Orchestration

http://www.soundsonline.com/product.php?productid=EW-177

This particular product is quite incredible. The company East/West recorded every instrument of the orchestra in a world class studio doing every possible articulation. They also did this for the piano and spent months and months editing all the samples. There were no other companies that had really put together a MIDI sound set that sounded this real, but these guys have done the closest thing by just taking the time and budget, and just doing it right. Pretty much anytime you hear orchestration in TV shows or lower budget movies, this is the program they use. Its an interesting disconnect between the body and the music, because technically someone played that exact note and articulation that you are programming, but they did it in a different order and a different place. Its like you're given a bunch of legos, each one representing a specific recording of music.

Eigenharp

Some time ago, I found out about this "instrument":

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8294355.stm

To summarize, the article describes a bassoon-like electronic instrument, capable of creating basically any kind of tone you could want. It's played by manipulating the fingerboard on either its front or the sides, or by blowing into the mouthpiece (this is where it gets its resemblance to the bassoon). The video demo in the article is actually pretty cool.

One quote from the article really made me think about the body's involvement in all of this: "It's not just the sonic thing - they are visually compelling, and there's a reason for that - we've got pretty fed up with watching people twiddle knobs on stage."

This made me think of how technology has impacted our performance space. It seems logical that setting up a show with a laptop and a few speakers makes less of a corporeal connection with the audience than does a rock band jamming on physical instruments. To me, part of this stems from the idea that while their minds compose the music, it is the body itself that actually creates it, by plucking, bowing, blowing, or drumming its way to sound. This instrument attempts to re-create the impression of a human body creating the sound in electronic music.

Here is the Wikipedia page for the Eigenharp, if you're curious: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eigenharp

I lost my Mojo! (Also, That 1 Guy)

There’s a new program called Mojo that’s currently bankrupting the music industry. Mojo allows a user to connect to the iTunes library of any other Mojo user close by in a wireless network and take music at will. (Regular network iTunes connections allow you to listen to others’ music, but you can’t put it into your own library.) Or, if you know someone else’s username, you can take their music from anywhere in the world, as long as they are connected to the Internet. You can sit in the library or a big lecture hall, open up Mojo, learn about the musical tastes of about 10-15 people, and steal the entire library of any of them. As you could imagine, a person could amass a huge collection of music this way, without ever paying for it.

What else is new? All sorts of new technologies allow you to acquire music without paying a cent. But are there any benefits, and how is Mojo different?

Most people I know who use Mojo end up finding favorite users to take music from (it lists users’ real names), and often these are people they have not met. If they do know these people, they will usually engage them in a discussion about their music. Hey, I saw your library on Mojo – good taste. Any more recommendations?

Most new technologies for music acquisition are contributing to the phenomenon of music as an increasingly solitary experience. Gone of the days of going to a record store, where the employees know you and your tastes and make recommendations, then ring you up and wish you a nice day when you leave. Humans are removed from most of the process of online music acquisition. Maybe somebody gives you the initial recommendation, but then you go on your computer, search for a torrent, download it, and achieve your goal with no more human interaction.

Mojo can facilitate an engagement with the musical tastes of others, and importantly, these others are either people you know or more commonly are people in your immediate vicinity. Mojo creates a micro-community of users sharing their musical tastes with each other, and the opportunity for real human interaction is there.

On another note, I initially wanted to write about how technology offers new methods of musical creation, but I see that that topic has already been covered. However, I still want to show you guys something. This guy is called That 1 Guy, and I saw him for the first time at a music festival in the middle of the Everglades; 10,000 people were freaking out to this goat-looking guy in a top hat manipulating a giant pipe with steam coming out of the top; every once in a while he would take off his shoe and play it. It was the best concert I’ve ever seen. He is a classically trained bassist who invented a machine that he calls the Magic Pipe; it is rigged with every type of technology possible. What’s more, the music that he makes with it is actually great! Watch these videos.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8DdKQCgUq4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCN7k3-PUss&feature=related

Future shock?

