Friday Influences Thread 04.24.09

What has influenced you in the past -- or since the last FIT?

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I've been playing ukulele for a couple of years. Earlier this year, I got an archtop tenor uke that sparked some creativity and songs started flowing. It appears that there is a bit of ukulele madness everywhere I turn, but that could just because my ukulele antennae are on high alert.

Bosko & Honey are world-traveling ukulists and they put up regular vids on youtube. Here they are with Gensblue in a uke trio original composition. The piece is in three sections.

[YOUTUBE]gGQDm9a_QDE[/YOUTUBE]

That's really cool. It's beautiful.

My influence as a kid was finding pure pop bliss through the perfect marriage of a melody against its chord. That perfect tension then euphoric release into the chord. The chord tones and the non chord tones in the melody all rubbing in various degrees of friction waiting to find a home for them to resolve in. Lennon and McCartney took this further and started using stressed non chord tones in their melodies to further help me appreciate the eventual resolve. But this is where I first heard this wonderful effect. I still strive for this type of soaring quality in my melodies. And it's what I find lacking in a lot of modern pop.

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Very nice.

I have a couple of different influences I can comment on right now.

The first goes out to Marcellis. The song he put up a few weeks ago about his friend (?) who died in Viet Nam rekindled a desire on my part to attempt something in a similar vein for my uncle who died in France in 1944. It has been the most painful, difficult yet rewarding piece I have ever attempted. I have made probably two dozen attempts thus far and I sill have yet to decide on which approach to take. I have much good material that I now need to turn into something coherent.

The second is a report that I now have begun working with some collaborative partners in my little endeavors. It is still in it's infancy but I am encouraged and hopeful. They are some fairly experienced musicians looking for lyrical content so I have my fingers crossed it will generate some results. They play a style similar to mine so it seems to be a good fit so far. The hardest part for me thus far has been "letting go" of my material and seeing it evolve into things I never imagined. It is exciting to say the least.

I really like both the Ukulele Safari and Sukiyaki videos.

I was at the Coachella Festival this past weekend and found just about all of the performances to be quite inspiring to me. Perhaps more so on a performance level than a songwriting level, but I suppose everything eventually ends up influencing what we write.

Even though some of the artists there were artists who I've adored for years, I was especially blown away by the Hold Steady and Amanda Palmer -- two acts who I previously knew little or nothing about. I'm posting an Amanda Palmer video since, of those two, she is more stylistically similar to the kind of music I tend to write.

[YOUTUBE][/YOUTUBE]

Paul Simon is a songwriter I admire. "Poppy" to the max, no doubt - but he has such a wide palette of creativity that he is true legend in my mind....

I've not had much time to spend writing my own stuff lately, so I worked on a cover version on the following son -"Kodachrome". It came out ok, except I couldn't hit the higher notes singing in the original key, so I wound up basically scrapping the whole project.

So not only is Rhymin' Simon a songwriting influence, his vocals on this song has inspired to get back to doing only those songs that are in more a vocal "comfy zone" for me....Oh yeah, I couldn't find a decent vid of him doing this song, so this is just a menagerie of screen shots. Hard to believe there isn't more of him doing this song live on YouTube....

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Why not just transpose it to suit your range?

Why not just transpose it to suit your range?

It's a good thought, and one that I have considered. The problem is, is that I downloaded a MIDI file that contains the bass track and drum track that I was using in my recording. I suppose I could keep the drum track, re-record the guitar track and simply eliminate the bass altogether. Then again, there's prolly also a way I could re-assign the MIDI bass to a different note scale (I'm using Cubase), but I don't know how to do that yet...

Maybe focusing on developing my songwriting skills would be easier than this, although I may give the song another shot - in another key!

Great tune. I've loved it since it first came out. And weird thing, I've never bought any solo Simon. I need to pick up this album. That era was just phenomenal for him. Hard to describe what it is in that song that I love so much. Just pop as art. Just great.

And fantastic rhythm section on that tune as well.

I never have either, but I may have to get this one as well...

