Piano Got Back

"I like piano baselines and I cannot lie ... you other brothers can't deny..."

In general, I love the songs from the Top 40. But through the years I’ve also developed my own Top 40 list, with a few songs deviating from the norm. In general, these are songs which feature an aesthetic influenced by the piano. A song with a strong piano background will stay on my charts for weeks, months or years longer than it stays on the Top 40, if it was ever there to begin with.

Ironically, I don’t always like the songs that much, but a strong piano part can make up for a lot. Here are some of the most notable that have won their way to my heart:

Listen to Your Heart (DHT)

Bad Day (Daniel Powter)

Boston (Augustana)

Piano Man (Billy Joel – Duh)

Walking in Memphis (Marc Cohn)

The Scientist (Coldplay)

How to Save a Life (The Fray)

Poker Face (Lady Gaga’s acoustic version)

Someone Like You (Adèle)

Give Me Everything (Pitbull, Ne-Yo, Afrojack & Nayer)

Not Over You (Gavin DeGraw)

Give Me Everything is one song that I don’t even like that much, but I love the fact that it starts off with heavy piano chords. A good baseline covers a multitude of sins.

Listen to Your Heart, Bad Day and How to Save a Life are three favorites that had a lot of influence on my musical education. I took piano lessons until I was 15, at which point I stopped and began teaching other kids in the neighborhood because it paid better than babysitting. I stopped learning new songs on my own, somewhat burned out after 8 years of lessons. But when I started tuning in to the songs on the radio featuring this aesthetic, things changed. I started searching for the most challenging sheet music versions of these songs and polished up on my technique. My little brother and I would give concerts together, he singing the high parts (yes, this was before his voice changed) and me working through the sheet music I’d downloaded for $3.95 in a gleeful online shopping spree.

My little brother, who has always had more talent for picking a tune out by ear, began learning the piano parts for songs we couldn’t find online, such as The Scientist, after he stopped lessons. In fact, he got more excited about studying piano only after he stopped his lessons, due entirely to his surging interest in artists like Coldplay.  

The piano fascinates me because it can create such a wide spectrum of sounds and thus play such different roles in popular music – at one extreme it serves as the soft and contemplative accompaniment to a simple song like in Listen to Your Heart, or complementary to Daniel Powter’s crooning in Bad Day, and at the other end it’s a slightly more organic version of the synthesizer, providing the beat and the baseline at the same time.

Of course there’s a whole world of Classical music written for the piano, and at some points in my life that has also inspired me to pursue my musical education further, but contemporary Top 40s have always had a much stronger pull on me than anything I’ve overheard squeaking out of my dad’s Bose headphones.

I always tended to worship the artists who appreciated the piano more than other members of pop culture, although now I wonder how many of them truly intended for the piano to play such an important part, or if it’s just a result of mediation. With songs like The Scientist, it seems much more authentic than in Gavin DeGraw’s Not Over You. Regardless, I still enjoy and have always enjoyed a strong piano riff in my personal Top 40s. 

Time After Old Time

Right before the school year began, I had the opportunity to attend the world’s oldest and largest Old Fiddler’s convention in Galax, Va. This year’s bluegrass and Old Time music festival was the 76^th annual, and like every year before it was held in Felts Park, in the center of a tiny Appalachian foothills town.

I’ve always been a fan of toe-tappin’ music of any kind, and bluegrass has been in my home for many years, especially since my younger brothers started to learn to play the fiddle from an Old Time fiddling enthusiast. But going to this convention opened my eyes to the culture that creates bluegrass.  Like all musical scenes, old time fiddle draws deeply from its geographical home, which is centered in the area between Pilot Mountain, N.C. and Galax.

Old Time music is unique in that by definition, the songs played must be part of the canon of recognizable tunes that have existed for centuries. Thus for Old Time musicians, the concept of authenticity is skewed. It’s not about creating a new tune from the 12 available tones; it’s about displaying your skill and personality through your performance of a familiar old tune.

I hadn’t really learned to appreciate this aspect of Old Time music until arriving in Galax – seeing hundreds of RVs and tents packed into a 28-acre athletic park with every spare inch turned into a temporary home. Checked table cloths covered picnic tables surrounded by folding chairs encircling portable charcoal grills. We didn’t have cell service, which meant we had to rely on primitive communication methods and planning – imagine that – only adding to the feeling of stepping back in time.