When thinking about the topic of technology, music and body, i come up with the video i watched during my History of Jazz class last semester:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nK0Pi4wC8Hk&feature=PlayList&p=DB952BF84A1DF9D4&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=1

It's the music video for Rockit by Herbie Hancock; the song is recorded in his electronic music album Future Shock during the 80s. During that time both the music was quite a blow in that Herbie exploited revolutionary special effects, including scratching and other turntablist techniques, which formed the DJ culture in the following decades,combined with electronic keyboard and drum synthesizers. The music video was even more shocking with its portrait of mechanized mannequins mimicking the life of human beings. Disassembled legs and torsos of the mannequins move around and fulfilling the tasks of everyday life. The body parts are animated by electrical signals and controlled by mechanic arms, the procedure of which indicates the absence of brain and emotion. The only part that relates to the real human body is the television presenting Herbie Hancock's own hands playing the keyboard, but the television got smashed at the end of the video, symbolizing the last trace of humanity is destroyed.

There is a contradiction of attitude shown in Herbie Hancock's creation. Rockit on one hand celebrating a whole new genre and discovery of possibility in music, but on the other hand revealing the horror for the possibility of a dehumanized future. The music became a hit and played repeatedly in pubs for both reasons, with the latter become paradoxically the obsession of contemporary people.

This kind of obsession can be more easily seen in the popularity of the electrical band Daft Punk. Here's a video of their live performance:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9MszVE7aR4

The members of Daft Punk only show up in public wearing the robot mask, never revealing their real appearance. Interestingly they claimed themselves robots that turned from human beings. The dance cannot be more appropriate for their music, being highly repetitive, fragmented and angular, detached from any kind of personal expression. The human bodies are represented as being homogenized, in almost a religious way, under the higher order of electrical signals and sounds.

Comparing those two videos, which are 20-30 years away, we see a lot of similarities of expression, that electrical music being de-personalized and bodies being detached from both visceral and cerebral functions. Both of them become enormously popular no matter what their stances are in their music making because they both visualized and audiblized the fetish for the mechanized corporeality.

headphones.

I think one of the most interesting things technology has brought to music and its relation to the body is concept of headphones -- portability and isolation.

We often take for granted how easy it is that we have ways of experiencing everything to some kind of soundtrack.. these days, it is rare to see people exercising or walking to class or driving a car without listening to music. this adds an entirely new dimension to the physicality that can play into musical engagement.

Even within one simple activity, exercising for example, headphones allow for a higher level of experiencing both the music and the body movement. Bodies can move rhythmically in time with the music or more aggressively during climactic phrases, and the music can be associated with the physical stimulus of exercise. Music can be enjoyed for its exercise-appropriate value (perhaps a quicker beat, a driven and energetic sound, etc.) and can be embodied and realized physically by its listener. The isolation of oneself in sound is empowering and increases focus. It may also give the listener a sense of privacy that makes exercising more comfortable. Or sometimes it's a tuning into oneself and a change of perspective from being an element of the outside world to being an outsider observing the environment. This aspect in particular applies in many more fascinating situations that exercise...

The world looks totally different when you're listening to music. When you decide to smile at a stranger you're passing by because you just heard the most uplifting and inspiring part of a song, your body interacts with the world differently than it would have without the music. The idea that listening to music in this way provides an alternative physical awareness and consequential interaction between the body and its environment in all kinds of different situations is perhaps the most powerful implication of the technological development of headphones.

Music, the Body, and Technology

Today, in music theory we watched this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnoD3NUux3M

It made me think about how so much of today's music is obsessed with auto-tuning. Recently, it's been used to the point where the voices don't sound remotely like anything that our bodies can actually create, but no one seems to really have a problem with this. I myself am kind of torn. On one side, I like some of the songs with auto-tuning, but on the other, I really don't like the overuse of this system because it makes "singers" out of people who aren't. With the abundance of technology like this that can "correct" the tonality of any singer and make their voice sound like whatever they want it to, which defeats the entire purpose of being a singer, and leads to people becoming famous for reasons unrelated to singing, or are already famous for something else and decide to "become a singer" even though they don't really know how to sing very well. The biggest problem is, society (or rather, the majority) seems to be okay with this. Will this continue to escalate (as in has since auto-tuning has been invented)? And if so, how far will it go?

