koganbot | Single Ladies (Put A Riff On It)

Current Music: Hole "Celebrity Skin"

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Single Ladies (Put A Riff On It)

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.]

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this gap -- between the precision of the technical language within a given music (whether it's staff notation, or the jargons of jazz or serialism, or any number of instrument-specific instructions -- "con legno", vamp till ready) and the larger discussion of meaning, intent, significance, and etc -- is what i was getting at, long ago, when i talked about an "incommensuralibity" between the world of the musician-composer, and the non-playing listener

in retrospect, "incommensuralibity" -- given that it's a technical term from kuhn's histories of science -- is a bit of a red herring, however (even though kuhn was the context i brought it up in)

Yeah, I would probably swap out "incommensurable" for hard. Good music writing provides the context to understand not only the terminology itself, but also the impact of the terminology. I can easily imagine learning the phrase "vamp till ready" precisely because it was used well to describe or evaluate or analyze a piece of music!

i think frank's question had been is there in equivalent in the arts to what "incommensurable" means in Kuhn's account of the sciences -- well, I'm inclined to say no (or at least, not that I know of) to what question...

But I do think there are uncrossable gulfs when it comes to professional techniques and the language that comes with them: in the sense that I think people who can read music can't hear music as if they didn't read it; there's a whole (basically synaesthetic) layer of logic been uploaded to the level of muscle memory, which can't be bracketed back out

what i don't know is the effect of this -- i associate it with the difficulty of writing about music, but maybe i shouldn't (i think i'm right to: but i'm not sure why i think i'm right)

Xpost! I think there are plenty of equivalents in the arts to what "incommensurable" means in Kuhn's account of the sciences; there just aren't equivalents to paradigms, in the sense of "social practices with enough shared understandings to get everyone on the same page" (as opposed to social practices that don't get us on the same page, e.g. music criticism).

maybe the social practice of processing* all music via note-and-staff would be a paradigm? i think there's a pretty tight relationship between its use and the start and end of a particular -- eefinable -- era in composed music: from the introduction of note-and-staff (in the 1500s?) and its breakdown in the 1920s (when people started writing music that couldn't be notated (or required non-agreed-on variants on orthodox notation: the futurists, for example; or the microtone composers)

*you didn't get to be a part of this sub-world of music unless you could read note-and-staff: composition meant writing on note-and-staff; and from pretty early on the music was actually unperformable without its presence -- it LITERALLY got everyone onto the same page!

i also think that harold bloom is offering up something that *might* function as a paradigm in his "anxiety of influence" argument: that this kind of oedipal relationship* is not only present in all the poetry he considers worthy of the name; its central to its practice

(obviously his claim is -- to say the least -- controversial, since it requires casting out lots of writing as not poetry the way he means the team which most other people think IS poetry: in other words, it ISN;T a paradigm bcz half the poets on his list would dispute it; but if he were RIGHT maybe it would be?)

*it's not just a passive or descriptive relationship, in his account; in its active placing of yourself in relationship; and he has seven technical terms of art to describe the stages of the process of this active placing (which i can never remember)

No, I want to be really strict on what we're saying is equivalent to a Kuhnian paradigm/disciplinary matrix, otherwise you're not going to understand his concept of "paradigm." Also, if we are strict in this way, then we can employ the notion effectively in understanding practices that don't have such Kuhnian paradigms because we can use the concept to highlight how these practices differ from the ones with actual paradigms, hence, these practices silhouetted against the background of the hard sciences, we can see highlight details from these practices.

Remember, Kuhn developed the notion of paradigm to understand how it was that science was able to achieve things that the social sciences in particular couldn't: how the scientists could perceive anomalies, know when an idea had been refuted or agree when a questioned had been answered, and periodically overthrow its basic ideas in astonishing reformations of thought. It doesn't do to extend the idea to other discourses that don't achieve these things, since then the concept loses its explanatory power.

And the Bloom example is exactly what I mean. Anxiety of Influence isn't a shared paradigm unless everybody in the social practice - everybody - buys into it. You're not a poet if you're not doing it - not, Harold Bloom, one man, doesn't consider you a poet worthy of the name if you're not doing it, but the entire community engaged in the enterprise doesn't consider you a poet, and you, the poets, can tell the poets from the nonpoets, just as the evolutionary biologist can push to the side the person who doesn't believe in natural selection. Whereas the fact that we get into methodological and taxonomic arguments about who's a poet and what poets are doing is an emphatic reason for saying that poets don't share a disciplinary matrix, or ever have.

how the scientists could perceive anomalies, know when an idea had been refuted or agree when a questioned had been answered, and periodically overthrow its basic ideas in astonishing reformations of thought

Hmmm. The "its" in that sentence has no antecedent. How about "an periodically overthrow a discipline's basic ideas, achieving astonishing reformations of thought in doing so.

"and periodically overthrow..."

"we can ~~see~~ highlight details from these practices"

"know when an idea had been refuted or agree when a questioned had been answered, and periodically overthrow ~~its~~ a discipline's basic ideas, achieving in astonishing reformations of thought in doing so."

maybe the social practice of processing all music via note-and-staff would be a paradigm?