As I walked up and down the cozy aisles with my brothers as they looked for their teacher, the chilly air was filled with banjo, fiddle, dobro, guitar and dulcimer music blended with scratchy voices singing lyrics that have been passed down through generations. From overhearing my brothers’ lessons I recognized many of the tunes, and was able to appreciate the variations in style and instrumentation among the different jam sessions scattered through the park.

Although I was only able to stay for two days of the festival and thus only saw the youth competition, which my brothers competed in, and the mandolin and dobro competitions, I gleaned a lot about this musical scene that I never appreciated before. For starters, the very fact that at the world’s largest old time fiddle convention there is a youth competition for those under age 14 impressed me. Youngsters of any skill level stood up on the same stage that fiddle masters and world-class old time and bluegrass bands would take later in the week. The audience, although only a fraction of the size it would be later in the week, still paid the same respects to the novice banjo players as it would to a veteran who had played on the back porch for 30 years.

This level playing field and sense of equal opportunity for all old time music lovers was really heart-warming, and telling about the music. Galax demonstrated that every old time artist has something to bring to the table to enhance the musical tradition, be it is the barest plucking of a basic tune from a banjo or a medley bowed at breakneck pace on a fiddle.

Surrounded by plaid, overalls, long scruffy beards and chewing tobacco, it was hard to believe anything about this scene could have looked any different 30 years ago. And for that matter I doubt it will look any different in 30 years. The town will hopefully eventually get cell service and the McDonalds’ might also be joined by a Wendy’s, but the music will stay the same.

Karaoke culture

Every Tuesday Night at Kildare’s Irish Pub, a local musical community congregates to participate in a therapeutic ritual. The conductor: a greasy DJ. The choir: harried college students and uptight professionals. The occasion: karaoke night.

Seeking to escape from the highbrow tastes of academia, this community finds respite in $2 drafts and timeless tunes belted at the top of their lungs.

The twenty-or-so attendees spread out through the bar, keeping a safe distance from the faces they recognize from the stage, but with whom they have not yet breached the acquaintance wall.

They’re all here for the common purpose of more deeply interacting with the music they love in a no-strings-attached environment. They’re more preoccupied with picking their next song than thinking about it, but they’re all here to enjoy an unmediated, purely authentic musical experience, because karaoke champions the delusional kid who tried out for American Idol because his mama never told him he couldn’t sing along with the quiet student in the corner who has performed more times than she can remember. At karaoke, the former punk rocker stands equal to the shower diva. Where there’s a will, there’s an untrained rendition of Don’t Stop Believin’. What said performance lacks in refinement, it makes up in gusto.

Unlike its cousin Open Mike Night, karaoke relies solely on sampling, but provides an unparalleled opportunity for completely unaspiring artists to practice innovation, improvisation and freestyle as they adapt the tunes and lyrics to their abilities and to please their supporting friends, who will stand by even the most tone deaf of the group.

This past Tuesday, the mood swung from angst-ridden to buoyant, with each artist bringing his or her personal situations to the scene, with no reason to be anything other than purely authentic. As the tweeters ping-ponged from genre to genre, the audience rode the sudden switches without the slightest hint of whiplash.

Abby, a senior with a mind to scourge her ex’s soul from 150 miles away, sang her own version of Adele’s Someone Like You, pouring her heart with all its tangled emotions into every note. Never mind that she couldn’t quite hit the highest tones; this brotherhood of minor-league minstrels has been touched by her voice, cracking with anger and regret.

A duel of sheer lyrical prowess ensued next, as a patron attempted Eminem’s Lose Yourself and was nearly upstaged by the one member of the audience who could sing every word from memory, but who confined the show to her friends and close neighbors at the bar.

Another regular stepped up to the mike, but started Zac Brown Band’s Toes in the wrong key. The audience didn’t mind too much, recognizing their own faults as performers, but relaxed when a friend came to the rescue.

The night wound down with a horribly off-key and painfully loud rendition of Third Eye Blind’s Semi-Charmed Life sprinkled with self-deprecating lyric-improvisations and laughs by yours truly.

There’s something magical about an environment that celebrates song for the pure joy of song, with zero ambition. The singer feels no outside pressure to conform to the desires of the public in order to succeed in life, and thus the performances are always honest and live in the most true sense of it.

What does karaoke represent for me? It’s a full-immersion in the music I love, it’s a tribute to the artists I respect, it’s an experiment in an art-form otherwise inaccessible to me.

Karaoke thrills, disappoints, and sometimes is downright painful. But it’s undeniably an overlooked, but powerful piece of the popular music puzzle.