Here’s a song I like from Speaking in Tongues:
Here’s a live version that I love, from Stop Making Sense, though the fast tempo is a bit anxiety-producing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcJtpFSjXak
And here’s my favorite version, which my kids are also completely obsessed with, from David Byrne’s American Utopia:
Since my kids continue to be obsessed with David Byrne’s American Utopia, I have Talking Heads on the brain. Here’s one of their best songs ever, produced by the band members themselves.
Here’s the delightful version from Stop Making Sense. As David Byrne says in his interview with himself, “I try to write about small things. Paper, animals, a house. Love is kind of big. I have written a love song, though. In this film, I sing it to a lamp.”
Here’s a good life goal: learn to enjoy doing anything as much as Alex Weir enjoys playing the guitar.
My kids continue to be absolutely obsessed with David Byrne’s American Utopia. I am especially surprised by how attached they are to “Don’t Worry About The Government.” Here’s the original version, from the first Talking Heads album.
Here’s a live performance from The Old Grey Whistle Test:
I go way, way back with Talking Heads. The first band I was ever in did “And She Was” as an acoustic folk number. My wife, who is awesome, recently took me on a date to see American Utopia on Broadway. You can see the fantastic filmed version directed by Spike Lee on HBO.
Like everything David Byrne does, the visuals are striking. The enormous band is dressed in matching grey suits, but their feet are bare. All the mics and instruments are wireless. The stage is surrounded by chain-link curtains but is otherwise empty. The lighting is all flat colors, simple geometric shapes, and the performers’ shadows. With nothing else to look at, you focus on the faces and the bodies, which, as David explains at one point, is the whole idea.
When I teach remixes in music tech class, I like to make the analogy to radical jazz arrangements of standards. Technically, John Coltrane’s version of “My Favorite Things” is not a remix of the version from The Sound of Music, but it occupies the same cultural role as a remix. (In fact, I just accidentally typed it as, John Coltrane’s remix of “My Favorite Things” is not a remix. There you have it.) One of my favorite ever jazz “remixes” is Erroll Garner’s version of “(They Long To Be) Close To You” by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, which the Carpenters had a number one hit with in 1970.
After reading and re-reading Dan Charnas’ Dilla Time, now I’m listening to music with new attention to rhythmic subtleties. I have especially been digging into the relationship between J Dilla and Herbie Hancock–Dilla sampled Herbie on “Get Dis Money” and “Zen Guitar.” That digging made me go back to my favorite Herbie tune with fresh ears.
This might be the funkiest thing in the history of funk. But what makes it so funky? I wanted to investigate the microtiming of that incredible opening groove to find out.
As part of my current J Dilla binge, I was excited to find a track where he flips a Herbie Hancock sample (no, not “Come Running To Me“, though that one is great too.) This sent me down a rabbit hole with “Watermelon Man.” This track has had quite a journey, both in its prehistory and in its afterlife.
I love that whenever Herbie tries to do something cynically commercial, it always ends up being an iconic work of art. “Maiden Voyage” was written for a Fabergé ad. “Rockit” was a last-ditch attempt to keep from getting dropped by a label. And “Watermelon Man” was meant to be ear candy to attract more listeners to Herbie’s debut album as a leader.
If you are a musician or audio engineer, it is very important to know what decibels are. Unfortunately, decibels are extremely confusing. For one thing, there are so many different kinds of decibels! You only care about two of them: the decibels you see on a noise meter, and the decibels you see on a mixer. The decibel scale is meant to reflect the subjective experience of your hearing. A change of one decibel is a just noticeable difference: if you make something one decibel louder, that is just enough for the listener to notice that it’s louder. Makes sense, right? Unfortunately, decibels are logarithmic, which makes it hard to develop an intuition for the actual sound pressure levels that they represent. Let’s dig in.
Since reading Dilla Time, I have been listening to J Dilla nonstop. In particular, I keep coming back to “Get Dis Money” by Slum Village.
I first heard it on the Office Space soundtrack. It didn’t really grab me at first. In fairness to me, it’s a pretty weird piece of music! Let’s dig in.
I recently finished reading Dan Charnas’ book Dilla Time. It’s a good one! If you are interested in how hip-hop works, you should read it. The book’s major musicological insight is elegantly summed up by this image:
“Straight time” means that the rhythms are evenly spaced and metronomic, like a clock ticking. (Think of a Kraftwerk song.) “Swing time” means that the halves of each beat are alternately stretched and shrunk. (Think of a Duke Ellington tune.) “Dilla time” means that there are multiple rhythmic feels simultaneously, some straight, some swung, some on the grid, some ahead of or behind the grid. (Think of, well, a J Dilla track, like the ones discussed below.)
You frequently see Dilla time described as “unquantized” or “drunk.” My favorite description is from the intro to Kendrick Lamar’s song “Momma.” As its heavily Dilla-influenced beat plays, producer Taz Arnold says, “I need that, I need that sloppy, that sloppy, like a Chevy in quicksand, yeah, that sloppy.” Poetic though it is, though, this is not accurate. Dan Charnas makes clear that Dilla was never sloppy in his rhythms, that their deviation from the grid was intended and meticulously executed. Dilla “misaligned” his beats because it sounds good. But why does it sound so good? I am trying to figure that out.