This is a more interesting question, though "paradigm" still seems to be the wrong word; you can make music in the seven-note scale (even if it's music that's not that complex) without using note and staff, or knowing how to, and you can lift a Chopin melody and give it a blues reading, styles penetrating each other (different scales, compromises between scales, like the blues).

My positive point in relation to what you're trying to do in these posts is that we can use the sense of "incommensurability" or consensus breakdown, as happens between incompatible scientific paradigms or in a paradigm that's undergoing revolution, to help understand incompatibilities and misunderstandings and breakdowns in general, among endeavors that never achieved a paradigm. When I say "Never achieved a paradigm" I don't mean "Has no features in common."

as happens between incompatible scientific paradigms or in a paradigm that's undergoing revolution

I should have said, "in a discipline that's undergoing revolution" (since in a revolution an old paradigm gets displaced)

Actually, rereading this, I realize:

(1) There's an ambiguity - and perhaps some confusion - in your statement "i also think that harold bloom is offering up something that *might* function as a paradigm in his 'anxiety of influence' argument," since you're not saying who would apply this potential paradigm, i.e., whether it's the critics who apply it, whether it's the poets, or whether it's both. To make a quick and dirty analogy, all living creatures are subject to natural selection, but for it to be a paradigm, only evolutionary biologists need to understand and basically agree on it and apply it in their work. It's the biologists, not all living creatures, that apply the paradigm. You can't say that all living creatures share the paradigm, because that would mean that all living creatures understand and basically agree on natural selection, and apply it in their work.

(2) So, when you get the time, I'd like to know what your understandings of "incommensurability" and "paradigm" are ("paradigm," in this instance, in the sense "disciplinary matrix"). In order to communicate, we don't necessarily have to agree on how we use those terms, but we do each have to understand how the other uses them.

In any event, as a potential paradigm itself, Kuhn's Structure Of Scientific Revolutions can get us on the same page in our understanding of the differences between a Galilean and an Aristotelian. But this doesn't get Galileo and Aristotle on the same page. Or, at least, the page is ours, not theirs, and it doesn't close the gap between their paradigms or eliminate the "incommensurability" between them.

The reason I put "incommensurability" in quotation marks is that the "incommensurability" applies to only one particular "measure." E.g., Kuhn says that where a Galilean would see a pendulum, an Aristotelian would see constrained fall. And the "incommensurability" arises because one particular measure - comparing the swinging stone to "reality" or to "the data" or to "the facts" or to "the evidence" or to "what's really there" - is not at hand. There's no such third thing (evidence, data, reality, facts) to look at.* There's no datum or sense impression etc. that would contradict either "pendulum" or "constrained fall," hence neither sense impressions nor data can be bases for choosing between "pendulum" or "constrained fall." (This doesn't mean that we have no good reasons for choosing "pendulum" over "constrained fall," or that "pendulum" can't be right and "constrained fall" wrong, though Kuhn would argue that there's no single criterion that can occupy the spot vacated by "the facts." But that's a whole other discussion.)

*It doesn't follow that there is no reality. Rather, reality is what we call our conclusion as to what is really there. But it - reality - is not in our sight prior to the conclusion, isn't helping us arrive at that conclusion. To think otherwise is to make what I call the basic teleological mistake, to say that an effect can cause its cause, that an outcome or conclusion can cause what leads to it, that the future can cause the past. (Not that everyone agrees that this is a mistake, but I think the antiteleologists win the argument.)

Even for Kuhn's own purposes, the term "incommensurable" is the wrong one, since it implies "incomparable" or "incommunicable," neither of which is true. But I certainly think Kuhn's idea of non-matching social practices can be applied to music. But the application would be along the lines of someone not familiar with the Western seven-note scale hearing half steps as out of tune, or someone not brought up with counter-rhythm hearing some African drumming as "confusing" or "free and wild" when actually the drumming is within a strict format. Or an example that Van Der Merwe gives, the "pop" in the melody "Pop Goes The Weasel" sets up a need for resolution that arrives with the last syllable of "weasel," but you're not going to hear or feel that need if you're not raised hearing Western music. (At this point, most people in the world have heard and have embedded enough of both Western-influenced and African-influenced music in their own listening that they're not as likely as previous generations to mishear in these ways.)*

But as for the difficulty that Dave is talking about, and the gulf you're seeing between the technical jargon and the larger discussion, that's a difficulty in attempting to understand all behavior, whether the technical vocabulary is adequate or not or whether the vocabulary is generally accessible or not. E.g., pretty much anyone can learn in one day what "subordinate clause" and "adjective" mean, but that doesn't make it easy to say how a particular writer's use (or relative non-use) of subordinate clauses and adjectives, or a culture's use or relative non-use of subordinate clauses and adjectives, relates to meaning, intent, significance. Surely they do relate, but in no simple way.

