Daniel Wang

Gerd Janson

How many people here are actually familiar with Mr. Daniel Wang?

Daniel Wang

I don’t expect everyone to know me. I’m not a superstar.

Gerd Janson

If you have the slightest interest in disco music, you might have come across his label, Balihu Records, which means what?

Daniel Wang

It was actually nonsense. A ballyhoo means in English, a big commotion, like a big noise. It’s actually nonsense. When I made the label everything about it’s spiritual grooves, deep house. I just wanted to avoid patching without even meaning to. It should be kind of nonsense. Ever since disco was invented. How many words do we have now for what we call dancing? Trip-hop. Two step. Drum & bass. The point of all of this is the possibilities of music over a four-four beat.

Daniel Wang

It's been that way for about 100 years actually. Blues was music over 4-4 beat, rock is, bassanova is. I wanted to not attach, say, this is house, you know? I just use the word disco lot because, when this was all invented, about 1973 officially is the proper birth date of disco, “Love Is the Message,” that's the whole Philly sound. “Gamble and Huff,” if you're familiar with it. We're playing with that same idea since that time for the past 33 years or so. It's been called disco since that time, it was a much more open word back then. It's kind of like the Tower of Babel, where everything split apart and went into different genres. But obviously, like a big tree, they go back to the same root. We're going to have lots of very corny metaphors here today. I apologize.

Gerd Janson

Didn't you start Balihu back then initially to get DJ gigs?

Daniel Wang

Yeah, I realized the only way in 1993 anybody would get a gig, I mean this is 1993, Danny Tenaglia and Junior Vasquez...

Gerd Janson

We're talking about New York right?

Daniel Wang

We're talking about New York. I still I feel this way, nobody needs an openly homosexual Chinese-American DJ pop star. I still don't think it's ever going to happen, and that's OK. I'm happy to do my own thing. I realized the only way to get any attention and to say OK, here is somebody who obviously knows something about disco or house music is make a record, you know. I just took all the records, I took 17 samples. Because everybody was a sampling at the time, and strung them together and made a parody record of, “OK, here's my idea if you were to sample all of the old disco records.” Of course, the joke was you couldn't recognize a single one. Well, you could recognize about three out of 17. There was this sort of joke on it, if anybody recognizes all these records, I'll give you a trip to Paris or something. Eventually one person named a few samples.

Gerd Janson

But not all.

Daniel Wang

Not all.

Gerd Janson

Maybe shall we show one of your early tracks?

Daniel Wang

All right. What should we do about the DVD?

Gerd Janson

Oh you want to show the little piece?

Daniel Wang

Let's do this little introduction first, for five minutes, then, slightly sentimental, but since we spent three hours yesterday talking about what somebody did in the bedroom at the age of 18, we can spend five or six minutes and watch a poetic lovely video of a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale about music. And life, and other things. Then we'll come back to the proper topics here.

(video: unknown)

OK, I think that's it. Just a simple comment and opinion on the current state of music.

Gerd Janson

So this is where we are today? The sweet music disappeared and now the machines took over?

Daniel Wang

Yeah. It's actually quite amazing, because I think the tale was written 1880 or something, when did Hans Christian... Google? Anyone have their computer on? When did Hans Christian Andersen live?

Gerd Janson

I think about ...

Daniel Wang

1880, I think. And this is actually the beginning already of mechanical music. Let's talk a little history now. I've been living in Berlin for the last three years, and there's these amazing machines from about 1900 to 1910, we're talking, in fact I can draw them for you. Now this becomes practical. Here's another question. If anyone has the answer for this, Chinese bells, what are they for? From 2,800 years ago? The answer will be revealed later in this lecture. But in Germany, if you go, there's these huge things, and they look like this. Gerd, have you seen these things?

Gerd Janson

I don't think so.

Daniel Wang

They're actually in, they're also in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London if you go. Just imagine this is covered with dots, these things were from about 1900, and they're actually like the first of the mechanical hand crank things. They're huge. They're this big, or they can be this big, and people already had dance parties, I'm talking DJ dance parties, in 1900 to 1910 using large mechanical wheels. There's even a strange woman in East Germany. She was a transsexual east German in the ’60s who went from becoming a man to a woman, and she collected these things. She had thousands of them, and they were in this archive in East Germany. I've yet to see these, but I'm told they exist, and a lot of them lost. Again, this DJ thing, going back over 100 years already, and the invention of mechanical music also goes back 100 years, so yes. I think we're in a state of mechanical music having almost completely replaced, yeah...

Gerd Janson

Sweet music?

Daniel Wang

Organic, human played music.

Gerd Janson

Maybe we should show them what you did as you started out.

