| | | ECLECTIC ELECTRIC
MVP Home Video
GVK 600  I wrote this back in 1990 for the video’s release. I have not updated it here. This is reproduced here for historical interest. In particular please see this website’s suggested listening/reading/viewing area for more up-to-date suggestions.
-- HK November 1997 INTRODUCTION I'd like to thank you for purchasing this video/booklet. I hope that some of the ideas presented here will surprise you and shake you up a bit. The information that I'm presenting can be applied to any style of music at any level of proficiency. My most important "messages" are: • BE YOURSELF. Don't try to be somebody else. Your grandmother should be able to recognize your playing if she heard it on the radio.
• TAKE CHANCES. Don't be afraid of risks.
• BE ECLECTIC AND BROADEN ALL YOUR HORIZONS. Try new things!
• PLAY WITH FEELING AND COMMITMENT. Music is not about notes, it's about feeling.
• IMPROVISE!
Besides these main points, I have attempted to completely fill this video with about ten times more information than you would expect to find in any instructional video for guitar. I figure that if you miss something the first time, then I'm sure that you know how to use the rewind button. Most of this specific information is fairly exotic and unconventional. I want to provide you with knowledge that you cannot find in any other book or tape. For the basics of guitar and the conventional music approach, there are hundreds of excellent books and tapes available. If you look through the Backstage Pass catalog you will find many excellent videos on specific styles and the basics of guitar playing. Take your time digesting the contents of this tape and I'm sure that you'll find that your playing will begin to transcend your expectations and limits. THE PEOPLE IN THIS VIDEO One of the most important things for me about playing music is my friendships with the many different people that I work together with. I'm very lucky to have five great musical innovators working with me in this video. Many thanks to them for their time and efforts on this project. SCOTT COLBY is the most unique and original slide player that I know of. We have been close friends since the late 70's and have had many different musical adventures together. He constantly amazes me with his ability to play any music with a slide.
ALEXANDER DUMBLE designs and builds the best sounding and most rugged tube guitar amplifiers that I know of. Many great musicians (David Lindley, Lowell George, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Eric Johnson, Larry Carlton, etc.) have depended on the sounds of his amps. Few people know that Alexander (whose real first name is Howard, although he prefers Alexander) is a terrific guitar player. He did many studio sessions during the 60's and he toured with Buffy Saint Marie.
JOHN FRENCH was known as “Drumbo” when he played on all of Captain Beefheart's greatest recordings. He is one of the very few rock drummers to have created his own completely original style. He is also my favorite drummer in the world. As with all of the players on this tape, words cannot begin to express how much I value our friendship. JIN HI KIM is an innovator and pioneer in Korean music. Besides being a world class player of her country's traditional musics she is one of the very first people to play experimental and contemporary music on traditional Korean instruments. Of the many improvisers that I work with, she frequently surprises me the most.
ANDY WEST is best known for his pioneering fusion bass work as a founding member of the Dixie Dregs. I don't think that you could find a more articulate and precise bass player with a pick. Andy has designed his own six string bass to suit the needs of his own personal playing style. Every note that Andy plays is full of warmth and straight from the heart.
NOTES ON THE MUSIC PLAYED IN THE VIDEO THE SANDMAN: The Sandman is the opening music of the video. It was written by my friend Fred Marshall. Fred Marshall is an amazing guitarist who is mostly known for his bass playing on Vince Guaraldi and Bola Sete's recordings for the Fantasy label. Fred is also a superb musical educator. His comments were very useful in the planning stages of this video. The Sandman is an easy-to-play, modal jazz construction in 6/8 time designed for improvising. The melody is first played over a D major bass line, then it is played again exactly three frets higher (a minor third) over a D minor bass line, then back to the first pattern. After a period of improvisation, the original line is played over a B minor tonality before returning to the original D major. This tune should be played very freely and intuitively.
