“cheap thrills” stack up the notes how swede it is one
TRANSCRIPT
MONTHLY
VOL.14 • NO.2
NOV2016
“CHEAP THRILLS”A CLOSER LOOK AT SIA’S BIGGEST HIT
STACK UP THE NOTES
HOW TO CREATE
POLYCHORDS
HOW SWEDE IT ISTHE NORDIC FORMULA BEHIND TODAY’S POP
BASTILLENovember 2016
$3.99 Vol. 14 • No. 2
UPC 8 8 4 0 8 8 5 4 7 5 4 7
THE YOUNG MUSICIAN’S TEXTBOOK
✦ Six Rules for Co-Writers✦ Classical Piano Legend Glenn Gould✦ Trumpet Embouchure Explained✦ Kaleo, Alessia Cara, the Listening List, and More!
BASTILLEOne man’s music project becomes
a full band—and creates a Wild World
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4 FROM THE EDITOR
7 MUSIC NEWS AND MEDIA l A history bonanza in Washington, D.C. ... From the subway to the studio for a New York singer … Robert Randolph helps remake the steel guitar ... plus books, videos, and more!
12 FRONTRUNNER l Kaleo, St. Paul & the Broken Bones, Joseph, H.E.R., and the Listening List
14 ICON l Classical pianist Glenn Gould
16 WRITE STUFF l Six suggestions for co-writing
18 PLAYERS l Bassist Nathan East
20 INFLUENCES l Alessia Cara
44 WHAT DO YOU DO? l Paul “TFO” Allen, MD
46 HOW IT WORKS l Trumpet embouchure
22 TECHNIQUES: POLYCHORDSA polychord is created by stacking one chord on top of another. Sound like fun? Then you’ll definitely want to
check out these music examples. BY ADAM PERLMUTTER
28 MADE IN SWEDENHow on earth did a few guys in a sparsely populated Scandinavian country end up creating the writing and
production method that dominates today’s pop music? Through skill, coincidence, and a little “melodic math.” BY ROB KEMP
36 FROM BEDROOM TO BRIGHT LIGHTSIn college, Dan Smith was perfectly content writing and recording songs by himself on his laptop. But a lucky
break forced him out of isolation and led him to form Bastille, now one of Britain’s most successful bands. BY MELINDA NEWMAN
41 MODERN BAND: “CHEAP THRILLS”It’s been a smash for Sia, but it wasn’t meant for her to record. Learn who was originally supposed to sing
“Cheap Thrills,” and get tips on how to play the song. BY ERIN O’HARE
THE LISTENING LIST Stream all 10 tracks from the November 2016 In Tune Listening List. intunemonthly.com/list
GOULD MINE A deeper look at the fascinating life, work, and opinions of Glenn Gould, with a quiz attached.
intunemonthly.com/gould
SWEDISH HITSFind out more about modern pop’s unlikely home, and take a quiz to see how much you’ve learned.
intunemonthly.com/sweden
THE THRILL IS ONWant to play Sia’s “Cheap Thrills” yourself? Modern Band charts for a variety of instruments are here.
intunemonthly.com/modern-band
Bastille
Nathan East
DEPARTMENTS
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November 2016 bonus content includes more info on Bastille, along with lessons, performance videos, audio playlists, and more.
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Some subscriptions to In Tune are donated to NAfME: The National Association for Music Education for distribution to music educators.
W hen I was in high school, I spent a lot of time alone playing guitar, writing songs, and making demos of those songs on a four-track cassette recorder. All that time on my own was crucial to my development as a
musician and songwriter. But a funny thing happened when I presented my songs to the band I was in at the time. The guys in the band would play their parts differently from what I’d recorded on the demo. Sometimes they’d even come up with new parts. The music no longer sounded the way it did in my head when I was writing it. And m ost of the time, I must confess, it sounded better.
From this experience, I learned that working in a group transforms music. I also learned that you need to give everyone in the group room to contribute, because you never know who might come up with something amazing.
The popular music world provides further evidence of this lesson every day. In the past two decades, the average number of songwriters for any given hit on the Billboard charts has doubled from two to four. That’s largely due to the rapid rise of a team-oriented approach to pop songwriting and production that came into being in, of all places, Sweden. You can read more about it in our “Made in Sweden” feature—and if that story gets you interested in forming your own writing team, check out our Write Stuff column, which offers some helpful tips about co-writing. Other things you can do a lot better with a large group include experimenting with arrangements and harmonies; turn to our Techniques feature about polychords, and to our Modern Band feature on playing Sia’s “Cheap Thrills,” for some cool ideas in that domain.
Sure, working as a solo act can be rewarding on many levels. But there’s a lot to be said for joining the group.
Join Together With the Band
Mac RandallEditor-in-Chief
MONTHLY
APRIL 2016VOL.13 • NO.7
ALL ABOUTAFROPOP
RULE FROM THE THRONE!THE SAVVY DRUMMER
GRAMMYS SCHOOLSTUDENTS’ WEEK WITH MUSIC’S ELITE
ED SHEERAN
April 2016 $3.99 Vol. 13 • No. 7UPC 8 8 4 0 8 8 5 4 7 5 2 3
THE YOUNG MUSICIAN’S TEXTBOOK
✦ Trombone tales✦ A lesson in lyrics✦ The national anthem in the arena✦ Meghan Trainor, St. Vincent, and the Listening List
ED SHEERANStardom as a one-man band all started with a plan.
[ ]F R O M T H E E D I T O R ’ S D E S K
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Mac Randall
SENIOR ART DIRECTOR & PRODUCTION MANAGER
Michael R. Vella
ART DIRECTOR Jackie Jordan
CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Mona Kornfeld
CIRCULATION MANAGER Tia Levinson
ASSOCIATE EDITOR Kate Koenig
CONTRIBUTORS
Bill DeMain, Alex Gallinari, Peter Gerstenzang, Paul Irwin, Rob Kemp, Erin O’Hare, Adam
Perlmutter, Melinda Newman, Bryan Reesman, Michael Ross, Emma Stoneberg
EDITORIAL CONTACT [email protected]
In Tune Partners, LLCIRWIN KORNFELD
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
WILL EDWARDSPRESIDENT
ANGELO BIASIC0-FOUNDER
EMILE MENASCHÉEDITOR-AT-LARGE
BARBARA B. BOUGHTONBUSINESS MANAGER
SPECIAL THANKS TO:
The National Association for Music Education
Little Kids Rock
The Association for Popular Music Education
For advertising inquiries:
In Tune Monthly (ISSN # 1554-4370) is published eight times each
year, from October through May, by In Tune Partners, LLC, 582 North
Broadway, White Plains, NY 10603, Fax 914-741-1136, Phone
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In Tune is independently owned and operated. No part of this publica-tion may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the pub-lisher. In Tune Monthly ©2016 by In Tune Partners, LLC, 582 North Broadway, White Plains, NY 10603. Although In Tune Monthly makes every effort to research the claims, statistics, technical facts and other assertions of its writers, the information and content provided in this magazine are for general information purposes only and its owner and contributors make NO WARRANTIES of any kind, express or implied. Any reliance you place on such information is therefore strictly at your own risk. In no event will the contributors and owner of this magazine be liable for any loss or damage including without limitation, indirect or consequential loss or damage, or any loss or damage whatsoever arising out of use of this magazine. Distributed to the music trade by Hal Leonard Corporation.
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After more than a decade of planning and construction, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC)
opened its doors to the public for the first time on September 24. Housing a treasure trove of nearly 37,000 objects created and gathered over 400 years, it occupies the � nal undeveloped museum site on Washington, D.C.’s National Mall, right next to the Washington Monument. “This national museum helps to tell a richer and fuller story of who we are,” President Obama said at the opening ceremony. “By knowing this other story, we better understand ourselves and each other.”
A major part of that story is musical, and although there are many reasons to visit the new museum, principal among them are the galleries on its fourth floor that focus on African-American music and musicians. There you can see plenty of artifacts that relate to famous artists or events: a trumpet played by jazz innovator Louis Armstrong;
classical singer Marian Anderson’s out� t for a 1939 performance at the Lincoln Memorial (given after she had been barred from Washington’s Constitution Hall because of her race); rock ’n’ roll pioneer Chuck Berry’s cherry red Cadillac; the fedora Michael Jackson wore onstage for the 1984 Victory Tour. But there’s also room for less well-known pieces of history. For example, a section of one gallery is devoted to Death,
an all-black trio from Detroit that was barely recognized during its lifetime in the 1970s but
is now hailed as an important precursor of the punk rock movement.
Fittingly, the NMAAHC’s opening was celebrated with a free three-day music festival on the National Mall. More than two dozen artists took part, including hip-hop acts Public Enemy and
the Roots, the rock quartet Living Colour, New Orleans’ Preservation Hall Jazz Band, the a cappella group Sweet Honey in the Rock, and singer/songwriter Meshell Ndegeocello. Find out more about the museum, its exhibits, and its mission at intunemonthly.com/nmaahc.
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Taking the Subway to FameA busker is a person who performs in a public space for spare change. Alice Tan Ridley has been one for more than 30 years, singing R&B music in the stations of New York City’s subway system —and using what she earned there to help raise her children, who include Oscar-nominated actress Gabourey Sidibe. In 2010, Ridley gained wider attention when she made it to the semifi nals of America’s Got Talent. The experi-ence prompted her to pursue a lifelong dream of recording and releasing her own music, raising money via the Kickstarter crowd-funding website. Now, at
age 63, Ridley has a debut album at last, called Never Lost My Way, but she still plans to keep on singing in the subway. “When I was no longer down under there, I missed it,” she told The New York Times. intunemonthly.com/subway
In Tune Monthly • November 2016 7 intunemonthly.com
D.C. Museum Opening Brings Music to the Mall
The Roots’ Damon Bryson (on Sousaphone) and Public Enemy’s Chuck D (below) performed during the opening weekend of the Smithsonian’s new museum (right).
