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shadowkatWell, considering I can't remember songs to save my life - it's basically everything. I was discussing this with mother over the phone today.
Me: So, a friend post that his mother could hum the entire orchestration of Lara's theme of Doctor Zhviago.
Mother: Beautiful, but can't remember it all.
Me: I can't remember the title of songs, the singer, let along the lyrics or tune. It's why I can't sing. I was hunting this song that had something like I can see clearly now, the rain is gone, it's going to be a sunshiny year..
but it took me forever to remember that phrase. And every song I've posted to this meme I'm doing online? I've had to look up. Because I can't remember theme..I've no memory for music for some reason.
Mother: Neither do I. I have difficulty remember our choral music, I don't remember the tunes or lyrics.
ME: Hmmm, I'm thinking this is not a skill or a talent, it's genetic. DNA.
If you can remember songs, your parents probably could, and theirs probably could. Which means you can probably sing.
[Edited to Clarify - I found the song I Can See Clearly Now - last night via a title on my journal posted in January 2008. I found it by a visual memory, and a sense of what it was - I couldn't remember the lyrics, tune, words, etc...only a feeling from it. ]
At first, I didn't think I knew what to go with. But my heart and soul screamed one above all the rest. It's the only song - I find that I stop to listen to..and am always moved by. It's a song that says so much with so little.
It's one of my father's favorite spiritual song - you see...and right now, my Dad is in my heart for oh so many reasons that I do not want to go into here. Sometimes music talks greater than words, and that is this song.
There's so many versions of it, it's hard to pick one, so I'm picking four - to give you an idea of it's range and versatility.
1. Aretha Franklin Sings Amazing Grace in 1971
2. Joan Baez & Aaron Neville Sing Amazing Grace
3. Celtic Women Sing Amazing Grace
It's a song that moves me to tears, comforts me, and gives me hope all at the same time.
Me: So, a friend post that his mother could hum the entire orchestration of Lara's theme of Doctor Zhviago.
Mother: Beautiful, but can't remember it all.
Me: I can't remember the title of songs, the singer, let along the lyrics or tune. It's why I can't sing. I was hunting this song that had something like I can see clearly now, the rain is gone, it's going to be a sunshiny year..
but it took me forever to remember that phrase. And every song I've posted to this meme I'm doing online? I've had to look up. Because I can't remember theme..I've no memory for music for some reason.
Mother: Neither do I. I have difficulty remember our choral music, I don't remember the tunes or lyrics.
ME: Hmmm, I'm thinking this is not a skill or a talent, it's genetic. DNA.
If you can remember songs, your parents probably could, and theirs probably could. Which means you can probably sing.
[Edited to Clarify - I found the song I Can See Clearly Now - last night via a title on my journal posted in January 2008. I found it by a visual memory, and a sense of what it was - I couldn't remember the lyrics, tune, words, etc...only a feeling from it. ]
At first, I didn't think I knew what to go with. But my heart and soul screamed one above all the rest. It's the only song - I find that I stop to listen to..and am always moved by. It's a song that says so much with so little.
It's one of my father's favorite spiritual song - you see...and right now, my Dad is in my heart for oh so many reasons that I do not want to go into here. Sometimes music talks greater than words, and that is this song.
There's so many versions of it, it's hard to pick one, so I'm picking four - to give you an idea of it's range and versatility.
1. Aretha Franklin Sings Amazing Grace in 1971
2. Joan Baez & Aaron Neville Sing Amazing Grace
3. Celtic Women Sing Amazing Grace
It's a song that moves me to tears, comforts me, and gives me hope all at the same time.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-15 01:52 am (UTC)Oh my GOD, I have to see Aretha's "Amazing Grace" movie. Because this is gospel that even a Jewish kid from Brooklyn can believe in.
Second:
I know the song you've been looking for! It's "I Can See Clearly Now" by Johnny Nash:
https://youtu.be/FscIgtDJFXg
(Jimmy Cliff also did a great version of this song for the movie "Cool Runnings.")
Geez, my pick feels almost irrelevant now.