MUSIC IN THE EQUIPMENT AND EFFECTS SECTION: Mr. Dumble and I have restricted ourselves to the blues-rock idiom with the hope that it will make some of these exotic effects examples less confusing. In my soloing I am sticking pretty much to the blues scale, the major pentatonic scale and the mixolydian mode. In other words: very common, standard rock vocabulary which is extended into new areas by the effects and by my interaction with some of the new rhythms and sounds created by the effects. It might be amusing for you to know that as you see us on camera, I have no idea at all what Mr. Dumble is going to play next or in what key. I asked him to surprise me with what he did and so you see me really having to improvise with each example.Here is how I have my equipment set up for this video:
H. K.’s Equipment : Signal-flow Path (back in 1990 for the video)
GUITAR > PETE CORNISH TRANSISTOR FUZZ > CHANDLER TUBE DRIVER > DUMBLE OVERDRIVE SPECIAL AMPLIFIER (PRE-AMP SECTION) > DBX 160X COMPRESSOR > ERNIE BALL VOLUME PEDAL > ADA PITCHTRAQ (PITCH TRANSPOSER) > EVENTIDE H-3000 ULTRA HARMONIZER > LEXICON PCM-42 (DIGITAL DELAY) > TC 2290 (DIGITAL DELAY) > ALESIS MIDIVERB (REVERB) > DUMBLE OVERDRIVE SPECIAL AMPLIFIER (POWER-AMP SECTION) > JBL D-120 INSTRUMENT SPEAKER
The “square wave modulation” solo guitar improvisation that I play at the end of this section of the video also sticks pretty much to the E blues scale and the E major pentatonic scale. I am also playing pretty simple rhythmic figures. The processing of this fairly basic playing by the delay modulated with a square wave VSO function results in quite complex music. Don’t be intimidated by the weirdness of this approach. Find a delay with the square wave function and give it a try. The possible musical applications of this technique are limitless!
THE WELFARE ELITE: This song was written for the first Crazy-Backwards Alphabet album. John French wrote the bass line as a completely composed piece of music designed to make Andy's life a little difficult. I wrote my own guitar part based somewhat rhythmically on the bass line, and Scott Colby wrote his guitar part as a sort of harmony to my part. John plays the drums fairly freely in this tune, improvising as his mood suits him. My first solo is played with the "pitch transposer capo effect" set for a fifth up and the second solo is through a delay modulated by a square wave VSO function. The song is a bit complicated with its many changes of time signature, but if you learn it one part at a time by following the music and tablature it should be pretty easy to play.
LYNN’S MAD MONEY: My friend Erling Wold and I wrote the guitar parts for this song back in 1980 when we were both members of the group Name. John wrote the drum part in the Trout Mask Replica style in 1981 when we recorded it for my Aloha album. Andy wrote his bass part in 1984 when we played the piece as a trio with Michael Maksymenko at a jazz festival in Germany. The guitar parts are best played in the Trout Mask style: light top and heavy bottom strings, chords plucked with the pick and fingers together rather then strummed. An easy tune to play. Contrary to general opinion, I'd say that the music on TMR is fairly easy to play if you put a little work into it. I imagine that it was fairly difficult to create and play for the first time, though.
SPECIAL RIDER BLUES: Scott plays Skip James' vocal part with his slide and I play something resembling Skip's original guitar part. Skip recorded this with his guitar in open G tuning. I am playing the baritone guitar tuned to open C# (G#-C#-G#-C#-F-G# -- the same intervals between each string as in open G). Scott, as always, is in open E. I have not printed the music and TAB for this tune in the booklet. I would recommend Stefan Grossman's excellent book: Delta Blues Guitar (Oak Publications), which is where I originally learned Skip's guitar part. It can be obtained, along with many other fine books and tape lessons, from: Stefan Grossman's Guitar Workshop, Box 802, Sparta, NJ 07871. We play this song as Skip James would have: very differently each time and with moods and feelings to suit the moment that we play in.
