Allusions of Music

In this essay I will try to talk about two things. The first is that feelings which music evokes in our minds and hearts. The second is how to write about it, and accordingly, as I wrote about it. I have accumulated a lot of ideas, among them there are also good ideas. When I wanted to write about musicians, first of all, I was looking for different ideas in fiction, created before me. Someone will say—the idea is not new. Although there are numerous sources written on this topic for a long time (for example, about harpists in Ancient Greece, or individual pianists that appear in Dostoevsky’s Russian literature), and in modern times (for example, the punk culture in the United States), the theme of my book still has a unique approach.

I did the most difficult thing I’ve never done before—I’m trying to describe the philosophy of sounds, such as allusions in sound. Of course, I was not a pioneer here. For example, some Chinese authors have succeeded in this more than me. Consequently, this essay will be devoted to some little popular topics; unlikely, you can find any description about it in other places. At once, I will say that basically, I will not talk about classical music. I found some charm in modern directions, and I think that the modern music wins in some cases. There are pros and cons of a classical music and a modern music. If you want to talk about what is best, is a matter of your taste. There is not any objective criteria.

First of all, I noticed that there are songs with non-standard sound, or bands that play somehow the unconventional one. A vivid example is Rammstein’s Rosenrot. In this song we hear a bass with an overdrive, which is set up sharply, it sounds like an electric shaver. The first few seconds we do not hear a word at all, but as soon as we hear this bass, we get the tough mood of the song. I believe that a music rich in such sound combinations, and it is a real contemporary art. And the standardized rhythms of various dance and rap projects are something the commercial one, the superficial one and the standard one. However, I am not enemy of a high-quality rap. Still, right now I’m not say about it. I’m will return to this topic later.

In another Rammstein—Benzin we hear the clear sound of guitar, along with the keys, which even sound like drops. This is definitely a good combination. The point is that sometimes I use the classical terminology to the modern music. Every time, when sound gets louder (it does not matter what technical decisions led to it) I call it a crescendo. Although this classification is not normally used for the modern music. So, in the beat of the song Benzin during the crescendo we hear the other keys. In fact, the keyboard player plays using the organ sounds, it’s very much like the car horn. In the last crescendo we hear other sounds, that it is more reminiscent of the clash and a clang of metal. You can recall Rammstein—Du riechst so gut. They played exactly one note of the guitar, recorded it on the sampler, and their piano player mixed it by his own keys. I heard a lot of comments, something like the fact that an industrial press was recorded for this song, but a separate guitar note sounds. This kind of some musical magic is quite possible in real life, and it is not necessary to read fantasy for this one.

Next, I can mention such a bass player like Fieldy from Korn. In my opinion, his own bass guitar technique is unique in the style of heavy music. He always plays standard bass passages with a constantly repeated slap. This one creates the illusion of the presence of a second drummer in the mix, as if the same drummer uses two bass drums at the same time. I would call it a sound that looks like a paper clip. Many in general like Korn due to this manner of a performance. But I be want to mentioned a certain song: Korn—Blind. The song begins with that we hear only by the drummer’s ride, alternating with one guitar riff. It creates a kind of frightening atmosphere, as if something is going to happen. The same atmosphere also have a guitar composition of Korn—Freak on a Leash. The truth is with one difference: the song starts from the bass (but the main crescendo will come after some time).

A curious soundtrack of Painkiller, the computer game, where almost every track though is not a new idea (similar to Korn’s sound), rather a reasonable combination that it has already been invented. But it is almost filled with all sorts of meanings, which are clear even without words. For example, in Catacombs Fight we hear the sound of the wind. In Cemetery Fight we hear the two guitars. You can agree that music can express a certain meaning without any words. One guitar symbolizes the sound of violence, and the other guitar—the sound of the pain. The third example is Bridge Fight. The scratch sound like you want to associate with flying heads, because in this PC shooter we are killing a lot.

