You're Grass and I'm a Power Mower

[jk]

Jan 14, 2020 21:24:17 GMT Sheriff John Stone said:

I do have a question about the guitar parts. For this particular guitar arrangement, did Brian tell or demonstrate the parts to the session musicians, or did the musicians come up with the parts on their own?

This is what Joshilyn has to say (at "another forum"). I really love the way she expresses herself!
 
"You know, I actually find the whole arrangement thing a bit mystifying. So many of the session players say the same thing: Brian 'knew what he wanted.' And clearly, he was able to eventually communicate these things to the musicians, through singing it to them or writing out crude charts. But isn't it so interesting that Brian's own playing on piano is always the same sort of poundy style? I have never heard him play the piano (or bass for that matter) with anything approaching the subtlety we find in his arrangements. It's also interesting that he has more or less forgotten everything having to do with these arrangements, viz. he couldn't tell you what instruments were used if his life depended on it, it would seem sometimes.

"And yet somehow he managed to be, in collaboration with people capable of realizing what he wanted, the most creative arranger in pop music."

[Sheriff John Stone]

Jan 17, 2020 12:23:15 GMT jk said:

Jan 14, 2020 21:24:17 GMT Sheriff John Stone said:

I do have a question about the guitar parts. For this particular guitar arrangement, did Brian tell or demonstrate the parts to the session musicians, or did the musicians come up with the parts on their own?

This is what Joshilyn has to say (at "another forum"). I really love the way she expresses herself!
 
"You know, I actually find the whole arrangement thing a bit mystifying. So many of the session players say the same thing: Brian 'knew what he wanted.' And clearly, he was able to eventually communicate these things to the musicians, through singing it to them or writing out crude charts. But isn't it so interesting that Brian's own playing on piano is always the same sort of poundy style? I have never heard him play the piano (or bass for that matter) with anything approaching the subtlety we find in his arrangements. It's also interesting that he has more or less forgotten everything having to do with these arrangements, viz. he couldn't tell you what instruments were used if his life depended on it, it would seem sometimes.

"And yet somehow he managed to be, in collaboration with people capable of realizing what he wanted, the most creative arranger in pop music."

Thank you, Joshilyn - and jk - for the response. Those are very interesting comments from Joshilyn. She obviously has a lot to offer to BB/BW fans in addition to her musical talents.

[Kapitan]

I'm glad she mentioned Brian's piano playing style in that response, because that's exactly what I've said over the years: while some discuss him as a virtuosic talent, that virtuosity never seemed to extend to any instrument. Yes, he could play bass, piano, organ, etc. But his piano playing was seemingly always the same basic patterns, mostly just quarter- or eighth-note block chords.

People sometimes say if "The Nearest Faraway Place" were a Brian Wilson song, fans would adore it. Be that as it may, there is no way it would have been his song: the keyboard playing, with its little flourishes, sounds nothing like anything Brian Wilson ever played.

[jk]

For those who are interested, Joshilyn set up a GoFundMe fundraiser page a short while ago: 

gf.me/u/xfaccv

H'mm. I see it didn't work directly, even with another name. So you'll have to type it in yourself. She'll explain when you arrive there.

[jk]

For completeness' sake, this is a slightly revised and edited version of Joshilyn's follow-up to a post of mine elsewhere that briefly explained her plight and drew attention to her crowdfunding campaign:

Yes, it's true, my laptop is dying and I can't really produce music on it any more.

I sure would love to keep doing videos for you (and for me) so if my videos have meant anything to you, it would mean a lot to get a donation. I promise that any donation will go directly to the recording laptop and directly result in more (and hopefully better) videos.

I don't really have anything in the can to entice you with, but here is a very very rough demo of the guitars only "In The Back Of My Mind" recorded transcription I have been working on. None of the tracks are finished, I'll probably do things differently when it comes time to put it all together. You can already hear the effects of my dying laptop--the occasional sync issues, some out of tuneness that creeps in because I couldn't listen to myself and record at the same time. But I hope you enjoy it.

Here is the clip:
voca.ro/iY3ohnEL6mM

Three guitars, all very differently used to great effect. Carl's guitar on Today was often very, very minimal--almost as though he was really there to listen, but plugged his Rickenbacker in just in case anything came to mind. Here, it is adding small touching until the very end, when it suddenly becomes the featured instrument around which the whole structure of the coda is hung.

