Marvin Gaye’s Classic Vocals on ‘I Heard it Through the Grapevine’: The A Cappella Version

in Music | July 8th, 2013

It’s hard to believe, but Mar­vin Gaye’s clas­sic 1967 record­ing of “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” was reject­ed by his record label.

The song, about a man’s grief over hear­ing rumors of his lover’s infi­deli­ty, was writ­ten by the leg­endary Motown Records pro­duc­er Nor­man Whit­field and singer Bar­rett Strong. It was first record­ed in 1966 by Smokey Robin­son and the Mir­a­cles, but that ver­sion was nixed by Motown founder Berry Gordy dur­ing a week­ly qual­i­ty con­trol meet­ing. Whit­field record­ed the song with Gaye in ear­ly 1967, but for some rea­son Gordy did­n’t like that ver­sion either. So Whit­field changed the lyrics a bit and record­ed it with Gladys Knight and the Pips. The fast-tem­po arrange­ment, influ­enced by Aretha Franklin’s “Respect,” was released as a sin­gle in Sep­tem­ber of 1967 and rose to num­ber one on the Bill­board R&B chart.

Gaye’s ver­sion might have been for­got­ten had it not been includ­ed in his 1968 album, In the Groove, where it soon became noticed. “The DJs played it so much off the album,” Gordy said lat­er, “that we had to release it as a sin­gle.” Gaye’s record­ing of the song became a cross-over hit. It rose not only to the top of the R&B charts, but also spent sev­en weeks at the top of the Bill­board Pop Sin­gles chart. It was Motown’s biggest-sell­ing sin­gle up to that time, and the In the Groove album name was changed to I Heard It Through the Grapevine.

Gaye was known for his sweet-sound­ing tenor voice, which he could mod­u­late from a bari­tone to a silky high falset­to. Dur­ing the “Grapevine” ses­sions, the singer report­ed­ly quar­reled with Whit­field over the pro­duc­er’s insis­tence that he sing the song in a high rasp. Whit­field pre­vailed, and Gaye’s per­for­mance is one of the great­est of the Motown era. You can hear his clas­sic vocals “a cap­pel­la” in the video above. And for a reminder of Whit­field­’s clas­sic arrange­ment, with its puls­ing elec­tric piano intro­duc­tion and shim­mer­ing strings, see the video below. The Funk Broth­ers, the leg­endary Motown back­ing group, played on the track, as did the back­ing vocal group The Andantes and the Detroit Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra.

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Vi Hart Uses Her Video Magic to Demystify Stravinsky and Schoenberg’s 12-Tone Compositions

in Literature, Math, Music, Random | July 8th, 2013

Hav­ing one of those morn­ings where you wake up think­ing it’d be “awe­some” if you jazzed up Stravin­sky’s aton­al musi­cal set­ting of Edward Lear’s famous non­sense poem, “The Owl and the Pussy­cat”?

You are? Wow! What luck! Appar­ent­ly Recre­ation­al Math­e­mu­si­cian Vi Hart had the exact same kind of morn­ing recent­ly, and used it as the spring­board for address­ing the 12-Tone Tech­nique orig­i­nal­ly devised by Arnold Schoen­berg. Unini­ti­at­ed philistines may want to dou­ble down on the caf­feinat­ed bev­er­age of their choice, as this stuff is dense, and Hart talks the way a hum­ming­bird flies.

But as she notes at the 15 minute mark, “Cre­ativ­i­ty means fear­less­ly embrac­ing things that seem odd, even ran­dom, know­ing that if you keep your brain open you’ll even­tu­al­ly find the con­nec­tions.”

Ergo, those of us whose ref­er­ence lev­el (or, it must be said, inter­est) is no match for a 30 minute trea­tise on the his­to­ry and log­ic of order­ing the twelve pitch-class­es of the chro­mat­ic scale into numer­i­cal­ly des­ig­nat­ed sets should find some­thing to chew on, too: copy­right and Fair Use Law, for starters; the con­straint-bound exper­i­men­tal fic­tion of French lit­er­ary group Oulipo, not to men­tion Borges’ “Library of Babel” and the orga­nized ran­dom­ness of Rorschach blots and con­stel­la­tions; zom­bies… John Cage…

(Easy to imag­ine the sort of jacked-up, expla­na­tion-crazed, bed-resis­tant child she must have been.)

