NPR's 50 Failed First Impressions

THIS. JUST. IN.


NPR's 50 Failed First Impressions.

"Debut albums are strange beasts. Some rocket artists to a lofty level of stardom that never seems to wane, making a permanent mark on the world of music. Others manage to attain a devoted cult status, but take years, maybe even decades, to do so. Even more go overshadowed by material the artist will eventually release. And there's just no calculating the countless number of debut LPs and EPs that get swept under the rug every year.

"Even though some artists just get it right the first time around, this mix is devoted to the ignored and under-appreciated debut. ..."

Let's say I'm a trained ballerina

Let's say I'm a trained ballerina (I'm not). If I then want to be a good salsa dancer, I take 6 months of classes, I ask questions, I watch others do it, I practice and get feedback from my dance partners. In all of this I develop my own skill and mastery of the style.

As a musician, my background is in classical. But I want to write music and perform as a singer-songwriter. So,  I approach songwriting and performing the same way. I want to develop my own vocal style, so I am taking lessons from a vocal coach who specializes in working with songwriters. I want to make use of orchestral instruments in my arrangements, so I am studying arranging/composition. I want to incorporate my French horn playing in my songs, so I'm busting out the Kopprasch etudes. I want to incorporate dance into my performance, so I'm brushing up on various dance styles. I want my songs to be heavy on percussion, so I'm studying drumline cadences and meeting with percussionists. I have no experience commanding a stage or a microphone as a solo artist, so I am starting to play open mics. I am miles away from where I want to be and I have a ton of work to do. This blog keeps me accountable and tracks the process.

In the contemporary classical world, there has been a notable rise (or rebirth) of the composer/performer in recent years. For the second year in a row the annual MATA Festival of new music by "young" composers from all over the world [full disclosure: I am MATA's publicist] will feature a composer/performer night called "Responsible Parties." (Performance on Thursday, April 19; roundtable discussion with said responsible parties the next morning, Friday, April 20.)

It's not exactly singer-songwriter fare. They've got video constructions, music for sheet metal, music for piano wire installation, part of an opera. Crazy interesting stuff. Often there's no singing at all = not songs. Lesley, Kate, and Matt's pieces are sung, so on that level are songs, written by song-writers.

Jacob Cooper, Triptych: II. Black or White
Cecilia Lopez, Mechanical Music for Sheet Metal
Kate Soper, Only the words themselves mean what they say
Lesley Flanigan, Snow
Matt Marks, sneak preview of The Little Death: Vol. 2 with Mellissa Hughes
Eli Keszler, Cold Pin

Still, within this greater movement there are those who more closely resemble singer-songwriters in that the music is primarily a) sung b) by the person who wrote it: Corey Dargel, Gabriel Kahane, to name a couple. Shara Worden fronts the band My Brightest Diamond as singer/songwriter but has moved into the world of composition.

One thing I've observed in my role as a publicist is that music which crosses multiple genre lines will, as a result, be received and evaluated by multiple and distinct sets of values, expectations, and reference points.

Case study: My Brightest Diamond released All Things Will Unwind in collaboration with yMusic [for whom I handled press via New Amsterdam Records] a few months back. ATWU is both an album by a songwriter-led-band (in indie rock terms) and a collection of short pieces for chamber ensemble with voice (in classical terms), and it was reviewed accordingly depending on the writer/outlet.

Sample review:  My Brightest Diamond
All Things Will Unwind
Peter Zimmerman,  Glide magazine (Peter has a classical/choral background)

Primary values/expectations by which "contemporary classical" music is measured:

• Separation of composer and performer is usually the standard. (Unimportant/unexpected that the two be merged.)
• Composer
• Musical innovation / experimentation / originality (composition)
• structure/form
• texture
• color
• rhythm
• harmony 
• media/instrumentation
• Reference points: Western classical canon of repertoire (development from Gregorian chant -->  Bach --> Mozart --> Mahler --> Reich --> contemporary movements/trends
• Performer
• Technical proficiency
• Mastery of performance practice by style/period
• Infusion of personal interpretation
• Reference points: Past performers (e.g. Horowitz for piano); past recordings (comparison against "definitive" recording of specific works)

