Reworking OK Computer Pt. I
Every effort I have made to produce music through notation has ultimately failed due to my want of fluency and a lack of rigor. When it comes to making use of notation, the musician cannot push the notes onto the staves, but rather a more dynamic push pull is required, whereby musical thought mostly takes place before marks are made, but the production of those marks also provides an apparatus for the reworking of the musical structures in stasis. My practice at the keyboard has lately become stilted, and the amount of time I spend at practice has plummeted, replaced by the consumption of chattery audio programs. Whereas those programs serve to deaden my cognition, a phenomenon that is not without its uses, on the occasions that I do put on a record, any record, I find my consideration of it to be reflexive, and even imaginative. The dynamics of the music continue to run through my head hours and days later. (A similar phenomenon happens with writing, and my solution has always been to cross one manner of cognitive divide or another. This mostly takes the form of an appreciation for another’s work, preferably a personal acquaintance.) Having always wanted to develop a capacity to make meaningful use of notation in my practice, I set about recording the melodies of Radiohead’s OK Computer on paper and working out a figured bass that is wholly indifferent to the original harmonies. As time goes, and I continue to explore the music, I will be figuring out the harmonies specifically in certain cases, or else merely make use of the original as a blueprint while I work out an interpretation that I find interesting to play at the piano.
I selected OK Computer because the melodies are interesting without being overly complex. It is, moreover, a record I have listened to enough that there are no surprises. I should be able to conduct my course of study without reference to outside analysis of the music. Only my ear, my staff paper, and my piano will be relied upon.
This is not a literary endeavor, but I hope to make my process comprehensible and engaging all the same. Please enjoy these articles, which will take the form of musical notation, recordings, and descriptions of the process.
First, the Score So Far
I was going through old papers recently when I came across a few songs I wrote for voice and piano. They were no more than studies, and their scope was limited enough that I was not interested in reviewing them. Moreover, the scores were messy. Blank areas prevailed where I did not care to be meticulous. They were a loose collection of suggestions and not a map of understanding, and I hope to produce scores going forward that will be interesting and useful at a glance.
This process should reveal to me the ways in which my musical interpretation reliably breaks apart. My acumen with musical notation is not robust enough for this reworking of OK Computer to be a project that is wholly divorced from influence. The actual key of Airbag, for example, does not seem to be F minor, but F minor is the relative minor of A-flat major, and this feels like a pianistic choice for ease of playing purposes. A-flat major also happens to be the key signature of the Beethoven sonata I am working on at present, Opus 57, the Apassionata. The major key and its relative minor share the same sharps or flats.
A higher resolution pdf is below.
Progress seems to come when, in the course of work, things seem to line-up. This, for me, is a process of discovery, rather than one of prior comprehension. As the first few lines of this score indicate, I attempted to denote the basic melodies in 4/4 time, with a pick-up note to capture Airbag’s distinctive opening. Unfortunately, this produced ties across measures, and when I actually counted the melody out, it was recognizably inaccurate. Here is a recording of the opening notes strictly as I wrote them.
Putting the piece into 12/8, the same time signature as that of the Apassionata, everything seemed to line up better. Here is a recording of the melody as written in 12/8 and at a somewhat faster tempo. This, to me, conveniently, sounds closer to the recording.
Airbag
A Figured Bass, But Not A Good One
A fluency with figured bass is useful for sketching out ideas for a composition. In music, the movement of the outer voices, that is the highest most note and the lowest most note, has an outsized impact on the musical content of a piece. Figured bass allows for the composer to quickly and informally sketch out musical ideas. With a little understanding of the rules of voice leading, such as not moving in parallel fifths, or that the 7th note in the key signature should resolve upward, the 4th downward, multiple harmonies can be tried. Figured bass takes the form of annotating a bass line and accompanying those notes with numbers that indicate what notes above that bass note are to be played, and therefore what the harmony is. A chord in root position consists of the bass note, along with the 3rd and fifth note above it. A chord in first inversion consists of the base note, the note 3 above it, and the 6th note above the base. A note in second inversion consist of base note, the 6th note, and the 4th note. Conventionally, the 5th and 3rd notes above the base note are not annotated. The absence of a notation implies the presence of the 5th or 3rd note. There are additional conventions, which I will only be delving into as a matter of course, if at all, but this is what my notations below the base line mean in brief.
Here, as an example is a simple harmonic progression sketched out with the figured bass in the top stave, and the base note along with the realized notes above the bass.
As I rough the harmonies out, I will find it easier to include the roman numeral of the harmonies, but these are not technically additive, as the figured bass notation contains all the information as to the harmony being employed. The figured bass merely takes a little additional scrutiny to parse in the absence of a roman numeral.
Putting it all together, here is an unpolished recording of the music so far.
The harmonies are haphazard and weak, especially in that they do not direct toward cadences, which are harmonic goals, and are even abysmal in places. Creating harmonies that are organized into cadences will be the next step I take.
Up Next
Refining the figured bass in order to organize the harmonies into cadences.
Looking into the actual harmonies used in the recording.