Also, there are bands with such an indescribable sound that you can only heard it. This cannot be expressed in words. Depeche Mode is just such an example. We hear something fantastically, the computerized one. Can this be called the sound of robots? Theoretically, yes. In real life, the robots exist. But what kind of sounds do they produce? Depeche Mode created their sound based on the changed sound of printers, copiers, possibly, quite material objects. But their sound at different times also depended heavily on the arpeggiators used in keyboard instruments. Have you ever know anything about the features of keyboard instruments, the technique of the game, the theoretical models of any music? It is almost impossible to understand why they sound this way, if you answer is “no.”

You can compare with Korn, Rammstein or the soundtrack from the game Painkiller. These techniques can easily be read by an external person who knows practically nothing about music itself, cannot play the guitar. For example, a music critic who can notice it, will be guarantying a positive review to an album. There are a lot of good music, which is based on receptions about which even musicians themselves argue, and these techniques do not have such easy associations for the listener. Judging by how Depeche Mode is become popular, we can say that philosophy in music might also be for sale in comparison with an easily recognizable sound. By the way, one of the first comparisons in the sound of a guitar, which someone noticed at all—it is a guitar and a motorcycle.

I am not enemy of such bands as AC / DC and many others who use in their work the allusion with the sounds of motors (mostly motorcycles), at the same time I consider that this one is a symbol of the seventies. In other words, it is an old one and not a new symbol. The music with other allusions is a priority of our generation. All I say you need to remember. If you want to describe music, just try to imagine what associations you have with the sound itself, outside the context of words. But I warn you. Not every musical styles in general are based on any allusions with real objects.

For example, such styles as Trance, Drum and Bass. Finding their allusions and some musical meaning is a bit pointless. It is music for nightclubs, dances, and its only requirement is a direct, clear and constant rhythm. A constant rhythm—because it is suitable for any kind of dance. It’s not a secret that you can dance during the jazz music. But the jazz music is restricted your style, because you need to know where to slow down, where to accelerate. As you can comparison jazz with dance music, you can choose the style of dancing. Regardless of whether you can dance fast or slow, what is your manner. You can accelerate, slow down in any piece of dance tracks, and during playing dancing music it will seem that you are very skillfully dancing. You need to be a professional dancer, if you want to dance during jazz. And you must do more if you want to study the opera ballet.

These dance music styles created for nightclubs can be comparison with amateur guitarists against some professional guitarist (even one instrument). These are dances for ordinary people, without any choreography. And sometimes there is music without any allusions, at the same time with a serious text orientation. Many rap songs do not contain any special musical ideas, however they can have serious lyrics than music that is oriented to sound allusions. Compare what Eminem says in his tracks and the lyrics of the song Rammstein—Rammlied, for example.

So, the main direction of my criticism became clear for you.

The matter is that having chosen this direction, I faced several other problems when creating my book. This lack of prosaic, literary experience. It’s not enough to just orient yourself very well in music—you need to know how you write, represented your ideas, and this one is also a skill. Many people can say “Hello,” “Hi,” “Bye,” “What’s up?” etc. But try to say the idea using such a vocabulary: “A cloud of dust dropped on the ground, thrown out by some gray mist.” Another thing is to write about real musicians and existing projects easier than to come up with a musical philosophy for new characters. You can create the character that will be very similar to Fieldy’s bass guitar technique, in other words, describe his playing style, but call him another person.

If you want to come up with a fictitious bass player, so that never one heard about him or her, but even believed in this description (to describing any unfamiliar topic, you might bother by certain details, because you do not know how to play), you have to be the bass player. You have to listen to a hundred other bass players, constantly learn this instrument, and come up with something that only you have discovered. And no one else can do this.

In 2013, my book got into a slightly awkward situation. Someone who does not have literary experience in the field of metaphorical description (an obligatory point for musical philosophy, the vocabulary may simply not suffice for this idea). For me, the native language is Russian, not English, although I also encountered this problem in Russian. I just did not know how to say or express a thought better. How to think up some virtuoso musician, so that his or her description was theoretically worked out (it did not contain mistakes in the field of various techniques), at the same time describe it using good literary vocabulary.

