Keyboard Expressiveness

I enjoyed this "Brooklyn Organ Synth Orchestra" clip of "Tubular Bells" so much that I eventually bought the song. Have a look:



As interesting as it is to see all these organs and synths at work, I'm always struck by how RELIEVED I am when the good old straightforward piano comes in at the end, bringing with it a warmth and depth that the rest of the song lacks. It gives me goosebumps! Even compared to the organs, the piano somehow sounds more EXPRESSIVE.

This has started me wondering: is the piano REALLY more expressive than a Hammond organ or an Omnichord? Is it more capable of conveying emotion than any other keyboard instrument?

That really does seem to be the case in THIS song, but that may have something to do with the relative skill of the player (Natasha Bartolf has obviously spent a lot of time with the piano so she may have more of a "connection" to it than -- perhaps -- Natalie Weiss with the Stylophone). Also, some of the instruments in the video ARE notably limited...that's part of their charm.

So I started thinking about synth virtuosos, the men and women who have spent their lives dickering with synthesizers. Manfred Mann has certainly bemoaned the lack of expressiveness in modern keyboards, but it's hard to compare his synth performances with virtuoso piano because he tends to use monophonic instruments. Bernie Worrell's more extravagant keyboard solos sound a bit farty these days. Thomas Dolby's synths are warmer than most, but still revel in a certain "coldness." Richard Tandy relies more on novelty than anything else.

I haven't looked into this enough. Is there something unique about the piano's ability to "express" the music that comes out of it, far beyond a pitch bend and a mod wheel?

"Me and My Imagination" by Sophie Ellis-Bextor

Once a year (approximately) I hear a song that is Pure Ear Ecstasy. It "sends" me. It gradually seeps into my brain and possesses every waking hour. When I listen to it, I get covered in goosebumps. When I'm not listening to it, I'm hearing it in my head.

I can't pin down what these songs have in common, but I DO know that they all have a "soaring" quality -- like they're flying higher than anything else in the world -- but only in certain parts; during other parts of the song they are quite low-key. In short, they employ an emotional rollercoaster in perfect mix.

These songs are also musically complex, but they're still pop songs. And their lyrics are interesting. And the singers themselves have an expressive quality to their voices.

Past songs that spring to mind are "Living in Another World" by Talk Talk, "I Know What I'm Here For" by James, and "Ride a White Horse" by Goldfrapp. The most recent song is...

..."Me and My Imagination" by Sophie Ellis-Bextor.



I didn't care much for it the first time I heard it but now I can't get enough. It has the minimalistic dance element during the verses, and then the "soaring" chorus that employs a totally unexpected and almost lurching chord progression. The lyrics are fun and interesting. The thin disco-style strings perfectly complement the fat keyboards. And Ellis-Bextor has the most emotive, expressive voice around...contrast her "upbeat dance" delivery during most of the song with her "intimate, slightly broken, almost soulful" approach during the breakdown.

I'm in love with this song. Actually I'm falling in love with Sophie Ellis-Bextor in general, but this song especially.

A Musical Moment, Childhood, Mike Oldfield, and Fovea Hex

Most of us probably felt music in a more pure and mysterious way when we were children, as opposed to the critical outlook we adopt as adults. When I was a child I had no idea how music was actually MADE, or why anybody would WANT to make it...I just opened myself up to an album and accepted it for what it was, mixed with the bizarre magical thinking of an imaginative and introspective childhood.

Fortunately my mother viewed music in a similar way, and in fact she still does. Some of my fondest memories are of listening to scratchy vinyl records over and over again in our farm's living room, and actually being ENCOURAGED in my love by both my mother and father. In that sort of environment the music seemed to get INTO me in a way that I still can't describe, and in a way that music rarely does nowadays unless it's really wonderful or I'm slightly drunk and very happy.

One album that I listened to endlessly was Mike Oldfield's Ommadawn, released in 1975. His third "classic" album, it combined the best of the first two and was therefore much more complex and varied. The whole thing is amazing, but the highpoint is definitely the last seven minutes of side one. It's a classic "musical moment" which music reviewer Karl Dallas described this way:

High whistles play the second, descending theme slowly, almost as if the whole side is coming to a gentle close: and there is a sudden break, the drums are upfront, and voices chant words which may or may not have coherent meaning. It is impossible to hear the words, but the effect is electric.

This section starts out very quietly with just the drums, the voices, and the tinny reeds of a monophonic synthesizer. The "drums" are a sequence of overlapping and increasingly polyrhythmic African drum loops...as this final section of the song progresses the loops are subsequently overdubbed, gaining more and more high-frequency taps which echo back and forth. A warm xylophone appears. Oldfield's guitar sings all by itself, no-nonsense but human in tone, like he's explaining to you how he feels while listening to these beautiful and exotic sounds.

