The Singers Unlimited Went to Hell in the Late 70s

[JSngry]

16 minutes ago, Larry Kart said:

And what's going on harmonically on the word "sing"?

 

1 minute ago, sgcim said:

Sounds like a C11th chord with the F on top in the key of Eb.

I've played that song a lot, but nothing can compare what they do with it.

Yeah, that one is pretty straightforward, sounds like a VI 7 Sus chord, if i was faking a solo over it, that's what I'd guess, and I think I'd be ok.

But how about that pivot out of the bridge, I hear where it begins and where it lands, but wtf is it doing in between, before they get to the VI again? That's some mindfuck shit for sure.

[Larry Kart]

17 minutes ago, sgcim said:

Sounds like a C11th chord with the F on top in the key of Eb.

I've played that song a lot, but nothing can compare what they do with it.

What I love about that move is that it's so subtle, not "hey look at me" in-your-face weird. You might not even notice it as something more than a somewhat different vibration. I'll listen again for the pivot out of the bridge.

[JSngry]

2 hours ago, Daniel A said:

 

 

That's the kind of thing that I think probably contributed a lot to Brian Wilson's breakdown )as far as a strictly musical obsession contributed to it...), you can hear him trying SO hard to get that m8ltiple-layers...infinity of sound, and lord knows, he came real, REAL close more than once. But he had to dig deeper into his resources than his resources at the time could support. He was just going off of want and instinct. But Gene Puerling, Gene Puerling had the skills, the knowledge, the scientific insight into not just how it could go if only he could find it, but how to get to it in the first place. There's no subsititute for inspiration, but once you have that, there's no substitute for skill, of knowledge, of science. The best of anything/everything in life is going to have both. That's accomplishment, everything else is aspiration.

Speaking of Brian Wilson, this is not a Brian Wilson song, but, lord, imagine it on Friends, on the other side of the LP from "Busy Doin' Nothing"...

It's a world!

 

[Larry Kart]

That pivot out of the bridge. I see what you mean.

[JSngry]

I know enough (such as it is) to know that a lot of this happens from having starting points and landing points and setting up you motion from one to the other on the bottom and the top and then moving everything in between in ways that move and land more or less at once (or not!) and in so doing, you create all sorts of cool shit (LOL!!!). Getting from Point A to Point B with everything in between being both at the same time.

But there's so much of that in Puerling's work, so much finely detailed architecture, and so much interest (and so many really "unusual" landing points...), I mean, it takes a mind of the highest order to keep that much moving detail in place, freely wandering but also completely ordered from start to finish. Some of that can be taught, you can always reverse-engineer damn near anything, but the mind that does it to begin with is a very fine mind indeed, a much more evolved mind than the one who merely learns "how it's done" and then replicates it.

Not just talking about music, either. And yeah, there are serious implications to this relative to the unstoppable global digital paradigm that are not inherently "good" or "bad", just...worth noting every damn waking moment (and many sleeping oens also).

[Teasing the Korean]

15 hours ago, JSngry said:

Speaking of Brian Wilson, this is not a Brian Wilson song, but, lord, imagine it on Friends, on the other side of the LP from "Busy Doin' Nothing"...

I can't hear that track on "Friends," but I can hear it on a Free Design album. 

[sgcim]

16 hours ago, JSngry said:

I know enough (such as it is) to know that a lot of this happens from having starting points and landing points and setting up you motion from one to the other on the bottom and the top and then moving everything in between in ways that move and land more or less at once (or not!) and in so doing, you create all sorts of cool shit (LOL!!!). Getting from Point A to Point B with everything in between being both at the same time.

But there's so much of that in Puerling's work, so much finely detailed architecture, and so much interest (and so many really "unusual" landing points...), I mean, it takes a mind of the highest order to keep that much moving detail in place, freely wandering but also completely ordered from start to finish. Some of that can be taught, you can always reverse-engineer damn near anything, but the mind that does it to begin with is a very fine mind indeed, a much more evolved mind than the one who merely learns "how it's done" and then replicates it.

Not just talking about music, either. And yeah, there are serious implications to this relative to the unstoppable global digital paradigm that are not inherently "good" or "bad", just...worth noting every damn waking moment (and many sleeping oens also).

Yeah, IMHO, some very perceptive comments by you and Larry about what made GP the Master he truly was. There are people on the scene now like Jacob Collier and Charlie Rosen who are 'kitchen sink' writers; (they throw everything at you but the), and it's better than nothing, as they are reaching a non-jazz audience, but they lack the taste and profundity of GP's thought.

Some of GP's harmonic choices remind me of Percy Grainger's comment that he "used harmony in his music to wrench the heart of the listener". Grainger once told the the college where he was teaching, that he couldn't get the greatest composer in the world to appear before the class, because he was no longer alive, but instead he brought the greatest living composer to the school, and his band, DUKE ELLINGTON!

GP is always aware of the lyrics of the song, and tries to emphasize what they mean to him in the most profound, deeply felt way. Instead of presenting "I Wish You Love" in the Maurice Chevalier, sophisticated cabaret-style, he literally rips your heart out (with the sublime Bonnie Herman's help) from the very start. A pianist friend of mine wanted to record a song that GP happened to arrange, and I excitedly transcribed GP's profound treatment of the song, figuring that it would be great to do an instrumental version of it, but when I went to his living room studio, he called the tune at a fast tempo, the exact opposite of how GP interpreted it.

