HW through Thursday, May 9th, plus upcoming due dates

Thursday, May 2nd:  discuss "Dr. Don," put up a new column post.  

Tuesday, May 7th:  Chloe's second visit.  Bring your podcast "script," or as much as you can plan out.  Come with your plans for logistics--time, place, equipment--how you will go about interviewing/conversion, how you will introduce your podcast, questions, etc.  Aim for 1-3 min podcast.  

Thursday, May 9th.  Column post, unconventional review/blog post.  

Looking ahead:  Visit by Isaac Fitzgerald on 5/16.  

2nd interview due Tuesday, 5/21.  (I moved this back one class period from what I stated in class).

Term project due Thursday, May 30th.

REVISION: In Hindsight, a Collaboration

In Hindsight, a Collaboration:

Timbaland and Timberlake Share the Spotlight on The 20/20 Experience

In a review of Gangstarr's The Ownerz, Rolling Stone Magazine said that rapper Guru could rhyme from a technical manual and still sound hot over DJ Premier's production.  Justin Timberlake tests this theory in The 20/20 Experience -- the complex, funky production from a reinvigorated Timbaland headlines the album, overshadowing Timberlake’s musically delicious but lyrically immature vocals.

20/20 is undersold as simply a Justin Timberlake album.  It's a Timbaland/Timberlake collaboration, with Timbaland pushing the boundaries of a pop producer.  Timbaland has kept a relatively low profile since his string of hits in the mid-2000s that spawned 11 number one singles in '06 and '07 alone, many for Timberlake himself.  20/20 signifies Timbaland's reemergence as an elite hit maker and his maturation as a producer.

Timbaland is given free reign to color the eight minute opuses that pepper the album with his dynamic and layered production.  He displays a remarkable creative range that is well-adjusted to the trends in indie pop and hip hop.  'Don't Hold the Wall', 'Let The Groove In' and 'Tunnel Vision' all hearken back to his classic style that had me calling radio stations to request 'Promiscuous Girl' and 'Sexy Back' in middle school -- driving, danceable rhythms with a vaguely ethnic sounding drum backing.  Elements of 'Mirrors' feel like a happier, sexier 'Cry Me A River', while others expertly drop out to bass and piano tremolos.  It's club music, Timbaland’s forte.

Even out of his comfort zone, Timbaland excels.  He brings Flying Lotus-style ambient trip hop into the fold, highlighted most notably in 'Strawberry Bubblegum' and its flowing synths.  His deep bass kicks move in and out of a sparing drum kit in the second half of this track, smooth organs melting beneath Timberlake's vocals.  'Blue Ocean Floor' could have been a love child of James Blake and the xx's turn tables, or taken straight from the playbook of LA electro hip hop producer Nosaj Thing. 

In addition to this mood hop and his club tracks, Timbaland experiments fairly successfully with neo-soul.  'That Girl', 'Suit and Tie' and 'Pusher Love Girl' pushed his pop niche towards R&B, disco and even swing.  They're brass heavy, with bright horn highlights and funky bass undertones.  They kick with a retro style that first made me peg them as just a cheap nod to the past, until you realize that Timbaland may be churning out soul music better than the real thing.  Search his solo album, Shock Value, and these types of track are nowhere to be found.  But Timbo's work these days is the real deal and, with the help of a fantastic studio band, his production and songwriting bring 20/20 to life.

Don't get me wrong -- Justin Timberlake has pipes.  His vocal arrangements are strong and I will rarely get tired of a well-intentioned falsetto that can live up to the hype.  Timberlake’s register allows him to handle his falsetto expertly, one of his trademarks, and distinguishes him from other falsettos, like fellow blue-eyed soul crooner Robin Thicke.  His harmonies and riffs on ‘Mirrors’ are thoroughly enjoyable and nuanced –the stripped down beat beginning at 3:42 to the bass drop at 4:34 was the most vocally interesting and layered segment of the album.  His voice will occasionally settle into an awkward, lusty, mid-range rap-singing, reminiscent of past N Sync habits that are, in my opinion, mundane.  Fortunately, these instances are significantly less frequent than they had been on his previous release, FutureSex/LoveSounds.

