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THE YOUNG MUSICIAN’S TEXTBOOK
intunemonthly.com
DubSteps
onto the
Dance Floor
All the
World’s
Instruments
Under
one
roof
Mastering
Musical
Vocabulary
Presto!
ADELE
The Musical Homework that
Turned a Promising Freshman into
a Superstar Sophomore
>> A Composer’s Super Bowl
>> The British Invasion’s Iconic Kinks
>> Guitar Student Shines at the Speedway
>> Rock’s Most Operatic Hit, the Listening List & More!
April 2012
Vol. 9 • No. 7
UPC 8 8 4 0 8 8 5 4 7 5 2 3
$3.99
volume Nine issue seven
departments
03From the Editor
07
Music News and Media
In Tune contest helps high school
guitarist open for Orianthi...Norah
Jones clicks with ‘Mouse’...Helping a
school band rebuild after a disaster...
Ne-Yo becomes a record executive...
plus new books, lessons, websites,
and more!
14Frontrunner Punch Brothers,
Band of Skulls, Gotye, Jay Park,
The Josh Abbott Band, and the In
Tune Listening List for April 2012.
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16Icon British invasion band the Kinks
18Write Stuff Super Bowl composer Joel Beckerman
20Players Bassist Mike Visceglia
22Influences Bruno Mars and Jelly Roll Morton
C o v e r p h o t o : K e v o r k D j a n s e z ia n / G e tt y I mag e s ; A b o v e : K e v i n W i n t e r / G e tt y I mag e s
48 Real Teachers, Real Students High school songwriters program
50Moments Queen’s great “Rhapsody”
Vrooom! >>>
Download our app for
more about the In
Tune Race to the Stage
contest, including
video, images, and an
exclusive interview
with Orianthi.
A QR Code reader app is required.
We recommend the free app Z
Bar (zbar.sourceforge.net).
This month at intunemonthly.com
3Table Italian Find an even longer list
of the Italian musical terms explained
in this month’s Techniques column.
3Adele’s Influences Listen to some of
the artists who inspire Adele.
3World of Instruments See more
from the Musical Instrument Museum
3PLUS: Check out Hear the Music and
the In Tune Listening list.
Adele
24
30
36
42
Techniques: Italian for Musicians
From prelude to coda, Italian terms have defined musical directions
for hundreds of years. Jon Chappell will be your interpreter.
It all adds up for Adele
The music Adele studied after her hit debut album helped make 21 the
biggest-selling album in years. By Melinda Newman
driven by Dance
Dancing has inspired new musical styles for centuries, from the
minuet to today’s cutting-edge Dubstep. By Ken MicalLef
musical instrument museum
More than 15,000 instruments from 200 countries from around the
globe, all under one roof in Phoenix. By Emile Menasché
Intunemonthly.com [ april 2012 ] 05
Save the Children
Saves a Band
Last April, a deadly tornado
reduced the band room at Alabama’s Phil Campbell High School
to rubble. “It destroyed every concert instrument and our entire
music library,” recalls band director Bobby Patrick. “As we were
sifting through the remains, one of
my students said, ‘I guess there’s
no more band.’ I explained that the
band was not made up of horns
and drums, but people.” So Patrick
and his students immediately
started rebuilding. “We had to have
our kids ready to perform at our
first football game, for their sake
as well as for the entire community,” he says. Neighboring schools
lent instruments. Companies like
Innovative Percussion (sticks), Ev-
Race
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race to the stage: courtesy of PRS; Photo far right: courtesy of Save the Children
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Alex Trimblett is off to the races—literally. The
What was it like taking the stage at a race drawing
16-year-old member of Lake Mary (Fla.) High School’s jazz
thousands of fans? “I was more excited than nervous,”
band has only been playing the guitar for three years, but
says Alex, who counts Eric Clapton, Duane Allman,
he had the experience of a lifetime in January when he Derek Trucks, and Stevie Ray Vaughan among his biggest
took the stage with Paul
influences.
Reed Smith Guitars’ house
Headliner Orianthi—
band, the Rocky Mountain
who jammed with legendStoneflies, as the opening
ar y guitarist Carlos
Santana when she was
act for Orianthi at the 50th
around Alex’s age—had
Anniversary running of
some advice for the
the famous Rolex 24
Hours At Daytona (Fla.)
young virtuoso and other
race. Alex also took home
aspiring guitar heroes.
a PRS SE Semi-Hollow gui“Never give up,” she says.
tar and a PRS SE 50 ampli“Sometimes everything
fier. He’s the first winner From left: Davy Knowles, Orianthi,
will go wrong—nothing is
Alex Trimblett, and Paul Reed Smith
of the In Tune Race to the
perfect with rock & roll.
Stage contest sponsored by PRS, which will give four high As long as you have fun, the audience will too. Play as
school musicians the opportunity to play at Grand-Am
much as you can and learn a lot.” She added that young
Road Racing races throughout 2012.
musicians should be willing to test themselves. Alex did
Alex made it to the finish line by winning a show- just that by entering the Race to the Stage contest and
down at the Guitar Center in Orlando, one of four Guitar
came up a winner.
Center outlets that will be holding competitions in assoYou could be next. Future auditions will be held at
ciation with PRS. Alex—who also plays the saxophone— Guitar Center locations in Syracuse, Indianapolis, and
says being in the jazz band has been a great comple- San Jose to support concerts at Grand-Am races through
ment to his guitar work because it taught him how to
July and August. High school guitarists can apply today
read music.
at intunemonthly.com/racetothestage.
ans (drumheads), Zildjian (cymbals), and King (brass) donated
equipment. But the biggest boost
came when Patrick answered the
phone in the school’s temporary
office to find a representative from
Save the Children on the line to
talk about rebuilding the school.
He asked if the organization could
also help the band program. Good
question! Save the Children provided a $2,000 emergency grant,
followed by a generous donation
from Warner Music Group for new
concert instruments and music.
“The grants allowed us to have a
concert season and helped restore
some of the normalcy for these
students. I and my students can’t
thank Save the Children and Warner Music enough.” Read more at
intunemonthly.com.
Intunemonthly.com [ april 2012 ] 07
When I sing, trouble can sit right on my shoulder and I don’t even notice.”
~ Jazz great Sarah Vaughan
After President
Obama sang Al
Green’s classic
“Let’s Stay Together”
in January, sales
jumped 490%.
Orchestral
Cab Fare
Subscribing to a Label
Online “cloud” subscription services like Rhapsody.com and Spotify.
com allow subscribers to hear thousands of artists from a wide range of
genres on their computers and mobile devices either by paying a fee or listening to advertisements. Now a small artist-run independent label, Stones
Throw Records—which is home to hip-hop and revivalist soul artists like Aloe
Black, Madlib, Mayer Hawthorne, and the Stepkids—is using the cloud to
distribute its own music. For $10 a month, subscribers can download high-quality MP3 audio files
that aren’t restricted by digital rights management (DRM) software. According to Billboard.com, having a subscription service allows a label to profit directly from the subscriptions. In contrast, Spotify
and Rhapsody pay the labels only a small percentage of the revenue they earn, dividing it among a
huge roster of labels and artists. Will the major labels follow suit? stonesthrow.com
ABBA Digs into the Archive OK, Go Color
it’s never been easy for an artist
from a non-English-speaking country
to make an impact on the U.S. pop
charts, but there have been exceptions. One of the most notable was
Abba, a Swedish quartet that often
sang in English instead of their native
tongue. At the height of their popularity in the 1970s, Agnetha “Anna”
Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, and Anni-Frid “Frida” Lyngstad dominated the world’s
charts like no band since the Beatles, selling more than 200 million records
worldwide and inspiring the hit U.S. musical Mamma Mia! Thirty years after
the band’s official break-up, Abba’s back catalog continues to sell in the
millions. So when the quartet announced they’d be adding a previously
unreleased track called “From a Twinkling Star to a Passing Angel” to April’s
special edition reissue of its final album (1981’s The Visitors), it made headlines around the world. “This is the first time since the Thank You For the
Music boxed set in 1994 that ABBA has opened the doors to the tape vaults
to release previously unheard music from the group’s heyday,” the band’s
website said about the song, which was assembled from demo snippets
made during sessions for The Visitors. The deluxe edition will also include
new unseen video footage of the group from the period. abbasite.com
In 2005, the video for “Here it
Goes Again” catapulted unknown
indie rockers OK Go to international fame. In February, the band
used its knack for combining
sight and sound to teach Sesame
Street viewers. The quartet wrote
and produced an original song
called “3 Primary Colors” to accompany some clever stop-motion animation created by director Al Jarnow, singing about how
to combine blue, red, and yellow
to create secondary colors like
orange, green, and purple. You
can see the video for yourself—
along with more new music from
the band—at okgo.net/news.
Death Cab for Cutie’s
2011 album Codes and Keys
features plenty of strings,
recorded by San Francisco’s
Magik*Magik Orchestra.
Most rock bands are content
to save money and use electronic sounds to mimic a
real string section when
they tour, but DCC has long
wanted to take the strings
on the road with them. “It
would be really fun to take
Magik*Magik Orchestra out,
but unfortunately, it is kind
of a nightmare to try and figure it out,” Death Cab guitarist and producer Chris Walla
told Billboard.com last year.
“You can make a living—or
you can play with an orchestra.” Well, where there’s a
will, there’s a way: The
orchestra will accompany
the band on tour across
North America this April
and May. Find shows
near you at deathcabforcutie.com/tour.