Music, the Body, Technology: Joshua Fried

After thinking about an example that I could find that would adequately demonstrate the convergence of music, the body and technology, I decided to embed a clip of Joshua Fried, a NYC musician/dj/technician. Fried has a solo show entitled "Radio Wonderland" where he begins by turning on a standard am/fm radio and cycling through the stations, looking for something interesting. Then he connects the radio to his equipment and begins to create a beat/melody by manipulating the radio sound wave. Involved in this process is his mixer, a set a shoes that act as a drum pad and a steering wheel that acts as a turntable and tempo controller. All in all, what he does is utilize the technological tools that we have as an 'electronic' society and manipulate the sounds we hear on a day-to-day basis into "music". With that said, after taking a look at this video, I asked myself a few questions that I would like to share, questions I think anyone would ponder after experiencing "Radio Wonderland":

1. Is this music? There are definitely unique sounds that are being made, there absolutely is a beat, I thought I was 'moved' by the sound, but is there something inherently different in this performance that is not related to or can not be compared to the 'regular' music we normally listen to?
2. Is there musical embodiment? Clearly Fried is not playing music with conventional instruments (other than maybe percussion while utilizing his shoe drum-pad), the audience doesn't see him strain to hit a high note or utilize his digits. Has technology removed all embodiment?
3. Does technology create a some sort of 'cop-out' within the realm of musical creativity? I understand that what Fried accomplishes here is thought-provoking and certainly creative, however does his use of electronic mediums and mechanical devices remove his musical creativity from the realm of other artists we respect?
4. Is this performance purely a gimmick?

I have my own answers to these questions and I feel as though each person will relate to this performance differently, so watch the video and see if this 'music' emboldens your views, or maybe changes them.

Musical Movements

Here is the link to a brief article about an interesting program that captures 3D movements of the body for conversion into musical sound:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3873481.stm

Of course, it would take some time to learn how to interface with the software, but the goal is to make it possible for anyone to control a musical composition.

Music, Technology, and the Body: House (etc.) Music

When I think about music and technology, the first subject that pops into my mind is house/dance/trance/techno music.  (Forgive me for mashing together those terms, but I never really know what particular characteristics, if any, separate those genres.  They seem generally similar enough to me that I'd like to refer to them as a whole.)  Why?  Well, quite simply: this overarching genre exemplifies the fact that we can now create music solely via technology; i.e. our only "instruments" necessary are the computer and other such devices.

The fact that we can produce music solely by using technology is not actually that important, and indeed, many electronically produced songs mix in samples of human-sung vocals or human-played instruments.  I want to focus more on the nature of this kind of music.  Here's an example:

Characteristics I note in songs like this one include:

• a beat that is repetitive and ongoing almost throughout the song
• a "melodic line" that consists of a short phrase, also repeated almost continuously with some slight modulations
• gradual entering/fading in of more layers of repeated phrases/sounds
• vocals are often (though not always, but especially in remixes like this one) reduced to one or two lines that are layered in like all the other effects, and are also usually technologically modified

When listening to this combination, I find myself semi-consciously aware of the sense that most or all of such music is electronically produced.  At some level, my mind knows it's artificial -- but I think this is the key point that raises the body to importance.

Consider singer-songwriter, acoustic, Jack Johnson type of music.  From my experience, I listen to these kinds of songs and the lyrics are likely the most prominent feature.  If I'm paying any attention to the song, the lyrics might get into my head and start evoking personal connections and memories.  They tap into the emotional part of you.  Sometimes I listen to one of these kinds of songs and just sit still and lapse into nostalgia -- my body is not really engaged.

