Destuctive Editing: Can ‘Pain’ be Indoctrinated in Music and Meaning transfered to a listener?

Here is a beautiful and graphic account of how painful circumstances resulted in a particular creative practice in music production. I would love to hear this piece by Adrian Benavides. As a musicologist, one of the things I challenge my students with is the ontological gap between the ‘intended meaning’ of a piece of music and the way it can be received. This gap is described by the likes of Umberto Eco and Roland Barthes as the ‘Open Work’ and the ‘Death of the Author’ respectively. This account leaves no doubt of the ‘pain’ that resulted in the ‘destructive’ editing described so eloquently below. What interests me – in particular with instrumental music – is how this intention is transferred to listeners. Indeed – can it be? In fact is it possible to embed ‘pain’ inside a piece of instrumental music? The start of the blog is copied below, followed by a link. It is worth reading.

This is what my therapist told me a month after I lost my daughter, Valentina, in a full-term stillbirth.  If you’re not sure what that means, then here’s a short explanation.  She was a fully formed baby who would have been born totally healthy and normally if her heart hadn’t suddenly and unexpectedly stopped beating.  For no reason.  She was delivered in exactly the same fashion as many other children.  I was in the operating room wearing scrubs like a father typically does during a c-section procedure.  My beautiful little girl was handed to me swaddled up with a little hat on just how she would have been delivered otherwise.  The devastating reality is that she was just gone.

To see the full blog click here.

Read Full Post »

Zappa and Intergrational Meaning: A Quick Example

I could not resist but to briefly cover an example of Barthes’ ‘intergrational’ meaning via a Zappa video example – ‘Montana’. For me anyway, here are a few examples of the simultaneous narratives that I can hear in the music. All of these could be discussed in order to unpick the ‘meaning’ of this text. Aside from the first conceptual continuity example (which is really ‘distributional’ in nature), all of them could be a meaning that is pertinent to us.

Zappa Conceptual Continuity: Dental Floss and Zircon Encrusted Tweezers

The (changing) tone of Zappa’s voice:

Sexual and ethnic equality of the group.

Guitar Sound/Technology/guitar style

Zappa’s image vs the complexity of parts of the music

The mixed tradition of some of the players in the group (George Duke (Jazz), Ruth Underwood (classical)

The mixture of improvised and notated music.

Zappa’s conducting when set against the rock aesthetic of the music

Any more?

Read Full Post »

Musicology, Zappa and Barthes: More Ideas of how to Listen and Examine Zappa’s Texts

Here is a sort of part 2 of my Barthes post a couple of weeks ago. That post mainly discussed Frank Zappa’s album covers, and the various messages that are potentially within the image. In this discussion I would like to focus more on some ideas based on Barthes’ landmark chapter in Image Music Text, entitled ‘Structural Analysis of Narratives’. Firstly, Barthes’ describes two ‘levels’ of narrative - ‘Intergrational’ and ‘Distributional’ (I would describe these as horizontal and vertical). His description of the former is correlational, and what I would describe as ‘diachronic’ in nature (in that it moves through time). So for example when considering the construction of a piece of music, a musical museme is related to a phrase, which is related a music sentence (the question and answer phrase combined), which is then related to the structural form of the piece etc (For example, verse, chorus, etc).

Another example would be the relation of specific chords to harmonic progressions. As all of these ‘groups’ are on the same level – Barthes would argue that have no specific meaning, but assist the musicologist to describe formalistically how a piece of music is constructed. However, when we consider ‘distributional’ levels,  Barthes would argue that we are then in a position to discuss meaning-

In Zappa’s music, it is interesting to consider how a specific signifier can have numerous ‘signifieds‘. For example, something as seemingly trivial as ‘Patricia The Dog’ (mentioned in my last post), can link in to music such as ‘The Poodle Lecture’ or ‘Stinkfoot’, album covers such as ‘Them or Us’ or ‘The Perfect Stranger’, or Zappa interviews etc. I would argue that he precise meaning of these occurances are open, because the mention of a specific dog not only has resonance to many aspects of Zappa’s portfolio, but also to additional levels, such as dogs in general, animals in general, pet ownership, dog behaviour, Monster Movies, by default 50′s Horror Movies, etc, etc.

Barthes describes a ‘function’ as ‘planting an element that will come to fruition later – either on the same level or elsewhere on another level (89), and Zappa is an expert of this practice – be it via  Object – Project, the Big Note, or Conceptual Continuity. However, it is also important to realise that multiple signifiers can have a single signified. In Zappa’s case, if one considers the ways in which Zappa signifies his political and religious views, sexual preferences, musical influences you will see what I mean.

So, try and listen to Zappa not in a time restricted way, by grouping together what Barthes describes as groups of chronological ‘sequences’, – which are ‘distributional’. Try and read his texts using a Big Note philosophy – to quote Barthes

‘What we call time does not exist, or at least only exists functionally, as part of a semiotic system’ (99). It is important that we listen to his music as being the conduit of multiple narratives, some which are chronological, but also some which transcend time and space. In doing this, it is important in my view to not only consider what these references mean for Zappa, but also what they mean for us. We need to sometimes free ourselves from the confines of the author and look upon his music as being an autonomous entity.

