Rickenbacker's "secret"?

[Ric5]

Well let's have a listen then.....

When you listen to the isolated bass it may surprise some how much different it is from the guitar line.

 

[lovethegrowl]

I listened & it bolstered my point. Pedal in eighth notes, last two syncopated notes of the phrase emphasized & played in unison with guitar. It doesn't get more homophonic than rock! No I am not surprised!

Conversely, jazz can be pretty homophonic at times too. But.....I'm not computer savvy enough to post Manhattan Transfer doing "Four Brothers" (certainly not as contrapuntal as Art of the Fugue) as it shows a linear sense of polyphony (bass & melody flowing along independently) that enables one to get away with a lighter sounding bass. Fluid might be a more descriptive term than polyphonic. (Still, arguably, a Fender Jazz might sound better than a Rick!)

The leaner & lighter sounding (in comparison to the P bass) Fender Jazz bass came out in 1960 explicitly to compete with the Rickenbacker 4000 which hasn't changed too radically over the years since 1957.

Hell, when I first heard that Rickenbacker bass in 1973 (playing trumpet in that Berklee ensemble) that was only 4-5 years after electric bass guitars first appeared with big bands. Relative to an unmiked upright, it was a huge leap. For the first time you could actually pick out each note the bass was playing. The name big bands then were Buddy Rich, Stan Kenton, Don Ellis & Maynard Ferguson. These bands were HUGE in the jazz world then, but now, all but forgotten. Anyone who hasn't heard Ellis & Kenton in the 70s is missing out. Check out Electric Bath, Don Ellis Live at Monterrey, Tears of Joy, Kenton in London, Kenton in Redlands.

 

[lovethegrowl]

When you listen to the isolated bass it may surprise some how much different it is from the guitar line.

Are you serious? A pedal held throughout a phrase is contrapuntal? This is supposed to debunk my description of classic rock as texturally homophonic? It doesn't get more homophonic than that!

 

[callofcthulhu]

Are you serious? A pedal held throughout a phrase is contrapuntal? This is supposed to debunk my description of classic rock as texturally homophonic? It doesn't get more homophonic than that!

Except there's a lot more to the composition than the main hook, isn't there?

Did you listen to the posted video? He's doing fills and runs all over the place, completely independent of the guitars, keys, and vocals.

 

[lovethegrowl]

Except there's a lot more to the composition than the main hook, isn't there?

Did you listen to the posted video? He's doing fills and runs all over the place, completely independent of the guitars, keys, and vocals.

Look at what I wrote earlier about runs & filling material--doesnt make rock any less HOMOPHONIC!

 

[callofcthulhu]

Look at what I wrote earlier about runs & filling material--doesnt make rock any less HOMOPHONIC!

Dunno, but the verses of Smoke on the Water sounds about as lilting as the left-hand part of any fugue I've ever heard.

Further, a pedaling bassline under a moving melody is by definition oblique movement, a polyphonic technique, not a homophonic one.

 

[Ric5]

Are you serious? A pedal held throughout a phrase is contrapuntal? This is supposed to debunk my description of classic rock as texturally homophonic? It doesn't get more homophonic than that!

Are we even talking about the same thing???

And that is a rhetorical question that does not require another post about contrapuntal homophonic bass lines.

What I was talking about is the bass line does not mimic the guitar line note for note.

Yes this can be easily understood without hyperbolic polysyllabic rhetoric.

 

[Korladis]

I won't argue against the fact that tons of rock music is homophonic, but as I and numerous others have pointed out, "Smoke on the Water" is a very bad example. A stationary pedal tone against a moving melody is actually the basis of early polyphony. In this case, the bass staying on a low G forms different harmonies with the movement of the guitars and keys, and in doing so, bolsters the impact of the chords at the end of the phrase when the bass finally moves to C and then Bb. And during the chorus, while the bass and keys play similar parts, they aren't even really close to the guitar line at all.

Any time you have musical lines deviating from each other, that is polyphony.

Much better examples would have been "Whole Lotta Love" or "Heartbreaker" by Led Zeppelin. Or "Iron Man" by Black Sabbath.

 

[lovethegrowl]

Exception, still only some of the time: Emerson Lake & Palmer, Jethro Tull, Yes. And I am sure you can pull MANY exceptions to the proverbial rule from Zeppelin, Deep Purple, etc. But Smoke on the Water IS texturally very homophonic.

As an aside, I remember listening to EMP do the Barbarian & thought Emerson was the world's greatest musical genius. Close. Later I found out that Kieth Emerson ripped off Bartok's Allegro Barbaro note for note w/o giving credit. That was a huge influence in my getting back to my classical roots.

Knife Edge in that same album was a big improvement over the original Sinfonietta by Janecek. Janecek's original composition employs 12 trumpets & is ineffably vulgar IMO.