YOU GONNA NEED SOMEBODY ON YOUR BOND: John is singing Blind Willie Johnson's original lyrics and the band is improvising very freely in a sort of country blues idiom in the key of G. I am playing in open G tuning (D-G-D-G-B-D) and I frequently make use of the classic delta blues descending figure played by fretting the 6th and 4th strings at the 3rd, 2nd, 1st and then open positions. I also play various chords and blues licks. I'm sure that you can figure it out by watching. Good luck in trying to figure out what Scott is doing. See the special note on his style to be found later in this booklet.
DEREK BAILEY STYLE GUITAR TECHNIQUES: Try some of the exercises presented here and then make up your own. Look at the harmonics and note charts in the back of the book and create some patterns of mixed stopped notes and harmonics to use in conventional melodic playing. Try fooling around with some of the chords and clusters that I've layed out for you. Then make up your own! Many thanks to Derek for giving me permission to use some of his exercises here. Since his recordings are so difficult to obtain I might suggest that you write to him for a catalog: Derek Bailey, 14 Downs Road, London E5, England.
WORLD MUSIC INFLUENCES: Many musicians look at the rest of the world's musics through the distorting ideas of western music. They make the mistake of thinking that for Japanese influence you just play a Japanese "scale". This is a very simplistic and limiting view. You should discover how other cultures conceptualize music and how it relates to the philosophy and lives of their peoples. How do other cultures think about music? Go to some concerts. Check some books and recordings out of your library. There are many more parameters to music then our western ones of melody, harmony and rhythm. Our western preoccupation with these very few dimensions of music is just one tiny local condition among the vast and varied traditions of the many musics of our planet.
"FREE JAZZ" & "FREE IMPROVISATION": I'm using the MIDI-guitar piano sound to simulate some of the musical shapes, feelings and lines that characterize some of the free jazz of the 60's. This is an intuitive process that is based on the many hours that I've spent listening to that music. In the free improvisation section, Jin Hi Kim and I are improvising in a completely free style as we attempt to construct our own musical language and structure as we play. On the first piece with the Korean changgo drum I am using something like a 1 second delay modulated by a random square wave to process my crazy wang- bar technique. On the second piece I'm sticking mostly with Derek Bailey type guitar vocabulary used in an extended Korean-Pan East Asian musical style.
DROPPED "D": My friend Bob Adams wrote the head for Dropped D at home on his porta-studio a few years ago. Andy and I especially enjoy each time that we play this tune. The head is a little difficult to execute but I think that you'll find that the music and TAB are very accurate. The head acts as a kind of launching pad for the improvisation which can go anywhere. Each time that I play this song it leads me to some new territory in rock improvisation.
