John Lagomarsino
Video · Photography · Music · Motion Graphics

Greetings from the trenches of the classical guitar world! This week your intrepid reporter is in search of some mad guitar skillz at the 20th incarnation of the National Guitar Workshop Classical Guitar Summit in lovely New Milford, CT.  In fact, I’m preparing this dispatch while seated at the front window of the charming Bank Street Coffee House in that same city.  The coffee is excellent; it’s a highly recommended stop if you’re ever here in New Milford.  In any case, I’ll spare you the guitar shop talk and poetic waxing about the finest of instruments (do head on over to my usual haunt if you do want to suffer in that particular fashion, though), and instead hip you to something every musician or music lover should check out.

The back story:  One of the courses I’m taking here at the festival is called “The Sense of Sound” and it’s taught by the encyclopedically brilliant,  musically unparalleled, and astoundingly inspiring Julian Gray, who also happens to be my teacher down at Peabody (you should be very jealous).  The course is meant as an examination of the two meanings of the word “sense” and an exploration of how the two possible understandings of the phrase “the sense of sound” affect music making.  In other words, answering the questions  ”how does one make sense of music, and how does a performer go about expressing that sense to a listener?” and “how do all of a performer’s senses work together to produce musical sound?”  Today Julian pointed out that when some individuals set out to make sense of music their genius, or their curiosity, or whatever else leads them to discover something that had never existed before — that new styles are forged only when a new understanding of musical grammar or emotional content is reached.  To prove his point he played two recordings of the same cornet player, one Louis Armstrong, on either side of his discovery of jazz.  The first, from I think 1931, smacks of the typical, it could be any dixieland trumpeter tooting out a bugle call.  The second, however, from 1933, is a revelation.  It swings, it groves, there’s breath in sound of some notes, and pitches swirl in an intoxicating stew of heartfelt emotion.  It’s also blatantly clear that the playing is Armstrong’s. It could be no one else.  What’s incredible, though, is that the arpeggio of the bugle call still looms large.  The basic musical material is exactly the same.  What’s different truly is that Armstrong understanding of what that bugle call is and means.  He truly birthed jazz by making sense of the arpeggio in a new and unprecedented way.

Thinking about musical innovation in this way is, I think, eye opening.  We’ve had the same 12 notes for more or less 800 or so years, and the system of organizing them that still predominates both popular and “classical” music we’ve had for about 400.  But just think for a second about the range of styles, both personal and collective, that have come and gone and come back again in that time.  Think about how much grew out of so little.  Words don’t quite do justice to this concept, so go out and grab an Armstrong collection and compare early and later stuff(seriously, do it, don’t just look at me like I’m crazy).   Check out the world of difference between the two — he’s playing the same notes, but man does he make sense out of them in wildly divergent ways.

Something occurred to me while picking up a copy of Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being at my local Barnes and Noble Booksellers yesterday: Metalica are a bunch of whiney old rockers who’ve totally missed the boat when it comes to the changing face of the music industry.  Don’t look at me with that face — this was a major breakthrough for me.  Let me explain.

A few months ago JT turned me on to Andrew Dubber and his incredible blog New Music Strategies, where among all sorts of other wisdom, Dubber derides the 30-second promotional clip and instead encourages artists to give whole entire songs, hell, why not whole catalogues, away for free.  The model by which musicians do business, he explains, is changing, as it has many times before.  Bach worked under a patronage model, Beethoven the live performance model, Brahms the print sales model, and the Beatles the record model.  What, with the entrance of the internet in to the marked, we’ve been experiencing in the past decade or so has been the transition to the relationship model, wherein artists no longer sell recordings, but instead relationships and connections.  The dawn of Web 2.0 — social networking sites like Facebook, blogs like this one, YouTube, del.icio.us, Wikipedia, and other hyperlinked, user-content populated internet real estate — has confirmed this change, as the web has morphed from something like a digital library and shopping mall in to an environment where people come to interact and exchange information.  To cut it in this environment, Dubber says, artists need to make personal connections with their fans and help their fans forge personal relationships with one another.  The way we musicians do this, obviously, is through our music.  By giving it away.

