The word oud might make some peo­ple think of fra­grances. Tom Ford’s Oud Wood cur­rent­ly sets fash­ion­istas back between $263 and $360 a bot­tle: oud can refer to “agar­wood,” a very rare ingre­di­ent in per­fumes. But reg­u­lar Open Cul­ture read­ers may be more famil­iar with the bowl-shaped instru­ment that made its way to Europe from North Africa dur­ing the Mid­dle Ages, giv­ing rise to the lute (al-oud… The word oud, or ud, in Ara­bic sim­ply means “wood.”) The oud is, after all, a direct, if dis­tant, ances­tor of the mod­ern gui­tar, a sub­ject we like to cov­er here quite a bit.

Some of the videos we’ve fea­tured on the his­to­ry of the gui­tar have starred clas­si­cal gui­tarist and stringed instru­ment spe­cial­ist Bran­don Ack­er. Just above, he intro­duces view­ers to the tun­ing, tim­bre, and play­ing tech­niques of the oud, “one of the most pop­u­lar instru­ments in Ara­bic music,” writes the site Maqam World. It is also one of the old­est. Ack­er leaves his “com­fort zone of West­ern Clas­si­cal music” in this video because of his fas­ci­na­tion with the oud as an ances­tor of the lute, “one of the most impor­tant instru­ments of the musi­cal peri­od we call the Renais­sance.”

The oud, whose own ances­tor dates back some 3500 years to ancient Per­sia, first arrived with the Moors dur­ing their 711 AD inva­sion of Spain. Although new to Europe, it was known in the Ara­bic world as “the king or sul­tan of all instru­ments” and had evolved from a four string instru­ment to one with (typ­i­cal­ly) eleven strings: “that’s five dou­bled strings tuned in unisons and then one low string, which is sin­gle.” Ack­er goes on to demon­strate the tun­ing of the sin­gle string and dou­bled “cours­es,” as they’re called. The strings are plucked and strummed with a long pick called a “risha” (or “feath­er”), also called a “mizrap” when play­ing a Turk­ish oud, or a “zakhme” in Per­sian.…

Wher­ev­er it comes from, each oud fea­tures the famil­iar bowed back, made of strips of wood (hence, “oud”), the flat­top sound­board with one to three sound­holes,  and the fret­less neck. “The oud has a warm tim­bre and a wide tonal range (about 3 octaves),” notes Maqam World. The instru­ment is tuned to play music writ­ten in the Ara­bic maqam, “a sys­tem of scales, habit­u­al melod­ic phras­es, mod­u­la­tion pos­si­bil­i­ties, etc.,” but it has tak­en root in many musi­cal cul­tures in North Africa, the Mid­dle East, and Europe. Ack­er may come to the oud as a fan of the Euro­pean lute, but the old­er instru­ment is much more than an evo­lu­tion­ary ances­tor of the Euro­pean Renais­sance; it is the “sul­tan” of a rich musi­cal tra­di­tion that con­tin­ues to thrive around the Mediter­ranean world and beyond.

Famous mod­ern oud play­ers come from Egypt, Syr­ia, Pales­tine, and Iraq, where Rahim AlHaj was born. The musi­cian “learned to play the oud at age 9,” NPR writes, “and lat­er grad­u­at­ed with hon­ors and a degree in music com­po­si­tion from the Insti­tute of Bagh­dad,” while also earn­ing a degree in Ara­bic lit­er­a­ture. AlHaj used his tal­ents in the under­ground move­ment against Sad­dam Hus­sain’s rule, and after impris­on­ments and beat­ings, was exiled in 1991. Now based in New Mex­i­co, “he per­forms around the world, and has even col­lab­o­rat­ed with Kro­nos Quar­tet and R.E.M.” See him per­form for Tiny Desk Con­cert above and hear more oud in con­tem­po­rary con­cert set­tings here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The His­to­ry of the Gui­tar: See the Evo­lu­tion of the Gui­tar in 7 Instru­ments

What Gui­tars Were Like 400 Years Ago: An Intro­duc­tion to the 9 String Baroque Gui­tar

Hear Clas­sic Rock Songs Played on a Baroque Lute: “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps,” “White Room” & More

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

Long before Fred Armisen became known as a SNL cast mem­ber or one half of the dynam­ic duo behind Port­landia, he was a drum­mer in a punk band called Trench­mouth. Based out of Chica­go, the band released four albums between 1988 and 1996 before dis­band­ing. In that time, Armisen did a lot of drum­ming and saw a *lot* of bands. Many would go on to grab the fame that seemed to con­stant­ly elude his band. In the above clip from The Tonight Show, Armisen’s expe­ri­ence is put to hilar­i­ous good use with a trip through indie and punk rock his­to­ry based on rhythm gui­tar styles.