SUGGESTED LISTENING/VIEWING/READING Here are some things that I know about that I'd like to suggest for you to check out. These listings are by no means complete and they are in pretty much of a random order. These are all people/things that I love and have been influenced by. I could talk for a minimum of a half-hour and play you five minutes worth of guitar for every single name, country, style or book listed below. VARIOUS GUITARISTS:Harvey Mandel, John Fahey, Jerry Garcia, Danny Gatton, Billy Gibbons, Robbie Robertson, Ry Cooder, George Van Eps, Jim Hall, David Torn, Bill Frisell, Gabby Pahinui, Raymand Kane, Amos Garrett, James Burton, Bo Diddley, Jimmy Nolan, Pete Cosey, David Lindley, Bob Weir, Peter Green, Merle Travis, Jimmy Bryant, Clarence White, Dick Dale, John McLaughlin, Hank Garland, Randy California, John Abercrombie, Fred Marshall, Ralph Towner, Jimmie Webster, Terje Rypdal, Richard Thompson, Glenn Phillips, John Cipollina, Sekou Diabete, Brij Bhushan Kabra, Sonny Greenwich, Tisziji Munoz, Carlos Santana, Neil Young, Robbie Basho, Reeves Gabrels, Atta Issaics, Roy Nichols, Chuck Berry, Curtis Mayfield, Steve Cropper, Henry Vestine, Jerry Reed, Bola Sete, Speedy West, Jan Akkerman, J.J. Cale, Bob Adams, Grady Martin, Leo Nocentelli, Ollie Halsall, Allan Holdsworth, Jean-Paul Bourelly, Ray Russell, Phil Baugh, Sandy Bull, Davey Graham, Martin Carthy, Lonnie Mack, Mike Bloomfield, Joseph Spence, James Blackthorne, Pat Martino, Bob Brozman, Greg Ginn, Bruce Anderson, Larry Carlton, Larry Coryell, Les Paul, Scott Colby, Roy Buchanan, Junior Barnard, Albert Lee, Jerry McGhee, Eldon Shamblin, Jerry Donahue, Leo Kottke, Robben Ford, Joe Maphis, Scotty Moore, Don Rich, Elliot Ingber, Bill Harkleroad, Jeff Cotton, Frank Zappa, Shawn Lane, Ramon Montoya, Harold Kelling, Gabor Szabo, Peter Lang, Michael Hedges, Tisziji Munoz, Ernest Ranglin, Steve Kimock, Nels Cline, Chris Muir, etc.
BLUES GUITAR, urban and rural: Lonnie Johnson, Hubert Sumlin, Skip James, T-Bone Walker, Muddy Waters, Otis Rush, B.B. King, Albert King, Freddie King, Albert Collins, Jody Williams, John Lee Hooker, Guitar Slim, Wayne Bennett, Lafayette Thomas, Johnny Heartsman, Johnny Guitar Watson, Robert Pete Williams, Snooks Eaglin, Robert Willkins, Freddie Roulette, Tommy Johnson, Son House, Bukka White, Rev. Utah Smith, Fred McDowell, Blind Willie Johnson, Charlie Patton, Matt Murphey, Willie Brown, Lightnin' Hopkins, Buddy Guy, Tampa Red, Hound Dog Taylor, Brewer Phillips, Luther Tucker, James Ulmer, Robert Ward, Ali Farka Toure, Big Joe Williams, Tommy McClennan, Magic Sam, J.B. Lenoir, Billy Butler, Pat Hare, Clarence Gatemouth Brown, Rosetta Tharpe, Cal Green, Clarence Green, Robert Nighthawk, Pee Wee Crayton, Lowell Fulson, James Davis, William Robertson, etc.
WEIRD/EXPERIMENTAL/WILDLY INNOVATIVE GUITARISTS: Derek Bailey, Sonny Sharrock, Hans Reichel, Eliott Sharp, Davey Williams, Fred Frith, Keith Rowe, Eugene Chadbourne, Masayuki Takayanagi, Tomoko Itani, Dudkin Valeriy, Joe Morris, Jim O’Rourke, etc.
MODERN COMPOSERS: Bela Bartok, Duke Ellington, Conlon Nancarrow, Terry Riley, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Charles Ives, Harry Partch, Gyorgy Ligeti, Toru Takemitsu, Olivier Messiaen, Iannis Xenakis, Giacinto Scelsi, Anthony Braxton, Carl Ruggles, Henry Cowell, John Cage, Henry Brant, Charles Mingus, Ornette Coleman, etc.
FREE IMPROVISATION/FREE JAZZ: Evan Parker, Cecil Taylor, Steve Lacy, Albert Ayler, Sun Ra, Ornette Coleman, John Stevens, John Oswald, Han Benninck, Paul Lovens, Tony Oxley, Anthony Braxton, Toshinori Kondo, Peter Brotzman, Pharoah Sanders, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Revolutionary Ensemble, Greg Goodman, Rova Sax Quartet, Julius Hemphill, Leo Smith, Derek Bailey, George Lewis, Richard Teitelbaum, Archie Shepp, Mashiko Togashi, Paul Bley, Jan Garbarek, Barre Phillips, John Coltrane, Lol Coxhill, Steve Beresford, Charles K. Noyes, Sang-Won Park, Jin Hi Kim, Barry Guy, Oliver Lake, Hugh Davies, Jaime Muir, Ronald Shannon Jackson, Marilyn Crispell, Milford Graves, Sonny Rollins, etc.
