MUSIC: the official thread.

Andre Previn's forays into jazz were admirable for their enthusiasm and his obvious reverence for the music but he had to have his parts written out for him and it shows in the playing... enthusiastic but awkward

Oscar Peterson, who Previn idolized and was close friends with tried his hand at a bit of Chopin... it wasn't bad but that same kind of awkwardness was there, it clearly wasn't his thing

It's exceedingly difficult to achieve true comfort and expertise in both Jazz and the old classical world. There's some overlaps in virtuoso technique here and there but overall the techniques, the foundations and the philosophies are so different from one another

Keith Jarrett and Chick Corea have had some degree of success in classical music but one could argue that both of them are less than convincing in certain jazz styles (the same ones Previn clearly found impenetrable)

I've yet to hear a piano player who was truly great in both worlds and I'd say the world of jazz offers a vastly greater array of amazing piano players than the stubbornly static classical world does ...

As long as there remains a complete disconnect between mainstream classical performers and actual living composers, classical music will be stuck in the mud... Today's celebrated young classical pianists (people like Trifonov, Yuja Wang, Andsnes, etc) are playing the music of men who are to them long-dead historical figures with halos ... When Arthur Rubinstein played Brahms, he was playing the music of a man who was a famous living composer when Rubinstein was going through puberty; when Rubinstein or Horowitz played Rachmaninoff, they were playing the music of a professional colleague, a man they knew... Sviatoslav Richter didn't know Prokofiev or Shostakovich as ancient dead guys, he knew them personally as living contemporaries... When George Szell or Fritz Reiner or Toscanini etc etc conducted the music of Richard Strauss or Stravinsky or Prokofiev or Hindemith, they were conducting music written by guys close to their own ages that they knew personally... they were just a generation removed from Schumann and Chopin and Liszt and Tchaikovsky and Wagner ... it wasn't this ancient music like it is now ... it shows in the records they made

30 year old piano players, big stars today play largely the same repertoire that Van Cliburn was playing in 1958 ... can you imagine any other musical form being treated this way? If jazz musicians did nothing but faithful transcriptions of Louis Armstrong's Hot Five or Charlie Parker forever? 120 different albums of the same exact thing? Imagine if instead of writing their own songs and cultivating their own particular sound, rock bands ceased doing that after the Beatles and the peak era Stones and instead it was the Edinburgh Rock Quartet performing Abbey Road to sound as much like the original as possible? Then critics wax poetic about the more sensual interpretation of Abbey Road by the Ensemblè Rockè de Paris ... that would be ludicrous of course but that's basically what classical music allowed itself to become

 

Wakeman's classical playing I found very convincing... Emerson less so

 

It´s funny, when I was growing up and absorbing all of their work with respecttive bands (Yes and Emerson Lake & Palmer), I always felt Wakeman was a joker and didnt take it too seriously - the pints of real ale, eating curry on stage, the cape / wizard hat and the marriages to topless Page 3 models.

A few years ago, his son, Adam, who knows a friend of mine, got us three free tickets to a Yes concert.
On the afternoon of the show, he contacted my friend and said ´Oh, by the way, is there any chance the three of you can go backstage afterwards? My Dad wants to meet you so you can thank him for the tickets´

 

That's hilarious

 

I agree. Followed very close by hip-hop.

 

Ok guys my bad before with the other thread, I just didn't realize what the deal was. So to make up for it I'm going to hit y'all off with some bangers.

 

LOL

 

Not good, catchy or memorable in any way.

 

Bland, pedestrian... inoffensive but more importantly inconsequential

















dië

 

Marvin Pontiac... got anything by Dave Buick?