D.C. Museum Opening D.C. Museum Opening Brings Music to the Mall Brings Music to the Mall Brings Music to the Mall D.C. Museum Opening Brings Music to the Mall D.C. Museum Opening D.C. Museum Opening Brings Music to the Mall D.C. Museum Opening D.C. Museum Opening Brings Music to the Mall Not for
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news[ ]
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Analog Meets Digital—and Mobile
Lesson Link Online Lessons We Like
As recently as 2005, the vinyl record industry was, for all intents and purposes, dead—overshadowed first by the CD, then the MP3, then the Internet. Fast forward 11 years, and the medium is at its highest selling point since 1988. Complementing its return to popularity is the Rock ’N’ Rolla, a portable turntable compacted into a small briefcase, harking back to the days when the word “mobile” referred not to telephones but to anything sporting a handle. Not just a record player, the Rock ’N’ Rolla comes with Bluetooth capabilities, auxiliary ports for MP3-playing devices, and a USB port for digitizing your vinyl and saving the files on a thumb drive. It’s available in three models, two of which include a rechargeable lithium battery pack, and one of which even features a hidden CD player—for those who may want the sleek design but don’t have the vinyl collection to play on it! myrocknrolla.com
Forty-four years ago, San Francisco singer/songwriter Terry Dolan went into the studio to record his first solo album. His band consisted of all-stars from the 1960s Bay Area scene, including members of the Steve Miller Band, the Pointer Sisters, players for the Rolling Stones and the Kinks, and future founders of the ’70s arena rock group Journey. Rather than launching Dolan to stardom, however, the album was canceled without explanation by his label two months before its release date. Dolan, who later formed the long-running band Terry and the Pirates, passed away in 2012. But on November 25, High Moon Records will release his long-forgotten self-titled debut—which
Rolling Stone’s David Fricke calls “a historic gem … that might have sealed his reputation.” intunemonthly.com/dolan
Robert Randolph Is Set in Steel
Robert Randolph has been named one of Rolling Stone’s “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.” But
unlike most of the other people on that list, his main instrument is the steel guitar, which has traditionally required its players to sit down while playing it. That’s no longer the case,
however. Randolph has collaborated with instrument manufacturers Peavey to produce a more versatile
and ergonomic type of steel, the Robert Randolph Signature PowerSlide—which you can play in many positions, no chair required. peavey.com
Dis•tor•tion n Alteration of a sound wave, often through high volume
EXAMPLE: Distortion sounds “crunchy.” Some-times this is unpleasant, but it can add richness to the tone of certain ampli-fied instruments.
What’s theWORD
Singer’s Acclaimed Solo Debut Is More than 40 Years Late
Avoiding Practice PotholesIn this month’s lesson, guitarist Nate Savage of GuitarLessons.com sheds light on some common practicing mistakes, from basic technique that may not be obvious to beginners to tips on how to be a conscientious and creative musician. Any instrumental-ist can take this advice from Mistakes 1, 2, and 7: set goals, avoid using practice time to play what you know, and go beyond learning fundamentals to apply what you’ve learned creatively. Get the full lesson at intunemonthly.com/lesson.
Terry Dolan (left) with longtime musical partner Greg Douglass. Above: Dolan’s “new” album.
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Duet for ClarinetMorrie Backun has been a well-respected clarinet maker for more than a decade. Now he’s brought his expertise to bear on a unique partnership with another manufacturer, Antigua Winds, and the result is the Antigua by Backun CL3230 clarinet. Its body, bell, and barrel are constructed from aged grenadilla wood at Backun’s factory in Vancouver, Canada. Then it’s brought across the border to Antigua’s facilities in Texas to be fi tted with keys, posts, and other metal parts. intunemonthly.com/backun
New Recordings by Jazz Legend UnearthedJazz pianist/composer Erroll Garner (1921-1977) is remembered as a one-of-a-kind artist, but a surprising amount of the music he recorded during his career was never released. On Septem-ber 30, Sony Music’s Legacy label issued Ready Take One, a new album containing 14 previously unheard Garner tracks recorded between 1967 and 1971. The album features six new original compositions, as well as eight jazz standards, including Garner’s own “Misty,” each with unique improvised solos that were never repeated again. Legacy’s fi rst archival Garner release, The Complete Concert by the Sea, came out last year and hit No. 1 on Billboard’s jazz chart; Ready Take One is expected to make no less of an impact. intunemonthly.com/garner
Honors for a Female CreatorCongratulations to Anna Vaus (pictured left), a junior at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., for winning the school’s � rst Women Creators Scholarship. The award was
created by Miranda Lambert, recently named the Country Music Association’s Female Vocalist of the Year. Vaus will receive $40,000 in funds for the 2016-17 academic season. A songwriting major with a minor in music business, Vaus is also a performer who has opened for country artists like Hunter Hayes, Lonestar, Billy Ray Cyrus, and Lee Ann Womack. “The tide is changing for young women in this industry,” she says. “I have so much hope for women in country music because of the path Miranda and [others] are � ghting to pave for us!” intunemonthly.com/womencreators
Journalists … were very cruel to me. They said I only knew three chords when
I knew fi ve!” —Singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen
The Internship I’ve always been curious about the behind-the-scenes world of entertain-ment. I loved that feeling of having a secret that the general audience didn’t know, whether it was about building a set, designing lighting cues, or marketing a concert. That’s why I was so excited when, between my junior and senior years at Catawba College, I got the chance to see the music business from within—thanks to an internship that would help set me on my course to Los Angeles, where I now live and work.
During my junior year, I had the honor of being part of a band that performed the entirety of Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 megahit album Rumours. One of that album’s producers, Ken Caillat, attended our show at Catawba and even worked with our group on the intricacies of the music. After Ken got to know me during that semester, he offered me an internship at his L.A.-based production company/record label, Sleeping Giant Music Group.
That summer, I experienced my fi rst real taste of the music industry at the legendary Village Studios, where Sleeping Giant was located. During my time there, I helped out in a variety of capacities, including artist development, recording, and placing music in fi lm and TV. I attended meetings and watched how the executives interacted with clients and other companies. The exposure to the industry was invaluable and solidifi ed my plans to move to L.A. after graduation.
I believe internships are essential to fi guring out what you want to do. They provide connections and opportunities that you just can’t get in the classroom. My schooling provided a great founda-tion, but the hands-on experience of the internship got to the core of what music professionals actually do. Find those internships, apply for as many as you can, and absorb everything—it can truly change your future!
EMMA’S DIARY
2PART
Meet Emma Stoneberg, a longtime In Tune reader and recent college grad who’s just beginning her career adventures in the music business. Every month this season, she’ll be reporting on her progress.
New Recordings by Jazz
In Tune Monthly • November 2016 9 intunemonthly.com
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[ ]media
Virtuoso saxophonist Frank Catalano covers a lot of topics in MODERN SAXOPHONE TECH-NIQUES, including practice with a metro-nome, developing proper embouchure, tonguing, finger positions, approaches to harmony, split tones, and how to hold the sax when you’re playing fast. If you buy the book, you’ll get free access to additional video lessons online. halleonard.com
SHEET MUSIC
gOOD READS
Not only was Rahsaan Roland Kirk (1935-1977) a gifted player of multiple woodwind instruments, including flute, clarinet, saxophone, and more obscure ones like the manzello and the stritch, but he often played many of them simultaneously. His blindness made this even more of a feat. After being partially paralyzed by a stroke, Kirk modified his instruments so that he could play them with one arm. THE CASE
OF THE THREE SIDED DREAM, out now on DVD and Blu-ray, is a fascinating documentary about a jazz musician who refused to be kept down by anything. rahsaanfilm.com
vIDEO
LESSONSFor several years, The Wall Street Journal’s Marc Myers has been writing a regular series of articles that tell the stories behind some of popular music’s greatest hits through the words of the people who created them. ANATOMY OF A SONg compiles 45 of these insightful pieces—arranged chronologically from Lloyd Price’s “Lawdy Miss Clawdy” to R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion”—and adds further reporting and interviews. groveatlantic.com
Blues legend B.B. King, rock icon Eric Clapton, and Foo Fighter Dave Grohl are just three of the many musicians who’ve played a Gibson ES-335. Tony Bacon’s THE gIBSON 335 gUITAR BOOK recounts the full 60-year history of this famous electric guitar and looks at other models with a similar semi-solid body type. As you might expect, there are plenty of cool pictures. backbeatbooks.com
RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS: THE gETAWAY features guitar tablature for all 13 songs from the veteran rock quartet’s latest album, including “Dark Necessities,” “Go Robot,” “Dreams of a Samurai,” and the title track. halleonard.com
ONLINE
Any recording engineer will tell you that it’s tough to get a great drum sound. Bobby Owsinski and Dennis Moody are two engineers who know how to do it, and in THE DRUM RECORDINg HAND-BOOK, SECOND EDITION, they discuss miking techniques that work well no matter what gear you have, along with drum tuning tips and general session advice. halleonard.com
intunemonthly.comIn Tune Monthly • November 201610
We live in a digital world, but the analog art of the old-school, record-spinning DJ continues to be revered. You can learn how to spin a little magic yourself by checking out THE COMPLETE gUIDE TO DJ BASICS WITH TURNTABLES AND A MIXER. In this online 14-tutorial video course,
Shortee—arguably the world’s premier female DJ—shows how to read vinyl grooves, scratch, crossfade, and cue up songs, both the traditional way and using software like Serato and TRAKTOR. groove3.com
COLOUR MY WORLD commemorates Chicago (the band)’s 2016 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with piano arrange-ments of 16 of their best-known songs, “25 or 6 to 4” and “Saturday in the Park” among them. alfred.com
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frontrunner[ ]New Music and Rising Artists By Paul Irwin and Alex Gallinari
Music for Musicians
THE LISTENING LIST is a collection of new
and noteworthy songs we think musicians
should check out. Each song can be streamed
in its entirety at InTuneMonthly.com.
