Music Technology | Brad Spurgeon's Blog

Of Timing, Count, Rhythm, Reverb and “Born to Run” – or Not!

July 6, 2024
bradspurgeon

Born to Run album cover

CASTELLAMMARE DEL GOLFO, Sicily: One of the things that fascinates me in playing music, is the question of the roles played and interchange of timing and emotion and melody. Sometimes I think there is a tradeoff between timing, the count, the rhythm, and emotion. Other times I think I just don’t know what I’m doing. The other day I stumbled upon a recording I did at home in 2015 of Bruce Springsteen’s song, “Born to Run.” As I now work on a new cover song recording that I hope to release in the coming months, this Springsteen one I did years ago made me think about that whole question again. The timing, the count, in this attempt at “Born to Run” is ALL OVER THE PLACE! It sounds like I didn’t know what a metronome is; although I know it was really because I didn’t care. It was an after dinner and wine effort to do a crude recording of “Born to Run” in a slowed down, folky version, rather than the original hard romping rock. While there is no constant rhythm or count, there is definitely meandering emotion.

[B. Spurgeon’s B. Springsteen lies here (I wonder if those initials ever hindered his career?!):]

Aquashow

With the song I am working on at the moment, by Springsteen’s friend Elliott Murphy – about whom I did a huge feature article in The Village Voice last February – I did use a metronome. This is his song “How’s the Family,” off Murphy’s first album, Aquashow, which was released in 1973. Although I had done an initial version of the song in the same way I did the Springsteen, and the emotional rambling worked for me, it was essential to use a metronome for the recording, as I am asking musician friends around the world to contribute their parts remotely – bass, drums, etc. But how strong will it be? Only the final recording will tell me.

When You’re Gone Away

Again, though, it reminded me today of my 2016 CD, “Out of a Jam,” where, although recorded in studios with the bands present, some of the songs were done with a “tick” – the metronome – and others we decided to do without the count. For instance, on the song Borderline, I used the metronome; but due to various reasons, on the song, “When You’re Gone Away,” we did not use a metronome. And the rhythm does actually change slightly over the song from the opening to the end, in a very slight crescendo. It felt appropriate for the song. And which is more effective? Not sure it’s possible to say – except I have noticed over the years that Borderline performed live tends to get a more enthusiastic response than did the Borderline of the CD.

Borderline

This morning, I saw an astounding video of Prince doing a monumental live version of “Play That Funky Music.” One of the keys to the whole performance was the astounding tight rhythm section and Prince’s more than impeccable melodic expressions on the guitar within that tight confine. Hits you over the head with that rhythm and tightness of timing! Filled me with an admiration I hadn’t felt since certain Jimi Hendrix moments.

Prince doing Play that Funky Music

But it did raise in my mind that question again of how much leeway a musician has within the confines of rhythm, count and beat, etc. Oh, yes, and regarding that Springsteen effort I did – another thing it brought to my mind, again in relation to the recording I’m doing at the moment, is when is reverb too much reverb? At the time I recorded it, I felt that I had put about 300 percent too much reverb on it. Now, I find it charming – this feeling of a big room, an otherworldly thing that goes along with the slowness of the version of the song.

Well, isn’t that what playing music is really all about? That there are no formulas? Just like writing, and most of the other arts. I hope to post that new Elliott Murphy cover sometime soon, once it is done!

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A Dualo Night at the Baroc Open Mic in Paris

April 22, 2015
bradspurgeon

Jules with his Dualo

PARIS – Arrived back in Paris on Monday night from Bahrain, totally wasted tired. But it just took one night’s sleep to lift myself out of my torpor and go on over to the Baroc open mic, to get right back into the groove. Groove would be a word that the night would reveal in a way I could never have imagined in advance.

There was this guy there who had this strange looking Star Trek-like luminous accordion-like device hanging off his chest, and I immediately queried him on what the hell it was!

“A dualo,” he said.

