Brubeck, Joyce, and the Relationship that Exists...

Years ago, when I was living in Chicago, there was  an elderly blues-man who often played acoustic guitar  in a coffee house in my neighborhood—I am sorry to say that I can’t remember his name. He began and ended every set with the song, “I’ll Fly Away.”

He wasn’t flashy either with his singing or his guitar playing, but he was always engaging and never failed to get his audience tapping their feet and clapping their hands to his music. His power emanated from his rhythm, though, on the face of it, he did not seem to do anything that was not characteristic of blues.

Other players, myself included, used these same rhythms, yet could not elicit the same response from our audiences—and I, for one, wondered why. I wondered what he had, or what he did, that we didn’t. I came to the conclusion that it was not what he had, but where he had it that made all the difference. I concluded that while I had the rhythms in my head, he had the rhythms in his body. I reasoned that since human beings respond to rhythm with their bodies, not with their minds, then if the rhythms came from a performer’s body, then it would be that which would make the difference—would give their rhythms power.

What does it mean to have the rhythm in the body? I decided that it was the body that had to understand the rhythm and that  being able to count and play a rhythm did not mean that the body understood it.

For decades I have been a full-time professional musician—performer and teacher. My studio is my laboratory. It is there that I study myself and my students in order to make us all better musicians. One thing that has become clear to me is that for the average student, rhythm is one of the last pieces to be fit into the matrix of their music. Again, I am not speaking about being able to count and play the rhythms, this ability usually develops pretty rapidly with traditional musical work, but to get the body to really understand rhythm and convey its power through the music takes a different kind of work—a different kind of awareness.

I think that James Joyce in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was on to something when he said, “Rhythm is the relationship that exists between the whole and its parts; between any part and the whole; and between any part and any other part within the whole.”

The important word here, the key to his definition, is the word relationship. Rhythm is relationship and for a relationship to exist there needs to be at least two—two sounds, two people, two things.  Rhythm in music can thus be understood as the relationship that exists between a piece of music and every sound that makes up that music; between every sound and every other sound within that music; and also the relationship that exists between every sub-phrase and every phrase and even every chord within the whole piece of music.

The greatness of Joyce’s definition of rhythm is that it is not limited to the relationships that exist between the relative duration of different sounds in music; it can also be applied to the relationships that exist between the pitches of those sounds, and all of the distinctions of timbre and dynamics also. His definition applies also to painting, sculpture, dance, poetry, in fact, everything and anything that is made up of more than one thing—and perhaps even to all that appears to be only one thing when we consider that one can always be in relation to nothing.

And what is the basis of all rhythm—of all relationships? It is the self. What we understand as the self, ourselves, is the beginning of every relationship we contemplate, and to neglect this truth is to render any study of rhythm and relationship a non sequitur.

Please listen to this recording by the Dave Brubeck Quartet of Unsquare Dance in 7/4 time from his epic recording Time Further Out ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDB4K5zCcfk ).

Dave Brubeck, like the old bluesman, like James Joyce’s poetry and prose, had his rhythms in his body. He, like them, and the many others not mentioned here in this blog, communicated their rhythms in a very powerful way to others. They all inspire me, and hopefully, my music too, and that of the student’s also with whom I have the privilege to work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igRMwiKPLrU&feature=youtube_gdata

                                                                                                © copyright Michael Kovitz, 2016

When a Sound is more than a Sound

What do Shamsuddin Farid Desai, John Coltrane, Toru Takemitsu, and Jimi Hendrix have in common?

The answer is that one cannot understand their music without being appreciative of sound. Of course all music is made of sound, but knowing that is not the same as being aware of it. You walk into a room and someone asks you if you were aware of walking into the room. You think back and remembering the entrance way and the fact that you were previously outside and that now you are inside, you answer, “Yes, yes I was aware of entering the room.”—but this is not necessarily true. Remembering that you did something is not a guarantee that you were aware of what you were doing at the time. And knowing that you just listened to this or that piece of music is not a guarantee that you were, at the time, aware of sound.

Sound, what is it? Let’s first  take a look at a sound, a single sound. A sound is not a note. Nobody hears notes. Note is, in fact, an abbreviation for notation—an indication of two aspects of a sound—pitch and duration. Notation works well in a system in which sounds with specific pitches and specific durations are used to create and express concrete musical forms—a music in which individual sounds are combined in various way to create forms. In this kind of music the sound is often subservient to what it creates.

But the music of Shamsuddin Farid Desai, John Coltrane, Toru Takemitsu, and Jimi Hendrix make sound itself equal to, or even superior to, what the combinations of sounds produce. For musicians like these, a single sound can have more than one pitch and duration of these sounds often cannot be measured out on a grid defined by a time signature. Also, from the timbrel point of view, sounds previously considered non-musical are sometimes embraced by musicians and composers. Want some concrete examples?

The Star Spangled Banner – Jimi Hendrix  –  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjzZh6-h9fM

Raga Yaman – Shamsuddin Farid Desai  –  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9L9YrMuXuI

Impressions (India) – John Coltrane  –  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSViN6lwGKU

From me flows what you call Time – Toru Takemitsu – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWipy3Q6gAI

A soundician is someone who works with sound. Not all soundicians are musicians and not all musicians are soundicians. But, it is my opinion, that the best musicians are also soundicians. Without an awareness of, and a feeling for, the living quality of sound, music seems somehow flat to me—like wallpaper—somehow two-dimensional instead of three—or four.

Technique is not only a matter of fingers or lips and tongues, and physical training can go only so far. Real technique results from a striving to create sound in accordance with one’s musical vision. To accomplish this, instruments are sometimes stretched to their limits and when they can stretch no further they are modified or replaced. Can the same be said for the ones who play them?