craigb

Moshkiae
GG is one of those bands that I respect to no end, musically. Even more so after Gary Green said that almost none of it was ever composed, and mostly they sat and just did whatever they felt like doing, which, somehow, always worked well. It is not one of my favorites at all (Amon Duul 2, Guru Guru, Can, Ash Ra Tempel are!), but the musicianship and the dedication to make something like that work is insane and second to none, and there are not many folks that are musically confident enough to even try that, let alone play it!

A friend of mine who is way more talented than he'll admit has played in a GG cover band and called it the most intimidating stuff he's had to play.

I can well believe it. I tried to learn 'Freehand' a couple of years ago, and Ed suggested covering 'Time to Kill' a while back..both were waaay beyond me.

jamesg1213

craigb

Moshkiae
GG is one of those bands that I respect to no end, musically. Even more so after Gary Green said that almost none of it was ever composed, and mostly they sat and just did whatever they felt like doing, which, somehow, always worked well. It is not one of my favorites at all (Amon Duul 2, Guru Guru, Can, Ash Ra Tempel are!), but the musicianship and the dedication to make something like that work is insane and second to none, and there are not many folks that are musically confident enough to even try that, let alone play it!

A friend of mine who is way more talented than he'll admit has played in a GG cover band and called it the most intimidating stuff he's had to play.

I can well believe it. I tried to learn 'Freehand' a couple of years ago, and Ed suggested covering 'Time to Kill' a while back..both were waaay beyond me.

Free Hand is one of my all-time favorite albums.  

Old55
 
Free Hand is one of my all-time favorite albums.  

Mine too!

 
Just don't stare at the giant please.

jamesg1213

craigb
A friend of mine who is way more talented than he'll admit has played in a GG cover band and called it the most intimidating stuff he's had to play.

...
I can well believe it. I tried to learn 'Freehand' a couple of years ago, and Ed suggested covering 'Time to Kill' a while back..both were waaay beyond me.
...

I don't think, that this stuff is about "talent", as much as it is about trying something different and in the end, it sounds like nothing we have heard before anywhere at all. You have to ahve courage to stick with that, or one of those, I don't care what you think, mentalities, to do something like that.
 
I don't think that any of those guys were waaay beyond anyone at the CHB, with one exception! They did more of it and learned it, and the folks here might not have done it to the point where it would (I guess) feel intimidating. It's sort of like trying to play Stravinsky with a rock band ... the guitar parts and bass parts would be insane and all over the place, and any guitarist is likely to say ... that's not even a challenge, I quit!
 
It all depends how unafraid you are to try something outlandish and different, and do not think about the result whatsoever. I have always thought that the biggest issue with folks creating music is always the worry about an ending and flipping the piece so you can get to a conclusion of some sort. The Europeans for a long time, lived by the Godard experiment ... everything has a beginning, middle and an end, not necessarily in that order ... except life!
 
It was the same for material with PDQ Bach. You were given a script that was not conventional in that the stops and breaks were different, and he would add his own instruments and effects on top of it. But no one, I have EVER heard, has complained about it!, or appreciated the insanity of the shows themselves.
 
You either believe in "music" or you don't, I guess! And music, should not have "limits". But all we can think of is "songs" and we think that is the only music!

Moshkiae

jamesg1213

craigb
A friend of mine who is way more talented than he'll admit has played in a GG cover band and called it the most intimidating stuff he's had to play.

...
I can well believe it. I tried to learn 'Freehand' a couple of years ago, and Ed suggested covering 'Time to Kill' a while back..both were waaay beyond me.
...

I don't think, that this stuff is about "talent", as much as it is about trying something different and in the end, it sounds like nothing we have heard before anywhere at all. You have to ahve courage to stick with that, or one of those, I don't care what you think, mentalities, to do something like that.
 
I don't think that any of those guys were waaay beyond anyone at the CHB, with one exception! They did more of it and learned it, and the folks here might not have done it to the point where it would (I guess) feel intimidating. It's sort of like trying to play Stravinsky with a rock band ... the guitar parts and bass parts would be insane and all over the place, and any guitarist is likely to say ... that's not even a challenge, I quit!
 
It all depends how unafraid you are to try something outlandish and different, and do not think about the result whatsoever. I have always thought that the biggest issue with folks creating music is always the worry about an ending and flipping the piece so you can get to a conclusion of some sort. The Europeans for a long time, lived by the Godard experiment ... everything has a beginning, middle and an end, not necessarily in that order ... except life!

 
It was beyond me to learn either of those tunes because they are both (for me) extremely complicated harmonically. I could possibly have learned the guitar parts - eventually - if I took a couple of months to do so.
 
I don't believe for one minute that they 'just played' and that stuff fell out. Sections may have resulted from 'jams' and been arranged together afterwards but GG's music is technically very precise, and not at all random. Apart from that, Green, Minnear and the Shulman brothers are virtuoso's on their chosen instruments, and highly competent on many others, as evidenced by their live shows where they swop instruments regularly.
 

I don't think, that this stuff is about "talent"

 
They would have been hard-pressed to create that music without it.

jamesg1213
... 
They would have been hard-pressed to create that music without it.
...

I don't quite ... believe you. You know why?
 
They were all 18, 19, 20 and 21, just like you and I. They had, up to that time only learned so much music to be able to think in the manner that you describe. I really believe Gary when he says they never wrote it down (probably after the fact, it might have been!), but in order to help create it and find a definition point, you can go out of the blue ... and I think that most of us are afraid of that.
 
I trust what Gary says in that special!

Moshkiae

jamesg1213
... 
They would have been hard-pressed to create that music without it.
...

I don't quite ... believe you. You know why?
 
They were all 18, 19, 20 and 21

Well, exactly..
 
Kerry Minnear graduated with a degree in composition from the Royal College of Music  before he joined GG.
 

Hi,
 
"Acquiring the taste is the second phase of sensory pleasure. If you've gorged yourself on our first album, then relish the finer flavours (we hope) of this, our second offering. It is our goal to expand the frontiers of contemporary music at the risk of being very unpopular. We have recorded each composition with the one thought - that it should be unique, adventurous, and fascinating. It has taken every shred of our combined musical and technical knowledge to achieve this. From the outset we have abandoned all preconceived thoughts on blatant commercialism. Instead we hope to give you something far more substantial and fulfilling. All you need to do is sit back, and acquire the taste."
 
"

• polyphony
• hocketing
• unusual chord progressions
• breaking up and tonally re-voicing patterns of initially simple chords (with the chords subtly altering from repetition to repetition)
• accelerating and decelerating duration of musical themes
• rapid and frequent key changes (sometimes within a single bar)
• division of vocal lines between different singers (including staggered rhythms)
• clever handling of transitions between sections (such as a hard-rock guitar riff being immediately substituted by a medieval choral)"

These quotes taken from Wiki.
 
To have the courage to do some of this, you have to either be stupid, silly, crazy, or sometimes, a simple, VERY SIMPLE, fun and disrespectful notion about music. But here it is a sacred COW! And everyone is afraid to have fun with it, and do something else with it, that turns out to sound insane and so damn intelligent that we can't even discuss it. Yes, it could be the case, but then the sound effect creating a beat at the start is not likely to be a very intelectual pursuit and design in musical theory either!
 
I have always thought tht most of it was actually done for fun, not anything else, and that is likely to be the main difference. Without it, the music becomes too serious and no one can agree on anything!
 

Bless 'em.