Now, I admit, I used to despise file sharing.  As much as I thought Lars and the Metalica gang were shooting themselves in the foot with all their complaining, I was glad someone was doing it.  Lots of work – by the artists, the engineers, the producers, the art people, the ad people, etc – goes in to making an album, and those people deserve remuneration for that work, damnit.  Even after reading Dubber and buying in to his explanation of how the business model is changing due to the web, I couldn’t make sense of how this relationship-building nonsense made anyone any money.  You don’t sell anything, you don’t make any money.

Then yesterday I walked in to Barnes and Noble.  At our local Barnes and Noble they’ve got big, plush armchairs — lots of them.  These chairs are often arranged in groups.  Sometimes around tables.  People like to sit in these chairs and look at (maybe even read) books, which they sometimes buy but more often put back on the shelves.  Sometimes they do this in groups, or just strike up a conversation with whatever other bibliophile happens to sit down next to them.  It always seemed to me an awful lot more like a library than any place wanting to sell books should be.  Yesterday, though, I got it.  Barnes and Noble’s chief concern isn’t selling books, it’s selling relationships — between reader and a particular body of literature as well as between reader and other readers — that will lead to selling books.  Have you ever noticed how many damn books someone who’s a bona-fide expert on a subject, say a professor, owns?  That’s because that person has an intense and intimate relationship with that topic, and has a need – no, a desire – to own books taking on that subject from all sorts of angles.  Since Barnes and Noble provides its customers the time and space (free!) to become something of an aficionado of whatever might intrigue them, to establish a relationship with the literature, they can turn the merely curious in to mini-experts like our professor above, and thus sell more books. Once that happens and our cadre of experts start running in to each other at the conveniently situated Barnes and Noble Cafe, or around the armchairs, recommendations will start flying like shot on the first day of open season.  And that means, you guessed it, more book sales. Ca-ching!

Clearly, then, selling relationships works. It worked to the tune of $5.4 billion in sales for Barnes and Noble last year.  But in the end I’m still skeptical.  Booksellers are still slinging a material product.  We’re selling vibrating air.  And if we go with Dubber’s plan, that vibrating air will be available in any home with an internet connection for free.  At least if a consumer wants to take a book home she has to pay for it.  Does this mean that we have to depend on upping our relationships with our audience to the point that they’ll want to shell out bucks to see us live?  Where else do we have an opportunity to get paid for what we do?  I’m starting to see the light on this, but those lingering questions really make me nervous.  What do you think?

First off, I apologize for the nerdiness of this post.  But I’ve been thinking about it, so I’m going to write it anyway.

I was listening to the movie version of Rent (nerd point No. 1), and was kind of taken aback by the recording quality (nerd point No. 2).  It wasn’t so noticable at first, but it barely had any dynamic variance at all.  I understand how this could be a good thing on, say, the radio, but I don’t really get it in a movie mixed in 5.1.  Take this clip for example:

Now, we can hear her voice just fine, and understand all the words.  I can hear the piano pretty clearly panned slightly left, the bass is pretty present, the drums (including what I can only imagine was a kick drum made of cardboard) are clear, and the guitars are audible.  However, pay attention to when the vocals get “louder.”  Do they seem farther away?  The compressor clamps down on the voice, and while the overall level stays the same, the dynamics are all but removed.

Now, this does seem pretty terrible from a sound reproduction standpoint, but then I got to thinking.  I can hear all of the parts in this recording.  Now, which is more important?  Should the peaks in the vocals momentarily drown out the ride cymbals, or should this kind of compression ensure an even mix among all the parts?  Put another way, if you paid someone to mix a recording of a musical, would the compression and dynamics in the above clip be acceptable?

I’m not sure what the answer is, and this is why I’m putting it out here.  What’s your take?

Something I’m kind of working on:

This qualifies as fair use, right? Right.

David Pogue just posted a blog entry about the alleged disappearance of live musicians in pit orchestras. His fear is that these systems are getting/will get advanced enough to seamlessly sound like real players, and we’ll just can the musicians altogether. I’m a little reluctant to agree. Here’s my response:

I was recently the conductor of a production of Thoroughly Modern Millie, a show that requires a fairly large orchestra. We’re a student group at a small college, so we’re limited in our performance spaces. I was in just that situation–having a pretty full orchestra, but missing a string player here and there, and a third trumpet player. My initial inclination was to contact the licensing company about their virtual orchestra setup.