1 Former Internet sensation and recent chart
topper Shawn Mendes has delivered yet
another doozy with Don’t Be a Fool. The track,
from his recently released sophomore album,
Illuminate, is a fi ne example of this young artist’s
pop prowess and one of the sweetest breakup
songs we’ve ever heard…
2 Seven albums into Ingrid Michaelson’s
career, her piano-based songwriting and
witty lyrics haven’t missed a beat, or the charts.
The New Yorker slowly walks you to the edge of a
cliff on Light Me Up, with beautiful piano chords
and tender vocals, before jumping off into a
goosebump-inducing fi nale. It’s part singer/
songwriter, part pop, part EDM, but all Ingrid…
3 Michigan native Tim Wu graduated from
Harvard and landed a high-profi le
consulting job but, to his parents’ chagrin, quit to
focus on music. Using the alias Elephante, the
classically trained pianist and guitarist has
recorded a debut LP, appropriately titled I Am the
Elephante, featuring Plans, a tropical cut with
shady vocals by Brandyn Burnette…
4 Bebe Rexha burst onto the pop scene last
year and has since become an in-demand
feature artist and songwriter. Powered by Dutch
DJ Martin Garrix, the heart-pumping love song In
the Name of Love is all about the heavy drops,
distortion effects, and Rexha’s fabulous
phrasing…
5 Usher has dominated the R&B scene since
the late ’90s and his latest record, Hard II
Love, proves he’s still got it. The Atlanta native’s
trademark falsetto surfs over stormy production
by f a l l e n and Carlos St. John on Crash. It’s been
St. Paul and the Broken BonesJust before closing his musical account, a bank teller breaks out
Vocalist Paul Janeway (nicknamed St. Paul by his bandmates because he doesn’t smoke or drink) was a bank teller trying to make it in a band on the side without much success.
Just before he gave up, a friend with a studio invited him and bassist Jesse Phillips to record a song. Something clicked, and with the addition of � ve new recruits, St. Paul and the Broken Bones were born. They debuted in 2014 with the warmly received Half the City, a horn-driven soul throwback. Now, after two live records, they’ve dropped Sea of Noise, a socially aware and groovin’ collection festooned with ’70s funk-inspired licks. No signature hit yet, but the Bones have nevertheless proven themselves worthy of Frontrunner status.
Kaleo“The sound” comes to America
and fi nds a new home
What started out as a hobby quickly turned into something much more for the members of Kaleo, an Icelandic rock band formed by childhood friends who have now made America their home. While in high school, Jökull Júlíusson (vocals/guitar), Davíð Antonsson (percussion/vocals), Daníel Ægir Kristjánsson (bass guitar), and Rubin Pollock (guitar/vocals) took any gig they could get but soon achieved success in their home country, hitting the airwaves with a self-titled 2013 debut. Kaleo (kah-LAY-oh) means “the sound” in Hawaiian; they chose that name just because they liked the word. They’ve now released A/B, a collection of stormy blues-rock with gritty folk highlights that includes the singles “Way Down We Go” and the more soothing “All the Pretty Girls.” The band members each display an array of skills on di� erent tracks, resulting in a body of work that sounds refreshingly new.
intunemonthly.com12 In Tune Monthly • November 2016
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JosephA sister act morphs from bluegrass to alt-pop and tops a chart
Natalie Closner � rst toured as a solo singer/songwriter before inviting her little twin sisters, Meegan and Allison, to join her on the road. The band, named for both their grandfather Jo and the tiny Oregon town of Joseph where he lived, self-released their � rst album, Native Dreamer Kin, in 2014 and signed to Dave Matthews’ ATO Records soon after. On their recently released sophomore record I’m Alone, No You’re Not, the sisters adapted their rustic bluegrass to alternative pop. Their homey style persists, however, through the trio’s sisterly harmonies and Americana leanings. After four weeks at the top of Billboard’s Heatseekers chart, Joseph is now a musical name to know.
Drake White A music man hangs up his hammer
By day, Drake White was a general contractor, but at night he performed an eclectic brand of country music, developing a blazing stage presence with his band, the Big Fire. Then, in 2013, when a deal with MCA Nashville made him a full-time musician, he quit his construction gig and released his debut single, “Simple Life.” After that, White’s life became anything but simple. The Hokes Blu� , Alabama, native became a city dweller and took to the road, spreading his country, blues, funk, and reggae blend. Check out his debut LP for Dot Records , Spark, and hear why this small-town hero is leading the charge to Nashville and beyond.
H.E.R.Mysterious identity, but conspicuously talented
There have been a number of successful but originally anonymous acts whose debuts have generated heightened excitement, particu-larly when they are obviously talented. This, of course, is the theory behind the blind auditions on The Voice. Because of the anonymity, listeners aren’t in� uenced by looks or lifestyle. Enter H.E.R., a new R&B singer whose � rst collection, H.E.R. Vol. 1, has topped iTunes’ R&B charts and received endorsements from Alicia Keys, Pusha T, and Bryson Tiller. Some have speculated that H.E.R.’s smooth and woozy sounds are the work of young singer Gabi Wilson, but whoever it is has seasoned vocal abilities and a solid team behind her at RCA Records. The mystery continues for now, but those brassy vocals layered on swirling piano are all we really need…
four long years since Usher dropped new music,
but fans should feel that it was worth the wait…
6 A power couple on and off stage, Andrew
Marlin and Emily Frantz are Mandolin
Orange, a North Carolina-based Americana/folk
act that dabbles in bluegrass, country, gospel,
and pop. Tight harmonies and virtuosic musician-
ship make Hey Stranger, from their recently
released album Blindfaller, the perfect choice for
country fans looking for something different…
7 A product of the Simon Cowell-created
Latin American TV singing competition La
Banda, CNCO features the latest season’s top fi ve
fi nishers. Coached by Ricky Martin, the quintet
was quickly signed to Sony and released Primera
Cita, with the sure hit Para Enamorarte (“To Fall
in Love”). Each singer can stand on his own, but
together they’re the biggest thing on Latin radio…
8 Willie Bobo was a Latin jazz legend known
for his animated stage presence and
ferocious command of any percussion instru-
ment he touched. He left us too soon, passing
away at just 49, but a collection of previously
unreleased cuts, Dig My Feeling, shows his
timeless effect on music. Try Broasted or Fried,
a funky fusion that oozes with the energy of one
of Spanish Harlem’s greatest sons…
9 The Robert Glasper Experiment explores
the relationships of neo-soul, hip-hop, and
jazz-funk. Often inviting vocalists and rappers into
a traditionally instrumental genre, this quartet
leaves no musical stone unturned. ArtScience is
their latest endeavor, and the standout in our
mind is the mostly improvised In My Mind.
Listen for Glasper’s solo on the keys…
10 Quickly recognized as a prodigy, Felix
Mendelssohn devoted his life to music and
became one of Europe’s most popular composers
during the Romantic period (1810-1900), despite
passing away at the age of 38. The London
Symphony Orchestra and conductor Sir John Eliot
Gardiner reimagine one of his best-known
symphonies today in Symphony No. 4 in A
Major, Op. 90 “Italian”: IV. Finale. Listen for the
horns at the top of each crescendo…
intunemonthly.com 13November 2016 • In Tune Monthly
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challenging 20th-century compos-ers such as Paul Hindemith and Arnold Schoenberg. Clearly, the young Canadian had his own ideas about music. Most famously, after having established himself as a per-former, he came to believe that concerts were a needless distraction and gave up playing live at the age
of 31. For the rest of his life, he was a creature of the studio.
Gould was fascinated by recording technology, by microphones and
audio editing. When it came to sound and technique, he was a perfectionist. But at the same time, his famous humming habit made a perfect recording difficult to achieve, understandably driving his engineers to distraction.
In the studio and out, Gould also distin-guished himself by his off beat dress. Whether in winter or summer, he wore a overcoat, scarf, and mittens. This wasn’t just a strange a� ectation; he su� ered from a condition called � bromyalgia, which made him prey to chronic pain and chills—and makes his creative output that much more remarkable.
The great pianist didn’t only confine himself to playing. He wrote extensively about music and lectured on the topic, as well as producing a number of radio and TV documentaries. Sadly, his health, never good, � nally failed him when he was still in his prime. A few days after his 50th birthday, he su� ered a massive stroke. He died a week later. Fittingly, his � nal recording was a new, drastically reinterpreted version of the piece that had first brought him to worldwide attention: The Goldberg Variations.
I C O N GREAT MUSICIANS IN HISTORY BY PETER GERSTENZANG
Deemed a prodigy early on, Gould was discovered to have perfect pitch by the age of three. His parents claimed that he was able to read music before he could read words. By 10, he was studying piano at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. He quickly set himself apart from his peers with his impressive, almost machine-like ability to play at extreme speeds while still clearly articulating every note.
As a young professional, Gould made even more of a stir by rejecting most of the piano repertoire favored at the time (mainly 19th-century Romantic composers like Liszt, Schumann, and Chopin) and showing a strong preference for the 18th-century Baroque period, especially the work of J.S. Bach. In 1955, he achieved a commercial breakthrough with his recording of Bach’s
Goldberg Variations. His record label had shown some resistance to his choice of such a seemingly “minor” piece—a set of 30 variations on a single theme—but the disc sold extremely well and Gould was vindi-cated. Generations of listeners would dis-cover, or rediscover, Bach due to Gould’s championing of such pieces.
Besides Bach, Gould was partial to more
Glenn Gould W HEN GLENN GOULD EXPLODED onto the
classical music landscape in the 1950s, no other pianists played like he did, looked like he did, or
spoke their mind like he did. And no one else hummed along while playing compositions by Bach, Beethoven, and Berg.
