Some more about Rudolphus

First a little background:

Some days ago, my friend Kevin Edelvang, organ grinder at St Stephen’s Church in Copenhagen, sent me a funny little text that started with “Reno erat Rudolphus”. I thought it might be fun to find a Gregorian hymn melody that would fit the metre, and slip the song in at some church occasion during Christmas season.

I browsed around a little but I couldn’t find anything that I was satisfied with, so I decided to write my own melody instead.

I then typeset the melody nicely to make it look like a page from a Gregorian chant book (using the excellent Gregorio software), then sang it a couple of times in a multitrack recording with lots of cathedral reverb, and sent the files to Kevin. He then passed them on to some church musician friends, who passed them on again, and the whole thing exploded.

I put the “manuscript” page up here at the blog, the sound file on soundcloud and eventually a video version on youtube, and in four days there were 50,000+ hits. Quite good for a couple of hours fooling around a Sunday evening.

The melody that came out of this little exercise, is actually quite interesting, if I may say so myself.

  • The Phrygian mode. Of course it is a Phrygian melody! Although the modern Rudolph melody is blatantly chordally conceived, the third mode skeleton e-g-a-c’ with the frequent turns to the neighbours of the outer notes (e-d and e-f, and c’d’/cb) actually accomodates for all those tones and melodic outlines that would never have occurred in plainchant.
  • Most problematic in this respect is the sequence-like relationship between the first two phrases (“Reno…” and “Si quando…”), and the very un-gregorian tritone leap between b and f between those phrases. Luckily, this could be masked by using standard melodic formulas.
  • These are actually the only places where I had to actively mask the melody; for the rest, it was enough to fill in leaps add cadential formulas here and there.
  • I made one mistake, which was completely unnecessary: the second phrase (“Si quando…”) should have ended on the low e and not, like the fourth phrase, on c’. This was in fact the one aspect of the chant tune that annoyed me: the repetitiveness of the phrase endings. Ironically, this would have been avoided completely had I just used the correct melody. The corrected version will appear soon in an internet near you.
  • I wanted to strike a balance between letting the melody be heard clearly and giving it a convincingly Gregorian melodic style. When even renowned chant scholars were fooled – and when I myself while recording it would forget which melody I was “really” singing – I take that as evidence that it works well as a Gregorian tune.
  • That said – apart from a few ornaments, just about every tone in the melody comes directly from the original, as can be seen from this version (with the second phrase corrected and some more textual emendations), in modern notation and with the melody notes marked in red:

 

Reno erat Rudolphus, modern notation with melody tones marked in red
Reno erat Rudolphus, modern notation with melody tones marked in red

Lastly, a few words about the text. The “textus receptus” that Kevin initially sent me has been floating around on the internet without attribution for a long time. But in a comment to the song, I was told that the translation was made by Claes Tande, catholic priest in Norway. I contacted him, but although he did remember having had something to do with the text, he would not claim authorship. Rather, it had something to do with a student expedition back in the eighties from Rome to Istanbul in a Norwegian owned Peugeot 404 1968 model Sherman Tank, where the writing possibly involved some priest candidates from Louisiana and Texas, and where Tande did some language checking.

Reno erat Rudolphus

Here’s a Christmas song that I wrote 800 years ago:

(use this link if the fancy media bar above doesn’t work, or if you want to download an mp3)

Here’s a more elaborate explanation of what is going on in the song.

And here’s the sheet music to go with it, in a slightly modernized version (and with some changes in the lyrics in relation to the recorded version):

reno-full-2

Ten points – or more! – and eternal Christmas cheer, to you if you get the joke.

Here’s a pdf file, ready to print: Reno erat Rudolphus

“What’s good is bad, what’s bad is good”: What I failed to mention about Another Self Portrait

There is one thing that I didn’t mention in my review of Another Self Portrait: that these songs are not masterpieces that redefine the history of popular music. In my review, I have downplayed the possible negative aspects. So just to make it clear:The album starts with three songs where Dylan’s guitar is painfully out of tune (thankfully, it gets better, but that sequencing would get you kicked out of album-sequencing class if I were the teacher); many of the songs are not quite well rehearsed or even known — even by Dylan, not to mention poor Bromberg (guitar) and Kooper (piano) who struggle heroically but not always successfully to follow Dylan’s eccentricities and to layer some musical substance over them; Dylan’s vocal inflections are interesting, and most of the time convincing, but he balances dangerously close to the thin line where the listener’s constant fear of a deadly crash overshadows the thrill of the balancing act.

The artist at work

In short, there’s plenty here to be annoyed about, should one be so inclined.

So why am I not? Why have I, in a review of the early incarnation of possibly the worst album in Dylan’s catalogue, not made a single negative remark about it?

Stressors

It’s all about stress. Stressors, rather.

Nassim Taleb, American-Lebanese scholar living in New York, gives a possible clue. It’s hidden in a recent Freakonomics podcast about why, among the most successful people in all the richest countries of the world, there is always someone from Lebanon.