Now back to the house music.  The ongoing pulsating beat makes me want to get up and move my body in sync with its rhythm.  The entering layers of phrases one by one add to the energy of the piece, rousing adrenaline and excitement.  The vocals are embedded, and the lyrics are simple enough that I don't have to mentally process a whole story, but just let the words sink in as a repetitive sound.  This music tends to engage my body in what feels like a "primal" way: it bypasses personal histories and thoughts and begs me to "lose myself" in it.  All drug/alcohol-related possibilities aside, I find that this music alone can induce some level of euphoria; the body becomes so engaged with the music that higher-level consciousness temporarily becomes unimportant and diminished.

This video is bad quality and a little ridiculous, but it's kind of what I'm talking about:

Music and the Body and Technology

When I think about the interface of music, technology and the body, the easiest go-to is the development of new methods of listening to music; in my lifetime, from cassette tapes to CDs to the iPod and other MP3 players. One of the common themes over times time also seems to be an individualization of the musical experience, something that I know Myles is discussing in his paper.

When I think of popular music in the 1980s, I get the image of someone walking down the street with the giant boombox, blasting music to the whole world. Music in the case was not really meant to be an individual experience, but something broadcasted to anyone within earshot. Later, music became walkmen, and finally iPods.

But this individualism is also present in the music we have access to. Gone are the days where (most people) go and buy whole albums – especially ones that they don’t know anything about, just on a whim. Music (can be) free, and even if it’s not – we all preview a song before we think it’s actually worth downloading.

I think the iPod ads that were so prevalent in the past few years speak to this idea. Music has become very much individual, and at the same time, its relation to the body has changed. Music used to be an external phenomenon – something that was listened to at a concert, or perhaps broadcasted to everyone near by. But over time, it has become more and more internal; earphones, and more recently, earbuds move the stimulus both literally into the body (moving further and further down the auditory canal), and emotionally within the body (you’re the only one really experiencing the music). At least, that’s how I’ve always interpreted the silhouettes in the iPod commercials. They may be individuals, but they are in essence becoming part of the music themselves – thus, we only really see responses to music, and minimal or stereotyped bodily features

Summary for Holsinger

In his article The Musical Somatics of Hildegard of Bingen, Holsinger proposes that the music of Hildegard and female sexual desire and pleasure, and devotional experience are in many ways inseparable, because he believes that the imagery and vocabulary of female sexual pleasure were an integral part of her musical creativity. He shows that Hildegard’s music constitutes a mode of sexual pleasure, anxiety, and fascination, exploring the techniques and implications of embodiment in Hildegard’s musico-poetic production.

The anxiety can be best described as being generated by bodily obedience. In her utter submission to God, she experienced three major visions during the time she was with the Benedictine order. She described herself as the vessel or the instrument of God, saying, “for I am a cithara sounding praises and piercing the hardness of heart with good will.” Her visions are full of the imagery of sexual anxiety and violence. Within those visions, she perceived the musical tortures of the Apocalypse, as well as the curious appearance of the lira “lying with its strings” across the body of the son of man. As to maintain the tempering of the instrumental body, accounted by Holsinger, strict musical discipline of the body on Earth can ensure a concordant harmonia in heaven.

The fascination refers to her repeated emphasis on the Virgin’s anatomy in her lyrics. The interpretive key to the musicality of desire and embodiment in her Symphonia requires both formal analysis and study of her voluminous writings. The text of Symphonia celebrates the miraculous birth of Christ, presenting a very sensual image of the Virgin’s organs. The notes that fall upon the words that relate to sexual pleasure tend to be treated with greater dramatic effects. When compared to the norms of the contemporary repertory, her melodic line is considered excessively physical and emotive.

