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Poster: | jerlouvis | Date: | Jul 17, 2011 11:29am |
Forum: | GratefulDead | Subject: | influence of classical music on the GD |
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Poster: | bkidwell | Date: | Jul 17, 2011 6:22pm |
Forum: | GratefulDead | Subject: | Re: influence of classical music on the GD |
I think the GD at their best were actually improvising classical music. I think that is actually the "home genre" of the band's improvisation, even though few people seem to realize it explicitly. Especially in 1972, "Dark Star" and "The Other One" have a musical texture and content that is very similar to the work of 19th century composers like Schumann, Beethoven, Wagner, and Mahler.
People assume the GD are a rock band, a lot of people make the connection to jazz, bluegrass is also mentioned - but despite all those entirely valid and legitimate influences, I think if you transcribed the "Other One" from 4/26/72 (Hundred-Year Hall) onto staff paper, it could be performed by string quartet and sound great, whereas most jazz music and certainly most rock and roll would sound peculiar.
My ears are biased towards hearing that way, of course - but even though I have more affinity for classical, I'm not ignorant of the rock and roll vocabulary, I spent a decade playing keys in bar bands and covering all the classic music of the 60s and 70s so I'm pretty grounded in that repertoire.
One thing I find fascinating is contrasting the role of classical influences in The Beatles music with that of the Grateful Dead. I think The Beatles are almost as "classical" as the GD, in some ways (George Martin is obviously part of that, but it extends to the type of melody and harmonies used by Paul & John also) - but the influence manifests itself in a different way.
Another classical aspect of the Dead emerges purely compositionally - the WRS suite has a lot of semiclassical elements, and Terrapin as well - I've always thought the album version of Terrapin Station was a nice demonstration of the overlap, although it does have some cheesy and overproduced elements. Phil's contributions all have a lot of classical elements, so you hear that in St. Stephen's intro and slow bridge.
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Poster: | light into ashes | Date: | Jul 17, 2011 12:30pm |
Forum: | GratefulDead | Subject: | Re: influence of classical music on the GD |
To take one example - Phil's bass solo in the later New Potato Cabooses, for instance on Two From the Vault. When I first heard it, I recognized it as some classical piece I had heard....but was never able to place it. Apparently, no one else has ever been able to place it either, at least not on a Dead forum - which made me wonder if I was nuts, or if it's just one of those Dead pieces that already sound "familiar" the first time you hear it.
Some have claimed it's based on Chopin's Minute Waltz (even deadlists), but there's practically no resemblance. At any rate, I have little faith in the classical knowledge of deadheads!
Others have had this reaction to New Potato & searched, too -
http://forums.etree.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=4277
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=394353
Anyway, this was one thread bkidwell started on another Dead classical quote, where we discussed more examples of the Dead's use of classical music:
http://www.archive.org/post/373487/mahlers-3rd-phil-lesh-interview-spring-1990-space
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Poster: | bkidwell | Date: | Jul 17, 2011 6:01pm |
Forum: | GratefulDead | Subject: | Re: influence of classical music on the GD |
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Poster: | jerlouvis | Date: | Jul 17, 2011 7:30pm |
Forum: | GratefulDead | Subject: | Re: influence of classical music on the GD |
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Poster: | bkidwell | Date: | Jul 18, 2011 4:41pm |
Forum: | GratefulDead | Subject: | Re: influence of classical music on the GD |
This post was modified by bkidwell on 2011-07-18 23:41:58
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Poster: | jerlouvis | Date: | Jul 18, 2011 9:54am |
Forum: | GratefulDead | Subject: | Re: influence of classical music on the GD |
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Poster: | light into ashes | Date: | Jul 18, 2011 10:18am |
Forum: | GratefulDead | Subject: | Re: influence of classical music on the GD |
One good question though, would to what extent the overlap between GD music & classical music in your points 1-4 are due to actual influence, or is coincidental... Despite the presence of an honest-to-god classical composer playing bass in the band, it's possible some of these shared techniques were arrived at independently by the Dead in their pursuit of new jams, rather than deliberately molding themselves after classical stylings.