I’m now confident that this thing will very rarely replace the volunteer orchestra entirely. The cost of the rental is high enough to prevent volunteer organizations from using it at all. In fact, for a lot of shows, it would almost be cheaper to hire live musicians to fill in the parts. Add this to the fact that most amateur productions have very limited runs, and the setup and fees begin to look extremely inefficient.

In the professional world, producers are throwing so much money at shows that the cost of the musicians is comparatively low. The unions in place would also pretty much prevent the complete replacement of the live players.

In the eighties there was a great fear that synths would wind up replacing musicians altogether. More recently, though, there’s been an emphasis, particularly in recording, on finding just the right blend between synth, samples, and real players. We’re learning now that emulation may be a good tool, but one that should augment real players in order to sound convincing. I think the same will hold true for musical theater.

What do you think?

I just read this article in the New York Times.  It was generally interesting (if a little long) but one section really made me do a double-take.

The sleeve of Final Fantasy’s most recent album (the title is at once innocent and vulgar, and can’t be printed here) lists violin, trombone, concertina, accordion, harpsichord, a string quartet, shouting and a monologue among its instruments, but guitar is nowhere to be found; neither, for that matter, is a drum kit. When I asked him why, Pallett answered without a moment’s hesitation. “Drummers ruin bands,” he said simply, as if the fact were common knowledge. “There are probably about 10 people in indie rock who know how to play the drums. If you’re in a mediocre band, just fire the drummer, and chances are you’ll have the best band in the world.”

Wait, what?  This is the prose of a cutting-edge indie musician?  How is it that someone who operates in the pop paradigm can say this about drummers?  I know quite a few drummers and, really, all the other musicians around them tend to get their time from the drummer.  In fact, I’d venture to say that most pop band musicians would sound noticeably worse without the aid of their drummers.

I think this was really just an opportunity for Owen Pallett to say something pretentious as an explanation for his lack of drums in Final Fantasy.  (In fairness, it’s actually a pretty good project, if you get a chance to check it out.)

I’ve been wondering about this one for a long time. Why don’t more musical theater actors read music? It seems like a no-brainer, but still, we’re stuck plunking out notes to actors who can’t read. Why is this the norm?

As far as I can tell, lots of people want to be on Broadway. They vary in talent, sure, but there seem to be more talented people than there are roles in musical theater at any given time. So, casting directors weed out the bad ones, and based on an off-book audition, or recommendations from other people, stick some talented actors in shows. The talented ones who don’t get work are left to keep trying.

Now, it seems to me this whole scheme could be a lot more merit-based if there was a sight-singing element to the audition process. Now, you don’t only have talented people, but you have talented people who can read music. The field is smaller for a while, and now you’re picking people based on real merit and abilities rather than splitting hairs over similarly-equipped actors.

Actors take lessons in singing, movement, interpretation, even auditioning specifically. If they’re already pouring all of this money into honing their craft, can’t they take the comparatively small step of learning how to read music? This would be one very easy prerequisite to implement, and it would smooth the whole process.

This has an economic advantage to producers, as well. When actors read music, they don’t have to spend as long in rehearsal. When they can sing through their parts the first time, and not go through it note-by-note by ear, everyone goes home early, and fewer bills have to be paid.

Usually I’m OK with the differences between the music world and the musical theater world. I understand the time crunches in the latter, and can accept the more free-flowing, frenetic attitude of it. Maybe technique should come second to meaning in theater, fine. But here, it would actually help everyone if actors had to read music. It would speed up the process, cost less, and make the singers more precise.

So, I’m kind of bummed. Brian and I were psyched to audition for Mark Burnett’s new reality show ‘Jingles.’ The basic premise is that teams compete to write commercial jingles for ad companies. The idea behind the show is to revive the art of the jingle.

You can imagine why Brian and I were so excited about this. Well, it turns out that we’d have to be available for six weeks this summer/fall. It would be kind of hard to justify taking a semester off to be on a reality show about commercial jingles. Maybe next season, after it becomes the most successful television venture in the history of the medium.

Also, all you web designers out there: can anyone figure out what’s wrong with my navbar? The lightup buttons display too high on Macs. I have neither a Mac nor the knowhow to fix this issue, so any help would be much appreciated.