WHO: Classical pianist
WHAT: A brilliant, if eccentric, musical interpreter who redefi ned how a classical musician could play, record, act, and look
WHEN: Born Sept. 25, 1932 in Toronto, Ont., Canada; died Oct. 4, 1982 in Toronto
Gould’s Bach recordings, including The Goldberg Variations and
The Well-Tempered Clavier, are justly famous, but also worth hearing are Beethoven: Piano Sonatas
Nos. 30-32 (1956), Berg: Sonata for Piano, Op. 1 (1959), and The Music
of Arnold Schoenberg (1966).
Piano Rolls
“The justifi cation of art is the internal combustion it ignites in the hearts of men…”
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dinner. Although great songs can emerge from scratch, that’s usually the result of being more expe-rienced and at ease with your co-writer. But if you have four or � ve snippets
in play, which do you follow? The one both of you can best relate to. Trust your gut.
Stay positive. Del Close, founder of the Second City comedy troupe, had a basic rule of improv: Just say yes. If your partner throws an idea your way, embrace it, then toss it back. This idea of the creative volley is at the heart of co-writing. Back-and-forth energy helps propel an idea forward, and sidesteps the internal editors that might keep you from voicing an idea. Nothing kills a session faster than a few repeats of “No, I don’t like that.” You can be more
critical later in the writing pro-cess; at the start, just get that ball in the air.
Be diplomatic but decisive. Making
Seek out someone with complemen-tary skills. You may be a better collaborator than a solo writer. A lot of us are either strong lyricists or more facile with melodies. So co-writing, like all relationships, becomes a matter of � nding someone who completes you musically. How do you do this? Go out, hear bands, meet people, let it be known you’re looking to collaborate. From this networking, opportunities will emerge. Also, don’t be afraid to approach someone whose writing you admire. Don’t
be pushy, but let them know you’d be hon-ored if they’d consider writing with you. From a business standpoint, it’s good to agree up front on how you’ll split ownership of a song. Unless it’s some special circum-stance, most co-writes are even splits (50-50 for two writers, a third each for three, a quarter each for four, and so on).
Bring some snippets. Writing sessions go more smoothly if you both bring ideas to the table: bits of melody, a title, a few lines of lyric. Think of it as a creative potluck
T H E W R I T E S T U F F THE ART AND CRAFT OF SONGWRITING BY BILL DEMAIN
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Be diplomatic but decisive.
Making the Team
You can be critical later in the writing process. At the start, just get that ball in the air.
F ROM GEORGE AND IRA GERSHWIN in the 1930s to the Beatles’ Lennon and McCartney, Motown’s Holland-Dozier-Holland, and modern conglomerates
like Stargate (see our “Made in Sweden” feature), the songwrit-ing team has been a cornerstone of popular music. But � nding the right co-writing partners isn’t easy. It usually takes a lot of trial and error, leading to a lot of songs that are just okay. If you’re interested in going down the collaborative path, here are six tips to help increase your chances for success.
decisions in the moment is crucial for co-writing. The basic rule is that whatever’s best for the song is the right decision, but the problem is that egos are always involved. You may become attached to a clever rhyme or chord change that doesn’t really belong in the song. At those moments, you have to learn to let go. Always listen closely to the song. It’ll tell you what it needs.
Don’t rush. In Nashville, where I live, it’s common for professional writers to � nish a song in three to four hours. Sometimes, on a really good day, that happens and the song turns out great. But not often. So don’t be afraid to say, “This is a good � rst draft. Let’s keep working on it separately, then meet again later to put the � nishing touches on it.”
Expect nothing and hope for the best. That’s a good approach to both song-writing and life.
Bill DeMain’s recent credits include co-writing all 10 songs on Teddy Thompson and Kelly Jones’ critically acclaimed 2016 album Little Windows.
Songwriting doesn’t have to be a solitary occupation. Here are six suggestions for forming and maintaining a co-writing partnership.
Motown’s Lamont Dozier, Brian Holland, and Eddie Holland at work in the 1960s
intunemonthly.comIn Tune Monthly • November 201616
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Born in 1955 and raised in San Diego as one of eight children, East started out playing cello but made a smooth transition to bass in his teens. “Cello helped me with my ear, helped me with reading bass clef, and I loved the instrument,” he says.
Actively involved in his high school music program, East played in several bands, including a group called Power that landed numerous college and party gigs and was hired (when he was 16) to back up R&B singer Barry White on a national tour. A subsequent recording gig with White con-
I T’S NOT SURPRISING that two of bassist Nathan East’s favorite words are “hybrid” and “bridge.” His long-held attitude that music is all fundamentally the same, no matter
how you classify it, has allowed him to mix numerous styles in his playing and to cross over easily from one genre to another.
nected East to arranger Gene Page, who would eventually hire him for 25 to 30 recording sessions per week with artists like Madonna and Whitney Houston. East has been working ever since, reportedly amass-ing over 2,000 recording credits.
“I always applied that work ethic of not turning down anything but my collar, and showing up and trying to hit it as hard as I can for as long as I can,” East says.
Although he was already a professional in high school, East continued to study music at the University of California, San Diego,
where professor of jazz studies Cecil Lytle and upright contrabass instructor Bert Turetzky became his mentors and friends. Studying with them “gave me an awareness about discipline and helped me with my sight reading and things that would eventually come in handy when I moved to L.A. and began a session career.”
The 1980s were a career-de� ning time for East. Beyond live and studio perfor-mances with Lionel Richie, Barbra Streisand, and Eric Clapton (another mentor), he co-wrote the hit “Easy Lover” with Phil Collins and Philip Bailey. (“I bought my folks a house with those royalties,” he reports.) In 1991, he co-founded the Grammy-nominated jazz group Fourplay, for which he composes. Recently he has been teaching electric bass through ArtistWorks, an online music school. His latest solo album is due out in January, and he’s planning to create an educational foundation to assist lower-income students with college tuition.
East still embraces musical adventure. “When sessions are what you do for a living,” he remarks, “you get everything from A to Z.” He recalls a 1982 recording session with keyboardist Joe Sample, during which Sample asked the bassist to play a minor-seventh note over a major-seventh chord. The original bass player for the date—trained at a top-notch music school—had refused to do this, so East got the gig instead. “I was minor-seventh over a major-seventh all day long,” he quips. “Although you study theory, some music breaks the rules. Music is all about what connects with you, not just academics.”
P L AY E R S THE LIVES AND TIMES OF WORKING MUSICIANS BY BRYAN REESMAN
Nathan East
“I always applied that work ethic of not turning down anything but my collar.”
MAIN CLAIM TO FAME: Bassist, songwriter, co-founder of Fourplay
SELECTED CREDITS: Barry White, Eric Clapton, George Harrison, Michael Jackson, Phil Collins, Stevie Wonder, Beyoncé, Daft Punk
EDUCATION: Started on cello at 11, took up bass at 14, studied music in high school and at UC San Diego
Pro� le INFLUENCES: Verdine White, Peter Cetera, James Jamerson, Ray Brown, Chuck Rainey
EQUIPMENT: Yamaha BBNE2 fi ve-string Nathan East Signature Bass, SLB-200 Silent Bass, and six-string TRB Series bass; Dunlop Super Bright strings; TC Electronic amplifi ers and pedals; Radial Engineering Firefl y direct box
WEBSITE: nathaneast.com
intunemonthly.comIn Tune Monthly • November 201618
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I N F L U E N C E S CONNECTING MUSICIANS THROUGH TIME
On her breakout fi rst album, Know-It-All, 20-year-old ALESSIA CARA shows a wisdom beyond her years. Songs like “Wild Things,” “Scars to Your Beautiful,” and the Top 5 hit “Here” address emotional topics such as peer pressure and self-esteem, sung over compelling R&B beats. Cara acknowledges that her music has many infl uences, but one of the clearest is that of British singer/songwriter Lianne La Havas.
Alessia Cara to Chaka Khan
CHAKA KHAN fi rst came to attention in the 1970s as the lead singer of the funk band Rufus. Since then, she has sold more than 70 million albums worldwide. Khan also has the distinction of being the fi rst major pop artist to include a rapper on one of her songs: 1984’s smash hit “I Feel for You,” featuring Grandmaster Melle Mel.
LIANNE LA HAVAS’ ear-grabbing mixture of soul, jazz, and folk has won her many fans in the last fi ve years, most notably the late Prince, who asked her to sing on his 2014 album Art Offi cial Age. Not surprisingly, she’s a Prince fan, but she says that as a preteen, she made an even stronger connection with the music of Mary J. Blige.
In the 1990s, MARY J. BLIGE became known as “the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul” on the back of her mega-selling albums What’s the 411?, My Life, and Share My World. Two decades later, she continues to be one of R&B’s top artists. The telltale combination of smoothness and grit in her singing is reminiscent of one of her key infl uences, Chaka Khan.
P H O T O S : ( C A R A ) A N D R E W L I P O V S K Y / N B C , ( L A H A V A S ) G U S S T E W A R T / W I R E I M A G E , ( B L I G E )
J O H N W . F E R G U S O N / G E T T Y I M A G E S , ( K H A N ) E B E T R O B E R T S / R E D F E R N S
clearest is that of British singer/songwriter Lianne La Havas.
CHAKA KHANattention in the 1970s as the lead singer of the funk band Rufus. Since then, she has sold more than 70 million albums worldwide. Khan also has the distinction of being the fi rst major pop artist to include a rapper on one of her songs: 1984’s smash hit “I Feel for You,” featuring Grandmaster Melle Mel.
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TECHNIQUES ✦ POLYCHORDS
Polychords are well suited to large ensembles like the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra (featuring, from left, Charles Fambrough, Wynton Marsalis, Bill Pierce, Ralph Peterson, and Andre Hayward).
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YOU’RE PROBABLY FAMILIAR WITH THE concept of superimposition as it applies to photography: taking an image of one thing and placing it over another, often for a funny
effect. Think of a picture of a cow on the moon, for example. But have you ever thought about how the concept might extend to music?
One of the best examples of superimposition in music is the polychord, which is simply the result of two or more chords being played at the same time. Polychords appear in many types of music, but most notably in the work of certain 20th-century classical composers and jazz musicians.
