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Ever notice that one word can make all the difference in the world. We miss use one work, slip one wrong word and a war can break out. The Catholic Church will spend years on one word; they will dissect it and look at all its possible meanings before they will decide if they want to use it. Words are a powerful thing; they can create kingdoms or bring them down.

Jesus used words to challenge the world; he used them to call people to task and to bring justice into the world. All with words, simple letters put together to create change.

Hitler used word for evil, to create hatred; he used words to murder thousands of innocent people. Words are a powerful thing.

Gandhi used word to sooth a nation, to bring about peace and understanding; he crafted letters in to a love that is still felt today.

Many great people and many not so great people have crafted words together to create a sound that still resonates today. The words of freedom and murder, the words of love and hate, the words of nothingness and everythingness float and flutter above and around. They settle on new ears and hearts planting seeds of sound for new generations to hear and speak.

We must craft our words with perfection, picking and choosing each carefully. Placing each one in the correct position, creating a composition that flows from sound to sound, allowing the heart to feel the vibrations of our crafting; The ears hear the music of the letters coming together to create the symphony of voices that flood our world.

Each composition we create, each symphony we speak must be one of love, one of a positive force, and the creation we crafted will resonate for ever in this world, looking for a new place to rest, to be recreated in to a new creation. Hate speeches and words of despair will remain in this world just as sonnets of love do. Hitler’s words are as powerful today as they where when he first sang his song of hate. Jesus’ words still resonate as they did then, in the hearts of his followers, creating a poetic love song for all to hear.

A finely crated poem or a timeless story told today will remain in score of this opera we call life, as well as the hatred of the mad men whose words cut to the bone will. We all have a responsibility to contribute to this opera of life, we all need to add our sonnets and symphonies, the only question is, is yours one of despair and hatred or one of love and optimism?

Sing a new song unto the Lord…

Paul

Comment figurer un oignon musicalement ?

Chez les coqs en pâte l'oignon est un peu sorti de l'imaginaire de Tim Burton :

L'oignon se situe entre les larmes, un certain lyrisme et son devoir d'être découpé. Ainsi la musique passera toujours d'une musique de devoir, avec un rythme bien marqué à des épanchements du spleen de ce pauvre légume.

On murmure même dans le chaudron musical qu'avant d'être pris entre ses penchants mélancoliques et son devoir il aurait eu des penchants gothiques.

Fort heureusement il maitrise maintenant ses sombres penchants et s'il est toujours enclin à s'échapper dans quelques rêveries à la mélancolie diaphane, il se maitrise du mieux qu'il peut.

Enfin c'est toujours pas la joie :

Après ce préambule sur la personnalité complexe de cet oignon, rentrons dans les détails du morceau :

Le début du morceau est très percussif, un coup de baguettes sur des casseroles de tailles différentes, un autre sur l'halogène, un bruit de poignée de porte, de clé qui ouvre une serrure etc, c'est sur un véritable tapis de percussions de le cuisine que la marche de l'oignon se développe.
[audio http://lechaudronmusical.wordpress.com/files/2008/05/oignon-percus.mp3]
Vient alors une partie introspective, figurant vague à l'âme de notre oignon émotif qui s'échappent de l'activité de découpe, Puis c'est le rappel à l'ordre du coq Luigi et de son tapis de percussions : "coupez l'oignon, coupez l'oignon" !
[audio http://lechaudronmusical.wordpress.com/files/2008/05/oignon-lent.mp3]

Le morceau sera ensuite fondé sur cette opposition entre phases "hors du temps" larmes et douces rêveries et phases "dans le temps" avec les percussions et le chant directif.
La fin, dans un grand crescendo fait se fusionner tous les thèmes de rêverie et ceux du devoir de découpe de l'oignon sur montée d'orgue.

Crédits :
Louis Geoffroy         : chant, choeurs, cordes, orgue, orgue Hammond, piano, glockenspiel,                     marimba, xylophone, vibraphone
Jérôme Gras             : Basse
Vincent Rusquet        : Choeurs, Congas, Guiro, cymbales, halogène, plateau, casseroles                     accordées, oeufs, fruit africain, triangle
Benoît Fuentes         : clés dans serrure
Romain Faroux        : Assistant anti-résonance d'armoire pendant l'enregistrement de congas

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Partie précédente : 1-le concombre

Partie suivante : 3-la tomate

Today we continue our stroll down memory lane with an old, decrepit Detholz! B-side:

CINEMA VERITE

I don't recall the exact date of conception, but I'd guess the vintage is from late summer 2002. This was among a wave of songs penned after the release of "Who Are The Detholz!?" that share the painful nerdiness of that period, which we had yet to shed at that point. ["Who Are The Detholz!" = Detholz! first LP, released in 2001 (out of print). If you're curious, it's available for download on our website: www.detholz.com ] In fact, given its jerky style and musical whirligigs, "Cinema" could have easily fit with the other zitty paens to unbridled dorkdom on "WATDH!?"