He says:

The idea that anything natural, anything organic, anything biological up to a point reacts a lot better to stressors than without. So in other words, now for example, I’m talking to you now on this [telephone] line. If the line has some noise on it, a little bit of mess here and there,  then the listeners will grasp the message a lot better and remember it longer. A little bit of adversity, a little bit of strain, of stress, results in a little more performance on anything.You switch from what Daniel Kahneman calls system one to system two. One system where you’re passive and not making an effort to an effortful one. And that switch takes place via a stressor.

Dylan’s infamous voice is such a stressor — even here, where the iconic raspiness is replaced with a mellow country-croon. But what little stress the voice itself can contribute, is abundantly amplified by the way he uses his voice: His quirky singing. His rhythms, which sometimes are limping, other times just give the impression of being so. His out-of-tune guitar.

Bob Dylan – the Lebanon of Rock’n’Roll

I don’t mean by this to say that Dylan’s music is equivalent to the trials of emigrants from a small country ridden with civil war, but I find the comparison interesting: that a little bit of strain heightens one’s attention in general.

At least the parallel struck me: what Taleb describes — concerning the Lebanese people, but also in general — seemed to correspond well with how I hear a track like “Pretty Saro”. I’m generally allergic to mistuned guitars. So naturally, I cringed when I heard the start of the song for the first time. But I can’t remember having noticed it when the song ended. What I did notice was a narrative. I had been drawn into the song, the lyric universe, the whole musical and textual edifice.

It can work this way because the other elements of the performance are good. But just like with Lebanon, there are situations where the stress becomes destructive. One is when the stressor drowns out the message entirely. The misery of a civil war may have made the inhabitants of Lebanon more focused, as Taleb argues, but there is a limit. If the whole country is bombed to pieces, progress is a long way away.

And it is not the case that a really bad performance gets the message through really well.

The other situation is the Chinese water torture kind of stressor: when the listener gets more focused on waiting for the next slip than on what happens between the slips. The performance can be as good as it gets — it doesn’t matter, if focus isn’t on it. That’s the point of the “balancing act” metaphor above.

I have this experience occasionally, most often with classical musicians: a wrong note here and there doesn’t necessarily matter, but if the flow is broken — and it doesn’t take more than a moment for that to happen — the listener has to be brought back into the flow again. His trust must be regained. And if it happens repeatedly, chances are that the flow goes on without him.

The nightmare: stress-free music

The idea of a slight stressor as something that stimulates experience does not become less interesting if one consider the opposite: the stress-free music. Be it elevator muzak, slick pop, or the most perfect orchestral sound a recording studio can muster: the more effort one makes to remove the mess, the strain, the stress, the more it also flows effortlessly — right through to the other side, without leaving a trace.

A world without stressors (yeah, sure)

Am I grateful for the mistuned guitar? Not at all. Dylan has so many stressors in store that this particular one, I could have done without. But if there is one thing that I’m grateful of, in my relationship with Dylan, it is that he has never gone down the road to perfection.

My Fault (a punk song)

Tom Lehrer once said: “If you can’t communicate, the least you can do is shut up!”

I’ve been living by that adage: if I don’t think what I have to say will make any difference, then why say it?

I don’t have an expressive urge, and history is filled with great art, made and transmitted by people who did have that urge and who did know what to do with it.

I fool around, though. Here’s a song, and this is the story:

A friend of mine was a character, not exactly centre stage but perhaps a little to the side, on the Danish punk scene in the early 80s. After several years of doing other things, she suddenly found out she wanted to make some music again. We met up and worked out a song from her translation of a poem by the Danish punk icon, Michael Strunge. The result wasn’t exactly punk, but it wasn’t exactly not punk either.

In the process, I happened to dig out a collection of poems by the Norwegian punk poet, Gene Dalby, from my bookshelf. The result wasn’t exactly a translation, but it wasn’t exactly not a translation either.

 

D   Em9/b C9
All my    fault, It was 
D   Em9/b C9
all my    fault
D        Em9/b  C9
Spoke to you in keywords. 
D      Em9/b C9
Choice be-   tween
F                    G
crossword and jigsaw puzzle.
G7                   A7/add6
crossword and jigsaw puzzle.
          D  Em9/b   C9
I thought jigsaw was out.
   D  Em9/b   C9
My fault.
       D  Em9/b   C9
all my fault.

F                 
 You felt your way 
G
 I was insensitive
    F
You gave me your all  
           G
it gave me nothing
     Am7       G/b       C     C#m7-5 Dm7    G7
Your words are shrapnels under mental finger nails

G                    A7
Someone has run a plow through your pretty head
    G                   A7
and planted hatred like mad.
      D      /c#          /b    /a
But I didn't come to reap bitterness               
   G             /f#       Em7  A7
or duck from the bricks of theory 
         D    Em9/b C9
that you hurl at    me 

D       Em9/b  C9
I don't give a damn 

F                     G7 
 if you replace your emotional life
     F               G7
with doctrines and vibrators.
G                        A7
 You're trying to commit suicide with aspirin.
G                       A7
  That's never going to work.
Am                 G/b        C             Bbmaj7
 It's like playing Russian roulette with an unloaded gun.
E7                 D/a     Em9   C9/g
 Let me lend you a knife.