WORLD MUSIC: After guitarists, most of my musical influences probably fall into this category. I have such a gigantic collection of music from all over our planet that it's a little difficult for me to decide where to begin and what to include. I could probably fill a booklet ten times this size with a list of recordings and still not tell you about everything that I'd like to direct your attention to. So I'll just give you a few pointers:
INDIA: Instruments: sarod, sitar, tabla, guitar, voice, sarangi, violin, shanai, vina, santoor, bansuri, etc. Artists: Ali Akbar Khan, Nikhil Bannerjee, Ashish Khan, Balachander, Vilayat Khan, Sabri Brothers, Dagar Brothers, Ali Brothers, Amjad Ali Khan, Prof. Jog, Halim Jaffer Khan, Zakir Hussain, Buddadev Das Gupta, Bismillah Khan, Brij Bhushan Kabra, Balaram Pathak, Sultan Khan, U. Srinivas, L. Shankar, Ram Narayan, Imrat Khan, Hariprasad Chaurasia, etc.
JAPAN: Instruments: biwa, gagaku orchestra, shakahachi, hotchiku, shamisen, koto, taiko drums, voice, etc.
VIETNAM: Instruments: danh tranh, spoons, voice, monochord, various lutes, etc.
KOREA: Instruments: kayagum, changgo, komungo, tanso, ajaeng, pook, court orchestra, royal ancestral shrine orchestra, voice, shinawi ensemble, samulnori drum ensemble, taegum, piri, haegum, etc.
AFRICA: Both the popular and traditional musics of the entire African continent are rich and varied beyond our wildest imaginings. The many different African popular electric guitar styles are a great untapped resource for listening and learning. Again, I could fill many books of this size with suggestions. Here are some of the countries whose musics you should be aware of: Zaire, Nigeria, Guinea, Burundi, Gambia, Mali, Madagascar, Zanzibar, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Togo, Benin, Mauritania, Niger, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Gabon, Chad, Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzaniya, Uganda, Sudan, Somalia, South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mozambique, Angola, etc. My record collection includes recordings from all of these places and I know thse musics very well. I use things that I've learned from them all the time.
THE MIDDLE EAST: Egypt, Nubia, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, Turkey, etc. Especially check out the Arabic lute, the oud. The Moslem/Arabic world has always had very rich classical and folk music traditions that you could spend many lifetimes studying.
EUROPE AND SCANDANAVIA: The British Isles, France, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Germany, etc.
ASIA AND THE SOVIET UNION: Russia, Mongolia, Khirghiz, Estonia, Latvia, Bulgaria, Roumania, Tajikistan, Azerbaidjan, The Ukraine, Kazakhistan, Armenia, Georgia, Uzbekistan, etc.
CHINA: One of the oldest musical cultures on the planet. The chin (a bridgeless zither), one of the most ancient stringed instruments in the world, is also one of my very favorite instruments. Sometimes it can sound kind of like a drunken slide guitar player playing together in a trio with a virtuoso fretless bass player and a harp player on an acid trip. The Chinese also have a great lute, called a pipa. I have spent many hours adapting the sounds and techniques of thse instruments to the guitar. Almost any record of traditional Chinese music is bound to be fairly interesting.
CENTRAL/SOUTH AMERICA: Mexico, The Carribean, Cuba, Guatemala, Peru, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Bolivia, etc.