Polychords are excellent tools for both composing and
improvising. They can transform simple harmonies—namely, plain old triads (three-note chords)—into something rich, complex, even bizarre. To put it another way, you can use them to add great depth and sophistication to your music.
The examples gathered in this lesson will give you a good overview of how polychords work and, equally as important, how they sound. If you’re a pianist, you can play everything here on your own instrument, but it might be more fun to discover how it sounds while play-ing with other musicians. Arguably, the best way to experience polychords is in an ensemble, with di� erent instruments or sections covering di� erent chords or even di� erent notes within the chords.
When you stack one chord on top of
another, it’s called a polychord—and it
opens up all kinds of musical possibilities.
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YOU’RE PROBABLY FAMILIAR WITH THE concept of superimposition as it applies to photography: taking an image of one thing and placing it over another, often for a funny
improvising. They can transform simple harmonies—namely, plain old triads (three-note chords)—into something rich, complex, even bizarre. To put it another way, you can use them to
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See, hear, and download each month’s music examples, powered by the Notion Music app, at InTuneMonthly.com/categories/techniques.
By Adam Perlmutter
23 intunemonthly.com November 2016 • In Tune Monthly
BEFORE WE GET TO POLYCHORDS, let’s take a look at a simpler type of superimposition: the slash chord. No, it’s not named after the Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash. In a slash chord—for example, A/D—the letter to the left of the slash represents the chord, while the letter to the right is the lowest note. Observe that the bottom note of a slash chord is never the root note. Playing an A with D in the bass adds a tension in
the harmony that sounds very di� erent from playing a regular A chord.
The notation here depicts all the triads found in the C major scale, each one played with the note C in the bass. Try this on the piano or on a computer with music software. Pay close attention to how the note C a� ects the sound of the Dm, Em, F, G, Am, and Bº triads. If you’re up for it, transpose the music to other keys as well.
1 SLASH AND LEARNAn intermediate step between regular chords and polychords is the slash chord.
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Techniques ✦ Polychords
intunemonthly.comIn Tune Monthly • November 201624
Now let’s take a look at a couple of ways that slash chords function in a typical context. The top line of music here depicts a common guitar pattern found in popular music. In this case, two slash chords—C/B and Am/G—are used to form a smoothly moving bass line that travels stepwise down the C major scale.
The bottom line of music is inspired by “On Green Dolphin
Street,” a standard from the Great American Songbook (pop and jazz songs from the early 20th century). Here, in a neat chromatic move, the D/C and Df/C chords create tension that’s resolved with the return of the C chord in the last bar.
Take a moment to see if you can think of any other instances of slash chords that pop up in the music you enjoy.
IN the PrevIous examPle, we worked with diatonic triads—meaning chords that are all con-structed from notes within a single seven-note scale (C major). Now let’s see what happens when we play major triads in the chromatic scale (includ-ing all sharps and flats) starting on C, again with C in the bass.
You’ll see that a couple of the notes have an X next to them. In case you’re unfamiliar with this symbol, it’s a double-sharp sign. This means that a note should be raised not one but two half steps. So an FS is in fact a G.
As before, focus intently on how these chords sound. Some, like the E/C and Fs/C, might really twist your ear.
3
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ChromAtiC mAdnessTry some more slash chords, this time built on all 12 notes in an octave.
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See, hear, and download each month’s music examples, powered by the Notion Music app, at InTuneMonthly.com/categories/techniques.
intunemonthly.com November 2016 • In Tune Monthly 25
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU stack two di� erent triads on top of each other? That’s what the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) did when he wrote works like Petrushka (1911) and Rite of Spring (1913), both ballet scores. One of the recurring chords in Petrushka is so famous that it became known as “the Petrushka chord.” Let’s check it out. The Petrushka chord is a polychord. In this case, the two chords are major
triads—C and Fs—with roots a tritone apart. On the piano, play the C and then the Fs. Each one sounds pretty tame on its own, right? But combine the two, and you get a pretty wild e� ect. The music in the last � ve bars depicts a melodic passage from Petrushka, with the top line built from a C major arpeggio and the bottom from Fs. If you’ve got a musician buddy nearby, try playing this together.
4 DOUBLING UPNow it’s time to delve into some full-fl edged polychords.
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OF COURSE, POLYCHORDS DON’T always sound so “out there.” Take, for instance, an A major triad and combine it with E major, and you get a very sweet sound. If you’re into music theory, you probably noticed that the two triads share a note, E, and you might’ve even realized that the combination of the chords is the same thing as an Amaj9 chord (A–Cs–E–Gs–B).
At any rate, the American composer Aaron Copland (1900–1990) used this very polychord in his ballet Appalachian Spring (1944). Check out the piano reduction here, where in the right hand an A triad (with the third, Cs, as the lowest note) rings into an E triad (the � fth, B, being the lowest note). After you’ve played through the example, alone or with a friend, experiment with combining other triads of all types.
5 PRETTY POLYCHORDSSome triads blend together in a beautiful way.
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Techniques ✦ polychords
intunemonthly.comIn Tune Monthly • November 201626
The French composer Darius Milhaud (1892–1974), whose last name is pronounced meel-yo, wrote a number of jazz-influenced works making use of what he called “polytonality”—the simultaneous use of multiple keys. Naturally, music of this sort tends to produce polychords.
Here’s an example from one of Milhaud’s Dances of Brazil. The part in the bass clef (it would be a left-hand part
for pianists) is a standard Latin pattern in the key of Fm; the part in the treble clef (or right hand) has a descending sequence of triads in Fsm. Combine the parts and the effect is a little disorient-ing, like you’re listening to two different radio stations at once. After you’ve worked out the example, have a friend play a repeating pattern in a given minor key, and improvise a solo from the minor key that’s a half step higher.
6 French connectionThe music of Darius Milhaud is rich with polychords.
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many common chords in jazz, such as the Amaj9 in Example 5, are polychords. Also, a lot of complex chords can be thought of as polychords. A C13s11 chord (C–E–G–Bf–D–Fs–A) may seem complicated at first, but thinking of it as a C7 (C–E–G–Bf) with a D triad (D–Fs–A) on top makes it easier to understand.
Some jazz musicians in particular have made great use of polychords. One name that comes to mind is the
classically minded pianist Dave Brubeck (1920–2012), who studied with Darius Milhaud. The example here, which shows how Brubeck might harmonize the bridge of his tune “The Duke,” is chock full of polychords. In bar 1, an Em chord is played over an F chord and G and Am chords are played over an E chord. See if you can identify the other polychords in this example and, again, pay close attention to how they all sound.
7 GettinG JazzyPolychords appear commonly in the work of Dave Brubeck and other jazz musicians.
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In Tune Monthly • November 201628 intunemonthly.com November 2016 • In Tune Monthly 29
A LOT OF PEOPLE SEEM TO LIKE things that come from Sweden. Take the Swedish furniture manufacturer Ikea, which has been the most successful global retailer of couches, beds, chairs, and other household items for the past 40 years—loved by customers who equate their prod-ucts with value, practicality, and pleasing aesthetics. And then there’s the country’s second biggest mass-market export, a similar testament to the power of design. That export? Hit songs, as devised by a loose confederation of songwriters, producers, and technicians centered around one man: Martin Sandberg, slightly better known to the world as Max Martin.
Initially working out of the now-shuttered Cheiron (pronounced KY-ron) Studios in the Swed-ish capital of Stockholm, Martin and his follow-ers—who include the American hitmaker Lukasz “Dr. Luke” Gottwald and the Norwegian duo Stargate—have in the past 18 years created a blue-print for the way pop music sounds worldwide. Today, Martin has more No. 1 hits as a songwriter (22) than anyone in history other than the Beatles’ John Lennon and Paul McCartney, and more No. 1 hits as a producer (also 22) than anyone besides, again, the Beatles’ George Martin. It’s worth noting that he usually treats the roles of songwriter (pen-ning words and music) and producer (de� ning the sound and arrangement of a recording) as one job.
For all his music’s incredible success, there’s an unassuming, practical aspect both to Martin and to his compositions that’s eminently Swedish. Shun-
Behind many of today’s biggest pop hits is an intriguing method of
writing and production—a method perfected
by a small team of Scandinavians whose
names you probably don’t know.
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Swedish native Martin Sandberg, a.k.a. Max Martin, is one of the most successful songwriters of all time.
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In Tune Monthly • November 201630
ning interviews and publicity of any kind, he prefers near-invis-ibil ity. Like the furniture designers at Ikea, he tends to view his work not as art but as a craft.
The singers who have ben-efited from Martin’s craft, and that of his group, are some of the dominant pop stars of the past two decades: Britney Spears, Taylor Swift, the Back-street Boys, Usher, Adele, Robyn, The Weeknd, Kesha, Kelly Clarkson, Celine Dion, Katy Perry, Pink, Avril Lavi-gne, Jessie J, Demi Lovato, Ellie Goulding, Ariana Grande. Some of the above follow the instructions of Martin and collaborators like Shellback (known to his mother as Karl Johan Schuster) and Rami Yacoub to the letter and don’t have a hand in the music’s creation. Others collaborate on the songwriting and production. But in every case, Martin’s exacting methods produce songs designed for universal appeal. As we’ll see, he didn’t invent these methods, but arguably he perfected them.
History of tHe “Hit factory”From the 1960s onward, rock music has been ruled by artists like the Beatles, Bob
publ ishers and wr iters based around a section of New York’s West 28th Street known as “Tin Pan Alley” (because of the audible clanking of the pianos coming from every window) created the f i rst mass-produced popu lar music: initially as sheet music for consumers to play on their own pianos at home, and then later for records to be played on the radio.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the suc-cessor to Tin Pan Alley was the Brill Building, named for the New York office building in which songwriters like Ellie Greenwich, Jeff Barry, Carole King, and Gerry Goffin
penned pop songs that addressed the roman-tic travails of teenagers. Around the same time in Detroit, soul-pop juggernaut Motown Records achieved huge success with an assembly-line method of production much like the automobile manufacturing for which the city was then known.