I wish I could articulate what these videos mean to me, and what I want them to mean to others. But it is too hard. When I got into the Beach Boys, I immediately gravitated toward the stack-o-tracks and stack-o-vocals mixes. Because here is what they did--they brought me to another time--closer to the people that made the records. When you look at the personnel for a 60s Beach Boys track, often everybody but Brian has passed away. The track mixes and then the session tape brings them back. It allows you to become their friends as you spend hours with them.

I realize this might not be everybody's cup of tea. But regardless of becoming friends with dead musicians, what I am trying to do with my videos is construct a way to experience and think about the music of Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys, and the clique of wrecking crewers in a way similar to how musicologists deal with the music left to us by more distantly historical composers and musicians.

With Bach, or someone much more recent like Stravinsky, say, we have the score. We have the music they wrote in a fixed and very discretely presented way; if I want to know how Stravinsky wrote a wind octet, I just look at the score. If I want to know what the bassoon is doing, I look at what he wrote for the bassoon to do. This is how composers have learned about music for centuries.

But with popular music, we don't have that. And some people who want to learn about it don't have the ability to read a score anyway. So what I want to do is create sort of living scores. Because this is music that is worth thinking about seriously. And it is not just about the parts themselves. I don't care what instrument plays the intro to "Wouldn't It Be Nice" because it'd just be neat to know. (Though, of course it would be neat.) I want to know because it reflects a number of choices and sociological conditions. What circumstances brought Barney Kessel into the booth at Gold Star that day, and what put that particular instrument in his hand? What prompted Brian to create that part with him? These are questions with ramifications far beyond a simple answer like "oh, it was a Fender XII" or "oh, it was a Gibson 12-string mandolin."

And I want to make these questions come alive for you, while at the same time, yes, giving you something neat to listen to. I guarantee you that nobody has spent more time with this music in this way than I have. And I assure you that nobody has, or will transcribe this music more accurately than I have. I wish that were not true because it's hard and frustrating sometimes and I wish I could go up to somebody who knows the answer better than I do.

Anyway. If any of this means something to you, please feel free to donate here:

gf.me/u/xfaccv [it's fixed now!]

Incidentally, once I get up and running again, here's what to expect:

Complete Pet Sounds LP guitars in isolation, basses in isolation, and together.
Select Today, Summer Days, and Smile guitar and bass isolations.
Random other guitar and bass isolations and walk-thrus.

Then we will move on to Keyboards. I will present my transcriptions of the Beach Boys most memorable Keyboard performances, in isolation.

Once we get through that, I hope to be able to do complete production breakdowns of some stuff, including some hypothetical complete "what-if" multitracks that you could mix yourself.

Thank you so much for reading this, and for your support.

[jk]

I hope you'll forgive this indulgence on my part. This follows on from the brief discussion of Philip Lambert's book in the Shoutbox. As this is Joshilyn's topic and there's nothing for BB literature (yet),* it's as good a place as any for this post of hers from "elsewhere":

"As I work on transcriptions for my videos and whatnot, I'm struck anew by how great it would be for my work to benefit more people than the immediate ambit of this board. I have from time to time put forward the idea of trying to publish a book of Beach Boys scores, but this time I have a lot of work done and have a very clear idea of the right way to do it. But does anybody have any connections to publishers? It's an issue with publishing full scores because of the music copyrights and all that, so it'd have to be in coöperation with BRI (and indeed I wouldn't have it any other way.)
"Incidentally, what I am envisioning is a lavish book, with selected full scores from the band's most interesting arrangements, stories behind the recordings, some wrecking crew stuff, some sessionography, etc.
"In any case, I think that a book of scores from one of the most creative pop arrangers of all time would have some value."

It would indeed. JH has some wonderful ideas. I hope they all materialize over time.

* _{Where would a book topic belong anyway--in the reference section perhaps?} 

[Kapitan]

Yes, I recall that discussion--possibly including her, way back in the old days--on some board or other as being a worthwhile project, I believe being in the context of "the Beatle Bible," their '90s books of scores. A Beach Boys one would be trickier to do due to the bigger arrangements being more common, but it would be great.

Alas, I have nothing to offer in terms of her request for publishing contacts...

[jk]

Jan 24, 2020 23:34:55 GMT Kapitan said:

Yes, I recall that discussion--possibly including her, way back in the old days--on some board or other as being a worthwhile project, I believe being in the context of "the Beatle Bible," their '90s books of scores. A Beach Boys one would be trickier to do due to the bigger arrangements being more common, but it would be great.

Alas, I have nothing to offer in terms of her request for publishing contacts...