Sample review: My Brightest Diamond
All Things Will Unwind
Amanda Petrusich, Pitchfork magazine

Primary values/expectations by which singer-songwriters/bands are measured:

• Overall listener experience/mood trumps technical proficiency
• Many elements of structure are (largely) assumed.
• It's a song. Has words.
• Melody is primary vehicle, voice is primary instrument.
• Melody-dominated homophony. Instruments as ornamentation, accompaniment, setting of mood.
• Short pieces (3 minutes); longer is significant.
• Personal expression, authenticity trump "proper" technique.
• Distinctive voice is imperative.
• Story-telling (theirs or others)
• Intimacy
• Lyric-driven
• Stage presence, persona.
• Visual style, brand.
• Use/command of microphone assumed.
• Songwriter/band as icon, singing soundtrack for others lives. What does it sound like to be me/us now?
• Reference points: Past artists (i. e. for songwriters -  Billie Holiday --> Woodie Guthrie --> Bob Dylan --> Joni Mitchell --> Sufjan Stevens), current rock trends.

All of this said, as artists should we care? I often hear from artists that genres and labels are super annoying, only for marketing, for people with tiny minds, or that they don't matter at all. "I write whatever I want," etc. Yes! Write that music! Write music because you have to! But what about performance practice? What about the ballerina who wants to be a successful salsa dancer? Does style/genre/label not matter then? If you're dancing salsa, does it matter to the audience or reviewers that you are accomplished en pointe, or does it only matter whether or not you 'bring it' with your salsa? And if you merge those two and become a salsa-rina, what will be your reference points and measures of success?

And music critics, how do you approach music that draws from multiple traditions, or that falls between genre lines? By what criteria and reference points and values do you measure that music? If you're reviewing a classically-infused album for a rock outlet, do you hold the album to rock or classical standards? Both? Meet halfway? If a rock musician composes a symphony, does it matter that s/he is one of the best rock artists of all time? Or does it only matter whether the symphony holds its own by classical standards? And if a conservatory-trained artist releases a singer-songwriter album, does it matter to you or the audience that that person can achieve great technical heights as a classical musician? Or does it only matter whether the album rocks?


[House rules are in effect. Be opinionated, be sincere, be civil.]

lyrics: you're a rescue

do you want

some proof above your head

or sand below

whipping wind around instead?

you're a rescue

neck deep in water when i found you

you're a rescue

surrender nothing to get through

/ / / / / / / / / / / / / / / 

when the scenery came down 

I lost all four walls and ground

when the scenery came down

I lost all four walls and ground

- sk 2009

I wish I wish I wish I was born a man

Martha Wainwright, as interviewed for the music issue of The Believer:

BLVR: Are you recording as you're writing?

MW: No, I can't stand the sound of my own voice. I can't stand listening back to it. I think it's devastating. Once I think the song is coming together I'll think, OK, let's try it from the top. I perform it for myself, from beginning to end, to make sure that it makes sense, if its' pleasing, or if it has an arc, or whatever. I'm performing it for myself, and I'm listening to myself do it in the room, to know whether it's complete or not. But I don't record it, because when I have recorded, I've listened back and been disappointed by what I've heard.

SK: She has one of my favorite voices. Let that be a lesson to us all.

Oh I wish I wish I wish I was born a man / So I could learn how to stand up for myself / Like those guys with guitars / I've been watching in bars / Who've been stamping their feet to a different beat
To a different beat / To a different beat

The Incredibly Upbeat Stick-Figure Progress Montage You've Been Waiting For

Well, I haven't posted a new song in three months. And, lest ye think I've come to a stand-still: "ARRR, but no! A busy wee lass I have been!", says the Scottish Pirate (?).

The fact is, there's a lot going on behind the scenes. In My Imagination, a Spotsylvania's Marching Knights live show involves a full band with multiple instrumentalists, drummers, dancing, shouting, choral-ography, the whole bit. So, not only do I need to write the lyrics and music for the songs, I need learn how to arrange them, sing them, play piano/ukulele/horn in them, gather and rehearse a band for them, dance [some of] them, and not be afraid of them.