As ever, her sharpie-on-spi­ral stop-motion visu­als add dimen­sion, espe­cial­ly now that she seems to be exper­i­ment­ing with giv­ing her on-the-fly stick fig­ures a cer­tain Hyper­bole-and-a-Half exu­ber­ance.

For good mea­sure, we’ve added a con­ven­tion­al video primer on the 12 Tone Tech­nique by The New York Times below.

H/T Hannes

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Math­e­mu­si­cian Vi Hart Explains the Space-Time Con­tin­u­um With a Music Box, Bach, and a Möbius Strip

Math Doo­dling

Inter­views with Schoen­berg and Bartók

Ayun Hal­l­i­day would’ve resort­ed to Vi Hart’s snake draw­ing tech­nique had this been a live lec­ture. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Rapping About Science: Watch High School Senior Jabari Johnson Talk Physics with Poetic Lyrics

in Music, Science | July 6th, 2013

Christo­pher Emdin, an Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor at Teach­ers Col­lege, Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty, loves to rap. And he loves using rap to teach kids all about sci­ence. That’s why he helped put togeth­er B.A.T.T.L.E.S., a New York City-wide com­pe­ti­tion that chal­lenges stu­dents to put sci­en­tif­ic con­cepts into lyri­cal raps. The kids were up to the task and rapped about every­thing from “rock sci­ence, nat­ur­al selec­tion and genet­ics to how mate­ri­als freeze or melt.” And the win­ner — Jabari John­son, a senior from Urban Assem­bly School for the Per­form­ing Arts in Harlem — was named on June 21, after the final com­pe­ti­tion took place on the Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus. John­son will now have a chance to make a pro­fes­sion­al record­ing of his song about Kinet­ic Ener­gy and post it on the Rap Genius web­site.

via Colum­bia

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Great­ness of Charles Dar­win Explained with Rap Music

The Large Hadron Col­lid­er Rap, Yo

The Hayek vs. Keynes Rap

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A Short Film on the Famous Crosswalk From the Beatles’ Abbey Road Album Cover

in Film, Music | July 5th, 2013

It’s one of the most famous images in pop cul­ture: the four mem­bers of the Bea­t­les — John Lennon, Ringo Starr, Paul McCart­ney and George Har­ri­son — strid­ing sin­gle-file over a zebra-stripe cross­ing on Abbey Road, near EMI Stu­dios in St. John’s Wood, Lon­don.

The pho­to­graph was tak­en on the late morn­ing of August 8, 1969 for the cov­er of the Bea­t­les’ last-record­ed album, Abbey Road. The idea was McCart­ney’s. He made a sketch and hand­ed it to Iain Macmil­lan, a free­lance pho­tog­ra­ph­er who was  cho­sen for the shoot by his friends Lennon and Yoko Ono.

Macmil­lan had only ten min­utes to cap­ture the image. A police­man stopped traf­fic while the pho­tog­ra­ph­er set up a lad­der in the mid­dle of the road and framed the image in a Has­sel­blad cam­era. The Bea­t­les were all dressed in suits by Sav­ile Row tai­lor Tom­my Nut­ter — except Har­ri­son, who wore den­im. It was a hot sum­mer day. Mid­way through the shoot, McCart­ney kicked off his san­dals and walked bare­foot. Macmil­lan took a total of only six pho­tos as the musi­cians walked back and forth over the stripes. The fifth shot was the one.

Since then, the cross­ing on Abbey Road has become a pil­grim­age site for music fans from all over the world. Every day, motorists idle their engines for a moment while tourists reen­act the Bea­t­les’ cross­ing. It’s a spe­cial place, and film­mak­er Chris Pur­cell cap­tures the sense of mean­ing it has for peo­ple in his thought­ful 2012 doc­u­men­tary, Why Don’t We Do It In the Road?  The five-minute film, nar­rat­ed by poet Roger McGough, won the 2012 “Best Documentary“award at the UK Film Fes­ti­val and the “Best Super Short” award at the NYC Inde­pen­dent Film Fes­ti­val. When you’ve fin­ished watch­ing the film, you can take a live look at the cross­walk on the 24-hour Abbey Road Cross­ing Web­cam.