The various forms of desire registered in the Symphonia, as written by Holsinger, pervaded Hildegard’s entire musical world. A group of nuns live in this world in intimate proximity, raising their voices together in song and allowing music, with the actual cantus resonating between the nun’s bodies as well as the Symphonia, binding the bodies of the nun together to grasp part of the pleasure of the Virgin Mary. Often she sexualized the entire body, not simply the genitals. She characterizes the pleasure in a woman as comparable to the sun, which “gently, calmly, and continuously spreads the earth with its heat, so that it may bring forth fruit.” Hildegard’s lyrics transfers the pleasure from masculine stem to feminine womb, which is related to fertility, and she implies that the female desire and sexuality paradoxically does not depend on male penetration, as the title of the article calls, a woman can be “moved to pleasure without the touch of a man” (sine tactu viri). Therefore the female-male-female constructions of triangulated desire often yield to female-female eroticized performance.

If Beyonce Were a Boy...

"If I were a boy
I think I could understand
How it feels to love a girl
I swear I'd be a better man

I'd listen to her
'Cuz I know how it hurts
When you lose the one you wanted
'Cuz he's taken you for granted
And everything you had got destroyed
If I were a boy..."

Comparison to Telugu and Tamil Padams

While reading Holsinger's article, I first noticed that every passage used to show the sexuality present in Hildegard's works personified female sexuality. The Antichrist appears from the vagina of a woman, while the male genitalia is hidden by a harp. The next few pages talk about Hildegard's vivid imagery of the female giving birth, the Virgin Mary's conception, etc.

This juxtaposition of sexuality and spiritual devotion reminded me of Telugu and Tamil padams: devotional poetry-songs. These songs often contained images of God as a customer of courtesans. Ksetrayya (one of the most celebrated authors of padams) and other writers generally composed these from the point of view of the courtesan. That is, it would be written in the voice of a courtesan searching for her lover, as the lord, to join her. While there are many cases of directly explicit sexual tones, in many cases, the expression was not directly sexual. The main theme in all of these was spiritual devotion. I was interested to see how spiritual devotion can have many sexual overtones in both forms; it seems as though the body is described sexually as a means of reconciling the mind with the "higher" pleasure of religious ecstasy. For instance, take this passage from When God is a Customer: Telugu Courtesan Songs by Ksetrayya and Others:

The whole town fast asleep,
the whole world pitch dark,
and the seas utterly still,
when it's one long extended night,
if He who sleeps on the snake,
who once devoured the earth, and kept it in his belly,
will not come to the rescue,
who will save my life? (5.2.1)

Deep ocean, earth and sky
hidden away,
it's one long monstrous night:
if my Kannan too,
dark as the blue lily,
will not come,
now who will save my life,
sinner that I am?
O heart, you too are not on my side. (5.2.2)

O heart, you too are not on my side.
The long night with no end
has lengthened into an eon.
My Lord Rama will not come,
with his protecting bow.
I do not know how it will end—
I with all my potent sins,
born as a woman. (5.2.3)

"Those born as women, see much grief,
but I'll not look at it," says the Sun
and he hides himself;
our Dark Lord, with red lips and great eyes,
who once measured this earth,
he too will not come.
Who will quell the unthinkable ills
of my heart? (5.2.4)

This lovesickness stands behind me
and torments my heart.
This eon of a night
faces me and buries my sight.
My lord, the wheel forever firm in his hands,
will not come.
So who will save this long life of mine
that finds no end at all? (5.2.6)

Ramanujan, A.K. When God is a Customer: Telugu Courtesan Songs by Ksetrayya and Others. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Pages 9–10.

In this song, the speaker is a young woman, obviously separated from her lover. This lover is identified as the various forms of Vishnu—Kannan, or Krishna; Rama; he who sleeps on the snake; and the Dark Lord are all various forms of Vishnu. The lover refuses to come, and the woman is alone at night. She is tortured with longing, and spends time wrestling with gender issues. She blames herself, her "sins," her womanhood, and possibly the lover as well.

I thought this compares interestingly with Hildegard's use of sexual language to reconcile the body with spiritual devotion.