To tell the story of what I've been up to, enter The Incredibly Upbeat Stick-Figure Progress Montage You've Been Waiting For! But first! Turn on your speakers and PRESS PLAY to enjoy the upbeat montage music!

[Click image to enlarge.]

Kudos to anyone who can translate my heiroglyphs into action points. I'll start: 1. Take dance classes.

Subdivide

(from http://www.bandnerdspoetry.com, via Thomas Deneuville)

This is profoundly intelligent.

I've been thinking a lot lately about how being a musician prepared me for Real Life. And I've been feeling pretty good because I realized a couple of weeks ago, when practicing my fourth horn part for the Brooklyn Wind Symphony, that I still remember how to learn. I think that may be the #1 thing that I learned from my years of musical training: how to learn. Slow it down as much as necessary in order to play it successfully, break it into pieces and master each fragment, combine one fragment you've mastered with the next and master that grouping, continue to add until you have the whole phrase. Subdivide and synthesize. It is better to do it accurately than to do it quickly. The process felt so good as I plodded away in the basement with metronome tocking.

Another thing I'd posit is that learning a musical instrument builds up a tolerance for inadequacy and failure and a faith in subsequent success. Meaning: the visceral and lifelong embodiment of the knowledge that inability + practice = success. Perhaps it even lowers the frustration boiling point in an individual.

Can you tolerate frustration? Can you tolerate not being able to do something long enough to master it and find fulfillment? Does anybody else out there feel like musical training helps with this?

Matt Torrey's & The Pickleback Band

Says the band director to the wind symphony: "Hey everybody, after rehearsal we all go over to Matt Torrey's bar." [He points to the principal percussionist.]

I have joined the Brooklyn Wind Symphony. For 11 years, such an ensemble did not interest me but then, this season, a change. I'd been trying to get back into horn playing but with work, songwriting, life, etc., I kept letting it go. What better way to keep my chops in decent shape than to join an ensemble, right? And how nice that P.J., a tubist from undergrad, had moved to NYC and was playing in the band.

What I'd forgotten — or underestimated or simply not anticipated — was just how friendly a community of musicians can be. I approached Grand Street High School wearing my horn backpack, and before I'd even crossed the street from the L station, three musicians had introduced themselves to me and one had asked me to join a brass quintet. I entered the halls of the school to that age-old warm-up cacaphony and numerous passersby smiled at me as they sucked on reeds and assembled their instruments.

My 8-years-in-NYC-default-response was: Why is everybody being so nice? What gives?

I was immediately processed, shuffled over to the principal hornist for evaluation, handed music for 4th horn, and seated last chair. (FAIR.) The principal, having taken a large chunk of years off of the horn earlier in life, didn't have to hear me play to know that my chops would need the lowest part possible to convalesce.

Within minutes we were reading Blue Lake Overture, Symphony No. 2, Elegy, and Incantation and Dance, for the all John Barnes Chance concert honoring what would have been his 80th birthday. As band-y as band can get. And there I sat, next to the saxophones, like the band kid I've always been.

At Matt Torrey's after rehearsal, I learned that my fellow 4th hornist studied at the University of Miami when I was living there for my first years of teaching and we'd run with the same crowd but never met. Another fellow hornist asked me why I decided to start playing again. I told her that I realized a couple of years ago that my husband and my friends in Miami and New York had never heard me play music — that they didn't know me as a musician — and it felt very strange to me. Her response was better than any words I'd put on it:

I know! It's such a part of identity, isn't it? Like, you walk around knowing yourself to be a hornist, even if you haven't played in months or years! I joined the band a year ago and it was such a relief, like I'd immediately found my people: the band kids.

It was about then that a round of about 25 signature "pickleback" shots were ordered and distributed — a shot of Old Crow bourbon chased with a shot of McClure's spicy pickle brine — and I was officially initiated into the pickleback band.