SOME PLACES THAT I HAVE NOT MENTIONED YET: Burma, Tibet, Canada, USA, Inuit (eskimo) musics, Thailand, Cambodia, Java, Bali, Australia, New Guinea, The Philippines, Hawaii, Polynesia, Okinawa, etc...etc. As I typed the World Music section of this list I noticed that I know a surprising amount about all of the musics that I have mentioned. All of these musics have had a great deal of influence on my guitar style and the music that I play.
FILM DIRECTORS: I know that I'm just as influenced in my music by the films that I see as by the music that I listen to. Rhythm, timing, space, structure, emotion, color, and expression can all be studied in films for use in music. Some directors whose work I've especially enjoyed and been influenced by are: Akira Kurosawa, Andrey Tarkovsky, Jordan Belson, Preston Sturges, Sam Fuller, Douglas Sirk, Kon Ichikawa, Masahiro Shinoda, Ishiro Honda, Frank Tashlin, Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng, Art Clokey, Nagisa Oshima, Frank Capra, Masaki Kobayashi, Hiroshi Teshigahara, Michael Powell, Tex Avery, Hideo Gosha, Kihachi Okamoto, James Whitney, Michael Snow, Pat O'Neil, Leo McCary, The Fleischer Brothers, Satyajit Ray, Nicholas Ray, Anthony Mann, John Alton, Robert Altman, Robert Aldrich, John Ford, Ida Lupino, Douglas Sirk, Stanley Kubrick, Fritz Lang, Jacques Tournier, Billy Wilder, Robert Wise, Alan Resnais, Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, Werner Herzog, Francis Ford Coppolla, John Pierre Melville, Luis Bunuel, etc.
FICTION: Besides seeing two or three films per week, I somehow find the time to read a book every two or three days. About one-half of what I read is fiction. Here are a few authors whose fiction has greatly influenced my thoughts on music. Note that there are several science fiction authors here. Sometimes I think of experimental music as being comparable to both experimental fiction and science fiction. A science fiction author will often try to describe a new human or alien culture with very different, yet consistent rules and structure that he or she must create. Sometimes making up a new musical language can be like that. Samuel R. Delany, Jack Vance, Gene Wolfe, R.A. Lafferty, Patrick O’Brian, Jan Potocki, Lawrence Norfolk, Thomas Pynchon, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Philip K. Dick, Robert Heinlein, James Ellroy, Jim Thompson, Joanna Russ, Carlos Castaneda, Chester Himes, Diana Wynne Jones, Daniel Pinkwater, B. Traven, Edward Hoagland, Russell Hoban, David Lindsay, Arkady & Boris Strugatsky, etc.
SPECIFIC SUGGESTED READING: It is inspiring and educational to read biographies and critical studies of famous musicians from B.B. King to Eddie Van Halen to Iannis Xenakis. It is certainly useful to study method and theory books. However, in this list I'm trying to point out some fairly obscure books that you might never come across on your own. My reading of these books has helped me to create the ways that I think about music and music making. Many of these books are not directly about music. But if you listen to me play, the music that you will here will have been radically affected by some of the things that I have learned here. Some of these books are fairly expensive and difficult to find. I suggest that you try a large library, particularly a university library. Many of these books are old and valued friends and it is my pleasure to introduce them to you.:
Musics of Many Cultures, edited by Elizabeth May, University of California Press, 1980. Twenty essays on different musics of our planet: China, Korea, Japan, Thailand, India, Indonesia, Polynesia, Australia, Africa, Iran, Alaska, South America, etc. This can turn you on to many new musical sounds, ideas and feelings. Useful discographies and bibliographies are included.
Improvisation - Its Nature and Practice in Music, by Derek Bailey, Moorland, 1980. Improvisation is one of the most widely practiced and yet least documented and understood aspects of music. This excellent volume is the only book that I know of that discusses improvisation in any kind of philosophical detail. It includes interviews on this subject with musicians from many different styles: Indian, flamenco, baroque, classical organ, rock (Steve Howe) and jazz. Bailey gives a very good history of the British-European free improvisation movement of the 60's and 70's that inspired me to pick up guitar. Unfortunately this book is now out-of-print. So, try your library for it. You might be able to get it by mail from Derek Bailey, 14 Downs Road, London E5, England.
