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ryanpow
Yeah, I think it pretty much clears everything up on this question.
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TheflyingDutchman
I listened to a few sessions and didn't hear any verbal communication. Seems impossible to judge who instructed what to play. Sounds like "Deuce" to me.
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LongBeachArena72
--Being in the studio with those guys must have been gut-wrenchingly tedium punctuated by intermittent moments of elevation. The songs are just not that complex to begin with and the interminable "takes" required for them to bash the initial ideas into songs is mind-boggling.
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DandelionPowdermanQuote
TheflyingDutchman
I listened to a few sessions and didn't hear any verbal communication. Seems impossible to judge who instructed what to play. Sounds like "Deuce" to me.
Call in sick for a few days and listen through it all
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Palace Revolution 2000
I can understand perfectly how 'Satanic Sessions' is torturous boredom for most people. And it is not something I'd listen to for "pleasure". But I am very happy it exists, and it is fascinating to me. Sections of e.g. "The Lantern". They were writing the song as production wore on, as studio time was adding up.
But I find Lewisohn's book of Beatles sessionography spellbinding reading..
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His Majesty
The stones are essentially amateur level musicians taking their interests and trying to make something of their own from them.
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peoplewitheyes
If you want to observe (well, with your ears) a pop musician with a head full of melodies and the ability to convey them to his musicians, you should check out many of the studio recording sessions of Brian Wilson. A great example (among many) being the Pet Sounds stuff.
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His Majesty
The stones are essentially amateur level musicians taking their interests and trying to make something of their own from them.
Satanic Sessions is interesting, but it is also comical how many takes they need to get things right. The Beatles are just as bad.
Winging it.
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LongBeachArena72Quote
Palace Revolution 2000
I can understand perfectly how 'Satanic Sessions' is torturous boredom for most people. And it is not something I'd listen to for "pleasure". But I am very happy it exists, and it is fascinating to me. Sections of e.g. "The Lantern". They were writing the song as production wore on, as studio time was adding up.
But I find Lewisohn's book of Beatles sessionography spellbinding reading..
You know, in spite of some of my snarky comments, ultimately I enjoyed them, too. There are nuggets in the midst of the tedium, for sure.
I've been reading a lot about Bach over the past year or so. What little is known about his actual method of composition is so different from what most rock bands do. Many 'classical' composers, for instance, find it a sign of limited talent to have to be chained to an instrument while you compose. You should be able to 'hear' your piece in your mind's ear as it develops and record that 'hearing' on paper the way a novelist would 'record' his or her words. Aaron Copland, for example, referred to an instrument-based method of composing as being 'chained to an instrument.'
(Because he was an unbelievable keyboard virtuoso and master of improvisation (the Hendrix of the organ in his day), Bach would apparently occasionally stop composing on paper and move over to an instrument in order to check that what he was writing was 'playable' by mere mortals.)
Many things separate rock musicians from timeless geniuses like Bach, and it's ultimately probably not terribly useful to compare them, but one thing stands out for me in the context of this discussion: the ability to invent music and carry loooooong stretches of complex music in their heads, to be able to hear very precisely what it is they want and then to transcribe that onto paper.
I'm not saying that this was an instantaneous process. I'm sure even the greatest composers labored long hours trying to come up with new ideas. But once they were on the trail, it seems they had an uncanny ability to make complicated music out of those ideas with the stroke of a pen.
I was imagining Bach and Mozart and Stravinsky and Copland hanging around during the Satanic Sessions and not really having any idea what those dudes were on about. They might have been just as likely to have imagined that the band were performing carpentry as making music! (Not making a judgement here on whether they would have liked the sounds; just commenting on how foreign the process is likely to have seemed to them.)
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Palace Revolution 2000Quote
LongBeachArena72Quote
Palace Revolution 2000
I can understand perfectly how 'Satanic Sessions' is torturous boredom for most people. And it is not something I'd listen to for "pleasure". But I am very happy it exists, and it is fascinating to me. Sections of e.g. "The Lantern". They were writing the song as production wore on, as studio time was adding up.
But I find Lewisohn's book of Beatles sessionography spellbinding reading..
You know, in spite of some of my snarky comments, ultimately I enjoyed them, too. There are nuggets in the midst of the tedium, for sure.
I've been reading a lot about Bach over the past year or so. What little is known about his actual method of composition is so different from what most rock bands do. Many 'classical' composers, for instance, find it a sign of limited talent to have to be chained to an instrument while you compose. You should be able to 'hear' your piece in your mind's ear as it develops and record that 'hearing' on paper the way a novelist would 'record' his or her words. Aaron Copland, for example, referred to an instrument-based method of composing as being 'chained to an instrument.'
(Because he was an unbelievable keyboard virtuoso and master of improvisation (the Hendrix of the organ in his day), Bach would apparently occasionally stop composing on paper and move over to an instrument in order to check that what he was writing was 'playable' by mere mortals.)
