Deadpool's Gong Show ft. Michael Jackson

In preparation for the long-awaited sequel (out in theaters as of the time of this writing) my roommate and I rewatched the original Deadpool film. To its credit, it holds up far better than it has any right to, and Negasonic Teenage Warhead is still the coolest superhero name ever. I can't say I enjoyed it more the second time around, but I certainly enjoyed it as much and did notice something interesting that I hadn't before, and that's an odd string of notes in the score. It's something of a leitmotif for DP, so I had plenty of opportunities to listen for it and try picking it apart in my head. It was a synthetic sound, very bassy, and made me think of a gong, like the transition effect used all over Law & Order, but with more of a sting to it. 

It finally hit me toward the end of the film that it sounded almost exactly like the opening notes for Michael Jackson's Beat It. Wikipedia wound up having a surprisingly in-depth look at the score, noting that since all of Pool's musical references were from the 1980's, especially WHAM!, it was decided to use instrumentation from that period. It mentioned two synthesizers, an Oberheim, and a Synclavier. The Oberheim link only showed me the entire range of equipment, so I focused on the latter. Sure enough, buried in a lengthy list of notable users was the King of Pop, with Beat It specifically cited for its notable "gong" sound. 




That should be where this story ends, but there's a twist to it. This "gong" sound isn't actually from Beat It. At least, it's not originally from Beat It. A full year before Thriller was released, Sycnlavier released a demo disc of their new Sycnlavier II model. It's about 24 minutes of small samples. It's at around 6 minutes and 40 seconds, following some jaunty xylophone-like sounds, we hear the gong.




But we don't simply hear the gong, we don't simply hear it in all its ominous glory; we hear it verbatim, all 7 notes. 

For the sake of giving credit where credit is due, all synthesizer sounds on Thriller were a team effort consisting of Steve Porcaro, Brian Banks, and Anthony Marinelli. The demo disc was effectively a promotional item from Synclavier, with Discogs crediting Denny Jaeger with that particular track.

Liner notes for Thriller do mention Jaeger, who went onto work for Jackson on BAD, but only after reaching out to Jackson upon spotting the match. This is not meant to be some call for justice or a knock against the King of Pop. If anyone was concerned about plagiarism or infringement, they've made peace with it by now. After all, Jaeger is credited with programming and performing the track for the demo, all under the hire of New England Digital, who intended the effect to be a built-in patch for their new synthesizer. Songwriter Tom Bahler, who wrote She's Out of My Life originally for Frank Sinatra before Michael Jackson made it famous, was actually the one who first played the effect for Jackson while writing Thriller. The rest of the programming team was anxious about using it, since it was so distinct (and a stock sound that literally worked right out of the box) and they'd have preferred to work more with the synth to produce original sounds. Michael, however, was insistent on using it. 

Okay, that explains the sound itself being featured, but it isn't just the sound, it's the full set of notes. This is an important distinction to make for legal reasons. Without getting into the exact economics of it, it is far less expensive to license a song to be covered (buying the sheet music, so to speak) than it is to sample even one second of a song's original recording. So, are the Synclavier II's gong sounds as they appear on its demo disc being sampled or covered in Beat It? 

The short answer is nobody really knows, it's in all likelihood a recreation using the original instrument in question, but the matter is almost academic. It does make me wonder if someone were to use those same 7 notes from the demo disc if they'd be getting a legal notice from the estate of Michael Jackson, New England Digital, or anybody at all. Then again, who would they be fooling? Sure, seven notes doesn't seem like anything special, but think of the first two notes of Elvis "The King of Rock" Presley's Jailhouse Rock, courtesy of his guitarist Scotty Moore. 



How often can you identify a song by the first two notes? Most people can probably identify Beat It by the first one. Suddenly all the red tape of legal ownership becomes a moot point because the two are linked by an almost unbreakable cultural consensus. 

Most of the information for the latter half of this entry is sourced from an article by Gino Sorcinelli for Medium.

Sirens in the Old Mountain Town

Had a few entries kicking around in the drafts bin, but not really feeling it on most of them. Some are outdated, and others just turned into "out of my system" exercises that I was satisfied with once I had enough on screen. In any case, until I get those solidified, here's a new ambient soundscape to go along with a recent painting. 

Incompatible Terracotta

First of all, super duper shout-out to Luke Phillips for his theremin app. 