The arrangement of the song is everything, IMHO. It can turn a bland pop tune into a masterpiece in the right hands. The Beatles had George Martin turn some of their songs into great art through his hard work, the Beach Boys had Brian Wilson do the same, even Arthur Lee used the great arranger David Angel to take Love's "Forever Changes" to a higher level. This is what IMHO GP did with The SU. There are other vocal groups that are tremendously talented; The King Singers, Take Six, and so on, but without a visionary like GP to elevate their material, the result is usually slick impeccable corn.

 

[JSngry]

You've done enough writing to know that there's two basic tacts to take when harmonizing a lead line for a section - you either keep the chord on every melody note and make anything out of the chord into a diatonicly compatible note that gets you there, or, you start looking at  non-triadic notes as potential places to go out of the diatonic and off into something else. The former is, no matter how well you do it, "easy", definitely basic (which is not necessarily bad, of course). But once you get into the other way, then you really have to know your shit, because, ok, you're going to go out of the key for this tone, where are you going to go, then, where are you going to land with THAT? That's where it can get really heady, and if you don't know enough, you can write yourself into a corner, and/or have some funny sounding shit that needs to have some kind of logic to justify it. Emotional, coloristical, whatever. Or, yo can just have it become obvious by sounding right, no matter how "out" it is. Math don't lie about itself by itself.

Not only does Puerling display a total mastery of that, he also knows his cadences. Sometime, it'll be like every two notes is a cadence unto itself, and the second not of the first cadence immediately becomes the first note of the next one, on and on and on. And oh by the way - the cat knew how to set up some totally unexpected cadences for final notes of a phrase, and they're shocking but not for the sake of being shocking, you can take it backwards and see how it's totally justified and, ultimately logical.

And also, he will change a melody altogether to have his harmonic way with it without fucking up the lyric even slightly.

Larry mentioned Morton Feldman earlier, let me throw another name out there - Ornette Coleman. Earlier Ornette, where his whole logic was recognizing that any note could belong to any chord. so improvise with that in mind rather than outlining the changes. Puerling, of course, much more a "song" guy, but he operatives with a similar type logic in a different type symettry, if that makes sense. Either way, both are/can be about as free as you can be in their musical thought.

5 hours ago, Teasing the Korean said:

I can't hear that track on "Friends," but I can hear it on a Free Design album. 

I can hear it even better on that Astrud Gilberto/Gary MdFarland album that nobody ever made.

[Teasing the Korean]

10 minutes ago, JSngry said:

I can hear it even better on that Astrud Gilberto/Gary MdFarland album that nobody ever made.

Actually, If Charles Manson had written the Singers Unlimited stalking song you posted, The Beach Boys may have covered it, and Dennis would have claimed the writing credit. 

[JSngry]

Maybe Manson DID write it, we don't know anything about that other than that Blossom Dearie was a freak.

[sgcim]

19 hours ago, JSngry said:

You've done enough writing to know that there's two basic tacts to take when harmonizing a lead line for a section - you either keep the chord on every melody note and make anything out of the chord into a diatonicly compatible note that gets you there, or, you start looking at  non-triadic notes as potential places to go out of the diatonic and off into something else. The former is, no matter how well you do it, "easy", definitely basic (which is not necessarily bad, of course). But once you get into the other way, then you really have to know your shit, because, ok, you're going to go out of the key for this tone, where are you going to go, then, where are you going to land with THAT? That's where it can get really heady, and if you don't know enough, you can write yourself into a corner, and/or have some funny sounding shit that needs to have some kind of logic to justify it. Emotional, coloristical, whatever. Or, yo can just have it become obvious by sounding right, no matter how "out" it is. Math don't lie about itself by itself.

Not only does Puerling display a total mastery of that, he also knows his cadences. Sometime, it'll be like every two notes is a cadence unto itself, and the second not of the first cadence immediately becomes the first note of the next one, on and on and on. And oh by the way - the cat knew how to set up some totally unexpected cadences for final notes of a phrase, and they're shocking but not for the sake of being shocking, you can take it backwards and see how it's totally justified and, ultimately logical.

And also, he will change a melody altogether to have his harmonic way with it without fucking up the lyric even slightly.

Larry mentioned Morton Feldman earlier, let me throw another name out there - Ornette Coleman. Earlier Ornette, where his whole logic was recognizing that any note could belong to any chord. so improvise with that in mind rather than outlining the changes. Puerling, of course, much more a "song" guy, but he operatives with a similar type logic in a different type symettry, if that makes sense. Either way, both are/can be about as free as you can be in their musical thought.

I can hear it even better on that Astrud Gilberto/Gary MdFarland album that nobody ever made.

Yeah, GM would've been perfect for AG. He sure would've been better than Gil Evans; the only one I really enjoy on that album was the one where he just pulled all the horns, and just had one wind player and rhythm. Middle period Jimmy Giuffre would've been a trip- just Jim Hall, Ralph Pena and JG and maybe Brookmeyer (his solo on AG's Aruanda sends tingling from my head down my back just thinking of it; truly nirvana) in his more care-free days.Magic timbres that we'll never hear again.

The only people I can think of that had GP's sense of the power of the surprise cadence in a new key were late period Bill Evans, and Chris Dedrick.

[JSngry]

Merry Christmas y'all.

Bonnie Herman does Phil Spector better than Phil Spector: