I've always listened to rock music, but, for a few years while I was studying jazz guitar at University, I stopped paying that much attention to it. I wasn't listening to the radio that much, and I'd never really gotten into the indie music scene beforehand anyway, barring a couple of random bands I'd heard on RRR and made sure to seek out.
When I got sick of trying to be the guitarist I wasn't going to be, I joined Plastic Palace Alice, after having only played in the odd cover band and jazz group. I'd never stopped listening to my favourites like Dylan or Radiohead, but I hadn't really spent the time learning new tricks, or thinking in terms of what rock guitarists did. Instead, I'd been focussing on jazz players. It may surprise non-musicians, but learning one style of music isn't necessarily useful when it comes to playing other styles. Jazz is generally considered to be a technically demanding style to come to grips with, and it is, but improving as a jazz player meant developing a style that wasn't very suited to rock music (as an example: in a lot of jazz you are encouraged to play all your notes slightly before the beat lands, in order to give a good forward momentum to the rhythm. In rock music, this tends to sound like you're rushing, and it's still a problem I deal with today: too often, especially when recording, I get ahead of the beat, rather than sit back on it).
So when I joined a rock band, I not only had very little experience of playing that music, I also had techniques that weren't particularly useful, and a limited vocabulary to draw on: no one really wanted to hear my jazz lines, and there's only so much of Johnny Greenwood's style you can ape in any one song. My solution to this was to start listening to new music, obviously. The number of bands who I "discovered" in the first year of being in the band is huge, and most of them had been popular so long they were on their way out before I found them, but that's not really something I minded. One band who had a new album out that got a lot of radio play right when I was paying the most attention (I've already eased off, partly due to my car's lack of stereo at the moment) was Spoon.
Spoon's album Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga hit me immediately as having something I wanted. The first track, "Don't Make Me a Target" exemplified the kind of guitar playing I wanted to do more of, and it still sits with me as a great example of a particular style of rock: it's quite a taut song, with a riff that lasts practically the entire tune. The guitar line is a kind of intervallic playing that I still try to use a lot, and I teach it as a useful way of approaching lead guitar. It's a simple riff, but that's as it should be.
A basic transcription of the riff from Spoon's "Don't Make Me a Target"
As you can see, it's a two note line, in which the top note stays on a G natural for the most part, before moving up to an A natural for the last two bars of the line, while the lower note descends chromatically from E natural to a B natural, before the last chord which is basically just a strummed E minor chord. The last bar of the line (before the E minor) suddenly adds a third note – the D# – which serves to ensure that this last bar is heard as a B7 chord, with the 1, 3 and b7 all present. As for the rest of it, well, it's easy to go through and work out what chords are implied by each interval – particularly once we include the rest of the band –, but what makes this sort of playing so effective is that they're still just intervals, rather than whole chords. Punk bands like Greenday have made a career out of playing power chords, which is when you simply play the 1 and the 5 for each chord, leaving out the 3 that gives a chord its tonality, but this is both more sophisticated and more melodic, while still being a very simple part. Instead of hearing just a chord progression, or a series of root notes, there are a couple of other things going on.
For a start, we hear the chromatic descending line, which is commonly used both by guitarists and bass players. It's a smooth motion, obviously, and it's an easy way to give listeners some non-diatonic notes that don't sound too dissonant: we immediately pick up on where the line is going, and so the dissonances aren't as surprising as they might otherwise be (even today, the fourth bar can sound harsh if played in isolation, but within the context of the riff sounds completely normal). Secondly, we hear the top note drone. It doesn't function as an independent melody because it's too static, but it does have an element of the sound of basic counterpoint: two or more notes moving against each other. And, in the manner of counterpoint, these two lines combine to create intervals that suggest harmony. For so long people have written popular songs by starting with a chord progression that it's worth remembering that in the days of counterpoint, the chords were created through combining melodic strands. This is what happens in this riff, and it's something I think is a very important part of good writing. Strumming one chord after another has its place, but it can get a bit boring. Equally, or course, you can go too far in the other direction, which I used to do as a hangover from my jazz days. If you create fuller chords, and still try the same tactic (called voice-leading, because of the idea of writing vocal lines that moved smoothly from chord to chord) it can get a little too floral and pretty. This use of two notes is a perfect middle ground, especially when combined with the heavy muted downstrokes of an overdriven electric guitar. I had been practising voice leading for several years in a jazz setting, but listening to Spoon use a similar, stripped-back version of the same idea got me hooked. If I'm ever struggling for inspiration when trying to write a lead guitar part in any of my bands, this is one of the ideas I'll try out first. The other one is, of course, just turning on all my distortion pedals and trying to make the guitar play itself.