08 [ april 2012 ] Intunemonthly.com
Ne-Yo Becomes a Record Executive
On the surface, R&B superstar Ne-Yo’s switch from the Def Jam label to Motown
Records may not seem that newsworthy: Both labels are part of the same parent company, Universal Music Group. But along with making records for Motown, Ne-Yo will play
an important role behind the scenes as the label’s new executive vice president
for artists & repertory (A&R), helping to run the department responsible for signing and developing new artists. The company hopes that Ne-Yo’s ability to judge
songs and talent will boost the label’s fortunes. “In Ne-Yo, we have both a global
superstar and arguably one of the best songwriters in music,” says Motown
Senior Vice President Ethiopia Habtemariam. “His presence on the executive
team only strengthens our commitment to be the very best in R&B.” Ne-Yo isn’t
the first star artist to help run a major label. Iconic singer and songwriter Smokey
Robinson held a similar position at Motown from 1961-88. “I’m honored that I’ve
been given such a prestigious title and trusted with such responsibility... playing the
role [of] one of my career role models, Mr. Smokey Robinson.” motown.com
death cab for cutie: Danny Clinch; stones throw: jake green; ne-yo: Chris Stanford
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The best music is essentially there to provide you
something to face the world with.”~ Bruce Springsteen
How Jones Clicked with Danger Mouse
When Norah Jones’s released her debut album Come Away With Me
in 2002, her jazz-influenced sound was a breath of fresh air. A decade
(and three No. 1 albums) later, Jones is reinventing her sound by teaming
with producer Danger Mouse (aka Brian Burton) for Little Broken Hearts,
due out this spring. The unlikely partnership between Jones and the
producer and multi-instrumentalist best known for projects like Gnarles
Barkley and Gorillaz was born after she sang on one of his projects last
year. Jones and Burton wrote Little Broken Hearts together and played
most of the instruments, recording in Danger Mouse’s studio. Jones’s
record label says the result “married their highly personal styles to create an entirely new sound.” norahjones.com
Kung-Fu Piano
3-D’s
a Crowd
Pleaser
Every time fans get access
to new technology, artists are
inspired to create for it. A hundred years ago, the invention of
the record player created the
modern music industry. Since
then, movies, radio, television,
home video, online streaming,
Jason Derulo
A Real Rock Band
Musical video games like Harmonix Music
Some (but not all) musicians consider speed to be
the ultimate measure of technical excellence. But few have
taken the quest for quickness to the level of Ukrainian pianist Lubomyr Melnyk, who plays continuous waves of
lightning-fast phrases to create a unique wash of sound he
calls “continuous music.” Melnyk told the BBC that he developed his speed—he plays as many as 93,000 notes an
hour—by approaching the piano with the mind-set of a
kung-fu master and compares the cascade of notes he
produces to floating on a river. “The technique is based on
almost a martial arts use of the body and energy,” he says.
See him play and explain his technique at
bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-16794606.
A ‘Bone to Pick
Embouchure—the position of the mouth and lips while playing—is one
of the hardest techniques for wind players to master. So we were blown
away (pardon the pun) by the idea behind the Jiggs pBone, a new low-cost
plastic instrument developed in the UK to teach embouchure technique while
helping wind players improve their pitch and intonation. When jazz trombonist Jiggs Whigham—who plays instruments by Conn-Selmer—endorsed the
pBone, the company (best known for high-end brass and woodwinds) decided to bring the plastic practice tool to the U.S. Available in red, blue,
green, and yellow, the pBone is now proving to be popular outside
the practice room, winning the “Best in Show” award at the 2012
NAMM instrument trade show and finding a place in marching and pep bands around the country. jiggspbone.com
10 [ april 2012 ] Intunemonthly.com
and mobile phones have all
offered new outlets for creative
artists. Today, portable game
systems are setting the stage for
this marriage of technology and
art. In 2011, Nintendo’s 3DS
made three-dimensional video
portable—and artists like OK Go,
Foster the People, Blue Man
Group, and Jason Derulo immediately jumped onboard with
videos for the format. Such videos may soon become the industry standard: ”Several label
execs who toured the [2012
Consumer Electronics Show]
were excited by technology from
vendors like LG, TCL and
Panasonic that could make 3-D
video conversion faster and
cheaper for the music industry
to embrace,” reports Andrew
Hampp of Billboard.com.
Mozart based one of
his most famous
piano pieces on the
ancient French folksong
we know as “Twinkle
Twinkle Little Star.”
jason derulo: nick spanos; kung-fu piano: Brian Hydesmith
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Systems’ Rock Band have always been fun.
But because the “instruments” used for
game play were limited to just a few buttons,
they were never very realistic. That’s all
changing thanks to a wave of new controllers that come closer to realistic instrumental play than ever before. While this might
make the games more challenging for nonmusicians, it also turns them into to potent
teaching and practice tools for real players.
We had a chance to see the educational
potential firsthand in January during a demonstration of Rock Band 3, which not only
adds keyboards to
the lineup of drums,
bass, guitar, and
vocals, but also
offers new controllers that allow players to develop core musical skills by playing
scales, chords, and rhythms. The company
is even teaming with guitar makers to offer
instruments that can be used in the game
and in real life. rockband.com/games/rb3
(media)
books
Spin Now!
By DJ Shortee (Hal Leonard)
Los Angeles-based DJ, turntablist, and
classroom instructor DJ Shortee offers
a basic starter’s guide to the emerging
art of DJing, from finding gear to
matching beats to blending tracks and
choosing the right music for a show.
An included DVD offers video
supporting the lessons in the text. halleonard.com
The Wrecking Crew: The Inside
Story of Rock & Roll’s Best Kept
Secret By Kent Hartman (Dunne
Books/St. Martin’s Press)
Hartman tells the story of pop music’s
unsung heroes—a select group of West
Coast studio musicians, known in the
industry as the Wrecking Crew, who
played on an incredible number of hit records by such
artists as the Byrds, Frank Sinatra, the Monkees, and
many others. Hartman profiles key players like drummer
Hal Blaine, keyboardist Larry Knechtel, and bassist Carol
Kaye and takes readers inside the recording of monumental albums like the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, Simon &
Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water, and more.
(us.macmillan.com/ThomasDunne.aspx)
new Music books
Lady Antebellum: Own the Night (Alfred)
Find all the songs from the country trio’s hit album,
including “We Own the Night,” “Just a Kiss,” “Dancin’
Away with My Heart,” “Friday Night,” “When You Were
Mine,” “Cold as Stone,” “Singing Me Home,” “Wanted
You More,” “As You Turn Away,” “Love I’ve Found in
You,” “Somewhere Love Remains,” and “Heart of the
World.” alfred.com
Hugo: Music From the Original Score
(Hal Leonard) This book offers solo piano arrangements
of a dozen pieces from Howard Shore’s Oscar-nominated orchestra score, including “Ashes,” “The Chase,” “The
Clocks,” “Coeur Volant,” “A Ghost in the Station,”
“Hugo’s Father,” “The Magician,” “Papa Georges Made
Movies,” “The Plan,” “Snowfall,” “The Station Inspector,” and “The Thief.” halleonard.com
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Originating from KCRW, a public radio station based at
Santa Monica College, The Morning Becomes Eclectic
program has been bringing the Adult Alternative format
to listeners since the late 1970s. Currently hosted by
Jason Bentley (who started at the station as a high school
phone volunteer and now serves as its music director),
the three-hour program airs from 9 a.m. to noon PT every
weekday. The playlist includes a diverse mix of artists—a
recent sampling featured Electric Light Orchestra and the
Shins—often interspersed with in-studio live performances. You can stream episodes and check out
playlists at kcrw.com/music/programs/mb.
Apps
Harman’s HT6 FastTuneTuner enables any
iOS device to work as a polyphonic tuner,
allowing string players to tune all their
strings at the same time. Based on the
HardWire HT-6 Polyphonic Tuner floor
pedal, the app can detect an instrument
through the iPod, iPhone, or iPad’s mic
input or via a separate interface that lets
you plug an electronic instrument into the
30-pin “charger” connection. In addition to
polyphonic mode, the app can be used for
chromatic (one string at a time) tuning and has a mode for
the popular drop-D tuning. Harman.com
12 [ april 2012 ] Intunemonthly.com
Neil Young Journeys
Classic rocker Young reunites with Oscarwinning director Jonathan Demme for a
third time on this feature-length documentary/concert film. Centered on two of
Young’s solo shows in Toronto last spring—
where he sang while alternating between
guitar and piano—the film combines
concert footage with brief scenes from a
road trip in a vintage Ford through Young’s
rural hometown of Omemee, Ontario. Neil Young Journeys has
been making the rounds at film festivals like Sundance and
Slamdance and is expected to be released by Sony Pictures
Classics later this year. sonypictureclassics.com.
instruction
How to Play from a Real Book
by Robert Rawlins (Hall Leonard)
Playing from the bare-bones lead sheets found in the Real
Book series can be a challenge. Rawlins outlines the
theory and techniques pros use to perform such material,
explaining how to interpret a melody, improvise over
chords, create bass lines, and more. halleonard.com
Neil Peart: Taking Center Stage (Hudson Music)
Combining performance footage from throughout his
career with backstage warm-ups and detailed song
demonstrations, this DVD set provides a unique look
into how Rush’s legendary drummer approaches his
instrument. The set includes more than six-and-a-half
hours of footage and a printable PDF eBook showing
transcriptions of Peart’s playing. hudsonmusic.com
Neil young: joel bernstein
Radio/online
FILM & VIDEO
(frontrunner)
ListeningList
Music for Musicians
The Listening List is a collection of
new and noteworthy songs we think
musicians should check out. Each
song can be streamed in its entirety
at InTuneMonthly.com.
The song is called “Pretender” and
appears somewhere down the cut list
on Miike Snow’s forthcoming album
Happy to You on Universal Republic
Records. (Yes, it’s spelled with two “ii’s” and
is actually the name of a trio of Swedish
musicians.) This melodic and sleek pop/
electronica is a great example of one of
today’s hottest sounds…
1
Punch
Brothers
Their new album
is another step
up for this
modern
Bluegrass
quintet
We’ve followed lead
Punch Brother and
virtuoso mandolin
player Chris Theile
for some time;
from his breakout
role with bluegrass
band Nickel Creek to
his recent Goat Sessions
album with Yo-Yo Ma
and others. He’s an in-demand session player and been playing
professionally since he was eight. But as good as he always is,
this Punch ensemble goes beyond. They seem to have created a folk/pop brand of
bluegrass with modern pop melodies and vocals that makes perfect use of fiddles, banjos, mandos, and ukes. There have been plenty of pop acts that use those instruments,
but this is a real bluegrass act that rolls back and forth over the pop line. Their latest
album has a bunch of breakout material on it, and more than one track on it could
give the Punch Brothers a sleeper hit.
We met and heard Hawaiian-born
singer/songwriter Anuhea at the
ASCAP EXPO in Los Angeles last year, and
liked her. But frankly, we were shocked at
how great her debut album For Love is. Try
“Higher Than the Clouds” from this selfreleased collection. There are a bunch of
winners on this wonderful reggae and R&Binfluenced record, and there’s a breath of
Hawaiian springtime in all of them….
