| LIST 69 | 10 Unusual Forms and Genres of Music |
1
Genetic music
The idea here is to take a sequence of DNA—whether a fragment, a gene, an amino acid, a protein—assign a musical characteristic (such as pitch, chord type, voice, or even a note) to various aspects of a mapped strand (bases, amino acids, molecular weight, light absorption frequencies, etc.), and then play the resulting composition.
David W. Deamer is a pioneer in the field, having created DNA music since the early 1980s. Using some simple rules, he started playing gene sequences on his piano. The first portion of human DNA he tried resembled a waltz; the insulin protein sounds like an Irish jig. Deamer currently has two albums available, with composer Riley McLaughlin.
More recently, Alexandra Pajak, a biology and music major at Agnes Scott College (Decatur, Georgia), created two works—a symphony based on the DNA of the school's founder and a CD of eight synthesized compositions, each one derived from a gene, including that of the Herpes B virus.
Other genetic musicians include Henry Alan Hargrove (A Splash of Life), Munakata Nobuo (“Duet of AIDS”), Susan Alexjander (Sequencia), John Dunn and K.W. Bridges (“Squid Eye Lens,” “Scorpion Stinger,” and “Slime Mold”), M.A. Clark and John Dunn (Life Music), Peter Gena and Charles Strom (“Collagen and Bass Clarinet”), Linda Long (“Calcium Chimes”), Aurora Sánchez Sousa (Genoma Music), and Larry Lang (“Oxy Fugue 9”).
2
Other body music
DNA is the most popular basis for bodily music, but many others exist. In 2003, at a live event called “DECONcert: Music in the Key of EEG,” 50 people were simultaneously hooked up to machines that made music out of their brain activity. Also, genetic musician John Dunn has created the fifteen-minute composition “Theta Music” from brainwaves (it's available on his self-published album Algorithmic Music). As you might imagine, full albums of gray matter music are few and far between; a couple include Cerebral Disturbance by Aube and the 1976 compilation Brainwave Music.
In a small study at the University of Toronto, scientists measured the brainwaves of insomniacs, then had a computer translate the measurements into sound that was sometimes melodious, sometimes cacophonic. Listening to these CDs, the subjects fell asleep significantly faster and stayed asleep significantly longer than subjects who listened to other people's brainwaves.
A number of albums designed to put babies to sleep (they're said to work on adults, too) incorporate sounds based on heartbeats. At least one series—Heartbeat Music Therapy by Terry Woodford—uses an actual human heartbeat as gentle percussion for the lullabies.
Galvonic skin response (GSR) measures electrical activity of the skin, and is believed to reflect a person's internal state, particularly the actions of the parasympathetic nervous system. Several hardware-software devices, including Mental Games by Mind Modulations, will translate your GSR readings into music.
Beyond these forms, the trail goes pretty cold, with just fleeting references to music based on pulse, respiration, and other bodily activities or measurements of those activities. This is definitely a ripe area—practically terra incognita—for musicians to explore.
3
Plant music
“Sound ecologist” Michael Prime created the album L-fields by reading the bioelectric signals from plants, then feeding them into an oscillator. The All Music Guide says: “Prime later compresses, overlays, and integrates sounds from the surrounding environment to the signal and voilà: through a work aesthetically close to electroacoustics, the listener is invited to hear a plant live its life!” The three performers he chose are very telling: marijuana, peyote, and fly agaric mushrooms. Prime did similar things with fruit on David Toop's album Museum of Fruit.
Likewise, after measuring the electrical vibes given off by plants, Michael Theroux arranged the resulting sounds into musical compositions on the album Plant Tones.
Biochemist Linda Long creates compositions by transcribing 3-D models of proteins in parsley and other plants into music, making her work essentially a subgenre of genetic music (item #2, above).
Stretching the genre of plant music to its limit is the First Vienna Vegetable Orchestra, which jams on nothing but musical instruments made out of vegetables (with a few kitchen implements, such as a blender, thrown into the mix). Some of the instruments are simple, such as a tomato or turnip that gets thumped for percussion, but often they're more complex, like the wind instruments carved out of carrots, celery, and cucumbers, or the marimbas made out of radishes. The group's website says that their “musical spectrum ranges from traditional african pieces to classical european concert music through to experimental electronic music.”
The eight musicians perform one or two concerts a month. After each performance, the group's chef chops and cooks the instruments, which the audience and band members then munch. If you can't make it to Europe, you can always buy their two CDs (meal not included).
4
Math music
Math was never my strong suit, so the ways that various numbers, constants, formulae, etc. are translated into music flies several thousand feet over my head. But it sure sounds purty. The largest subgenre is undoubtedly fractal music, though Daniel Cummerow has made compositions from trigonometric functions, prime numbers, and the Fibonacci sequence, among others.