D/a     Em9   C9/g

   D/a          Em9    C9/g
My heartbeat is just a recoil.
   D/a          Em9    C9/g
From a gun in the cellar of an empty house.
   Bb           F               Gm7      C7
In front of the house there's a fountain.
    Bbmaj7
And sometimes 
    C7
the wind comes
    F            A7         Dm     D7
and tears at the fountain's veil
          Gm7
and blows droplets 
                 C7 
on to the cellar window
Db7
droplets too small 
   Bbm
to look like tears at all
         Gm7-5   E7/g#      A
but they still remind me of something.

D            Em9/b C9
I just came  by to tell you
     D       Em9/b   C9
that you can keep my bulletproof vest 
Bbmaj7  C7         D/      Em9/b  C9
I don't need it anymore.

D/a     Em9   C9/g

   D/a          Em9    C9/g
My heartbeat is just a recoil.
D/a    Em9       C9/g
I will never get used to it.
D/a Em9 C9/g
But I   keep on 
D/a Em9 C9/g
shooting.

D/a     Em9   C9/g
D/a     Em9   C9/g
D/a     Em9   C9/g
D/a     Em9   C9/g


=========================
Chords
=========================
D       xx0232         D/a       x00232
Em9/b   x2x032         Em9       020032 
C9      x3x030         C9/g      332330
A7/add6 x02022
C#m7-5  x42000
Bbmaj7  x13231
Db7     x4342x
Bbm     x13321
Gm7-5   3x332x
E7/g#   422100

It Ain’t Me, Babe meets the Devil (on a bad day)

Time for another track, perhaps.

This one is a long time coming as well. It started with the idea that this song has two faces.

One is the defiant, harsh, “screw you” character that puts it in the category with Positively 4th Street and Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat. The cocky, major-key bravado that says: “you may think we have something going here, but we don’t.”

But there is also a more mellow angle to the song. All those things that it ain’t me that’s going to put up with — it’s not that they’re all that unreasonable, really, as long as they don’t turn into a lifestyle or a pattern of empty habit. In this light, the song becomes more of a second cousin of Idiot Wind or Sara — and a minor key would be much more suitable.

So I played it in A minor instead of C major, with exactly the same melody — and it worked.

And thus transformed from a put-down song to a breakup song, other references offered themselves up: Sympathy for the Devil, “there must be some way out of here”, etc.

The track is highly unfinished. I’m going to record a more polished version eventually, so take it for what it is.

It Ain’t Me, Babe meets the Devil on a bad day

Jokerman

Jokerman is, without any doubt whatsoever, one of the great classics on a rollercoaster album such as Infidels. The single-guitar version on dylanchords, however, never really did it for me: great song, great harmonies, but so thin when you’re alone with your guitar, without the exquisite drums’n’bass work by Sly and Robbie.

Then, one day, on my way home from work, I was somehow humming Jokerman while thinking Moonlight (this was back when “Love and Theft” was recent news), and something clicked.

I’ve had it in the back of my head for some years now, so I figured it was time to record it.

Enjoy:

Jokerman meets Moonlight

I suppose one could say that where Dylan’s Jokerman tends towards the enigmatic, mine is more of a joker.

For those so inclined: here are the chords:

Chords:

Bbo      x12020
Co       x34242
A/c#     x42220  or x4222x with half-barre
D/a      x04232
E+       022110
A7/g     34222x
E7-9     076760
Bb       688700
G#+      476500


|: A . Bbo . Bm7 . E7 . :|

A               Bbo    Bm7          Co
Standing on the waters casting your bread
          A/c# /e     F#           Bm7   E7       A       D/a  A  E+
While the eyes of the idol with the iron head are glowing.
A       Bbo           Bm7      Co
Distant ships sailing into the mist,
          A/c# /e    F#                    Bm7      
You were born with a snake in both of your fists 
        E7            A       D/a  A  Bbo
while a hurricane was blowing.
Bm   /a-g#-f#   E     /f       /f#     /g#    A  D/a  A  Bbo
Freedom         just around the corner for you
         Bm     /a   -g#-f#  E   /f  /f#    /g#    A /g# A7/g F#7
But with truth so far off,    what good will it do?

Bm7                   E7-9
Jokerman dance to the nightingale tune,
A        G           F#           F#7
Bird fly high by the light of the moon,
Bm7    Bb  G#+  A
Oh,    oh, oh, Jokerman.

Edit: Oh, and my friend Lars thought I started out too negative here, with the “I don’t like this and I don’t like that” and all, and that I should at least liven it up with a picture of U2. Go figure.