Daniel Wang

All right, so this is how Gerd and I got to know each other. You know what, let's do an overview, because I don't want to give you the impression that I'm going to sit here for three hours and talk about what I do. In fact, this whole talk, I hope, will be about ten minutes now. Five minutes about myself, and the rest, can we open the thing please? Let's take an overview. Alright, if you go to the second page, some things to think about. The first things that came to mind were, it's personal opinion again. It's perfectly all right to be asocial and it's OK not to like or buy stuff. We're all here, and we want to be polite, we want to be nice to each other, and lots of people here, I think, almost everybody here is talented and has something to say. If I were running this camp, I'd almost want to say turn off the computer, turn off the mobile, and turn off the email, MySpace especially. Because music, people who really concentrate on music, does anyone know Erik Satie? We all know our Erik Satie right? [sings melody from Gymnopédie No. 1] Yes, famous theme? Does anyone know how he died? He lived alone in a room for 15 years, and when he died, he was covered in old newspapers and umbrellas, because he was so afraid that every time he went out, he was afraid of rain or something like that. He collected old umbrellas. You know how he actually made music right? Why he started making ambient music? Because there was too much loud accordion music in the cafes. I was thinking this yesterday, when the radio show was blasting out over the speakers during dinner, he simply wanted quieter music so he could digest his food. There's actually been studies by the American military in the ’50s and ’60s that say loud music actually disturbs digestion and is not good for your health. I really wanted to put on some Satie during dinner yesterday.

Number two, why we're here, what we're going to explain in a minute. Just as a painter cannot use only one color and straight lines to paint, it's really about expanding our minds, understanding chords and melodies and harmonies, and also tone palette, which we'll get into a little bit. Let's see, I'm going to jump down a bit here. I think maybe what always scared me most of all about modern music is the amount of force that it entails. I mean, you're talking about 120 dB's of sound coming at you. We kind of live in a “might makes right” world right now, with George Bush running things and everything. Whoever has the biggest bomb wins, but I don't think that should be the case, and you probably don't either. Might should not make right, especially with music. But like it or not, even with so many DJs talking about peace and love and world whatever, I think they follow exactly the same principle. Whatever's loudest and thickest and fattest is what cuts through, and the rest doesn't really matter. Frankly, it’s a great way to destroy everything that's great around you.

Probably the thing that bothers me most of all is things like MTV. As we all know, music has been going downhill probably, since about early ’80 s. It's exactly when MTV came in. This is when the picture and propaganda replaced music. More often that not – almost always – music is basically marketed toward a social group. It's saying, "You're gay; you listen to this music. You're black; you listen to this music. You're white; you listen to this music." MTV has enforced that. No matter what, we can't avoid it, even in what we do, thinking, "This is right." Looking at music as a pure, I don't want to say as a pure mathematical or scientific phenomenon, but in the ’60s and ’70s, there were no such distinctions. Everybody listened to disco. It all came together, Latin music, Salsa, percussion, rock, blues, classical, it was all there. There was really no distinction. The idea that there should be any distinction is purely a marketing ploy trying to separate people.

This might be totally obvious, but we have to start with this premise. At any point in the lecture if anyone says, "Oh that's not black music. That's not real," or, "Oh, you know that's not a proper classical transition. Bach would never have played that." I think we have to throw that out. We have to throw out those pre-conceives. So, thinking this, I started making records, and this is how Gerd and I met. What are we supposed to hear now? Here's something that... This is not necessarily something I'm proud of. This is maybe something I produced that you'd like.

Gerd Janson

Yeah, that I like, and that you did at a very early stage. I think you're pretty dissatisfied these days with what you did back in the day.

Daniel Wang

Right. Let's just say the first few records, I just sampled a lot of stuff. I just took the things that I liked. I didn't know what I was doing. I'd done a theory course in college, but I never learned to apply it. People say often there's a ten-year rule. You start out doing something, about ten years later, you'll come to the revelation of how all the knowledge that you've acquired actually applies to what you do. It takes a while, actually. I mean, with me, I only feel like, after 12 or 13 years, it's really coming together. Now, a technical difficulty. Any questions or comments so far?

Audience Member

Do you get a lot of flack for your opinion?

Daniel Wang

Actually, less and less. I can't even believe I'm here, and people are giving me a chance to speak to so many people.

Gerd Janson

Because your views are pretty, how do you say?

Daniel Wang

View, OK. Let's go to the first page now, and see what we're actually going to talk about, and see what we think about those views. We're going to listen to some records, first of all, so we don't sit here in silence again. It's so boring to listen to somebody talk about their opinions and not hear what they're actually talking about.

(music: Daniel Wang – unknown)

Gerd Janson

OK, here we go.

Gerd Janson

Back to the beginning.

Daniel Wang

I didn't make it; I just strung it together. Actually, I could never find the people to pay, anyhow. It was MCA. In case you're wondering, on later records, I put all the samples on the label, and it said, "Here are the originals. If you like this, then you should just go buy the original."

Gerd Janson

But it's still a great record.

Daniel Wang

And it’s a decent re-edit. It took the best parts of that record, which were actually very short; that guitar solo's like this long. It's 20 seconds. I just extended it and made it longer.

Gerd Janson

It's a great record to dance to and have fun to.