Timberlake's lyrics, unfortunately, cannot match the top-notch musicality of the album.  While his voice is fantastic and Timbaland is at the forefront of trends in pop production, Timberlake is not on the same level lyrically as the premier R&B songwriters of the time.  In a year where Frank Ocean and Miguel dropped poetic manifestos, 20/20 just isn't close.  Lines like, "So thick, now I know why they call it a fatty," probably won’t cut it in the current cerebral and complex R&B environment.  He clunks his way through a number of clichés -- comparing a girl's love to drugs in 'Pusher Love Girl', loving someone "from the other side of the tracks" in 'That Girl'.  It's been done before, and he doesn't bring anything new to the table.  A number of the tracks could have been found their way into the liner notes of his first solo effort, Justified, with simple rhymes and up front, straight-forward intentions.  It's not painful, but it pales in comparison to the high bar set by Timberlake's recent R&B peers.

Get the album.  It’s a pleasure to listen to and Rolling Stone’s hypothesis -- that pedestrian lyrical content can be overlooked in the presence of high quality production -- is proven correct.  Timbaland will undoubtedly begin fielding diverse musical opportunites following this all-star performance.  Justin Timberlake’s limitations, however, may have been revealed.  Take a creative writing class, JT; it could serve you well on your next project.

Jazz as a Second Language

“Talking about jazz is like singing about architecture,” -Apocryphal, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise

Jazz is the music we made when we first climbed out of the primordial sludge and needed something to say. Jazz is Whitman's barbaric yawp, Ginsberg's howl, and what Plato was most afraid of. Jazz is not background music, despite what coffeehouses and elevators try to convince you. Jazz is the name for when you become human through music. It's imminent and it's intimate and it's ineffable.

But jazz has had bad attorneys in the courtroom of public opinion lately. My personal quest is to try to expose people to the heart of jazzness, because everybody already loves it whether or not they're aware. And this means correcting the notion that liking jazz means having a copy of “Take Five” on your iPod or hanging a poster of Miles Davis on your wall or having any association with Michael Buble. Fuck Michael Buble. That belongs in another column, though.

Obviously, this has to be experienced though. Listen to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yf1Eo-6sDIE
And that means really listening. Attention must be paid. Give the music the respect it deserves, and it will respect you too.

This tune (jazz musicians say 'tune' more than normal people, and 'ditty' too, embarrassingly enough) is by the unparalleled trumpet player Lee Morgan, whose biography deserves more than this gloss. He, like other trumpet greats Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Wynton Marsalis, and Clifford Brown, got his start as a teenager, recording as a solo artist for Blue Note Records, one of the most venerated labels in jazz. He worked with John Coltrane and Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers and was an integral part of several albums that changed the face of jazz in the '60s. He was the first trumpet player I loved. His heroin addiction forced him to take a break right at the pinnacle of his career.

He returned with Sidewinder, the record this song comes from. The groovy, bluesy coolness rocketed the song to the top of the charts and caused Blue Note to adopt this style basically through the present day. He continued to make amazing records until February 19, 1972, when he was just 33. His wife called his name while he was on stage getting ready to perform. When he turned to her, she shot him, then began crying out, “Baby, what have I done?” He bled to death because the ambulances were reluctant to go to the rough neighborhood the club was in. Jazz is, if nothing else, a series of tragedies.