Mass production of this sort is an Ameri-can innovation, and like films, TV shows, and many other products, pop music from the States had an allure that proved global. Only the United Kingdom could challenge the U.S. as popular music’s center for most of the past 60 years. (The U.K. had hit factories too, most notably the Stock-Ait-ken-Waterman partnership in the 1980s,
Dylan, U2, and Radiohead, who write their own songs. But other branches of popular music have had a very different operating procedure, more consistent with top-down corporate production methods. Typically, a song publisher or record com-pany picks a song written by professional songwriters, selects a singer, and has the basic track recorded by musicians in a studio, followed by the singer’s contribu-tion. The finished recording is then ready to be distributed.
Various “hit factories” have used this process, or a similar one, in the past hundred years or so. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a network of song
ABBA: an early Swedish pop success
Left: Ace of BaseRight: Denniz Pop
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which created big-selling songs for Kylie Minogue, Rick Astley, and Bananarama.) Other countries produced their own pop music, of course, but its appeal didn’t often travel past their borders.
There are a few exceptions, however: Jamaican, Latin-American, and lately South Korean popular music have each found international acclaim. And in the 1970s, Sweden had ABBA, two men and two women who took their group name from their first initials (Agnetha, Benny, Björn, and Anni-Frid) and were popular at a level approaching that of the Beatles in much of the world. ABBA songs like “Waterloo,” “Dancing Queen,” and “Take a Chance on Me” had English lyrics, were instantly catchy, and displayed a bitter-sweet quality that would carry over into the music of their countrymen years later.
The Cheiron WayABBA’s template was updated in 1993 by another half-male, half-female Swedish quartet: Ace of Base. Their songs “All That She Wants” and “The Sign” had the same combination of wistful and perky ele-ments, and had similarly huge sales. Ace of Base’s producer was Denniz Pop (born Dagger Krister Volle), a Swedish DJ who had transitioned into production. Pop founded Cheiron Studios and soon became a mentor for Max Martin, a former pop-metal singer.
Martin quickly used his songwriting and arranging experience to become Cheiron’s golden boy. Clive Calder, the head of American record label Jive, noticed Ace of Base’s success and con-tracted Pop and Martin to produce what would be the first hit by the Backstreet Boys, 1995’s “We’ve Got It Going On.” For the next eight years, Martin would write and produce most of the hits by Jive Records’ big three: Britney Spears, Back-street Boys, and ’N Sync.
Martin’s productions at the t ime blended the slinky rhythms of late-’80s/early-’90s “new jack swing,” common to R&B acts such as Boyz II Men and Baby-face, with classic pop song structures and
the dynamics of ’80s pop-metal bands like Def Leppard. In fact, his closest stylistic precursor is probably producer Robert “Mutt” Lange, who created multiple high-powered hits in the ’80s and ’90s with Leppard, AC/DC, Bryan Adams, and his onetime wife Shania Twain.
The “special sauce” of Martin’s songs includes a trademark Nordic mournful-ness. In The Song Machine, John Seabrook’s recent book about how Martin and other super-producers have shaped pop music in the past two decades, songwriter Klas Ahlund says that in Sweden, a geographi-cally large but sparsely populated country, “songwriting is a thing you did on your own while watching the cows, a kind of meditation,” and the results can often recall dark classical compositions like Edvard Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Moun-tain King.” (Grieg hailed from neighboring Norway, by the way.)
Perhaps the most important aspect of Martin’s technique is what he calls “melodic math.” When it comes to lyrics, his main priority is to find the combina-
tions of vowel and consonant sounds that work best alongside the music. The right combinations—the right numbers in the equation, if you will—add up to a hit. And so Martin’s songs often contain verses in which the arrangements of syllables are exactly parallel in every line. Sometimes these lines don’t entirely make sense in English, but they’re still ear-catching. For instance, the lyrics to the verses of the Backstreet Boys’ “I Want It That Way” seem to contradict the words of the chorus. And it’s doubtful that any American song-writer would have titled a song “(Hit Me) Baby One More Time,” as Martin did for Britney Spears. It’s also doubtful that such facts bothered many of the millions of people who bought these songs.
Martin prefers to work collaboratively, as opposed to conceiving and then enacting every element of the music creation process. In the Cheiron way of working, roles are assigned to specific team members; one will contribute a verse, another a chorus, still another the beats, and so on. Any individual element of any recording could have been—and in many cases was—originally con-ceived for a different composition. Song parts are regarded as interchangeable until they find their proper matches.
Perhaps the most important aspect of Max Martin’s
technique is what he calls
“melodic math.” When it comes
to lyrics, his main priority is to find the combinations
of vowel and consonant
sounds that work best alongside
the music.
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Dr. Luke (left) with Max Martin at an ASCAP awards ceremony in 2011
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Although Martin’s original song demo recordings have rarely been made public, you can hear his voice every now and again in his produc-tions. Those are his stacked harmonies, for example, sounding like a barber-shop quartet on Britney Spears’ “Lucky.”
A SPREADING INFLUENCEBy the mid-2000s, Martin had changed up his signature sound. The R&B and ballads had been replaced by a guitar-led rock-pop inspired by contemporary New York bands the Strokes and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Kelly Clarkson’s 2004 hit “Since U Been Gone” launched this new style. Martin’s collaborator on the song, Dr. Luke, is the second most prominent pop mastermind of the present era. Born Lukasz Gottwald, formerly the guitarist for Saturday Night Live’s house band, he’s been the main creative engine behind the hits of Kesha and Katy Perry.
At the same time, producers that had been in� uenced by Martin, such as Mikkel Eriksen and Tor Hermansen of Stargate, were taking his creative method even fur-
ther. Stargate and other production teams like it make tracks—including beats, chord progressions, and instru-mentation—and then bring in “toplin-ers” to create the melodies, lyrics, and vocal hooks (recurring parts that “hook” listeners into the song). One respected topliner, Ester Dean, is known to free-associate in the studio, resulting in improvised vocal parts that are then scrupulously reproduced
by the artists whose names later go on the � nished product. Rihanna’s “Rude Boy” and “You Da One” are good examples of Dean’s work.
This has become the standard method for modern hitmaking: Topliners and producers record the basic tracks in marathon sessions, frequently trying out multiple hooks over multiple beats before settling on a combination. Then they have those tracks delivered to singers who, due to their perpetually busy schedules, often record their vocals in hotel rooms and other locations. Since the beginning of the 2010s, EDM pro-ducers like Calvin Harris and Avicii have gotten into this act too, working with star singers and internalizing the tech-niques developed two decades ago at Cheiron to create songs that travel far beyond the dance clubs.
Of course, Martin and his cohorts still produce hits regularly. They were key to the success of Taylor Swift’s 1989 and Adele’s 25, collaborating on the songwrit-ing and arranging with both singers, and they’ve helped Usher and the Weeknd make huge R&B singles like “DJ’s Got Us Falling in Love” and “Earned It.” They’ve sometimes been criticized for the assem-bly-line nature of the music they’ve made over the past 20 years. But placing them in historical context—next to Tin Pan Alley, the Brill Building, Motown, and other “hit factories” of the past—it’s easy to argue that they’ve simply put new wrinkles on old traditions. In any case, they’ve certainly made a prominent place for Sweden on the pop music map.
ther. Stargate and other production teams like it make tracks—including beats, chord progressions, and instru-mentation—and then bring in “toplin-ers” to create the melodies, lyrics, and vocal hooks (recurring parts that “hook” listeners into the song). One respected topliner, Ester Dean, is known to free-associate in the studio, resulting in improvised vocal parts that are then scrupulously reproduced
by the artists whose names later go on the
The pop song assembly lines of Max Martin, Dr. Luke, Stargate, and their peers may be rooted in venerable traditions, but they wouldn’t exist
without modern technology. It was the invention of the computer-based digital audio workstation (DAW) in the 1980s and ’90s that fi rst allowed producers to record tracks, repeat them in a continuous loop, move them around, and swap them for others with just a few mouse clicks. Having such tremen-dous creative control over a song’s basic building blocks makes a team-oriented approach to produc-tion more feasible.
Today’s DAWs aren’t just for megaproducers; there are dozens on the market, at varying levels of price and functionality. Digidesign’s high-powered Pro Tools remains the industry standard, but other popular choices include Apple’s Logic, Ableton’s Live, Propellerheads’ Reason, and PreSonus’ Studio One. Some DAWs, like Apple’s Garage-Band, come in versions that can be used on a tablet or smartphone. And others, like Acoustica’s Mixcraft, are easily adaptable to the classroom, giving students a chance to learn a little “melodic math.”
Behind the Beats
Stargate (Mikkel Storleer Eriksen and Tor Erik Hermansen) with GRAMMYs
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From Bedroom to Bright Lights...
What started out as one man’shome studio project has become one
of Britain’s hottest pop bands.
intunemonthly.com November 2016 • In Tune Monthly 37
DAN SMITH never intended to be in a band. The vocalist and founder of the British quartet Bastille was initially content to write and record songs by himself on a laptop in his bedroom. But fate had a di� erent plan.
When Smith was a student at the University of Leeds, a friend, unbeknownst to him, entered one of his songs into a competition. It ended up winning the top prize, which included an opportunity to play the song live. That forced Smith out of his bedroom and onto the stage. For his early performances, he used loop pedals and other e� ects to recreate the sounds he’d originally made on his laptop. But eventually, he says, “I hit a limit as to what I could do. That’s when I decided I wanted to turn from doing things by myself to being in a band.”
And what a band Bastille has become. Besides Smith, the group
now includes guitarist/keyboardist Kyle Simmons, bassist Will Farquarson, and drummer Chris “Woody” Wood. They took their name (pronounced bah-STEEL) from Bastille Day, the anniversary of the rebellion that kicked o� the 1789 French Revolution—cel-ebrated in France on July 14, which also just happens to be Smith’s birthday. In 2010, the band began a far smaller and more peaceful uprising by releasing a two-track single that quickly received airplay on a British radio show. A self-released EP followed, which led to Bastille’s signing with Virgin Records.
