Soundscapes and voices March 26, 2009
Posted by David Hiran Watson in Music, Social Commentary.Tags: Brooke Waggoner, Music, Music Production
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I was thinking recently on the way tracks in the West (North America and Western Europe) are produced. Specifically I was thinking about how they are mixed. Through my cousin’s blog – Love, Devi – I was introduced to the artist Brooke Waggoner. I believe on her site you can download her album “Fresh Pair of Eyes”. (I would post the link, but I’m too lazy to Google it right now, so just search for Brooke Waggoner). Her style of music is classified as Alternative & Punk; I would classify it as a mix of jazz, classical, folk, and possibly alt. punk. You really need to listen to her music to understand why it’s hard to properly classify her style.
Anyway, back to the issue of mixing tracks: Brooke Waggoner is (I would say) a rare artist in that she seems to treat all voices the same. Before I explain what I mean by that, let me define my use of the word voice. For me, a voice in music is any unique, or individual, instrument or vocal (commonly referred to as human voice) in music. As an example, let’s take a song that is sung by a lead female singer, has a backup vocalist who sings harmony, and has a piano, two guitars, a bass guitar, and drums as instrumentation. This song has 7 voices, drums counting as one for simplicity. So, getting back to Brooke Waggoner, she treats all voices as the same. That is, her message in the song is expressed through all the voices; at times one voice will be more prominent in purporting that message, but all the voices and their parts are used and combined in expressing whatever she is epxressing through the song. If it helps to picture this, think of message as more than the meaning of the lyrics; it’s the overall mood the song is trying to create.
If you recall, I mentioned that Brooke Waggoner has a mix of folk in her songs. The folk aspect is very much heard in her lyrics – they are story-like in their flow. But even with her lyrics, while they are telling a story, they are not the most prominent part of the song. The story is really told by all the voices, and the combination of their parts. For example, in one song her lyrics mention about this guy listening to her as she plays a concerto on the piano. The piano is one of the voices in the song, and at this point, as the lead vocal voice sings the word concerto, the pianist plays a tiptoe-type walkdown through half a scale. Basically, the piano part is made to sound like you’re listening to a classical concerto. Bringing all of this back to mixing, at this point, when the pianist plays the walkdown, the piano voice is made a little more prominent in the mix compared to the point just before when the lead vocalist was singing and the piano was backing.
Thus, the idea of treating all voices the same does not mean they all have to be at the same volume level through the whole song. Rather, the message of the song can be realized and expressed through all the voices. What I commonly hear in Western music is the message of the song realized and expressed through the vocals, and supported by the instruments. It’s almost like the instruments are there to provide structural support and nothing more. The focus is only on the vocals. To use an a painting analogy, the instruments are treated as the frame on which the painting is hung, and the vocals as the actual painting. Treating all voices the same would be viewing all the voices as the actual painting – perhaps just different colours in the painting.
As I implied, mixing while treating all the voices the same will still give prominence at certain points to certain voices. This also includes the idea of having certain voices – namely instruments such as bass guitar and drums – as structurally supportive voices. And I recognize that certain songs will need the prominence or focus given exclusively to the vocal voices, and the instrument voices will all have to be treated as structurally supportive voices. An example of a song like that, to me, is “Bleeding Love” by Leona Lewis. But, the point is that the basis upon which voice(s) carry or express the message should depend upon the message itself. It shouldn’t depend upon some cultural bias toward differentiating importance of various voices.
If, after reading all of this, you’re confused and don’t get the point I’m describing, check out Brooke Waggoner’s songs. I finally googled her, and her media page is here. If you scroll down that page to the track listing of her album “Fresh Pair of Eyes”, you have the opportunity to listen to each track (I believe fully). The example I gave above was from the track “So So”, but “My Legionnaire” also demonstrates my point quite well.
DH
Elitism (post from a friend) March 31, 2009
Posted by David Hiran Watson in Social Commentary.4 comments
A friend of mine – Steve Mah – posted the following note on his Facebook notes page:
Elitism
“I have always wondered whether there is some merit in presenting one’s perspective with some degree of equivocation, reducing its accessibility. The accessibility thus reduced, the argument would be impervious to objections from individuals not possessing the thoughtfulness or the capacity to deconstruct it–in a sense, it might be assumed that those who cannot overcome this barrier would not have constructive input in the first place.
I’ve always wondered: is there a benefit to being unclear? If you make an argument clearly, absolutely anyone can disagree with you. If you aren’t clear, only the people who can figure out what you’re saying (or people who recognize the argument, despite it not being clear) can disagree with you. Maybe those people are the only ones who would have useful criticism anyway?”
Without digressing into commenting on the main point in the note – I’ll leave that up to you to internally or externally debate – I would like to comment on Steve’s writing:
I really enjoy Steve’s usage of the English vocabulary. It’s not often that I come across any sort online article that’s intelligent in terms of the specific words chosen to convey the idea(s) purported. I have come across well-written articles, but to me a well-written article is separate from the vocabulary used. A well-written article is well-written due to the structure of flow of ideas, and includes vocabulary and grammar used, but is so much more than that. As such, I have read well-written articles with bad grammar and spelling issues. I have even read popular well-written articles with bad grammar and spelling issues! But Steve uses the rich, varied English vocabulary to convey his meaning, and does so without sounding condenscending or improperly using “big” words.
One of the beautiful benefits to English borrowing from other languages is that each word has specific connotations; it’s often hard to properly translate an English phrase into another language because of this connotational aspect to our words. However, it’s hard to find someone today who recognizes that, and uses it to their advantage. I find that even I don’t have as great a grasp of the varied English vocabulary as I would like to. Many times when thinking of how to convey a meaning, whether written or spoken, I try to use specific wording to convey my full intention. In other words, if I can say something in 5 words, why say it in 10? But this requires me to know the “big” words in English, and especially know their connotations and their context.
On an ending thought: I wish the Western school system focused more on teaching the varied English vocabulary, especially in today’s social networking and social media world.
DH