In 1976 the great clas­si­cal gui­tarist Andés Segovia returned to Grana­da, Spain, the city of his child­hood, to per­form a few pieces on film at the 14th cen­tu­ry Moor­ish palace, the Alham­bra.

In the scene above, the 84-year-old Segovia plays a pair of gavottes from his own tran­scrip­tion of Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach’s Suite for Solo Cel­lo No. 6 in D Major, BMV 1012. A gavotte is a kind of folk dance, orig­i­nal­ly from France, that was pop­u­lar dur­ing the Baroque peri­od. Bach often incor­po­rat­ed them into his suites and par­ti­tas. In this per­for­mance, Segovia tran­si­tions from the bright and live­ly Gavotte I to the more restrained Gavotte II at the 1:54 mark.

The scene is from the doc­u­men­tary Andrés Segovia: The Song of the Gui­tar, which is avail­able on a two-film DVD, Andrés Segovia: In Por­trait. For more on Segovia, includ­ing his per­for­mance of Isaac Albéniz’s “The Leg­end of Asturias” from the same film, see our 2011 post: “Andrés Segovia, Father of Clas­si­cal Gui­tar, at the Alham­bra.”

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of Mak­ing a Fla­men­co Gui­tar: 299 Hours of Blood, Sweat & Tears Expe­ri­enced in 3 Min­utes

The Genius of J.S. Bach’s “Crab Canon” Visu­al­ized on a Möbius Strip

Glenn Gould Explains the Genius of Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach (1962)

Opin­ions may be like that oth­er thing every­one has, but nobody’s got opin­ions like John Lydon, a.k.a. John­ny Rot­ten of the Sex Pis­tols and Pub­lic Image Lim­it­ed. The punk tastemak­er nev­er holds back, and that’s why he’s so much fun in inter­views. Take the clip above, from an appear­ance on the UK’s Absolute Radio. Lydon offers his take on a few artists, some con­tem­po­rary, some aging pop stars. With no evi­dence of irony, he calls Lady Gaga “fan­tas­tic… wit­ty, clever,” and says her song­writ­ing is “bang up there.” Each to his own, I guess. Of Paul McCart­ney (who Lydon calls “McCarthy”), he says the for­mer Bea­t­le recent­ly sang “like an old don­key.” He opines that “Blondie” (does he mean Deb­bie Har­ry? Or are we back to Gaga?) “real­ly is a dob­bin,” and Madon­na is “kind of humor­less.”

It’s all off-the-cuff good fun, noth­ing for­mal, unlike the review above, where Lydon employs his con­sid­er­able crit­i­cal acu­men in a seri­ous review of a very seri­ous film: Katy Perry’s Part of Me. Although “not gen­er­al­ly a film crit­ic,” Lydon lets his gift for sar­cas­tic under­state­ment loose on a few clips from the movie. His review most­ly focus­es on Perry’s image, which seems appro­pri­ate. He’s pleased she shaves her armpits, but not with her var­i­ous dye jobs. He reach­es out to Per­ry in a very heart­felt way after see­ing her father, who is, he says, a “nut­ter.” And oh, there’s so much more, but you should watch it for your­self.

Pub­lic com­men­tary is not some­thing Lydon has only tak­en up in his old age, though he has made a sec­ond career of it late­ly. Last year, Dan­ger­ous Minds dug up a record­ing of a 20-year-old John­ny Rot­ten spin­ning his records for Cap­i­tal Radio in 1977 (below). He plays some Bowie (but he’s not a fan), Can, Cap­tain Beef­heart, John Cale, and plen­ty of dub reg­gae, intro­duc­ing each track with his char­ac­ter­is­tic wit. Appar­ent­ly, Sex Pis­tols man­ag­er Mal­colm McLaren didn’t want him to do it and hat­ed the inter­view and record selec­tions, but John­ny Rot­ten has nev­er been one to do what he’s told. Good for him—it’s an excel­lent lis­ten. You can find a full tran­script and track­list of the ses­sion here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“Joe Strummer’s Lon­don Call­ing”: All Eight Episodes of Strummer’s UK Radio Show Free Online

2009 Kate Bush Doc­u­men­tary Dubs Her “Queen of British Pop”

Mal­colm McLaren: The Quest for Authen­tic Cre­ativ­i­ty

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

A com­mon­place in rock and pop song­writ­ing: minor keys are sad (or dark or soft) and major keys are hap­py (upbeat, extro­vert­ed, etc.). Want to add some com­plex­i­ty? Set hap­py lyrics in a minor key or vice ver­sa. You don’t need much the­o­ry to grasp the con­cept (apply­ing it effec­tive­ly is anoth­er mat­ter). But even for clas­si­cal­ly trained com­posers, the why of it all is still a bit of a mys­tery. Guardian clas­si­cal music blog­ger Tom Ser­vice sug­gests that since the 17th cen­tu­ry, it’s become learned behav­ior, as is our ten­den­cy to fall into minor thirds when com­mu­ni­cat­ing sad­ness through speech. Whether a nat­ur­al or cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non, there’s no doubt that trans­pos­ing tonal­i­ty can give a song vast­ly dif­fer­ent emo­tion­al res­o­nance.

Which is exact­ly what hap­pened with a recent viral dig­i­tal exper­i­ment: a tweak of R.E.M.’s tor­tured “Los­ing My Reli­gion” from minor to major so upset reli­gious blog­ger Matthew Lin­der, he com­ment­ed that the “change in tonal­i­ty white­wash­es the sor­row­ful song and brings in the Pollyan­naism of REM’s much derid­ed ‘Shiny Hap­py Peo­ple.’” Now I hap­pen to think “Shiny Hap­py Peo­ple” is a com­plete­ly stu­pid yet love­able song, but he does have a point. The tonal­i­ty hack, orig­i­nal­ly per­formed by MajorScaledTV, has also been done sev­er­al times by Ukrain­ian YouTube user MajorVs­Mi­nor, real name Oleg Berg and his daugh­ter Diana. The Bergs take songs like the godaw­ful “Final Count­down” by Europe and make them almost lis­ten­able, or ruin songs like “Hey Jude” (above).