This might wet your appetite:

1 Kodachrome 3:32

2 Tenderness 2:52

3 Take Me To The Mardi Gras 3:26

4 Something So Right 4:33

5 One Man's Ceiling Is Another Man's Floor 3:44

6 American Tune 3:47

7 Was A Sunny Day 3:40

8 Learn How To Fall 2:44

9 St Judy's Comet 3:19

10 Loves Me Like A Rock 3:32

It's a good thought, and one that I have considered. The problem is, is that I downloaded a MIDI file that contains the bass track and drum track that I was using in my recording. I suppose I could keep the drum track, re-record the guitar track and simply eliminate the bass altogether. Then again, there's prolly also a way I could re-assign the MIDI bass to a different note scale (I'm using Cubase), but I don't know how to do that yet... Maybe focusing on developing my songwriting skills would be easier than this, although I may give the song another shot - in another key!

Man, I was just thinking you could use a capo.

Man, I was just thinking you could use a capo.

You mean, that is what that thing is used for???? :lol:

Anyways, an update - I've tried the capo up and down the neck - it's that soaring chorus that gets me everytime...

[YOUTUBE]Yheo2AgNywU[/YOUTUBE]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yheo2AgNywU

suh-weet!

OMG! Lee Knight - did you nail it for me! Sukyaki! I LOVE that song! I LOVE that version. I LOVE that era! Oh thank you so much for that!

And you nailed it twice. My favorite British producer from the 1960's was not George Martin or Joe Meek. it was Tony Hatch. His productions on Petula's records are incredible. She is my favorite British act from that era.

DParr - I Love "Hazy Shade" too. This is a really good week for this series!

I'm an acoustic guy at heart. Dan Seals passed away recently. In honor of him, I'm posting this Parker McGee song. It has been an an influence on me, because I've never been able to write a song this good.

And I keep trying.

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McGee's written line was:

"There's a warm wind blowing, the stars are out,"

Somehow poetry intervened. And the listener heard on the radio,

"There's a warm wind blowing the stars around,",

A lot of us fell in love while those words were being sung on the radio.

That's what poetry does.

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Danny Wayland Seals (February 8, 1948

I've been a fan for almost 25 years now - ever since 'Til Tuesday were anointed "the next big Boston band" by Rick Ocasek of the Cars . I'm posting "Calling It Quits". I love the way that the song builds, the funky drums, how distortion is used sparingly but to great effect, the jazzy guitar solo, and how the keyboard instruments add to the atmosphere while still riding the beat.

[YOUTUBE]OffZRdPUnLw[/YOUTUBE]

Love the Aimee Mann! Can I do two in one week?

Danny Elfman! I am convinced that Danny Elfman rode the Haunted Mansion ride in Anaheim, CA as a kid and was inspired by its music like me. The first time I heard Oingo Bongo, way before they were a known entity, playing in So. Ca., I thought, "Haunted Mansion".

He is so original. His pop music was so creative, which is why I included a recent rock offering from the Wanted soundtrack. His scores... well, I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking, "I wish I could do that! In some ways he's sort of a Disney dark cloud Peter Gabriel with a silly, evil grin. Like a Phantom of the Enchanted Castle. I love the ElfMAN! Every time I look for some slightly dissonant tweak for something I'm working on, Elfman comes to mind. Not dissonant really, just twisted in a really fun way. He can write with beauty and heart as well. Check the piece from Scissorhands...

When I think of Elfman... I think of the 1/2 step. Of chromaticism. Of the the "under chord". There's your tonic, major or minor, then Elfman comes along and finds the chord, be it a dim chord or a modified V chord that uses the almighty 1/2 step beneath to get his "under chord". It's a theme he uses again and again and I love how he manages to make it fresh each and every time.

Can't seem to find a Dead Man's Party with the embedding enabled so... Only A Lad it is. Listen to the acapella break in Only a Lad at 2:55 and see if it isn't a tribute to the singing from the Haunted Mansion at 1:52.

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I didn't realize there were other fans of this song. http://acapella.harmony-central.com/forums/showpost.php?p=27842947&postcount=6

It is a perfect Pop song AFAIC.

And the inadvertent change from

"There's a warm wind blowing, the stars are out

to

"There's a warm wind blowing the stars around,"

Sheer accident. Sheer magic. Sheer poetry.

The voice of the caller so honest, his motives so simple.

It's really hard to write like that.

And a lot of people fell in love while that song was playing on the radio.

I know I did.

It was a different era. There was a future out there. This song is full

of unspoken promise about a future. And yet, there is a nagging sense,

that individualism won't cut it. People get lonely.