Many things separate rock musicians from timeless geniuses like Bach, and it's ultimately probably not terribly useful to compare them, but one thing stands out for me in the context of this discussion: the ability to invent music and carry loooooong stretches of complex music in their heads, to be able to hear very precisely what it is they want and then to transcribe that onto paper.
I'm not saying that this was an instantaneous process. I'm sure even the greatest composers labored long hours trying to come up with new ideas. But once they were on the trail, it seems they had an uncanny ability to make complicated music out of those ideas with the stroke of a pen.
I was imagining Bach and Mozart and Stravinsky and Copland hanging around during the Satanic Sessions and not really having any idea what those dudes were on about. They might have been just as likely to have imagined that the band were performing carpentry as making music! (Not making a judgement here on whether they would have liked the sounds; just commenting on how foreign the process is likely to have seemed to them.)
You bring up several interesting points, as usual.
Very often I sit and imagine scenarios where Beethoven walks into a modern recording session; the mind f*ck.
But the real fascinating point you raise is " the ability to invent music and carry loooooong stretches of complex music in their heads, to be able to hear very precisely what it is they want and then to transcribe that onto paper.
I THINK in the case of Bach (and you kind of make that point yourself) is that it wasn't so much an abstract piece of art in his head, that needed to be transcribed, but more a rational set of mathematics, of theorems, that were constructed on paper; maybe as an expression of dynamics, or of balance. This particular expression was so ingenious that it was then played on a piano.
Studying Bach, the words "this is like high math" are often uttered.
So I'm saying it might be the other way around: not in his head, and then on paper, but from paper into his head.
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hopkins
well those are fascinating questions and I don't have any answers.but this really informs my perspective and inspires me.
I was also thinking that very very many of the great composers of the 20th century were teams.
...the brill building foundationally created rock and roll as much as any other source of material. Leiber Stoller Etc. even all the great guys that Dylan is covering, and that Sinatra covered, will many times be teams of writers.
Even if it was bitter parody, Lennon and McCartney were always working off of each other, even after they went solo.
They were writing songs about each other and to each other.
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LongBeachArena72Quote
GasLightStreet
Listen to bootlegs of unfinished songs and you'll hear Mick (usually) going off on some kind of vocalling that doesn't necessarily have words but has a melody. Hell, you can hear that on released songs.
The melody is not strictly the writing of the song. Brown Sugar is a great example. The melody, as we know it, is how the lyric runs and up and down and then the chorus - but the music dictates. Then there are songs where the music melody (the chime that you would sing or hum in the shower) is the melody - Beast Of Burden is a perfect example.
I'm not sure I understand this. How is the creation of the melody not part of the songwriting process? There's an instrumental component, which can be transcribed/notated, and then there's the vocal line. Sometimes these overlap and even, as you indicate, in some cases are the same. But when they are not the same, the melody is 'invented' as surely as the initial chords which form the instrumental basis of the song, no? Or is it somehow a 'lesser' musical achievement to create a vocal melody to accompany an instrumental passage?
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GasLightStreetQuote
LongBeachArena72Quote
GasLightStreet
Listen to bootlegs of unfinished songs and you'll hear Mick (usually) going off on some kind of vocalling that doesn't necessarily have words but has a melody. Hell, you can hear that on released songs.
The melody is not strictly the writing of the song. Brown Sugar is a great example. The melody, as we know it, is how the lyric runs and up and down and then the chorus - but the music dictates. Then there are songs where the music melody (the chime that you would sing or hum in the shower) is the melody - Beast Of Burden is a perfect example.
I'm not sure I understand this. How is the creation of the melody not part of the songwriting process? There's an instrumental component, which can be transcribed/notated, and then there's the vocal line. Sometimes these overlap and even, as you indicate, in some cases are the same. But when they are not the same, the melody is 'invented' as surely as the initial chords which form the instrumental basis of the song, no? Or is it somehow a 'lesser' musical achievement to create a vocal melody to accompany an instrumental passage?
When Mick talks about writing melodies he means vocal lines. That's not necessarily "the melody". For example, Start Me Up's melody is what? The riff; its vocal melody is "If you start me up"... which mostly coincides with... the riff melody.
But back to what you specifically asked: think about Time Waits For No One. One could argue it doesn't have a melody ala a defined melody like Beast Of Burden or Start Me Up. Granted, the sound the guitars make is "the melody" but it's not exactly "the melody" of the singing.
So that's what Mick meant when he said he needed to "write melodies" for the leftover tracks for EM and TY - they didn't have vocal melodies, in which it may not always stick to the music melody.
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DandelionPowderman
Harmonies and musical details might be provided or suggested by the producer.
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GasLightStreetQuote
DandelionPowderman
Harmonies and musical details might be provided or suggested by the producer.
Or band members or backing vocalists.
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DandelionPowdermanQuote
GasLightStreetQuote
DandelionPowderman
Harmonies and musical details might be provided or suggested by the producer.
Or band members or backing vocalists.
Exactly.