Daniel Wang

Let's do a quick overview. OK? In this package, you will find… What do we find? Overview: Personal journey we're talking about, how I got into this whole thing. That's, I hope, the only personal part. Page one. And then, finding records. I started seeing this list. Now, we're onto page one and two. See these lists here?

I was living in San Francisco, it was about 1991. My friend said, "You've gotta' see this magazine.” There are these two gay, black guys from Chicago who put out a big list of all the records that were “house” records for them, up until about 1987. Which was already amazing. This is 1991. There was some Strictly Rhythm records, that was it. No one talked about house music the way they do now. People didn't even really talk about techno that much either. Like Derrick May, like he was saying yesterday, only in a few warehouse parties. Here was this list of a hundred records that I'd never heard of. Furthermore, you'd go out to the record shop, and they'd be everywhere for two or three dollars. You'll recognize some of these. Shall we go down the list a bit? Does everyone know what “Love Is the Message” is? Most? Kind of. “Love Is the Message” is the number one house... the first. 1973 is what I was talking about.

Then we go down the list. I think that Trussel – the thing that was just sampled – was number 60. “I Love It,” by Trussel. We went and found this record for like three dollars, and it was just amazing. I decided I would go – and you would get these things on bootlegs – I would go to every record shop, and I wouldn't stop until I found every record on this list, and found out why they were good. A lot of time I would buy them and I would think, "This is total crap. Why would anybody play this?" I was getting into Strictly Rhythm and all this stuff at the time. The bass drum sometimes is really tiny; sometimes it's very corny and kitschy like Clark Sisters “You Brought the Sunshine” is actually kind of a swing beat. It's like [sings the beat] bum-bu, be-dum-de, be-dum-de, be-dum-de kind of beat. It's not at all disco. This is for your reference, by the way, too. Maybe you'll go and check out some of these records some day. This is “Love is the Message.”

(music: MFSB – “Love Is the Message”)

Daniel Wang

Let’s skip quickly to page – in the Xerox copies, it’s page eight, page eight and nine. There’s a book I recommend strongly. It’s called Music, the Brain and Ecstasy, and we’re not talking about ecstasy, the drug. We’re talking about the feeling of ecstasy. There’s a whole bit about, it’s a book that basically, it’s probably the best book of the type I’ve ever found. It’s all about musical research, about every aspect of music actually – melody, harmony, preference. Autistic people who can play music perfectly but who can’t, who have an IQ of 20, for example. There’s a great story in there that I can tell you in a bit.

Taste. What is musical taste and why do people carry it to such extremes? We use the word taste not just as an explanation but for justification. Some people prefer mangos, the other people prefer papaya. It begins with the notion of the role that music should play in your life. It says folk singer, the important thing is not only is it good music, but what is the music good for? Before everything else, people use music for mood enhancement. We have known for a long time that different personality types are attracted to different kinds of drugs, legal and illegal. So there’s a parallel here. We take music; it’s just like taking a drug, isn’t it? Easy listening is the kind of martini, we want to get laid back like marijuana. We want psychedelic stuff with classical or psychedelic rock.

Let’s move on to the next page, page nine. I think the critic is very objective. He talks about classical versus rock. Obviously, there’s something valid in both of them. In fact, it’s too bad that more people don’t go to classical concerts now, because that’s probably a little bit what’s needed, but classical can be so stiff and so boring, who can blame you? Here we go.

“Some social critics think the symphony orchestra is capitalist oppression. There’s a strict hierarchy.” We’re on page nine here in the middle. The orchestra is stratified. “Everything is uniform. The music is written by expert composers and expert musicians. The audience takes no part.” You’re not allowed. You just sit there and listen, isn’t it? “You simply consume what is offered. In short, the orchestra’s a music factory.”

Next we go down. “By comparison, a rock concert is all barricade and guillotine. It is a symbol of rebellion.” He says, dah dah dah, it’s a place to hang out, talk with friends. I put a question mark here that says, "Rock is also profoundly anti-intellectual," which I think is highly problematic. I mean, you know, I won’t explain that any further.

But if we move on in the paragraph, what’s interesting is it says, “Despite all these factors that we say,” some people like reggae, some people, you know, I think everybody here probably says, “We like a bit of everything,” and that’s perfectly true actually. I don’t think there’s anybody who would be here if we didn’t realize there’s something outside of the little genre that we started out, that got us into this, whether it’s R&B or hip-hop or jazz or whatever.

“We make musical choices that are neither personal nor musical. We take on, we – people in general – take on music to blend in with their peers.” We often deal with this, because we’ve all DJ’d for crowds where it’s all about [makes heavy rumbling sound] or, rock! [makes sound]. “This power force overrides, apparently, considerations of individual neurology. Some social psychologists have gone so far as to suggest we imprint to a preferred musical style during adolescents the same way young animals imprint, they get attached, to their mothers. A lot of this happens during the years from about ten to 12.”