In the Pi Project, over two-dozen musicians created compositions directly based on the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. You know: π (3.141592….). Basically, any aspect of music that can be expressed as pi was employed—frequency, pitch, measure, etc. Others chose to take graphic representations of pi—either the Greek letter itself or the endless string of numbers that is pi—and convert them into sound through various means. Each piece is exactly three minutes and fourteen seconds long.
On an even more complex level, classical composer Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001) applied calculus, probability, game theory, Boolean algebra, set theory, and other brain-crushing forms of mathematics to his work, which is regarded as some of the finest orchestral music of the twentieth century.
5
Underwater music
Michel Redolfi is the Neptune of underwater music. His album Sonic Waters contains original electronic music recorded in pools and the Pacific Ocean. The follow-up, Sonic Waters #2: Underwater Music, 1983-1989, showcases soundscapes derived from natural noises recorded by submerged microphones. In his concerts, Redolfi—while on land—plays his music, which is broadcast on nearby speakers that are completely underwater. Landlubbers hear nothing; you must put at least your head into the drink in order to hear the songs. Redolfi has even written an opera meant to be sung by performers encased in specially-designed bubbles at the bottom of the sea, and vibraphone virtuoso Alex Grillo has been known to team up with him for live sets performed underwater.
Jim Nollman—by virtue of the fact that he plays music with whales—is a de facto underwater musician. His live guitarwork is piped through speakers suspended under a boat. Through a hydrophone, he hears the cetaceans answer him. He then responds musically, and an underwater, interspecies jam session occurs. As part of the same series of experiments, chanting Tibetan monks and a reggae band have also had two-way musical encounters with the whales.
6
Palindromic music
“Palindrome” usually refers to a word or sentence that reads the same backwards as forwards: mom, dad, “Do geese see God?” But anything composed of discrete units, such as music, can be a palindrome. Classic composers including Mozart, Bach, and Haydn created pieces in which time, pitch, and/or melody was reversed at some point (a trick called a “crab canon”).
According to the Wikipedia: “The Icelandic music-band Sigur Rós composed a song [“Staralfur”] on their album Ágætis Byrjun, which partly sounds the same, playing forwards or backwards. Not only symmetric from the notes, but also symmetric in the sound by mixing the reverse music over the original…. The interlude from Alban Berg's opera, Lulu is a palindrome.”
College radio staple They Might Be Giants has a song called “I Palindrome I” in which one verse is a word-by-word (but not letter-by-letter) palindrome:
“Son, I am able,” she said, “though you scare me.”
“Watch,” said I.
“Beloved,” I said, “watch me scare you, though.”
Said she, “Able am I, son.”
7
Toy instruments
The shtick for Pianosaurus, a trio from New York State, was that they played pop-rock on kiddie instruments bought at toy stores. Their only studio album, Groovy Neighborhood, includes covers of Chuck Berry's “Memphis” and John Lee Hooker's “Dimples.”
Although their complete devotion to plinky pianos and Smurf drums is unique, other bands before and after have occasionally taken the same approach. Indie-rockers Self released an all-toy album in 2000, Gizmodgery (with an explicit lyrics warning sticker) replete with Mattel Star Guitar, a See ‘n Say, Little Tykes Xylophone, talking stuffed animals, beeping robots, baby rattles, etc. None other than the Rolling Stones pioneered the approach, when Charlie Watts played a 1930s toy drum kit on the band's rowdy “Street Fighting Man.”
Outside of rock and roll, avant garde pianist Margaret Leng Tan is billed by one of her record labels as “the world's only professional toy pianist.” She plays the full-size version of the instrument, as well the string piano, but it's her 1997 album The Art of the Toy Piano, plus assorted shorter works, that earns her a spot on the list. Tan has played compositions by Phllip Glass, Beethoven, Lennon-McCartney, and John Cage (his 1948 “Suite for Toy Piano” is “the first ‘serious’ piece ever written for” the instrument, according to Tan).
8
Corporate anthems
Companies have always sought to motivate employees, and some of them go to lengths far beyond taping up signs that say, “TEAM = Together Everyone Achieves More.” One such method is to infect workers' minds with a song that practically deifies the corporation. IBM was an early—if not the earliest—pioneer of these efforts. The 1931 edition of “Songs of the I.B.M.” has been reproduced online, and it contains such mind-numbing propaganda as “Ever Onward”:
Ever onward! Ever onward!
That's the spirit that has brought us fame.
We're big but bigger we will be,
We can't fail for all can see,
That to serve humanity
Has been our aim.
Our products now are known
In every zone.
