I get it now

I get it now

the less sense you try to make of it the better it gets

when you stop analyzing it, it becomes godly

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=6tCLPL8otMM
youtube.com/watch?v=4krCIQTr4dc
youtube.com/watch?v=-FhhB9teHqU
youtube.com/watch?v=Od0_LRNlE5A
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

Aye. It's not good in the sense that TV&N or Pet Sounds is, it's that this album packs so mamy different unique ideas into its runtime, and has a lot of fun with it. If you just kinda sit back and let this album be fun and stupid and chaotic, it's pretty good.

But people lose their minds because SECOND GUITAR WOOOOOOAAH

Do fuck off, it's better than Pet Sounds, listen to the fucking compositions you shithead.

The album realistically isn't even chaotic, it's actually EXCEPTIONALLY structured.

Only because the band members applied structure to it improvisationally, not because the basic compositions were intricate.

Nope, there was no improvisation involved, whoever you credit with the arrangments, the house rehearsal recordings that have been released make it perfectly obvious that everything was planned, ie. it's exceptionally structured, as that user said.

This album was not at all improvised, they spent months (I think almost an entire year) crammed into Beefheart's shitty house meticulously creating it because Beefheart wanted an extremely specific sound.
Everything you hear on this album isn't the product of someone going off the cuff, everything was planned.

What they did was color in the lines of Beefheart's vague ideas—you can hear an example of this in China Pig where he says something to the effect of "do the chunk-a chunk-a thing" to his guitar player and then he just shouts over it. Beefheart had no idea what he was doing musically. So the band (who were real musicians) would do this more or less off the cuff, THEN they would rehearse that exact bout of improvisation, frozen in time, until all the soul was sucked out of it.

So, it's not really either when it comes down to it, but to imply that TMR is actually careful and mulled-over is a complete misconception. People think Beefheart and co. were slaving over sheet music with all sorts of complex notation.

China Pig is clearly the one time that ever happened.

No, he had every idea what he was doing.

They did nothing off the cuff. Van Vliet played things on the piano, French notated it, worked out with Van Vliet how many times it would repeat, then he'd put it together with the group and they'd rehearse it. Nobody who listens to free improvisation regularly could mistake anything on this album for improvisation.

No it's not, it's the truth.

People don't think sheet music was involved, but notation of a sort was, stop being a fucking liar about the greatest American rock album.

>when you stop analyzing it, it becomes godly
Well, no. If you're anable to analyze a piece of music and if you don't know music theory, no amount of it simplifed in any way is going to help you.
youtube.com/watch?v=6tCLPL8otMM
youtube.com/watch?v=4krCIQTr4dc
And this was composed by a man ignorant of music theory, forget polyrhythms and notation.
youtube.com/watch?v=-FhhB9teHqU

>No, he had every idea what he was doing.
In the sense that he had a vague idea where his own stream of consciousness was coming from, sure. Did his music adhere to anything other than his own abstract sensibilities? Not a chance.

>80% of it was done by him kinda beating the shit out of a piano, in a rhythmic sense, and having no idea what any of those black and white things were on the piano. And John French, the drummer, transcribed it, notated it all, and would dole out the parts to the players. So he had a concept of being away from tonality, but using rhythm as the main input, because that's what he had to offer, right—being a non-musician. So John would transcribe it, and then in the process of us working with John to get the parts, you know, when there were seven notes, you'd scratch your head and say, "Well, how do I do seven notes with six strings?" So then we would invert things and mess around, and try to keep it as close to what he played—for what reason, to tell you the truth, I'm not sure, because he didn't know what he played after he played it.

The basic idea seems to be that he wanted the final recording to be as close to his original improv as possible, which astoundingly manages to defeat the purpose of music no matter what way you look at it. If he meant to capture the essence of his improv through rehearsals, that's self-defeating; if he meant for them to be compositions, he would have started with a pen and paper.

And I would argue that every member of the Magic Band was borderline genius for actually being able to perform material of this complexity, not to mention John French actually transcribing all of it and teaching it to other band members.

those transcriptions are surprisingly on fucking point

i love this album so much

When did I say it adhered to anything other than his own sensibilities? But they were anything but abstract, you fucking cunt. Fuck off.

You've just quoted the information I was referring to when you were lying, you worthless piece of shit. No, it doesn't defeat the purpose of music, it fulfills the purpose of music. You don't deserve this music, keep away from it.

>composed
by the band, who made all the necessary adjustments to make it playable and Beefheart didn't know the difference afterward

Nope, stop trying to defame your betters to excuse your own impotence.

Thanks for those links and good points.

Zoot's inability to work out that 1: Van Vliet knew he couldn't play the piano, so deciding to play anyway and accept whatever tonalities resulted was a creative decision, and 2: that preserving the oddity of the tonality was the whole point of French's transcriptions, is why he never achieved anything worth listening to on his own account. Every Magic Band made Beefheart music, but none of the former members could make Beefheart music by themselves, however much of a dummy they'd like to make Van Vliet out to be as payback for his tyrannical behavior. That seems to settle it.

That wasn't me, but I would recommend
to watch:
youtube.com/watch?v=Od0_LRNlE5A
As well as any other Captain Beefheart fans.

The disappointed French, any chance of matching his former achievements gone, slagging off his old, safely dead, boss? Nah.

What is wrong with you?

lol, the only thing dishonest going on here is ignoring the ignominy of this recording to make Beefheart conform to your romantic idea of a mad genius

On the other hand, without a band that he could subjugate so cleanly as to put them through this album's horrid process, the only things Beefheart could compose on his own were more straightforward things like Doc at the Radar Station.

It's not that he was entirely disposable in the TMR formula, it's that he held a minority of the musical talent there.

>Aye. It's not good in the sense that TV&N or Pet So
stopped reading there