Single Ladies (Put A Riff On It)

[koganbot]

Something I posted on a comment thread here, about the Turnage-Beyoncé thing:

Just a point in regard to whether one "got" the reference to "Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)" [not an issue for me, 'cause I discovered the Turnage piece through one of the mashups, and wouldn't bet on my having recognized the tune otherwise, though probably would have been saying to myself, "this reminds me of something; what the hell is it?"]: loads of melodies sound like other melodies, some deliberately, some from the songwriters' unconscious, some coincidentally, etc. I often miss the obvious references and then hear connections that aren't there, or when I do hear I have no idea what's intended and what isn't. And just to give an example, I've probably heard Hole's "Celebrity Skin" and Ashlee Simpson's "Surrender" over a hundred times each, and I know that Ashlee has covered "Celebrity Skin" in concert, and I saw the episode of Ashlee's reality show where she and her label president, Jordan Schur, are discussing "Surrender" and Schur says that it makes him think of Hole's "Celebrity Skin," my assumption being that he's correctly inferring from the sound that Courtney Love is a huge inspiration for Ashlee, yet I didn't realize, until just a few days ago when I ran into a YouTube mashup that showed it, that "Surrender" uses the riff from "Celebrity Skin." So... well it's not a contest, to see who gets it. No one gets it all.

[Worth clicking the link to see my comment on someone's odd assumptions concerning the authorship of "Single Ladies."]

[Also, though I love "Celebrity Skin," "Surrender" is one of my least favorite Ashlee tracks, Ashlee's most triumphant Hole-style song being "I Am Me."]

[EDIT: I'm speaking loosely when I say "uses the riff," since I don't mean "plays the riff" but "plays something similar to the riff that was almost certainly based on the riff," the rhythm and the style of power-chording being identical but the notes not. I talk a little more about this in the comment thread.]

Comments

[johnsonsrambler.wordpress.com (from livejournal.com)]

Hey,

Thanks for the comment and the thread here. Hope it doesn't come across when I say 'get the joke' that I'm implying Turnage is making fun of anything - I don't think he is, and everything in his career suggests a genuine affection for popular music of all sorts. But the fact that he had attempted to hide the Beyoncé reference by not telling anyone about it beforehand, and letting listeners work it out for themselves ('surprise!') is the 'joke' I'm getting at. If he's making fun of anything, it's the classical music establishment that's commissioning him in the first place (hence 'seditious').

Having spoken to him, and having listened to the piece several times, I don't think he was setting out to do anything especially grand beyond write a fun piece, but I take the point that referencing popular music isn't necessarily lighthearted.

Would be interested in hearing any music by your friend, skyecaptain - does he have a site?

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Haha, xpost! Thanks for the clarification, and it's worth noting that the part of Frank's comment I was referencing was more of a post-script that he didn't even cut 'n' paste here so grain o' salt.

I can't seem to find "Real Good" anywhere online -- perhaps he'll be able to link it here if it's still available -- but he's currently a graduate student at Harvard, and you can hear some of his work here: http://www.myspace.com/ianhpower

[koganbot]

Since Dave skyecaptain didn't give you his links, I will: his lj and his Tumblr and his blog and his twitter, but none of them link to his playing music or anything (as far as I know). I'd like to hear his friend Ian's piece too.

But now that I've got you here, one thing that's been on Dave's mind recently and mine off and on for years is that music is difficult to describe and impossible to convey in words. The technical vocabulary is useful in reproducing the music on an instrument, or giving one an idea of how to technically follow what's going on in the music if you're a composer who'd like to learn from it, but the vocabulary is worthless for talking about what one really thinks is going on and matters about it. Or it is for me, anyway, but then my theory is rudimentary (as is my playing). I loved Peter Van Der Merwe's Origins of the Popular Style: The Antecedents of Twentieth-Century Popular Music, but he used staffs and notes and such to make his points (one of which was "the liberation of melody from harmony" as music approached the twentieth century, by which I think he meant that melody gave up its role of leading us from one chord or key to the next, or something). If you've ever posted particularly on this subject, meta-comments on how one writes about what's actually going on in the music, I'd be appreciative if you'd link it. Dave posted briefly about it here and here and here.

The only time I myself tried to write in any kind of descriptive detail about what the musicians were actually playing was in this piece about the relation of hip-hop and r&b to James Brown, and the relation of rock to the Rolling Stones, and even there I used the musical in order to push through to the social (and you can judge for yourself if what I did works or not). I got comments like "I loved the piece, though I didn't understand it."