I never usually watch reality TV, least of all music-based reality TV. I'm not snobbish about it. I just don't think it's the most valuable way of unearthing new talent. However a new show began tonight on RTE Television and I figured that, as I knew a number of people on the first episode, it couldn't hurt to watch.
It's called The Hit and tries to pair up songwriters with stars who are looking for their next single. It's an oddly antiquated concept for the Irish circle of musicians in 2013. There is no Tin Pan Alley culture in Dublin - there is instead a huge and wildly diverse collection of songwriters and composers who perform their own music with a great deal of originality and creativity in their arrangements, lyrics, execution and design of their package. It is so original that it makes doing covers difficult, best left to the bar room one man band (and they usually stick to the international hits of yesteryear anyway). The first acts to try and find a new single from six pitching songwriters were Steve Wall (excitingly on behalf of The Stunning who would release the final song as their first single in twenty years) and Julie Feeney. Jezzebelle (a performing and writing duo whose work I've admired for many years and had the pleasure to record with a few years ago as well) were one of the "teams" sitting in a little room to play their selected song for Steve and Julie who moved around the cubicles before staking their claims to two songs and hoping to get to their favourite before the other. The final decision would be made in the studio with the songwriters only knowing the final decision on the night. Both winning songs were markedly different to their demo performances. Both decisions were down to which songs the artistes could most make their own. I enjoyed watching the transformation but The Stunning performed a song at the end of the show that sounded very like a The Stunning song. Julie Feeney sang a song that sounded like she had written it. Jezebelle didn't get through but they already sounded too like Jezebelle already and that may have been their downfall. The only question that remains is: given the royalties to be reaped, and the fact that our songwriters already have such performing talent with fully-formed arrangements, and the fact that we will just change these ones to sound like our own, why should we spend large amounts of time trying to find other peoples' songs to sing ?
Once upon a time, a very long time ago, there was a thing discovered called music and, over time, people discovered they could put different pitches together in different combinations of instruments and create compositions. Over more time, a divide (not entirely unworthy) was drawn between the composers and the people who chose to perform the composed music. The performers knew better than to go around tinkering with the notes or playing the soft bits too loud and vice versa. The people who were studying the composed music put a lot of time and effort into correcting themselves (if their teachers hadn't already done so) when notes played deviated from the score and nobody was taught to improvise or play from scratch - composing at its core. A century of jazz and other popular music has helped redress the balance with the educational system remembering to teach children to improvise again and the concept of composition and the interplay between composer, performer and listener challenged time and time again in all music styles. A previously productive musical partnership i had with a classical musician soured when I played one of my colleagues' composition and took one section out (playing ABA instead of AABA). Aware that this had upset him, I offered to make it a co-write to preserve the integrity of the original composition for which this would be a first performance (which angered him even more). Then I got frustrated. Then the partnership was no more. In our 8 year partnership we had had many conversations about what constituted the "composition", ie the process that earns the royalty. Melody and lyric, or chords as well ? Or full arrangement of first recording ? This vexes everybody involved in popular music at some stages and the person who considers themselves the songwriter or composer need to work out the answer and work with people who share their version of this.
As an aside to this, it is interesting to work with songwriters who have a huge amount of ideas trapped in their heads without the musical vocabulary to tell their musical colleagues what they want them to do. I'm not being snobby, just amused to observe how far down this road we have come only to arrive at this frustrating disconnect. Frustrating for everybody; the self-styled composer and the session musician.
People perform other peoples' songs for a huge number of reasons and should continue to do so. If we in Ireland can channel more of our great drama heritage into our music, we should be really good at this. There are surprisingly few who excel t interpreting other peoples' music outside the trad community - Christy Moore and Mary Coughlan spring to mind. Both Steve and Julie commonly referred to songs they could "feel" or "make their own" and eventually they did that with both the songs. However, this is difficult when writers write so personally. This makes the song awkward to cover but mostly, I think, because the singers are all in their own little box as well, either musically or in terms of what they're comfortable singing about, often both. We need to get back to telling stories about other voices in other rooms. Peter Gabriel recorded an album in 2008 called "Scratch My Back". It featured radically reworked covers of songs by a vast array of songwriters from Paul Simon to Bon Iver via Elbow. It doesn't sound particularly like a Peter Gabriel album but it does sound like Peter Gabriel. This is the sign of a truly creative force. A new CD comes out in September of all the different songwriter performers featured on this CD interpreting Peter Gabriel. It's titled "and I'll Scratch Yours". I look forward to hearing how they have interpreted In return and what new perspective they can breathe into his music.
I hope you don't expect me to come to any conclusions. If I was able to do that I would be working at the Irish Times. No, I was just watching this curious new programme and it set me to thinking . . . . . How I wished Irish musicians were better and more interested in performing other peoples' music . . . . . . How I wished people wouldn't get distracted by silly TV game shows and just concentrate on the hard work that will get them where they deserve to be . . . . . How it's good when people can see they're really good at certain parts of the jigsaw puzzle and don't try to do the whole thing. Even though you didn't see the whole thing, it was interesting to see the bits of the process they did let you see. I don't have an opinion of the Julie Feeney song although I do like her CDs. I don't think she would have done Jezebelle's song any better although I would have been pleased to see them get a break. I liked the song The Stunning turned their hand to very much, more so after they rearranged it but can't say, if I'm honest, I like it more than Steve Wall's original songs. A promising and interesting start though. I was only going to watch one week. I now look forward to seeing how the series develops. A birth for a Tin Pan Alley in Dublin ? I don't think so somehow but if it gets us all thinking somehow that's not a bad idea, right ?