I chose this song because many people of our generation say “the beat” is what matters most to them in a song. The first thing you hear on this track is Bob Cranshaw's bass. There's no better feeling than experiencing the sound of a fat double bass played through quality speakers. The bass ostinato (a repeating rhythmic or melodic figure) stays fairly constant throughout the song, which is fairly rare. Usually in jazz the bass will “walk,” or outline chords by playing one note on every beat. The effect of the figured bass is to establish a groove, along with masterfully laid-back drummer Billy Higgins. Higgins' cymbal is somewhere in between straight eighth notes and swung, which is where the second note of each beat is delayed. This is called playing “in the cracks.” If you can listen to this, combined with Barry Harris' bluesy syncopated (off-beat) chords, without moving a little, I don't know if I can help you.

The rhythm section plays through the form once to set the mood for the piece. Let yourself dig in and feel yourself in their groove. Listen to how each instrument fits perfectly in the spaces left by the other musicians. The bass note on the fourth beat of every measure is a major seventh, even though the key has a flatted (meaning lowered a half-step, also called dominant) seventh. This gives a sense of anticipation, whether or not you're aware.

(An idiosyncrasy of jazz is that, even without knowing all of the music theory that goes into it, your musical sense is affected strongly by very small changes. Learning the theory doesn't make you more susceptible to this, it just makes you more aware of what's happening to you. It's like taking literary criticism classes to learn why you like a book.)

The basic progression, or series of chords, is almost a blues. The uniqueness of the song, and what gives it its title, is the piano's shifting chords. Each measure starts one half-step below the key, then rises up to it. The ear still knows what key the song is in, but the moment of uncertainty leaves the song slippery and perpetually driving forward. At the end of this intro, there's a pause. Remember that pause.

The trumpet and sax (played by the wonderful Joe Henderson) enter and play the head, which is the basic melody of a song which serves to outline the chords that the musicians will solo over. Each repetition of the progression is called a chorus, and each chorus will follow the same progression. The basic structure of a song is head, solos by each musician, then a recapitulation of the head. While the soloists are doing their thing, the rhythm section will comp, or accompany, them, by suggesting the chords as well as by reacting in real time to the improvisations of the soloist. This is hard to do.

The melody is similarly driving, never really giving a moment's rest. The pause at the end is now home to one cool-ass bluesy lick that should make you squinch up your nose and go “Ooooh!” At the end of the head, Lee Morgan's solo begins. He's one of the true masters of soulful playing. His solo includes many snippets of the melody, which helps make it more cohesive. Listen to how he bends and growls some of his notes. The uncomfortable bit of dissonance is what it's all about. If you're paying attention, there's a lot of tension in the music. Without it, what's the point? He uses a lot of motifs, or repeating figures, with minor variations to subvert the listener and keep you on your toes. You should be shaking your head and shimmying your shoulders a bit. His sound has got a tinge of suffering in it, but in a way that reassures that it's all cool cuz he's got his axe and he's really blowin', man, this shit's cookin'. When he starts his third chorus he goes into a flurry of B-flats with accents on the beat. This raises the crap out of some tension. His resolution isn't quite convincing, so he has to go back into it and lead us out with explorations through the range of the scale that doesn't really ever solve the problem. He backs out, leaving us forced to seek resolution in other places we won't find it. C'est la vie.

Henderson's solo follows. While his blues work isn't as immediately accessible as Morgan's, he's got fun moments where you can feel the reediness of his tenor being used to its full bluesy potential. The repeated figures are common and an easy musical moment to latch onto for beginners. These licks are what drives a lot of blues based music and speak to us on a primal level. There's something about the immediacy of an insisted repeated melodic figure that makes us feel the performer's passion in a really clear way. Harris's solo uses the same principle, playing on old blues tropes.

Then bass solo, then head out. Jazz is tough to get into, I'll be the first to admit it. But once you make the attempt to understand jazz qua jazz, you've made the first step towards being able to experience one of the most truly religious endeavors of human existence. Is it worth it? If you have to ask, you'll never know.

Champagne Bubbles and Polished Chrome

Wiley Webb is a freshman progressive house DJ from Malibu, California and his common app essay began "At my first rave".  I heard his two latest singles, 'Humour' and 'Ambrosia', shortly after they dropped in early April, so I jumped at the chance to sit down with him and talk shop. 

