Reply-To: toby at cs dot man dot ac dot uk Sender: toby at cs dot man dot ac dot uk Precedence: bulk From: toby at cs dot man dot ac dot uk To: toby at cs dot man dot ac dot uk Subject: Discipline #90 Discipline, Number 90 Thursday, 6 May 1993 Today's Topics: Let The Power Fall Solos over Frippertronics? S&BB Yet more on Discipline-- the song. Ride wanted to Fripp show The Problem with "Starless" Re: sky saw guitar Discipline (the song) notes [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] To the person who sent the contribution about Fripp's upcoming activities listing them all and talking about the projects: I'm TERRIBLY sorry but I accidently lost your mail, and forgot who you were! Could you resend -- it was an interesting item. -- Toby (member of the Fumbly Fingers Club) [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] Date: Fri, 30 Apr 93 09:24:49 PDT From: I heard the voice of a pork chop. 30-Apr-1993 1220 Subject: Let The Power Fall RamZ sez: >Lately i purchased a cassette of Fripp's _Let The Power Fall_ (EG >Editions). To be frank - i didn't know quite what to make of it at 1st >earsight - > but i was left with the notion that there's more to it than meets the ear. More than you might expect. This album of Frippertronics is indeed odd compared to some of RF's other Frippertronic recordings because the solos are missing! Usually, Robert would record the Frippertronic track on one pass, then rewind the tape and improvise over it. By comparison, check out "Zero of the Signified" from the "God Save the Queen" LP and listen to the version on the "God Save/League of Gentlemen" reissue and it's obvious that the solos are different, although the backing Frippertronics is the same. The liner notes confirm this. So, why no solos on LTPF? Who knows... Brian Rost rost at tecrus dot enet dot dec dot com 508-568-6115 DEC, Hudson, MA ******************************************************************************* In the words of famed composer Johann Sebastian Shwarzenegger, "I'll be Bach". ******************************************************************************* [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] Date: Fri, 30 Apr 93 17:33:07 BST From: Toby Howard Subject: Solos over Frippertronics? Are there any legitimate albums that actually do have the intact solos over the frippertronics? The only recording I think I know about is the `Easter Sunday' soundpage that came with Guitar Player magazine a few years ago. I lost my copy -- :-( -- but I seem to remember that it was an acoustic nylon-string solo over the 'tronics. Also, the early 'tronics was 2 revoxes, and in later interviews I read that RF uses a digital delay system now exclusively, which permits backwards loops etc. Anyone know more? The 'tronics sounds on the Grid album sound backwards and quite different in timbre to the old Revox stuff. Toby [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] Date: Fri, 30 Apr 93 19:51 BST From: ronc at cogs dot susx dot ac dot uk (Ron Chrisley) Subject: S&BB (2) Jon, I hope you are not criticizing the meaninglessness of Asia's lyrics... The Palmer-James' lyrics are just as meaningless as well as pretentious (but a hell of a lot more entertaining, IMHO - esp. those on _S&BB_... Chris "Got no truck for the la-di-da/Keep my bread in an old fruit jar..."?????????? I assume that your ?'s imply that you don't understand what is being said here? Well, "got no truck for" is like "have no truck with", meaning have no involvement with. The la-di-da is the fancy, posh life. He keeps his money at home in a jar instead of spending it, or putting it in a bank, or investing. The money he makes from pimping, that is. That's my impression. Anyone else? If you want to find cryptic KC lyrics, there are much better examples... Ronald L. Chrisley (ronc at cogs dot susx dot ac dot uk) School of Cognitive & Computing Sciences University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9QH, UK Tel: +44 273 678581; Fax: +44 273 671 320 ==If I never replied to your message, chances are I never received it== [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] Date: Tue, 4 May 1993 21:56 CST From: "Of the Sun..." Subject: Yet more on "Discipline" -- the song. Matt here. I recently received a letter from a Phil Chang, probably on the Discipline list, and he claims that Tony Levin may be playing some of the guitar part in _Discipline_ on the Stick. Now since I am not familiar with the instrument, I cannot accurately verify if this is so. I can't beleive that Two guitars are not enough to cover the guitar parts. I know the Levin plays some guitar like parts on stick (ie Elephant talk) but I honestly can't see why Discipline would not be played on two guitars leaving the low notes ofr the stick? Any light you could shed would greatly calm my ear. I didn't think I could be deceived THAT bad. WHo knows? Sincerely, Matt [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] Date: Tue, 4 May 93 14:10:16 -0700 From: David A. Craig Subject: Ride wanted to Fripp show Anyone out there going to fripp at the great american music hall? i need a ride from santa cruz, or even mountain view, to the show. i'll be staying in the city that night so it's just the one way. any assistance would be appreciated. the show at the anaconda theater in santa barbara (sort of ... isla vista) should be great as well. the fellow who runs the place tells me that fripp really wanted to play in that building because his wife went to ucsb and he spent a lot of time there at one point in his life???? can anyone verify this? at anny rate his eagerness to play here is pretty certain; rob didn't want to do the show because santa barbara people are by and large too llazy to come out to isla vista and the college kids have by and large never even HEARD of robert fripp. fripp eventually agreed to do the show for a percentage of the door (vs several thousand up front), so he wasn't kidding about wanting to play here. so maybe there'll be some extra intensity :) i'll review all of the shows i get to if people are interested ... david [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] Date: 5 May 93 05:16:00 PST From: "Chris King" Subject: The Problem with "Starless" Numerous Crimhead friends bruised and battered me over the last few issues because of my defense of corporate rock. Along the same vein of What's Good and What's Not? I got kicked and punched when I labeled Starless' tick-tock