Red Hot Chili Peppers: "Aeroplane"

Because it's the official music video, I can't embed it, so here's the link to it on YouTube.

I learned of this song thanks to participation on Blip (basically a Twitter-for-music social network) and fell in love with it.  In search of shirtless males in music videos, for the sake of my comments on the Mika song, I looked up the Red Hot Chili Peppers on YouTube and found their official page.  So I checked out the video for Aeroplane.  It wasn't the best example of what I wanted, but as I let the song play, I suddenly realized the lyrics seem to relate a LOT to what the chapter on Hildegard's work was talking about.

Now, as is the case with many music videos, I admit I don't have much idea what this one is supposed to mean.  But some of the lyrics in particular hit me.  I'll copy/paste the full lyrics at the end (from Sing365) and pull out a few lines in particular to relate back to the reading.  [Note: pardon the profanity; I've starred-out a few words in the original lyrics.]

I like pleasure spiked with pain - This reminds me of the bodily/erotic pleasure, on one hand, and the pain and strain of pushing the vocal capacity to its limits, found together in singing Hildegard's compositions.

and music is my aeroplane - Music is the vehicle (okay, terrible accidental pun) via which the pleasure and pain merge.

songbird sweet and sour Jane - another pleasure/pain dichotomy.

Someone better slap me,
Before I start to rust,
Before I start to decompose - Clear references to the body and description as if it is literally deteriorating.


My melancholy baby,
The star of mazzy must,
Push her voice inside of me - This is a reference to some female, her singing ability, and penetration (which has a decidedly sexual flavoring).  Unlike Hildegard, though, whom the author interprets as talking about female-only sexuality (and sexual space, in the sense of the womb and flowing of winds in and out), this singer is a male referring to a female's voice interacting with him bodily.

Just one note could make me float,
Could make me float away,
One note from,
The song she wrote,
Could f*** me where I lay - This imbues the music itself - produced by a female (this time composed, not just sung) - with apparently a complete sexual power over him (the singer).  This is interesting actually because it removes entirely the female's body from the scene; the sexuality is transferred to the music she produced.

Just one note,
Could make me choke,
One note that's,
Not a lie,
Just one note,
Could cut my throat,
One note could make
me die. - Now we've lost the sexual meaning of the music and instead it has a power to bring on pain ("choke", "cut my throat") and death.  In the vein of Hildegard, this almost seems like a warning: if you don't do with the music as you should, it will cause the end of you - and in a negative way.  I'm recalling her visions that threatened her to share the messages she was given, or else she would undergo further torture, I assume.


----- 

I like pleasure spiked with pain and music is my aeroplane,
It's my aeroplane,
Songbird sweet and sour Jane and music is my aeroplane,
It's my aeroplane
pleasure spiked with pain,
that motherf***ers always spiked with pain.

Looking in my own eyes (hey lord),
I can't find the love I want,
Someone better slap me,
Before I start to rust,
Before I start to decompose,
Looking in my rear view mirror,
Looking in my rear view mirror,
I can make it disappear,
I can make it disappear (have no fear),

I like pleasure spiked with pain and music is my aeroplane,
It's my aeroplane,
Songbird sweet and sour Jane and,
music is my aeroplane,
It's my aeroplane,
pleasure spiked with pain,
that motherf***ers always spiked with pain,

Sitting in my kitchen (hey girl),
I'm turning into dust again,
My melancholy baby,
The star of mazzy must,
Push her voice inside of me,

I'm overcoming gravity,
I'm overcoming gravity,
(It's easy when you're sad to be,)
It's easy when you're sad, sad like me

I like pleasure spiked with pain and music is my aeroplane,
It's my aeroplane,
Songbird sweet and sour Jane,
and music is my aeroplane,
It's my aeroplane,
pleasure spiked with pain...,

Just one note could make me float,
Could make me float away,
One note from,
The song she wrote,
Could f*** me where I lay,
Just one note,
Could make me choke,
One note that's,
Not a lie,
Just one note,
Could cut my throat,
One note could make
me die.