I've been working on a few longer posts recently, but in the meantime it's worth reading this interview between Sasha Frere-Jones and Johnny Greenwood.
I like Greenwood's pragmatism, and I'm inclined to agree with him in a general way. Although many musicians and composers that I've spoken to recently care greatly about the lack of audio fidelity in mp3 format, I tend to feel that it's not really worth the struggle. There are two reasons for this. The first is that, for those of us who store music on our computers, storage space is climbing at such a rapid rate that the size of music files are becoming effectively meaningless, thus negating the need for compressed audio formats. Secondly, as people are apparently moving to a music-listening model whereby they stream tracks from the internet, file size is only important in terms of bandwidth. This will, once again, initially start with horribly compressed audio, and probably last longer than mp3s – given the slower rate of internet speed advances – but will surely end in a similar way. To me, it seems likely that in the near-future file compression will cease to be a major issue. Perhaps I'm just being optimistic though.
On the other hand, I can't help but feel that Greenwood is being slightly disingenuous, and this may relate to my experience with buying their album In Rainbows. When I found out about their decision to offer it as a download, with the famous "pay what you want" model, I was excited. I'd been listening to most of my music through iTunes for many years by that stage, and I'd never had a particular attraction to the physical medium of the CD. I decided to pay something like $15 for the download, because I wanted to support their decision to distribute the album in such a way, and because this was instead of paying $30 for a physical release (or much more for the whole collectors' package).
When I downloaded it, though, I saw that it was encoded at the relatively low bit-rate of 160k, which I didn't really notice when playing on my computer speakers, but did make a small difference when playing through my stereo. It wasn't the actual quality that bothered me so much as fact that it made me feel like Radiohead weren't quite as into this model of distribution as I thought they were. Sure enough, I soon read articles about them getting a distribution deal, and their manager being quoted as saying that "If we didn't believe that when people hear the music they will want to buy the CD, then we wouldn't do what we are doing." So it's a bit to easy for Greenwood to come out and suggest that if you care about such things you "have probably spent far too much money on your speaker-stands." The reason why I wished they had released their album in higher-quality was because I thought that they were leading the way in online distribution to some extent. Instead, it was a (very good) publicity stunt. And the album is amazing, of course. As Greenwood is right to point out, at the end of the article, "It’s like the pixel resolution of digital cameras: higher numbers are better, but that discussion always pushes the actual photography to one side, somehow."
I was talking to my housemate Alex about a workshop he was in at uni, in which people were discussing what albums they would take with them to the famed desert island. Being classical music students, these lists were filled with Beethoven etc. which Alex found fairly depressing given his preference for new music. It reminded me of the Triple J hottest 100 controversy again, which I mentioned here.
The whole desert island idea, which is a prominent feature on ABC FM – I think there's a series of CDs they put out under that label – is a similar thing to the hottest 100 lists, only it has a built-in "of all time" part, because their listeners are generally talking about music written over a century ago. The very idea of these lists breeds conservatism. It encourages someone taking part in such a list-making exercise to choose canonical works over pieces that may not stand the test of time. What's odd about this is that we feel any need to cultivate a conception of "classic" albums. You either like listening to Jimi Hendrix or you don't, but if it doesn't feel relevant to your life right now, why should you elevate it above Lil Wayne? Why, given the massive quantity of music created each day, do we feel like a piece of music should stand the test of time?
Is art that endures more important than art that doesn't?
Richard Gill has a piece in The Age today, about music education in schools (I'll link to it when I can find it online, but it is eluding me so far). In it, Gill claims that music education in Australia is woefully inadequate, and that "children are being discriminated against if they are not receiving a well-planned and properly taught music program". Gill goes on to make the case for quality music education, but he seems to contradict himself a little, or at the very least he tries to have his cake and eat it too.
Activities such as playing Mozart sonatas while they do arithmetic, believing it will make their brains bigger. . . do not constitute music education.
This is fair enough, but there are two things he implies here. The first is that classes that feature passive listening are not the same as either performance or more active listening sessions, and are not as beneficial. I also detect a sense of cynicism at the idea of teaching music for some sort of ulterior motive, beyond the appreciation of music itself, hence the "making our brains bigger" line. He seems to reinforce this reading in the next paragraph:
We teach music to children because of its immeasurable capacity and potency to act on the heart, mind, spirit and soul of humanity. We teach music to children because, in so doing, we acknowledge a heritage which points to the fact that there is almost no civilisation on earth which does not have music somewhere at the heart of its existence.
But then, after this, he takes a new approach:
Apart from the intrinsic reasons for teaching music. . . the evidence from the collected wisom of neuroscience is now overwhelmingly demonstrating that children studying music seriously have a considerable advantage educationally over children who don't study music.
