phoneme (from the Greek: φώνημα, phōnēma, “a sound uttered”)

Be careful when changing the lyrics to a near-completed song.

There are two factors that contribute to successful lyric writing: meaning and phoneme. The meaning of a word or phrase is the most obvious factor when writing, but the best songwriters realize the importance of how a word sounds. What a word sounds like—the linguistic timbre—needs to be seen as another aspect of the instrumentation. A word can provide a percussive snap to a phrase, with the clicks and shooshes that propel a song.

Luckily, the balancing of meaning and phoneme (i.e. the proper writing of lyrics) is done best when done instinctively. The sound should seem “right” in the context of a piece of music, and make sense only after the second pass. But it’s when you go back to revise lyrics that you risk losing the instictive sound that caused you to choose words in the first place.

Phoneme, for some artists, are more important than meaning. Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers is a master at using words as instruments in and of themselves:

“What I’ve got you’ve got to get it put it in you
What I’ve got you’ve got to get it put it in you
What I’ve got you’ve got to get it put it in you
Reeling with the feeling don’t stop continue”

“Black bandana, sweet Louisiana
Robbin’ on a bank in the state of Indiana
She’s a runner, rebel and a stunner
Oh her merry way sayin’ baby whatcha gonna”

“Sweetheart is bleeding in the snowcone
So smart she’s leading me to ozone
Music the great communicator
Use two sticks to make it in the nature”

Kiedis is ALL phoneme. But one musician that consistently strikes a nice balance between phoneme and meaning is Paul Simon. Here’s an example from his song “Boy in the Bubble”:

It’s a turn-around jump shot
It’s everybody jump start
It’s, every generation throws a hero up the pop charts,
Medicine is magical and magical is art think of
The Boy in the Bubble
And the baby with the baboon heart, and I believe…

The point is, think long and hard about the sound of a word before you remove it from a song. People hear things before they understand it, and we all know how important first impressions are…

This is from the great blog Indexed in a post entitled “I will now ruin your day by mentioning Hanson’s “MmmBop”

For those unfamiliar with what an earworm is or who have never heard the song before, I apologize in advance:

Hanson’s “MmmBop“

“In classical music, love is based on bitin’ — imitation. It’s not based on interpretation. A jazz musician, if he plays someone else’s song, has a responsibility to make a distinct and original statement.”

- Dr. Cornel West, philosopher, author, professor (b. June 2, 1953)

Check out Merlin Mann’s entry over at 43 folders: “Perfect” iTunes equalizer setting

Photo by Todd V. Wolfson, © All rights reserved

I’m 1 for 1 on Best New Artist predictions so far (proof here in 2008…), so I suggest you take heed.

Her name is Kate Earl, and she just released her EP on June 9th. You can pick it up on iTunes or AmazonMP3: Introducing Kate Earl – EP

The EP is a playful and layered mixture: on top is Kate’s delicately powerful vocals, which are a foil to the beats and syncopation trading blows below. The tunes have dub-appeal—there’s a hint of reggae infused in there somewhere, but it’s the catchy (sometimes haunting) melodies that stand alone, and separate Kate from her peers on the music scene these days.

It’s soulful and  fun and relevant, but the reason I am predicting Kate’s profound success this year is because of her songwriting. These songs are hers, and the glossy pop brilliance is rooted in deceptively mature taste and craftsmanship. What I’m getting at is this: these songs hold up without the production, which is a notoriously difficult quality to find these days, especially in great singers. If you need proof, check out the video below which features Kate on solo piano playing her song “Melody:”

The website for the band Concave Scream (I have never heard of them before either…) is astounding. Crank up your speakers, click the link, and get lost in it all. It’s pure inspiration: Soundtrack for a Book

Tip: Play with the levels in the upper-righthand corner!

(Post courtesy of Daily Exhaust)

“We know music can calm, influence creativity, can energize. That’s great. But music’s role in recovering from disease is being ever more appreciated.” – Dr. Ali Rezai, director of the Center for Neurological Restoration at Ohio’s Cleveland Clinic

Music as medicine is the latest notion in the long-established principle that music affects physiology. It’s  a mellifluous dance of organized vibrations in the air striking an eardrum, with the vibrations being transferred through bones and nerves into the gray matter of your brain. Listening to music, or any sound really, is the act of your body translating physical motion into aural playback in your mind.

