Music can be broadly be classified into two main
categories: absolute music and programme music. When writing absolute
music the composer is generally concerned with expressing emotion
with no external associations whereas in programme music the composer
is concerned with expressing an idea or story through the music.
In its most extreme forms an excerpt may of programme music may not
be "musical" in the usual sense of the term, such as the "Critics"
section of Richard Strauss's Heldenleben - "remarks" on
muted trombones seem nonsensical to the listener unless they realize
that these represent the hero's crude reply to his critics. Programme
music need not be this extreme and may even be unrecognised by the
listener in a piece of music that uses absolute music and programme
music.
The success of the programme music depends on how well it evokes the
story or idea in the mind of the listener and it frequently helps if
the listener is aware of any story beforehand. Programme music can be
subtle or blatant, intentional or even unintentional and spontaneous.
Some of the musical techniques used in programme music have become
part of a widely used musical vocabulary such as the use of a
diminished seventh chord to signify terror or horror (the diminished
seventh chord on the guitar can be fingered as "E" on the fourth
string, second fret, first finger; "Bb" on the third string, third
fret, third finger; "Db" on the second string, second fret, second
finger; "G" on the top string, third fret, fourth finger).
Although the foremost exponents of programme music include Richard
Strauss, Wagner, Liszt, Dvorak and Berlioz, programme music is by no
means restricted to the classical music world. Notable examples of
programme music which have been heard by millions of listeners are
Carl Stalling's scores for Bugs Bunny and many other Warner Bros.
cartoons [as can be heard on The Carl Stalling Project's Music
From Warner Bros. Cartoons 1936 -1958 (1990)]. Stalling's
scores are full of so-called "Mickey Mousing" - sonic descriptions of
visual events.
One of the best known pieces of programme music is Berlioz's
Symphony Fantastique (aka The Fantastic
Symphony ). Noted theorist and music educator Dr William
Fowler as quoted in Bill Milkowski's article "Jimi The Composer":
"His major work, The Fantastic Symphony is pictorial in
that it shows the succession of drug dreams. It's a five-movement
work. He's in love with a girl and she rejects him, so he takes
opium. Next to the last movement is called "March To The Gallows",
and in it he marches and stumbles. It's all onomatopoeic. The
orchestra tells everything that's happening to this guy. They march
him up to the scaffold, they put his head down, and all of a sudden
there's this guillotine down on his head...it's just a slashing
chord. And then his head bounces three times... So Berlioz is getting
this pictorial thing and his subject is death. And the last movement
is his funeral. The instruments are totally distorted here - muted
trumpets, strange, strange sounds. This guy was exploring sound for
the sake of exploring sound pictorially. He took the romanticism out
of romanticism and made it real through sound."
Fowler continues: "Now didn't Hendrix do exactly the same thing on
pieces like "The Star Spangled Banner" and "Machine Gun" and a few
others? The bombs bursting in air don't burst in air in Jimi's
rendition, they come down and hit the earth...whining guitar
glissandos. The rockets red glare...well, with Jimi it's blood. And
when he plays that melody of "Taps", he is saying something about
pseudo-patriotism. He's saying that the genuine face of war is not
the glory of bombs bursting in air and the rocket's red glare. The
genuine face of war is blood.
"Jimi's tremendous expansion of tonal possibilities and new timbre
possibilities through distortion and feedback and Wah-wah was his way
of portraying something pictorially." Referring to Berlioz and
Hendrix, Fowler comments: "These people are creative people. They're
not technical geniuses. Berlioz is not a skilled composer like Mozart
or Mendelssohn. But he had a wonderful imagination. And Hendrix was,
technically speaking, an ear composer. It all comes right out of his
feelings. His is a natural compositional process. There was a man who
felt everything and expressed it directly through his music."
There are perhaps only two Jimi Hendrix tracks which could be
described as programme music from beginning to end - "EXP" and
"...And The Gods Made Love". However, there are numerous examples of
Jimi using music to illustrate ideas or lyrics within songs.
