by drlj on Feb 16, 2024 15:43:22 GMT -5
One of the most interesting music interviews I've ever heard. That was amazing. I have read his book 3 times. The first time, I didn’t understand anything. The second time, a few things started to jell—especially substitute chords. The third time I didn’t start on page one. I skipped around and pulled out things I could actually almost understand. I really got interested in chord substitutions and I still am. I find that when I play anything, I am looking for inversions, substitutions, passing chords and passing tones to make things more interesting. It has opened up a completely different way( for me, anyway) of looking at things.
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Dub
Administrator
I'm gettin' so the past is the only thing I can remember.
Posts: 19,852
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Post by Dub on Feb 16, 2024 15:58:30 GMT -5
That was amazing. I have read his book 3 times. The first time, I didn’t understand anything. The second time, a few things started to jell—especially substitute chords. The third time I didn’t start on page one. I skipped around and pulled out things I could actually almost understand. I really got interested in chord substitutions and I still am. I find that when I play anything, I am looking for inversions, substitutions, passing chords and passing tones to make things more interesting. It has opened up a completely different way( for me, anyway) of looking at things. I assume you’re referring to Tunesmith. Have you read The Cake and the Rain?
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Post by drlj on Feb 16, 2024 16:20:34 GMT -5
That was amazing. I have read his book 3 times. The first time, I didn’t understand anything. The second time, a few things started to jell—especially substitute chords. The third time I didn’t start on page one. I skipped around and pulled out things I could actually almost understand. I really got interested in chord substitutions and I still am. I find that when I play anything, I am looking for inversions, substitutions, passing chords and passing tones to make things more interesting. It has opened up a completely different way( for me, anyway) of looking at things. I assume you’re referring to Tunesmith. Have you read The Cake and the Rain? Tunesmith is what I read/am reading. I have not read the other.
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Post by millring on Feb 17, 2024 4:36:36 GMT -5
I get some of the music theory concepts he's talking about. I even use some of them when I'm trying to arrange a way to play a song. What I find incredible is the speed at which some musicians process what they are doing. Their brains work so fast that they can improvise in real time -- throwing in complex substitutions and knowing they will work.
I would be James Taylor calling and asking how it can be in F. And after he explained it to me, I would say, "oh." and hang up learning nothing except that there are music theory concepts I may come to understand but will never functionally grasp.
I suppose there's comfort in knowing that I don't have to grasp them to enjoy music (in fact, to some extent the magic of the arts remains -- in part -- in the mystery. Sometimes demystifying takes away the magic. It may add a different kind of interest, but never the magic).
I think humans evolved with different processors in our individual brains -- we aren't supposed to be alike -- so that our diversity aids our collective survival. I suppose much of the diversity is a blessing to the colony. And there might just be some that is like the ant bringing back the Terro to the colony. The intentions are good (sharing food), but what they're bringing back kills us all. And that explains bad music.
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Post by Cornflake on Feb 17, 2024 7:14:20 GMT -5
I doubt that Webb found the chords he ultimately used in Wichita Lineman immediately. I suspect he noodled around, trying out possibilities and keeping what he liked.
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Post by Cornflake on Feb 17, 2024 8:21:34 GMT -5
John's comments got me to thinking. During the Spanish Civil War, Franco allowed the Luftwaffe to practice bombing human beings in the city of Guernica, Spain. Pablo Picasso responded by doing a painting that most people have probably seen at one time or another. For years the painting was exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Picasso did not want it to be sent to Spain until democracy was restored there. In 1970, I visited the museum for the first time. I was walking around with no particular plan when I walked into the room where Guernica was exhibited. It stopped me in my tracks. There was a lot about it that my intellect couldn't make sense of. I didn't know anything about art. But I had a very strong emotional response to it from the outset. Years later I read about how Picasso created it. It began as a series of sketches of various parts of the painting. Some sketches worked. Some didn't. He kept at it until he knew how he wanted the painting to look. Then he painted it. When the painting was first shown, it attracted little attention. The responses it drew were mostly negative. That doesn't surprise me. These days when we see a Picasso or a Van Gogh, we know that those guys have been deemed "great" by whoever decides such matters. Our response is filtered through such knowledge. But when people first the work of these guys, they often responded with disdain. Picasso and his friend Georges Braque were pioneers of cubism. Cubism is hard stuff to digest and I can't say I'm fond of very much of it. I've read that in the beginning their cubist works were widely detested. But they kept at it. Imagine getting up each day and doing creative work that you know is likely to be greeted with scorn and ridicule. But you do it anyway. I think creativity often requires not only imagination but courage. End of blah blah.
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Post by John B on Feb 17, 2024 9:36:56 GMT -5
To bring things full circle ("Imagine getting up each day and doing creative work that you know is likely to be greeted with scorn and ridicule. But you do it anyway"), this is a lot better than I remembered.