It's called The Hit and tries to pair up songwriters with stars who are looking for their next single. It's an oddly antiquated concept for the Irish circle of musicians in 2013. There is no Tin Pan Alley culture in Dublin - there is instead a huge and wildly diverse collection of songwriters and composers who perform their own music with a great deal of originality and creativity in their arrangements, lyrics, execution and design of their package. It is so original that it makes doing covers difficult, best left to the bar room one man band (and they usually stick to the international hits of yesteryear anyway). The first acts to try and find a new single from six pitching songwriters were Steve Wall (excitingly on behalf of The Stunning who would release the final song as their first single in twenty years) and Julie Feeney. Jezzebelle (a performing and writing duo whose work I've admired for many years and had the pleasure to record with a few years ago as well) were one of the "teams" sitting in a little room to play their selected song for Steve and Julie who moved around the cubicles before staking their claims to two songs and hoping to get to their favourite before the other. The final decision would be made in the studio with the songwriters only knowing the final decision on the night. Both winning songs were markedly different to their demo performances. Both decisions were down to which songs the artistes could most make their own. I enjoyed watching the transformation but The Stunning performed a song at the end of the show that sounded very like a The Stunning song. Julie Feeney sang a song that sounded like she had written it. Jezebelle didn't get through but they already sounded too like Jezebelle already and that may have been their downfall. The only question that remains is: given the royalties to be reaped, and the fact that our songwriters already have such performing talent with fully-formed arrangements, and the fact that we will just change these ones to sound like our own, why should we spend large amounts of time trying to find other peoples' songs to sing ?
Once upon a time, a very long time ago, there was a thing discovered called music and, over time, people discovered they could put different pitches together in different combinations of instruments and create compositions. Over more time, a divide (not entirely unworthy) was drawn between the composers and the people who chose to perform the composed music. The performers knew better than to go around tinkering with the notes or playing the soft bits too loud and vice versa. The people who were studying the composed music put a lot of time and effort into correcting themselves (if their teachers hadn't already done so) when notes played deviated from the score and nobody was taught to improvise or play from scratch - composing at its core. A century of jazz and other popular music has helped redress the balance with the educational system remembering to teach children to improvise again and the concept of composition and the interplay between composer, performer and listener challenged time and time again in all music styles. A previously productive musical partnership i had with a classical musician soured when I played one of my colleagues' composition and took one section out (playing ABA instead of AABA). Aware that this had upset him, I offered to make it a co-write to preserve the integrity of the original composition for which this would be a first performance (which angered him even more). Then I got frustrated. Then the partnership was no more. In our 8 year partnership we had had many conversations about what constituted the "composition", ie the process that earns the royalty. Melody and lyric, or chords as well ? Or full arrangement of first recording ? This vexes everybody involved in popular music at some stages and the person who considers themselves the songwriter or composer need to work out the answer and work with people who share their version of this.
As an aside to this, it is interesting to work with songwriters who have a huge amount of ideas trapped in their heads without the musical vocabulary to tell their musical colleagues what they want them to do. I'm not being snobby, just amused to observe how far down this road we have come only to arrive at this frustrating disconnect. Frustrating for everybody; the self-styled composer and the session musician.
People perform other peoples' songs for a huge number of reasons and should continue to do so. If we in Ireland can channel more of our great drama heritage into our music, we should be really good at this. There are surprisingly few who excel t interpreting other peoples' music outside the trad community - Christy Moore and Mary Coughlan spring to mind. Both Steve and Julie commonly referred to songs they could "feel" or "make their own" and eventually they did that with both the songs. However, this is difficult when writers write so personally. This makes the song awkward to cover but mostly, I think, because the singers are all in their own little box as well, either musically or in terms of what they're comfortable singing about, often both. We need to get back to telling stories about other voices in other rooms. Peter Gabriel recorded an album in 2008 called "Scratch My Back". It featured radically reworked covers of songs by a vast array of songwriters from Paul Simon to Bon Iver via Elbow. It doesn't sound particularly like a Peter Gabriel album but it does sound like Peter Gabriel. This is the sign of a truly creative force. A new CD comes out in September of all the different songwriter performers featured on this CD interpreting Peter Gabriel. It's titled "and I'll Scratch Yours". I look forward to hearing how they have interpreted In return and what new perspective they can breathe into his music.
I hope you don't expect me to come to any conclusions. If I was able to do that I would be working at the Irish Times. No, I was just watching this curious new programme and it set me to thinking . . . . . How I wished Irish musicians were better and more interested in performing other peoples' music . . . . . . How I wished people wouldn't get distracted by silly TV game shows and just concentrate on the hard work that will get them where they deserve to be . . . . . How it's good when people can see they're really good at certain parts of the jigsaw puzzle and don't try to do the whole thing. Even though you didn't see the whole thing, it was interesting to see the bits of the process they did let you see. I don't have an opinion of the Julie Feeney song although I do like her CDs. I don't think she would have done Jezebelle's song any better although I would have been pleased to see them get a break. I liked the song The Stunning turned their hand to very much, more so after they rearranged it but can't say, if I'm honest, I like it more than Steve Wall's original songs. A promising and interesting start though. I was only going to watch one week. I now look forward to seeing how the series develops. A birth for a Tin Pan Alley in Dublin ? I don't think so somehow but if it gets us all thinking somehow that's not a bad idea, right ?