Expanding the scope a bit, consider this:

• Music begins as a concept in a musician or composer’s mind, a purely cerebral activity.
• It is then transferred into either the physical act of playing an instrument, or composing.
• If composed, it takes the vision of a musician to read (intake) the notes and convert them to the appropriate physical movement, whether vocal or instrumental
• Once the music is performed, it makes its way into a listener’s ear and sent along to the brain, where the snapping of synapses creates playback inside the listener’s mind

It’s a circular experience, beginning and ending in the mind.

But what if that’s not where the journey ends?

This is what a recent MSNBC article attempts to answer. The thought is that the journey continues past the mind and actually influences physical behavior and recovery from injury:

“Research has already shown that if you play a piece — like Mozart — at a certain slow beat, the listener will adapt their heart beat to the beat of the music.” – Dr. Claudius Conrad, senior surgical resident at Harvard Medical School; pianist

This extra leg of the aural journey, from listening to physical response, is detailed in the article: the synaptic pulse in your brain, in addition to stimulating your auditory cortex, also hits the hypothalamus, which controls heart rate and respiration in addition to stomach and skin nerves. This is why a tune can “give you butterflies or goose bumps.”

The journey also includes the chemical, in the form of hormones. It was found that, in addition to a reduction in blood pressure and heart rate, critically ill patients can show a “50 percent spike in pituitary growth hormone” when listening to Mozart sonatas. This hormone is known to stimulate healing.

So what does that mean for the aspiring musician looking to make a living?:

“At Cleveland Clinic, Rezai and other neurosurgeons collaborate with The Cleveland Orchestra to compose classical pieces to play for patients during brain operations.”

And one of the oldest instruments, the harp, is still the go-to solution for music therapy:

The harp is the only instrument that has 20 to 50 strings and is open, unlike, say, a violin. When a harpist strikes a chord, she also opens vibrations in strings just above and below the few she plucks. Those vibes… are absorbed by the body.

The world of medicine is becoming entwined with the world of music, which is likely to result in a whole new cache of careers and job opportunities for musicians and doctors alike.

The folks over at Pick Punch are onto something big. This stapler-like device lets you create a guitar pick out of old credit cards, coffee lids, gift cards, etc. It’s an ingenious invention, and a great companion product to my own QuikCallus.

The first production run is this summer, so check out their blog now and be one of the first in line.

“If you want to know how to play the blues, live beyond your means. It’s that simple.” – Eric Clapton

This Information Age we’re living in is full of knowledge, most of which is free and entirely at our fingertips. Yet despite the litany of sites offering free downloadable copies of classics, the world at large remains largely unread. Why?

Perhaps its because the words are not on a page.

You may argue that words are words, and can be read wherever they appear. While this is true I argue that the medium matters. A lot. More than we may realize. Amazon’s Kindle is trying to address this issue, which is this: People want to read things in a format that suits one’s field of vision.

I dont think this is a conscious choice. It’s simply a more comfortable reading experience when you’re looking at something your eye is able to take in without trouble. This is why reading a novel on your computer screen, or scanning through a treatise typed on a billboard, will never be best practice. The medium matters.

So what, then, of music?

The term “medium” or “format” in music relates to the way in which the sound is recorded and listened to, and can range from LP’s to streaming mp3’s.  And the format does matter. Audiophiles who swear by the warmth of long-playing records sometimes have a hard time enjoying the experience  of listening to music on an iPod Shuffle. Similarly, Apple-philes find that the portability and interactive nature of the iPod and iPod Touch make listening to music more fun, and find LP’s antiquated, crackly, and inconvenient.

In the end it amounts to personal preference, but always remember that the way you intake certain art forms can affect your opinion more than the art itself. The subtle way that content relates to medium is an overlooked aspect of preference.

(For further reading into the mysterious nature of aesthetics, check out the Wikipedia article on The Golden Ratio: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio#Aesthetics )