Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Peer Comment 3
Hi Frank,
I really enjoyed reading your post, not only from an informative perspective, but also from hearing your thoughts on The Beatles and Revolver from someone who is not a fan of their music. I personally am a Beatles fan and after hearing Revolver I immediately downloaded the album.
I do completely agree with you that The Beatles would not have been the same band without the influence of George Martin. Without his compositional and production influences I don’t think that The Beatles would have been the super-stars or innovators that the world knows them as today. I also agree that LSD did play a huge role in the transition of The Beatles from a “Teenie-Bop Pop” group to a serious band that would change the world of music forever. I do feel like you insinuated in your blog that without the drug experimentation that they would not have come up with many of their innovations or lyrical content and that very well may be true, but isn’t that fairly common practice for most pop and rock stars.
I also agree that during the recording of this album, that The Beatles and George Martin made very good use of the studio. One of my favorite aspects of the album is the very beginning, when the listener is invited into the studio and you can hear the sounds of the musicians right before laying down the track.
Again, this was a very good read and I am glad that you shared.
Brian Best
Lee "Scratch" Perry and King Tubby
Osbourne Ruddock, aka King Tubby, and Lee Scratch Perry together were instrumental in giving the world two new genres of music, Dub and Reggae. Though the two had very different styles and attitudes, their combined work was revolutionary for Jamaican music and created a worldwide phenomenon. King Tubby’s technical know-how and obsessive perfectionism as a sonic engineer helped him gain notoriety on the small island, so much so that albums were getting sold just because his name was on them[1]. Perry on the other hand was a fiery young songwriter/producer who, through a thick cloud of ganja smoke, let his madness take control of the music he was creating, and in doing so, invented many production techniques that are still heavily used in today’s music, such as sampling and very experimental recording techniques.
Both men came up in Jamaica’s music industry through working with the country’s biggest producers, Perry with Clement “Coxsone” Dodd, and Tubby with Duke Reid, and each gained a great deal of experience and skills with these experiences. In fact, it was while working for Treasure Isle studio under Reid, that King Tubby accidentally stumbled upon the beginnings of Dub. He accidentally left out some of the vocals on a track while cutting the record. He listened to the track, expecting failure, but what he heard was something far different, he realized that the spaciousness that the missing vocals provided actually increased the sonic quality of the track, thus the roots of Dub were born1. During his time at Treasure Island, King Tubby continued to expand his technical abilities due to the fact that sound systems would regularly be damaged or sabotaged by rival companies and need to be repaired. He ultimately was able to design his signature Home Town Hi-Fi system, which included some heavy-duty echo and reverberation effects, which would later be used to craft Dub music.
In 1972 Perry and King Tubby began working together on an album that would effectively put Dub on the map. The album Blackboard Jungle Dub was only released in Jamaica and they only made 300 copies but the techniques used on the album are still evident in much of today’s music[2]. Full of jittery rhythms, sampled audio, growls and screams by Perry, and of course King Tubby’s sonic mastery of the craft of dub, that he was virtually inventing, Blackboard Jungle Dub was the first full Dub album and began a style that would be heavily embraced in Jamaica and techniques that would be used world-wide.
Lee “Scratch” Perry and King Tubby completely changed the face of music in Jamaica and influenced music throughout the world. Tubby provided the sonic and technical know how to effectively use heavy effects to full in the minimalist approach to Dub music and is also known as an innovator of the remix[3]. Perry’s madman approach to creating music helped shaped the more upbeat and jittery sound of Reggae in contrast to earlier forms of Jamaican music. He is also a great innovator in the use of recorded audio samples and some very unique recording techniques that he developed in his home Black Ark Studio.
It is very apparent how the music from both of these men has helped create the styles of Reggae and Dub music. What I appreciate most when listening to their music is their vision. I really like the sample of the baby crying on Perry’s “People Funny Boy”; in fact I myself have used the sounds of my daughter babbling and crying in several of my tracks. I also really like the minimalist vibe of Blackboard Jungle Dub and how it allows the effects to breathe and gives them a sort of life.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Kraftwerk
Kraftwerk is one of the most influential bands to today’s new wave of music. Their experimental approach to music and use of new mechanical instruments, in place of traditional ones, has been a catalyst for many styles of music to flourish and has helped transformed others into what we know today. If you turn on your radio to the top 40’s chart, you will instantly hear sounds that were initially pioneered by Kraftwerk such as synthesizers, sequencers, and vocal transformers, just to name a few.