He starts with a decent Lou Reed imi­ta­tion to locate the orig­i­nal source at the Vel­vet Under­ground, then up through the Ramones and Sex Pis­tols, even­tu­al­ly wind­ing its way through the ska-influ­enced pop-punk of Blink-182 and end­ing with the Strokes. Host Jim­my Fal­lon, as always, laughs non-stop through­out. And Armisen also name drops Sleater-Kin­ney as a know­ing wink to his Port­landia mate Car­rie Brown­stein.

If this sounds like a well-rehearsed bit, well, it is. But when Armisen does it live, it’s on the drum set. In the below clip, he makes almost the same stops along the way on his jour­ney. And it helped con­firm my sus­pi­cion that his post-punk gui­tar bit (“I am a neon light”) is his par­o­dy of Wire.

Armisen spoke to Sam Jones on his mono­chro­mat­ic Off Cam­era inter­view show about his years of punk strug­gle with Trench­mouth, which will help place his numer­ous band-based com­e­dy skits in the cor­rect con­text.

Don’t miss his clas­sic punk music SNL skits in the Relat­eds below. And if you are jonesing for the punk stylings of the hot, young Armisen, here’s live footage of Trench­mouth from 1992:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Clas­sic Punk Rock Sketch­es from Sat­ur­day Night Live, Cour­tesy of Fred Armisen

Ian Rub­bish (aka Fred Armisen) Inter­views the Clash in Spinal Tap-Inspired Mock­u­men­tary

The Ori­gins of Spinal Tap: Watch the 20 Minute Short Film Cre­at­ed to Pitch the Clas­sic Mock­u­men­tary

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

Anto­nio Vivaldi’s The Four Sea­sons reigns as one of the world’s most rec­og­niz­able ear­ly 18th-cen­tu­ry pieces, thanks to its fre­quent appear­ances in films and tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials.

Upon its debut in 1725, The Four Sea­sons stunned lis­ten­ers by telling a sto­ry with­out the help of a human voice. Vival­di drew on four exist­ing son­nets (pos­si­bly of his own prove­nance), using strings to paint a nar­ra­tive filled with spring thun­der­storms, summer’s swel­ter, autum­nal hunts and har­vests, and the icy winds of win­ter.

The com­pos­er stud­ded his score with pre­cise­ly placed lines from the son­nets, to con­vey his expec­ta­tions that the musi­cians would use their instru­ments to son­i­cal­ly embody the expe­ri­ences being described.

For two hun­dred years, musi­cians cleaved close­ly to Vivaldi’s orig­i­nal orches­tra­tion.

The last hun­dred years, how­ev­er, have seen a wide range of instru­ments and inter­pre­ta­tions. Drums, synths, an elec­tric gui­tar, a Chi­nese pipa, an Indi­an saran­gi, a pair of Inu­it throat singers, a Japan­ese a cap­pel­la women’s cho­rus, a Theremin and a musi­cal saw are among those to have tak­en a stab at The Four Sea­sons’ drows­ing goatherd, bark­ing dog, and twit­ter­ing birdies.

Remem­ber­ing that Vival­di him­self was a great inno­va­tor, we sug­gest that there’s noth­ing wrong with tak­ing a break from all that to revis­it the orig­i­nal fla­vor.

The San Fran­cis­co-based ear­ly music ensem­ble, Voic­es of Music does so beau­ti­ful­ly, above, with a video playlist of live per­for­mances giv­en between 2015 and 2018, with the four con­cer­tos edit­ed to be pre­sent­ed in their tra­di­tion­al order.

Voic­es of Music co-direc­tors David Tayler and Han­neke van Proos­dij were adamant that these high qual­i­ty audio record­ings would leave lis­ten­ers feel­ing as if they are in the same room with the musi­cians and their baroque instru­ments. As Tayler told Ear­ly Music Amer­i­ca:

We did tests where we sat in the audi­ence lis­ten­ing to the mix. We stopped when we got to the point that it sound­ed like sit­ting in the audi­ence. We didn’t want some­thing that looked like a con­cert, with a CD play­ing in the back­ground.

