• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

Hearing Music with the Ears of a Composer M A U RA BOSCH The author, a composer, compares the experience of composing in Link Ray’s 1958 hit “Rumble.” Less than two years music to the experience of “just” listening and finds the point where later, Pop formed a new band, Iggy and the Stooges. these two meet: in the moment of hearing a new sound. The author • From a young age, Abigail Washburn wanted to be a provides examples as described by other composers and finds a ABSTRACT consistency in the way they recall their experiences. Their stories lawyer in China. Afer college she moved to Vermont indicate the direction for further study of this rare but highly formative to prepare for her graduate studies. Tat’s when she type of musical experience. heard “Shady Grove.” Tree years later, just weeks before she planned to move to China, she took a road trip that ended up in Nashville, where she was ofered Te frst time that I heard Bob Dylan I was in the car a record deal. with my mother, and we were listening to, I think, maybe WMCA, and on came that snare shot that sounded like somebody kicked open the door to your mind, from “Like Every composer has a story to tell about a piece of music a Rolling Stone.” And my mother, she looked at me, and she that kicked open a door in her mind. Hearing this music said, “Tat guy can’t sing.” But I knew she was wrong [1]. changed her life. Te encounter was crucial in her decision to become a composer. Te piece that triggered the experi- One day I was in the student union of this major university, ence was an indicator of the type of music she would go on and I heard this music, duh_duh_daaahh. And it was called to create. “Rumble.” And it sounded bad. I lef school emotionally at How can a piece of music change someone’s life? Similari- that moment, the moment I heard “Rumble” [2]. ties in the way these three composers describe their expe- I think it might have been Beau, my boyfriend at the time, riences provide important clues. First, all three tell a story who put on a record, and I heard it out of the corner of my about the frst time they heard this music. And second, ear, and it was this beautiful, old sounding voice and this their stories point to a sound. Tere is no mention of lyr- incredibly rhythmic, vibrant, but rich and deep sounding ics, or an album cover, or a performer’s dress or hair. For instrument, and it ended up it was Doc Watson and he was all three, the experience of hearing a new sound changed playing “Shady Grove” . and I sat next to the record player the course of their lives. It led them on a path to become a and played it over and over again. I went out and bought a composer. banjo afer that [3]. All three stories point to a sound, yet all three composers are barely able to describe the sound, even though, in the Te three composers quoted above are talking about a crucial years since they frst heard the sound, they have acquired a encounter with a piece of music: technical understanding of it and the ability to reproduce it. Pop knows that the sound he heard is called a power chord, • Bruce Springsteen was 15 in the summer of 1965 when and Washburn knows that the rhythmic style of banjo play- he heard “Like a Rolling Stone.” Soon afer, ing is called clawhammer. Yet Pop sings the sound and Wash- his mother bought him his frst electric guitar. burn uses vague adjectives to describe it. Maybe they want • Iggy Pop was attending the University of Michigan to convey a sense of how it felt to hear it the frst time. Or in 1965 when he was stunned by the power chords maybe, in telling their stories, they are reliving that moment in which they heard it for the frst time. Springsteen does Maura Bosch (composer), 4327 Pillsbury Avenue, Minneapolis, MN 55409, not even try to describe the heavy electric organ sound that U.S.A. Email: <[email protected]>. is initiated by the snare. He just describes the efect it had See <www.mitpressjournals.org/toc/lmj/-/26> for supplemental files associated with this issue. on him. 32 LEONARDO MUSIC JOURNAL, Vol. 26, pp. 32–34, 2016 doi:10.1162/LMJ_a_00964 ©2016 ISAST I DIDN’T KNOW MUSIC COULD DO THAT! tambourine or an autoharp while everyone else got a pair of In another example, Ben Kweller, an indie rock composer, re- red rhythm sticks. Brooks hated the class because he always calls his experience hearing the opening of “Smells Like Teen got the rhythm sticks. His disappointment in not getting a Spirit.” Tis happened while he was skating at a roller rink. real instrument was enhanced by the disgust he felt for the sticks themselves. In a typical class, the students sang “Oh I’ll never forget, I was going around this corner, and dah- Susanna” along with a worn-out recording, accompanying na-na, chicka chicka, dah-nah-nah, nah-na-na came on, themselves with the rhythm sticks, dully tapping on beats and I was like holy shit what is this? And I literally had to one and three. pull over onto the side and hold onto the wall, and I listened One day, the teacher introduced a new song, “Pick a Bale of to the whole song, and it just blew me away. And I imme- Cotton.” She passed out the instruments. As usual, Brooks got diately went back to the DJ and asked what it was, and he the sticks. She instructed them to tap on beats one and three. said it’s this new band Nirvana. And I went to Hastings the But, when the song started, something crazy happened. In a next day, the local record shop, and I bought the record [4]. moment of pure inspiration, Brooks fnally knew what to do How can a piece of music change someone’s life? For with those sticks. Instead of mumbling the song and tapping Kweller, as for the others, it was not the lyrics. It had noth- on beats one and three, he sang loudly and whacked the sticks ing to do with the performer or the style or the culture. It hard on beats two and four. “Oh! whack Lord! whack, pick- certainly had nothing to do with sex. It was the music itself: a-whack-of-cotton, whack. Oh! whack Lord! whack, pick- A few notes changed his life. a-whack-a-day, whack” [5]. Brooks sang and clapped as he Kweller does not leave us to wonder which notes. He sings told this story, and his eyes flled with tears as he recalled his them for us. His “dah-na-na . .” represents the guitar rif that exact thoughts toward the kids who always got picked to play appears in the introduction and that is blasted throughout the autoharps. “What are you going to do with your precious the chorus. Kweller sings the rif, but not the whole thing. autoharps now? I’ve got rhythm sticks!” [6]. Te rif has four notes over four bars, but he sings just the Te experience of hearing a new sound changed their lives. frst three. Tese three notes are critical. Tey encapsulate Kweller and Brooks went on to become composers. Te new his entire experience of the song. Tese three notes changed sound was, for each of them, an indicator of the music they his life. would later compose. Kweller formed his frst indie rock band If three notes can change someone’s life, then they deserve within three years of hearing Nirvana. Brooks’s discovery of a close look. Te frst note is the tonic (F). It leaps up to the the of-beats was an early sign of the rhythmic innovations second note, the subdominant (B-fat). So far this is old news. that have characterized his own music in the years since then. A large body of rock and blues is limited to three chords, Kweller and Brooks were both young at the time of their tonic (F), subdominant (B-Flat) and dominant (C). But the experiences. Kweller was 10 and Brooks was 8. Neither knew news happens when the second note, B-fat, moves to the he was headed for a life of music. What if, instead of becom- third note, which does not turn out to be either an F or a C. ing a composer, Kweller had become a doctor and Brooks Until his encounter with “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” Kweller’s an accountant? Would the experience have been less life- musical world consisted of songs that used some combina- changing, less formative? Would it have had less infuence tion of tonic, sub-dominant and dominant. In all of his expe- on the way they experience music today, as “just” listeners? rience, the only note that could follow the B-fat was either an F or a C. When he heard something diferent, when he heard WHAT MAURA DIDN’T KNOW B-fat move down to A-fat, he exclaimed, “Holy shit what is Tis refers to an essay by philosopher Frank Jackson about this?” He had never heard that sound before. a fctional character, a brilliant scientist named, not Maura, Te progression from B-fat to A-fat reverberates through- but Mary: out the song, in the many repetitions of the guitar rif and in the strangely abbreviated melody of the chorus.

Load more

  3

Copy Link