Or another example, when at the end of King Lear, Lear goes, "Pray you, undo this button," this has an emotional impact based on what led up to that utterance over the entire play. But that doesn't mean we can jump to "This is what undoing buttons means in British culture" and "this is what undoing buttons means in Shakespeare's work." And conversely, Andrew Sarris writes, in his write-up of Max Ophuls in the American Cinema, "'Quelle heure est-il' ask the characters in La Ronde, but it is always too late, and the moment has always passed. This is the ultimate meaning of Ophulsian camera movement: time has no stop." This is excellent analysis, but it wouldn't work to then go, "the meaning of every Ophulsian track and dolly shot in every particular scene is that time doesn't stop." Nor would it work to say, "The meaning of dolly shots in film is that time has no end." Often, the choice to dolly or pan rather than cut is between showing a bunch of things at once without directing the viewer's attention to any particular thing, or singling out particular things, by cutting to one after another. But noticing this choice in this instance doesn't necessarily bring you to a broader understanding of significance and intent, unless you start looking at a lot of choices over a lot of scenes, and even there you might not make your way to any particular conclusion. In the sentence after the passage I just quoted, Sarris says "Montage tends to suspend time in the limbo of abstract images, but the moving camera records inexorably the passage of time, moment by moment." That's a ridiculous overgeneralization. The moving camera records the passage of time in Ophuls' films because that's what's happening in the plot and to the characters. Fritz Lang, on the other hand, uses moving cameras not to show the unfolding of time but to set up nervous tension, as what we're now seeing within the limits of the camera frame is likely to be imperiled by what we will see once the camera gets there. But that's because in Fritz Lang films, a lot of scary things happen.

*A good way of thinking about "paradigm" (in the broad sense of "disciplinary matrix") is to think of a paradigm as a social practice, bearing in mind that while all paradigms are social practices, most social practices aren't paradigms. But nonetheless, our understanding of miscommunication across paradigms can be used in understanding miscommunication across social practices in general.

In my review of GN'R Lies I wrote, "Guns N' Roses evoke Zeppelin and Aerosmith, but there's more effort and, maybe because of that, more humanity or soul or beauty or reach or desperation." During the line edit, Doug Simmons praised this by telling me that by embedding the word "soul" in a long list I'd found a way to use it without its being the impossibly weighty thing it is in most writing. I hadn't even noticed this when I was creating the piece! But that doesn't mean that what I did wasn't characteristic. But also, you can't say, "Whenever someone writes a list, that person is evening out the emotional impact of the items on it. Whenever Frank Kogan writes a list, he's evening out the emotional impact of the items on it." No, sometimes I'm just trying not to leave things out. But - I'm at my third consecutive "but" - how I wrote that line does tell you something about me, though to know this you have to have read a bunch of things by me. In that sentence I do even out the items on it, therefore not making such a big thing of "soul." But this isn't due to any leveling impulse on my part, isn't an attempt to make things equal and drag soul to earth. Just the opposite, it's an attempt to counter a culture-wide leveling and destruction of, e.g., the word "soul" and a whole bunch of other stuff. It's the overweight that the culture puts on the word "soul" that led to the word's being grasped by many hands and pulled under and drowned. By putting it in a list I was bringing it back up to the surface, giving it life and impact in a sentence that it had lost over the years of ballooning up ridiculously and then plummeting. And I was doing all this unconsciously. But again, this rhetorical device - the list of attributes - only meant a lot here (beyond my finding a way to use a dead word effectively) because in my ideas at that time I was wrestling with the fact that People Like Me (the quasi-intelligentsia of writers, musicians, and artists on the cultural so-called left) were destroying whatever we were exalting, rock and then punk and then... Take the line out of that context, and it's just a nice sentence.

So the difference, the gulf, isn't always one of vocabulary, but of how to relate individual musical choices to broader events in a particular song, in a bunch of songs, and in the world, though certainly a better and more accessible vocabulary would help us to do so. But it's never easy to connect individual events (e.g., Frank's use of the word "but" in this sentence) to whole metropolis-sized conversations full of "buts" and "thoughs" and "whereases" and "howevers" or to the broader constellation of cultural chopping and counterchopping in general.

The Kuhnian "incommensurability" is of people playing different games in which different moves and tokens meaning different things, hence can't be mapped one onto the other. There's a mapping problem here, too, but it isn't a vocabulary gap per se; the gulf here is one of size, between the small and the not-so-small.

I have a better grasp of Kuhn than I did when this originally came up on ilx: so now I think what I find interesting is why doesn't the kuhnian map really apply to the arts -- despite the apparent possible similarities, if they are even that -- and why is it good that the arts aren't like the sciences? In other words: what are the different things we want them to do?

Yes! Arts do undergo revolutions in ways at least superficially similar to scientific revolutions, whereas few other cultural endeavors seem to. But arts will have related but competing movements, opposing schools, and the like, and productive intermixing between genres, with the past generally remaining accessible to the present (at least apparently so).

The Kuhnian "incommensurability" is of people playing different games in which different moves and tokens mean~~ing~~ different things

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Single Ladies (Put A Riff On It)

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Grr

So, to collate all my corrections

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another correction

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A day without orange juice is a day without proofreading