The solo in "Hey Joe" contains two bends on the second string of "D"
at the fifteenth fret bent up to "E" at the seventeenth fret from
1:50 to 1:52 which sound like gunshots and illustrate the line "Shoot
her one more time again, baby", sung at the same time.
The intro of "Foxy Lady" symbolises Jimi's "rising passion" according
to Dave Whitehill in the Performance Notes for "Foxy Lady" in the
Are You Experienced? transcription book. With the
guitar volume control turned off, Jimi frets an "F" note on the third
string, tenth fret. Jimi plucks this note then gives it a wide
vibrato, in effect sounding an "F#" note. Jimi gradually turns up the
volume control and, with his amp presumably cranked up, the note
begins to feedback as he increases the volume control on the
guitar.
Again according to Dave Whitehill in the Performance Notes for "Manic
Depression" in the Are You Experienced? transcription
book, the JHE make the 3/4 time signature "swing like the pendulum
moods of a manic depressive".
The beginning of the solo seems to reflect the "frustrating mess" of
the lyrics with some particularly frantic and agitated lead work,
Jimi "cramming" in the notes in the first half of the solo,
particularly from 1:36 to 1:40 and 1:44 to 1:48. Towards the end of
the solo at 1:51 Jimi plays a common 1st position blues scale lick of
a "D" note on the third string, nineteenth fret bent up two frets to
"E" followed by a "G" note on the second string, twentieth fret. Jimi
plays this lick three times followed by the bend on the third string
only which he holds on to. This phrase sounds like "crying",
particularly in this high register and at 1:53 Jimi sings "Cry on,
guitar" then rounds off the solo with variations on this "crying"
lick. Commenting on the guitar solo, Dave Whitehill says: "...with
the use of large interval bends, notes on the verge of feedback, and
wide vibrato from the whammy bar, Jimi creates an aural metaphor of a
mind's journey into psychosis."
In "Love Or Confusion" when Jimi sings "My heart burns with feeling"
he plays a phrase which echos this sentiment - at 1:11 Jimi plays a
"C" note on the third string, seventeenth fret then bends it up two
frets to "D" and holds it, embellishing the note with a wide vibrato
from the vibrato arm, creating the aural illusion of burning. Jimi
plays a similar lick at 2:20 when this vocal line is repeated.
In concert Jimi often dedicated "I Don't Live Today" to "the American
Indian" and, appropriately, the song begins with a native American
drum pattern. The frustration and anguish expressed in the lyrics is
vividly expressed in the guitar and voice section from 2:10 to 2:23
and the tortured guitar solo section from 2:31 to the end of the
song. Though a passage like this was sometimes known in the sixties
as a "freak out", Jimi himself didn't like the expression. In the
Performance Notes for "I Don't Live Today" Dave Whitehill comments:
"the despair [of the lyrics] is reflected musically as the song
progresses especially by the incessant droning of the second guitar
in a fashion similar to "Love Or Confusion"."
Jimi begins "May This Be Love" (aka "Waterfall") with a slide up and
down the fretboard presumably with a solid metallic object such as a
bottleneck, the microphone stand or a cigarette lighter (he used Dave
Mason's lighter for the "slide" guitar part in "All Along The
Watchtower") evoking the waterfall referred to in the lyrics and the
song's alternative title. A similar effect can be heard at the
beginning of "Night Bird Flying" from The Cry Of Love -
Jimi uses a smooth glissando up and down the fretboard from 0:00 to
0:11, presumably to represent a night bird flying.
In the Performance Notes for "May This Be Love" Dave Whitehill notes
that "the breaks between verses feature a judicious use of tape echo
for simulating various aquatic phenomena such as ripples on a pond as
well as slide effects in other sections for the waterfall he sings
of." The use of echo can be heard during the intro figure from 0:03
to 0:15 and in the first two breaks at 0:35 and 0:55.