Stanford Arts Review: How would you describe your music?

Wiley Webb: Eclectic.  Fun.  Unclassifiable.

SAR: Ok.  How would you describe your music to someone deaf?

WW: Champagne bubbles and polished chrome.  Yeah.

SAR: Woah.

WW: Warmth.  Warm summer winds; not hot but energetic and playful.

SAR: Why do you describe your sounds in themes?

WW: EDM is more abstract -- with acoustic music, it's clearly defined.  EDM can be transformers having an argument, a romantic vacuum cleaner encounter.  Visuals are a big part of the production process.  I like to imagine things of a different sense and then try to translate it into another sense.  There's a detachment between you and what's creating the sound since it's all synthetic.  It allows for room for imagination

SAR: Why is EDM blowing up right now?

WW: To start, the technology is available and being used for music.  As that becomes more widespread, popular taste becomes accustomed to electronic music.  Honestly, it's more fun, it's more interesting, and to my aesthetic taste, it's superior music.  EDM is designed for live environments, and people are down with losing themselves in the moment.  In other types of music, you're forced back into reality in between songs at a concert.  Dance music shows, until very recently with the emergence of celebrity DJs,  were about dancing, and not about the performances.

SAR: Do you think the great musicians of the past would value EDM?

WW: Yes?

SAR: What would John Lennon like about your music?

WW: What type of hypothetical John Lennon are we talking about?  Like, has he listened to Skrillex?

SAR: Let's say this is an open-minded Lennon -- he's looking for positives.

WW: Lennon would love the sound design and cohesion. Cohesion is a big thing for my music.  As a producer, I'm working wit ha conglomeration of sounds.  I'm trying to sew them into a Frankenstein of melodies, where you can't see the seams.  Every sound should work towards the song as a whole, which is what separates amateur from quality producers.

SAR: What about Biggie?

WW:The booty bass  section of 'Humour'.  It's basically a fat kicking bass with a wonky synth over it.  And the main part is very rhythmically conscious.

SAR: Michael Jackson?

WW: The hook.  He'd like the hook.

SAR: You're generally not the biggest drinker or drug user.  Is it weird that there is such a strong drug culture surrounding the type of music you produce?

WW: Yeah, it's a little weird but never disconcerting.  It's never really been about that for me.  If you look at someone like Kaskade -- he's a 42 year old Mormon dude.  It can be done.

SAR: Kaskade is 40?  And Mormon?

WW: Yeah.

SAR: Interesting.  Who are you favorite artists right now?

WW: As for EDM, out of the big guys I likeKaskade, yeah,  deadmau5 and Daft Punk, of course.  As for lesser know guys, The M Machine, Madeon, Porter Robinson.  I opened for Madeon at Ruby Skye in January.  Outside of the genre, I'm getting really into the artsy electronica scene.  Flying Lotus, James Blake, Bonobo all came out with albums in the last three months, so I'm really happy.  They're starting to sway me towards stronger songwriting as opposed to straight production -- song, notes, melodies as opposed to sound structure, arrangement and mixing.

SAR: You think they'll influence your own work?

WW: Yeah.  I'm starting to use a lot of non-traditional chord progressions and my stuff is very melodically based.  If you're not starting on the piano or in some melodic way, it's just not really going to sound like music.

SAR: Do you always start from the piano?

WW: Yeah.  Or in the shower.  I thought of 'Humour' in the shower.

SAR: What's next for you, career move-wise?

WW: Here's where I'm at now.   I feel like I've developed a unique sound that I can call my own.  This summer I'm going to do a lot to try and release some tracks and see what kind of traction I can get with those.  From there, I'll try to figure out if I'd like to do my own thing as a producer/DJ or try to produce for other people.  I just met with a manager to produce for a pop-rock singer looking to expand her creative sound.  It will be a new experience to try to work within her style of rock while making in more interesting and danceable.