I wonder if, for instance, their variations of the theme in different keys in Playing in the Band, or the way Jerry varies the main Dark Star riff in similar fashion, or their preference for jam suites that were in related keys, was actually derived from any classical techniques or if there weren't more direct reasons for those that they found in rehearsals.
What ended up with a classical resemblance might have started out with different intentions. For instance, the Dead's first known transitions? Caution>Death Don't and King Bee>Caution from '66. And their first medley with a return to the theme? Schoolgirl>You Don't Love Me>Schoolgirl from '66. Their first extended jams? Viola Lee Blues and Midnight Hour. So a case could be made that their initial delvings into segues & extended material were actually most influenced by the medleys & long dance numbers blues and soul bands played at the time. (The dynamic range, with Jerry sometimes playing very quietly, may also be partly cribbed from electric blues guitarists; that's actually a common technique, though the song genre is different.) And the types of speeding-up jams they were playing in '67 Viola Lees were more likely inspired by listening to Coltrane & Shankar than to Beethoven.
Then again, you never know with the Dead; they're such a melting-pot stylistically - a blues will soon turn the corner into jazz (as in the Same Thing), or an avant freakout into a country medley (as on 8/27/72), or rhythmic rock into violin-like duets (as in some Other Ones). All these elements are equally important in the full range of the Dead's music.
Anyway, someone someday needs to tackle a history of the Dead's transitions. The classical elements you note may have been arrived at after trying out other styles of medleys - the first real bloom of constant transitions, in early '68, does seem mainly jazz-inspired to me. (Indian music also had a big impact on them at the time; that's where the Main Ten figure originated.)
But Phil's and TC's avant-classical groundings were definitely a huge part of the Anthem album, and there's a direct line between that and the later Spaces.
Jerry on Anthem: "We were making a sound collage... It had to do with an approach that's more like electronic music or concrete music, where you are actually assembling bits and pieces toward an enhanced nonrealistic representation."
Phil on Space: "I think the whole space section, which essentially evolved from our feedback experiments, is a response to electronic music and concrete music, found-objects music, tape music, that sort of thing. Some of the discontinuity that we get going - the heterophony of everybody playing something different - probably comes from those worlds to a degree."
But when asked whether his modern avant-electronic leanings were brought into the Dead, Phil warns, "Somewhat. In any amalgam, any alloy, there are several components, and there are parts of those components that get melted away in the joining." I would point out that, for instance, Phil likes modern music where, as he describes, "It's difficult because it usually doesn't have even rhythms or a euphonious tonality that it always comes back to so you always know where you are." In that sense, the Dead made only limited use of 'electronic & concrete' styles in that they never abandoned their melody-&-rhythm-loving listeners for long...and even then, only deep in the second set!
Space is actually a good example - while you find strong classical stylings in the '90s, as Phil pointed out, the whole Space concept evolved out of the big post-Caution show-ending Feedbacks, which rather than a "response to electronic music" is much more likely to be a response to the over-amplification and love of feedback many rock guitarists manifested at the time. (The Dead's first known Feedback, for instance, was around the same time as the Monterey festival with its well-known blasts of noise...)
Which brings up another point - that the Dead had the good fortune to start out during the freest, most experimental phase of rock music, when it was all "new" and rock musicians were grabbing freely from all varieties of music. There is a direct resemblance between, say, the Beatles' Day in the Life, and the Other One suite on the Anthem record - both are two songs joined together with a reprise that ends in a climax of Stockhausen-inspired noise. So I suspect it's not always possible to disentangle the classical threads in the Dead from the mingled web of their other influences...
Anyway, I'm writing a post on a related topic, so this has been a useful thread for me!