In 2013, the band released its full-length debut, Bad Blood. The album broke through commercially the following year on the strength of “Pompeii,” a track inspired by the ancient Roman city on Italy’s Bay of Naples that was destroyed by a volcanic eruption in 79 A.D. Down-loaded more than � ve million times in the U.S., the song was one of several hits from Bad Blood, catapulting the band into stardom.
BY MELINDA NEWMAN PHOTO BY BERTRAND GUAY/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Left to right: Kyle Simmons, Chris Wood, and Dan Smith
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Smith acknowledges that the new fame has taken some adjustment, but says that rising so quickly has “generally been a very positive experience. We’ve never been surrounded by people who said, ‘You guys are going to be massive.’ So when things started to snowball and ‘Pompeii’ grew and grew, we thought, ‘Let’s be as creative as we can with everything we do.’”
That creative directive continues with the group’s new album, Wild World, which debuted in September on the Billboard 200 chart at No. 4, fronted by the hit “Good Grief.” Like much of Bastille’s material, “Good Grief” is electronic pop with a twist. Smith and his bandmates bring in di� erent rhythms, instruments, samples, loops, and other elements to form Bastille’s unique sound.
INSPIRATION FROM AFRICASmith partly credits Bastille’s innovative textures to the in� uence of the music he heard as a child in London. The son of South Africans who immigrated to England, Smith grew up listening to 1960s folk artists like Simon & Garfunkel, in part because of his mother’s prefer-ences (she’d worked her way through college as a folk singer). That led in turn to hearing some of the music that singer/songwriter Paul Simon made after splitting with his singing partner Art Garfunkel in the early ’70s.
In particular, there was Graceland, Simon’s groundbreaking 1986 album recorded primarily in South Africa with local musicians, including the vocal group Ladysmith Black Mambazo, and melding Anglo and African rhythms and instrumentation. Smith also fondly recalls a record that featured multiple renditions of South Africa’s new national anthem (adopted after Nelson Mandela became presi-dent in 1994) in various South African languages and dialects. Both projects “de� nitely a� ected my music in terms of polyrhythms [the simultaneous use of two or more rhythms] and other sounds,” he says.
Smith grew up playing both piano and violin, but eventually abandoned the latter because “I wasn’t good at it. I didn’t have the discipline.” He loved the piano, though, especially when he was
using it to work out by ear songs that he heard on the radio. That ignited an itch to write his own songs.
He started out simply, writing on piano. Then he discovered multitrack recording, which opened up a new world of possibilities. “That’s where my desire to start layering stu� came up. [I realized] if I layer things, I can make them sound way bigger than they really are. I always loved big harmonies, and so discovering the ability to make an entire choir made up of just my voice was really fun.”
When he was creating music (much of which ended up on Bastille’s � rst album) on his laptop, “I would use my imagination and try to create little worlds to transport the listener to somewhere di� erent. That’s the wonderful thing about using your laptop. If you want to
use a kalimba [African percussion instru-ment] sound, you’ve got it at your fingertips—all the sounds from around the world that I’d never be able to physically hold in my hands. I took inspiration from everywhere.”
Though Smith writes all Bastille’s songs and co-produces the albums with Mark Crew, he stresses that Bastille is a band, not just him and some hired hands. “I work on every inch of the record, but so do the other guys,” he says. “They played all over the � rst album and on this one as well. It’s very collaborative and [the music’s] much better for that. Sometimes it’s basically me on my computer, and other times we’re
all in a room recording as a full band. There’s a nice � uidity to that.”
LIFTING THE GUITAR BANMusically, Bastille continues to evolve, especially in its attitude toward the electric guitar. Smith had originally intended the group to be a guitar-free zone. With Bad Blood, “we were going to try to make this alternative album using weird sounds—on computer, on percussive instruments or strings or interesting beats,” he says. “We wanted to create this upbeat feel without having guitars.”
However, as the band played live, it began to realize that its self-imposed instrument ban was limiting. “We were like, ‘There’s a whole other world here that we haven’t explored,’ which made it really fun when it came to Wild World,” Smith says. “It opened our sound up to other things we could try: heavier ri� s or really minimal guitar things and everything in between.”
After broadening its parameters, Bastille continued to build on its sound for Wild World by creating its own samples [short audio record-ings of instruments, voices, and/or other sounds], chopping them up with editing software, and adding e� ects to them. All this was done with the hope of creating an album that “feels like a soundtrack,” Smith says, mentioning the track “Two Evils,” which does indeed sound
Dan Smith Kyle Simmons Will Farquarson Chris Wood
intunemonthly.com November 2016 • In Tune Monthly 39
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like it belongs in a Western movie directed by Quentin Tarantino.The idea was to take the band to a different level, while still
remaining recognizably Bastille. “It was important to move on,” Smith says. “One of the things that was liberating about making this album was the realization that with my songwriting and with us all playing on the songs, that’s what makes it Bastille. Then in and around that, we can experiment as much as we like.”
Much of that experimentation happened during the band’s extended time on the road between the two albums, which helped them become a more cohesive unit and allowed them to road-test certain songs for Wild World. “We had the advantage of touring while we did this album, so there were a couple of songs in particular, ‘Blame’ and ‘Snakes,’ that really were informed by playing those songs at festivals last summer,” Smith says. “Those songs evolved and changed quite a bit because of how we were doing them as a band. Mark Crew, our co-producer, came to see a show and [heard ‘Blame’] and was like, ‘Wow, this has become a completely different thing,’ and that’s what’s on the record.”
The time between albums also led to the band working its way through some different styles. “We had a heavy rock stage and we had an R&B stage,” Smith says. “This album is almost our curation of the last three years of our lives in music.”
What has remained from Bad Blood to Wild World is Smith’s uncanny ability to write songs that sound upbeat until one actually listens to the lyrics, which are often fraught with anxiety and concern about the state of the world. “Good Grief” is no exception. “It’s about loss and how that’s really messy and complicated,” Smith says. “But I didn’t want the song to be completely full of despair. I wanted it to be about how sad things happen in life, but there are always moments of humor and happiness hidden away.”
Although he has nothing against the lighter lyrical fare that usually accompanies the big melodies and strong hooks of modern pop music, Smith explains he’s simply drawn to the darker side. “There are a lot of people out there writing about happy stuff and dancing and going to the club,” he says. “There are moments of that in our music, but the darker stuff is a bit more interesting. A narrative about happiness the whole way through isn’t a very com-pelling one. What I try to do is juxtapose the positive and the negative in a way that feels a bit more realistic.”
MORE IN THE MIXAlong with its two official full-length albums, Bastille has also
released a series of free unofficial compilation recordings, including 2014’s VS (Other People’s Heartache Pt. lll), which featured collaborations with Haim, Angel Haze, MNEK, Skunk Anansie, and more. Following an old tradition taken from the hip-hop world, these compilations are called “mix tapes,” even though they aren’t actually on tape, having been produced digitally. Smith says that the idea to release them to the public was inspired by the R&B and rap artists whom the band admires, like Frank Ocean and The Weeknd. “We saw how
they initially gave away music for free on the internet and I thought that was really cool and progres-sive,” he explains. “For us, it was just a fun opportunity to mess a rou nd i n t he s t ud io w it h production.”
Smith notes that, unlike the albums, which are made by a small core group, the mix tapes allow the band to collaborate with a wide spectrum of artists, to experiment, and to play with people’s percep-tions. “VS was the exact opposite of our own album. It was this mad jumble of music and sounds that people wouldn’t expect us to make,” he says. “It was very much like, ‘Right. We’ve released Bad Blood and lots of people have probably made a judgment about who they think we are. And with VS, we were like, no. If we want to do a heavy hip-hop song, we can. If we want to do an
electronic dance song, we can. ” While Smith doesn’t expect the group’s casual listeners to
explore the mix tapes, for fans who want a deeper dive, the tapes can provide insight into the band’s inspirations. “There are a lot of pop culture references in our songs and in our mix tapes, and I love that people can almost use them as a road map to stuff we love and that influences us. If you care enough to unpack all the stuff that we’ve done, there’s a lot of layers.”
Although their lives look different from the way they did even a few years ago, Smith says he and his bandmates have been “really keen to not get caught up in any kind of hype” and to stay focused on the music. “There’s a down-to-earth mentality in our band. If anyone ever started acting stupid or above their station, I think we’d, in a nice way, knock them down to size. We’ve not really edged into the world of fame so much. We didn’t expect any of this to happen. We still feel hugely grateful for this opportunity and it’s important to try to enjoy it as much as we can.”
Dan Smith and fellow British singer Craig
David duet at a recent Bastille show
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IT’S A LITTLE HARD TO BELIEVE THAT “Cheap Thrills” is the � rst song by Sia to reach No. 1 in the U.S. That’s because the Australian singer/songwriter (whose last name is Furler) has been creating music as a solo artist for nearly two decades. Up until about two years ago, though, her greatest successes had come from either writing songs for other sing-
ers—including Christina Aguilera, Beyoncé, Kylie Minogue, and Rihanna—or collaborating with artists like David Guetta (“Titanium”) and Flo Rida (“Wild Ones”).
All that changed in 2014, when Sia released her sixth solo album, 1000 Forms of Fear. The album contained the song “Chandelier,” which became her � rst non-collaborative Top 10 single, taking her career to a new peak. In the wake of “Chandelier,” Sia was a major star at last, and her penchant for wearing outrageous wigs that hid her face—meant, she said, to protect her privacy—only ended up further boosting her visibility.
