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- Ask the indie professor: Why do bassists want the most sex? | Wendy Fonarow
From sex to soundchecks, the indie professor picks your best questions and gets her thinking cap on
Here's this week's answers! Please post your questions for the indie professor in the comments section below or email theindieprofessor@gmail.com
Why can't people think of anything else to say other than "testing, one, two ..." at soundchecks?
OT Dude
This isn't a matter of creativity. Saying "testing, one two" or "check, one two" is formulaic and serves the same function as other formulaic expressions, such as greetings. People often claim that formulaic expressions are meaningless, ignoring the work they do. When someone says, "How are you?" in English or "Have you eaten?" in Thai, they aren't really asking about your well-being or your last meal, they're expecting to receive an answer from a predictable repertoire of replies. This opens lines of communication and allows the parties to focus on other important interactive information. With formulaic speech, you don't need to focus on content or specific words, but rather the acoustic information provided by slight variations in sound. By saying the same thing at a soundcheck, crew and performers can hear the significant contrasts in sound quality. The content of a formulaic expression is arbitrary. However, "check, one two" has a variety of sound units: the voiceless postalveolar affricate in "ch" (which has a lot of turbulence) and an alveolar plosive (which has a strong expulsion of air). Additionally, the audience are also aware of this routine and, therefore, don't pay attention to it. If something different was said, such as a movie quote, it would draw attention to the soundcheck and create confusion. However, if you ask a crew why the soundman says "one, two", their answer is "because you lift on three".
Hey Prof,
What kind of living can non-chart-topping indie bands make? I went to see Teenage Fanclub recently – they sold out a 600-capacity venue and release an album every five years that will sell modestly, but how do they keep the wolf from the door?
meadowside
Currently, this is the issue in the music industry, at least for the professionals who like music. It's the question of economic remuneration for artists and, at present, there is no model. Because of this, I can only answer historically when fans actually paid for music. The answer to what kind of living a non-chart-topping band makes is, they don't make a living. The "big" advance a record company gives an artist is shared between the managerand lawyers, and covers the recording costs of an album. Now, divide what's left between the four or five band members. This advance is not income – it is a loan that needs to be repaid by the percentage of income allocated to the band from an album's sales. For a major label the standard is around 13%; for an independent label it can be up to 50%. However, while the label is "supporting your record", its expenses are added to your debt. It's called recoupable and most things that a record company does for a band are paid for by the band, which increases their debt. This includes the cost of videos, publicity and tour support. (By the way, if you think a band makes money by touring, ask yourself why labels have to pay bands' tour support). A band must also rely on a record company accountant to keep track on how much of their debt has been repaid. Almost every band, including some platinum-selling artists, never recoup – they are always in dire need of that next advance. The non-chart-topping bands that persist do so through fool-hearted doggedness, wise early decisions, luck and/or having another means of support.
Normally, the only real source of revenue is from publishing. Publishing is the money paid to songwriters, primarily from mechanical royalties (CDs, MP3s, soundtracks). This system was designed in the era of sheet music, when one person wrote music and another wrote lyrics. This carried over to the present so that usually it's only the singer and guitarist who receive songwriting credits while the percussion section gets a big duck egg. Thus, the most important decision for a young band is the one that is usually the least thought out. If you don't divide the publishing fairly, you'll have two people living in a house and two who are basically homeless. This will eventually result in the breakup of the band. The disparity in funds and prestige also impacts on the sexual politics of bands, with musicians disproportionately taking advantage of sex available on the road. Counter-intuitively, rhythm section members, who are less likely to receive material rewards, are more likely to pursue carnal ones.