I think this imprinting, it never really stops there, doesn’t it? Because at about age 17 or 18, well, 14 or 15, you start discovering sexuality. That’s one thing this thing certainly doesn’t talk about, is what role sexuality plays in music.

Gerd Janson

What role did it play for you? In regards to music.

Daniel Wang

I can't, you know… That's a good question. I would say definitely when I discovered I was gay and I was going out to gay clubs and listening to house music. It wasn't just that because most of the clubs I went to weren't so much gay clubs, there were actually, there was always more black people than gay people, actually, in general. The really strong contingent, the people who really danced were the gay people, obviously. The gay black people were, you know, doing all this. [shakes around like crazy] I'll just say it simply: They taught me to be free. They taught me to just throw all your cares away and don't be embarrassed. Don't be ashamed. That's what's the whole vogue-ing and breakdancing thing too. You know, you look ridiculous. You do look ridiculous spinning on your head on a floor. You know, but if you do it well enough and your soul is in it, whatever, it doesn't matter. That's probably the biggest lesson that soul music and black music taught the entire rest of the world for the past 100 years is be free, let it out, put your body like Stephanie Mills thinks. Put your body into the music. Don't let it only be in your head. That's one of the most important things. Like people said of Chaka Khan. She's one of the greatest singers because she sings with her whole body. If you look at actually all the great soul singers that way. They sing with their whole body.

It's also very interesting because, obviously, microphone recording made a lot of things possible. Like in the ’50s ever since the time of Chet Baker. People say Chet Baker and Ella Fitzgerald wouldn't even be possible without the microphone because these people were not singing. That actually kind of comes back in the ’60s and ’70s with the divas. They were people who were whispering into the microphone sometimes and without a microphone it wouldn't be possible. I mean, why do you have opera and this kind of singing in the 18th century. [does a big loud operatic “aaah!”] There's no other way to amplify the sound in a big concert hall.

Gerd Janson

So, technology is a good thing.

Daniel Wang

Technology is many in times a wonderful thing. Also, I want to say this thing about repetitive. There's always this conflict between do I want to create tension and build and all the way Bach and Debussy and how all these classical people wrote orchestras. There is such a thing as getting into a trance. Where's our mathematics professor here? Who is that guy who I was talking with yesterday?

Gerd Janson

I think you're talking about Richard, but he's...

Daniel Wang

Richard's not a participant.

Gerd Janson

No.

Daniel Wang

He's not? OK, I'm sorry.

Gerd Janson

He just cares for them.

Daniel Wang

Oh, does anyone know Richard your caretaker? Richard's the tall guy. He actually studies mathematics and he showed me this incredible graph yesterday about certain chaos patterns. You know, chaos patterns are those goofy things you get the [shakes his hands around]. And the more you look at them they keep on changing. They do that. There are other different kinds of mathematical formulas which describe behavior in populations. Behaviors in human beings like smoking tobacco. It's interesting. You start out with any point and the graph he showed me looked like this. Hey! Paper. [writes on his paperboard] The graph was fascinating. It looked like this. You start out with this very simple mathematical formula. Where's my other pen? Oh, here it is. OK, this is just random mathematical formula. This is X, this is Y. For X we have negative one-third X plus X squared. Then for Y equals negative four. Something really simple. You start out with a dot here.

Gerd Janson

Not that simple.

Daniel Wang

OK, the graph looked like this. It bends, it bends, it bends, it bends. This is exactly how it looked. After a while, strangely no matter what numbers you put in the graph freezes. It just stays right there. It doesn't move. This describes behavior’s patterns. It obviously happens in human societies and in our brains. It seems to me to prove that there is such a thing as a locking groove. That you get into this trance and you just don't get out of it and it feels really good. I'm not going to argue with that because, you know, if it feels good, do it.

I'm not denying there is this thing. At a certain point there's also this thing called boredom. I mean, after a while it's like how much more? You know, like “The Emperor and the Nightingale.” I don't need to say anymore. A picture says a thousand words. How do we at the same time get the wonderful lessons of African music, of falling into a trance, of having repetition, of having [sings a rhythm]. And at the same time us having, grabbing classical progressions and all those things that really make music beautiful? I think it's possible to have both of those things. A lot of those lessons, in a very naïve way what people put together as disco music in the '70s is probably the closest thing we'll ever get to that because when you look at everything from ABBA to the most basic like Van McCoy, "The Hustle." We're going to play that in a minute. The structures are so similar to what people like Bach were already doing in 1780. When Bach created equal temperament keyboard, which is... [plays major scale on keyboard] Not a pretty sound. Let's change the sound a bit. [fiddling with keyboard] Why's it so buzzy?

When Bach started playing with this equal temperament keyboard around 1780, I think, he really laid down all the rules which would be used up until now for the next 250 years. But they hadn't really discovered rhythm yet. Not the way that African-America showed us in the 20th century. Actually, I shouldn't just say Africa-America because in Brazil, obviously, something parallel happened where you had a mixture of European and African cultures and incredible things happened there, too. What were we talking about?