3
Every once in a while we need a helping of garage music; a bunch of kids
banging out a catchy tune without any bells
or whistles. Well, maybe a little reverb to
simulate the sound of the garage, but that’s
classic. The unsigned Brooklyn four-piece
band Fast Years does that on the cut
“Young Heart” from a yet to be released EP,
a throwback in style for sure, but somehow
fresh in its execution…
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Apparatjik is a “super group” made
up of members from Coldplay, MEW,
and A-ha. Their stage show is unique in that
they play in a specially created cube with
visuals and silhouettes of the four band
members being projected onto all four
sides. They released an album to iTunes in
5
14 [ april 2012 ] Intunemonthly.com
Band of Skulls
The name of their new
album Sweet Sour describes
them perfectly
Band of Skulls is an experiment in sonic swirling, where Emma Richardson’s sweet lead vocal
is blended with a rough-hewn guitar sound reminiscent of Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page. In fact,
when that guitar is a little less fuzzed and relegated
to fills on ballads, the tunes produced are as pretty
as any. Regardless, this trio rocks, and it does so
with freshness and creative songwriting. The Skulls
signaled their arrival when one of their tracks was included on the Twilight Saga: New
Moon soundtrack in 2009, and this latest album plants their flag in the sand.
pu n ch brothers : D a n n y C l i n ch ; ba n d o f s k ulls : J o n Fur n i ss / W i reIma g e ; g otye : J ames B rya n s ;
J ay par k : M B L i m / M ult i - B i ts v i a Getty Ima g es ; josh abbott ba n d : T odd P ur i f oy
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Russian-American pianist and singer/
songwriter Elizaveta was trained as
an opera singer. You can hear it in her song
construction as well as in the vocal on
“Dreamer” from her eponymous debut
album on Universal Republic Records. We
love the combination of electronic sounds,
orchestral strings, and pop stylings throughout the album…
2
Gotye
He’s big abroad and now
crashing onto our shores
Gotye (pronounced GORE-tee-yeah) is an ARIA
award-winning singer/songwriter from Australia
(by way of Belgium) who has been compared to
Sting and Peter Gabriel. His soaring voice and use
of varied sounds and effects combine to offer a
wonderfully diverse set of tracks. He’s got a derivative style
that’s still very much his own, with a little Brit-pop here and little Motown there. It all hangs together very nicely, and it would
seem that his success in other parts of the world will follow him
to the U.S. in short order.
Jay Park
2010 and now have new music available on
their website ahead of a full release. We like
the track “Do It Myself” for its trans-genre
approach, general composition, vocals, and
use of electronics…
We have no idea what to make of
Gregory Porter. He always sounds to
us like he’s singing tunes from a Broadway
show—and he has sung on Broadway. But
the original songs on his sophomore album
Be Good, on the Motema Records label,
don’t sound like
hear the music @
musical theater.
intunemonthly.com
They call him a jazz
singer—but we’re not so sure. Nevertheless,
we can’t ignore this album. Our conclusion:
This music stands on its own. Listen to the
title cut from Be Good, and maybe a few
others. The one thing we know is, this is
something special…
6
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This American born-South Korean hiphop sensation is poised for U.S. success
Wildly popular in South Korea and in many U.S. Korean communities, the story of Jay Park’s rise with—and then departure
from— the boy band 2PM is legend. But to much of the rest of the
U.S., Park is a newcomer. Yet what a newcomer he is. When singing in
English you think Usher and Michael Jackson. When rapping, there’s more
than a bit of Eminem in his cadence. The singer, writer, dancer, producer,
and actor now offers up an album called New Breed, and it’s all over the
place in terms of tempo, English and Korean, and remixes. Never heard
Korean R&B and hip-hop? Check it out.
Josh Abbott Band
Pop-style songwriting is raising the fortunes of
this Texas country band
The Josh Abbott Band has been around for a few
years, singing about Texas and many of the traditional country music themes. They’re a real
band that makes music onstage as well as they
do in the studio, and their lead vocal is young
and true. To this point, they were good at
this music thing, but they’ve now produced a hit called “Touch,” and it will
draw them out of the pack, fiddles a-whinin’ and banjo a-pluckin’. The Josh Abbott
Band has a country pop hit that should do
for them what songs like it have done for
Taylor Swift, Shania, and the like.
The new album and single “Un
Hombre Normal” on Disa Records by
Mexican singer/songwriter Espinoza Paz
showcases a wonderful singer and a stillrising international talent. It doesn’t matter
that we don’t speak Spanish. “Un Hombre
Normal” is beautifully crafted and recorded,
and in any language illustrates music’s transcendent nature. We were waiting for a full
orchestra to glide into this number—and it
could, but never does. No matter, the crisp
and simple production is enough…
7
Sibelius: Symphonies No. 2 & 5 by conductor Osmo Vansk and the
Minnesota Orchestra on the BIS label is a
masterpiece of classical music by Finnish
composer Jean Sibelius. Sibelius died in
1957, but his music has always felt modern
to us, taking an almost new age approach to
the form. Try “Symphony No. 5 in E-Flat
Major, Opus 82 III.” Allegro molto. We find
that the music restores us. Hopefully it will
restore you as well….
8
The classic rock closer for this list is
“Rock N Roll Band” by the iconic rock
group Boston. The cut led off the second
side of the band’s self-titled Epic Records
debut in July of 1976 and told the story of
their rise to fame. Active to this day, Boston
has sold 31 million albums and toured the
world. MIT grad Tom Scholz is the mastermind of the group, writing the songs and
commanding the production of each track
with an engineer’s precision. Rumor has it
that he’s 85% done with yet another record…
9
Intunemonthly.com [ april 2012 ] 15
ICON
by Ken Schlager
“I got together with my brother and a friend and we decided to play dates.
The more we played, the more we wanted to do it.”–Ray Davies
fier’s speakers) and began using more sophisticated studio techniques. Ray Davies
also became increasingly sophisticated as
a lyricist, painting richly detailed and often satirical portraits of modern British
life. “A Well Respected Man,” “Dedicated
Follower of Fashion,” “Sunny Afternoon,”
and “Waterloo Sunset” all were U.K. hits
and performed modestly well on the U.S.
charts. Feeling ambitious, the band embarked on the first of several themed albums, The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society. Critically applauded, it was
a commercial failure. More successful was
the 1970 album LolaVersus Powerman and the
Moneygoround, with its classic single “Lola,”
an improbable hit about a more improbable romantic encounter.
For much of the 1970s, the Kinks detoured into a theatrical phase, touring with
a horn section and backup singers and issuing albums with operatic pretensions.
But the rocking Kinks returned later in
the decade with successful arena tours and
hit albums like Misfits and Low Budget. The
American band Van Halen’s raucous cover
of “You Really Got Me” reintroduced the
Kinks to younger audiences. Long recognized as a precursor of heavy metal, punk,
and new wave, the Kinks’ music would
more recently be credited as an influence
by British pop acts such as Blur and Oasis.
Throughout their career, the Kinks
were beset by internal strife, most notably
between Ray and Dave. The band broke
up in 1996, but that merely set the stage
for reunion rumors that quieted only
when Dave suffered a stroke in 2004. Pete
Quaife died six years later. Ray, now 67,
continues to record and tour, sometimes
as a solo artist—sometimes with a band
and choir. His autobiography X-Ray, and a
companion tour (which included readings
from the book) inspired the launch of the
TV series VH1 Storytellers.
WHO: Influential British rock band led by brothers Ray and Dave Davies
Masters of social commentary, the Kinks evolved from edgy British-invasion
rock band to theatrical troupe to worldwide arena headliners.
WHEN: Mid-1960s through the mid-1990s.
WHAT:
THE STORY: The Kinks were among the dozens of British bands that invaded Amer-
ica on the heels of the Beatles. Like the Fab Four, their earliest recordings were raw,
energetic, and rooted in both British dance hall music and American R&B. But unlike
the Beatles and most of their U.K. contemporaries, the Kinks would rock on for decades. They did not have huge-selling albums—they never had a No. 1 single in the
U.S.—yet they recorded some of the most memorable songs of the rock era and are
cited as a major influence by generations of musicians.
The Kinks grew from a series of bands formed in the London suburb of Muswell Hill
by guitarist/vocalist Ray Davies, his younger brother, lead guitarist Dave, and a school
chum, bassist Pete Quaife. Thanks to their older sisters, music was a constant presence in
the Davies home, and both boys learned to play guitar. Ray briefly left for art college, but
came back home to reform the band. By early 1964, they had found a drummer in Mick
Avory, a recording deal with the British label Pye, and a permanent name: the Kinks.
After some initial flops, the Kinks shot to the top of the British pop chart with “You
Really Got Me” in August 1964. It was the height of Beatlemania and the Kinks fit right
in. Subsequent singles “All Day and All of the Night” and “Set Me Free” were similarly
successful in the U.K. and also gave the band a foothold in the U.S., each reaching the
top 10. The Kinks were soon touring worldwide. Perhaps it happened too fast. In mid1965, an on-stage fight between Avory and Ray Davies added to their growing reputation for rowdiness and apparently prompted the American Federation of Musicians to
block the band from touring the U.S. for four years, significantly reducing their commercial potential in the world’s biggest music market.
Still, the Kinks remained a force. The band evolved from its early rough-edged sound
(Dave Davies had created the distortion on “You Really Got Me” by slashing his ampli-
16 [ april 2012 ] Intunemonthly.com
GET THE KINKS OUT:
Grab the hits for your iPod, but stick
with the full album versions of Lola and
Preservation Society to appreciate Ray
Davies’ range as a songwriter.
p h o t o : M i c h a e l O c h s A r c h i v e s / G e t t y Im a g e s
The
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[
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the write stuff
By Emile MenaschÉ
Joel Beckerman (left) at
with John Legend
puter software, they recorded the guitar, bass, drums, and electronic
instruments as Beckerman composed.
The orchestral parts were mocked up
using software but eventually replaced
by horn and string players from the New
York Philharmonic. “We used live musicians on every track, but we used them
in different ways,” Beckerman says. “The
theme was the most orchestral. The
dubstep piece has strings for only a couple of phrases.”
NBC chose four of Beckerman’s new
pieces and decided to reuse five that Man
Made had produced in 2009. “By editing,
we created a lot of material out of those
nine compositions,” he says. “There ended up being about 55-60 choices for the
music editors and director to use on the
broadcast.”
Interestingly, while Beckerman plays
keyboards, he doesn’t always use them to
compose. “My voice is probably my main
writing tool,” he
hear the music @
intunemonthly.com
says. “I sing parts
into my phone or into a portable recorder. I find that if I sit down at a keyboard,
my hands tend to go to places they’ve
gone before. But if I force myself to just
come up with a basic idea with my voice,
I go in more interesting places.”
Over his career, Beckerman has done
everything from producing songwriter
demos to collaborating with Grammywinners such as John Legend to creating
“branding” sounds for corporate clients
like AT&T. He’s learned to tailor his music to cover every situation a client might
face. “TV is very specialized,” he says.