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Poster: | bkidwell | Date: | Jul 18, 2011 3:11pm |
Forum: | GratefulDead | Subject: | Re: influence of classical music on the GD |
I think there is another possibility, which is "parallel evolution" - the desire of the Grateful Dead to play on a longer timescale than short individual songs led them to evolve a set of musical techniques for structuring their performances which end up being similar to classical music, because the principles of musical sound determine what will work, aesthetically.
It is similar to how the law of gravity means that buildings worldwide will have a similar basic structure, with walls and a roof on top - there may not be a direct influence, but neither is it a coincidence - the laws of nature imply that roofs+walls is how buildings will generally be constructed.
I think the nature of our minds and the physics of musical sound means that the kind of "musical architecture" we hear in both classical music and the GD is in some ways an inevitable result of trying to play long-form music.
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Poster: | jerlouvis | Date: | Jul 18, 2011 8:01pm |
Forum: | GratefulDead | Subject: | Re: influence of classical music on the GD |
In any event I did a little classical listening and searched out a short piece that I have always enjoyed,for one reason or another Paganini's violin works have always interested me,and this one puts me in mind of Jerry during a very out jam in Dark Star or Playin' or such.Caprice No.1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eblB2-y23Dc
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Poster: | light into ashes | Date: | Jul 18, 2011 10:10pm |
Forum: | GratefulDead | Subject: | Re: influence of classical music on the GD |
How grounded Jerry was in classical music, I'm not sure - the record seems to be silent on this, as far as I remember, so we have to guess from his playing.
Actually the whole issue of the Dead's influences - what they heard, what they copied, what they transformed - still hasn't been studied enough, so a lot is relatively unknown, or at least hasn't been effectively compiled. (Ideally a whole stack of "Dead sources" and A>B comparisons should be available. Heck, there are whole books analyzing the Beatles' songwriting development! And you know how many volumes there are technically analyzing & notating the music of jazz & classical "greats"...)
Just as a random instance - here's a blogpost about one influence on Garcia's guitar style I'd never heard of:
http://hooterollin.blogspot.com/2011/04/howard-roberts-jerry-garcia-and.html
Another point is that the jams & transitions we hear are only what they chose to share with us... There must have been an infinity of possibilities in rehearsals, only a sliver of which made it to the stage. In general, I think the Dead usually improvised live within a 'known' framework, in that they knew where things would end up and roughly how they'd get there - their telepathic skill and high success rate (in the first 10 years at least) is one indication of how practiced they must have been, and (by inference) how many paths they didn't take.
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Poster: | Roberta Flack | Date: | Dec 1, 2011 6:01am |
Forum: | GratefulDead | Subject: | Re: influence of classical music on the GD |
Genre(s): Folk: Rock
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Pop
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Grateful Dead : Crimson, White and Indigo: Philadelphia, July 7, 1989 (Cd 1)
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Grateful Dead : Crimson, White and Indigo: Philadelphia, July 7, 1989 (Cd 2)
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Grateful Dead : To Terrapin: Hartford '77
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Grateful Dead : Rocking The Cradle: Egypt 1978 Disc 1
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Grateful Dead : Dick's Picks Vol. 34
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Poster: | jerlouvis | Date: | Jul 17, 2011 3:12pm |
Forum: | GratefulDead | Subject: | Re: influence of classical music on the GD |
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Poster: | bkidwell | Date: | Jul 17, 2011 5:36pm |
Forum: | GratefulDead | Subject: | Re: influence of classical music on the GD |
What I notice is that the early GD sounds much more like a traditional 60s rock band than the later band, and that the band's sound became increasingly distinctive - and, to many people, ugly - as time went on.