The "voices," though...oh, the voices! It's Clodagh Simonds singing back there. Her syllables were actually Gaelic and they sound vaguely pagan and somehow powerful. Oldfield tended to use "pretty" singers like Maggie Riley on his later albums, but Simonds' voice is something other than pretty; it's adult, mystical, and a little scary.

What makes this section so amazing is that Simdons' multi-tracked vocals are actually being shouted, but everything else is so QUIET. To compensate, the producer has pushed her voices way back into the mix, applied lots of reverb, and -- inexplicably -- stripped out her bass and treble so that she truly IS ghostly...a shouting ghost keeping time, adding structure to the building movement, getting louder and louder as the song reaches its end.

And the ending IS the climax. Mike Oldfield has been described as a man of multiple climaxes, able to string you up and up and up until you achieve the ultimate release. The guitar solo at the end of Ommadawn is the PERFECT and most sexual Oldfield climax, rising to a screech as the drums and vocals and keyboards are also screeching...then sustaining...then...

...amazingly...

...just the drum loop playing quietly in one speaker, nothing else. The loop plays for over ninety seconds, just one bar over and over again. It no longer sounds exotic or pulsing or pushing, it sounds...well, post-coital. Eventually, far beyond a time which would be considered "reasonable" in a normal situation, the drums fade away, and side one is finished.

This segment entranced me as a child. I could listen to it forever. Everything about it was unique and perfect, but most entrancing were the vocals by Clodagh Simonds, a woman who didn't exist to me as a biography or a picture. Over the years she appeared on a few other Oldfield albums, but somehow it wasn't the same...Clodagh Simonds would always be for me the woman who yelled "Ommadawn" at the end of side one. Other than that she was a complete mystery from thirty years ago.

Then, yesterday, I discovered Fovea Hex. Now I know who Simonds really is.

You can read the details of her life in the Mellow Candle biography if you wish, but you should really check out her current music. "Fovea Hex" appears to be her band for the most part, but it is also a bit of a supergroup collaborations along the lines of .O.Rang, featuring contributions from people she has worked with through the years (including Brian Eno and Robert Fripp, predictably). On a whim -- and out of respect -- I purchased the mp3s from her "Neither Speak Nor Remain Silent" EPs, and the songs "get into me" the same way I mentioned at the beginning of this post...something above and beyond, something magical, something REAL.

Their music is minimalistic, often little more than a harmonium, a vocal harmony, and a background of sly and unidentifiable manipulations. The lyrics are full of gravity and totally without irony...stark poetry. It's sad, but not angsty...just the sadness of every day life as told in tales around a fireside.

If you're going to try one, I recommend the "Huge" EP as the easiest to get into. This is not music to listen to while walking to work, though...

A Cowboy Junkies Musical Moment

Tomorrow night's another Club Renaissance "Glamourspunk Night," and in a quest to find new songs to perform I've finally tackled the holy grail: "'Cause Cheap Is How I Feel" by Cowboy Junkies.

It's already a risky song because it's slow and sad, but it's also eloquent and poignant and awfully fitting for a "bar performance around Christmas." The only problem is the extended instrumental portion in the middle, which consists of a steel guitar solo followed by an accordion solo, during which the key and the mood changes from "I'm game" to "I've found temporary happiness" to "I'm simply resigned."

Cutting instrumentals out of songs is easy enough to do, and I do it frequently to prevent me from prancing about on stage with nothing to do. But this instrumental is one of the most important parts of the song...it tells a story in a way the words never could. And the solos are so individual and complete that you simply cannot chop pieces out of them. Believe me, I've tried.



After all this editing frustration I can only conclude one thing: this song is a perfect construction which cannot be dismantled. You can't take a single thing out of it without throwing the whole thing out of balance. That's annoying, but it's also evidence of a really special piece of music. This is one of the world's most under appreciated "musical moments."

I guess I'll just have to come up with some "business" in the middle.

I'd Buy Anything By...The Moody Blues

The Moody Blues. Brilliant songs meet ace musicians. High concept and innovative production techniques, plus a mellotron and lots of reverb. What's NOT to love?

Well, like many bands of their age they went in and out of favour. They were psychedelic darlings until such things became unfashionable...then they were clean-cut pop-rockers for the baby boomer generation. When THAT became unfashionable as well they just started touring around and making tons of money off their aging fans, which is NEVER fashionable.