I like pleasure spiked with pain and music is my aeroplane,
It's my aeroplane,
Songbird sweet and sour Jane,
and music is my aeroplane,
It's my aeroplane,
That's spiked with pain.

(my aeroplane, my aeroplane, my aeroplane, my aeroplane)

...it's my aeroplane..(x8)..

Response to Holsinger - Croom

According to Holsinger, Hildegard viewed the musically embodied life as a disciplined life; taking proper care of one's body "lead[s] to musical "tempering" of the body, the strings of which will resonate correctly only if the body is properly fed" (p. 96). The idea seems to be that, without disciplined action towards the regular maintenance of the body (e.g. eating moderately), the human body may no longer "bind together its parts into a musical whole" (p. 96). But if this really is Hildegard's view about the musical body, then it seems that it might contrasts with her musical style in, for instance, O viridissima virga. This is because, deviating from standard practice, Hildegard's use of internal centonization in O viridissima virga was for the purpose of avoiding to use "the same melodic fragment over and over as a simple reference point" (p. 118). That is, in order to achieve greater expressivity, Hildegard strategically deviated from the regularized, "tempered" use of simple repetitions of melodic fragments. Further, Holsinger later explains that Hildegard's compositions anticipate Bach's in that the works were intentionally composed so as to be physically demanding to the point of inducing suffering in musicians that would resemble religious suffering (p. 135). So what I find strange is this: if it's essential to Hildegard's conception of the body that it remain 'musical' in that it remains harmoniously tempered and regularly disciplined, is this in conflict with her musical style whereby, in order to attain higher expressivity, she breaks with 'the harmoniously tempered and regularly disciplined' technique of standard centonization? For Hildegard, is the musical life one that is tempered so as to be healthy, one that is untempered so as to be expressive, or harmed so as to be religiously humbled? Or is the musical life a struggle between all of these?

Mika, "We Are Golden"

I'm probably two or thee years behind the times, but I just "discovered" Mika while eating breakfast in Riga two weeks ago. His song/video "Grace Kelly" was playing on German MTV on the video screen in the hotel dining room.

Listening to the song, and viewing the video, what can you say about this performance in terms of not only music and the body, but in terms of gender and sexuality as well? How are the latter related to the former, specifically in Western popular culture/popular music? How do various types of bodies get presented for consumption, and what do these presentations (presume to) tell us about gender/sexual identity? To whom are these images addressed - or, to use Michael Warner's terminology, what sorts of "publics" do they create? What does a moving, singing body "do" that a photograph doesn't, and on what registers?

Of course, you needn't answer these questions; I only offer them as a way of starting things off. Add your responses as comments to this post, instead of starting a new post for each response.

(By the way - the formatting of this clip seems to be too wide for the column width on this blog, so if you want to watch it without the major cropping, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEhutIEUq8k.)

What does it mean to call music profound?

For those of you have have requested it, here is one of my sources (my favorite so far) for the 'emotional abstraction' part of my paper. It's a great read and if you're anything like me it's got a lot of those lines that make you hit the desk, like "YEAH, THAT IS SO TRUE!"

If the link doesn't work for you, just let me know and I'll send you an electronic copy :)

"The Experience of Profundity in Music", Bennett Reimer

http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3333288.pdf

caryl.

The Falsetto - What Does It (Or Can It) Express?