And some­times a fas­ci­nat­ing thing hap­pens. Remem­ber that coun­ter­point between tonal­i­ty and con­tent I not­ed above? In some cas­es, the entire effect of a song depends upon that ten­sion, as is the case with George Gershwin’s “Sum­mer­time” from Por­gy and Bess. In the tweaked Ella Fitzger­ald ver­sion above, the lyrics—“and the liv­ing is easy”—lose their sex­i­ness, their melan­choly under­tones and strained irony, when the tune sounds as hap­py and straight­for­ward as the words. This is not an improve­ment, of course, but an inter­est­ing exam­ple of how form and con­tent push against each oth­er in com­po­si­tions more musi­cal­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed and emo­tion­al­ly com­plex than “Final Count­down.” Once these tweaked ver­sions of pop­u­lar songs lose their appeal as viral curiosi­ties (if they haven’t already), they’re sure to make excel­lent teach­ing tools for musi­col­o­gy pro­fes­sors.

MajorVs­Mi­nor have applied their treat­ment to over two dozen pop­u­lar songs and film and video game themes. Want to know how they do it? Watch Oleg and Diana reveal their secrets in the video above. There’s quite a bit more to their process than Evolver.fm assumed about MajorScaledTV’s REM exper­i­ment.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

R.E.M.’s “Los­ing My Reli­gion” Reworked from Minor to Major Scale

Bob­by McFer­rin Shows the Pow­er of the Pen­ta­ton­ic Scale

His­to­ry of Rock: New MOOC Presents the Music of Elvis, Dylan, Bea­t­les, Stones, Hen­drix & More

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

If you learned to play a musi­cal instru­ment as a kid, you like­ly remem­ber your first encounter with tra­di­tion­al music nota­tion. You remem­ber being baf­fled by the sym­bols denot­ing quar­ter notes, eighth notes, six­teenth notes. Or the dif­fi­cul­ty of read­ing notes locat­ed above or below the staff. The West­ern sys­tem of music nota­tion goes back hun­dreds of years, and it has been befud­dling stu­dents for gen­er­a­tions. Enter Blake West, a piano teacher from Austin, Texas, who enlist­ed his old friend Mike Sall, a data visu­al­iza­tion wiz, to cre­ate a more intu­itive form of music nota­tion. They dubbed it “Hum­ming­bird,” and between the two videos on this page and this com­plete ref­er­ence guide, you’ll get a quick feel for the con­cepts under­ly­ing this new way of read­ing music. On the Hum­ming­bird web­site, you can also find 26 songs — every­thing rang­ing from Bach’s “Ode to Joy” to Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train” — rewrit­ten in a for­mat that bud­ding music stu­dents will love.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How a Bach Canon Works. Bril­liant.

85,000 Clas­si­cal Music Scores on the Web

Bob­by McFer­rin Shows the Pow­er of the Pen­ta­ton­ic Scale

Lis­ten­ing to Music (Yale) in Our Col­lec­tion 700 Free Online Cours­es

The Police pulled off the most unlike­ly of musi­cal feats. While sev­er­al bands com­bined the rest­less, raw ener­gy of punk with the rhyth­mic, tune­ful urgency of reg­gae, these guys wrapped it all up in the accom­plished musi­cian­ship and off-kil­ter key changes and shift­ing time sig­na­tures of jazzy prog rock. This had nev­er been done before, and any­one who’s tried it since owes a tremen­dous debt to Sting, Andy Sum­mers, and Stew­art Copeland (no one comes to mind, though). The fact that they were able to retain rock cred­i­bil­i­ty while win­ning pop star­dom and a Gram­my for a rock instru­men­tal (1979’s krautrock-influ­enced “Regat­ta de Blanc”) are all fur­ther tes­ta­ments to the phe­nom­e­nal odd­i­ty that was this band. While I’ve nev­er been much of a fan of Sting’s solo work, The Police have always kind of aston­ished me with their brav­ery and vir­tu­os­i­ty.

And so we come to the act of brav­ery above: in a live appear­ance at Hat­field Poly­tech­nic (now the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hert­ford­shire) in Feb­ru­ary of 1979, the band decides to drop a new, untest­ed song on the enthu­si­as­tic crowd. The song? “Mes­sage in a Bot­tle” from the ’79 album Regat­ta de Blanc, the same record that pro­duced that Gram­my-win­ning title-track instru­men­tal. What’s so brave about that, you ask? There’s often no bet­ter way to try out new mate­r­i­al than in front of an already appre­cia­tive audi­ence. Well, this gig was record­ed for a BBC series called “Rock Goes to Col­lege.” Although The Police were skirt­ing star­dom with the sin­gle “Rox­anne” from their first album, they hadn’t quite made it yet, and their first TV appear­ance was a risky venue for demo­ing a new tune. But they pull it off. The crowd bounces in time and the three Police, who seem on the edge of a mis­take or dropped note some­where, give the song a flaw­less turn.

You can watch the full “Rock Goes to Col­lege” con­cert below, which also includes ear­ly hits like “Can’t Stand Los­ing You” (the open­er) and “Rox­anne” (at 29:45).

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pavarot­ti Sings with Lou Reed, Sting, James Brown and Oth­er Friends

The First Live Per­for­mance of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” (1991)

Two Very Ear­ly Con­cert Films of R.E.M., Live in ‘81 and ‘82

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