Virtual Jukebox

As a naive teen - still struggling to understand myself in relation to the rest of the world - I was obsessed with the music of Mike Oldfield.  I loved 'Tubular Bells', but 'Ommadawn' seemed to strike at something deeper.  I bought the album with my first week's wages after starting work.  I think it cost me £3.  Every night, I'd come home from work and sit and listen to it as I ate my dinner, alone, with my headphones on, whilst mum and dad sat and watched the telly.  The bit after 12 minutes always has me hypnotised.  The drums.  The strange, foreign-sounding lyrics, the dramatic crescendo.  I played it over and over and over and over then... and I still do, over 40 years later.  It seems to strike at something primal...

Ommadawn Part 1

That's rung some (tubular?) bells. In my teens, I didn't have a huge amount of interest in pop music. Partly through my Dad's taste in music, I was mesmerised by the likes of Mike Oldfield, Vangelis, Tangerine Dream, Tomita, JM Jarre, etc. I always had a preference for music that took me on journey, and where the experience wasn't spoiled by paying attention to lyrics. I loved anything with unusual instrumentation, bizarre time-signatures and polyrhythms, atmospheric effects etc. The opening to Tubular Bells was the first riff I ever taught myself on a keyboard; blissfully unaware that it's in a peculiar time signature. When my folks were out, I would sneak a go on my Dad's posh headphones (I wasn't supposed to touch the hi-fi!). I always laid down in the middle of the room, and would get the feeling of falling through the floor when I slipped into a little universe filled only with the music.

Odd to think that I later played in punk bands! I'm not sure if my continuing preference for odd time-signatures was a blessing or a curse in those - the later stuff I did came out like Crass flailing out an attempt at a Gong track! (I have a compulsion for utter chaos in music on a regular basis!)

Anyhow, thinking back to my teenage "falling through the living room floor" moments, and since I mentioned "little universes", here's one that I always loved for some reason, even though there is so little to it, and it has lyrics - the vital statistics of planet Earth...

I learned that riff, too.  I've played the piano for 40 years and have absolutely no natural talent for the instrument.  I have to learn everything a bar at a time, over and over, and even with pieces I've played hundreds (even thousands) of times, I mess up.  It would help if I could read the music and play at the same time, but I always have to be watching what my hands are doing.  Also, although I know all the keys, and know which notes are in which chords, I don't really 'get' progressions.  If a song is in the key of F, for instance, I wouldn't know which chords can be used that key - apart from F and its inversions.  I could never do improvisations.  I don't know what it is.  I just lack that certain thing that makes for a proficient or even semi-proficient player, even after all these years and thousands of hours of practice.  My niece's teenage son has that ability, though.  He started playing guitar a year ago, and he just kind of worked it all out himself.  He seems to know instinctively how to work his way around the fretboard.  He's already in a band, playing lead.

Here's a piece you might like - from the film The Reluctant Fundamentalist. This kind of music is hypnotic to me.  I just get lost in it...

Kangna - Fareed Ayaz & Abu Muhammad

Wonderful! It would be completely spoiled by comprehensible lyrics, I think; as you say, just not necessary to convey the emotion at all.

His little emulations of environmental sounds and synthesisers were great; I've never quite understood why people can accept playing a "prepared" piano with a power drill, but not someone manipulating their voice in such a clever way. I'm fascinated by human beat-boxers, and the like too, and usually test the music software that I write by making the most ridiculous noises into a microphone (though without 1% of the talent of the previous artist!)

I wouldn't want to look after this guy's microphones, and I'm not the world's biggest dub-step fan, but I find street artists like this amazing...

the human voice as an instrument, it seems i alone can feel what this performer was trying to get across, Mother Earth crying at how we were destroying her, I didn’t know what he was singing, I guessed, the sounds, the hand gestures, it floored me, I wept as it carried on, the last few songs were heavily staged by production teams, everyone I play that to just laughs, embarrassed at the sounds he makes, why?

I have no idea if he uses any real words in any known language,it doesn’t need to be translated.

https://youtu.be/g9VjiTDbVDk

i love African sounds from the voice, guttural but humanity speaks, 

I must admit, I've never really got my head around keyboards either. I kind of use them under duress because it's handy when making backing tracks to play the instruments I'm more comfortable with along to. I could never get my head around the whole black-note/white-note thing, so that the fingering changes for every key. On bass, I just slide my hand up or down a bit and make the same shapes, which is so much easier.

I learned how to read music, and quite a bit of music theory at school, where I played trombone in the school band and sang in the choir. But somehow, I almost completely lost those skills, and in the bands I was in, didn't really need them much - we just worked things out by ear and by pointing at each other's fretboards!

Anyhow, I really enjoyed Kangna - a very hypnotic 10/4 rhythm, and exactly the kind of vocal that I love listening to. Although I'm not a big fan of having to follow lyrics a lot of the time, I absolutely love to hear the human voice as an instrument. I'm rather fond of bands who sing in foreign or invented languages, or totally abstractly. So here's a bit of Magma, all sung in their own invented language, Kobaian. I couldn't find many short ones, but here's an except from De Futura. An example of the musical chaos that I'm rather fond of, so not quite as, erm, relaxing, as the previous couple of tracks I'm afraid!...

...[splish] Oops. I shouldn't headbang with my glasses on and try to drink coffee at the same time!

I must admit, I've never really got my head around keyboards either. I kind of use them under duress because it's handy when making backing tracks to play the instruments I'm more comfortable with along to. I could never get my head around the whole black-note/white-note thing, so that the fingering changes for every key. On bass, I just slide my hand up or down a bit and make the same shapes, which is so much easier.

I learned how to read music, and quite a bit of music theory at school, where I played trombone in the school band and sang in the choir. But somehow, I almost completely lost those skills, and in the bands I was in, didn't really need them much - we just worked things out by ear and by pointing at each other's fretboards!

Anyhow, I really enjoyed Kangna - a very hypnotic 10/4 rhythm, and exactly the kind of vocal that I love listening to. Although I'm not a big fan of having to follow lyrics a lot of the time, I absolutely love to hear the human voice as an instrument. I'm rather fond of bands who sing in foreign or invented languages, or totally abstractly. So here's a bit of Magma, all sung in their own invented language, Kobaian. I couldn't find many short ones, but here's an except from De Futura. An example of the musical chaos that I'm rather fond of, so not quite as, erm, relaxing, as the previous couple of tracks I'm afraid!...

...[splish] Oops. I shouldn't headbang with my glasses on and try to drink coffee at the same time!

Wonderful! It would be completely spoiled by comprehensible lyrics, I think; as you say, just not necessary to convey the emotion at all.

His little emulations of environmental sounds and synthesisers were great; I've never quite understood why people can accept playing a "prepared" piano with a power drill, but not someone manipulating their voice in such a clever way. I'm fascinated by human beat-boxers, and the like too, and usually test the music software that I write by making the most ridiculous noises into a microphone (though without 1% of the talent of the previous artist!)

I wouldn't want to look after this guy's microphones, and I'm not the world's biggest dub-step fan, but I find street artists like this amazing...

the human voice as an instrument, it seems i alone can feel what this performer was trying to get across, Mother Earth crying at how we were destroying her, I didn’t know what he was singing, I guessed, the sounds, the hand gestures, it floored me, I wept as it carried on, the last few songs were heavily staged by production teams, everyone I play that to just laughs, embarrassed at the sounds he makes, why?

I have no idea if he uses any real words in any known language,it doesn’t need to be translated.

https://youtu.be/g9VjiTDbVDk

i love African sounds from the voice, guttural but humanity speaks,