This may be true, although he doesn't actually quote from any study, no doubt assuming that we've already read such studies (here is one article I found in five seconds that supports his claim: It's not by a neuroscientist, but by a music educator). My problem is that I start to distrust arguments in which someone says "it's not about whether or not x is good for y, it's about x's intrinsic value. It also happens to be good for y". By no means are the two arguments mutually exclusive, but that it makes me feel like one of the premises is weaker, and simply being thrown in behind the actual reason.
In this case, the whole cultural argument is moot: if music education makes children better students overall, it should be encouraged. I feel like Gill added the other part of his argument because, as a director for the Victorian Opera, he probably feels like he needs to make overarching statements about how great music is.
And possibly because he was stretching to get the word-count. Surely there is no other reason to say this, when talking about teacher training:
Would you train a surgeon on 11 hours of classes? In some places in Australia, that's the number of hours a trainee primary teacher receives in music education.
Leaving aside the horribly vague "some places in Australia" line, there's a fairly gaping hole in the logic of this analogy. How many hours of training does it take to write opinion pieces for the newspaper?
Venues that host live music tend to have slightly uneasy relationships with the bands they book. The owners of live-music venues feel that they would almost certainly make more money if they had DJs or simply iPods playing house music, as they wouldn't rely on the bands pulling a crowd themselves. This is almost certainly true: I obviously haven't seen the figures, but I think it's a safe bet to suggest that Bimbo Deluxe in Fitzroy is a more profitable business than the Punters Club was in the same spot.
Aside from lack of popularity, a number of factors can make a band not draw a crowd: lack of promotion; other gigs on the same night of a similar style; the night of the week; and the number of gigs that the band has played in that area recently. These factors make it quite hard for a venue to accurately gauge whether or not a particular band is worth booking. I would also be interested to see whether a person would spend as much money on alcohol at a concert as they would in a club environment – I wonder whether the structure of performances mean that people are more likely to wait in between songs or sets to buy another drink. Add to this the number of fans of the band who are only prepared to spend money on the door fee – in the jazz scene a large proportion of the audience are often students who can't afford the expensive drinks at jazz clubs. Then there are the additional costs, such as band riders and the maintenance of the sound system. While venues generally take a small cut of the door fee, the understanding is usually that the band gets the money on the door and the venue gets the money the audience spend on drinks. For the above reasons, it is not only unlikely that a band audience will generate as much profit for the venue as the same-sized crowd in a club, it is also hard to imagine that the size of the band audience is likely to be any bigger, over an average week.
Of course, the band tends to see this differently. If they have been around for a while, a band has spent countless hours writing and rehearsing material. Bands spend their own money on petrol, musical instruments worth thousands of dollars, rehearsal studios, recording studios, and publicity. They often have to take time off work if they play interstate, and this eats into their money for things like food and rent (it never cuts into booze money though). When they play a gig to 200 people, or even 30, they see an audience who wouldn't be there if they weren't performing. From their perspective, they're only competing with the crowd-pulling potential of other bands. If there are 30 people, paying $10 a head to get in, the headline act is likely to take home $170, minus the $50 to $100 they owe the sound technician. Assuming they didn't spend any money on publicity – they only got 30 people there after all – that still translates to around $30 per member of a four-piece band, excluding all the costs I mentioned just before. Then to be told that they only get one or two free beers (or none if they're playing in Sydney), well, you can see why so many musicians are depressed.
The problem is, obviously, that neither side is wrong. A band often has to hang around a venue for several hours before they play, it seems fair that they get a free beer or two while they wait to go on stage. On the other hand, the venue manager could look around the room, count their staff, and know that they're barely going to be able to cover the wages. Now, the obvious solution would be to have more popular bands, but this is Melbourne. There are simply too many venues and too many bands for a success story like Little Red to happen at every Wednesday night residency. More importantly, every band has to play to no one at some stage. Is there a solution to this problem? Probably not, but it sometimes surprises me that there aren't more venues and bands coming up with more creative ideas for dealing with the issue.
Mess and Noise claim that Temper Trap (who Plastic Palace Alice supported a while ago) have "hit a snag with a lukewarm review on US indie barometer Pitchfork", in their attempt to make it big in the States. Whether or not it proves to be a snag at all is, of course, up in the air – as one commenter noted, it's not like the Pitchfork readership is necessarily Temper Trap's target audience.
