Today on the bike, I did 2 up, 2 downs, 15 reps, so 2 minutes standing and 2 minutes sitting for 30 total, with the downs being ~103 rpm and the ups being ~60rpm. I of course adjusted resistance so the efforts felt comparable. This makes two waves, one that involves a quick pelvic twist, which is a small motion and a high frequency, and one that involves a larger pelvic twist with a lower frequency and higher amplitude. The wavelengths didn’t scale objectively to speed or calories measures on the bike computer but they felt in tune because they reflected my perceptions of effort expended divided in two forms, the one higher frequency, shorter wavelength and the other being, well duh. This led me to think of the song Are You Ready For It: it begins with hard pulses that allow it to transition seamlessly into a hip hop style, but the song then switches to a fast, smooth part with a different tone and sonic immediacy that connects to the hard pulses that have been implied throughout – and to which it then returns. It’s a form of alchemy when you hear it: three distinct forms arranged in an order that makes them flow together because they contain enough rhythmic similarity while being distinct in nearly every other way.
I can’t express how much this interests me. Think of John Lennon: in ‘She Said, She Said’ he switches between two songs, just as later George Martin combined the two versions of ‘Strawberry Fields’ and then how he varied ‘Good Morning Good Morning’. These pushed two separate bits together. The Beatles then combined different scraps of songs to make a long ‘tone poem’ for Abbey Road but these were all separate bits linked with more care than usual. That’s John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, George Martin (and top flight engineers like Geoff Emerick). Now think of the way rap songs switch from rap to smooth chorus: great example being Eminem’s ‘Love The Way You Lie’ with Rihanna. These are also stylistic switches whose abruptness was in part the point: the contrast, the first times you heard the songs, played with your expectation about what a song should be (though it rapidly became a cliché in which every song was a rap either stuck in between smooth sections or a smooth section stuck into a rap).
To me, I read the count of 3 as SBE3 extending over the context of the song and within the song. To explain, Tali has always used 3 repeats – the reasons are complicated – and in this song she counts across the count of the styles Start-Between-End and then that plays with what is Between, and also what repeats and what doesn’t repeat in each iteration of a style. This sets up waves or threads that run through the song from its Start through Between to End and back as the meanings reverberate. I think of this in Hindu terms, particularly in the way they relate the ‘gross’ or material aspects as she refers to real seeming events in her life to her most inner self as it proclaims an idealized love that contrasts with the material. Pop goddess indeed, with emphasis on goddess because she makes this, represents this, puts this out, and that unifies her with her creation in, well, the most remarkable way. I can’t think of a parallel outside of the Picasso level.
Back to the bike. I did this workout because 2 minutes is enough time to transition, relax and then work on form and efficiency of the appropriate pelvic wave frequency and amplitude. It takes a number of repetitions to isolate the mechanics. The higher frequency motion starts to draw the knees inward to be as close to the center line as they can get, so the oscillation of the pelvis is contained to drive the leg straight forward and back without extraneous movement. The two frequencies traded places and I was then able to minimize the lower frequency, higher amplitude oscillation so my knees again tracked with minimal extraneous movement. How does this connect to a song? To me, they’re the same thing: I hear music in motion, and I count across the sections so they transition and share similarity while being very different. The bike is highly constraining so I’m writing a song over 15 repetitions of these constrained wave movements. It isn’t as complicated as Tali’s song, but I give myself some credit for connecting thoughts about physical movement contained within larger physical movement while going through a literally exhausting process.
As an aside to myself: one of my favorite riffs ever, perhaps the single riff I sing when I sing a riff is I’m Too Sexy by Right Said Fred, though I do it versions like a Mongolian herder singing I’m too sexy for my yurt. Or Ernie singing I’m too sexy for Bert – you have to get the timing right to drop the ‘for’. And then I change sexy to T-rexy and so on. So when I heard Look What You Made Me Do, I went ‘wha?’ because I sing things like ‘I like to pet the cat, the cat is where it’s at’ or anything to that beat.
jomi: playing with perception 