This song enjoyed a year or so in the limelight of Detholz! live set rotation, and as I remember it, the little music-school gnomes inside of us enjoyed playing this one a lot. Given the consistently lukewarm response from audiences-- and as we began adding better songs, some of which ended up "Cast Out Devils" ("Spectacula" and "IMA Believer" were written during this period)-- we retired "Cinema" sometime in 2003. ["Cast Out Devils" = 2nd Detholz! LP, released 2006, NOT out of print and available for download and/or on compact disc at detholz.com!]

The vocal delivery on this track is embarrassingly dorky. This was recorded long before I had discovered that one shouldn't to try so hard when recording vocals.

Speaking of which, as you recordists know, vocals are usually the toughest thing to get right on record. The reason the vocals sound so tense and strained on "Cinema" is because I was overcompensating for colossal vocal problems we'd had the year before. We had recorded nearly ALL of the vocals for "Who Are The Detholz!?" with picture-perfect precision-- a process that took many, many weeks-- before we discovered that picture-perfect precision can transform even the greatest song ever committed to tape into an insufferable bore. We scrapped ALL of the vocals and redid them with one- or two-take passes, and it saved the record... well, heh, such as it is.

The lyrics to "Cinema" are also an almost total miss. I've always felt like a fish out of water when writing lyrics over the years-- I'm a musician, not a poet, Captain!-- so a few of these old Detholz! songs are real dogs lyrically, and this is one of 'em. The lyrical miss I shan't ever live down is a song the rest of the band STILL mercilessly teases me for: "Time Traveling Peterbilt Semi." *shudder*

"Peterbilt Semi" got one spin at a Chicago show and was received so poorly that it was downright laughable. It was deep-sixed posthaste.

Anyway, enough of this self deprecation. There are parts of this song that work really well, and parts that don't. In all it suffers from what will likely be graven in stone as my epitaph: "HE TRIED TOO HARD."

I'd be curious to hear what you all think.

Tune in next week for another B-side from the bottom of the VORTECS Corporation's circular file!

Today, a departure from the norm... at least if you don't consider the narcissistic blathering about one's own compositions the "norm." Doughty readers: I need your help.

I have polished up my conquistador's helmet, hefted a makeshift lance under my arm, and am preparing to storm a few windmills After that, I'm diving back into the world of-- bom bom BOMMM! Orchestral composition!

So, this week, a practice score: BUNNY OF DEATH

Bear in mind before you listen that this is a soundtrack to an animated film short done by a friend of mine-- so what you're hearing is cartoon music without the cartoon. (I haven't gotten my friend's permission yet to post a link to the video, but when I do, I'll post it here. )

Objective: working to improve not only my compositional chops, but the recording/mixing of convincing orchestra music. Comments/critiques on either "score" are welcome! Here, I used the "East-West Gold" orchestral plugin, which is my current favorite.

1. COMPOSITION

Regressing back to my music school days, this is a loose "cell" composition, based on the intervallic progression: minor 2nd, major 2nd, minor 2nd. Sometimes it ascends or descends, is broken across octaves or instruments, and at other times I gave myself the liberty to diverge from the constraint if it made sense melodically. When composing, I've found it useful to limit myself to 3-4 note cells, even if I don't adhere too strictly to them.

It ain't exactly serialism, but after having been a pop musician for so long, it's difficult for me to write music that is completely atonal (meaning ALL gesture and no harmonic/melodic content).

Arnold Schoenberg (the inventor of 12-tone serialism, arguably) calls this approach "developing variation," and though there is a lot of debate in theoretical circles as to what "developing variation" actually means-- Schoenberg himself vacillates on its precise definition-- it's application in this piece is best described this way:

"Whatever happens in a piece of music is nothing but the endless reshaping of a basic shape. Or, in other words, there is nothing in a piece of music but what comes from the theme, springs from it, and can be traced back to it; to put it still more severely, nothing but the theme itself." -A. Schoenberg, 1931, "Linear Counterpoint"

Bear in mind that Schoenberg equates a "theme" with a "shape," (at least in the context of the 1931 article) so in the case of my little practice score, the intervallic cell could be seen as a "theme" of sorts, shaped and reshaped as the piece develops. You can hear it at the very beginning in the "Jaws"-like flourishes in the low strings, and in most of the descending lines in the strings towards the end of the piece, to name a few occurrences.

I think Schoenberg is absolutely right in his above quote. The older I get, the more I am interested in presenting more unified musical "ideas." Oh, and speaking of "ideas, here's dear old Arnold again:

"In its most common meaning, the term 'idea' is used as a synonym for theme, melody, phrase or motive. I myself consider the totality of a piece as the 'idea': the idea which its creator wanted to present." -from a 1930 article entitled "New Music, Outmoded Music, Style and Idea"

I think this is a universal compositional technique. Those of us who aspire to compose music -- in whatever genre-- would do well to think "wholistically" before sitting down with pen and paper (or with mouse and keyboard). Rather than thinking of barlines, scraps of melody or little chord changes... why not conceive of something in its totality? How will a given piece develop? How can your "scrap" transmogrify into an entire piece? What will that piece sound like?  Or, more simply, what do you wish to communicate?