When I was a little kid, digging through my parent's record collection, I was most attracted to their "On a Threshold of a Dream" album. The opening track was a nightmare of spooky keyboards and an evil-sounding robot, and the gatefold sleeve is still one of the creepiest covers I've ever seen, but the actual album...wow. The Moodies could take a concept, milk it just enough to get eight good songs out of it, and still leave enough time for an overwrought poem by Graeme Edge.

Unlike many other bands of that era their adult contemporary reinvention was a complete success. I was listening to "The Voice" at work today and was reminded of how damn GOOD it sounds, and also totally unconventional: a chorus that takes second-place to a soaring bridge, immediately followed by one of my favourite "musical moments"...a farty keyboard sound that breaks the song into separate segments. Other bands would have used a drum fill or a shouted "oh yeah," but this was MUCH more effective. In lesser hands it would have been terrible.

You can't hear the keyboard breaks in this 2005 live version, but you can at least tell that they're still an amazing band.



I feel stupid writing about The Moody Blues because it's sort of like writing about oxygen: some things have so permeated our musical culture that we no longer notice them. But sometimes you need to be reminded that breathing fresh air feels great, so therefore I encourage you to buy a cheap Moody Blues CD and listen to it like it was the first time.

Albums to buy: "On the Threshold of a Dream" feels like a juicy steak, slow-roasted over a hashish fire, full of contradictions, mismatched ideas, and all-out "wow" moments...not a single bad song on it. For something from their later period try "Long Distance Voyager," a perfect blend of rock and synthpop.

Albums to avoid: somebody's going to shoot me for saying this, but I have NEVER liked "Days of Future Passed." It's all twill and no hook, with the obvious exception of "Nights In White Satin."

Because It's Friday (Morning): "Mother of Pearl"

Do you ever feel like you have a "theme song," a song that resonates at exactly the same frequency that your soul does, and when you hear it you simply fall apart?

If you do...write about it in the comments! Here are two of mine.

First, Roxy Music's "Mother of Pearl." Forget about the first ninety seconds -- I've always been baffled by the so-called "red" portion of the song -- it's all about the strange, seemingly endless conveyor belt of lyrics and call/response that makes up the bulk of it. Never has someone so well summed up the sublime emptiness of a night on the town, and written about it in words that make you feel both post-coital AND sad.



Then, a song that goes back to my disaffected high school years, Talk Talk's "Living In Another World." It's remarkably similar to "Mother of Pearl" with its seemingly non-stop thumping groove and its underlying alienation, but it's mixed in with so much BOMBAST. Whenever I hear it I want to hug Mark Hollis and tell him that I understand. The "video version" is tragically cut by two minutes or more, but it's still wonderful, and it contains one of my favourite "musical moments" -- the transition from the over-the-top, instrument-heavy first chorus to the simple, fat, thumping bassline of the second verse.

It's sort of a strange approach to the video...I assume that the band members were already tiring of the music industry and were just trying to make the best of it. There's something almost creepy about the juxtaposition of a thoughtful song with goofy images.

In Praise of Elton John's Drummer

If you grew up listening to radio pop-rock during the '70s, you may be aware of a distinctive drum sound that has never reappeared.

I don't know exactly how to describe the sound. The simple explanation might be that the kick drum and snare drums are gated, have their volume boosted across all frequencies, and then are sent through an effects processor which adds a short plate reverb. Michael B. Tretow -- who produced some early ABBA singles which used this technique -- described it as sounding like a turkey being thrown against the wall.

Yes it does, a bit.

You'd hear this drum sound on any highly-produced pop-rock song which wasn't yet experimenting with disco: ABBA, Electric Light Orchestra, Supertramp, Harry Nilsson...and the "classic" Elton John line-up.

During my "breakfast walk" this morning I choose -- at random -- to listen to Elton John's "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" double LP. Besides being perfect in almost every way -- the exception being "Jamaican Jerk-Off," which makes me scream every time -- this "thumpy drum" sound appears in most of the songs...you can hear it in "Benny and the Jets" and "I've Seen That Movie Too," though it would be used at its most extreme in "Better Off Dead" on his subsequent "Captain Fantastic Album."

While luxuriating in this distinctive sound I found myself paying attention to the elaborate rhythms of Elton John's band at the time. Considering that the songs were nominally based around piano, there's a surprising amount of rhythmic interplay between ALL the instruments, with Nigel Olsson's drums being particularly tricky. Again, I don't know which "drumming terms" to use, but I suppose the right word is "fills." Olsson's fills are perfect. He'd never hit a drum unless it accented the rhythm that the other instruments were playing at the time.

So here's to a drum sound that I haven't heard again since...

