How architecture helped music evolve | David Byrne

497,465 views ・ 2010-06-11

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00:16
This is the venue
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where, as a young man,
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some of the music that I wrote was first performed.
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It was, remarkably,
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a pretty good sounding room.
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With all the uneven walls and all the crap everywhere,
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it actually sounded pretty good.
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This is a song that was recorded there.
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(Music)
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This is not Talking Heads,
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in the picture anyway.
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(Music: "A Clean Break (Let's Work)" by Talking Heads)
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So the nature of the room
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meant that words could be understood.
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The lyrics of the songs could be pretty much understood.
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The sound system was kind of decent.
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And there wasn't a lot of reverberation in the room.
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So the rhythms
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could be pretty intact too,
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pretty concise.
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Other places around the country had similar rooms.
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This is Tootsie's Orchid Lounge in Nashville.
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The music was in some ways different,
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but in structure and form,
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very much the same.
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The clientele behavior was very much the same too.
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And so the bands at Tootsie's
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or at CBGB's
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had to play loud enough --
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the volume had to be loud enough to overcome
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people falling down, shouting out
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and doing whatever else they were doing.
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Since then, I've played other places
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that are much nicer.
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I've played the Disney Hall here
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and Carnegie Hall and places like that.
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And it's been very exciting.
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But I also noticed that sometimes the music
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that I had written,
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or was writing at the time,
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didn't sound all that great
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in some of those halls.
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We managed,
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but sometimes those halls didn't seem exactly suited
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to the music I was making
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or had made.
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So I asked myself:
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Do I write stuff
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for specific rooms?
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Do I have a place, a venue,
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in mind when I write?
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Is that a kind of model for creativity?
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Do we all make things with
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a venue, a context, in mind?
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Okay, Africa.
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(Music: "Wenlenga" / Various artists)
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Most of the popular music that we know now
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has a big part of its roots in West Africa.
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And the music there,
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I would say, the instruments,
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the intricate rhythms,
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the way it's played, the setting, the context,
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it's all perfect. It all works perfect.
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The music works perfectly in that setting.
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There's no big room
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to create reverberation and confuse the rhythms.
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The instruments are loud enough
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that they can be heard without amplification, etc., etc.
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It's no accident.
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It's perfect for that particular context.
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And it would be a mess
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in a context like this. This is a gothic cathedral.
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(Music: "Spem In Alium" by Thomas Tallis)
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In a gothic cathedral, this kind of music is perfect.
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It doesn't change key, the notes are long,
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there's almost no rhythm whatsoever,
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and the room flatters the music.
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It actually improves it.
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This is the room that Bach
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wrote some of his music for. This is the organ.
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It's not as big as a gothic cathedral,
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so he can write things that are a little bit more intricate.
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He can, very innovatively,
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actually change keys
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without risking huge dissonances.
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(Music: "Fantasia On Jesu, Mein Freunde" by Johann S. Bach)
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This is a little bit later.
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This is the kind of rooms that Mozart wrote in.
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I think we're in like 1770, somewhere around there.
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They're smaller, even less reverberant,
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so he can write really frilly music
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that's very intricate -- and it works.
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(Music: "Sonata in F," KV 13, by Wolfgang A. Mozart)
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It fits the room perfectly.
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This is La Scala.
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It's around the same time,
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I think it was built around 1776.
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People in the audience in these opera houses, when they were built,
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they used to yell out to one another.
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They used to eat, drink and yell out to people on the stage,
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just like they do at CBGB's and places like that.
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If they liked an aria,
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they would holler and suggest
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that it be done again as an encore,
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not at the end of the show, but immediately.
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(Laughter)
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And well, that was an opera experience.
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This is the opera house that Wagner built for himself.
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And the size of the room is not that big.
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It's smaller than this.
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But Wagner made an innovation.
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He wanted a bigger band.
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He wanted a little more bombast,
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so he increased the size of the orchestra pit
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so he could get more low-end instruments in there.