“For example, going to commercial, you
generally want to sneak in with a musical
statement and have a big finish. Coming
out, you should have a big hit at the top
and an ending the director can fade out.
You need different music for a tense moment like the break leading up to an important field goal than for something like
the halftime show. TV is about storytelling, and I put the story at the center of all
my work.”
Joel al to copy.
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This composer had three weeks
to score NBC’s Super Bowl broadcast.
F
rom themes to backing tracks (or underscore) to the so-called “bumpers”
heard before and after commercials, music is an essential part of all television programs. But when the show is the most watched broadcast of the year,
TV executives want the music to be as dramatic as the action onscreen.
So when NBC Sports hired Man Made Music to create the soundtrack for Super
Bowl XLVI, Joel Beckerman and his team of producer-arrangers approached the
project more like a film score than a football game. “The Giants versus the Patriots
was a grudge match,” Beckerman says. “So I thought, ‘How can I bring this to epic
proportions?’”
He wasn’t starting from scratch. NBC’s weekly pro football broadcasts have used
a theme called “Wide Receiver,” by John Williams (Star Wars, The Adventures of Tin Tin)
for several years. “My job was to take Williams’s fantastic melody and evolve the
music to capture the imagination of the huge Super Bowl audience,” says Beckerman,
who called his version “Epic Matchup.” “The themes we created are called derivative
works because they use material from the original plus new ideas. We created a new
section in the middle that didn’t exist before.”
The assignment came only three weeks before the big game, so Beckerman, a Selected credits:
veteran composer who did similar work for NBC’s 2009 Super Bowl coverage, c Super Bowl XLVI theme and underscore
started writing while listening to film soundtracks—as well as dubstep artists like
c
Skrillex—for ideas. “We looked at how we could have a collision between the tradi- AT&T theme and ringtones
c NBA theme and underscores
tional orchestral world and modern rock and electronic styles,” he says.
It took Beckerman and his team about a week to compose 10 pieces. Using com- c Wild Discovery theme and underscore
18 [ april 2012 ] Intunemonthly.com
players
by Geoff Giordano The Lives and Times of Working Musicians
Bassist Mike Visceglia
M
any young musicians get started on the path to success because they
come from musical families—but when your father lands you your first
job in a band, you’ve really got a leg up.
That’s what Mike Visceglia, bassist for GRAMMY-winning artist
Suzanne Vega, discovered when his family left his native New York City for New
Jersey and his father, a semi-professional musician, let a local garage band called the
Young Loves rehearse at the family’s home in 1966-67.
“I was always snooping around then, taking my classical guitar lessons,” Visceglia
recalls. “One day they had a falling out with the bass player, and the light bulb went
off in my dad’s head: ‘I have a really good idea; if you want to continue rehearsing
here, you have to audition my son.’” The band agreed, and Visceglia’s father whisked
his 12-year-old boy to the nearest music store to buy a bass.
“Because I had a really good ear and had been playing a little guitar, they auditioned
me and I got the job,” Visceglia says. “I started playing and making money.”
When he moved back to New York City at age 15, he began going to shows in the
city’s famous Greenwich Village neighborhood, meeting singers, songwriters, and
musicians of every stripe. The city at the time was a hotbed of styles. “People were
more free with their time, energy, and knowledge,” he explains. “I learned a lot just
going scene to scene.”
That footwork eventually led him to join singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega as she
played coffeehouses early in her career. “I went on the ride with her to the point that
we were headlining 10,000-seaters and I played on her album Solitude Standing, which
featured [the GRAMMY-nominated song] ‘Luka.’”
Experiencing big-league success and having the freedom to contribute to an artist with a strong record company and management “was a defining moment,” he says.
Since then, Visceglia has taken on a plethora of projects,
from running bass clinics to starting the production company
Pryzm Music to subbing on Broadway in the pit band for Mamma
Mia! in 2011.
“All (my projects) have ebbs and flows
to them,” he notes. “I go where the energy is taking me at the time. If my production company is really active, that’s where
my energies go. Being a freelance musician as I’ve been my entire life, you have
to constantly be creative and constantly
be thinking outside the box. When things
start slowing down, you can’t just be
depending on the phone ringing — you
have to go out create situations for yourself. Create showcases, write and record
music, put yourself up on YouTube, go
out into scenes and put bands together
that can highlight your playing.”
Given his proactive approach to the
music business, it’s no surprise Visceglia
is quick to answer when asked what he
wants to do next.
“I think about it often,” he says. “There
are three things I haven’t done that I want
to do. I have not played at Madison Square
Garden yet; being a New Yorker I’ve
played just about every other venue (in
the city), including Carnegie Hall and
Radio City Music Hall. I’ve also
never played in a big band, like a
20-piece jazz or fusion band with
horns. And although I’ve played
on parts of movie soundtracks, I’ve never been
in a studio with a full
orchestra to record
a big television or
filmscore.”
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Mike Visceglia’s Playbook—A working pro’s take on:
c Developing: If you’re going to be an employable musician, read music at least
well enough that you can navigate through basic figures and know the notes of your
instrument. That’s going to give you a lot of chances to get into different kinds of
work you never thought you might be getting into.
c Surviving as an artist: I didn’t specialize in any one thing. The general palette
of information of what I could bring to each musical situation has proved to
be the most valuable asset. Be a generalist and understand lots of things
about different styles of music; that doesn’t mean you have to be the
best at everything, but you have to be good enough at a lot of things.
c Handling success: Keep in the forefront of your mind that this
can all go away in a New York minute and it more than often does.
You can’t look at it as, ‘This is my new long-term reality.’ You have
to have a sense of self that is not validated by an external world of
adulation or applause or the trappings of that world.
20 [ april 2012 ] Intunemonthly.com
I nfluences
paul Irwin
Connecting Musicians through time
Bruno Mars & Jelly Roll Morton
■ If Bruno Mars’
turn onstage at the
2012 Grammy
Awards show doesn’t
solidify him as a
performer who
understands the
roots behind his
rhythms and melodies, nothing will.
Mars says that his
music owes something to a diverse
array of artists,
including reggae king
Bob Marley and some
of the acts he later
influenced like the
British new wave trio
the Police and the
punky reggae
California band
Sublime. But it’s the
genre-defying
approach of alternative rap group A Tribe
Called Quest that
reminds us most of
Bruno’s “it’s all music”
approach.
Called Quest was around for hiphop’s early years and drew from rap
pioneers like Curtis Blow and Rakim,
as well as from their creative neighbors
De La Soul, who inspired them to incorporate jazz into their music. The
jazz influence was so direct that the
Tribe use samples from jazz greats like
Cannonball Adderley in their work.
TCQ’s INFLUENCES Curtis Blow, Rakim,
De La Soul, Cannonball Adderley
p h o t o S : ( M a r s ) G e o r g e P i m e nt e l / W i r e Imag e ; ( T C Q ) B e nn e tt Rag l i n / W i r e Imag e ; ( A dd e r l e y ) M i cha e l Ochs A r ch i v e s / G e tty Imag e s ;
( B as i e ) U . S L i b r a r y o f C o ng r e ss ; ( M o r t o n ) H o gan J a z z A r ch i v e
■ Growing up in Queens, N.Y., A TribE
Cannonball Adderley
had a unique career, playing
(along with his cornetist brother
Ned) with Ray Charles before joining Miles Davis’ most famous
quintet, where he played with
fellow sax great John Coltrane.
There’s no doubt that Charles,
Davis, and Trane helped shape his
sound, but it was the powerful
sound of swing master Count
Basie that would most characterize Cannonball’s later work as a
leader.
Bruno’s INFLUENCES The Police,
Bob Marley, Sublime, A Tribe Called Quest
CannonBall’s INFLUENCES Ray Charles,
Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Count Basie
■ Count Basie came of age at a time when
jazz was just finding itself, and was still thought
of as party music for clubgoers (sort of the
Dubstep of its day). It’s still hard to sit still
while listening to Basie’s jazz orchestra.
He was influenced by pioneers like W.C.
Handy (known as “The Father of the
Blues”), virtuoso pianist Fats
Waller, and swing bassist Walter
Page, who took the young pianist
under his wing. But the root of
Basie’s style goes back to the
very first recognized jazz great,
Jelly Roll Morton.
Count Basie’s INFLUENCES W.C. Handy, Fats
Waller, Walter Page, Jelly Roll Morton
22 [ April 2012 ] Intunemonthly.com
Credit
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■ Lyrical alto saxophonist
Techniques Italian
tI alian
For Musicians
24 [ April 2012 ] Intunemonthly.com
InTune Interactive: Log on to InTuneMonthly.com
to hear the music examples shown here.
Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra
at Carnegie Hall.
S t e f a n C o h e n f o r C a r n e g i e Ha l l
n
For centuries, one language has told musicians
around the world how to play. By Jon Chappell
E
ver wonder why your sheet music gives performance instructions using terms like “piano”
and “presto” instead of “softly”
or “quickly?” Those words—
and scores of others—are used by musicians
all over the world. But they’re native to only
one land, Italy.
How did Italian become the language of
music? From the Middle Ages through the
Renaissance and beyond, Italy was the center of Western art and culture. Many of the
musical systems and practices we still use
today developed during this time. Therefore, Italian was established as music’s lingua franca (a language systematically used
to make communication possible between
people not sharing a mother tongue). The
language is so widely used in music that you
may not even realize that such common
“English” words as piano, opera, tempo,
and tuba are actually Italian.
Fortunately, you don’t have to learn to
speak Italian fluently to master the words and
phrases needed to express musical ideas. But
having an understanding of key terms in various categories will give you a better understanding when reading or playing music.
Function Follows Form
All music must be organized into a form, or
the structure that holds together the piece
itself. A song is probably the most common
musical form, and that’s an English word.
But there are other forms for which there
are no English equivalents. For example,
opera: It’s a dramatic stage piece where a
story is told almost exclusively through
singing. But the word is actually the plural
of the word opus, which means “work” in
Latin. A sonata isn’t just any piece of classical instrumental music, even though the literal translation means “sound.” The sonata
form defines a very specific way in which a
piece of music will start, develop, and end.
Libretto means “small book” in plain Italian,
but in musical Italian, it is the story and lyrics of an opera.
You may be more familiar with at least
some Italian terms used for tempo and dynamics (the difference between loud and soft
sound). Now, tempo is itself an Italian word
meaning, simply, time.There’s a whole range
of Italian tempo terms, and they tell you
more than how many beats per minute to
play. They also imply a mood or feel to the
music. For example, Grave and Largo are both
Intunemonthly.com [ April 2012 ] 25
InTune Interactive: Log on to InTuneMonthly.com
to hear the music examples shown here.
