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Me Chinese Melody

28 May 2014, 4:12 pm

There is a cliché in popular music used to evoke the Far East flavor—Chinese, Japanese, Nipponese, you-name-it-ese.
It goes like: “di di di di di, di, di, di, diii.” Click the score below to listen (or stop). Warning: Recorders!

The Oriental Melody dates as far back as the mid-1800s. Quartal parallel harmonies in a pentatonic key with a common rhythm that we all recognize no matter what variation.

The pentatonic scale is common to folk music around the world, but when it’s arranged in 4ths ([A, D] [G, C] [E,A]), the sound takes on an exotic Eastern characteristic. Here in America (and the rest of the west), we like our music harmonized in 5ths. Most chord progressions move in parallel perfect 5ths and most vocal harmonies are accomplished in major/minor 3rds, so it is unusual to hear lone quartal harmonies.

From novelty songs to cartoons, leitmotifs and modern pop, the many variations of the Oriental Melody share a common cadence, and when harmonized in fourths, you get instant noodles. Throw a gong in at the end, and now we’re talking Chinese.

Proverb: Like the fabled Chinese middle finger, the Oriental Melody can take many forms—the little or the middle or even the widdle.

Variations of the Oriental Melody:
“I’m Turning Japanese” by The Vapors (The intro is the same as the notation above transposed up a fourth.)
“Kung Fu Fighting” by Carl Douglas
“China Girl” by David Bowie
“Di Di Di Di Di Di Di I love You” by Los Doggies
Listen to “Cho Cho San” and fall in love all over again.

If you can think of any more, please put them in the comments below.

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The Mystic Chord

26 May 2014, 3:28 pm

Alexander Scriabin, the great Russian tone poet, was particularly fond of a 6-note chord that his disciples dubbed “the mystic chord.” Drag horizontally over the bass and treble to hear the top 3 and bottom 3 notes separately, or drag vertically and lickety-quickly to hear the full 6-note chord.


The Mystic Chord is known as a C13 (augmented 4th, add 16). Author A. Eaglefield Hull writes of the chord: “Play it over forte, then piano; then sprinkle it very softly; try it in various keys. We have the splendid vitality of the augmented 4th, the soft mollity of the diminished 4th, the sweet firmness of the perfect 4th, and so on. Reckoning everything from the root, we get the augmented 11th, the minor 7th, the 3rd, the I3th, and the 9th.” [1]

The Mystic Chord is derived from the Harmonic Series. In the beginning, there was the Tone, and the Tone was with Chord. Every note that you hear is actually made up of a series of overtones. Though they are not quite audible, the arrangement of overtones determines the timbre of the note you hear, allowing you to distinguish between a piano and a flute playing the same tone.


The Harmonic Series arranged horizontally results in a scale known as Lydian Dominant. It is a natural scale—the genome of music. Just as every cell contains DNA, each tone contains the Lydian Dominant scale sounded at the same time in a chord—a mystical chord.

The Mystic Chord bares some resemblance to Stravinsky’s Petrushka Chord.

Instead of relying on the weight of the Perfect Fifth (C, G) as heard in 99.9% of music, Scriabin favored the Augmented 4th (C, F#)—the Flat Five or Tritone. For a little taste, check out Scriabin’s sexy evil composition “Prometheus”.

For more on Scriabin and colored music, go here.

Note:
[1]
A great Russian Tone poet, Scriabin by A.Eaglefield Hull

One of my favorite books ever. The quaint flowery passages on music and the author’s excitement for motion pictures coupled with sound are not to be missed.

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New Video

20 May 2014, 8:31 pm

A collage video is created for “Pari Passu”, the Latin love song.

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All Alone

13 May 2014, 12:32 pm

Is life a serious and stuffy affair? With shirts stuffed for Summer and butts stuffed for Winter? Does the Hereafter call out to you, as it did for old Walt Whitman, whispering sweet salad verses of “death’s death deathingly” from the waves of the Long Island Sea? Or does the Endless Nameless dog at your heels from the time you crawled out of the abyss; aroused by the pursuit, it waits for carefree moments to reach those creepy tendril fingers around your neck, and you run in the opposite direction straight into a parallel abyss, a shotgun shock to Oblivion, which like the Great Nothing, is something big and black-bodied, always hungry yet never full.

When you laugh too long, does the laughter turn to tears? And when you cry, does the sadness ripple through your form almost pleasantly, fluid and frissony, like an orgasm less sticky? Are men allowed to fuse with their child selves, creating a kind of man-child in the process? And is said man-child allowed to cry? Should rhetorical questions end with a question mark.

Has a sheep eaten a rose? Pourquoi mamans meurent? Why do we die and how is life lived? Does thanatopsis make for a good pop song?

There is a hell-mouth of human drama out there, yet Popular Music seems to be limited to a single vibe, a consistent tone. A song must be this or that; a band should be taken seriously if they are not to be a joke band. They must be bound live to a dancy click-track, eroticize the abstract musical image with graven promos, and worship Baphomet with the blood of their blood. Ahem.