Nevertheless:
The Kinks: "Waterloo Sunset"
In a career filled with immortal songs, this is the peak of Ray Davies' catalogue. It's about appreciating the simple joys in the most mundane places (like Waterloo station) or just sitting at home, watching the world, and appreciating its beauty. The song structure is fairly simple, but Davies' voice is wise snd wistful. The background vocals shimmer like late afternoon sun on the Thames. The acoustic guitar chimes like a church bell in the coda, and it's almost a spiritual moment....
https://youtu.be/jP9ERvYjQcU
no subject
Date: 2020-08-15 04:13 am (UTC)How did I find the song last night? I remembered when I heard it and saw image in my head of a New Year's Eve Party with Wales in 2007. So, I hunted for a January post or December post around that period. Found the song in the title of a January 2 post on my journal. (I posted it in response to wendahl last night, but unless you saw that exchange - you probably didn't pick up on the fact that I'd already found it.)
Hmm..I decided to listen to two different versions of the Kinks song, to see if it was the song or the version that I did not like. The one you posted, which I did not like at all - my ears! It felt like nails on a chalkboard, I had to stop immediately. Maybe it's my laptop computer's connection to youtube? This is entirely possibly - I've got it at high volume for Teams and Zoom meetings, and the bass could be off. I don't know - or maybe I just don't like the Kinks, also possible, I don't really have anything by them and they are a band I remember everyone loving, and feeling sort of ambivalent about. So I listened to the David Bowie version - which is bloody brilliant. It is very hard to mess up Bowie's voice - it is a gift from God. Few have the range or ability to sing like Bowie could.
https://youtu.be/TyMGZ5zf3Pk
It's also about visuals, I think. I found watching the lyrics distracting somehow, while Bowie's showed well Bowie.
Similar to Amazing Grace above. Cactuswatcher doesn't like it - possibly because of the versions he heard in church and on movies. While I associate Amazing Grace with a melodious version sung at a Grandmother's funeral, while my father grips my hand, tears running down his eyes (my father rarely cries).
And in all three versions, there's others as well...the song is a completely different song. You loved it - when you heard Aretha's version, and admittedly Aretha is like Bowie, very few people can sing like Aretha... and most likely stopped there, while the one I'm most familiar with is Judy Collins and Joan Baez, who I've listened to the most. The version that annoys Cactuswatcher is Celtic Woman's.
I see movies and stories when I listen to music. I don't see notes. I can't really distinguish the nuances of the sounds like you can - I can't hear them. It's why I can't sing. It's why I don't like certain songs you love - because what you are hearing - may be white noise to me.
I tell you this in an attempt to make a point about music - we can share it, but we all experience it so differently. I'm not hearing the same song you are. I don't process it the same way. If that makes sense? It's why I did not like the Kinks version of Waterloo Sunset, and Grandmaster Flash doesn't work for me, but I loved the David Bowie version of Waterloo Sunset.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-15 05:37 pm (UTC)The Baez version is fine, but I don't connect to it the way I do with Aretha. Same thing with Bowie and "Waterloo Sunset"; it's a solid version (hey, it's Bowie, after all) but for me, it doesn't capture the wistful mood of the song the way the original does.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-15 06:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-15 02:37 am (UTC)"Amazing Grace" oddly is one of the least favorite hymns I remember from my childhood. Can't tell you exactly why. We sang it in church, of course. But it always struck me the wrong way. Could be something as simple as someone in the congregation always singing it slightly off key.
When I saw Star Trek: Wrath of Khan in the theater, I was sad when Spock dies, but Shatner's overacted eulogy just about had me in giggles. Then I saw the bagpipes and thought to myself, "OMG, they're going to play Amazing Grace!" I had a hard time not bursting out laughing when that was indeed the tune. The fact that since then half the time someone plays the bagpipes in public they play "Amazing Grace," makes the tune all that much the worse for me.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-15 03:33 am (UTC)This is why Amazing Grace works for me.