Techniques Italian
“slow” tempos, but the former also indicates
that the playing should be “somber.”
Check out the table of tempo terms (Figure 1) as they progress from the slowest to
the fastest. There are actually many more
Italian tempo terms than the 14 shown in the
table, but these are the most widely used.
You’ll notice that many of the terms show a
range of speeds, while others offer instructions that are open to interpretation.
A tempo indication tells you how fast to
play. But it doesn’t tell you how to change
tempo as you play.Terms like accelerando and
ritardando (often abbreviated ritard. or just
rit.) tell you to speed up and slow down,
respectively. Other Italian terms can tell you
to hold a note indefinitely (fermata, ), or to
return to the original tempo (a tempo) after
a ritard. or a fermata.
FIGURE 1: TEMPO
This table shows the most popular tempo terms, from slow to fast, and provides metronome
markings (in beats per minute) where appropriate.
Tempo Marking
Description
Grave
Very slowly and solemnly
Beats per Min.
Largo
Slowly and broadly
40 – 50
Lento
Slowly
50 – 60
Larghetto
Slowly, but faster than largo
60 – 66
Adagio
Slowly, with movement
66 – 76
Adagietto
Less slowly than adagio
Andantino
Slower than andante
Andante
A walking pace
76 – 108
Moderato
Moderately
108 – 120
Allegretto
Between moderato and allegro
Allegro
Brightly
Vivace
Lively
120 – 168
Presto
Quickly
168 – 200
Prestissimo
Very fast
200 – 208
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Soft, Loud, and
All Points in Between
As with tempo, Italian provides a range
of standard terms that take you from the
very softest to the very loudest sounds you
can produce. Look at the chart in Figure
2, and see how the three letters p, m, and
f are logically combined to go from soft
to loud. By the way, though piano means
soft (or quiet) in Italian, the reason we use
it for a keyboard instrument is that when
the piano was originally invented, it was
named the pianoforte because it could play
both soft and loud (unique for a keyboard
at the time).
Music rarely goes from extremely loud
to soft in an instant. Gradual changes in dynamics can be indicated in words or symbols. To get increasingly louder, composers
write crescendo (abbreviated cresc.) or use a
character that looks like a stretched out “less
than” sign (<). A diminuendo (dim.) or decrescendo (decresc.) means “gradually softer,” indicated with an elongated “greater than” sign
(>).These symbols are sometimes referred
to as “hairpins.” To get from mezzo-piano to
fortissimo gradually, you’d employ crescendo,
indicated by a hairpin that opens outward as
it moves from left to right.
Attacking the Problem
One of the most interesting things about
Italian musical terms is the way one word
can express ideas that require a whole
phrase in English. You can see this with
articulations (Figure 3), which tell you how
26 [ April 2012 ] Intunemonthly.com
FIGURE 2: DYNAMICS
Symbol
ppp
pp
p
mp
mf
f
ff
fff
From soft to loud, a table of
dynamics. If no dynamic mark is
present, the level is assumed to
be mezzo-forte (mf).
FIGURE 3:
ARTICULATIONS
Staccato = very short, crisp;
staccatissimo = medium
short; marcato = accented;
martellato = forceful and
shorter than marcato; tenuto
= held for full value.
.
œ
&
Name
Definition
pianississimo
very, very soft
pianissimo
very soft
piano
softly
mezzo-piano
medium soft
mezzo-forte
medium loud
forte
loud
fortissimo
very loud
fortississimo
very, very loud
´
œ
staccato
staccatissimo
to perform, or attack, a single note or note
sequence. There is no single English word
for staccato (indicated by a dot over a note
head).That one word tells you to play notes
short and crisply.
Techniques from
the Masters
To see how Italian musical terms get used
in the real world, let’s take a look at three
different pieces of music from composers
of three different nationalities and eras.
In the string quartet shown in Figure 4,
German composer Beethoven uses many
marcato
>œ
œ^
œ
tenuto
martellato
Italian words to tell us how to play. The
tempo indication of Andante means “play
at a medium-slow pace” (making it easier
to play the 32nd notes that occur in the
second violin part). The dynamic marks
indicate an alternation between forte
(loud) and piano (soft), with no gradation
between the two levels. So we know that
this passage should sound dramatic! The
first violinist plays a trill for three bars
as the dynamic level goes from piano to
forte and back to piano again, and then
introduces a crescendo—all during the trill.
The second violinist also has a challenge
InTune Interactive: Log on to InTuneMonthly.com
to hear the music examples shown here.
Techniques Italian
FIGURE 4: BEETHOVEN STRING QUARTET
The drama of this passage is revealed more through the articulations than the notes themselves.
Ÿ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ϫ
Ϫ
Ϫ
Andante
° ## 3 œ ™
& 8
Vln. 1
#3 .
& #8 œ
f
Vln. 2
B ## 38 œœ
.
Cello f
?# 3
¢ #8 œ
.
f
Vla.
œ
p
≈ œR ® œ œ œ œ œ œ œ
œ.
p
sf
œœ.
œ ‰
‰
.
œ
p
œ.
œ. ‰ œ.
‰
ten.
p
f
œ.
f
œ.
œœ
œ. .
.
f œ
.œ
f
f
p
œœ
f
cresc.
œ ≈ œ ® œœœ œœ
œ
R œ
. cresc.
p œ
‰ œ œ
‰
.p
.
‰ œ œ
‰
.
ten.
œ.
œ.
œ.
f
f
œ.
p
œ.
ten.
œ
≈R ‰ ‰
œ. sf
p
.
œ. ‰ œ. œ ‰
p
œ.
œ.
œ ‰ œ.
‰
.
p œ
œ. ‰ œ.
‰
p
f
FIGURE 5: THE YOUNG PERSON’S GUIDE TO THE ORCHESTRA
Here, composer Benjamin Britten has put articulations and dynamics on
every note and in every measure.
Allegro
>˙ w
˙ bw
>˙ w˙ w
fp
>˙ w˙ w
œ œ. -˙
œ œ ˙
U
˙ ÓÓ
˙
in that she must play her three-note DD-Fs figure with two staccato notes followed by a tenuto—all while observing
the alternative f-p-f (loud-soft-loud)
dynamic scheme.
Benjamin Britten’s TheYoung Person’s
Guide to the Orchestra (Figure 5) is quite
challenging for the performer. Almost
every note in this excerpt has an articulation mark, requiring performers to consider three aspects for every note they
play: pitch, rhythm, and articulation. In
fact, the only notes without either staccato or tenuto marks have their own bit
of complexity: The whole notes in bars
3–5 have to be executed using forte-piano (initially played loud and suddenly
dropped in volume) and then brought up
again with a gradual crescendo until the
very next note, a half note with a marcato accent. Note too how the trumpets
split apart in bars 3 and 4, where the first
trumpets play staccato eighth notes against
the second trumpets’ tenuto and marcato
quarter and half notes. They join forces
at bar 5 playing an all-staccato line while
simultaneously increasing the dynamic
level from forte to fortissimo—not an easy
thing to master, but quite powerful when
done correctly.
In Apollon Musagète, for string orchestra (Figure 6), Igor Stravinsky includes not
just dynamics, crescendos and diminuendos in
rapid succession, but additional bowing instructions, including down- and up-bows
(U and u), pizzicato (plucked) and arco
(bowed). Note that in bar 3 the first cellos
play piano, but in the very next bar they
play mezzo-forte, indicating it’s their turn to
take the spotlight. This tells the performers not just to play louder but that they
are now the featured instrument. And that
naturally affects the way a performer plays
in ways other than loudness.
Maybe that’s why we still use these old
Italian terms so often: They’re both efficient and expressive. The word crescendo
is more open to interpretation than if you
said something scientific like “play 30%
louder.” You can tell someone to play a passage smoothly, but it doesn’t have nearly as
much impact as saying, “Make this melody
legato.” And when someone delivers a brilliant performance, there’s only one proper
response: shouting out that Italian—and
universal—word of approval, “Bravo!”
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FIGURE 6: STRAVINSY’S APOLLON MUSAGETE
The challenge here is to perform the dynamics and different articulations within a short
period of time, or in rapid succession.
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28 [ April 2012 ] Intunemonthly.com
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photo: TKTKTKTKTKTKTKTKTKTKTK
Adele singing at the
GRAMMY Awards show
in February.
30 [ April 2012 ] Intunemonthly.com
A star at 19,
Adele’s decided
to study the
music she loved,
pumping soul
into her sound
and making
21 an album
for the ages.
By Melinda Newman
Photo: Lester Cohen/WireImage
The spotlight and the world were
focused on a young woman from North London,
England—and it was her moment to shine. Almost two hours into the 54th Annual Grammy Awards in February—and after four
months of doctor-mandated silence following vocal surgery—Adele Laurie Blue Adkins
sang again in public for the first time.
We heard her before we saw her. On
a darkened stage at the Staples Center in
Los Angeles, her voice, a cappella, wailed
the now-familiar, searing refrain of “We
could have had it all,” from “Rolling In
The Deep,” before yielding to the song’s
instantly recognizable stomping rhythm.
Four minutes later, as the performance
drew to a close, the audience leapt
to its feet, happy to have her back,
and to recognize an artist that many
credit with a reversal in fortunes for
a struggling record industry.
It was a night of victories for
the 23-year-old British singer. She
won six GRAMMYs, including album of the
year for 21­—tying the the record for the most
GRAMMYs won by a female artist in a single
year. But her biggest triumph was reclaiming
her voice and showing the world that she was
back, as good as new.
The Grammy Awards bestowed by the
National Academy of Recorded Arts and Sciences recognize many different genres of music, and there are many musicians who fit very
neatly into categories like jazz or alternative
rock.
Then there are artists like Adele. Her second album 21, released in 2011, blends pop,
rock, country and R&B into a cohesive mix
that’s ideally suited for her powerful and expressive voice. The album’s cornucopia of
styles was completely by design, as Adele, who
co-wrote the songs on 21 with a number of
other songwriters, including Paul Epworth,
Dan Wilson, and Ryan Tedder, purposefully
worked on developing and broadening her
sound and on educating herself on a wide
range of musical genres.
Although Adele’s first album, 2008’s 19,
sold well, received great critical acclaim, and
garnered her two GRAMMYs—including
best new artist—the singer felt like there was
tremendous room for growth, in part because
music critics told her so.
“A lot of the reviews, even though they
were positive, said ‘I don’t think her songs are
as good as I think her voice is’,”Adele recalls. “I
was like,‘Right. I’m going to back up my ideas
with better writing’.”