PS For those of you wondering about money from licensing, merchandise or touring. Ask and I'll tell you: it doesn't change the answer above.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Переслать - New music: Diddy's Hello Good Morning (Skepta remix)
Skepta adds some thrills to a stale Diddy track – Twitter goes beserk
Earlier this year, Sean Combs – aka Puff P Daddy Diddy – released Hello Good Morning with TI under the moniker Diddy-Dirty Money to a chorus of "meh". Thankfully, "UK grime king" Skepta has rescued the song by pushing Diddy to the periphery – his flow consists of going "uh", "Skepta" and spelling out "D.I.D.D.Y." – setting off a smorgasbord of sonic explosions, tightening the whole thing up and making it sound a lot darker and more thrilling than a host of US producers could manage. Skepta also drops the following immortal line in the first verse: "I like tea, but I don't like crumpets." A man after my own heart.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - New music: The Hundred in the Hands – Pigeons
Check out the Brooklyn band's sickeningly good new video, featuring a spectacular take on the Technicolor yawn
You know when you've had too much to drink at a party and suddenly need to redecorate the bathroom, but instead of vomit what emerges is a stream of sparks? No? Well, the poor girl in this video from Brooklyn-based, Warp-signings the Hundred in the Hands does. She even shoots into the air and explodes like a firework at one point. But despite their label's electronic leanings, the Hundred in the Hands are less glitch-techno, more melancholic dance-pop; all minor chords and chiming guitars. The chorus recalls Ladyhawke, while Eleanore Everdell's detached vocals create just the right amount of ennui. Oh, and the track was produced by Richard X, the man responsible for such classics as Sugababes' Freak Like Me and Rachel Stevens's Some Girls. Pigeons is good, just not that good.guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - Two conductors fight it out in the Wagner ring | Tom Service
Simon Rattle's Tristan packs a punch at the Proms, but Anthony Negus's refined Walküre shows powerful things can come in small packages
This has been a weekend of Wagner, with Anthony Negus conducting Die Walküre at Longborough and Sir Simon Rattle taking on Tristan – well, act two, anyway – at the Proms last night with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. And which was more radical, more revelatory, more moving? On paper, this looks like a no-brainer: in the red corner, the chance to hear the OAE get their period-instrument chops around Tristan with a cast out of the top drawer of international Wagner-singing (including Ben Heppner's Tristan and Violeta Urmana's Isolde) in the company of the most famous conductor of his generation; and in the blue corner, the latest instalment of Longborough's shoestring Ring with a cast of relative ingénues, a specially convened festival orchestra, and a conductor who will be familiar only to operatic cognoscenti.
But in the end it was their similarities that were most striking. In her review of the Longborough Walküre, Rian Evans talked of the show's "intimacy and integrity", and she's right. But it was Negus's achievement with his 65-piece orchestra that I found most fascinating. Taking advantage of Longborough's Bayreuth-in-miniature acoustics, with its ideal balance between the singers and the musicians, Negus led a faultlessly structured Walküre that flickered and shone with new colour and insight. Using a mildly adapted version of the score (an arrangement that only the most distinguished of Wagnerians would spot, made for smaller German opera houses like Longborough that don't have room for 120 players in their pit) Negus was able to create a chamber-like rapport between the stage and the orchestra, to reveal the delicacy of Wagner's orchestration, as well as revelling in the score's big moments. Even more importantly, he paced the whole evening as well as I've ever heard a Wagner opera in performance. OK, so the Longborough Orchestra isn't the Berlin Philharmonic, and the relatively few strings were tiring by the end of the show, but this was the sort of refined, revelatory Wagner conducting that takes a lifetime to learn. Lee Bisset's Sieglinde was the pick of the vocal performances, but this is Negus's Ring, and all the better for it.
The benefits of Rattle's period-instrument Tristan were similar. The soundworld of the OAE's 1860s instruments and the reduced band at Longborough brought exactly the same dividends: greater textural transparency, a near-perfect balance with the voices, and the creation of a kaleidoscope of orchestral colour. Every bar of the OAE's performance had a clear dramatic purpose (apart from the odd moment when the players sounded like they were engaged in a battle for supremacy with their obstreperous instruments), and there wasn't a trace of the stodgy Wagnerian soup that his orchestration can become in mediocre modern-instrument performances. Sometimes, though, it felt as if Heppner and Urmana were the odd-musicians-out in this performance. They sang with the same über-vibrato they always do, relishing the chance – for once – to blow the orchestra out of the water with their voices rather than fighting with them. But they did not craft the love duet with the same care and attention as Rattle and his musicians. The outstanding singing was Franz-Josef Selig's King Mark, whose shattering performance of his long monologue was the emotional highlight of the evening, and which inspired the OAE to their most insightful, impassioned playing.
The lesson of the weekend is that you don't need period instruments and an expensive cast to scrub the patina off Wagner. As Longborough proves, all you need is a conductor who knows his Wagner inside-out – well, alright, that and an opera house in your garden. Talking of which: I'm off for the rest of August to tame some plants and do some chapter writing. Enjoy a music-filled August of Proms and festivals, and see you in a few weeks.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - Exclusive: Robert Plant – Angel Dance
Watch the video for the Led Zeppelin legend's new single, taken from his forthcoming covers album, Band of Joy
For his first album since the Grammy award-winning Raising Sand, recorded with Alison Krauss, Robert Plant returns with a new LP featuring interpretations of Americana anthems. "Band of Joy represented an attempt to create, diversify and celebrate the great dynamics of the music scene in the mid 60s," explains Plant. "I just wanted to bring it back into now." As with his cover of Los Lobos's Angel Dance (above), Band of Joy features renditions of Low's Silver Rider and Monkey, the Kelly Brothers's Falling in Love Again, and the Appalachian folk song Cindy, I'll Marry You Some Day.
Band of Joy is released on 13 September.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать
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