Abbey Road Album Cover

via That Eric Alper

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Chaos & Cre­ation at Abbey Road: Paul McCart­ney Revis­its The Bea­t­les’ Fabled Record­ing Stu­dio

John, Paul and George Per­form Duel­ing Gui­tar Solos on The Bea­t­les’ Farewell Song (1969)

Bob Egan, Detec­tive Extra­or­di­naire, Finds the Real Loca­tions of Icon­ic Album Cov­ers

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Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Version of “Little Wing” Played on Traditional Korean Instrument, the Gayageum

in Music | July 4th, 2013

Ear­li­er this year, we showed you Luna Lee rock­ing out a ver­sion of Jimi Hendrix’s 1968 song “Voodoo Chile” on the tra­di­tion­al Kore­an stringed instru­ment called the Gayageum. Now she’s back with an Asian-inflect­ed ren­di­tion of “Lit­tle Wing,” a song orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten by Hen­drix, but then lat­er cov­ered in a 1991 Gram­my-win­ning ver­sion by the late, great blues­man Ste­vie Ray Vaugh­an. On her YouTube page, Lee tells us that it’s Vaugh­an’s ver­sion that she’s bas­ing her charm­ing pro­duc­tion on.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Voodoo Chile’ Per­formed on a Gayageum, a Tra­di­tion­al Kore­an Instru­ment

The Talk­ing Heads’ “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” Per­formed on Tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese Instru­ments

Pak­istani Musi­cians Play Amaz­ing Ver­sion of Dave Brubeck’s Jazz Clas­sic, “Take Five”

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A Song of Our Warming Planet: Cellist Turns 130 Years of Climate Change Data into Music

in Music, Science | July 3rd, 2013

If you use data graph­ics and tech­ni­cal illus­tra­tions to explain cli­mate change to most Amer­i­cans, their eyes will glaze over. So Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta under­grad Daniel Craw­ford is try­ing a dif­fer­ent approach. He’s using music to com­mu­ni­cate the lat­est in cli­mate sci­ence. Draw­ing on a method called “data soni­fi­ca­tion” that con­verts glob­al tem­per­a­ture records into a series of musi­cal notes, Craw­ford and his trusty cel­lo have cre­at­ed “A Song of Our Warm­ing Plan­et.” Here’s some of the tech­ni­cal back­sto­ry you need to know:

Craw­ford based his com­po­si­tion on sur­face tem­per­a­ture data from NASA’s God­dard Insti­tute of Space Stud­ies. The tem­per­a­ture data were mapped over a range of three octaves, with the cold­est year on record (–0.47 °C in 1909) set to the low­est note on the cel­lo (open C). Each ascend­ing halftone is equal to rough­ly 0.03°C of plan­e­tary warm­ing.

In Crawford’s com­po­si­tion, each note rep­re­sents a year, ordered from 1880 to 2012. The pitch reflects the aver­age tem­per­a­ture of the plan­et rel­a­tive to the 1951–80 base line. Low notes rep­re­sent rel­a­tive­ly cool years, while high notes sig­ni­fy rel­a­tive­ly warm ones.

Craw­ford has released the score and sound files under a Cre­ative Com­mons license.

Down­load the sheet music (PDF) | Down­load the audio file (MP3) | Play the audio file only | Code to embed the audio file

To delve deep­er into what’s hap­pen­ing to our cli­mate, we sug­gest you spend time with Glob­al Warm­ing: a free course from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go.

via i09

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends! They’ll thank you for it.

 

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David Bowie Narrates Sergei Prokofiev’s Children’s Symphony Peter and the Wolf

in K-12, Music | July 3rd, 2013

Some of the 20th century’s great­est actors have nar­rat­ed Sergei Prokofiev’s sym­phon­ic sto­ry Peter and the Wolf, includ­ing Peter Usti­nov, Alec Guin­ness, Ralph Richard­son, John Giel­gud, Basil Rath­bone, Edna Ever­age, and one of my favorites, Boris Karloff. In 1978, David Bowie joined this illus­tri­ous com­pa­ny with his record­ing of the clas­sic for RCA Vic­tor with the Philadel­phia Orches­tra. Find it above.