meandering section and its goofy, pretentious ending under "Not Good". Let me again disagree with you. A few people made statements which I think missed the point: John Lewis in #87 said it's impossible to explain the value of music; JTSEET (Jon) seemed to want to count chords to determine whether a piece is good or not--he said something to the effect that since Asia's "Heat of the Moment" had four chords, it is not as good as a Crimson song with more than four chords; David Hodson pointed out that Starless' meandering section is a drum-percussion solo; and Ophir told us that Starless' meandering section uses ostinato, plus Larks Tongues pt I was the most interesting piece he (she?) had ever heard. Briefly, I think good music, especially longer pieces, need a good idea or theme and then a good expansion of the theme. If you don't have a good idea to start with, a musician shouldn't waste our time. If the musician can't expand on the idea, maybe re-analyze it several ways in several "movements", bring new subtleties to light over the course of the song, then the musician shouldn't waste our time. You can't count chords. Let's face it Jon, most Crimson songs rely primarily on three or four chords. One of the best Crimson songs, Easy Money, is beautiful one-chord rock (oh I know very briefly when the words "Easy Money" are sung there are, for a very brief moment, a couple chords are played). Please, Ophir, just because Starless uses ostinato doesn't make it good. Starless, like a number of Crimso's songs (especially Larks I) , suffers from wretched excess. It has a pretty melody section; why didn't the band stop there instead of adding baubles, bangles, tinsel, aluminum siding, dancing girls, fireworks, and mag wheels? Starless' pretty theme reminds me of melodic quality of "Book of Saturdays", "Heartbeat", maybe "Cadence and Cascade", etc. Thank God, Robert and the boys didn't screw up "Book of Saturdays" the way they screwed up "Starless". "Saturdays" would have turned into this long, drawn out opus, with oh-so clever ostinatos and oh-so pretentious odd meters and an oh-so over-orchestrated ending where maybe they could have brought in a harp, a tuba, and a glockenspiel to ram the melody down our gullets just one more time. Let's switch gears. Larks I breaks my first rule: it doesn't even have a good theme to start with. Each "movement" is weird, silly, and unconnected to anything that went before it. Ophir, explain to me why those corny, mysterious voices in the coda have anything to do with the thumb piano idea which opens up the whole song. I'm sorry. I'm being a bit dramatic to make a point. We each have our likes and dislikes. If you want perfection and connection, listen to how well the opening idea of "Nightwatch" blends into the rest of the song. That's Crimso at its best. Perfection is the improvisation in "We'll Let You Know". Wretched Excess is the dumb "Requiem". "Cadence and Cascade" knew when to quit with a perfect Mel Collins' re-analysis of the melody, flute solo. Silly Excess is the miles-long (kilometers-long) extension to "Moonchild" which never even once re-examines the theme. Oh my final proof that Starless' extensions are excess? Bobby, himself, chopped them off in the edited version found on "Frame by Frame". One imagines he thought the original additions to Starless were as embarassing and silly as the extensions to "Groon" on the Earthbound album. I know, I'm sorry, I'm going off making judgements without outlining all my analysis, but I think I've gone on enough this issue . . . . Let's keep Crimso's feet to the fire. Don't let them get away with crap. When they're at their best, there's nearly no other band on this planet that's as hot as they were/are/will be. When they're at their worst, they're about as bad as "The New Kids on the Block". --Chris [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] From: cs64sbt at sdcc8 dot UCSD dot EDU (Paolo Valladolid) Subject: Re: sky saw guitar Date: Wed, 5 May 93 9:10:13 PDT I looked through back issues of Electronic Musician and I found the answer to my question about "sky saw guitar". It was in an article entitled "Zen and the Art of Fripp's Guitar" or something like that and it was published in 1987. In this article, Fripp explained that "sky saw guitar" was a sound produced in a specific manner which involved processing a guitar through an EML/Synthi VCS3 (a primitive synth with inputs for external sound sources) with digital feedback. He was commenting on the irony of having spent so many hours practicing his guitar technique only to go into the studio to play just one note which would drone on and on. The only other guitarist I could think of who experimented with the Synthi would be Pete Cosey, who played with Miles Davis on _Pangaea_ and other live albums. He tried processing the horns of Miles, as well as George Lewis, through the Synthi, but never his own guitar for some reason. Boss is coming out with the SE70 effects device which claims to be able to generate synthesizer sounds from just a standard guitar plugged into it (no MIDI pickups/converters required). I'd like to see if I could get my own "sky saw guitar" out of that... Paolo -- ******************************************************************* If you know you have an unpleasant disposition and dislike people, this is no obstacle to work. J.G. Bennett ******************************************************************* [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] Date: Wed, 5 May 1993 19:05 CST From: "Of the Sun..." Subject: Discipline (the song) notes Dear Discipline readers, Many of you requested my transcription to Discipline and have received generally favorable responses. Thank you. There are a few changes that need to be made though. Part M and Part O are wrong. Instead, Belew is playing Part N and P, respectively. The chords are taken care of by the stick. The bass lines during these sections are very simple, leaving Levin free to take care of the mysterious third part that enters there. Sincerely, Matt PS. Thanks Phil. [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] To join this mailing list or have your thoughts in the next issue, please send electronic mail to Toby Howard at the following address: toby at cs dot man dot ac dot uk The Discipline archives are available on ftp.uwp.edu, in /pub/music/lists/discipline. The views expressed in Discipline are those of the individual authors only.