I had two or three ways of creating this musical philosophy. I wrote something like “We heard a bass guitar in low tones, which symbolizes a certain chocolate mood.” A first mistake: how is this described fictional track different from most others? Far from always we hear music based on allusions with some kind of non-musical sounds. Bass is often added just for filling, because it should be there. And it rarely has the same value as Fieldy’s bass of Korn or other very professional musicians.

A second mistake: try to find the allusion in each track is not very correct idea. Some music appear is not only with special musical solutions (Korn, Rammstein or Painkiller’s soundtrack), but which is simply standardized. A solo guitarist can play, a keyboard player can be connected, we can hear a bass. But we do not find any allusions with anything here. Musicians can play by the principle of “add some bass, add some keys, add some solo guitar. We hear a sound, it’s already the standard” (regardless of whether there is anything else besides the music).

The music of very professional bands are distinguished by mentioned qualities and allusions, not every musician.

If you listen to Lady Gaga, Nicky Minaj you will be understanding that this is an emphasis on the dance. This is music for dancing, not full-fledged music. Here the constant rhythm is important, everything else is not important. You can also compare what Eminem reads and puts in the meaning of his songs with Rammstein—Benzin. One performer has strongly developing his or her texts, but is unlikely to develop music, and the other is unlikely to write lyrics of songs with an additional meaning.

The first kind of narration I described above. The second type—the mention of all sorts techniques. In electronic music, there are scratches, changes of the tempo (I’m using common words due to I know perfectly how it called in Russian, I’m not sure how it is called in English), different LOW and HIGH filters. My fiction musician’s style is electronic and apparently at the junction of some rap. This is not too typical music.

I did write something like:
“He did scratch his vinyl about 60 degrees.”
“He slowly and smoothly made scratch his vynil, as if he is preparing us for something grandiose.”
“He was doing the scratch his vynil too fast, achieving a pulsating effect.”
My literary style was simpler, but something like this.

I tried to describe the rehearsal, the live DJ work and so on. But for some time, I noticed a certain tendency. The number of receptions that I written about, it was small and often repeated. The scratches were mentioned too often. I thought I had too many repeats. After that, I began to learn about other tricks. I had added HIGH and LOW filters; I tried to think of where there should be a slowdown. Not bad, the minuses is still remained. These are very short paragraphs, for example (2-3 sentences). Then in the second book, when I made a sequel, I began to call the tricks, as well as I achieved a more or less literary description. Here and there were layers of the old style (that’s not the best), but these are single exceptions. Anyway, all the mistakes cannot be fixed.

The most strange idea was to abandon the characters, the relationships, a plot and other things. Although the book will be have a little interest to anyone, if it consists only musical descriptions. I did descriptions of naive rehearsals. For example, my character been invited by some people to play for 5 hours, they want to promote songs about their own company (advantages, why it is necessary to cooperate with them). And my character does not sing together with the DJ (who can play around 10 hours), but together with the rock band. The first mistake. The rock band does not play so much, they’ll get tired faster. It was assumed that they do not have any musical material, and they must improvise. The second mistake. This method can’t allow make the good product. In real music, it will lead to disappointment of the listener. The third mistake. The vocalist has no lyrics, and she must experiment with improvised verses.

You can make any text that describes musicians. But perhaps it does not match with real rehearsals. I was in situation of the characters two times (just a couple of years after the end of my story). I improvised many times using keyboard (usually, successfully) and using guitar (as a rule, less successfully). As a result, for four hours I played the same pentatonic through Skype.

As the author of poetry, which is written without any script—when I synchronously translated some American songs into Russian to some my friends. I can hear the refrain for the first time, at the beginning I translate it literally and improve them (until the appearance of poetry in Russian translation) after the third verse. To do this, I need to hear the verse, do not translate it right away, think a little, and when it will be repeated a second or third time, I can translate it into Russian with a little of poem. Miracles do not happen here. You can’t begin to say something impromptu and then to finish this one as a poem.

As for an improvisation—I saw one Russian rapper on a local television, when I was 10-11 years-old-boy. He allegedly can say lyrics impromptu, although it’s even no secret that television producers often use the script. Another example: he really said impromptu, but he knew where he works. He could have a set of words that are consonances that he prepared before the program, and only a part of the fragments of his verse were spoken impromptu during the filming. Therefore, if you see any fact about music from TV shows, there is no guarantee that it corresponds to the truth. Better try to ask those who is writing poetry and know something of it.