It's hard not to love this song if you've ever been in love or ever wanted to be in love.

It's sung in the first person, like Jim Croce's "Operator" from the same era.

But this is not a loss song. There is an innocent optimism in these lyrics.

Even in this later version by Seals, it's still there.

This may be the only song that leaves me feeling a little more cheerful, every time I hear it.

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Sorry I didn't reply to your thread. I sure would have

had I known about it.

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Lately I've been waking up to a long list of favorites from a mix of folks from the Jayhawks and Wilco to Linda Ronstadt. The list is usually in scramble, but at the top of it is Ronstadt doing Hoagie Carmichael's "Skylark."

I first fell in love with "Skylark" back in the early 70s. I was an outsider acid/progressive rock fan (favorite band in that era, Family, the great, but little-known-in-the-US Brit art/blues band [and, yes, that mix was as odd -- and often oddly intoxicating -- as it sounds])... but I loved making 'party tapes' (on my reel to reel -- soon to be stolen) that mixed up all the strains of my brand of ultra-ironic hipsterism.

And that meant prowling the record collection -- some of which I'd 'inherited' when my folks split up -- for particularly piquant exotica.

When I stumbled on Claude Thornhill's orchestra doing "Skylark" and a few other tracks on a long playing 10" (a size seldom seen between the late 40s and the late 70s -- when various forms of EPs became popular as many of the most interesting bands didn't have enough budget to fill a whole album).

The vocals on the record were tight, full harmony mixed ensemble, sweet in the sweet chords and tartly in tune on the others.

At first the appeal was strictly camp. But the song -- and the singing -- won me over.

It's a great song from one of the most uniquely American writers of the first half of the 20th Century.

Couldn't find Ronstadt's version. I listened briefly to a version by Aretha Franklin from early in her career but it was gawdawful. (She just steamrollered over the melody -- she clearly didn't bother to learn it in the first place. Normally I like early Aretha but this really was disgraceful.) So, here's a very respectable but very low key small combo reading with Maxine Sullivan from 1947.

[audio only]

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Here's a more elaborate version by Helen Forrest, fronting the Harry James Orchestra... those unused to the big band tradition of doing an instrumental chorus, just wait, the singing kicks in the second time around:

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And finally, here is a version that arguably takes the fewest liberties with the melody, sung with easy and graceful professionalism by Dinah Shore, early in her extraordanarily long career:

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And, finally, here's Hoagie, himself, along with band leader Jack Teagarden and singer Meredith Blake -- in an actual video clip (a soundie, actually). This clip helped introduce the songwriter to movie audiences, who would later see him in the sidekick roll (and more) in a number of 40's and early 50's flicks:

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Modern audiences may have a moment's discombobulation to see a bunch of white guys in tuxes doing Carmichael's "Washboard Blues" superimposed over film clips of black sharecroppers "down south" -- but white people performing songs of, by, and about black people was often considered an expression of solidarity with people of color. (By the white folks, anyhow. Evidence of this is seen in the fact that any depiction of people of color outside of servants' clothes or cotton fields was chopped out of any movie shown below the Mason-Dixon line -- even into the 50s. And when the studios finally began cracking down on the practice of southern distributors performing their own race-based cuts, many films simply weren't distributed in the American south of the era.)

I've been listening to the new Neko Case lately and really enjoy her cover of a song I'm unfamiliar with - Sparks' Never Turn Your Back On Mother Earth.

[YOUTUBE]Gd5KaTS3H2Y[/YOUTUBE]

I love "Skylark" too. Don't forget B2B, Johnny Mercer wrote those lyrics.

Carmichael was born in Boomington, Indiana. Cole Porter was born in Peru, Indiana.

Mercer was from Savannah Georgia. Most of the other great songwriters of that era

were from the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

Wow. That's really cool. I love the song (Sparks?) and the vocal rendition. But the arrangement is what really gets me. Nice pick.

It's been a long time since I've listened to any Sparks so take this with a grain of salt, but I remember them as a kind of a 70s answer to They Might Be Giants or maybe a different flavor of early 10cc. Smart-alecky dweebs trying to be too clever for their own good. The two main guys are brothers. Their music didn't do much for me at the time I first heard them but maybe I need to revisit them.