Beresford Green Speaks... (Thirteenth Fit)

MUSICAL EXPERTISE
There is still a good deal of mystery attached to our understanding of what makes a good "musician". Current thinking has it that among the many necessary strands is dexterity on the instrument, creativity, communication on an emotional level, and a special faculty for memory. Yet you don't need to be a player at all to be a musical genius. Oh no! Many a wonderful composer is a non-player. Science has something to say about why we like the music we do. A definite preference for consonance over dissonance only alters as we grow older & more sophisticated. {Perhaps deaf!}. I favour the idea that the physical parts of the ear prefers the harmonic resonances that is given by vibrations that don't fight with each other. Too simple? That's me. It is said to be the music of our teenage that has the longest long-term influence. Whatever the truth of that reason, I wouldn't subscribe to it being that period alone. I was definitely influenced from the age of three or four. I liked the "cowboy music" of Gene Autry & Hank Williams from the start. I liked my parents records of the 30's - which ranged through dance bands to operatic arias. Nevertheless, by the age of 18/20 it is said that our musical tastes have formed. After that we seem more reluctant to remain open to new ideas.
{Ref: - Daniel Levitin "Your brain on music"}.

WORDS & MUSIC
In delightful combination there may be symbiosis. It's hard to imagine "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" being as "catchy" if it had not got the lyric that it has.Yet would that lyric be as emotional without any tune? It's a tough one. For me I love the songs that have just the "right" balance. Especially if I can play them! Even more if I can play them in a key that I can attempt to sing them in. Therein lies the frustration & the challenge - for me, when it come to learning new stuff. How often can I get all the bits I need into harness? Rarely is the answer. Very rarely.

RECORDED MUSIC
The invention by Thomas Edison of the Phonograph in 1878 was not the beginning for two reasons: - 1) He wasn't actually the first, and 2) It took another 10 yrs for the cousin of Alexander Graham Bell, (the man credited with inventing the telephone-CAREFUL!), to come up with a useable wax cylinder. His name, very appropriately, was CHICHESTER Bell, and he worked with a certain Mr C.S. Tainter. From that point there would be seismic changes in the way Music Hall & other items reached into people's homes. By the way, St Anley the Incandescent, it was during that time that Edison pursued his carbon filament light bulb, and he wasn't first to come up with that either. The credit goes to a certain Mr Joseph Swan who demonstrated his prototype years before (1860). He actually obtained his patent a year before Edison in 1879. Better still he was British!

And did you think that John Logie Baird invented Television? He didn't! He developed the Russian Nipkow's mechanical scanning system, yes. Even so, his whole concept was eventually blown sky high by a certain Mr Alan Dower Blumlein, possibly the greatest electrical/electronic engineer of all time, and certainly a genius without parallel in the 20th century. He worked for EMI. (Columbia - HMV). He was also, and now we're literally back on track, the inventor of Stereo. Actually he called it "Binaural Sound." This was pre TV (1931) when he was charged to get a better quality recording system that would get around the Edison patents. There's a lovely little story to go with this. Wanna hear it? While at the cinema with his girlfriend Doreen, she commented on how the voices all came from the same place. It was this train of thought that led him to it. However, it was so far ahead of its time that it got shelved for around 20 years awaiting a more enlightened era. In between he made an enormous technical contribution to the development of wartime Radar, and gave his life testing the process in a 1942 plane crash. The political secrecy erected to shroud his death from the enemy left him in obscurity for all time. Not with thee & me now eh?

When you attempt to record sound everything goes wrong. It is extremely difficult to capture the balance & ambience in a way that sounds natural. In fact unnatural is still the byword for some popular music production. Several well known effects were discovered in recording studios, and it would be some years before these could be done live. These somewhat "processed" sounds make it difficult to copy the songs. The problem of balance also brought developments to bear. From separate microphones and a central mixing desk to a method that could record every instrument in isolation, yet still in time with each other. This means they can be post edited and altered in many ways. An early example of this can be heard on Humphrey Littleton's "Bad Penny Blues" which was recorded by the legendary engineer, Joe Meek at Parlophone, (I thought it was Philips!), He boosted & processed the piano sound to unnatural levels. You get this sound if you take off the panel by the pedals and lie down there. {Yes I have!}.

P.S. Even Albert Einstein was helped by his mathematician wife. Then he divorced her! Nice. {Extract Wikipedia - Einstein's gifts inevitably resulted in his dwelling much in intellectual solitude and, for relaxation, music played an important part in his life. He married Mileva Maric in 1903 and they had a daughter and two sons; their marriage was dissolved in 1919}. So much for jazz!
BJG