Gerd Janson

Mathematics.

Daniel Wang

Mathematics. Oh, the locking groove, that's right. How do we get this. I think maybe we're going to move to Bach now. So, for me, I guess, the personal mission was how can I find out how all this became possible at all. And here we're going to get into some technical stuff.

Gerd Janson

But if you have any questions.

Daniel Wang

Any questions so far? Sorry, please, yes.

Audience Member

You said, was it back in ‘91, that you found that list and you went and you got all the records off of that list, correct, and you wanted to listen to them to find out why they were good?

Daniel Wang

I just wanted to know what they were. I mean, like, somebody says to you, let’s find an example. Like Baskin-Robbins, 51 flavors. All your life you had vanilla, and suddenly someone says, “There’s this shop where you can get strawberry, kiwi, fudge, vanilla, everything.” You just go to the shop.

Audience Member

Did that list make the standard for which you would deem good and bad in music?

Daniel Wang

It wasn’t necessarily. Because, as I was saying, I would get this list and sometimes I bought the records, and I’d be like, “I wouldn’t play this. This is horrible.” Or, “This sounds like crap.” Or, “This is way too like this record.” “This is way too fast.” “This is 134 BPM.” We all know that, because we’ve all played with a drum machine. I’m thinking, “But ‘house music’ is supposed to be 120 BPM,” or Tony Humphries’ DJ makes it only 116BMP. How can I possibly play that? Who’s going to listen to that?” I didn’t know that it was a bunch of gay men with tambourines. This stuff surprised me, and a lot of the records I still don’t have. Because I realized, “Maybe I don’t have something to learn from this record. Maybe it’s not as good as someone else thought it was.” I hope that answers.

Audience Member

Yeah. For sure.

Daniel Wang

Where were we?

Gerd Janson

Don’t you feel like Don Quixote sometimes fighting against windmills?

Daniel Wang

Yeah. There’s a little bit of that, because I wonder... No. I don’t believe that. No. I actually believe that all human beings the world over, the more you DJ, I really believe that – this sounds really corny now – I really believe that music is the most universal thing and is the closest thing to love and truth we’ll ever find, and if you don’t believe that, you shouldn’t be doing music. And furthermore, that these are things that are built into our brains, which I would like to prove or discuss seriously in a minute. And if you reach down close enough, you can touch everyone. Because this was the case in the ‘60s and ‘70s, and only now, with massive commercialization and MTV and all this media bullshit, have we somehow accepted that there are these separate categories and tribes which are, especially on MTV, white people and black people or suburban people and urban people.

What’s really functioning in the back of the human brain is more or less the same. Especially when it comes to music. The ‘70s seem to show us that for a moment; and maybe the ‘50s, too, when you had jazz, when you had bossa nova. Everybody can get into a great bossa nova song, like “One Note Samba” or “Girl From Ipanema.” “Girl From Ipanema,” somebody sing it. [sings] We can all sing it. “Happy Birthday.” “Merry Christmas.” We can all sing it.

Gerd Janson

But what is your solution to the problem?

Daniel Wang

The solution – Red Bull. [laughs] I hope, I’ll just say it right now. What I hope when you go home, when you take with you today, I’m not a very good musician and I can’t really play the keyboard and the guitar properly. What I’ve got accumulated is a great knowledge of what this thing is. And if everyone goes home today and you’re no longer content to make what you’ve been making, which mostly I’m guessing is structurally, relatively simple. Or a repetitive thing based around loops. Or you’ve been content to do that so far. Or maybe you need more time in life because it’s taken me a long time – maybe 10 years or so – in life to discover, you have to go home with a conviction that this really matters and that repetition’s not enough and making a simple hit is not enough.

Because making good music is something, I hate to say this, but it’s between you and God. And I don’t mean God in religious, because I’m not really religious. I’m not Islamic or Christian, a little bit Buddhist, maybe, but it’s between you and God because there are rules of physics and mathematics out there in the universe.

Even if Bach didn’t discover this stuff and they hadn’t calculated these scales, do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do, they’d be there in the universe anyway. If you look all around you – I’m really sounding like a religious nut, I know. If you look at the way plants grow in the Fibonacci sequence, 1-3-5-8-13 and so on, it’s all around you. In fact, we’re going to get to that, about how plants react growing to music.

So why don’t we go to the universal stuff? Really quickly. One minute here. Rethinking music, dance music. How we got into this. I played you one example. We can name off hundreds of thousands. I was actually going to play you, and you probably know this, what are we going to do?

Number one. First of all, we got into sounds. We’ll get into that later. George Benson, “Give Me the Night.” Anybody know that? [sings] Again, the changes in there. It does a change to 1-4-5 in the middle again. Michael Jackson, “Off the Wall.” [sings] We know about that stuff.