Amazing Grace - is something I remember because of the feeling and images - I keep seeing my cousin singing it at my grandmother's funeral, while my Dad sits with tears streaming down his eyes. My Dad never cries. I remember touching his hand in comfort and he clasped it, and told me that it was his favorite spiritual and got him every time, particularly with a wisp of girl singing it at her grandmother, his mother's funeral. He can't sing either.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-15 03:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-16 01:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-15 03:09 am (UTC)There are plenty of versions online for composer Jorma Kaukonen's version of this, either with Jefferson Airplane, Hot Tuna, or solo, but while checking some of those out, I found this fellow, who I never heard of, who just performs it stunningly.
I loves me some people I never heard of who do really great things!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlPzwYZBAUU
A very close second (for either category) would be:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6zypc_LhnM
I liked the one comment that noted:
One thing I love about this masterpiece: it's raw. Listen for the little flub at 0:50. Instead of cutting and re-recording, Guaraldi just played through. We don't get to hear that very often these days.
People associate this tune with Christmas, but I love hearing it any time of the year-- it is a little masterpiece, just like Kaukonen's.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-15 03:42 am (UTC)Amazing Grace - is something I remember because of the feeling and images - I keep seeing my cousin singing it at my grandmother's funeral, while my Dad sits with tears streaming down his eyes. My Dad never cries. I remember touching his hand in comfort and he clasped it, and told me that it was his favorite spiritual and got him every time, particularly with a wisp of girl singing it at her grandmother, his mother's funeral. He can't sing either.
I give you that story - because it may explain why I think some associate it with Christmas or Peanuts, and wouldn't recognize the instrumental outside of that.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-16 05:50 am (UTC)I can't venture an intelligent guess as to how common your way of processing music is, but it may well be more common than you think.
The one thing I can state with certainty, based on my several decades of work in the retail specialist audio trade is that a weakness in many salespeople is a failure to understand that people do indeed hear/process sound and music differently, often very much so. If you're trying to recommend a component or system for a customer, you have to first try to find what works for them.
One simple example would compare myself with another salesman I worked with in my early days in the trade. He was especially sensitive to a characteristic known as "imaging". This is the ability to place yourself between the two speakers, and with your eyes closed, be able to tell exactly where each instrument or singer is located within that space. I'm nearly deaf to that ability, but on the other hand, I can usually detect even minute amounts of distortion in the audio. I'm moderately pitch sensitive, others-- fairly rare-- have perfect pitch, can for example say "that's A above middle C" and be dead on.
As to hearing music visually, there was a segment on 60 Minutes a few weeks back where this fellow who was totally blind nearly from birth started playing a toy piano his father bought him when he was just two years old. He could not only hear a piece of music, and then play it on the piano, he used both hands to do so!
His parents , realizing how astounding this was, got him started with lessons. Today, he is one of the world's greatest jazz pianists.
But the mind-blowing thing was, recently, a doctor who wondered just how this young man's brain actually processed information when he played music, arranged to have MRI scans done while he played a keyboard.
The results? The man's entire visual cortex responded when he played, or simply heard music! His brain had effectively reprogrammed the normal visual area to work with sound, obviously from when he was a small child.
Damn. Gives new meaning to that old saw about a mind being a terrible thing to waste.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-16 01:41 pm (UTC)At the end of the song, and when all the students finished putting down their thoughts. The teacher went around the room, which had approximately thirty students, maybe less.
Approximately half had either put down colors, notes or chords, numerical values depicting sound vibrations, or even an emotion. My Aunt was the only one in the class who had written a story, it was about two pages in length.
The teacher informed her that how she processed it was rare. My Aunt isn't a singer or a musician.
I remember seeing a documentary on the Beatles a while back and during it - they explained that none of the Beatles could read music. They were note blind. In fact McCartney in a recent interview explained that neither he nor John could. A lot of musicians don't. I don't think my friend, Lando, reads music well. They do it all by ear.
Another interesting thing about musicians? They think mathematically. In numbers. Not in pictures. My friend Lando, thinks mathematically - he can do equations in his head.
I think in words - I see words in my head. And I see pictures. I can see an entire movie in my head, complete with audio and sound, and in color. I think like my Aunt K in that way. But her son sees numbers, scales, equations, colors...
And that's an oversimplification.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-15 08:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-16 01:43 pm (UTC)