Mul­ti­ple sta­tionery cam­eras ensured that the most­ly stand­ing per­form­ers’ spon­ta­neous phys­i­cal respons­es to the music and each oth­er would not pass unre­marked. As tempt­ing as it is to savor these joy­ful sounds with ears alone, we rec­om­mend tak­ing it in with your eyes, too. The plea­sure these vir­tu­osos take in Vival­di and each oth­er is a delight.

You also won’t want to miss the Eng­lish trans­la­tions of the son­net, bro­ken into sub­ti­tles and timed to appear at the exact place where they appear in Vivaldi’s 300 year-old score.

Spring:

Alle­gro — 0:00

Largo — 3:32

Alle­gro — 6:13

Sum­mer:

Alle­gro non molto — 10:09

Ada­gio — 15:31

Presto — 17:46

Autumn:

Alle­gro — 20:42

Ada­gio molto — 26:14

Alle­gro — 28:25

Win­ter:

Alle­gro non molto — 31:56

Largo — 35:29

Alle­gro — 37:25

While the audi­ence reac­tions were edit­ed from the pre­sen­ta­tion above, we’d be remiss if we didn’t direct you to a playlist where­in these vir­tu­oso play­ers are seen gra­cious­ly accept­ing the applause of the crowds who were lucky enough to catch these per­for­mances in per­son.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Yes’ Rick Wake­man Explores Vivaldi’s Four Sea­sons, and Why It Was the First Con­cept Album

The Authen­tic Vivaldi’s The Four Sea­sons: Watch a Per­for­mance Based on Orig­i­nal Man­u­scripts & Played with 18th-Cen­tu­ry Instru­ments

Why We Love Vivaldi’s “Four Sea­sons”: An Ani­mat­ed Music Les­son

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, the­ater­mak­er, and the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Her lat­est book, Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo, will be pub­lished in ear­ly 2022.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

George Har­ri­son, the qui­et Bea­t­le, was the first to break out on his own in 1970 with his glo­ri­ous triple album All Things Must Pass. “Gar­bo talks! — Har­ri­son is free!” wrote Melody Mak­er’s Richard Williams in a review, a ref­er­ence to the reclu­sive silent film star who, like the Bea­t­les’ gui­tarist, kept her mys­tique and star pow­er even after fans first heard her voice. Har­rison’s rev­e­la­tion could­n’t have been as dra­mat­ic as all that.

Sure­ly, no fan of “Tax­man,” “With­in You With­out You,” “Here Comes the Sun,” “Some­thing” — and espe­cial­ly The White Album’s stun­ning “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Sleeps” — doubt­ed that George had it in him all along. But the oth­er Bea­t­les would only humor him dur­ing The White Album ses­sions. That is, until he brought Eric Clap­ton into the stu­dio. “That then made every­one act bet­ter,” Har­ri­son remem­bers in Anthol­o­gy. “Paul got on the piano and played a nice intro and they all took it more seri­ous­ly.”

The ques­tion in the You Can’t Unhear This video above is whether Paul played bass on the final stu­dio record­ing and, if not, who did?  It’s an inte­gral part of the song’s feel — the grit­ty, restrained growl, slow­ly grow­ing in inten­si­ty until it sounds like it might give Har­rison’s gui­tar some­thing else to weep about. The mys­tery of the aggres­sive-yet-mut­ed part “has per­plexed schol­ars and Bea­t­les fans for decades.” If you’ve remained unper­plexed, you might find your­self ques­tion­ing assump­tions about this most beloved of Bea­t­les’ tunes.

Ses­sions for the song began in late July of 1968, then picked up again in August, but Har­ri­son decid­ed to scrap every­thing and start over in Sep­tem­ber once Ringo returned from a “self-imposed exile” in the Mediter­ranean. The band seemed refreshed: “the qual­i­ty of the per­for­mances on the new Sep­tem­ber ver­sion seemed to reflect that renewed spir­it.” Ses­sions for the track wrapped on Sep­tem­ber 24. “For many years it was believed that this was the record­ing ses­sion in which Eric Clap­ton over­dubbed his lead gui­tar solo,” writes the Bea­t­les Bible. Not so — Clap­ton sat in on all of the live takes record­ed with the band. Ah, but who played bass? See the mys­tery take shape above and post your the­o­ries below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Bea­t­les’ 8 Pio­neer­ing Inno­va­tions: A Video Essay Explor­ing How the Fab Four Changed Pop Music

Is “Rain” the Per­fect Bea­t­les Song?: A New Video Explores the Rad­i­cal Inno­va­tions of the 1966 B‑Side

