Some people wish above all to conform to the rules, I wish only to render what I can hear. There is no theory. You have only to listen. Pleasure is the law.
-Claude Debussy
Today was an interesting and frustrating day, that could open up some decent philosophy-of-music debate. The matter of issue is the extended jam-solo section that we are adding to the middle of “Tequila”. Marty picked out a whole shwack of drum loops that he thought would be good to dice and layer in Live. When I got home from work, I was to set to work on harnessing the chaos into some semblance of song. To me, an unfinished song is essentially pure chaos. An infinitum sprawl of unmade choices and possible directions. When jamming and improvising, this chaos is exciting to me, but at all other times I feel really unnerved by it. So I usually don’t start having fun with writing, recording, or producing a song until I am well into the ordering of the chaos.
Uneasy as I was today, I expelled Marty from my studio (bedroom) and set to work for several hours. And I quickly started really liking what I was coming up with! Satisfied that the chaos didn’t swallow me in agitation and inspired by the direction of the song, I invited him back to hear the progress. Within a few seconds he made a sour face at a bass note that he perceived to be dissonant. He tried jamming to the new section on his horn, but left my room after a few minutes. When I queried him on the back deck he said, sadly, “I don’t know if we’re on the same page, musically.”
After talking it through and listening to some variations of the bass line, it is apparent that he perceives certain notes to be wrong while I perceive them to be interesting. He hears unmarketable dissonance where I hear the cool parts that I want to thrust my body to. What IS THIS ALL ABOUT? Are his ears more old fashioned? Am I just a fringe musician with out-there tastes? I like well used dissonance. I hardly consider it to be dissonant! I’ve heard a lot of noise music and I don’t like most of it. That is not what I’m trying to do.
I tamed the Tequila jam-section way back. Now it is happy and groovy and there are no remotely wrong notes, but I know he feels bad that I am holding myself back from true musical impulses. I have some other ideas for the song including some DJ style cutting of samples, but I’m second-guessing myself about whether or not this is going to marketable for the masses. Masses. Pfff… Are we starting to do this for the classic ‘wrong reasons’.
Well, that’s a whole other debate I guess. For now, lets just focus on dissonance. Is it EVER appropriate to use when so-called ‘normal people’ are the audience? Or do I have to wait for the trippy music festival circuit before I can use the interesting notes?