In "Third Stone From The Sun" Jimi slows down the tape speed on his
vocals to make them sound otherworldly. Jimi also employs feedback
and extreme vibrato bar manipulation to illustrate a space craft
moving through space. Jimi: ""Third Stone From The Sun" is Earth, you
know, Mercury, Venus, and the Earth. It's about these cats coming
down and taking over, but they don't really see anything here that's
worth taking [laughs]. They observe Earth for a while and they think
that the smartest animal on the whole Earth is chickens, you know,
hens. There's nothing else here to offer, they don't like the people
too much, so they just blow it up at the end."
Axis: Bold As Love opens with the first of Jimi's pure
programme music tracks, "EXP", the mock interview setting the scene
for Jimi's voyage into space. [Noel Redding: "I remember recording
"EXP"; myself and Hendrix put the guitars on the ground and started
kicking them and they recorded it [laughs]! We turned up the amps
full, got my bass and he got his guitar, and smashed them against the
amps. And we got this amazing feedback."] Jimi uses both harmonic and
microphonic feedback in this track helped by the use of a Fuzz Face.
An ambitious attempt to transcribe the studio version of "EXP" can be
found in the Axis: Bold As Love transcription book, and
an even more ambitious attempt by the JHE to recreate this track live
can be heard on Exp Over Sweden .
The perception of more subtle uses of programme music can be very
subjective. Author David Henderson poses an interesting one in his
book The Life Of Jimi Hendrix: 'Scuse Me While I Kiss The Sky -
describing "Spanish Castle Magic", Henderson says "On a
one-chord jag the bass comes up, it's three note drone syncopating
into five. Rocking out. The guitar tracks in the background move up
too, their chant creating a whirlwind."
Whilst one does not wish to be accused of being a joyless pedant,
there is only one guitar track all the way through
"Spanish Castle Magic" (listen for yourself, if possible with the
"SCM" music for reference from the Axis: Bold As Love
transcription book or Guitar For The Practicing Musician
, December 1992) - the eight string bass and piano provide a full
sound with no need for additional guitar parts. "Their chant creating
a whirlwind?" Perhaps Henderson is employing a touch of writer's
licence in pursuit of a "lively" writing style...
Dave Whitehill comments on a rather subtle programme music effect in
his Performance Notes for "Wait Until Tomorrow" in the Axis:
Bold As Love transcription book. He says: "On the basis of his
singular style of storytelling, both in lyric content and
accompanying guitar parts, Hendrix could have been the Mark Twain of
rock. For instance, note in measure three of the third verse that as
he queries, 'Do I see a silhouette...' the guitar seemingly says,
'Uh-oh' on beat three with the introduction of a "G" major chord
against "A" in the bass." This actually occurs in measure
five of the third verse from 1:43 to 1:44.
In "Little Wing" Jimi plays a suitably poignant lick at 1:11 during
the beginning of the second verse after singing "When I'm sad, she
comes to me." Jimi plays a "G" on the bottom string, third fret
followed by a sliding fourth interval on strings three and two - Jimi
plays an "A" note on the third string, second fret with a "D" note on
the second string, third fret.
Commenting on "Bold As Love" in his book, David Henderson says
"Jimi's chords are tense on envy." At 0:08 when he sings "envy" Jimi
plays two consecutive ornamented diads based on the conventional "A"
major barré chord (although Jimi would normally use his thumb
for the note on the sixth string rather than a barré) in the
fifth position based on the basic "E" chord. Although these two diads
are both played with accents, there's nothing particularly "tense"
about them. Another case of writer's licence, perhaps?
Forward to
part
2
This article was originally published in UniVibes issue
20, November 1995.
Copyright UniVibes 1995 - reprinted by permission of UniVibes,
International Jimi Hendrix Magazine, Enniskeane, County Cork,
Republic Of Ireland
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