Concerning songs and guitars

Among the many things I do not fully understand about blogging, there is the entire area of “comments” or replies. As far as I can determine, I have only had one real, legitimate, comment posted so far in my blog -- the blogging service has automatically filtered out others considered “spam”.

Among the murky issues, there is copyright. If I write it, whether it is posted on my blog or on someone else’s, it is automatically copyrighted to ME, just as anything YOU write but post on MY blog is copyrighted to YOU. This is a major reason many blogs frown on anonymous comments -- since anything YOU write remains YOUR intellectual property, the blog owner needs some way to trace ownership of the comment back to YOU.

The other day I ran across an interesting blog post which has inspired me to post a comment on that blog. To keep the ownership issues clear, I have decided to post my comment first here, on my own blog, before I post it as a comment elsewhere. Perhaps this is stupid or otherwise inappropriate. I continue to learn by doing.

The original blog post was entitled “How Rock Ruined Songs.” The blogger writes eloquently, and any attempt on my part to summarize his post will not do it justice, but he basically argues that since rock guitar parts tend to be played in specific keys, this limits the vocalist to singing in those keys, rather than freely transposing into keys more comfortable for the individual vocalist. As I said, this is an oversimplification, and if you are interested, you should refer back to the original post at http://wheatwilliams.com/wordpress/2009/09/18/how-rock-ruined-songs/.

Here is my response:

You make many interesting points, and I cannot disagree with your conclusions -- provided that you define “song” as a melody-driven primarily vocal endeavor, with other instruments relegated to supporting the vocalist or vocalists.

For me, it is more complicated. When I listen to music, whether live, recorded, or broadcast, I tend to view the vocalist(s) as simply one of the various instruments -- often a solo instrument, but not necessarily much more important than the others. Furthermore, I am increasingly convinced that the overall appeal and “sound” of any given piece of music depends more on the underlying chord structure than on the melody itself.

After voice, my formal musical training was piano and then trumpet, with guitar coming third among my main instruments. I perform most regularly on trumpet, in a brass quintet, a symphony orchestra, two brass bands and a variety of other groups. Incidentally, my favorite style for trumpet playing is jazz. My favorite style for guitar playing is folk.

While I am not sure about the proper musical term for this, one of my favorite things about the guitar is its irregularity. That is, due to the traditional tunings of the six strings, the chords used to accompany a song in the key of G sound completely different than the chords used to accompany a song in the key of A. On the piano or on the trumpet, I can play a song in either G or A, and the difference between the two keys will be mostly just the difference in pitch. On guitar, EVERYTHING changes -- or, at least, in my humble opinion, everything SHOULD change. I have little respect for those guitarists who eschew open chords and instead focus mostly on bar chords, making the keys sound interchangeable.

When I listen to a recording of a piano or a trumpet, it is a relatively straightforward matter to roughly duplicate what I hear. With a guitar, it can be an incredible challenge discerning how the guitarist used the particular combination of fingers and strings to achieve the sounds -- especially if the guitarist used a capo or non-standard tunings. Again, this is one of the things I love about the guitar, and, in my mind, what sets it apart from other instruments.

Incidentally, when I sing along with my guitar, I make extensive use of a capo to try and match the chords and fingerings of other guitarists, or simply to get the “sound” I am striving for, while suiting my own unique voice. I also accept that there are certain songs I simply cannot perform the way I would like to perform them, since even with a capo they fall outside of my vocal range.

I am not saying that a guitarist is obligated to copy the notes or keys of some other guitarist, although that is an option, and sometimes the best option. (Sometimes another instrument will attempt to duplicate the notes of a guitar riff -- this is one way to handle performing a guitar-based song in a completely different key.) The guitarist is simply obligated to attempt to contribute to each unique piece of music using their unique abilities and the unique characteristics of the instrument -- which they should embrace, rather than struggle against. Not every song is suited for every instrument or every instrumentalist or every vocalist, and there is no reason why they SHOULD be.