I don't have any particular "attachment" to the sound of classic rock - my personal "attachment" is to the sound of a symphony orchestra, a solo piano, or a string quartet, and as a result some elements that others dislike, such as the use of midi synth instruments, I think are Just Fine. If anything, it is the hardest for me to appreciate what i think of as the "rock" sound with very loud and prominent distorted lead guitar, and very steady and driving rhythm. I've learned to appreciate it, but there was a time when I dismissed a lot of the band's music as "too rock and roll" - often the same things that some people really like. I still haven't learned to love 1978 and 1971 the way some do, for that reason - a bit too much lead guitar, not enough abstract space.
Preferences in timbre are very important to how we enjoy music, but in my listening I try to listen to the GD in the same way I listen to Bach, where the important thing is the notes and rhythms, rather than what each note sounds like. Bach wrote a lot of his best music for harpsichord, which has notoriously been called "the sound of two skeletons copulating on a tin roof":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvmCUx7NdLg
(Bach prelude and fugue from WTC book 1 in C minor, on the tin-roof skeletons in romantic embrace)
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Poster: | dark.starz | Date: | Jul 18, 2011 8:32pm |
Forum: | GratefulDead | Subject: | It's the Melody |
This post was modified by dark.starz on 2011-07-19 03:32:15
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Poster: | bkidwell | Date: | Jul 17, 2011 9:20pm |
Forum: | GratefulDead | Subject: | Re: It's the Melody |
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Poster: | SpacedAgain | Date: | Jul 18, 2011 4:24pm |
Forum: | GratefulDead | Subject: | Re: influence of classical music on the GD |
That one reminds me of my favorite version of Brandenburg Concerto No.5-1, led by Hogwood
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPO_4NgnBlo
Do you know they seem to be the only ones who do the harpsichord part that way at the end?
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Poster: | bkidwell | Date: | Jul 17, 2011 5:49pm |
Forum: | GratefulDead | Subject: | Re: influence of classical music on the GD |
I've always thought one of the most important ways this influence made itself felt was in large scale form and continuity. Famous sequences like Playin->UJB->Dew->UJB->Playin are really structured like a lot of music in the 19th century. One of the basic ideas in classical music is making a large section of music(10+ minutes in a symphonic movement, or a full symphony) work as a sequence with "exposition of material, then variation of material and contrasting material, then recapitulation of the original material with a feeling of completion and resolution."
A topic I've been meaning to write up a big post on is "tonal structure and song continuity" which is really just a fancy name for explaining why the band chose particular sequences of songs - and it usually boils down to simple key relationships. In general, a big sequence of songs like "He's Gone->Truckin->Other One" or whatever is just based on a central harmony, which is "E" in the case of the example I just gave. If two adjacent songs aren't in the same key, they will usually be in closely related keys according to the "circle of fifth" which is a simple way of mapping harmonic relationships. Playin->UJB->Dew is centered around D, but UJB is in G, and there are some interesting connections in the scales because Playin does a shift to minor in its jam section, and UJB has that rhythmic contrasting jam which is also on a d minor riff, so you have the cool connection between the UJB jam and the Playin jam.
I'm sort of rambling so I'll just post this before I make this too long.
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Poster: | Cliff Hucker | Date: | Jul 17, 2011 6:33pm |
Forum: | GratefulDead | Subject: | Re: influence of classical music on the GD |
http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-12-11.sbd-aud.cotsman.8998.sbeok.shnf
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Poster: | bkidwell | Date: | Jul 17, 2011 6:55pm |
Forum: | GratefulDead | Subject: | Re: influence of classical music on the GD |
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Poster: | rbh | Date: | Oct 14, 2011 1:28am |
Forum: | GratefulDead | Subject: | Re: influence of classical music on the GD |
Folks like Ives, Varese, Carter...Phil and the others have brought them all to the table in one way or another. When I am awake, I will tell about some things I have picked up over the years or even presented with some live Dead on a small radio program. (An early seventies Dark Star that faded out I followed with Scriabin's POEM OF ECSTACY. Blew a few minds with that one.)
But check out the Stravinsky.