But first, Adele knew she needed to hear
more in order to learn more. She became a musical sponge. She actively listened to whatever
music was before her. While touring America
to support 19, she had the members of her
band play her the music they were listening
to on the tour bus.And when she sat up in the
front of the coach with the driver, she started
to learn all about country music.
“I was on tour in the U.S. for quite a while,”
she says. “I had the same driver all the time. He
Adele has often cited Etta James (right)
as an important influence on her
expressive singing style.
32 [ April 2012 ] Intunemonthly.com
was from Nashville. Sometimes, I would stay
up with him for a 10-hour drive and he would
be playing all this amazing music that he was
born and bred on that I’d never heard of.”
Her bus driver introduced her to the music
of Wanda Jackson, a 74-year old spitfire nicknamed the Queen of Rockabilly, who blended
country and rock into a feisty brew during
the 1960s. In fact, Adele says that Jackson’s
toughness—which often hides an aching vulnerability—influenced “Rolling InThe Deep.”
“Wanda, for me, is sort of like my rockabilly
Etta James,” she says, referencing the late legendary blues singer whom Adele considers
her greatest influence. “She has this feistiness
that you’re either born with or you’re not.You
wouldn’t want to [mess] with her.”
But Adele’s education didn’t end with Jackson. Her bus driver also taught her about modern-day country artists as well, some of whom
effortlessly tie together country and pop, such
as current hit-makers Lady Antebellum and
Rascal Flatts. She also heard superstar Garth
Brooks, who has been on a recording hiatus
for the last several years to focus on raising his
three daughters, for the first time.
The intimacy of Brooks’ singing inspired
her. “There’s just something in his voice that
completely moves me and sucks me in,” she
says. “It’s like I’m in this slight fantasy world...
The story telling and the tender moments that
really kind of get into a role. Not that I’m saying he ‘plays a role’ when he’s singing, but for
me that was brand new. I can imagine having a
conversation with him and then he starts singing me that song that’s summing up what we’re
talking about.”
That ability to make a song seem like a
close one-on-one conversation between singer and listener permeates 21 and is part of
its success.When Adele sings “Someone Like
You,” “Rolling in the Deep,” or current single
“Rumour Has It,” it is possible to imagine that
you’re sitting with her, sharing a coffee at a
kitchen table, swapping secrets. That feeling
is further perpetuated by her girl-next-door
vibe in interviews and on television. (In fact,
it’s probably a sure bet that she’s the only
P h o t o s : A n d y S h e p p a r d / R e d f e r n s ; ( I n s e t ) H o u s e O f Fa m e LL C / M i c h a e l Oc h s A r c h i v e / G e t t y I m a g e s
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From GRAMMY Camp to the Red Carpet
Adele’s big night at the GRAMMY Awards
meet amazing artsts like Jason Mraz and Alison Krauss, who’s
was the culmination of a week full of events, including won 28 GRAMMYs. I was geeking out with Foo Fighters when I
performances by student ensembles, all-star rehearsals, got to interview them on the carpet. I’m a huge fan. They were
and a ceremony honoring Sir Paul McCartney as Person of all really nice.”
“You don’t realize how much work it takes to thoroughly
the Year for The Recording Academy’s charity MusiCares.
Two alumni from last summer’s 2011 GRAMMY Camp—San cover a band for a week until you actually do it,” adds Julian,
who especially enjoyed interviewing Marcus
Francisco-based Julian Ring and New
Mumford (Mumford and Sons). “All the
Yorker Kevin Burke—were on hand to
events during the week took an enormous
cover it all as part of the media team
amount of planning and coordination to put
traveling with 27 GRAMMY Camp–Jazz
on, and I got to see them from the inside
Session student musicians.
out. I learned how hard you have to work
“I got a crash course on Monday in
to make great things happen. This was one
how to use the equipment and started
of the most surreal and exhilarating weeks
shooting an hour later,” says Kevin, a
I’ve ever had, for sure.” Learn more about
high school junior who plays guitar in
GRAMMY Camp at grammyintheschools.
the pop-punk band No Good News.
Kevin Burke and Julian Ring on the 54th Annual
com and hear more from Kevin and Julian
“The students in the Jazz Session were
GRAMMY Awards red carpet. (Courtesy of The
at intunemonthly.com.
unbelievable musicians. I also got to
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Recording Academy.)
Grammy winner to acknowledge “I’ve got
a bit of snot,” when she cried during her acceptance speech.)
Once Adele came off the road behind touring 19, she began schooling herself more intensely. The singer bought a good stereo and,
as she says, “locked myself in my [apartment]
for months and just listened.” Instead of relegating music to background noise, she studied
it. She listened for patterns—and when she
heard something that moved her, she tried to
figure out why and how the sound was created.
Along the way, she added yet another genre
to her listening list. “I really got into hip-hop,”
she says. “I was truly fascinated by Jay-Z and
Nas and Kanye [West] —how they manipulate
words and make the most mundane thing so
exciting that you almost explode.”
The education didn’t end once she began
writing songs for 21. Just as she had turned to
other artists to listen and learn, she looked to
other songwriters to help her accomplish her
vision. It can be hard for a new artist to follow
up on a successful debut with something that
shows growth, and Adele was worried that the
new album would sound like a retread of 19,
which she wrote largely by herself.
34 [ April 2012 ] Intunemonthly.com
Songwriting is a very personal art, and
many writers find it hard to let outsiders
change or critique their work. But in what
sounds like a contradiction, Adele found that
by writing with others, she was able to bring
out her authentic self on 21. “The first record
I’d say was 80-85% written by me,” she says.
“This one is 55%-65% written by me. I do feel
limited as a musician and I have a vision for my
music and my songs, but I can’t articulate it
and I can’t describe it.”
Realizing that she needed help was a matter
of maturity, she found. “I was writing 19 from
about 16 [years old on to] 18 and 19. I was just
a typical stubborn teenager,” she admits. “I was
like ‘No! I can do it all on my own.’With 21, I
embraced the fact that I can’t do it on my own
anymore.”
Adele found that specific collaborators
brought out different emotions in her. They
were also able to hear things in her nascent
songs that she couldn’t necessarily hear. Paul
Epworth, with whom she wrote “Rolling In
The Deep,” “brings out the feisty side of me
and he’s just so fearless and spontaneous as a
producer. He just brings out the more adventurous sides of me,” she says. DanWilson, with
whom she wrote “Someone LikeYou,” “just
makes me get on the floor on my hands and
knees and cry. He just brings out that vibe in
me.”
Once she got into the studio with the album’s producers, which included Epworth,
Tedder, Wilson, Fraser T. Smith, Jim Abbiss
and Rick Rubin, she concentrated on delivering the best performance she could. And she
took away another lesson, this one from Rubin, who is best known for his work with the
Beastie Boys, the Dixie Chicks, and the Red
Hot Chili Peppers:The song is what matters
the most. “The kind of glitter that goes on a
record after it’s done is completely irrelevant
to Rick,” Adele says. “I mean like the videos,
the styling, the remixes, the guest verses. He
doesn’t [care], and in a world so obsessed with
trends, it was an honor to make a record like
that so early on in my career.”
Now, even with eight GRAMMYs to her
name, don’t expect Adele to think she has it all
figured out. As long as she is making music she
vows she will be on her own continuing education program.“I want to make records forever,”
she says. “I don’t want to be a flash in the pan. I
really want to show development.”
Deadmau5
performs at
Roseland
Ballroom in
New York City.
photo: Wendell Teodoro/WireImage
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36 [ April 2012 ] Intunemonthly.com
W
hen the GRAMMYs
recently handed producer Skrillex (a.k.a. Sonny
John Moore) multiple
awards, it was a sign that electronic dance
music has gone global. Skrillex’s particular style—known as dubstep—may just be
cracking the mainstream in the U.S., but
dubstep has been a popular British dance
style for years.
The latest in a line of dance sub-genres
with names like techno, trip hop, drum ’n
’bass, and garage, dubstep’s synthesizer
bass lines and effects-laden electronic
melodies have invaded everything from
underground clubs to singles by Britney
Spears and Katy Perry to dance music
artists like Cassius, Nero, and Benny
Benassi.
Defining Dubstep
By Ken Micallef
There’s no dance called the “dub step.”
The genre is defined more by the way
different elements like drum patterns,
bass lines, and melodies work together
than it is by a specific beat.The drums—
almost always programmed on a software
or hardware machine—start and stop and
stutter in interesting ways. But perhaps
the most distinct characteristic of dubstep
is the way it uses electronic effects as part
of the rhythm itself.
“Dubstep is generally anything in the
70 to 140 beats-per-minute tempo range
that has wobble bass tones,” explains the
U.S.-based dance producer Mimosa. To
create the wobble bass, producers use
various audio effects to make one long
sustaining synthesizer bass note sound
like a rhythmic part. One way is to use a
special tone control called a filter, which
can change the timbre of a sound by cutting off (or filtering out) treble or bass as
the control moves from high to low.The
filter’s movement from treble to bass can
be set to change rhythmically over time,
creating a pulsing sound (you can hear
an example at media.intunemonthly.
com/9-7/dance). Echo is another popular effect in dubstep. By changing the
timing of the echo and the number of
Intunemonthly.com [ April 2012 ] 37
repeats, a single note can produce many different rhythmic patterns.
The intensity-building bass drop technique is also common.To create a bass drop,
producers stop the rhythm (or make it very
sparse) about 32 bars into a song, then use a
long and intense bass note as the drums come
back in.Again, electronics are important:The
bass note might be held for 30 seconds or
more, changing pitch from high to low using
a synthesizer control called portamento.
Step Back
Dubstep is made with very modern tools
such as computer software and synthesizers
(see “TheWobble: Step by Step” at right). But
the body movements of dance have shaped
music styles for thousands of years.The basic
need to move to the groove is as essential to
the human condition as food, water, and air.
Most modern musical styles—dance and
otherwise—can be traced to Africa, but all
Austria during the 1500s, the 3/4 time signature style was first seen as vulgar and revolutionary by the social establishment.
It was popularized by peasants before
being adopted by high society. When
you listen to a classical ensemble play
a traditional waltz, you’ll notice that
drums rarely have a role. The pulse of
the music is conveyed mostly by the
strings, guiding the body to a graceful,
flowing movement.