I'd checked this out some time ago, but didn't start really putting it through its paces until a few weeks ago, getting a good sense of what soundscapes it can put together just using its own looping/overdubbing features. I decided to make a small project out of it due to it being criminally underrepresented on YouTube apart from Phillip's own demonstrations. Saying that, though, I didn't have a good setup for filming the actual composing/performing that I was happy with. I figured it would be more in line with the spirit of musique concrete to let the sounds speak for themselves.

This is a roughly 50% improvised composition using a theremin app on an Android device pumped through a bass effects pedal's ring modulator setting. It was all recorded in one go with no post-processing on a Zoom H2N. When I say 50% improvised I mean that I had criteria for what notes to use, what waveforms to use (only square and sine wave), what pedal settings to stick to, and what an acceptable overall length would be to convey (if only in an abstract sense) a suggestion of a narrative.

More Auduino Fun

New Auduino with Pedal

Little Auduino

Auduino synth improv with LED mod

Auduino first demo

Arduino Optical Theremin

Screamer Tin II

Prelude to An Incoming from A Far Off Place

The Quadrun, a 4093 synthesizer

https://youtu.be/GBDlLbSwJOA

By(gone)-Product of an Era

A few nights ago, my roommate was laughing in awe and befuddlement at the musical stylings of one Richard Cheese, a lounge singer whose choice of subject matter is, to put it mildly, eclectic. Music is ultimately a reflection of the culture that created it. As such, Country is typically about working on a farm or driving a truck while pretending not to care what others think, Punk is about railing against an establishment or fighting oppression by wearing mismatched articles of torn clothing, Rap is about growing up on the mean streets only to sell out and buy a mansion while the public school clings to its one microscope, and Lounge singing is about losing an entire year's income on keno and drowning subsequent sorrows in margaritas.

Obviously, there are exceptions, far too few (especially in Rap and Country, but that's for another discussion) overall, but exceptions all the same, and Richard Cheese is a Lounge singer who sings about... really what everyone else sings about and then some, just filtered through the style of a Rat Pack-era Vegas Lounge act. If it sounds like he's a novelty act, that's because he probably is, but here's a question:

What's wrong with that?

When Swing Kids came out, I remember being obsessed with "Sing, Sing, Sing (With a Swing)" by Louis Prima not just from the trailers for the film, but also the Chips Ahoy! commercials of the time. This was about 1993, and I was completely alone in my newfound obsession with this era of music. Although bands like Cherry Poppin' Daddies and Squirrel Nut Zippers were around, their popularity was niche at best. This was the grunge era of music, when bands like Stone Temple Pilots, Alice In Chains, and Nirvana were all the rage. None of it really interested me, which is why stuff like swing held so much appeal; it was practically the polar opposite of alternative, but didn't have that lofty pretentiousness of classical or the tired banality of older rock.

Later on, as tended to happen to me with trends and fads (don't get me started on POGs.), I grew out of swing just in time for everyone at my high school to declare it the next big thing. Along with Ska, swing didn't just become a type of music people liked, it became a lifestyle, with people adopting the dress sense of these bands like The Mighty Mighty Bosstones or The Brian Setzer Orchestra and some even starting ska-themed bands of their own. Just like grunge, I didn't really care.

At least, I didn't care until I heard "Zoot Suit Riot" and some little assortment of machinery started whirring and clicking away in my head. It wasn't trying to reconcile its anachronistic terminology with modern-day living, I'd worked that out years ago. Rather, it was the two-pronged question of, "How many people know what a Zoot Suit even is (let alone a riot centering around them), and is there any modern equivalent that isn't already represented in some other genre of music?"

In other words, why does this style and genre of music not only have to be a reflection of the era that created it, but ultimately be stuck in that era?

Think about this, if I wrote a song meant to be played on an old-school synthesizer like the Fairlight CMI, would my lyrics have to make references to leg-warmers and big hair? Would my album's artwork have to feature someone in a pair of shutter shades and a jean jacket?

Why would a swing piece about MySpace seem so weird or even hokey? Why would it be written off as a novelty track on par with "Telstar" or "Witch Doctor"?

If I sound crazy, here's one last little bite of food-for-thought: When you hear the term "Hammond Organ" what exactly do you think of first? Electric organs were meant as inexpensive alternatives to traditional pipe organs that smaller churches couldn't afford. So, if that was their intended use, and given how frozen-in-time swing and lounge acts seem to be, why have so many progressive rock bands implemented them so pervasively? Just look at Keith Emerson or Rick Wakeman or David Greenslade. Sure, most of them moved onto more advanced synthesizers, but the Hammond Organ still got a lot of mileage outside of churches, yet so many people probably still think of hymns and old radio plays.