Sound Structure in Music, by Robert Erickson, University of California Press, 1975. There are countless books on the subjects of melody, harmony and rhythm. This is about the only generally readable book that I know of on the subject of an area of music that is just as important: timbre. This book helped provide a framework for a lot of my thoughts on this subject. What is the exact difference between the guitar sounds of Hubert Sumlin, Otis Rush and Albert Collins? What is the difference between a note, a chord, a sound and a noise? Why does it mean something very different when Albert King and Eric Clapton both bend an A up to a C#? How can I make my solo guitar playing sound like a large orchestra? These are the kind of thoughts that this book encouraged for me. Very inspiring but also a bit academic and orientated towards 20th century classical music.
Mind Tools - The Five Levels of Mathematical Reality, by Rudy Rucker, Houghton Mifflin, 1987, The Mathematical Tourist, by Ivars Peterson, Freeman, 1988 & Silicon Dreams, by Dr. Robert Lucky, St. Martins, 1989. I was one of those kids who enjoyed mathematics a lot in school. If you hated math you might not like these books. They are full of clear explanations for the general reader of what is happening on the far frontiers of mathematics today. The emphasis of Mind Tools and Silicon Dreams is on a fairly new branch of math/science called information theory. The "thought tools" of information theory have proven to be very useful to me for thinking about and making music. To me, all music that I have heard is just one tiny drop from an infinite ocean of music that could be. Reading these books could give you a good handle on how to think about what music might be in the depths or on distant shores of that ocean. There are many books that directly relate math and music. Godel Escher Bach by Douglas Hofstadter, for instance, is a popular book that I do not recommend. I find its ideas to be extremely culture bound and limited.
The Science of Musical Sound, by John R. Pierce, Scientific American Library, 1983. The scientific view of music. The basic physics and mathematics of music are set forth in this well-illustrated volume. The author is a professor at Bell Laboratories who was involved with the first computer-generation of music about 25 years ago. If you are getting into MIDI and synthesizers/samplers, then this would be an excellent book to read to get an overall understanding of the scientific views of what music and sound are.
Grammatical Man - Information, Entropy, Language and Life, by Jeremy Campbell, Touchstone-Simon and Schuster, 1982. An excellent, popularized introduction to information theory as mentioned above. Some sections on the structure of language that relate well to the structure of music. Some interesting discussions of music, too. I suspect that information theory and music will become a very fashionable subject during the 1990's. I was exposed to information theory at the same time that I started to play guitar in the early 70's. I have thought about music from this point of view from the very first day that I picked up a guitar in 1972 and still information theory completely colors the way that I think of music today.
Mind and Nature, by Gregory Bateson, Bantam, 1980. This book is concerned with Bateson's theory that how we think and learn is governed by the same sort of system that governs the evolution of ecology of all life on earth. I like to compare systems and this book provides interesting system models to apply to art and music. Since the human mind produces music, it is interesting to look at how it might work and think about how that affects music. While directed towards a general audience this book is a challenging pleasure to read. It certainly challenged my assumptions about many things.
The Lore of the Chinese Lute, by R.H. Van Gulik, Sophia-Tuttle, 1969. The chin or Chinese lute of this volume has the most sophisticated and varied right hand picking techniques of any instrument that I know. I have applied a lot of this book's information directly to guitar technique.
Micromotives and Macrobehavior, by Thomas C. Schelling, Norton, 1978. I took a course from this guy in College. It was probably worth more than all of the time that I spent in all my other classes combined. He deals with a special area of his own where economics meets human behavior meets unanticipated results. How does behavior in the aggregate become more than the sum of simple individual behavior? How do a group of musicians playing and improvising together create music that transcends their individual contributions? Why are artists who nobody likes so popular? Why does the music industry behave the ways that it does...often in ways that are bad for music? This work, for me, provides an interestingly different starting point for discussing such subjects (while of course the book never mentions music).