Mess and Noise loves it when Pitchfork features Australian artists, and generally consider such an event worthy of news all by itself. When Royal Headache had a tune played on Forkcast, they not only reported on it, but implied that an upcoming headline slot was given to them as a result – something that a friend of the band's informed me was simply not true (something a commenter tries to point out also). Interestingly, at much the same time as Royal Headache got put on Forkcast, so did Denim Owl: a duo consisting of Janita Foley and Aleks Bryant from Aleks and the Ramps. Denim Owl keep a somewhat lower profile than Royal Headache do at the moment, which may explain the fact that Mess and Noise declined to comment on it. It would seem that yes, they have had at least one offer of a gig as a result of being played on Forkcast but, if you go to their myspace page, you will see that the single that was played, "Knitted Soup" is still sitting on 997 listens, as of the time of writing. No doubt most people who listen to Forkcast just stream the track through the Lala service, but it is interesting that it doesn't seem to have resulted in a huge influx of visitors to Denim Owl's website. Isn't this "Pitchfork effect" supposed to be huge?
Of course, Mess and Noise really just use Pitchfork as a foil, and a way of generating easy news. If Pitchfork mention an Australian band, it's news! And they deliberately take lines from the review out of context: when Marc Hogan writes that "Australia is still pretty far away from most of the rest of us", it sounds like the statement of a typical parochial American. But here's the quote in full:
The Temper Trap didn't come out of nowhere. But even in an age of instant global communication, Australia is still pretty far away from most of the rest of us. So when this Melbourne rock foursome with stadium-sized ambitions first landed in my inbox last October, it was a modest revelation.
See what they did there? They took a line that was describing their ostensibly immediate arrival onto the music scene and made it somehow relate to the 4.6 score Hogan gave their album. Who's being parochial now?
24 August 2009 —
Grants
A couple of years ago, when I was doing a phone interview to promote Plastic Palace's Album The Great Depression, I ended up in a conversation about grants. We'd been lucky enough to get a grant to help us record the album, and then another one to tour to promote it (and we received another one to tour in late October this year), which basically meant that we were able to release a full-length album, rather than an EP. So we were pleased about that. Recently, in my interview with Aleks Bryant, we talked briefly about the grants that Aleks and the Ramps had received, which allowed them to tour Canada and New Zealand, in addition to releasing their second album.
One of the things that my interviewer asked me was whether I thought it was good use of taxpayers' money to spend it on arts grants. I do think that supporting the arts is important, but it's fairly difficult to say that the music I make is adding something essential to the cultural life of Australia. I decided not to ask Aleks a similar question, but I was reminded of it while talking to him. The fact is that grants are often the difference between being able to release an album or not. Some bands never even apply for any, and I wonder how they make ends meet.
One of the funny things about the process of applying for a grant is that you have to talk yourself up quite a lot. You have to say why you think that you do contribute to the rich cultural tapestry. And it's a bit distasteful. Maybe that's why so few bands apply for them: musicians are surprisingly fragile off-stage, most of the time.
21 August 2009 —
Promos
The café that I work out often gets sent promotional CDs, mainly of the kind of stuff you would call "café music": soft beats and melismatic female vocals predominate. The other day we got sent a sampler of Paul Dempsey's new album though, which I'm assuming doesn't quite fit that description.
For us to play one of these CDs would mean me taking them home and putting them on my computer, then loading them on to the iPod I leave at work. Other people bring theirs in too, but I'm the only one happy to leave mine there all week – my iPhone is all I use these days. Then it would mean someone deciding to play it during work hours. So there are already two "gatekeepers" before the customers hear an album.
And then what? I've only very rarely been asked what was playing in the café, but it does happen, so that's a potential album sale right there. But I'm talking maybe 5 to 10 times in the past year. That's not really what it's about, though. Having the album played in cafés across town is advertising. It's creating awareness of the album in people's minds. It is targeted at people who already know what the music is, but may be reminded to buy a copy by hearing it around the place.
As an individual marketing tactic I remain fairly skeptical, but as part of a more overarching strategy, getting free copies of albums out to cool venues in the city is probably sensible.
Having said that, Dempsey's album is the first one that I've had any inclination to even listen to, let alone put on my iPod.
Last week I interviewed Aleks Bryant, of Aleks and the Ramps. I've known the Ramps for a couple of years now, after playing a few gigs with them when I first joined Plastic Palace Alice. They've recently released an album, Midnight Believer, which is out through Stomp. We talked about the industry, reading reviews and how bands go about paying their way.
Read the rest →
The New Yorker has a piece on the live music ticketing industry, in their August 10 issue. Here's an abstract at their website (registration required for the full article), and here's an audio discussion with the author, John Seabrook.
This is really a piece about the big side of town: massive U.S. artists like Bruce Springsteen and The Eagles. It's an interesting piece from that perspective, but it's a whole different world from the average band experience.