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(Music: "Lohengrin / Prelude to Act III" by Richard Wagner)
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Okay.
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This is Carnegie Hall.
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Obviously, this kind of thing became popular.
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The halls got bigger. Carnegie Hall's fair-sized.
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It's larger than some of the other symphony halls.
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And they're a lot more reverberant
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than La Scala.
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Around the same,
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according to Alex Ross who writes for the New Yorker,
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this kind of rule came into effect
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that audiences had to be quiet --
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no more eating, drinking and yelling at the stage,
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or gossiping with one another
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during the show.
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They had to be very quiet.
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So those two things combined meant that
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a different kind of music
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worked best in these kind of halls.
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It meant that there could be extreme dynamics,
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which there weren't in some of these
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other kinds of music.
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Quiet parts could be heard
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that would have been drowned out
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by all the gossiping and shouting.
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But because of the reverberation
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in those rooms like Carnegie Hall,
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the music had to be maybe a little less rhythmic
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and a little more textural.
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(Music: "Symphony No. 8 in E Flat Major" by Gustav Mahler)
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This is Mahler.
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It looks like Bob Dylan, but it's Mahler.
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That was Bob's last record, yeah.
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(Laughter)
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Popular music, coming along at the same time.
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This is a jazz band.
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According to Scott Joplin, the bands were playing
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on riverboats and clubs.
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Again, it's noisy. They're playing for dancers.
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There's certain sections of the song -- the songs had different sections
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that the dancers really liked.
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And they'd say, "Play that part again."
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Well, there's only so many times
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you can play the same section of a song over and over again for the dancers.
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So the bands started to improvise new melodies.
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And a new form of music was born.
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(Music: "Royal Garden Blues" by W.C. Handy / Ethel Waters)
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These are played mainly in small rooms.
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People are dancing, shouting and drinking.
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So the music has to be loud enough
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to be heard above that.
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Same thing goes true for -- that's the beginning of the century --
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for the whole of 20th-century popular music,
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whether it's rock or Latin music or whatever.
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[Live music] doesn't really change that much.
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It changes about a third of the way into the 20th century,
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when this became
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one of the primary venues for music.
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And this was one way
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that the music got there.
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Microphones enabled singers, in particular,
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and musicians and composers,
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to completely change the kind of music
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that they were writing.
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So far, a lot of the stuff that was on the radio was live music,
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but singers, like Frank Sinatra,
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could use the mic
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and do things
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that they could never do without a microphone.
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Other singers after him
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went even further.
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(Music: "My Funny Valentine" by Chet Baker)
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This is Chet Baker.
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And this kind of thing
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would have been impossible without a microphone.
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It would have been impossible without recorded music as well.
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And he's singing right into your ear.
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He's whispering into your ears.
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The effect is just electric.
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It's like the guy is sitting next to you,
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whispering who knows what into your ear.
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So at this point, music diverged.
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There's live music,
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and there's recorded music.
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And they no longer have to be exactly the same.
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Now there's venues like this, a discotheque,
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and there's jukeboxes in bars,
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where you don't even need to have a band.
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There doesn't need to be any
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live performing musicians whatsoever,
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and the sound systems are good.
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People began to make music
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specifically for discos
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and for those sound systems.
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And, as with jazz,
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the dancers liked certain sections
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more than they did others.
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So the early hip-hop guys would loop certain sections.
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(Music: "Rapper's Delight" by The Sugarhill Gang)
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The MC would improvise lyrics
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in the same way that the jazz players would improvise melodies.
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And another new form of music was born.
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Live performance, when it was incredibly successful,
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ended up in what is probably, acoustically,
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the worst sounding venues on the planet:
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sports stadiums,
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basketball arenas and hockey arenas.
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Musicians who ended up there did the best they could.
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They wrote what is now called arena rock,
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which is medium-speed ballads.