The waltz evolved through the
centuries: The 17th-century waltz
has almost a “polka” feel. The lighter
Viennese waltz was popularized by
Johann Strauss II in “The Blue Danube
Waltz.” Later developments included the
faster Hesitation Waltz of the 1900s and the
progressive Country Western Waltz, which
eventually morphed into modern square
dancing. The minuet, developed in France
in the 1600s, is another courtly 3/4 dance
style with a distinct rhythm (sometimes
played in 3/8 or 6/8 time). Like the waltz,
it was soon adopted by composers in nondance works.
Latin America’s heated climes—most
notably Cuba—has produced its own unique
dance styles. After the Haitian revolution of
the late 1700s, many Haitians and French
settlers escaped to Cuba.They brought with
them a blend of African and European dance
styles known as the contradanza, eventually
leading to the danzón, which remains largely
intact and popular in Cuban culture.Variations
to the danzón have led to styles that can still
be heard throughout Latin American culture,
including the more syncopated son, cha-cha,
bolero (famously adopted by French composer
Maurice Ravel), mambo, and salsa—a modernized mambo with American influences.
Think dubstep’s start-and-stop rhythms
are new? Check out Argentina’s unique tango. This very formal and passionate dance
involves complex movements to music
performed mostly in two-step meter.Tango
is distinguished by elaborate clothing and
a rigorous adherence to tradition, that is
unless you favor the music of composer
Astor Piazzolla. Originally shunned by tango
purists, he’s now embraced as an Argentine
national treasure.
The Wobble:
Step by Step
As With most electronic
dance music, computers play a
big role in the making of dubstep
tracks. We asked San Franciscobased producer Mimosa to explain
how it’s done.
“I make everything on my
MacBook Pro and use Ableton Live
and Logic Audio as my digital audio
workstations,” he says. “I use a
Moog Slim Phatty synthesizer for
bass tones, an Access Virus TI Snow
synthesizer, and software synthesizers like Native Instruments Massive and Tone2 Gladiator.
“For a generic dubstep track, I
begin with a kick and a snare and
program a beat. Over that, I add a
melody, a simple bass line, and create parts like a verse, a break, and
bass drop or a breakdown section.
That’s the general formula.”
To create his all-important bass
wobble synthesizer sounds, Mimosa starts with a blank slate and
sets the synthesizer to produce a
saw wave—an electronically generated sound with a buzzy character.
He uses the synthesizer’s low-pass
filter—which reduces highs—to
change the tone, then goes with
something called a low frequency
oscillator (LFO) to make the filter
work in a pattern. “You can adjust
the filter and the rate of the LFO
to get different wobble sounds
and speeds,” he says, adding that
he further colors the sound with a
range of audio effects.
Thomas Wilson’s Correct Method of German and
French Waltzing showing nine positions of the Waltz.
cultures have dance. Archaeologists have
found 9,000-year-old depictions of dancing figures in India; the Ancient Greek poet
Homer describes dancers in his epic the
Iliad, and Aristotle said that dance could be
as expressive as poetry.
After the fall of the Roman Empire,
dancing was frowned upon by strict European Christians. It wasn’t until the waltz that
dance became a popular and accepted part
of courtly life.Yet when it first appeared in
38 [ April 2012 ] Intunemonthly.com
Photo: New York Public Libr ary Archives
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DJ/producer Skrillex
performs using a
laptop computer and
Ableton Live software.
America Takes a Swing
that emerged in the 1950s, guitar and bass
players could now be heard over a drummer
pounding out a heavy beat, bringing a raw
energy to the dance floor that revolutionized
youth culture. Rock would evolve in many
directions, from country-flavored rockabilly
to R&B-influenced funk and soul to Jamaican
ska and reggae. Even the slow-dance “power
ballad” has its roots in early rock & roll.
By the 1970s, mainstream rock, just like
jazz some decades before, had become more
about listening than body movement. But in
the clubs, a new style was emerging. When
it was dramatized in the John Travolta film
Saturday Night Fever, disco ignited a national
craze. Million-selling disco acts included
Donna Summer, Taste of Honey, KC and
the Sunshine Band, and the Bee Gees (who
did the Fever soundtrack). Distinguished by a
steady bass drum beat known as “four on the
floor,” disco was the first style to put the club
DJ on par with the live performers.
Akai and Ensoniq. The futuristic, cold, and
often alien sounding music produced by
techno pioneers like Detroit’s Juan Atkins
continues to influence both American and
European producers.
But maybe the biggest measure of techno’s
impact has less to do with specific musical motifs and more to do with working methods.
Producers used drum machines, samplers,
and loops to create songs with a new kind of
freedom.You didn’t have to stick with familiar
sounding instruments any more. The music
could have extreme tempo changes or impossibly steady beats; bass notes could shake the
room or blip and skitter on top of the drums.
The electronics made it easier than ever before to experiment—and to test out tracks on
the dance floor right away.
Today’s computers put software versions
of these tools at anyone’s disposal, both onstage and in the studio. Hot producer/artists
like Deadmau5 (a.k.a Joel Thomas Zimmerman) and Skrillex use sound technology almost as an instrument itself—in fact, Skrillex
takes his “studio” onstage when he performs,
using Ableton Live running on a laptop to
heat the dance floor to a fever pitch. As the
music that dubstep producers create makes
its way into more mainstream fare, these
cutting-edge sounds may eventually become
as common as the once alien-sounding fuzz
guitar.Yet if dance music continues to evolve
as it has over the centuries, a new sound is
already waiting in the wings, ready to give
the dance floor its next transformation.
Rock Rolls In
Like modern electronica, the next big development in dance music had a lot to do
with new technology. Musically, rock & roll
wasn’t that new. It was based on the same
rhythms, harmonies, and song structures
country, folk, and blues musicians had used
for decades.The key difference was the technology used to produce the music.Thanks to
the affordable amplified electric instruments
40 [ April 2012 ] Intunemonthly.com
Disco to Dubstep
Disco never died, but instead evolved into
the modern style known as house. Beginning in 1980s Chicago, house began as an
electronic dance style based on a repetitive
4/4 groove playing subtle sound effects and
R&B vocals.
After house came techno—yet another
style made possible by new technology.
Techno’s signature sound was created using
the classic Roland TR-808 drum machine
and digital samplers from companies like
p h o t o : C F l an i gan / F i l m M ag i c
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Early in U.S. history, the social elite danced to
courtly European styles such as waltzes. But
with immigrants pouring in from all over the
world, a new dance culture was forming in
city neighborhoods and rural meetinghouses.
Irish people brought the lively jig; Germans
the powerful polka; Africans the syncopated
rhythms of their homeland. It’s the mix of
these styles that laid the foundation for early
jazz, which started as dance music and is at
the root of most of today’s popular dances.
Jazz was the dubstep of its day, and early
jazz dances like the Lindy hop and the jitterbug grew out of NewYork City’s Harlem
area during the “roaring” 1920s and soon
dominated big-city nightclubs all over the
country. But no dance style ever seems to
rule for long.Within a decade, swing dancing
to the accompaniment of powerful big bands
dominated. After the war, swing evolved
into ballroom dancing, a less raucous style
popularized by the likes of Fred Astaire and
Ginger Rogers.
SWEDEN
ICELAND
FINLAND
NORWAY
ESTONIA
DENMARK
NETH.
U. K.
IRELAND
CANADA
LATVIA
LITHUANIA
BELGIUM
UKRAINE
SLOVAKIA
MOLDOVA
AUSTRIA HUNGARY
SLOVENIA
ROMANIA
CROATIA
BOSNIA
SERBIA
MONTENEGRO BULGARIA
MACEDONIA
SWITZ.
FRANCE
BELARUS
POLAND
GERMANY
LUX.
CZECH
TURKEY
TUNISIA
CYPRUS
LEBANON
MOROCCO
Canary Islands
ACIFIC
OCEAN
ATLANTIC
OCEAN
THE BAHAMAS
CUBA
JAMAICA
BELIZE
HONDURAS
GUATEMALA
EL SALVADOR
DOM. REP.
HAITI
VENEZUELA
PANAMA
ECUADOR
COLOMBIA
GUYANA
FRENCH GUIANA
SURINAME
PAKISTA
QATAR
U. A. E.
SAUDI ARABIA
MALI
GAMBIA
COSTA RICA
GUINEA
SIERRA LEONE
BURKINA
IVORY
COAST
LIBERIA
BENIN
GHANA
TOGO
NIGER
YEMEN
ERITREA
CHAD
SUDAN
NIGERIA
OMAN
DJIBOUTI
SOMALIA
CAMEROON
CENTRAL AFRICAN
REPUBLIC
ETHIOPIA
UGANDA
EQUATORIAL GUINEA
SAO TOME & PRINCIPE
GABON
REPUBLIC OF
CONGO
CONGO
IN
OC
KENYA
RWANDA
BURUNDI
TANZANIA
PERU
COMOROS
BRAZIL
BOLIVIA
A World of
ANGOLA
ZAMBIA
NAMIBIA
BOTSWANA
MALAWI
ZIMBABWE
MOZAMBIQUE
PARAGUAY
CHILE
MADAGASCAR
Musical
Instruments
SWAZILAND
ARGENTINA
SOUTH AFRICA
LESOTHO
URUGUAY
42 [ April 2012 ] Intunemonthly.com
photo: TKTKTKTKTKTKTKTKTKTKTK
The Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, Arizona,
shows how music is made and played in almost 200
countries around the globe. By Emile Menasché
See and hear some of these instruments in action at themim.org.
T
AFGHANISTAN
IRAN
KUWAIT
EGYPT
LIBYA
MAURITANIA
GUINEA BISSAU
IRAQ
JORDAN
WESTERN
SAHARA
TURKMENISTAN
SYRIA
ISRAEL
ALGERIA
SENEGAL
NICARAGUA
ARMENIA AZERBAIJAN
GREECE
SPAIN
U. S. A.
UZBEKISTAN
GEORGIA
ALBANIA
PORTUGAL
MEXICO
KAZAKHSTAN
ITALY
ave you ever stopped
R U S S I A
to consider how many different cultures and nationalities
there are on Earth? The United
Nations counts 194 sovereign
states among its current members. Add the handful that aren’t
official members, and you have more than 200 countries.
Within their respective borders you’ll find many
PACIFIC
languages, cultures, social structures, religions, and
OCEAN
systems of government. But they all have something in
common: Every country in the world has music—and
musical instruments to go with it.
The Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix,
Ariz., is a “United Nations” of sound. With more
than 15,000 instruments on hand (about 5,000 of
which are on display at any given time), it shows
NDIAN
how the urge to create music transcends all politiCEAN
cal, cultural, or geographic barriers. “People will
take whatever exists in their environment and
figure out a way to make it into an amplifier of
emotion—that is, to make music with it,” says
Dr. Bill R. DeWalt, president and director of
the MIM. “You’ll find instruments made from
everything from the rarest rosewood to the oil
cans that some Africans use to make wonderfulsounding guitars.”