Hear the Beau­ti­ful Iso­lat­ed Vocal Har­monies from the Bea­t­les’ “Some­thing”

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

The word “sem­i­nal” does a lot of work in expres­sions like “sem­i­nal band/album/track, etc.” Yes, it’s an adjec­tive denot­ing “major­ly influ­en­tial,” even “essen­tial.” It’s also an adjec­tive relat­ing direct­ly to the male repro­duc­tive sys­tem. The con­cep­tu­al use of the term does not nec­es­sar­i­ly exclude women, who can per­fect­ly well be said to “seed” artis­tic move­ments. But it does sug­gest that cre­ativ­i­ty is an inher­ent­ly mas­cu­line act. To take a broad­er view, we could say that art is non-bina­ry; it includes all of the gen­er­a­tive prin­ci­ples involved in the act of cre­ation, includ­ing ges­ta­tion, birthing, and nur­tur­ing new art forms.

In this vein, we might call Ger­man elec­tron­ic pio­neers Kraftwerk a “sem­i­nal matrix” of musi­cal activ­i­ty, an econ­o­my of cre­ative work led by two fathers — Flo­ri­an Schnei­der and Ralf Hüt­ter  — who mid­wived a techno/electro rev­o­lu­tion, and — indi­rect­ly — through ear­ly spin-off projects like NEU!, an exper­i­men­tal post-punk/New Wave rev­o­lu­tion.

The best known of the “Krautrock” bands to emerge in the 1970s, ear­ly ver­sions of Kraftwerk includ­ed in its ranks Ger­man pro­duc­er Con­ny Plank (unof­fi­cial­ly) as well as drum­mer Klaus Dinger, and gui­tarist Michael Rother, both of whom went on to play in the afore­men­tioned NEU! and “sem­i­nal” avant-garde bands like Har­mo­nia and La Düs­sel­dorf.

In its ear­ly, anar­chic phase, “Kraftwerk’s music nei­ther ref­er­enced nor evoked the robot­ic,” writes Simon Reynolds at NPR. “They start­ed, in the final years of the 1960s, as post-psy­che­del­ic pro­gres­sives — long hair and all. (Watch their first record­ed gig in 1970 here.) In 1968, Hüt­ter and Schnei­der met at the Acad­e­my of Arts in Rem­scheid, near Düs­sel­dorf, where they stud­ied piano and flute, respec­tive­ly. Shar­ing an inter­est in impro­vi­sa­tion and avant-garde elec­tron­ics, as well as a fond­ness for The Vel­vet Under­ground, the Doors and the mul­ti­me­dia provo­ca­tions of Fluxus, they joined with three oth­er musi­cians and record­ed the album Tone Float under the name Organ­i­sa­tion.”

This ear­ly avant-garde phase con­tin­ued for a time, but once Dinger and Rother left and were replaced by Wolf­gang Flür and Karl Bar­tos, Kraftwerk began its unlike­ly climb up the charts, and into the hands of remix­ers and DJs every­where, with 1975’s Auto­bahn. “That is the point at which they went from a krautrock curio to a world-his­tor­i­cal force,” Reynolds writes, “when the sin­gle edit of the 24-minute title track became an inter­na­tion­al hit in 1975.” The song retains some instru­men­tal ele­ments from the band’s pre­vi­ous incar­na­tions — “twin­kling gui­tar and waft­ing flute fea­ture along­side synth puls­es and drum machine.”

But the meld­ing of man and machine was well under­way. “Cru­cial­ly, it was music stripped of indi­vid­u­al­ized inflec­tion and per­son­al­i­ty” — not only were Kraftwerk beyond 70s gen­der stereo­types, they were chart­ing the course for the post-human before the term had any cur­ren­cy. “We go beyond the indi­vid­ual feel,” Schnei­der told Sounds mag­a­zine. “We are more like vehi­cles, a part of our men­sch machine, our man-machine. Some­times we play the music, some­times the music plays us, some­times… it plays.” Kraftwerk may have played Ger­man stereo­types for humor in music videos and live per­for­mances, but their detach­ment was no act — their approach from the late 1970’s onward was entire­ly the oppo­site of rock and rol­l’s self (indulgent)-expression.