 

[Korladis]

It really, really isn't. Pedal tones are pretty much the birth of polyphony. Maybe you're using a different definition of polyphony and homophony, but the rest of us are using the standard definition. The fact is, having one voice repeat a pedal tone while another voice moves, is polyphony. Very basic polyphony that was often employed in the late middle ages, true, but polyphony by definition, nonetheless.

Look, I'm not making value judgments here. Homophonic music can be great, and polyphonic music can still sometimes be very lackluster, and vice versa, and whether music is good or not is mostly subjective and a matter of personal opinion, but while language evolves, it does so slowly, and both the terms polyphony and homophony have meanings, and those meanings aren't really a matter of opinion. They mean what they mean, and those definitions don't change instantly just because you want them to mean something else. By those meanings, "Smoke on the Water" is not a good example of musical homophony. Calling the relationship between the bass part and the guitar part in the main riff homophonic is just plain incorrect. Because that isn't what homophony means. The relationship between those two parts is polyphonic. Is it complex polyphony? No, obviously not. But something doesn't need to be complex to be polyphony (in fact, the vast majority of early polyphony isn't), nor is music that's homophonic always simple in terms of technical playing.

The main/verse riff of "Iron Man" is homophonic (especially during the vocal verses). "Smoke on the Water," is not.

 

[lovethegrowl]

Are we even talking about the same thing???

And that is a rhetorical question that does not require another post about contrapuntal homophonic bass lines.

What I was talking about is the bass line does not mimic the guitar line note for note.

Yes this can be easily understood without hyperbolic polysyllabic rhetoric.

I won't argue against the fact that tons of rock music is homophonic, but as I and numerous others have pointed out, "Smoke on the Water" is a very bad example. A stationary pedal tone against a moving melody is actually the basis of early polyphony. In this case, the bass staying on a low G forms different harmonies with the movement of the guitars and keys, and in doing so, bolsters the impact of the chords at the end of the phrase when the bass finally moves to C and then Bb. And during the chorus, while the bass and keys play similar parts, they aren't even really close to the guitar line at all.

Any time you have musical lines deviating from each other, that is polyphony.

Much better examples would have been "Whole Lotta Love" or "Heartbreaker" by Led Zeppelin. Or "Iron Man" by Black Sabbath.

There are widely varying levels of homophony & polyphony. Homophony is usually defined as melody over chordal accompaniment. In theory that includes Show tunes that actually built the foundation if the big band era. However, in Swing instrumental pieces these tunes are highly syncopated and the walking bass lines become fluid & enough by contrast to be regarded as MORE polyphonic than your run of the mill Broadway show tune & way more polyphonic than Classic rock.

Specifically what makes rock texturally even more homophonic are those square predictable (downright banal) phrases in which downbeats are almost always very hard. Filling material, runs & rolls make little difference.

I used the analogy of Mahler's 8 the being far MORE polyphonic than Brahm's Tragic Overture. The fact that there is an extended contrapuntal section in the middle of Brahm's Tragic Overture doesn't change things!

Woody Herman's Four Brother's is a little more polyphonic than Smoke in the Water. It's a ridiculous argument to point out that the bassist plays a pedal point, not entirely in unison with the guitars to say that it is any less homophonic!

 

[StereoPlayer]

Back to the OT ....PLEASE!

 

[Korladis]

See, now you're putting value judgments into it. That's what's tripping you up, because even if you're doing it unconsciously, you're using "homophonic" with negative connotations that are peeking through, and the opposite for "polyphonic." These are technical terms to describe how music is arranged. They have no bearing on how good or bad you find that music.

And, quite frankly, the definitions you're using aren't correct. While one could see homophonic-polyphonic as a spectrum, I suppose, it's still incorrect to say a piece of music is "homophonic" when one line is clearly moving and the other line clearly is staying on the same note, because that is by definition polyphony. And while you may have a point with chords staying the same, the bass isn't playing chords. It's playing notes. It is playing a pedal line, and that is by definition, contrapuntal. That part of the song is riff based (and we all know that a riff is basically just a slang term for a relatively short, repeated melodic motif), not chord based. While something might be "more homophonic," or, more accurately, "less polyphonic" than something else, it's not really homophony until you have every musical line moving parallel to every other musical line (which was why in Baroque chorale composition, they avoided having two voices move together in parallel fifths or octaves, as they felt it undermined the independence of the different musical lines and thus the polyphony, which they felt was important to that particular genre of work... but often in such compositions, there are instances of one line staying at the same note while the others move... especially with the alto voice). It simply isn't.