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(Music: "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" by U2)
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They did the best they could
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given that this is what they're writing for.
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The tempos are medium. It sounds big.
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It's more a social situation
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than a musical situation.
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And in some ways, the music
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that they're writing for this place
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works perfectly.
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So there's more new venues.
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One of the new ones is the automobile.
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I grew up with a radio in a car.
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But now that's evolved into something else.
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The car is a whole venue.
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(Music: "Who U Wit" by Lil' Jon & the East Side Boyz)
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The music that, I would say, is written
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for automobile sound systems
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works perfectly on it.
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It might not be what you want to listen to at home,
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but it works great in the car --
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has a huge frequency spectrum,
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you know, big bass and high-end
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and the voice kind of stuck in the middle.
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Automobile music, you can share with your friends.
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There's one other kind of new venue,
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the private MP3 player.
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Presumably, this is just for Christian music.
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(Laughter)
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And in some ways it's like Carnegie Hall,
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or when the audience had to hush up,
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because you can now hear every single detail.
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In other ways, it's more like the West African music
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because if the music in an MP3 player gets too quiet,
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you turn it up, and the next minute,
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your ears are blasted out by a louder passage.
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So that doesn't really work.
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I think pop music, mainly,
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it's written today,
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to some extent, is written for these kind of players,
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for this kind of personal experience
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where you can hear extreme detail,
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but the dynamic doesn't change that much.
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So I asked myself:
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Okay, is this
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a model for creation,
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this adaptation that we do?
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And does it happen anywhere else?
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Well, according to David Attenborough and some other people,
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birds do it too --
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that the birds in the canopy,
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where the foliage is dense,
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their calls tend to be
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high-pitched, short and repetitive.
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And the birds on the floor
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tend to have lower pitched calls,
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so that they don't get distorted
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when they bounce off the forest floor.
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And birds like this Savannah sparrow,
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they tend to have a buzzing
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(Sound clip: Savannah sparrow song)
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type call.
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And it turns out that
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a sound like this
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is the most energy efficient and practical way
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to transmit their call
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across the fields and savannahs.
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Other birds, like this tanager,
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have adapted within the same species.
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The tananger on the East Coast of the United States,
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where the forests are a little denser,
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has one kind of call,
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and the tananger on the other side, on the west
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(Sound clip: Scarlet tanager song)
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has a different kind of call.
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(Sound clip: Scarlet tanager song)
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So birds do it too.
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And I thought:
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Well, if this is a model for creation,
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if we make music,
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primarily the form at least,
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to fit these contexts,
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and if we make art to fit gallery walls or museum walls,
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and if we write software to fit existing operating systems,
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is that how it works?
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Yeah. I think it's evolutionary.
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It's adaptive.
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But the pleasure and the passion and the joy
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is still there.
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This is a reverse view of things
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from the kind of traditional Romantic view.
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The Romantic view is that
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first comes the passion
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and then the outpouring of emotion,
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and then somehow it gets shaped into something.
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And I'm saying,
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well, the passion's still there,
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but the vessel
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that it's going to be injected into and poured into,
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that is instinctively and intuitively
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created first.
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We already know where that passion is going.
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But this conflict of views is kind of interesting.
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The writer,
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Thomas Frank,
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says that
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this might be a kind of explanation
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why some voters vote
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against their best interests,
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that voters, like a lot of us,
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assume, that if they hear something that sounds like it's sincere,
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that it's coming from the gut, that it's passionate,
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that it's more authentic.
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And they'll vote for that.
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So that, if somebody can fake sincerity,
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if they can fake passion,
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they stand a better chance
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of being selected in that way,
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which seems a little dangerous.
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I'm saying the two, the passion, the joy,
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are not mutually exclusive.
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Maybe what the world needs now is for us to realize
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that we are like the birds.
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We adapt.
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We sing.
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And like the birds, the joy is still there,
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even though we have changed what we do
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to fit the context.
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Thank you very much.
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(Applause)
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