He then began to demonstrate. The dualo may look like a quaint accordion of the past – one of those quintessential French instruments that we define as being the backbone of so many songs by French singers, or even Belgian ones, like Jacques Brel – but it is capable of sounding like an orchestra. Or even, I was brought back in mind to the late sixties, early seventies, the days of Moog synthesizers and mellotrons and other keyed electric instruments.

The guy who held the thing is Jules Hotrique, a street-musician-cum-mathematician who is also the creator of the instrument, this dualo, and who is in the thick of developing this instrument of the future in dynamic with his engineers at his new French start-up.

So what is it really? Well, let’s say, a dual is 116 letup pads and captors that acts like a midi, keyboards, synthesizer, drum machine, with 8 hours of autonomy and the ability to be played through speakers, headphones, a computer, has looping sequencing and 116 editable instrument sounds that can be programmed, shared and even help you write music.

Welcome to the electronic-instrument musical world. And the device only cost €1000. That’s only a third of the price of my Gibson J-200, which is just a bit of wood and plastic and you have to play it all by yourself. Oh yes, you do have to do some learning for how to play the dualo; but you can get your first lessons by watching some of the videos I took last night….

And the open mic at the Baroc was not that bad either…

I’ve talked enough about the dualo, the videos do the best talking. The open mic itself was pretty good, and I got to play some songs, and I got to forget some chords on “Just Like a Woman,” which I play all the time, so it must have been the lack of sleep from recent days….!

Present also were many of the regular regulars, as well as one or two new faces and sounds I did not know, like a guy from Holland who did several pretty mean interpretations of well-known covers…. Again, check out the videos…!

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Worldwide Open Mic Journey 2014: The Multimedia Consolidation – Paris

December 26, 2014
bradspurgeon

Paris Skyline

My worldwide open mic journey began in China in 2008 after the Formula One race in Shanghai, and little did I know that it was a journey that would continue for six more years and cover most of the globe, every continent except Africa (where I once lived and played music in an open mic decades earlier) and Antarctica, and that it would spawn a book, a blog, an album, a documentary film, numerous podcasts, music videos and other multimedia projects.

This year, 2014, I have decided to finish all of the projects and tie them together into a consolidation of multimedia. As part of my personal impetus to gather it all together for myself, but also put it into perspective on this blog, I have decided to create a page for each city I have visited on the journey, tying together samples of the whole multimedia adventure linked to that city.

So here is the page devoted to tying together the pieces of the open mic adventure that I have lived in Paris since I first started.

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Worldwide Open Mic Journey 2014: The Multimedia Consolidation – Abu Dhabi

December 10, 2014
bradspurgeon

bait al oud

So here is the page devoted to tying together the pieces of the open mic adventure that I have lived in Abu Dhabi since I first started.

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Worldwide Open Mic Journey 2014: The Multimedia Consolidation – Brazil

December 8, 2014
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Sao Paulo skyline

So here is the page devoted to tying together the pieces of the open mic adventure that I have lived in Sao Paulo since I first started.

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Worldwide Open Mic Journey 2014: The Multimedia Consolidation – United States

November 9, 2014
bradspurgeon

For my U.S. chapter, I divide it up between the two cities I visited for the adventure, New York City and Austin, Texas.

So here is the page devoted to tying together the pieces of the open mic adventure that I have lived in the United States since I first started. At each subsequent Formula One race that I visit this year, I will add a new such page. Keep posted….

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Worldwide Open Mic Journey 2014: The Multimedia Consolidation – Istanbul

October 16, 2014
bradspurgeon

Istanbul

Because the last race that I attended was in Sochi, Russia, and it was the first time that I have been there, I did not have any material aside from my weekend’s experience there there year to constitute a part of the Worldwide open mic multimedia thing. So what I have done instead, is to take a race that used to exist, and where I have a lot of material, and which no longer exists. In that way, I have fit into the multimedia adventure a race location in the place of Sochi, and made use of a major part of the adventure:

So here is the page devoted to tying together the pieces of the open mic adventure that I have lived in Istanbul since I first started. At each subsequent Formula One race that I visit this year, I will add a new such page. Keep posted….

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