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Cholakis Article in SOS


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Craig, I found your article in the new Sound on Sound on Ernest Cholakis extremely interesting. I've been fascinated for a long time with whether and in what ways musical effectiveness is susceptible to analysis. Ever since I put an electric metronome to an ancient pre-click-track Parliaments single ("A New Day Begins" by George Clinton's proto-P-Funk doowop group) and was amazed to hear that it kept absolutely steady time from beginning to end, I've wondered about the mathematical foundations of groove, and of musical success in general. These days, of course, with MIDI sequencers and related apparatus, music and geekdom can overlap a lot more easily, and for me it's been great (except when Cubase malfunctions, or a hard drive, or an SPDIF cable, etc. You know). I've been actively exploiting Mr. Cholakis's Groove DNA stuff in my own tunes, and look forward to buying and lingering over some of his groove analyses of the masters (e.g., Bernard Purdie, Clyde Stubblefield). So thanks for giving some attention to this really interesting guy and his work. I did find myself a little uncomfortable with your distinction between moving the body (like the Chemical Brothers) and the emotions. I'm not sure how much of a difference there is: after all, it's not useless to talk about our emotions as physical, biochemical phenomena. I would think that any response to music (or indeed to any sensory or intellectual input) could be regarded as moving the body. I'm a big fan of particular pieces of music on both sides of this divide that you propose, and I can't say my response is fundamentally different on either side. I have a couple Chemical Brothers CDs and I get a kick out of them. I also like Bach and I vividly remember my amazed and intense reaction to my first hearing of "In the Air Tonight" with its remarkable dynamics, not to mention the [in]famous gated reverb on the drums that still represents about as far as anyone has (or maybe can) go in terms of a Big Drum Sound (and against which extreme the whole industry has been reacting for some years now). I would suggest that the Chemical Brothers and their ilk (a personal favorite is Fatboy Slim, who I think is an extraordinarily creative musician) do not contradict or qualify the hypotheses you present, and don't require a different category to explain their potency; rather, that they achieve their goals by doing their musical work in areas not under scrutiny in the particular analyses you discussed in this article. Each piece of music in any style has aspects that are invariant as well as some that grow, develop, or change in time. While the Chemical Brothers can be faulted for being dynamically static, is that not equivalent to criticizing Bach for his long unvarying strings of eighth notes, or beboppers for their monotonously steady pulse? In each case, I think the work is simply getting done somewhere else, and often the static elements provide an anchoring framework against which "the changes" can happen. I'm not sure what music would sound like where everything changes, and I wonder whether I would distinguish it from noise (possible conversational detours present themselves concerning Stockhausen and Cage and the rest of the aleatory gang). It's interesting that in your article the extraordinary narrowness of the dynamic range of the sustained notes in Family Man Barrett's bass line in "Waiting In Vain" is offered as an indication of his remarkable control (and I agree; that song, by the way, is my favorite Wailers tune...I recently wrote another in blatant and conscious imitation of it). I have a feeling something else is going on with the Chemical Brothers that just didn't happen to show up in the particular analysis you were describing. Given the breadth and depth of Mr. Cholakis's (and your) interests, I wouldn't be surprised if some very telling data showed up one of these days that just might explain what those two wacky guys are up to (in this case the wacky guys I'm referring to are the Chemical Brothers, not you and Cholakis). But how I do blather on when I get excited. Anyway, thanks again for yet another fine article that's obviously got my attention. More, please. -Chrono
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Well, all the credit for the piece goes to Ernest. He just needed a co-author...I guess that somtimes I'm the equivalent of a mastering engineer for the printed word. On a slightly different subject, am I the only one who's discouraged that the only place something like could find publication is outside the US? For purely economic reasons, I know of no American magazine that would publish an article of this length. It will be interesting to see what other comments this piece elicits...
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Craig, I'm surprised this isn't more interesting to the forum members (maybe I need a more compelling title: how about "Naked Sex"?). It seems like a natural for computer music fans, especially when you can so easily apply Mr. Cholakis's results to your own recordings; you know, a few mouse clicks and your MIDI drum parts are grooving *just* like James Brown. Not to mention that then you can go figure out how he did it. So did you write it, submit it to the usual suspects and take it to SOS only when they passed? Well, my apologies to the sponsors, but this is just another reason to pay more attention to SOS. I wouldn't disparage your role as mastering engineer for the spoken word; we all agree on the mission-critical artistry of the best mastering engineers. I'd love to hear more about Ernest Cholakis. I spent quite a bit of time in Toronto last year and I wish I'd taken the opportunity to go pester him in person (he may well feel otherwise). It sounds like he's not thinking so much about groove these days as about sound (in the sense of frequency-band-dependent dynamics, natural reverb, and the like). Or does he continue to be interested in all these things and you just emphasized those specific areas in your article? How did you meet him? Does he ever participate in any of these forums? Thanks for any info you might be able to provide. -Chrono
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