Finally, while I am not a music historian, it seems to me that “from the dawn of time” most early instruments capable of varied pitches tended to have a limited range and a limited number of available keys, so the vocalists would have to accommodate THEM. The development of instruments capable of easily performing in all keys came later ...

Still, it all comes down to your definition of “song.”

Pets and Me

I did not particularly grow up with pets. When I was very young, my family had a dog -- a Cocker Spaniel -- who lived out in a pen in the back yard. I would sometimes go up to the fence, and the dog would climb up on the fence to face me, and as far as I was concerned the dog and I had done a trick. I do not recall any of the other children in the family -- all older than me -- ever having much to do with the dog. We gave her away while I was still quite young.

When I was a bit older, about third grade, we had a lamb who lived in the dog pen. I would actually play some with the lamb, and sometimes gave her her bottle when she was young, and food when she was older. Eventually the lamb sort of grew up, and we took her back to the farm she came from.

The first pet that was truly "mine" was a tiger salamander that one of my dad's co-workers caught in his yard. I took care of my salamander and played with him and was quite fond of him. After less than a year, he escaped inside the house (he normally lived on the back porch, but they were spraying for mosquitoes so I brought him inside). My dad found his shriveled body months later, and I cried.

I had various other short-term "pets", especially orphaned and injured birds, and frogs. Most died, but a few were released alive or at least escaped to fates unknown. In general, my family had a rule against "pets in the house" though an exception was made for my "sea monkeys". As with most people who have had "sea monkeys", I was not particularly impressed with them as pets, and I do not recall for certain what became of them, but I am pretty sure they died. I also interacted with neighbor pets, and formed occasional short-term attachments to animals encountered away from home. I should mention the curious case of a robin who bonded with our family, but I will leave that for another time.

After my older brother had moved away from home, gotten married, and acquired a pair of Golden Retrievers, I would sometimes be asked to keep them for a week or two. They would reside in the same pen as our original Cocker Spaniel (and later lamb). I like to think those were pleasant times for both the dogs and me. Since I only had them for relatively brief spans of time, while I did have them I could devote most of my time and energy to their care and recreation, putting other things on hold until they were gone. Mostly we would go for walks. LONG walks. They were both very good, likable dogs, and easy to take care of. Eventually I went off to college, and the arrangement ended.

For several decades, my life was almost pet-free, though there were still relationships with neighbor pets and occasional short-term attachments. Then life began to take some convoluted turns. In the space of a few years, I first formed close relationships with several pets technically belonging to a close friend, then suddenly had my own dog, then my own cat, then more cats, more dogs, and the occasional mouse, not to mention my crippled squirrel.

Now I care for literally more animals than I can count, since I am involved with a variety of stray or wild animals who come and go and exist on the edge of my perception, animals cared for also by friends, and those animals who are one hundred percent "mine". In recent years, I have never specifically sought out a pet, and I have never purchased a pet or answered an ad for a pet or adopted a pet from a shelter -- though a couple of my pets have spent time in shelters before eventually working their way to me. All my animals are strays or cast-offs or animals for some reason needing a home. (In the case of mice, I sometimes catch house mice in live traps in the dead of winter and care for them until warm weather when I attempt to relocate them.)

(I am aware that people have a full range of emotions about pets, just as they have a full range of emotions about most topics. When hearing about the numbers of animals I keep company with, a common first response is to question whether I have had them "fixed". The short answer is "Of course." Among my largest personal expenses is pet-neutering.)

The point of this introductory discussion is just to begin to explain where I am coming from in regard to pets. Though I grew up largely without animals, they are now a huge part of my life. As I type this, there are two nine-week-old orphaned, bottle-fed kittens asleep on my lap, a somewhat older kitten asleep on the desk next to the computer monitor, and yet another cat grooming himself on the shelf six inches from my shoulder.

LATER: It's been awhile since I first typed this, but I never got around to posting it. NOW there is yet another cat curled up in front of the monitor, and every now and then he hits the power button and the monitor goes off.

I COULD try and discuss the role of pets in our lives, or our relationship with the rest of the animal kingdom, but I will leave all that for another time.

Truth is complicated.