Awkward heading but can’t think how better to express it … there’s a definite “something” drawing me to certain arrangements, the dominance of certain instruments, e.g. bass, bagpipes, others and not being a music professional, I wondered why for a long time.

When Dearieme mentioned, with Tuba Skinny, that the stronger and more numerous the rhythm section, often the better the sound, I thought on’t … also why basso continuo sounded so good in Baroque … why Adrian Rollini was so good. Then I saw this:

“Some Western Composers liked to use a drone (especially one in fifths) to make it sound like bagpipes or other folk instruments. Bach, François Couperin and other Baroque composers often called such pieces “Musette” (the French for “bagpipes”).”

It’s such a different way to approach a song. During the Shoegaze phase of noise pop in the early nineties, same thing often occurred … dominant bass, droning rhythm, high vocals … the Byrds had done similar with the jangly twelve string. Then I saw this about Lennon’s voice on Rain:

“Rain” strongly evokes the style of Indian classical music through its “droning harmony and the, at times florid tune.”

And:

”The increased volume of the bass guitar contravened EMI regulations, which were born out of concern that the powerful sound would cause a record buyer’s stylus to jump.”

EMI bleeding “regulations”? You whaa? Interference plus. I also read how the album Revolver marked the end of live performances in 1966 and heralded far more technique in the studio. One such technique was with Lennon’s voice:

“Geoff Emerick, who was the engineer for both sessions, described one technique he used to alter the sonic texture of the recording by taping the backing track “faster than normal”. When played back, slightly slower than the usual speed, “the music had a radically different tonal quality.” The opposite technique was used to alter the tone of Lennon’s lead vocal: it was recorded with the tape machine slowed down, making Lennon’s voice sound higher when played back.”

In fact, all voices were much higher … same with the singer in Pale Saints, replaced later by a girl … and the Beatles on this song quite easily replaced by a girl in the best cover I’ve heard, including enhanced bass and rhythm drone:

I was going to say that the drone and reversed lead technique was a power technique, more suited to a male, giving it that relentless driving quality, a la Donny T or Kash or Nole or Tom H … and yet here are girls doing it too, such as Kristi N and Pam B … I for one find it more relaxing than a dum-dee-dum, light pop song … it packs more authority … great for sleep at night too as it’s so atmospheric in a rain on the roof way.

However

There’s so much I don’t like in the technique, the scene as a whole I mean. For a start, I was thinking bagpipes rather than sitar, did not like Harrison’s swami phase in the least, nor that of the Moody Blues … and yet the final song in The Lost Chord was undoubtedly good, musically, and the Beatles sounded better with the work put in, just as with the Beach Boys’ Good Vibrations.

Yet look at how artificiality has gone over time … auto-tuning, everything now in the engineering, not in the quality of the voice and playing … plus the narco connection, the psychedelic, never my thing, plus the eastern mumbo-jumbo. Plus that was the time of Lennon’s Jesus reference, the idiot.

There was so much wrong social direction which followed just a musical technique … why? In the hands of the wrong people … Lennon for a start was wrongheaded and destructive.