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KSKS45 Making music with David Bowie David Ashworth by David Ashworth is a freelance education consultant, specialising in music technology. He is project leader for INTRODUCTION www.teachingmusic. org.uk and he has Following his recent death, it’s a good time to take stock of David Bowie’s significance in music and shed been involved at a some light on his music making. The worldwide reaction following his death confirms his importance as one national level in most of the major music of the most popular and innovative musicians of recent times. His appeal was to music lovers across a wide initiatives in recent musical spectrum. Fans of music from Abba to Zappa all share a love of the music of David Bowie. Much has years. been written about his lifestyle, stagecraft and visual presentation. The lyrics to his songs have been analysed exhaustively, but strangely little has been written about how he actually went about writing and recording the music for his songs. This resource plays a small part in addressing this omission, by providing students with some insight into his composing methods – which they can adapt and use in their own music making. This resource explores many of the writing processes that went into one of Bowie’s most important works – the album Low, released in 1977. Prior to the release of Low, Bowie had already explored ways of working innovatively within the rock music framework, but this album was to take his music in a much more radical, experimental direction. Working with co-writer and to some extent mentor Brian Eno, he was able to bring procedures from the musical avant-garde and ways of working with electronic sounds into his music. A consideration of the processes that went into making this recording can provide a rich resource of valuable ideas for music teachers who want to help their students expand their musical horizons and work with some different approaches to composition. This resource provides a collection of starting points and some useful background information. A note on resourcing Low is an example of an album in which the processes of manipulating recorded sound was a key element in the creation of most of the compositions. In this resource, students will often be recording sounds into tracks, which will then require further audio editing and processing to produce the intended final results. So some recording equipment and computer-based audio editing software will be necessary. The class will also require access to the album Low. MIXING ROCK, ELECTRONIC AND VOCAL SOUNDS Many students will be happy working in a basic rock/pop idiom – devising and arranging music for guitars, bass, drums and keyboards. In this section, we show how students might take this one stage further, by incorporating extra tonal colours and layers to add further interest to a song. Sound and Vision is a straightforward rock track with two important additions. The first is the sustained falling synth line playing what sound like synthesised strings in a high register. The second is in Bowie’s use of vocal sounds. Listen to the ‘ah, ah’ sighs and the ‘do, do, do’ sections before the main vocal comes in. Notice also the stylistic changes to the vocal delivery ranging from an impassioned soul sound to a more restrained baritone. What in the World is another good exercise in combining art-rock elements with straightforward pop. A burbling synth part bubbles along underneath a standard rock ensemble, giving it a sonic interest where the synth part is sometimes buried, emerging when the rock instruments pause for breath. Just this one simple addition transforms an otherwise ordinary-sounding track into something more interesting. 1 Music Teacher April 2016 Activity Students can take any song they have been working on in a traditional rock/pop style. They can embellish it in two ways: Vocal: follow Bowie’s lead and try singing fragments of the song in different vocal styles – gentle, angry, passionate, etc. Add some other ‘non-verbal’ vocal parts as backings or interludes. Electronic: find a synth pad sound on a keyboard or mobile device that complements the sounds you are already using. Devise a slow-moving textural part in a higher register. A higher register is recommended, to guard against the mid- and bass-frequency ranges becoming too cluttered. It is likely that these ranges will be filled already by the more traditional vocal and instrumental sounds being used. CHORD PROGRESSIONS Bowie is well known for his mastery of unusual and distinctive but effective chord progressions: Life on Mars is an obvious and well-known example. On this album, his chord progressions are fairly conventional, though there is one feature he uses extensively. He displays a penchant for the use of two chords a tone apart. In Speed of Life the progression moves down a tone from the key chord of E flat to the (non-diatonic) chord of D flat. This is followed by a step-down progression of the diatonic chords of B flat and A flat: E flat – D flat – B flat – A flat A major chord built on the flattened 7th (in this case D flat) implies a mixolydian mode and gives the piece a bluesy feel. This makes it a popular choice for rock/pop musicians – especially guitarists who can easily slide from one chord shape down a couple of frets. Even more interesting, and unusual, is the way in which Bowie uses the chord D flat later in the progression to move down a semitone to the chord C major – giving this section a vaguely ‘Spanish’ feel. Other songs on the album that use this type of progression are Sound and Vision and Be My Wife. Activity These activities, based on the ideas above, provide students with ways of breaking out of the diatonic straightjacket without going too far astray. Ask students to write a progression using any major chords from a chosen key. For example, if they are working in D major, they would be using the major chords of D, G and A. Ask them also to include the major chord built on the flattened 7th – in this case C major. In a further section ask them to incorporate a major chord that is a semitone above any of the chords indicated above. Below is an example, incorporating both of these suggestions: Verse: D D C G D C A A Chorus: G F sharp G F sharp A G C A Music Teacher April 2016 2 THE IMPORTANCE OF MELODY The track Some Are was an outtake, not included on the original vinyl album, although it is available on the CD reissue. This track was considered important enough for Philip Glass to include it as the basis for the second movement of his Low Symphony, an orchestral work he based on Bowie’s album (discussed in more detail later). Some Are is a fine example of the effectiveness of slow tempos. Students whose musical frames of reference are almost exclusively limited to medium- and up-tempo music should be introduced to the music of Arvo Pärt, Morton Feldman and Brian Eno, who was this song’s co-writer. The piece begins with gentle, sustained piano chords on a slow steady beat. The repeated notes of A and D initially suggest a harmonic ambiguity. It is this unchanging harmonic base that allows Bowie the space and time to fashion a melodic line that is improvised, intuitive and unhurried. Notice how the phrases end on sustained notes, with a few bars’ rest between phrases. These different phrase lengths add further interest. The melody is harmonically ambiguous – although D minor is suggested, note the B natural in the second phrase. It is only when the C moves to a C sharp at the end of the melody that we are assured that D is the key note. These two elements on their own could make for a facile piece of music. There are two further elements, however, that add to the musical richness and sophistication: Cries of wolves in the background add an ethereal element. David Bowie has been quoted as describing Some Are as ‘a quiet little piece Brian Eno and I wrote in the Seventies. The cries of wolves in the background are sounds that you might not pick up on immediately. Unless you’re a wolf.’ Harmony on a contrasting synth sound. You get the sense that this harmony part has been constructed intuitively by ear and with some trial and error, without too much regard to any formal theory of harmony considerations: 3 Music Teacher April 2016 The second synth phrase begins by harmonising a 2nd above the vocal part. If the two lines were played on the same instrument, the harmony might well sound dissonant. However, the choice of synth timbres negates this possibility. This, and the final phrase harmonised in 4ths, sound strange but effective. The timbres and slow tempos are key factors in making this unconventional harmony work. Emphasising the song’s impressionistic elusiveness, Bowie suggested it might conjure up ‘images of the failed Napoleonic force stumbling back through Smolensk. Finding the unburied corpses of their comrades left from their original advance on Moscow. Or possibly a snowman with a carrot for a nose, a crumpled Crystal Palace Football Club admission ticket at his feet…’ Now there’s a fine invitation for some class discussion! Activity Provide students with this composition brief: Devise and record a slow, repeated two-note drone on a piano. It should sound like the tolling of bells. Improvise and record a slow melodic vocal line over this.

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