Ok – that’s my half an hour time limit to write the post – More next time…………………….

Read Full Post »

Roland Barthes Interpretes Zappa: The Perfect Photo

While working on my book on Frank Zappa, I am currently reading a lot of Roland Barthes, and have started to consider how some of his ideas can apply to music. There is a really interesting chapter in his book Image, Music,Text that discusses the ways in which the text of an advertising poster interrelates with its image. After asking the question – which of the two (image or text) are the dominant force, Barthes takes as a starting point that all texts are polysemic in nature, essentially regarding them as a stream of potential meanings that are given cultural authenticity via both the author and the interpreter– i.e. us (although he does consider the semiotic meaning to be either ‘obvious’ or ‘obtuse – but that’s for another post)!

As many of you will know, the nature of polysemy goes all the way back to the Greek philosopher Protagoras, who believed that ‘man is the measure of all things’, a view that was in direct opposition to Plato, who considered art to be a sort of reflection of a perfect ‘world of forms’.

Barthes is also interested in the relationship between the image and the text, and how the latter can be ‘neutralised’ by the former.

Anyway, how does all of this relate to music? If we take as red that a piece of music has an array of potential meanings, how does the author manipulate this? I see this working on two levels.

1) How can the text/image dialogic apply directly to albums covers etc?

2) How do lyrics interrelate with music – or vice versa?

I have no chance of covering this in one post, so I thought we could start with album covers. If we take as an indicative example Frank Zappa’s ‘The Perfect Stranger: Boulez Conducts Zappa’

When looking at Zappa’s album, it is apparent that he has adopted the pervasive practice of placing his (the composers) sir name alongside the conductor, with the former having marginal hierarchical importance by appearing at the top right of the cover. This juxtaposition often represents an exclusivity between creator and interpreter, effectively reducing the room for the fan’s interpretation of the music, something which encourages a formalistic view of art, with  ‘value’ not being  impacted the ‘receivers’ reaction. In Zappa’s case however, it is  interesting to note how the  text has irregular lines, somehow bridging the gap between mechanical/automated and ‘man made’ reproduction, something that resonates strongly with Zappa’s DIY philosophy. It also has to be noted that the colour of all the text seems to clash – accenting Zappa’s ‘cut and paste’ philosophy. However, it has to be acknowledged that these signifiers are small when compared to the entire  Zappa cover, and havean interesting resonance when placed alongside a much larger painting by Donald Rolar Wilson of ‘Patricia the Dog’, a conceptual continuity character that Zappa incorporated on two other albums he released that year – ‘Them or Us’ and ‘Francesco Zappa’. Although the content of this painting could appear to be irreverent when compared to the Boulez Conducts recordings outlined below, it is more the nature of the painting when compared to a photo that is of interest here.

As part of this series, Pierre Boulez, conducts the work of a range of composers such as Weben, Mahler and Stravinsky, and aside from the musical content of these recordings and the brief textual analysis depicted above, the CD covers leave one with no doubt of the high art value of the product. For example, the signifiers of the ‘pose’ of Boulez himself (a very conservative character with a long tradition in high art music), the ‘traditional’ looking logo of the record label, the positioning of the armchair (which Barthes would describe as an ‘object’), and the above mentioned juxtaposition of conductor and composer – all indicate high art. Additionally, note how the straight lines of the text, contrast strongly with Zappa’s more freeform style.

Barthes describes the paradox of the photograph as ‘a message without a code’, whose relationship of signifieds to signifiers tend to record as opposed to transform  their subject matter. The conative as (opposed to donative) capacity of album cover art is used by Zappa on countless albums, and a look through his back catalogue confirms that he used cartoon type images on numerous occasions. Something which give his music the multifaceted meanings he was interested in.

Ok, I have ran out of steam now. Will come back when I have time to think about the impact of this on the music itself.

Read Full Post »

What Is A Loop In Music:what does it mean to us?

 

I am currently getting ready to present a paper at the university of Liege with my colleague Ben Challis. It is  entitled

The Impossible Made Real: A Typology of Loops and an exploration of the impact of immediacy and hypermediacy in Popular Music.

Now in the closing stages of the conclusion, I am comparing two key opinions on how repetition works. The first is a minimalist mantra often credited to Brian Eno, which goes something like -  ‘repetition as a form of change’? For example, although a loop may repeat indefinitely, the time and circumstance through which it is experienced changes. In other words our listening experiences can evolve during the course of listening to a piece, or perhaps as a performer we may respond to the loop stimulus differently as time goes by.

My big question is how does this resonate with Roland Barthes’ view that ‘The bastard form of mass culture is a humiliated repetition’. He continued ‘always new books, new programmes, new films, news items, but always the same meaning’ (Barthes 1975: 24).

According to Barthes, we are duped into thinking music (and other forms of media) are giving us different experiences, but the reality is they are a subliminal  form  of repetition. This is a similar to Adorno’s view that all popular music is ‘standardised’.

So, when listening to the beginning of a piece such as In C by Terry Riley, does the experience precipitate an evolving and profound meaning, that changes during the course of listening to it, and each time we experience it? Or, is it simply a ‘bastard from of mass culture’, which evokes essentially the same meaning each time we experience it?

Letters on a postcard!

---

Read Full Post »