“All Alone” is the song that ends e’rebody. It is the song that kills e’rebody. It is a serious song, in that it describes a Great Dying—the end of a relationship, the death of love, and the killing of the self—but it is also ridiculous, with its upbeat refrains, bouncy beats, and hopeful One to Four chord progression (the happy plagal cadence), which inverts itself to a Four to One by song’s end.





We emerge from the white goo (the same white goo as you) like some special effects farce of a superhero film. We die as we dream—all alone…

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Olly Olly Oxen Free

9 May 2014, 12:01 pm

“Olly Olly Oxen Free” is the penultimate song off e’rebody, and the final act of the Playground Trilogy that began with “Farted On” and “Westminster Quarters”. Built around the common melody of a Minor Third interval from the kid’s game Hide-and-Seek, “Olly” features a fun fanfare chorus, puzzle-box structure, and at eight and half minutes, it is the longest Los Doggies song, harking back to the old 70s epics. It might even appeal to actual kids, were it not so prog.

Nobody is sure exactly where the phrase comes from, as it was passed down from kid to kid, and wasn’t recorded until the 1950s. There are several variants, such as “All ye, all ye ‘outs’ in free,” and “Holy Holy Umphrey’s McGee.”

Take a listen to “Olly” on the player below. See if it doesn’t rekindle that child-like spirit of adventure where anything can happen and everything does. Most entertainment these days is designed to either appeal to and/or produce an assembly line of man-children with disposable incomes. Los Doggies would rather appeal to the child-man, the boy-kings and teen empresses, with the beginner’s mind of a zen pupil and the open heart of a fool, freewheeling, exploding into being, and if not living in the moment, then riding atop it like a dad-horse or diaper-box go-cart.





Olly Olly Oxen Freeeeeeedoooooooommmmmm!

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Buddha Thompson

8 May 2014, 9:23 pm

“Buddha Thompson” is a song made from musical cryptograms—words spelled with notes. Composers like Bach (Bb A C H) and Brahms (Bb A B Eb [B, r, A, H, m, Es]) spell out their own names in their work. Bach’s name works out perfectly, like sonar baby, but Brahms is a little bit of a stretch. John CAGE would have had any easy name to make into a cryptogram, if only he wrote music.

The Phish song “AC/DC BAG” spells out “AC/DC FAG” in the chords, but the change from BAG to FAG is probably for musical reasons and not because of the band’s well-known conservative bias and reactionary fanbase.

A popular cryptogram is found in the grade school mnemonic for remembering the notes of the stave—”FACE”. Together, the notes form an F Major Seventh chord. Drag over the black stemmed noteheads below to hear the FACE Chord sung in 4-part harmony.

 



Johann Sebastian Bach’s Motif is referenced by many composers over the years. In German notation, H is for B, and B is for B-flat.

Both the FACE Chord and the Bach Motif are found in the metal opera “Buddha Thompson” among other musical cryptograms. The abbreviation “Before the Common Era” heralds the start of the song in the major chords B, C, E, and Anno Domini—as A major, and D major. The low B of the Earth Tone is played while sung about, as if the literalist song-writer can only sing about what they know, and all they know is chord names.

Also featured prominently is the dreaded Schuman Scale—the lick of thunder and lightning. The Schuman Scale is derived from the electromagnetic frequencies in our own local Magnetosphere.



The B of the Grid is also the B of the Earth. “B” is for Buddha Thompson, best friend of Jesus Christ.

Yet again, it seems as though this blog has written a song rather than a human being. I think more blogs should write songs, like that hit from a few years back: “The Ballad of Blog.com”.

Buddha Thompson 1
Super Buddha Two
Buddha Thirteen Years Later

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Chickadee (New Wave)

7 May 2014, 10:09 am

The Black-capped Chickadee sings these noteheads three—B, A, and E. When he says “fee bee”, he sings a B to an A, and the chorus of his namesake falls on an E. Drag over the notes below.



We wanted to cover this guy’s song, but didn’t know where the royalties should go. Is the chickadee public domain, or is he contracted to one of the Big 3? Pretty soon they’ll be paving paradise and selling sunny days through some sort of sunny day real estate franchise company.

Inspired by Nirvana’s “(New Wave) Polly” (the acoustic halfway point on Nevermind that became just another punk song on Incesticide), the simple 3-note song of the black-capped chickadee is given the new wave treatment in “Chickadee (New Wave)”, meaning there’s a disco beat somewhere in there and keyboards galore. The spontaneous and freewheeling nature of birdsong is reflected in the New Wave version, as bird language is sung loosely over an aurora of suspended strings and guitar feedback, and the feel of the music flutters from chorus to chorus as if trying out different perches, before alighting on the final coda swing.

The original math thrash of the Boird Band cover is revisited towards the end of the song. When chickadees say their name, you can bet they mean business. The number of dee’s refers to the nature of the danger. And “fee bee” means the same thing in any language. The language of the birds is the language of music.



He’s trying to say, “I love you.” But she is silent. She can’t sing back. There is no sweet harmony. We’re not wrens. Tis but a stag song.

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