 

Something of an underground legend of NY though I've not heard all that much of his work; the conductor Artur Rodzinski, a fine conductor and legit oddball who used to keep a loaded revolver in his pocket while giving concerts was a fan of his as is the great minimalist composer Steve Reich ... this is a lovely song, really ... excellent use of the second piano for counterpoint and ornamentation and that's really all that was necessary to fill it out... could have easily been a hit if anybody had bothered to cover it

 

This is a disgrace, really

Complete desecration of a beautiful song by know-nothing hacks. The song isn't all that complicated and these untalented, unmusical nobodies still can't figure it out. The second chord is not A minor and the third chord is not a true C major ...

The magic of the song, its poignant tone and tension is the result of (in addition to the intangible qualities of George Harrison the artist) two time-honored tricks of the trade:

1) He uses a low G as a pedal point, over which he uses a descending chord voicing sequence

2) The second chord is an unexpected minor 6 and the third chord is a false C major (because of that low G which prevents full resolution)

From those elements in combination with the melody line we experience the feeling of poignant tension that made the original so beautiful and soulful

These mooks totally ignore this because a basic pedal point and a minor 6th voicing are apparently far too musically urbane for them to comprehend. So they completely rid the tune of these crucial elements and play G to A minor to C like those are the only chords they know and the clueless bassist also ignores the fact that his instrument is supposed to provide a pedal point and follows suit with the first year guitarist(s)

Furthermore, the singing is fourth-rate and hugely irritating

Revolting trash; inexcusable

 

Sounds to me like you'd be a Rembrandt or Andrew Wyeth type guy. But not Picasso or Van Gogh.

 

Not an uninteresting line of question, imo- not necessarily of clogg but of everyone. There are certainly parallels in aesthetic taste across mediums in most cases

 

Sounds to me like you're more of a finger-painting by a 2 year old guy than a Van Gogh guy

The way those talentless cretins performed that song, it could've been written by a jaded Avril Lavigne ... they understand nothing, you understand nothing


DIË

 

To some extent but I have no technical understanding of painting so my judgement is wether or not the image is striking to me or not ... The Scream (for example) is striking to me, so I just like it ... I like the Mona Lisa but I couldn't tell you a thing about how it's constructed, but if someone drew a stick figure with a circle head and a slightly wobbly line for the smile and said "this is my cover of Mona Lisa", I'd rightly say it was a piece of shit

That's what that cover of "Isn't it a Pity?" is... the musical equivalent of someone who can't sketch or paint at all (like me, for example) attempting to duplicate the Mona Lisa ... except I'd have the sense enough to be embarrassed doing that

 

Your critique of the song is highly technical. But art is not a technical undertaking. You are probably right that those guys are not well schooled musicians. But that doesn't mean there isn't something there to enjoy and appreciate - something that is no doubt elusive to many highly skilled players.

 

Don't mind this - catchy tune.

Shit name for a band though.

 

Technique is part of art and certainly it's part of music

But the critique was less about technique (this is a very simple song... you don't need to be taught in a conservatory to execute it properly) than it is about the science of music... chords arranged a certain way evoke things even to a listener who doesn't know a third from a fifth... as an example a major chord feels (generally speaking) "positive" or even possibly "happy" ... a minor chord feels "negative" or "sad"... a 7th feels "bittersweet" etc etc ... combinations of these voicings greatly influence how the listener emotionally interacts with the tune ... this is literally the art of composing, songwriting in the language of western music

What is evoked by Harrison's intended G pedal point with descending major-6th-unresolved major-back up to beginning major is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT than what is evoked by simply playing G, A minor, C with no pedal point ...

One evokes the complex emotional state alluded to in the lyrics, the other really doesn't

This bit: "But that doesn't mean there isn't something there to enjoy and appreciate - something that is no doubt elusive to many highly skilled players" ... you seem very certain... what's there that's so elusive?

 

Is this the worst solo in the history of recorded music?

 

Fucking hilarious

He even manages to be slightly sharp on a few of those Ds

 

I've listened three times now... the enthusiastic shouts in the background like they and the sax player are absolutely lit up on Crystal meth

It's nice to finally hear a sax solo I could play though