Blog

Given the long history of music, it’s easy to miss that we live in a golden age. Musical instruments, musical scores, and acceptable (MP3) or excellent (CD) recordings of great music are readily available though, sadly, really good playback systems remain somewhat expensive and quite rare. In any case, I thought it would be interesting to take a quick look at how we got here.

Human beings struggled for thousands of years to write down how music sounds. Inspired by the efforts of the Catholic church, modern musical notation had its origins in medieval Europe about a thousand years ago. By 1700, around the time Johann Sebastian Bach began composing, musical notation had achieved most of the form that musicians and piano students still use today.

In the late 1800s sound recordings were developed — a really remarkable technology considering that neither electric amplification, the airplane, nor the motor car had yet been developed. But by the early 1900s, really popular recordings were selling hundreds of thousands of copies.

Then, in 1948, how music is recorded, and even created, was dramatically changed by guitarist and electronics inventor Les Paul, best remembered today as the namesake of the Gibson Les Paul electric guitar.

Les Paul got hold of one of the new-fangled tape recorder machines (ask your grandparents…) and added another recording head. This was, in effect, a very rudimentary form of what we now call “multi-track recording.”

Les Paul’s system allowed him to start by recording one instrument or voice (in other words, recording one “track”) and allowed him to later record more voices and instruments (“tracks”) onto the original recording. Hence, multi-track recording.

Later multi-track systems were much easier to use than Les Paul’s original, with a separate recording and playback capability for each track, but the principle remained the same — different tracks could be recorded at different times, and even in different places, then combined and perfectly synchronized, so one or two (or just few) musicians and vocalists can sound like a large ensemble. Today, virtually all audio recording is done this way.

This technology has become so common that it is available for home computers, which brings us full circle in the history of music.

Here we have an adaptation of the Prelude from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Unaccompanied Cello Suite No. 1 in G major, from around 1720, re-arranged for eight cellos instead of the single cello for which Bach wrote it.

And, no, this isn’t a set of cello-playing octuplets; it’s the product of multi-track recording of one cellist, Steven Sharp Nelson, playing eight different cello parts, with both music and video tracks laid very precisely, one over the other, to obtain this finished product, all done on a home computer — J.S. Bach meets Les Paul:

Copyright 2018 by Toni Pfau. All rights reserved.

Contact Toni Pfau at:
503-358-5359
13530 N.W. Cornell Road
Portland, OR 97229
Toni.L.Pfau@gmail.com

I’ve known many self-taught musicians who’ve shown real musical ability, but they almost always struggle with two important aspects of music: handling what are called “key changes”, and mastering rhythm so they can play alongside other musicians.

The theme from the television show Hawaii Five-O is an example of song that will be essentially impossible to play well if musicians haven’t mastered both key changes and rhythm. Most people are surprised to learn that this rather pop-sounding song is played by an orchestra (along with a couple of guitars and an extensive set of drums), but it illustrates the importance of mastering these two foundations of music.

At a really basic level, rhythm means playing the right note at the right time. Rhythm is linked to tempo, or how fast the music is played.

Here’s a little experiment that illustrates the challenge of mastering rhythm and tempo: Tap your hand on the table in patterns of four beats, emphasizing every first note, like this: 1–2-3-4–1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4. See how fast you can do it without messing up.

Now try the same thing with a three-beat pattern: 1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2-3.

The four-beat and three-beat patterns are rhythm, and how fast you can do them are tempo.

Most people can do the four-beat pattern much faster than they can the three-beat pattern, and the three-beat pattern takes a lot more concentration. Only with a lot of practice can most people do both equally fast.

Now consider this challenge: Imagine getting a bunch of people around a table at home, at school, or at work, and having them tap out even the easier four-beat measure at a very fast tempo (Hawaii Five-O runs at three beats per second), do it all simultaneously, and keep it up for two or three or four minutes without anybody missing a beat. That’s the challenge of training musicians to be able to play together.

Another thing that makes this song so challenging it that we can’t just play the song slowly. The composer, Morton Stevens, wrote it in a minor key, the same sort of key in which funeral music is written. Played slowly, Hawaii Five-O sounds dreadful.   Continue reading “Book ‘Em, Danno: Why Self-Taught Musicians Struggle”

In the last few years I have heard, interspersed with the usual Christmas melodies, a piece of music that was essentially lost for over a quarter of a millennium.

About 50 years ago a version gained popularity, played at a strangely slow tempo, heavily orchestrated, and with a strong emphasis on the plucked instrument called the theorbo.

Versions like this were frequently used for the odd combination of background music, weddings, or funerals, with some lasting two and three hours — quite an accomplishment (not in a good way) for a piece that is originally under five minutes. I’m glad to hear it find a home, played in something like the way it was originally composed, in the music of Christmas.

The piece is often thought of as “Classical music,” but it’s not. Written by the German composer Johann Pachelbel, who lived from 1653 to 1706, it’s actually from the earlier Baroque era. (The Classical period can be thought of as starting with Mozart. To put this in perspective, Mozart was born in 1756, and the American revolution started in 1776.)

Technically the piece is called “Canon and Gigue in D-major”, but the title is usually shortened to “Canon in D-major” or simply “Pachelbel’s Canon.”

(Actually, the title, when spoken, is often shortened to Pachabel’s Canon, leaving out the middle L. The composer’s name is properly pronounced a bit like “pickle-bell”… Pachel-bell.)

I really like this version of the piece. It’s played from the earliest known manuscript of the piece, on the less brassy and less strident sounding instruments common at the time in which the song was written. The instruments are also played in the style common at the time.

This version includes familiar instruments — three violins, and a cello — along with the much-less-familiar, all-wood, baroque organ and an instrument almost unknown today, the theorbo, a sort of oversize lute with an odd neck extension and extra bass strings.

Enjoy, and have a Merry Christmas!

Copyright 2017 — 2021 by Toni Pfau. All rights reserved.

Contact Toni Pfau at:
503-358-5359
13530 N.W. Cornell Road
Portland, OR 97229
Toni.L.Pfau@gmail.com