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Post by millring on Feb 17, 2024 17:26:32 GMT -5
I have a friend who wept upon seeing Guernica in person. The arts so often do what words cannot. Though I've spent my life immersed in the arts, I don't seem to have the gene to respond often to abstract expressionism and its ilk. Believe me, I wish I could "get" it and other forms of artistic communication. I can educate myself to appreciate them but its not the same thing as getting them. I could tell you stories of folks who come away from viewing the seeming ineffable with essentially the same response. Art may not be very precise communication, but it's sometimes more effective.
I know I've told the story of my Notre Dame professor friend who told me the anthropology dept was using a book the theme of which was that the arts preceded the written word as a communicator. As the written word became more common, art receded. But it still remains a communicator in ways that words cannot.
I've had to re-think human communication in big ways several times.
Here in Warsaw I was part of a discussion group that met once a month. I was the only participant in about 15-20 regulars without an advanced degree in theology. That isn't because of my knowledge of theology. It's because the group started as an art discussion group, but as the group evolved and had more questions about theology, we kept inviting more theologians to present (their latest books, writings, thoughts) to the group. Over the years the artists diminished in number and the theologians grew. I just happen to be one who stuck it out through the change.
Anyway, one of the guests was Brent Sandy (Ph.D., Duke University) because he had just finished a book about the conveyance of the Gospels -- specifically focusing on the fact that they were written word derived from an oral culture. Among the interesting points he makes in the book is that oral cultures don't "trust" the written word any more than we of a written word culture "trust" oral conveyance.
See, we tend to think of oral conveyance as a parlor game of "Telephone". You know the one? ....one person whispers into the ear of the next person on the couch....what was said in turn is passed to the next ear.....and on and on until the last person in the room has heard the message. The punch line of the game is, of course, that what was started is never what comes out in the end.
But Sandy points out that that's really not at all what happens in an oral tradition. What happens, in fact, is that the culture gets very specific about not just the words said, but HOW they are said. The accuracy extends far beyond the accurate recitation of words and carries over to include how those words are expressed.
I think that maybe as recently as 30 years ago we all might have been more skeptical of Sandy's findings and assertions (that oral tradition is at least as demanding and accurate as the written word). But now that we all live in an internet age we are beginning to understand. Profoundly. We're suddenly all believers because we are almost daily misunderstood ... and we misunderstand ... the written word that we pass back and forth on social media and internet forums.
What we now understand is that the written word -- minus facial expressions, emphasis on the right syllables, stage direction (shouting, whispering, said while smiling, said while crying) -- minus all that, we are finding that the written word is a wretched communicator that is breaking up perfectly good friendships, starting needless fights, making perfectly friendly people appear to be assholes....and making perfect assholes (with razor sharp words) appear to be good people.
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Post by millring on Feb 17, 2024 17:35:45 GMT -5
I figured out Wichita Lineman pretty much the way you see Glen Campbell playing it in the video. Chord-wise, anyway. I don't play that little telegraph sound up high like he does. I play it in first position. And I play the first descending line, not with the first position maj7, but up the neck. But they're all the same chords. My solo is pretty basic.
I found it interesting that Webb said something about wishing he were (I forget how he said it) like CSN&Y -- just one of the guys. In a way I understood what he meant (though it probably isn't exactly what he meant). His songs aren't accessible. They're exceedingly complex to learn to play and virtually every song we know him for is HEAVILY reliant on the best vocalists of our day -- Linda Rondstadt, Glen Campbell, Marilyn McCoo, etc. They mostly aren't the songs we share in a song circle. Most players -- even intermediate players -- cannot play them accurately.
There's an album by the Fifth Dimension that I have loved for fifty years -- Magic Garden. It has many Webb songs in it and it's VERY dated. Very 60s.
Webb's and Bachrach's music is -- to my soul -- uplifting.
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Dub
Administrator
I'm gettin' so the past is the only thing I can remember.
Posts: 19,852
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Post by Dub on Feb 17, 2024 18:40:34 GMT -5
I figured out Wichita Lineman pretty much the way you see Glen Campbell playing it in the video. Chord-wise, anyway. I don't play that little telegraph sound up high like he does. If you listened to the whole interview, you know that you can't make that little telegraph sound accurately without hiring a truck and movers to bring Webb's organ to wherever you're playing. Campbell wasn't playing that sound. I thought that story was very cool.
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Post by millring on Feb 17, 2024 18:44:57 GMT -5
I figured out Wichita Lineman pretty much the way you see Glen Campbell playing it in the video. Chord-wise, anyway. I don't play that little telegraph sound up high like he does. If you listened to the whole interview, you know that you can't make that little telegraph sound accurately without hiring a truck and movers to bring Webb's organ to wherever you're playing. Campbell wasn't playing that sound. I thought that story was very cool. I'm talking about the d-d-d-d-d between the verses.
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Post by millring on Feb 17, 2024 18:45:15 GMT -5
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Post by millring on Feb 17, 2024 18:46:04 GMT -5
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