So I started thinking about all these records and sort of put them into a category in my mind. Rethinking music. Here on this first page again. Level zero. We just invented this, because he’s always saying, “Danny, what’s running in your head right now?” I’m saying, “It’s a big zero.” Zero. Zero. Zero. What does that mean? The groove is not changing. It’s just doing the same thing over and over again. Dah-dah-dah-dah-dah, and we’ll go to this in a minute.

Level one. It seemed like there was some records that seemed to have an added sonic complexity. For example, let’s make an example of this. Some records have a great groove, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Oh. Here’s a great one. Here’s a great example. Chic, “I Want Your Love,” one of the best disco groups of all time. Well, there are hundreds of them. Although it’s not really fair to say that this is a total disco groove because it actually does a very subtle thing in the bass line already. It’s basically going back and forth between two keys.

(music: Chic – “I Want Your Love”)

Chic is more sophisticated than we thought. OK? This is, you might say it’s...

Gerd Janson

Do you know, Danny? Do you know Moodymann’s, “I Can’t Kick This Feeling When It Hits?” Its samples?

Daniel Wang

We just sampled it, right? Well, I think we’re talking about level zero again. Sorry. Level zero. Steal groove from the past, loop it, repeat it, never changes, never varies. You’ll never get a key change out of it. You’ll never get anything more, you never even get the second lyric. Don’t play it. Don’t believe the hype. I don’t care. Moodymann’s going to hear this. He’s going to beat me up.

Gerd Janson

I think Moodymann doesn’t care either.

Daniel Wang

Right. Well, you know, I mean, this is the thing about conviction. We have all these people who clearly know what dance music can be. He knows how good Chic is, so why don’t you try to make something like this instead of stealing from other people. I mean, that becomes a moral and an ethical question, not a musical question.

Gerd Janson

But playing the devil’s advocate again. How many people are actually involved in doing a record like Chic’s “I Want Your Love?” It’s more than one guy.

Daniel Wang

Maybe about eight people. Well, also, thanks to computers, I would say, on the first one, if there weren’t computers, then programming all this stuff or an eight-track, I wouldn’t be making music either. So I’m glad for this technology. If you understand the principles, one person can do it. I’m not saying it’s going to sound exactly like that, but you can at least give it a try. And if you’ve got two or three other musicians, a studio, and a good violin player and a good horn player, you may come pretty close. I actually want to talk about this in a minute, it’s also here. With about eight tracks you could do this record. And again, how many tracks did the Beatles use in the ’60s? Four-track. Carpenters. Does anyone know Carpenters, as in ... Oh, there’s our mathematics professor! [sees Richard in the audience] Are you happy? [points to drawing board] That’s what he showed me last time in honky tonk, the locking groove. Pure pleasure.

Carpenters, most ‘70s, “We just used eight to twelve tracks,” actually. When you think about how much good music came from the Carpenters, with a little training and a little ingenuity, and a good voice, you realize that all the stuff with ProTools, like 256 tracks, do you really need that? If you really need 256 tracks to do like drum & bass, you really should think about another career. Now I’m sounding really sarcastic, but ... Okay.

Level two, we move onto more basic R&B, blues, pop composition, and you notice something ... Like a record like “The Break,” like what is played here might be a good example. The changes are not complex. This starts out in I think it’s actually D minor like bum-bum, bum-bum, bum-bum, bum-bum, and then does the changes to higher, higher tension, back to the original. It’s a very basic composition. But of course you can also have extended cyclical modular compositions. That means we really modulate to a lot of different keys; we come back to the same key but we’re going through some very complex changes.

Let’s do an example of this. I think I’ll even play you the next Balihu record. I found an obscure classical record from some East European symphony orchestra. They had done a version of Debussy’s “Clair de Lune,” which is a composition from about 1890, I think, and done it as a disco version. What number is it? Okay, number eight. Right. This might take about a minute or two. But notice, again, we start out with a very simple tonal center, it’s going to modulate to a lot of different keys, and it has a lot of color. It’s not all major and minor. There are wonderful nines and things. There’s a violin doing a triplet going dah-dah-dah, dah-dah-dah, dah-dah-dah, dah-dah-dah over a four beat, okay? One two three, four five six, seven eight nine, ten, 11, 12. Okay?

(muisc: Oto Gelb – “Clair de Lune“)

I hope that wasn’t too pedagogic, too pedantic. Did you hear the entire cycle of modulations going over ... I don’t know how many bars that was. Thirty-two bars or something?

Gerd Janson

It sounds like something from the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack.

Daniel Wang

It does, yeah. Beethoven was in the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, so why not Debussy?

Again, I’m going to say, I’m not a big classical [fan]. For example, there’s loads of classical I don’t know. There’s classical we all don’t know, and there are lots of people I know who are perfectly trained in classical who don’t necessarily understand the principle of why it’s beautiful. Especially people who were forced to play classical violin, piano from an early age. I think a lot of them are not necessarily happy with what they have to do.