What does the falsetto express? Initially, one might think that singing in such a high register would be expressive of 'femininity'. That is, to sing in such a high voice is to express one's feminine or more youthful nature. However, as we saw through the course of our interesting discussion in class the other day, there's nothing essentially 'feminine' about the falsetto. For instance, Maxwell features the falsetto in "This Woman's Work", but I don't find this song feminine at all. I think what Maxwell expresses in "This Woman's Work" is not femininity, but rather vulnerability. But vulnerability needn't be feminine; for instance, a man's most courageous moment can be exactly when he's expressing his vulnerability towards the person he loves. In this sense I find Maxwell's use of the falsetto expressive of both masculinity and vulnerability. So what is the nature of the relationship between the falsetto, femininity, and vulnerability? Is there some single fixed relationship, or are there several cross-cutting relationships? Maybe the falsetto is expressive of vulnerability, since in singing in that register one's voice is more likely to crack or break. Since falsetto is by definition a non-standard register in which to sing, to sing it is to take a risk and deviate from a norm, which may make one vulnerable. And maybe it's because falsetto is associated with vulnerability, that it's also associated with femininity. Or no? What do you think?

Miller, Chapter 2: Travels to the Center of the Square

In Chapter 2 of Sacred Harp Singing and American Pluralism, Miller goes into detail about the tradition of Sacred Harp conventions and singings. Originating in the Southern U.S. the late nineteenth century, this tradition draws people from all over the country to join in singing anthems and hymns according to a notation system specific to Sacred Harp singing. This reading focuses particularly on the interaction between those who attend the singings and the formation into which they arrange themselves while singing. An entire convention (2+ days) or a singing (1 day) is geared around this formation, the "hollow square". A song leader stands in the center of this square with his back toward the alto section, facing the tenor section, with basses to the right and trebles to the left of him or her. The front row singers are almost always of higher experience levels and seniority. There have been times in the past when these singing events would draw crowds of around 1000 people, but these days they typically have an attendance of around 300 people. However, it seems that the energy, loyalty and attraction to this tradition is still very much alive.

A typical singing day would start with women waking early to begin preparing food for the "dinner-on-the-grounds." The convention chairman then might make announcements or signal the start of singing. At this point, people would take places in the hollow square and follow lessons led by the leader at the center of the square or sing the songs led by them. Anyone can volunteer to lead a song, but for most it takes a good amount of time and experience to work up the courage and skill to lead. Most members consider their first lead a turning point in their spiritual experience with Sacred Harp singing. After the singing, there is a memorial service for those members who have passed away since the previous singing event, followed by dinner-on-the-grounds.

Miller describes many facets of this event in great detail. There is definitely a sense of community fostered by the way in which the singers are arranged and the way newcomers come into the group. For example, there is a lot of play in group dynamics based on voice part, genders within the voice part, and physical orientation of that voice part during singing. Also, Miller touches on the idea of place vs. people as the primary driving force of a singing event. An indoor venue in Chicago for example tends to emphasize the importance of people joining together, whereas a beautiful rural space in Georgia plays a lot more into the event than the Chicago venue might.

There is also a lot of discussion about the different roles that members can take on during a singing. People can volunteer to lead songs, act as executive members, serve as arrangers, or serve on a committee. There is a lot of thought and planning that goes into making a singing or convention as powerful for the participants as possible.

Female Falsetto?

Opera singers often talk about the "whistle register," in women, which includes the E above high C and higher. People sometimes call this the "falsetto" register of a woman's voice.

From wikipedia:

"In European classical music, the whistle register is used primarily by coloratura sopranos. Many parts in the coloratura soprano repertoire extend beyond "high C" and often extend up to high F (F6). Although many coloratura sopranos use whistle tone vocal production to sing these notes, some operatic sopranos are capable of singing up to "high F" (F6) without utilizing the vocal production associated with the whistle register but remaining in the modal register. That being said, most coloratura sopranos do utilize the whistle register, particularly when singing staccato notes in rapid succession, during high trills, or other elaborate coloratura ornamentation in the upper tessitura. Rarely will coloraturas use whistle tone when doing high extended notes. However, singers like Mado Robin were noted for doing so. Also, some rare coloratura sopranos do not need to use whistle register at all. Probably the best-known example of the whistle register in European classical music is in the "Queen of the Night" aria (properly titled "Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen") [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ufeyarJxNQ] from the Mozart opera Die Zauberflöte; it calls for pitches up to F6"