Of course, the two methods of narrating about musicians described above are not the only ones. I also added elements of such literary style as Steam Punk. Usually, this is a story about hackers, programmers. In the center of our attention—the text on the computer screen, computer failures, replacement of components. I thought that modern musicians are very connected with computers. You can describe the advantage of a more expensive audio card compared to a cheaper, with worse signal-to-noise performance in your text.

Usually, musicians of heavy styles (Rammstein, Korn) tend to better equipment. But for such styles as Funk, Blues, Jazz the solo guitarist will not find a difference. This is a budget issue. In heavy styles due to noise you cannot play slowly.

There is another fourth way to write about musicians. This is very common. These are stories about rock towns, drug addicts or bikers, social contradictions. These are external topics. They have nothing to do with the sound of music. At the same time, they most often attract the attention of the public and the media. You can analyze the reasons very long. Sometimes it seems to me that people are just tired of the monotonous life. People take loans and go to unloved jobs in order to pay off. But look at them—they are musicians. They are addicts, they have bad habits. They live more festively and more cheerfully than we, but they are worse than us. Because they are less healthy than we are. A person is inclined to blame others. You can blame someone else, and then feel that it becomes easier for you.

I love music. I would completely abandon watching any kind of movies, although I would never have desire to refuse from music. But looking at individual musicians, strange thoughts appear in my mind. They only can be associated with stereotyped talk shows. I sometimes think that musicians are comical people. They come to the show, they discuss their husbands or wives, they spend a huge amount of time and money not on the tour equipment or expensive sound engineers, but rather on expensive photo sessions, they provoke all sorts of scandals, if they understand that they are more often quoted by sleaze magazines. Do these musicians make sense? Should I call them musicians or clowns? I’m probably too interested about the Russian third-rate musicians. First-rate musicians are in endless tours. But another people who have lost their voice, who are in a creative crisis, go to the show for housewives. I have no other explanation for this behavior.

One guy from my good friends pointed out this aspect. If the singer is not a man, but a woman, they are more often valued for appearance and sexuality, and sometimes they leave music for the sake of a fashion business. He blames this sexual revolution of the sixties and our recent history. I think the problem is deeper than we think. During the tenth and fourteenth centuries the vocal was in church choirs—the performer’s appearance was not important. As soon as the vocals became sing in the opera houses, the secular music appears—the performance of music becomes subordinate to theatrical traditions and appearance plays a primary role. In my opinion, the theater is more to blame for the stereotypical perception of female performers than the sexual revolution.

When I created a character for my book, I tried to take into account my interests, and I make it so that outside audience can read this work at the same time. I showed the wires, audio cards and added the elements of Steam Punk. I cut out the musical philosophy—it’s easier for me to judge ready-made music than to invent a philosophy for completely fictional music. In addition, it seemed to me that the musical philosophy is somewhat that is distracting from the song lyrics. Effects, toggle switches, mixers—I included these in the text. I made a little big bet on the lyrics, like in rap. It is assumed that the words are no less important than the sound allusions in a particular song. I created a character, added a history of relationships. I tried to write so that dialogues and monologues did not irritate people who usually not watching talk shows about celebrities.

For example:
“If you do not like scandals, why did you mention your divorce?” asked the reporter.
“Because I was uncomfortable to see what some reporters write about my name. At least once I have the right to say this one. And then scandal have been raised by not me, by people who screams about it constantly and increase their own rating. Certain people.”

I think that many will support the point of view of my character. Everyone should have the right to speak. At least once. But to come for such interviews the second time, the third time—why? There is nothing more to do.

If you want to write about music, you should be interested in music. You need to live with it. If you want to create your own fictional music group, possibility listening to a lot of music will not help you. You probably need a good knowledge of the history of one group. I watched a lot of concerts of Rammstein, Korn, Linkin Park and some other Russian musicians, whose names unlikely can reminded something to you.