Our reputation sparkles
Like a gem.
Despite such a long track record, the existence of corporate anthems only hit the mass mind in spring 2001, when Chris Raettig started a little website to collect these capitalist ditties. Soon the site was swamped with visitors, who were downloading the songs by the thousand, over a gigabyte of material every hour. The jingle that first caught Raettig's attention was written for a European conference of international accounting firm KPMG's consultants. For simpleminded cheesiness, most of the lyrics would embarrass Barney the Dinosaur. The chorus goes: “KPMG—a team of power and energy. We go for the gold. Together we hold to a vision of global strategy.” Another line actually declared: “We'll be number one, with effort and fun.” The song was remixed by amused Netizens into jungle, hard rock, industrial, and Nokia ringtone versions.
Not to be outdone, accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers commissioned a tune with the lyrics: “We don't sell no dogma. All we've got is skill. Doing each and every client's will.” “Global Technology” by Deutsche Bank contains this bit of doggerel: “Global technology is no easy game to play. A new challenge for all of us, every day.”
In perhaps the most ill-advised move in corporate music history, “Internet solutions provider” Asera wanted to kick it old-school style, so they chose to make “Asera Everywhere” into a rap song:
Yo! Homeboys, homegirls, gather ‘round.
We're poppin’ it, kickin’ it, gettin’ down.
We're hot, we're bad, we're lean and mean.
We're takin' control of the e-biz scene.
Other corporations who took the dive into sonic drivel include Ericsson, Novell, GE, Honeywell, and Ernst & Young. The fad of collecting and listening to corporate songs died rapidly, but companies are surely still making such numbers under the radar.
9
One-man bands
Being able to play two or more instruments at once is a musical tradition that has been much overlooked. Sure, guys like Prince, Paul McCartney, Trent Reznor, and Dave Grohl have played all the instruments on some of their albums, but did they play them all at the same time? I think not.
The earliest known references to simultaneously playing two instruments come from Iceland in the eleventh century. In the journal Musical Traditions, Hal Rammel writes:
[I]t was in vaudeville and the music hall, a setting that encouraged the unique and unforgettable performer, that the one-man band flowered in its wildest varieties. Ragtime composer Wilbur Sweatman in the early 1900s did a vaudeville act playing three clarinets at once and Vick Hyde, a vaudevillian of the 1940s did his finale playing three trumpets at the same time and twirling a baton as he exited the stage. Virtuoso Violinsky concluded his act with a piano-cello duet by fastening a bow to his right knee while his right hand fingered the strings, leaving his left hand to accompany himself on the piano. The piano, generally thought to be a two-handed instrument was played with only the right hand by Paul Seminole in the 1920s while he played guitar with his left, and for jazz musician and comedian Slim Gaillard playing the piano and guitar at the same time was possible by turning up the volume on his electric guitar “…it'll play itself—you just make the chords and hit the strings, feedback!”
This almost unrecognized musical genre is alive and well. In Boston, Eric Royer comprises the totality of Royer's One Man Band. He plays traditional bluegrass with a banjo in his hands, a dobro (related to the slide guitar) across his lap, an acoustic guitar at his feet (he built the contraption that allows him to play it footsie-style), and a harmonica held to his mouth by a brace. Royer has released five albums, including Barefoot Breakdown and Bluegrass Contraption. Alternative music mag The Noise believes that his music sounds “more blended than most five piece bluegrass bands.”
If you think playing a guitar with your feet is impressive, you ain't heard nothing yet. Choctaw one-man band Joe Barrick built a device that allows him to use his tootsies to play guitar, bass guitar, banjo, and snare drum at the same time. With his hands he works a double-necked instrument (also his own creation) that is half mandolin, half guitar, sometimes switching to a fiddle. Around his neck is that staple of one-man bands, the harmonica. That's a total of six or seven instruments, plus vocals, simultaneously.
Hasil Adkins, according to his official website, has been playing “true lonesome country, hopped up blues, and boogie woogie rockabilly nonstop since 1949.” As of early 2004, he's still touring. Considered the progenitor of the psychobilly genre, Adkins wails on an untold number of instruments at once. He claims to play piano and organ with his elbows, and on some tracks he can be heard somehow playing spoons.
Some purists feel that a true one-man band not only plays at least three instruments at once, but must be able to remain mobile while cranking out the jams. Among this extremely rare breed is Australian industrial designer and jazz musician Tom Nicolson, who walks around playing banjo, bass drum, cymbals, kazoo, and whistles, while singing.
