Dawn Xiana Moon: Intelligent folk pop with influences from jazz and traditional Chinese music. From Chicago.

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Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Recording and Chinese Instruments

Today's session was incredibly productive, in spite of the fact that the music I sent to Chihsuan never made it to her inbox (good thing I brought music anyway, just in case). Chihsuan Yang plays violin and erhu, the latter of which made an appearance today on seven of the eleven songs that are going on the new album.

Few people on this side of the world are familiar with it, but the erhu is the Chinese equivalent of a violin - it's a two-stringed, fretless instrument that actually sounds fairly similar to a violin, though it looks like no instrument Westerners are familiar with. Where it differs acoustically is an encouragement of pitch bending (think bluegrass fiddle, if there's to be a comparison - this quality, which can sound amazing, also makes the instrument fiendishly difficult to keep in tune) and a more melancholy, haunting sound. My already pensive piano pieces seem more mournful.

On a whim, we also experimented with pizzicato erhu on a Philip Glass-inspired reworking of a traditional Chinese folk song, which worked surprisingly well as another textural layer.

I've been listening to the roughs for the last hour, and they sound fantastic - I'm excited for you all to hear the finished product!

Labels: Asian culture, musical styles, musicians, recording

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Thursday, March 29, 2007

So-Called "Godly" Music

Slacktivist links to a slightly disturbing YouTube video: Satan's Tool: The truth about contemporary Christian Music. In this sermon, courtesy of Alan Ives, Music Minister of Wyldewood Baptist Church in Oshkosh, Wis., we learn:

God only likes conservative, "safe" (i.e. somewhat boring) melodies.
Only straight 4/4 time with a strong downbeat is godly. Syncopation is clearly of the devil.
Rock music is bad. As is just about all Latin music and most jazz (the rhythm is way too fun).
Dancing is evil.

There are so many things wrong with Ives's sermon I'm not even sure where to start. One of the really sad things about his message, as Slacktivist points out, is that Ives seems competent on each of the three instruments he plays (OK, he does play piano using one finger from each hand for a while, which drives the classical musician in me nuts) and has enough knowledge of the musical styles he condemns to make it clear that he enjoys this "evil" music.

People like Ives seem completely ignorant of the history of church music and, sadly, the Bible. Many hymns that now seem sedate borrowed melodies from the secular music of their day. The tune for "O Sacred Head Now Wounded" was originally a medieval love song. (Apparently the legend that Luther and the Wesleys used drinking songs as a source for melodies is false.) Throughout his sermon, Ives repeatedly claims that music is bad if it "makes the body want to dance." But dancing is often seen in the Bible, and it's frequently reported as a good thing. Dvora Lapson writes: "[King David in I Sam. 6:14] not only danced, sahaq, in the ordinary sense of the word, but rotated karar, with all his might (verse 14); jumped, pazaz (verse 16); whirled around, hul; and skipped, raqad. The dance was an expression of spiritual ecstasy."

I hate to say this, but Ives is very obviously, well, white. I suspect you'd be hard-pressed to find an African-American or Latino pastor claiming that only "marches" in 4/4 are acceptable to God--gospel music frequently plays with rhythm, and so much Latin music is a rhythmic challenge. I'd also be willing to bet that if Ives listened to the Jewish music of Biblical times he'd declare it ungodly--their tonal modes were based on quarter-tones (essentially this means that they'd be sliding in-between notes on our scale), which surely wouldn't fit his conservative musical style. Sacred music did not begin and end with the classical European composers.

Obviously I should book my next gig at his church. I'll be in Oshkosh next month.

Labels: Christians, musical styles, musicians

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