I noticed how the live sound engineers of these projects changed. How long time ago LP starts with a dirty sound, what mistakes the guitarist made in the beginning, I saw how they interrupted the performance of the song in a half. It was in the distant 2000-2001. But it is from these situations that your point of reference for your fictional musical stories develops. Not musical talk shows, not Billboard’s ratings, not numerous of articles by other music critics. In most cases, it will not help you. Yes, you may need some magazines articles, but a bit. What kind of hotel do musicians require? What kind of cuisine? But by 70-80% of writing such chapters help musicians and their creativity, but not external sources. You only need to listen carefully to the musicians, and I will discuss this topic.

First of all, let’s digress from LP and remember a band like Green Day. At first glance: a vocalist with a controversial biography; concerts with too dirty sound, more like a school band; uncomplicated riffs and the complete absence of any allusions. Why do others like them? But I understood something by the example of their last album of 2013. I took their tracks, opened them in the audio editor and increased the compressor’s threshold. This is often done on radio stations. I understood something about the dynamics, which I had never guessed before. The increase in compression has both its pluses and its disadvantages. A disadvantage: we can not distinguish quiet parties from the crescendo. But there is also a plus: we are beginning to hear the drummer and his or her room with crash, rides and so on. We hear even the reflection from the whole drum set as a whole. This is provided, if the drums are real in the mix. If not, at best it will become much louder, or all sound reflections will be the same and that’s not so interesting.

Even if a band does not have anything interesting at all, I’m interested to hear them at least because of the real drums. The vocalist can write the trashy lyrics, the guitarist can play the simple riffs, but the drummer can work good. And now, for a second, imagine something. Take some music hit, for example Rammstein—Benzin. What do you think, what is the role of the sound engineer of the band? When I listened to Green Day with the sound of raised drums and comparise with the default mix, I understood everything. If the volume is too loud, we just do not distinguish the crescendo from quiet parties. And secondly, if the crashes and rides of drums are at the top, when we’ll listen to Benzin, we’ll skip the guitar, which is there in the beginning depicts a splash.

Can you imagine that? You are listening to a song. Any song. Literally, you fall down everything that has been thought up in music for the last 50 years. In the track there is a real drummer, we clearly hear all his or her sound reflections. In the track there are several good accords of the guitar, besides the guitars are recorded noisily with some reverberation, as if it is a concert, and the song is so famous that it is clearly not played for the first time. But who will listen it from us? The album is worth doing dosed and not try to copy the concerts.

I analyzed the variations of perform the same songs. For example, we have such a song Proklyaty stary dom (The damned old house) performed by Korol i shut (The King and Jester). The composition is dedicated to a lonely old man. He did not go out the house for a long time, and some people began to doubt whether he is still alive. Then his house was sealed. In the original composition there are no keys at all. When they added a few keys together with their keyboardist Pavel Sazonov, their song only won. The notes become in unison of voices and guitars, thereby even making this song more terrible. We seem to hear knocking from the window of this grandfather.

There are so many songs that are played at concerts better than their versions recorded in the studio. You can compare Linkin Park—No more sorrow between the studio and the live version. In the studio version we hear a guitar processor, the sound of which resembles some sort of wind instrument. At the concert—a standard dirty sound of the (guitar) cab. There is such a feeling, as if splinters  pierce our hands right now (or other place on the body) or we get rid of splinters.

I will not forget to mention Michael Jackson. Most of his songs represent a simple structure, they are sentimental and they have a dancing style. But Earth Song is something other than just a song. At the same time there is no solo guitar in the song. We hear the descending bass guitar notes that sound instead of the left hand of keyboard player. The descending sequence sound like a sad look, as if we lower our brows when we regret about something. We hear a sequence of notes, but they are so connected with the visual picture. I understand when I listen to the good music, if I imagine some pictures. But the show itself on stage. Large number beats of bass drum, simulating the sound of an army tank. I heard a lot of breaks (drum term) and their variations. In the context of drums, break is a crescendo or an increasing power of drum, when the drummer ends the melody. Usually, in addition to kick drums, other drums are used. We hear the break only with the kicks. But, perhaps, it is the most exciting and terrible (drum) break in the history of pop music.

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