SAR: With Skrillex and Diplo doing testing their waters in hip hop, would you consider doing work in that genre?

WW: Yeah.  There's still a lot of room for individuality in creating hip hop beats, even if you're doing it for someone else.

SAR: Is working in hop hop selling out?

WW: It's a way to flex production muscles in a different way and in a different environment.  You dress up in different clothes to go to the gym than for dinner, but it's still you.  Different settings demand different applications of yourself.

SAR: Is DJ Wiley Webb different from Stanford kid Wiley Webb to construct a sort of brand?

WW: As far as I can tell, no.  It's a lot easier not to have to think about

SAR: Did you know DJrankings.com has you ranked as the 10,730th best DJ in the world?

WW: Nice.

SAR: What will it take to get you to crack 10,700?

WW: That's been my dream since day 1.

Wiley's two latest singles, 'Humour' and 'Ambrosia', can be streamed and downloaded at http://wileywebb.com/.  He'll be opening for 3lau at Ruby Skye in San Francisco on Thursday, May 30.

Street Art for Neurotics

Dr. Peter Mann teaches SLE at Stanford. He's also an accomplished visual artist (you can see his work at pmannia.com).

Stanford Arts Review: What first seriously drew you to art, pardon the pun?

Peter Mann: I definitely drew all the time as a kid. I was into cartooning and drawing action heroes and that kind of thing. I first got serious about art in college, especially in my semester abroad in Spain. My friend brought watercolors, and I just sucked at them. My first reaction was that I sucked at art, that all my cartooning had been no good. I had just read Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy and had become convinced that art was the highest form of living. God this is going to sound so pretentious in interview. So through an act of will I threw myself into art back in college.

SAR: Who are some of your major influences?
PM: I love German expressionism. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Darger, who's this crazy outsider artist who was like a William Blake of the 20^th century.

SAR: Do you find yourself trying to emulate their style?
PM: I find myself copying the German expressionist style somewhat, especially Egon Schiele. But mostly I try to do my own style. I do think that the best way to learn is to try to copy the masters. I draw from lots of photographs now.

SAR: So you've just finished a series in which you made a unique drawing on every page of Don Quixote. Are you trying to sell those pieces?
PM: Actually, what I did was go to bookstores around the city and leave the pages inside of books with a label that had my website on it. I've already heard back from some people who got the pieces and responded and registered their pieces with me.

SAR: What was the selection process for the books you left them in?

PM: Well, I think that since Don Quixote was the birth of the novel, I had a kind of free range with which books I could leave them in. So some were books that had really affected me, others were books by authors that I enjoyed but hadn't gotten around to reading yet. It was like stamping the books with my own interests.

SAR: Are you interested in this kind of guerrilla art?

PM: This was my first foray into it. I was interested in street art that could be privately or intimately experienced. Street art doesn't really turn me on visually, so I guess in keeping with my bookish nature I wanted to do it through this setting. Like street art for neurotics.

SAR: Who are some contemporary artists you're into?

PM: Andrew Schoultz, William Kentridge, David Shrigley. I'm mostly into graphic designers, like Joe Sacco and R. Crumb, if he counts as contemporary art. He's still alive, right? The piece that's moved me the most lately is by Christopher Marclay, “The Clock.” It's a 24-hour film of movie characters referencing the time of day. It blew my mind when I first saw it.

SAR: Do you have an artist's statement?

PM: No, I'm very much anti-artist's statement. I wrote a manifesto against them a while ago. “The Found Manifesto of Unhinged Lyricism.” You can probably find it online.

http://www.waxworksandroustabouts.com/2009/02/unhinged-lyricism.html

You most certainly can.

Collaborative Review Question 5: Kronos/Anderson

5.  We sat in the back (choir) section.  What are those seats like?

Collaborative Review Question 4: Kronos/Anderson

4.  Confounding/maddening/what-the-heck-is-going on parts?