Bowie begins, as do all of the nar­ra­tors, with a brief sum­ma­ry of how this sym­pho­ny works, with dif­fer­ent instru­men­ta­tion rep­re­sent­ing the var­i­ous char­ac­ters (see here for full text of the sto­ry and descrip­tion of themes):

Each char­ac­ter in the tale is going to be rep­re­sent­ed by a dif­fer­ent instru­ment of the orches­tra. For instance, the bird will be played by the flute. (Like this.) Here’s the duck, played by the oboe. The cat by the clar­inet. The bas­soon will rep­re­sent grand­fa­ther. The wolf by the French horns. And Peter by the strings. The blast of the hunters’ shot­guns played by the ket­tle drums.

Bowie has said he that he made the record­ing as a present for his son, Dun­can, then 7. Prokofiev, com­mis­sioned by the Cen­tral Children’s The­atre in Moscow in 1936 to help cul­ti­vate the musi­cal tastes of young chil­dren, wrote the sym­pho­ny in four days. As Tim Smith points out in an essay for PBS, Peter and the Wolf has “helped intro­duce gen­er­a­tions of chil­dren to the instru­ments of the orches­tra and the con­cept of telling a sto­ry through music.” I know it will be a part of my daughter’s musi­cal edu­ca­tion. I’m pret­ty sure we’ll start with Bowie’s ver­sion.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

David Bowie Releas­es Vin­tage Videos of His Great­est Hits from the 1970s and 1980s

The Sto­ry of Zig­gy Star­dust: How David Bowie Cre­at­ed the Char­ac­ter that Made Him Famous

Rare 1946 Film: The Great Russ­ian Com­pos­er Sergei Prokofiev Plays Piano, Dis­cuss­es His Music

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Earliest Footage of Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly and Johnny Cash (1955)

in Music | July 2nd, 2013

Here are some rare home movies from the ear­li­est days of rock and roll. Although accounts dif­fer, this is appar­ent­ly the old­est footage of four leg­endary per­form­ers: Elvis Pres­ley, Bud­dy Hol­ly, John­ny Cash and Carl Perkins. The film was shot in 1955 with an 8mm cam­era in Hol­ly’s home­town of Lub­bock, Texas, by his friend Ben Hall, a local disc jock­ey and musi­cian who would lat­er write the song “Blue Days, Black Nights” from Hol­ly’s That’ll Be The Day album. The silent footage is wide­ly report­ed to have been tak­en at one of Pres­ley’s April 29, 1955 shows at the Cot­ton Club in Lub­bock. But that may not be entire­ly true, because Hol­ly, Cash and Perkins were not on the adver­tised bill for those shows.

Pres­ley per­formed in Lub­bock sev­er­al times that year. He first met Hol­ly at a show at the Fair Park Col­i­se­um on Feb­ru­ary 13, when Hol­ly and his friend Bob Mont­gomery appeared at the bot­tom of the bill as the coun­try duo Bud­dy & Bob. Hol­ly was 18 years old and still a senior in high school. The charis­mat­ic Pres­ley, though still unknown in most parts of the coun­try in 1955, was already treat­ed as a star in the South, where he was mobbed by fans.

Accord­ing to the Scot­ty Moore Web site, the footage of Pres­ley was tak­en on April 29 and the oth­ers were filmed lat­er in the year. Pres­ley is shown onstage and off with his orig­i­nal band, the Blue Moon Boys, with Scot­ty Moore on gui­tar and Bill Black on bass. Perkins appears in an orange jack­et, Cash is wear­ing a white string tie over a black shirt, and Hol­ly, who turned 19 around that time, is eas­i­ly rec­og­niz­able in his trade­mark eye­glass­es.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bud­dy Hol­ly at Age 12: His First Record­ing

Library Card Signed by 13-Year-Old Elvis Pres­ley, the Ear­li­est Known Sig­na­ture of the King

Jim­my Page, 13, Plays Gui­tar on BBC Tal­ent Show (1957)

Two Prison Con­certs That Defined an Out­law Singer: John­ny Cash at San Quentin and Fol­som (1968–69)

The Bea­t­les as Teens (1957)

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