10
Animal music
Humans aren't the only animals that make music. Birds and whales are known for their beautiful songs, and they've supplied the content for many “sounds of nature” albums. Recordings of other life forms in the act of singing are harder to come by, but they're around. The bland title Animal Music masks the fact that this album of a team of sled dogs howling together is quite a stunner. A German reviewer marvels: “The chorus of dogs definitely seems to have its lead vocalists and harmonizers and after a while one can hear the motifs of the leading parts being expressed in stretto as though in a fugue, but then also inverted and even, dare I say, in retrograde form.”
At times, humans have attempted to incorporate animal sounds into their music. Mozart swiped some melodies from his pet bird. The Paul Winter Consort played with animal sounds, and on the hopelessly obscure Euro-album Bugs & Beats & Beasts: Natural Techno, Ammer & Console go heavy on the insect sounds and light on the artificial music.
Graeme Revell—cofounder of the experimental German performance group/band SPK—created The Insect Musicians, an album built on the sounds made by crickets, grasshoppers, cicadae, beetles, flies, gnats, wasps, bees, and moths. In many cases, the creepy-crawlies make noises that are inaudible to humans, but through the magic of technology, Revell has brought these hidden sounds to our limited ears. The liner notes of the album explain:
I thus chose to make Volume I of The Insect Musicians a series of vignettes of a multicultural nature.
Each traces a development from the raw sound to its digital transformation and its position in the musical structure. At most 8 different sounds are used in one piece, the better for the ear to trace the modification and its development as syntactic and semantic component in musical organisation. Some sounds (the scrapes & clicks) lend themselves more to rhythm, whilst those more tonal (chirps & buzzes) to melody. I have tried to remain faithful to the essential “nature” of each sound, and where possible to use an insect native to a particular continent in the context of a musical theme based on the ethnic music of that continent.
On the album Natural Rhythms by Ancient Futures, musicians including Michael Morfort play with frogs in Bali and Cali. The album Experimental Musical Instruments: Early Years has a similar track on it in which the aforementioned Jim Nollman (see item #5) plays guitar with a group of whales.
Similarly, the avant-garde/jazz pianist-composer Kirk Nurock has used vocalizations, didgeridoo, and piano to coax dogs, cats, guinea pigs, wolves, sea lions, an owl, and other animals into making yips, howls, squeals, and other noises. He only chooses to work with the individuals who have the most melodic and interesting vocalizations. His live compositions include “Sonata for Piano and Dog,” “The Bronx Zoo Events,” and the three-dog, 20-human chorus of “Howl,” performed at Carnegie Hall. He's currently working on a CD in which jazz musicians and various furry or feathered creatures improvise with each other.
Another form of animal music—probably the rarest—occurs when the critters play instruments, either manmade or improvised. At one point, circuses—including Barnum and Bailey—featured “elephant bands,” but no recordings appear to be extant. At least one entire album of pachyderm music is available—Thai Elephant Orchestra. In it, six young elephants at a conservation center in Thailand play renats (similar to a xylophone), a bow bass, slit drums, and a gong, while sometimes trumpeting with their trunks. Beforehand, David Soldier—founder of Mulatta Records, the label that released the tusked ones' album—thought he'd have to sample the sounds the elephants made, then mix them into a human composition. Turns out the elephants were so musically inclined that the tracks are exactly as they were performed live. Soldier played the songs blind for many people, who all thought they were performed by homo sapiens. A critic at the New York Times even named chamber music groups who play near Lincoln Center as the likely performers!
A New York Times critic—who knew the true source of the music—wrote: “The players improvise distinct meters and melodic lines, and vary and repeat them. The results, at once meditative and deliberate, delicate and insistently thrumming, strike some Western listeners as haunting, others as monotonous.” The Economist remarked: “They clearly have a strong sense of rhythm. They flap their ears to the beat, swish their tails and generally rock back and forth.”
One of the few other such recordings is “Monkey Business”—the first cut on the epic percussion box-set The Big Bang—in which leading nature-recorder Bernie Krause caught chimps making excited guttural sounds and beating on trees in the rain forest. It sure sounds like they're trying to make music. 
Unusual Band # 1
Burqa Band
This trio of Muslim women is known to have performed only once. Sometime during the summer of 2003, a German music producer and his colleagues were running a workshop in Kabul to reintroduce Afghans to their musical heritage. They asked the only female in attendance, their translator, if she'd like to play drums. On the spur of the moment, she and two friends donned their blue burqas and banged out a rock song, with the translator on skins, another woman on bass, and a third singing in English: “You give me all your love, you give me all your kisses, and then you touch my burqa, and don't know who it is.” Agence France-Presse reports: “All that remains of the ephemeral alliance of the Burqa and rock is an amateur video clip and a song remixed by Berlin DJ Barbara Morgenstern which has become a modest summer-time favourite [in Germany].”