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IT’S A LITTLE HARD TO BELIEVE THAT “Cheap Thrills” is the � rst song by Sia to reach No. 1 in the U.S. That’s because the Australian singer/songwriter (whose last name is Furler) has been creating music as a solo artist for nearly two decades. Up until about two years ago, though, her greatest successes had come from either writing songs for other sing-
ers—including Christina Aguilera, Beyoncé, Kylie Minogue, and Rihanna—or collaborating with artists like David Guetta (“Titanium”) and Flo Rida (“Wild Ones”).
All that changed in 2014, when Sia released her sixth solo album, song “Chandelier,” which became her � rst non-collaborative Top 10 single, taking her career to a new peak. In the wake of “Chandelier,” Sia was a major star at last, and her penchant for wearing outrageous wigs that hid her face—meant, she said, to protect her privacy—only ended up further boosting her visibility.
ABOUT MODERN BANDModern Band is a school-based music performance ensemble program that
focuses on popular music instruments and repertoire. This season, In Tune
will take a closer look at songs that are being taught in Modern Band
programs across the country.
BY ERIN O’HARE
A No. 1 hit, years in the making.
SI A'S"CHEAP
THRILLS"
M O D E R N B A N D : L E A R N I N G T O P L AY N E W S O N G S
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This newfound fame didn’t stop Sia from continuing to write songs for others. In fact, she and regular collaborator Greg Kurstin (who’s also worked with Beck, Kelly Clark-son, and Lily Allen) originally wrote “Cheap Thrills” for Rihanna, who rejected it for her 2016 album Anti. That led Sia to include it on her latest album This Is Acting, which consists entirely of songs written for and rejected by other artists. Rih’s loss was Si’s gain; the latter has now become the � rst woman over 40 to top the Billboard Hot 100 chart since Madonna did it in 2000 with “Music.”
“Cheap Thrills” features the kind of big, catchy, sing-along chorus that Sia has delivered time and again on “Chandelier,” “Titanium,” “Unstoppable,” and other hits. However, the song’s light-hearted, uplifting feel is a change of pace for Sia, whose music usually has a darker mood. This change is due largely to the addition of guest star Sean Paul and the Jamaican reggae � avor he brings to the track. You can hear the in� uence of the Caribbean not only in his style of singing on the chorus and bridge, but also in the drum track that runs throughout the song. The four-on-the-� oor kick (meaning that the bass drum hits on every beat in a 4/4 measure) and the syncopated snare drum (playing largely in between those bass drum hits) are staples of dancehall-style reggaeton music—as opposed to roots-style reggae, which tends to be slower. You can hear a similar mix of styles in the R. City song “Locked Away,” which features Adam Levine from Maroon 5 singing over a reggaeton groove.
PERFORMANCE TIPSReady to try and play “Cheap Thrills” yourself? Here are a few things to keep in mind. To really capture this song in per-formance, you need to get a good groove going between the drums and keyboards. It’s those two instruments that do the most to establish that dancehall feel. Start with just your drummer playing four-on-the-� oor at the tempo of the song. Once that feels solid, bring in your keyboard players. De� nitely go for a sound on the keyboards that’s synthetic rather than a straight piano or organ tone. Most electronic pianos have lots of sounds to choose from; a good place to start looking is in the banks of synth sounds. Keyboardists should play that
M O D E R N B A N D : S I A' S " C H E A P T H R I L L S "
bouncy rhythm that can be heard at the very beginning of the song.
Bass players should play right with the kick drum on all four beats per measure. Just play-ing the root of each chord is perfect; it’s a great way to reinforce the beat while adding to the harmonic progression of the song.
Guitarists can do one of two things, depending on how many are in your Modern Band. If a guitar player wants to use power chords, I’d suggest he or she double the bass’s rhythm. If your guitar player is using open or barre chords instead, have him or her play along with the keyboardist in that syncopated rhythm. If your band has a lot of guitar players, splitting their parts up in this way can be helpful, providing dif-
ferent roles for di� erent members.Back to keyboards for a second: Looking for a real challenge?
Try combining the bass and keyboard parts by playing that bouncy rhythm with your right hand while playing on all four beats with the left hand. If you have several keyboard players in your band, assign some of them to play pads—sustained chords that don’t establish a rhythm but add fullness to the
sound of an ensemble. Many keyboards have a bunch of sounds just for this pur-pose; check out the synth pad sounds on yours. I f you give each keyboardist a different sound to use, you can create a unique blend for your band.
Once the drummer’s got that four-on-the-� oor kick drum real steady, he or she should add in the syncopated snare drum. More experienced drummers can also add some swing with a hi-hat part, if so desired. If you have additional drummers � lling in on other instruments, divide them into high and low sounds. Low instruments can play on every quarter note while high instruments can play the syncopated rhythms with the keyboards.
Performing “Cheap Thrills” is a great way to feature multiple singers using di� erent styles. After all, the original version of the song already features two. Feel free to take the strengths of your singers and arrange the song in whatever way suits those strengths best. Yes, it’s fun to learn a song exactly like the artist performs it, but it’s also fun to put your own personality into it and create your own arrangement.
Sean Paul
bouncy rhythm that can be heard at the very beginning of the song.
bass’s rhythm. If your guitar player is using
Written by Sia Furler and Greg Kurstin. Produced by Greg Kurstin. First appeared January 29, 2016, on
Sia’s seventh studio album, This Is Acting. Released as a single
on February 11, 2016, it reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart during the week of August 6, 2016.
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On this page you’ll find a Modern Band guitar accompaniment chart in the style of “Cheap Thrills.” If you want charts for other instruments, you’ll find
them at intunemonthly.com/modern-band.
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SAY YOU’RE A solo performer with a recently signed record-
ing contract. You’ve just com-pleted your � rst album and are starting a national tour to pro-mote it in a month or two. The parts performed on the album were played by session pros, but they can’t go on tour. You need a road band. Who do you call to help you assemble the musi-cians? Paul “TFO” Allen.
The “TFO” stands for Ten Finger Orches-tra, referring to Allen’s ability to create a guitar “orchestra” by tapping on the fret-board with all 10 fingers. In addition to playing guitar with all his digits, Allen is a Nashville-based multi-instrumentalist, author, and product designer, whose credits as a session player include Adele, Big & Rich, Jake Owen, and Gretchen Wilson.
Years of touring with major-label acts have given Allen a huge list of industry contacts and led him to yet another income stream: musical directing. A musical direc-tor (MD for short) is the person hired by either an artist’s management or label to bring together the players for a given project. Those players must be able to show not only that they can handle the music but also that they can get along personally with the other band members and are prepared for the heavy travel schedule of a long tour.
“Sometimes I call people I’ve known for 15 years,” Allen says. “I know their musical background and how they’re going to act on the road. Other times, when players aren’t available, they recommend someone they’ve met who they think is good and reliable.” Word of mouth counts for a lot.
necessary adjustments on the road. Pay for this job can vary widely. “I charge
according to the workload,” he says, “which can include, in addition to rehearsal and a show, calling � ve bass players before I � nd one available and willing to do it, and multi-plying that times each instrument. First, the client needs to know how many band mem-bers are needed, how many tunes are in the set, how many rehearsals, etc.” Allen tells clients up front that any additional work beyond what was initally agreed upon will cost accordingly.
“People are comfortable hiring me because I know what they’re up against,” he says. “I’m not just thinking about how much money I’m going to make, I’m thinking about how I can make it easier for the person I’m handing the band o� to, because that’s how I’m going to get hired again.”
W H AT D O YO U D O? EXPLORING CAREERS IN THE MUSIC INDUSTRY BY MICHAEL ROSS
intunemonthly.comIn Tune Monthly • November 201644
Once the musicians are rounded up, Allen makes sure that written music is available for them and that any pre-recorded tracks an artist wishes to use as part of his or her live performance are ready to go. Then he rehearses with the band for a few days, aiming to solve all technical problems before the artist enters the scene. “I make sure everyone’s playing together, and that the click track [a metronome meant only for the drummer to hear] isn’t going to the front-of-house speakers [for the audience to hear] by mistake,” he says. “Often, I’m there through the [tour’s] � rst practice show for management, label, friends and family, etc. At that point, if I’m not also in the band, they’re set to go and I’m done.”
When not continuing on with the band himself, Allen recommends one of the touring players to be the person whom the artist deals with directly for making any
JOB TITLE: Freelance musical directorWHAT HE DOES: Finds, auditions, and rehearses musicians for touring bands
“People are comfortable hiring me because I know what they’re up against.”
Paul “TFO” Allen
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The Creation of a Powerful Blow
ka
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H ow I t wo r k s TrumpeT embouChure By kate koenig
Of all the instruments in an orchestra, the trumpet may just be the most iconic. The sight of one can also call to mind the heralding of a royal entrance, a bebop solo, or an ear-piercing screech. Although trumpets have existed for centuries, our modern understanding of how they produce tones was only developed about 30 years ago. But one thing is common knowledge: Trumpet playing depends on your embouchure (AHM-boo-sher), or the way you use your lips.
ReaDy When playing a trumpet, you first must collect air in your lungs by inhaling. This increases the air pressure in your lungs, and that pressure provides energy for the production of sound.
Set Your lips become the focus in the next part of the process. The embouchure, which derives its name from the French word for mouth (bouche), is the section of the lips that you place within the circumference of the trumpet’s mouthpiece cup. Your mouth and jaw muscles hold the embouchure in place with a firmness that creates tension in your lips as you prepare to release the air pressure from your lungs.
go Here’s where the mechanics take place: As you push the air up from your lungs and through your mouth, the pressure of the air forces your lips apart, creating a small opening in your embouchure called an aperture. Due to the tension created by your muscles and the elastic, springy quality of lip tissue, your lips respond by vibrating in all directions: up and down, side to side, forward and back. Pressed against the cup of the mouthpiece, your embouchure then acts as a mechanical valve; as the air pressure is released, the aperture rapidly opens and closes, causing the pressure to escape in a pulse of periodic bursts at fractions of a second. From these bursts, a sound wave is produced—and goes on to resonate through the body of the horn.
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