...though now that I think about it, you can hear a similar effect in "The W.A.N.D." by Flaming Lips, which must be one of the greatest songs ever, and is always an intricate thrill to dance to:



Given what I understand to be a Flaming Lips tendency to pay "homage" to their '70s influences, I suppose this make sense.

Musical Moments: If There Is Something

A while back Eli posted a list of five musical moments, that is, moments in a song that make you go "ARRR!" with delight.

I wanted to put my own list together but I realized this would be even more subjective than a list of rare perfect albums; the most obvious "musical moments" would leap to mind first, resulting in a list of twenty-five songs where I say "they go up an octave at the end and I get goosebumps." Not useful, the equivalent of Madonna and Michael Jackson winning 95 of the Top 100 Viewer's Choice Best Videos of All Time Awards.

So I figured I'd post "musical moments" when I came across them, therefore:

"If There Is Something (Live Viva! Version)" by Roxy Music.

If you've never heard it, the song -- from their first, self-titled album -- is really three songs in one. The first part is a ridiculous, embarassing Texas ho-down complete with twangy slide guitars, a fiddle, and Bryan Ferry doing his worst C&W hiccups, singing somewhat cryptic lyrics about trying to be in the place where a special somebody might think of looking for him.

This segues shockingly into an over-emotional, sparse, I'd-do-anything-for-you dirge. The tension -- and the Mellotron -- builds, but all the instruments slowly fade down to just Paul Thompson's mechanical, thumpy drums.

And this is the moment: Bryan Ferry, voice cracking from an excess of volume and emotion, breaks in with the final, simple, evocative, uplifting lyrics, under which the the instruments gradually return in a hypnotic and repetitive refrain:

Shake your hair girl with your ponytail
Takes me right back...when you were young.
Throw your precious gifts into the air
Watch them fall down...when you were young.
LIFT UP! your feet and put them on the ground
You used to walk upon...when you were young.
LIFT UP! your feet and put them on the ground
The hills were higher...when you were young...

This is when you pick up your cat, swing her around the apartment, and sing along as your heart jumps out of your chest and into heaven for the final sixty seconds. Sixty seconds of BLISS!

I single out the live version on their "Viva!" album because the silliness of the first segment is toned down and the middle portion is extended to a ridiculous length, giving every band member a solo. Therefore when the final segment begins you're really READY for it.

I'm not fond of the version on their 2002 "Live" album, however, as it's one of the few moments when backup singers manage to SPOIL a song. Instead of hearing Bryan Ferry's painful and exultant howling we hear a lot of sweet voices that can't carry the required emotional load.

Bonus Comment

It seems to me that many percussionists are playful eccentrics; every time I see a concert video the percussionist has a streak of individuality and is more than a little strange. From the bald guy who toured with everybody from Roy Orbison to George Harrison during the '80s (and who can be seen playing sax in the "not stupid, but definitely a sexual metaphor" version of Harrison's I Got My Mind Set On You video), to spastic Steven Scales (who I'd show you a screen capture of if my DVD copy of "Stop Making Sense" didn't cause my computer to crash), to the lovely Julia Thornton.

Julia Thornton using what seems to be a specialized type of castanet, which produces a precise quadruple snap.

You can see Julia Thornton's deadpan oddness on the Roxy Music "Live at the Apollo" DVD, as well as on the "Bryan Ferry in Concert" DVD. Her fashion sense is eccentric to say the least, and she plays percussion like she is simultaneously loving it and feeling embarassed about it. She particularly shines in "Mother of Pearl," the call-and-response of which always makes me think of The Rocky Horror Picture Show ("Well I was up all night--" "AGAIN?") ("...thus even Zarathustra--" CLAP-CLAP!) ("...a few throw-away kisses--" SMACK-SMACK!) ("...just give me your--" "FUTURE...")

What's up with percussionists? Do they feel insecure because their niche is so specialized and so many of their instruments are used to just add variety to what the wage-earning band members are playing? Is it because they need to have an encyclopedic knowledge of obscure types of gongs, the names and specific uses and histories of which nobody else cares to know? Were they the slow children in music class who had to choose the Temple Blocks after the other kids had taken all the COOL instruments?

I don't know, but I DO know that -- while trying to figure out what the hell Ms. Thornton is holding in the picture -- I've discovered that this whole percussion business is more organized and complicated than I thought. You've got idiophones, membranophones, chordophones, aerophones, and controversial electrophones. Some of them have definite pitches and others produce sounds that are too complex for pitching. You can make a lot of them at home. You can become your own percussionist. Hmmm...maybe this gongs-and-rattles stuff is pretty cool after all...