The Society of Mind, by Marvin Minsky, Simon and Schuster, 1986. Minsky is one of the chief pioneers in the development of artificial intelligence in computer science. In this book he attempts a unified theory of the mind and the nature of thought. It can also be looked at as a new conception of human psychology. Some possible unifying concepts for all that has been discussed above are provided here.
Does God Play Dice? :The Mathematics of Chaos, by Ian Stewart, Blackwell, 1989. Fractal mathematics, something very important to me since the late 70's is suddenly becoming very fashionable. For me this is probably even more relevant to the music of the future than information theory. This is by far the best, and most accessable book that I know of on chaos and fractals.
Laws of Form, by G. Spencer Brown, Julian, 1972.
Wholeness and the Implicate Order, by David Bohm, Ark, 1980.
System and Structure, by Anthony Wilden, Tavistock, 1980.
Noise, The Political Economy of Music, by Jacques Attali, Minnesota, 1977.
Music and Trance, by Gilbert Rouget, Chicago, 1985.
The Wellsprings of Music, by Curt Sachs, Da Capo, 1962.
Lexicon of Musical Invective, by Nicholas Slonimsky, Washington, 1953.
Science, Order and Creativity, by David Bohm and F. David Peat, Bantam, 1989.
Engines of Creation, by K. Eric Drexler, Anchor, 1986.
On Filmmaking, by Edward Dymtryk, Focal Press, 1986.
The American Shore, by Samuel R. Delany, Dragon Press, 1978.
Essays on Korean Traditional Music, by Hye-Ku Lee, Royal Asiatic Society, 1981.
Forces in Motion,
The Music and Thoughts of Anthony Braxton, by Graham Lock, DaCapo, 1988.
King of the Delta Blues (Charlie Patton), by Stephen Calt and Gayle Wardlow, Rock Chapel, 1988.
Angels Fear, by Gregory Bateson and Mary Catherine Bateson, Bantam, 1988.
Quantum Questions, edited by Ken Wilber, New Science Library, 1984.
The Evolution of Individuality, by Leo Buss, Princeton, 1987.
Choice and Consequence, by Thomas Schelling, Harvard, 1984.
Probability and Scientific Inference, by G. Spencer Brown, Longmans, Green & Company, 1957.
Turbulent Mirror, by John Briggs and F. David Peat, Harper Row, 1989.
Painting With Light, by John Alton, Macmillan, 1950.
Tri-Axium Writings, by Anthony Braxton, Synthesis Music, 1985.
Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema, by David Bordwell, Princeton, 1988.
Standing in the Shadows of Motown, by Dr. Licks, Hal Leonard, 1989.
Genesis of a Music, by Harry Partch, Da Capo, 1974.
The Advancing Guitarist, by Mick Goodrick, Hal Leonard, 1987.
Music and Trance, by Gilbert Rouget, Chicago, 1985.
Information Mechanics, by Frederick Kantor, Wiley, 1977.
The Fractal Geometry of Nature, by Benoit Mandelbrot, W. Freeman, 1982.
Sculpting in Time, by Andrey Tarkovsky, Knopf, 1987.
20th Century Masters of Fingerstyle Guitar, by Stropes an Lang, Stropes, 1982.
The Guitar Book, by Pierre Bensusan, Hal Leonard, 1985.
The Problems of Mathematics, by Ian Stewart, Oxford, 1987.
Sound and Sentiment, by Steven Feld, Pennsylvania, 1982.
Introducing the Dots, by Dave Stewart, Blandford, 1982.
I strongly recommend that you read ALL articles in the various guitar magazines; especially articles about people/styles that you think you're not interested in! I always follow this practice and I'm always eventually glad that I do.
| |