That's going to be a tough nut to crack. Someone suggested she "reach out" to Philip Lambert for advice. I suggested SWD. We'll see. She has other concerns right now.  

Oh, I managed to fix the URL to her fundraising page--it's gf.me/u/xfaccv.     

And, she's made a brief phone video:

[jk]

Joshilyn's crowdfunding campaign really took off with a vengeance yesterday. (Many, many thanks to that person--she is "flabbergasted" by such generosity!) And now there's been a follow-up donation in its wake. As a kind poster told me at... well, somewhere else, it takes time to build up a following on YouTube and then beyond. JH is so talented and has such a sound musical background and reputation that her breakthrough in that regard is just a matter of time.

[jk]

The amount raised for aeijtzsche's new recording computer now stands at a magnificent $1,344!!!

I shall alter this figure as it increases. [Edit: As of 5 October, it stands at $2,305!] I sincerely hope that one of the very next posts in this topic will be the new JH video!

The link to her fundraising page is gf.me/u/xfaccv.

Meanwhile, to keep the pot boiling, here's a list of episodes we can be looking forward to in 2020:

- Wouldn’t it be nice to know: the story of the introduction to Wouldn’t it be Nice
- Dano perfectly well I’m not where I should be: Brian Wilson, the Wrecking Crew, and the electric bass
- Getcha Tack: the tack piano in The Beach Boys music
- Rocksichords, Clavinets, and Rhodes, Oh My: the home studio electric keyboards
- Be Synth Me: Dennis Wilson’s use of synthesis
- Moog to my Baby: how synthesizers infiltrated then took over Brian Wilson’s arrangements and WHY

It's all ours on a plate, but we need to help get it there. 

[jk]

I have to post this here. It all ties in with the "Power Mower" project:

This is what Joshilyn has been working on while the funds mount up. It's a full score in progress of "In The Back Of My Mind". The biggest surprise so far is Carl's descending figure out of nowhere on acoustic guitar right at the end!

drive.google.com/file/d/181e3m1E9uRBsiey29Q_zhjBK-4Hxlk-p/view

To partially quote JH at Smiley:
"This is a nearly complete layout of my transcription of everything happening musically in 'In the Back of My Mind'. Missing are a few notes, but mostly the dynamics, other textual notes, expression symbols, etc. The hope would be to get this, plus a whole host of others, published in a book not unlike the Beatles scores book that came out a few decades ago.

"The finished product would have copious session notes, performance notes, and suggestions for performing the pieces with smaller ensembles. Beach Boys covers have suffered from very wrong chord progressions, which, I think rather than being intentional most of the time, are down to the difficulty in being able to pick out chords sometimes. So I hope that having a solid musical representation of some of the more dense and inscrutable tracks can only encourage the band's legacy."

Here are the guitars on "ITBOMM" isolated and played by Joshilyn:

vocaroo.com/iY3ohnEL6mM

[jk]

Folks, in case you haven't seen this yet:



Good things are coming... Please don't forget to donate!

[jk]

The amount donated to JH's fundraising campaign is creeping up inexorably, having now reached a wonderful $1,609!

[jk]

And now this! I've lifted the following message from one of two other forums, where JH posted it yesterday:

Hi there!

Thanks to a dedicated crew of supporters, I've managed to get a new set-up going to make new videos! I am so grateful to those who helped and I really hope to turn that back on you.

There will be three video series coming at you very soon.

One will be a sort of chronological exploration of the Music--a bit less talky and more music.

Another will be sort of at large topics of interest to me; these will be a little more technical and detail oriented.

And third will be a track by track breakdown of Sunflower.

Hopefully these will come out next week.

First up will be guitar and bass isolations of Do You Wanna Dance, an investigation of the WIBN intro, and the breakdown of Slip On Through.

Look for them soon. I am still accepting donations, by the way--either one off gifts at my gofundme, www.gofundme.com/f/recording-computer-for-joshilyn or ongoing support at my patreon. I had to sacrifice much to get this going. In any case, I really hope somebody enjoys the work and effort I put into this.

Somebody, she says. If there's a Beach Boys Heaven, I should imagine it looks a lot like this. 

[jk]

And now the Power Mower is back--with a bang!

This is Joshilyn's first video with the new set-up. In it, the brief intro to "Wouldn't It Be Nice" is examined to within an inch of its life. It's a long story but one told with authority and aplomb. JH is the business! I believe the lights have just gone on again in Beach Boys Land.