For people like us who are so deeply in music, especially who want a beat and everything, I think we’re in a great position to appreciate this kind of stuff. It can show us the possibility of what we actually want to do in our own music. Furthermore, something like a triplet should make perfect sense, because anybody ... Who here plays conga or plays Latin percussion? A few people? More? Come on. Really? No. Really? No? All right. You’ve got a conga, you’ve got boom-chak-a boom-chak. Often you have, what does it feel like? Back-ga-ga-ga-ga-ga-ga, right? You have these triplets going, which is doing the exact same thing as the violin. When you’ve got a computer keyboard, you can do exactly the same thing on your keyboard. Should be no conflict, actually. You should be able to put all the things together.

Gerd Janson

What would you recommend to an 18-year-old kid these days, feeling the urge to do music?

Daniel Wang

Oh, yeah.

Audience Member

Do you think people should maybe play an instrument before having a computer?

Daniel Wang

Yeah, I think that would help but I think that’s not the only way. You can use the computer to learn, too. I actually use the computer, I feel, in the end, to learn what all this stuff is about. It did help.

Audience Member

I’m saying this because it’s like, where I grew up, a lot of music that come out wouldn’t have come out if it wasn’t for computers, and there’s a whole scene because people could afford computers and I guess a lot of us wouldn’t be doing music –

Daniel Wang

Me too.

Audience Member

Yeah. I don’t know, I’m just ... I hear what you’re saying, but then I...

Daniel Wang

I think you’re right. Obviously, with all technology ... It’s both ways. Even the piano ... This is getting ... We really should move on to this topic and I don’t want to keep you here all day, okay, but I hope there’s substance that can keep us interested. Even the piano was, after all, considered technology. This was rejected by most ... This scale was basically rejected because it actually doesn’t have pure tonality, and this we’re going to get into right here. After we’ll look at –

Gerd Janson

There’s another question.

Daniel Wang

Another question?

Gerd Janson

Torsten has a question.

Daniel Wang

Torsten has a question? Lying on the couch.

Audience Member

But what about the political ramifications? Because obviously when you talk about Chic and all those lush string arrangements and all those lovely strings, especially in the ‘70s and so on, how many string players and orchestra players have played on the not very severe conditions and so on and have properly exploited them? Nobody here would be wanting to reduplicate that kind of thing.

Daniel Wang

Yes. Okay. I think we have to separate the two issues. First of all, the quality of the music that’s made, I don’t want to say it’s nothing to do with ... Every musician should be paid properly for what they do, and every artist in general. But at the same time, it’s an illusion to say something like this is ... I’m not actually a Nike fan, but the beauty or ugliness of a Nike sneaker, in its design, has, in a way, nothing to do with the fact whether a child laborer in China made it or not. It does in social, in whatever realm, but if there’s such a realm as pure aesthetics as in, “This is a beautiful line for a shoe and this is not,” that line has nothing to do with who made that line or who had to manufacture it in the factory. All right, now we’re getting into some have issues, too, like, “Is there such a thing as absolute beauty.” In music, I have to say there is, and we’re going to move on to this. But there are scientific and real reasons for what we describe as beauty, this phenomenon in music, the harmonies and tonalities.

Audience Member

What about social conditions?

Daniel Wang

Right. First of all, I’m not sure if the musicians were really exploited in ‘70s. I think a lot of them were session players, and a lot of them in fact were happy to have this work. There were a large number of East European classical players in the ‘70s in New York who were just like, “Look, come in the studio. We’ll play you 50 dollars for the afternoon. Just come and play the piano,” I mean, or, “Play the violin.” It’s easy for them. “Look, just play a few legatos. Play a few styles.” [mimics violin player] Da-da-da-da-da. “Done.” “Okay, bye.” You got your fifty dollars. Where’s the exploitation? You know, they didn’t write the song, they’re not the producers. They were there to serve a role, a small cog in the machine, and they accepted willingly. I don’t think that’s exploitation, you know?

Audience Member

Do you think it’s the same kind of thing if you were to hire a couple of East European session players right now, because there’s plenty of them out there.

Daniel Wang

Personally, I’m a little more fair. When I hire session players, I pay them quite a bit, actually. If it’s my friends, especially. I say, “Okay, for five people here, everybody gets 20%,” you know? But in those days you had forty people, and furthermore, in the social context, it was considered normal.

You might be surprised, but for people who can really play music, I don’t think they think so much about, “Where’s my rights?” I think people who do music nowadays, especially with hip-hop, it’s like, “Yo, I made this beat. Where’s my money?” Wrong. It’s like, anybody can fucking do that. I’m sorry. If you really... Playing. Done. If somebody pays you 50 dollars, that’s fine, because if I’m really a good musician, I know I can do something else with my skills and my knowledge than, [makes exaggerated movements on keyboard then holds out his hand] “Where’s my money?” I don’t think that’s exploitation, you know? People did it willingly. Nobody was forcing them.