MIM’s collection includes a visually stunning array of instruments. It includes ancient acheological
finds—like a 7,000-year-old Chinese drum—and
cutting-edge digital equipment used by today’s
musicians. Instead of merely viewing the instruments
as static objects, visitors get to see and hear them
in action as they walk through the MIM’s 300plus exhibits thanks to a sophisticated multimedia
1. Dobro (resonator guitar), USA; 2. Kiringwa (slit drum), Mexico; 3. Bandoneon
system that shows video on large screens while
(accordion) Germany; 4.Flauta de chino (end-blown flute), Chile; 5. Oil-can guitar,
feeding sound into special Sennheiser wireless
South Africa; 6. Ud (plucked lute), Iraq; 7. O (wood and bamboo scraper), South
Korea; 8. Kundu (drum), Papua New Guinea; 9. Huxtar (bowed lute), China
headphone receivers.
N
MONGOLIA
KYRGYZSTAN
NORTH KOREA
TAJIKISTAN
SOUTH KOREA
C H I N A
N
NEPAL
AN
JAPAN
BHUTAN
TAIWAN
MYANMAR
BANGLADESH
LAOS
VIETNAM
THAILAND
INDIA
PHILIPPINES
KAMPUCHEA
SRI LANKA
BRUNEI
MALAYSIA
I
N
D
O
N
E
S
I
A
PAPUA
NEW GUINEA
FIJI
NEW CALEDONIA
AUSTRALIA
photo: TKTKTKTKTKTKTKTKTKTKTK
NEW ZEALAND
Intunemonthly.com [ April 2012 ] 43
A World of Musical Instruments
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1. An exhibit on the music of Mongolia includes an ensemble of instruments, audio, video,
and even costumes worn by the performers. 2. An exhibit compares guitars from around
the world. 3. A display shows a pair of Dung-chen horns from Tibet 4. Museum visitors listen
to African instruments on specially designed wireless headphones.
44 [ April 2012 ] Intunemonthly.com
The connection between such beautiful objects and the art that musicians make with them
is what inspired Robert J. Ulrich—former head
of Target Corp. and an avid art aficionado—to
create MIM. “Wherever Bob goes around the
world, he visits museums,” DeWalt explains. “He
was at a musical instrument museum in Brussels,
Belgium, that pioneered technology where, if you
stand in just the right place, you can hear the instruments being played through big headphones.
Bob thought it was something we could do here
with better technology. We can synchronize the
music with great quality video of the instruments
being played.”
Rather than look for one iconic instrument
type per country, the MIM team sought ensembles
A World of Musical Instruments
1. Conservator Daniel Cull and conservation lab assistant Adriana Milinic
reattach a cherub on the stand of a 17th-century Italian octave harpsichord. 2. Conservation lab assistant Adriana Milinic removes dirt and
debris from a Goboi Mask (from Sierra Leone) 3. A group from Sierra
Leone performs at the Musical Instrument Museum’s theater.
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from each nation, then tried to include every
instrument used by these groups. “In most
cases, musical instruments are not played
alone—they’re played in ensembles,” DeWalt
explains. “If you look at a country like the African nation Sierra Leone, for example, you’ll
see string instruments, horns, percussion,
etc.We try to put the instruments in cultural
context. Our Sierra Leone exhibit has a giant
mask on display along with the instruments.
While you’re watching video of the instruments being played, you’re also seeing dancers in amazing costumes.”
SPANNING the GLOBE
While most museums focus on one culture
or musical style. Ulrich’s vision was to be
all-inclusive. He didn’t want to leave anyone out.
MIM has five regional sections: Africa and
the Middle East; Asia and Oceania (which
includes Australia and New Zealand); Europe; Latin America and the Caribbean; and
the United States and Canada.Visitors walk
down a central spine, which branches off
into each region. “Within those regions, we
have things organized by country,” DeWalt
says. “We tried to keep countries that border
46 [ April 2012 ] Intunemonthly.com
one another in real life
borderering one another in the exhibits.”
The story of how the instruments got to
Phoenix is almost as interesting as the sounds
they make.The process started with some research “There’s a large set of books called the
Garland Encyclopedia ofWorld Music,” DeWalt
says. “It tells what kinds of instruments are
used in different countries. First, we compiled a shopping list of instruments from every country. Then we set out to find experts
on the different regions. We had about 130
consultants all over the world collecting musical instruments and capturing audio and video
of them being played.”
Because there may be multiple musical
traditions within any given country (the U.S.
exhibit alone features 40 genres), deciding
what to exhibit at any given time can be a
challenge. “We choose instruments that are
historically, visually, or musically interesting
or representative of their country of origin,”
DeWalt says. “For Switzerland, for example,
we collected some of those really huge Alpine
horns. For many countries, we have more musical instruments in storage and rotate them
out to represent minority groups or other
cultures within that country.”
Not all exhibits are based on geography.
One popular display includes guitars from
many nations. This spring and summer, the
MIM will exhibit African thumb pianos from
different cultures.Another new exhibit looks
at Arizona’s musical history in celebration of
its 100th anniversary as a U.S. state. MIM also
presents live performances in a state-of-theart theater that has hosted artists ranging from
American violinist Joshua Bell to ensembles
visiting from all over the planet.
Keeping all these elements in motion requires a team of specialists. Four full-time curators search for new instruments to purchase
or borrow for exhibits. As new instruments
come in, experts restore and repair them at
the museum’s conservation lab.The multimedia team edits hours of audio and video into
small segments. Finally, exhibit builders put
all these elements together.
“We try to make musical instruments come
alive in the exhibits and theater,” DeWalt concludes. “There are things here that nobody in
the United States has ever seen before.”
[
]
R e a l t e a c h e rs , r e a l st u d e nts
By Debbie Galante Block
Songwriting students will combine
voice, guitar, and/or piano instruction,
with classes on recording, lessons in creative writing, and more. “We also have a
motion picture arts division [where they
can] work on video,” Merwin says. “We
have a theater arts department which
will be involved as well.”
Merwin says that much of the program’s focus will be on helping budding
songwriters hone their craft—and perhaps
make a song more salable to their intended
audience. Students will learn about structure and approaches for revising and rearranging their material. Because the major
will be taught over two years, teachers will
be able to track each student’s progression
over the course of the program.
Interlochen will also teach skills intended to help the young songwriters
avoid career pitfalls. For example, Merwin says, the program’s vocal training
will help students preserve their voices
over the long haul. “Really good solid
fundamentals will enable them to be artists for the rest of their lives.”
In the first year, 15 students (mostly
juniors) will be accepted into the twoyear program, eventually rising to 30. In
addition to the typical academic transcript, application requirements include
an audition along with a video or audio
portfolio showing the student performing three to five of their own completed
songs. “We don’t look solely at academic
test scores, but instead look at academic
work and arts accomplishments,” Merwin says. “We look at the whole student.
There is a difference between creativity
and measurable test results. And, creativity can be useful in all types of ways
in a student’s future world.”
Merwin says interested students must
recognize that entering
such an intensive program—especially at a
boarding school like Interlochen—takes a serious commitment. The
school days are relatively
long (typically 8:30 a.m.
to 6 p.m.) so that students can get the arts
and academic instruction they need. To learn more, visit
interlochen.org/crescendo/singer-songwriter-major-comes-academy.
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into a
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school students.
A
ltough best known for training high school instrumentalists and singers
for the college-level conservatory, Interlochen Arts Academy counts
some high-profile pop tunesmiths (including Jewel, Norah Jones, Rufus
Wainwright, and Sufjan Stevens) among its alumni.
This fall, with songwriting becoming a bigger focus on college campuses, the
Michigan-based arts preparatory school will introduce its first major specifically for
singer-songwriters on the high school level. “It’s a natural major,”
explains director of music Kedrik Merwin, adding that the program
was developed, or “piloted,” over the past two years at Interlochen’s
summer camp. “The kids want it and many are already creating
songs on their own. We also believe the musical world is ready for it
now. Some of the major conservatories have been adding singersongwriter programs. We’ve looked at those and talked with the
people involved to make sure that our student preparation meets
their expectations.”
Merwin says the faculty will include successful professional songwriters, who will add some business savvy to the song craft. “These
teachers know how to get their songs on iTunes and how to develop relationships
with different venues where students can perform,” Merwin says. “That’s an important skill.”
48 [ april 2012 ] Intunemonthly.com
moments
Queen’s Releases
“Rhapsody” Video
November 15, 1975
I
n 1975, the era of “art rock”—a visual and sonic
departure from the blues, country, and folk influences
that had shaped the genre—was at its height. Artists
like David Bowie and Elton John had introduced new theatricality to their stage shows a few years earlier, while
“prog” bands like Yes and Emerson Lake and Palmer
seemed to owe more to Bach than Chuck Berry.
“Bohemian Rhapsody,” from the British band Queen’s
A Night at the Opera album, brought these elements
together. As lead singer Freddie Mercury envisioned it,
the song would dispense with rock’s traditional versechorus song structure, instead unfolding in six distinct
sections to tell a story inspired by famous operas. To
create the tune’s famous a cappella sections, the band
recorded and mixed together as many as 180 vocal
parts!
When the song was done—after three weeks of grueling sessions—it clocked in at 5:55. Queen’s record
company refused to release it as a single because they
thought it too long to get radio airplay. The band
believed otherwise, leaking tapes of the song
to popular disc jockeys (one of whom played
the song 14 times in two days). With fans clamoring to
buy the record, the label gave in and released the single
on Oct. 15. But now Queen faced a new problem: How
could they present such a complex song on Britain’s
popular Top of the Pops television show?
Knowing that lip-syncing would look ridiculous, they
decided to produce a promotional video instead. With its
clever production and lighting, the video enhanced the
songs atmosphere in a way that earlier videos—usually,
just filmed performances—hadn’t achieved. First shown
in late November, the video helped “Bohemian Rhapsody”
top the charts in the United Kingdom for nine weeks and
reach the Top 10 in the U.S. in early 1976. But its legacy
lasted much longer.
Few artists would attempt to match “Bohemian
Rhapsody’s” complex audio production. But the video,
which only took a day to produce, showed how the right
visuals could make a good song into a massive international hit. Within a few years, videos became an essential part of music promotion, eventually leading to
the launch of a new television channel, MTV,
in 1981.
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[ april 2012 ] Intunemonthly.com