Why, then, does Kraftwerk belong in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? Just induct­ed this year, their pres­ence is tru­ly indis­putable. It’s not much of an exag­ger­a­tion to say, as the Hall of Fame does, that they “are the foun­da­tion upon which all syn­the­siz­er-based rock and elec­tron­ic dance music is built.… Kraftwerk’s influ­ence can be heard in the work of David Bowie and Bri­an Eno, the synth-pop of Depeche Mode, the elec­tron­ic-rock inte­gra­tion of U2, the ‘robot rock’ of Daft Punk, the pro­duc­tion tech­niques of Kanye West, and in count­less EDM and dub­step artists.”

This is just to name a tiny sam­pling of the musi­cians influ­enced by the per­fec­tion­is­tic Ger­man four­some. The case can and has been made that for the sheer breadth of their influ­ence, Kraftwerk is more impor­tant than even the Bea­t­les to the his­to­ry of pop­u­lar music, for rather than mas­ter­ing and trans­form­ing the music of the 20th cen­tu­ry’s first half, they invent­ed the rock and roll of the future. See many more clas­sic Kraftwerk videos at this YouTube chan­nel.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Psy­che­del­ic Ani­mat­ed Video for Kraftwerk’s “Auto­bahn” from 1979

Kraftwerk’s First Con­cert: The Begin­ning of the End­less­ly Influ­en­tial Band (1970)

The Case for Why Kraftwerk May Be the Most Influ­en­tial Band Since the Bea­t­les

Watch Kraftwerk Per­form a Real-Time Duet with a Ger­man Astro­naut Liv­ing on the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion

Kraftwerk’s “The Robots” Per­formed by Ger­man First Graders in Adorable Card­board Robot Out­fits

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

Hav­ing evolved over cen­turies — indeed, mil­len­nia — the for­mal ele­gance and son­ic beau­ty of stringed instru­ments con­tin­ue to inspire their play­ers toward ever-greater heights of vir­tu­os­i­ty. But of course, the attain­ment of vir­tu­os­i­ty itself does­n’t come easy, and what­ev­er alti­tude you reach, you’ll still be dogged by some of the same prob­lems you were as a novice. What vio­lin­ist, for instance, could ever ful­ly put out of their mind the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a string’s break­ing as they play, whether at home or in Carnegie Hall? Not celebri­ty play­er Ray Chen, sure­ly, giv­en that it’s hap­pened to him at least twice in the past five years.

Being a Youtu­ber as well, Chen has turned these onstage mis­for­tunes to his advan­tage. Just last week he put up “Vio­lin­ist string BREAKS dur­ing Tchaikovsky,” a video that cap­tures his lat­est such expe­ri­ence while play­ing with the Seat­tle Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra. Far from grind­ing to a halt, the per­for­mance con­tin­ues with only a minor hitch.

After mak­ing a valiant attempt to sol­dier on short an E string, Chen switch­es to what appears to be the back­up plan. With­out the option of singing the blues while chang­ing the string him­self, as B.B. King did at Farm Aid, he swaps his instru­ment with that of the con­cert­mas­ter, who pass­es it down the line. Unfazed, Chen con­tin­ues play­ing right where he left off.

Chen fol­lowed a sim­i­lar pro­ce­dure after a string break in 2017, while play­ing in Brus­sels with the Tai­wan Phil­har­mon­ic. Then, as now, he uploaded the footage to his Youtube chan­nel, where it has  racked up more than 1.6 mil­lion views. The brief clip also cap­tures his final toss onto the floor of the spare pack of strings he’d had the good sense to place in his pock­et before­hand. The acco­lades post­ed in the com­ments below bring to mind the sto­ry of 19th-cen­tu­ry vio­lin­ist Carl Her­man Unthan. Born with­out arms, Unthan became a vir­tu­oso by play­ing instead with his feet — which he also used to change a string that broke on him in con­cert. This proved aston­ish­ing enough that he’s said lat­er to have delib­er­ate­ly weak­ened strings in order to repeat the spec­ta­cle for oth­er audi­ences. Just imag­ine if he’d had Youtube.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

B.B. King Changes Bro­ken Gui­tar String Mid-Song at Farm Aid, 1985 and Doesn’t Miss a Beat

Why Vio­lins Have F‑Holes: The Sci­ence & His­to­ry of a Remark­able Renais­sance Design

The Art and Sci­ence of Vio­lin Mak­ing

Watch Price­less 17-Cen­tu­ry Stradi­var­ius and Amati Vio­lins Get Tak­en for a Test Dri­ve by Pro­fes­sion­al Vio­lin­ists

A Gigan­tic Vio­lin Floats Down Venice’s Grand Canal with a String Quar­tet on Top

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.