Two students of the Dusseldorf Conservator, Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider formed Kraftwerk[1]. At first, they were attempting to imitate the pop sound of The Beach Boys, but after initially being unsuccessful, the two young musicians built their own studio and began working on more experimental music using mechanically created sounds. Their first two albums have been described as being Krautrock, a form of experimental pop; however, their fourth album Autobahn was something completely different and had a sound that hadn’t been heard before[2]. It was on this album that the band had completely removed all forms of traditional instrumentation and was purely creating music through the use of machines.
Kraftwerk also had an image that wasn’t a standard for a pop or rock artist of the time. They played shows dressed in vintage suits with short, neatly cut hair, and enjoyed bicycling in their free time rather than partying and running wild. This image was in part due to their background of growing up in Germany and also in part to their idea of acting out their music and simulating robots, as if they were one with the instruments that they had created.
One of the attributes that helped Kraftwerk to become so successful was how they were able to conceptualize entire albums based on a single theme. Autobahn was obviously themed towards motor vehicle travel and the voyage. Their next album, Radio Activity was not an international hit like Autobahn had been, but they still continued to have a theme in their art. Radio Activity however, was a success in Europe and allowed the band to travel the area playing shows and subsequently finding the theme for their next album, Trans-Europe Express, which was a tribute to locomotion. The two albums released in 1978, Man Machine, and 1981, Computer World, showed a shift in the themes to go from something human such as communication and travel to something very non-human in that of technology[3].
Kraftwerk is responsible for not only many innovations, but also influencing the right people to make this electronic form of music more widely popular. The very nature of their robotic, repetitive, yet funky sound was an innovation. In a way it is similar to what The Beatles were experimenting with songs like Tomorrow Never Knows, where the tracks could go on forever and somehow never get old. They also were innovators technologically, creating and using many instruments for the very first time. However, one of their biggest achievements may be the influence that they had on huge names of the time such as Brian Eno and David Bowie. They helped open up a much wider audience for this style of music and helped shape a worldwide love affair with electronic music.
When I listen to Kraftwerk I can definitely hear the way that they have influenced pop music. You can’t turn on the radio anymore without hearing a song that has auto-tune on it, which is basically a form of a vocoder. Electronic drum kits and processed synthesizers are also very common in today’s most popular music.
Gary Numan
Another great innovator in the realm of electronic music is the iconic Gary Numan. His most popular works include “Cars” and his work with Tubeway Army “Are Friends Electric”. Gary Numan is an English born singer, composer, and musician who is most widely known for his use of synthesizers being fed through amps and effects processors designed for electric guitars. He was highly influenced by the band Kraftwerk and it shows through in his music and image.
His sounds were robotic, his image icy and without emotion, and his content was filled with paranoia and lonely darkness. He helped usher in the age of goth rock and the industrial music revolution. In the 90’s it became apparent how important of a role Gary Numan played in the new wave of music being produced when several big names such as Hole, The Foo Fighters, Marilyn Manson, and The Smashing Pumpkins covered many of his songs[1].
His melancholy attitude and industrial sounds being combined with pop beats were what made Gary Numan’s music so innovative. Interestingly enough, the style that Gary Numan is so famous for came as an accident. Before appearing on a television show, “Top of the Pops”, the make up crew had caked his face with make-up, to cover his intense acne, and darkened his eyes so they weren’t lost in the make-up. He then made his appearance, lacking showmanship and full of nerves, and produced a very stiff, robotic performance[2]. The combination of the image and performance stuck with him and thus the goth/emo persona was defined.
Week 2 Peer Comment
Hello Stephany,
Great post! I find it interesting that many of the most influential bands and albums of our time were great musical experimenters, and Kraftwerk was one of the best. It sort of blows my mind that they actually created many of the electronic instruments that they used. I would have to agree with you, that the members of Kraftwerk probably scoff at the luxuries that we producers have in regards to the ease of being able to create electronic sounds with a few clicks of a mouse. At the same time, I would also have to imagine that this fills them with a great sense of pride, because without the innovations that the group formed, many of these tools would not be so widely used. However, even with all of the power of our DAW’s, software instruments, and hardware, we can still think like Kraftwerk and try to find new ways of creating interesting and innovative sounds through musical experimentation.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Tomorrow Never Knows - Podcast
Here is the link to my podcast over some of the innovations brought on by The Beatles Revolver and in particular the track "Tomorrow Never Knows".
Tomorrow Never Knows Podcast
Tomorrow Never Knows Podcast
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