From your post, it appears you look down on rock music, to a certain extent. This is common among jazz players, I've found, and I actually somewhat think it's silly... as jazz music started as popular, working class music, just as rock did. Beyond that, I find it silly to try to find justifications for not liking something. You don't need a reason not to like a kind of music any more than you need a reason beyond "I don't like the taste" to not like a certain kind of food. I don't like most modern jazz I've heard. Doesn't mean it's bad music, just isn't for me. I like a lot of pre-war jazz, but that doesn't mean it's "better," just that it appeals to me more. Similarly, I like Romantic Era orchestral music more than I like that of the Baroque Era. It doesn't mean either is better than the other, just one appeals to me more than the other does.

 

[callofcthulhu]

I dunno what they were teaching you upstairs in the composition department, but in the sub-basement where they kept the electronic music department we learned that homophony (from the Greek homos - the same - and phone - sound - i.e. making the same sound) is when all the voices in a phrase are articulating the same notes - the EXACT same notes (like the earliest examples of Gregorian chant), and polyphony is when the voices play different notes. Note that the terms purely describe characteristics of pitch and tonality - rhythmic emphasis, variation, or lack thereof has NOTHING to do with the classification.

I see little value in ranking polyphonic music in terms of its homophonic-"ness."

 

[stevebasshead]

So. Rickenbacker's secret. Where were we?...

 

[audiomitch]

I dunno. I press my finger on a string and it makes a sound. As long as the chicks dig it, baby!

 

[Ric5]

So. Rickenbacker's secret. Where were we?...

The secret of Rickenbacker tone ...

1 - pickup positions
2 - maple construction
3 - single coil pickups
4 - a finished bubinga fretboard

These and other factors give the Ric a distinctive high mid bark.

 

[lovethegrowl]

The description of 2 or 4 bar phrases that invariably begin with hard downbeats as banal wasn't really that much of a value judgement. It's just the way it is. It has limited potential to generate tension & is very square. The same could be said of Vivaldi

 

[Korladis]

I dunno what they were teaching you upstairs in the composition department, but in the sub-basement where they kept the electronic music department we learned that homophony (from the Greek homos - the same - and phone - sound - i.e. making the same sound) is when all the voices in a phrase are articulating the same notes - the EXACT same notes (like the earliest examples of Gregorian chant), and polyphony is when the voices play different notes. Note that the terms purely describe characteristics of pitch and tonality - rhythmic emphasis, variation, or lack thereof has NOTHING to do with the classification.

I see little value in ranking polyphonic music in terms of its homophonic-"ness."

Indeed. I'm coming at this from a music history perspective.

In fact, polyphony was created by taking older, homophonic chants, and stretching out each note of the old chant enough that you could fit a whole phrase, sung by a separate voice, above it, with the old chant's line acting basically as a pedal tone. The statement that a pedal line doesn't constitute polyphony is simply incorrect.

And, as you mention, polyphony/homophony describe harmony, not rhythm. The rhythm of a piece has nothing to do with whether it is homophonic or polyphonic.

The secret of Rickenbacker tone ...

1 - pickup positions
2 - maple construction
3 - single coil pickups
4 - a finished bubinga fretboard

These and other factors give the Ric a distinctive high mid bark.

Going back to the actual topic, I totally agree on this.

The pickup positions used by Rickenbacker play a huge part in how these basses sound. I haven't seen those positions used on very many other instruments, which why there's the idea that nothing else sounds like them. Most other manufacturers use pickup positions more similar to the Fender ones.

There's nothing mystical about it, it's just these basses are built with a combination of factors not seen in many other basses. If you build a bass out of hard maple, use something like finished bubinga for the fretboard, and put single coil pickups in the same positions Rickenbacker uses, you'll get something that sounds very much like a Rickenbacker. As you've so often demonstrated.

 

[StereoPlayer]

Indeed. I'm coming at this from a music history perspective.

In fact, polyphony was created by taking older, homophonic chants, and stretching out each note of the old chant enough that you could fit a whole phrase, sung by a separate voice, above it, with the old chant's line acting basically as a pedal tone. The statement that a pedal line doesn't constitute polyphony is simply incorrect.

And, as you mention, polyphony/homophony describe harmony, not rhythm. The rhythm of a piece has nothing to do with whether it is homophonic or polyphonic.


Going back to the actual topic, I totally agree on this.

The pickup positions used by Rickenbacker play a huge part in how these basses sound. I haven't seen those positions used on very many other instruments, which why there's the idea that nothing else sounds like them. Most other manufacturers use pickup positions more similar to the Fender ones.

There's nothing mystical about it, it's just these basses are built with a combination of factors not seen in many other basses. If you build a bass out of hard maple, use something like finished bubinga for the fretboard, and put single coil pickups in the same positions Rickenbacker uses, you'll get something that sounds very much like a Rickenbacker. As you've so often demonstrated.

But a RIC sounds like a RIC....unplugged!