This is a mistake I hear in my own earlier pieces and with those of many music school students-- too many ideas are crammed into too small a space! Because one HAS the chops for a pyrotechnical idea doesn't mean that every one of those should be slopped into one stew... if you do, you almost always end up with a foul-smelling gruel.

Okay, back down to Earth from the Ivory Tower-- a few things I need help on here:

1. To you non-classical types, are these orchestral sounds convincing? Or does it sound too "canned?"

2. To you mixologists, what do you think of the mix here? Clear or muddled? Weak or strong?

3. To you composers/songwriters: does this form work? Does it hold your interest? Or is it a mess?

Thanks for visiting, earthlings! Tune in next Wednesday for another Tune of Surprise!

(Tuna Surprise?)

In order to teach communicative competence in the classroom, researchers and teachers needed to develop understanding the wide scope, influence, and uses of the various languages. Of particular concern were developing understanding about variety status, code switching, mutual intelligibility, and social attitudes about language use. “International” problems of teaching communicative competence in English speaking classrooms also came into focus. (231-232)

In the early 1970s, sociolinguistic studies were prolific. Five major research areas were determined by Pride and Labov to be of use to this work: field studies of linguistic diversity in urban communities; investigations of social implications of dialectology; identification of coexistent systems and bilingualism; attitudinal studies of the social evaluation of language; and reconsideration of the relation of language and thought (233).

Also in need was ability for teachers to know how to respond appropriately to, assess and evaluate language varieties in written composition. Focus turned toward how to help students who spoke non-standard English develop communicative competence. Bidialectal research was key here. Previous assumptions about writing differences between white students and students of color were challenged. Focus on grammar shifted from attention to error to attention to appropriate use/rhetorical effectiveness. As attention turned to helping minority students, contrastive analysis between speech and writing also became necessary. All in all the research indicated that composition teachers in pluralistic society needed greater understanding of language varieties and all its complexities. This work stimulated the dialectal-diatypic shift in perspectives prominent in the 1980s.

Dialectal varieties—the linguistic reflection of reasonably permanent characteristics of the USER in language situations.

Diatypic varieties-- the linguistic reflection of recurrent characteristics of the user’s USE in language situations.

This shift was important because it shifted attention away from the way users are governed by temporal, geographic, and social provenance and dialects to the various uses which are governed by role, relationship, and discourse requirements (238).

The shift away from how communities communicate to how individuals communicate in certain situations emphasized the use of sound, syntax, context, register, functions, and stylisitics in various communicative acts.

When studying dialectics, focus attended to distinctions of pronunciation, vocabulary and syntax in various communicative habits; the primacy of speech; and differences between spoken and written language. In attempting to define, identify, and differentiate dialects, the definition of dialects was dependent on a number of various perspectives. One perspective treated dialect as nonjudgmental linguistic term and focused on regional, social, and literary varieties. However, another judgmental perspective focused on defining standards of various dialects instigating the ongoing standard/non-standard English debate. Not only were temporal and regional dialects researched, so were social dialects, determined the socio-economic and linguistic variables that affect social interaction. With this change, “non-standard English is now considered within the context of the nature of language, sociolinguistic principles, educational implications, and needed in school research. The connections between language behavior and social class became popular as did studies of the ramifications of Black English, its historical significance, and its cultural validity and the implications of these studies on teaching and training (247). Bidialectal teaching approaches were researched. So too did the uniqueness of grammar. As mentioned before, teachers attitudes, beliefs, and values also became focus of research.

Evolving out of this research and pedogical concerns came the “Students Right to their Own Language” in CCC in 1974. “This statement attempts to help teachers of composition and communication review then-current attitudinal problems and linguistic knowledge so they may more effectively respond to the variety of dialects they face in the English classroom” (249).

The study of diatypic varieties focuses attention on intentionality of speaker and the rhetorical negotiations he/she makes when communicating for specific audience in specific context. Speech events, cohesive procedures, stylistic variations, and stylistic considerations of written rhetorical competence became major concerns of composition.

Made popular were Martin Joos level of functional styles: frozen, formal, consultative, casual, and intimate. Gleason’s adaption of these styles turned attention to written keys: formal, informal, and semiformal. Cautionary studies became popular in which teachers were challenged to become aware of their own prejudices toward non-standard communication habits. Comparative linguistic analysis of different genres composed in specific situations became a popular teaching activity. Register studies grew as did attention to the coherence and cohesion of texts. Usage handbooks grew which first were determined by linguistic norms of authority to usage in situation and thus the rhetorical role of usage. Error was thus redefined as was usage error.

Data-gathering methodologies changed as well. Ethnography of communication became popular as language variety became a matter of literacy, dialectal and diatypic differentiation became important and usage and acceptability became an issue of assessment (258). Communicative competence arose from ethnography studies which seek to determine the social significance of competence and performance in speech and writing events (258).

Most important here to realize is that the study of rhetorical competence became firmly established in the field of composition, as it clearly influenced comp pedagogy and research.