By the way, I know you’re asking a serious question. I don’t want to be like demonizing this. Like tambourine players, you know like “Funky Town.” My friend Ashley told me they knew the guy that did the tambourine on “Funky Town.” “Da-da-da. Won’t you take me to Funky Town?” You just go to the street and ask some guy from the gay club who had a tambourine in his bag, “Come on here, we’re going to give you some drugs,” you know? “We’re going to give you some cocaine. Just come in the studio.” “OK.” “Can you just play the tambourine over this track for the next three hours?” “Sure, no problem.” Dum-da-da-dum-da-da-dum. Oh, god. Sorry. Really made a noise there. That’s how those records were made and that’s the energy that was captured. Those people weren’t exploited. They did it willingly. They probably died from other causes later, you know... And I think to a certain extent, the only person really making the record, the producer and possibly the person playing the keyboard, especially someone like Quincy Jones. You look at George Benson and all this stuff. There has to be a central directing intelligence in any project.

OK, I’m going to do a quick experiment now actually. Anybody really know what the role of an orchestra conductor in an orchestra? Like why is the guy standing there with his baton? Has anybody ever thought about this, right? Can we do a quick experiment? I saw this on Japanese TV and it really worked. It was amazing, OK? I’m the producer; you guys are all the instruments. You’re the vibraphone player. Can we halve the room in two sections, this way and this way. OK? You guys, give me a note. Sing me [plays a C note on a keyboard]... Yes, you’re going to have to sing. Sing me, “Ah!” OK. You guys sing me [plays another note], “Ah!” Nice harmony. “Ah, ah.” OK. What is the guy with the baton doing? I want, “Ah!” “Ah!” OK. Both? Right? Without a central intelligence directing things, nothing happens. Everybody else is just that, all right. Thanks I’ve been wanting to do that ever since I saw it on Japanese TV last year. It works! It was a program for schoolchildren, like... Sorry. Chairman Mao has a question now.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Yeah, I was curious to know where the music of James Brown in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s fit into...

Daniel Wang

OK. Firstly, I’ll be honest. James Brown, we all know... This is the political element, definitely, and it’s totally important. Who can say that it’s not important that, “Say it loud, I’m black and I’m proud,” and all that stuff. This is one of those things where, again, we get back to locking grooves. There’s nothing wrong with a great rhythm and a beat. For me, harmonically, if I think like a stiff classical musician, there’s nothing happening harmonically in James Brown. He’s just playing that same beat and the same bass line over and over again. Make it funky, it’s just, “boom boom chick.” Right? That’s the whole thing. I think you’re talking about the social and political dimension of things, and I won’t deny, it’s totally important... Musically, not much is happening? That’s not totally true, because like we’re engineers and we’re producers. You know that that beat is not so simple. If anybody could play “boom-chang-boom-boom-chang” on a drum machine, we’d all be James Brown. That’s not the case. Bernard Purdie was a fabulous drummer. If you look at the recording, there are probably great engineers in the studio. There were dynamics in that thing, so it’s not just “boom-chang-boom”... There’s the swing in the high-hats. “Fif-fif-fif.” It’s not, “Fif-fif-fif.” Right? That’s the power, that’s the life in black music. Who’s to deny it?

Those things obviously came together, like what’s a... “Jungle Fever?” Is it... What’s that track? The classic “dun-a-dun-a, dun-a-dun-a” classic thing? Comes together again. You got... Huh? Sorry? OK. You’ve got I think it’s a clavinet riff or something coming together with the beat and worldwide disco hit. All the things come into play. Did I answer your question? Kind of. OK. Somebody’s saying don’t ... What are we? OK. So let’s go on.

Let’s do one more. No, you know what? We’ve seen how complex modulation can be. Let’s really hit the dirt here. Getting back to basic music theory, and this is where we’re talking about what inspires me, what should inspire everyone, what is the basic beauty of music and how does this whole musical tone scale thing come about? Who here knows the circle of fifths? What is circle of fifths? Can you answer? What is the circle of fifths?

Audience Member

It’s just how...

Daniel Wang

Through all the keys, right? OK. We’ve got 12 notes here and it’s how you go around and around. A lot of people here don’t know what it is, or you’re just being modest and you’re not holding up your hand.

Gerd Janson

I don’t know what it is.

Daniel Wang

OK. It’s a very important concept. OK.

How did we get tone scales at all in the first place? Let’s look quickly on the [inaudible] book, and I hope this is something you all take home with you. On page three. Building scales, alright? From, this is the book which I recommend to anybody, especially if English is your native language. It’s the most comprehensive book on this topic, and it’ll give you a lot of faith that you can actually still keep on doing stuff. There’s so much to do.

From page 68, “Octave equivalence makes harmonic music possible.” Somehow there’s a thing, when you play an octave [plays music on keyboard], in all cultures across the world human beings agree, those are the same note, and sometimes they can’t even tell them apart. If you play [plays two F notes]. Did I play a low F or a high F, for example? Or did I mix them together? Right? That’s this high F. It just means any two notes across an octave, [singing] do, do, sound exactly alike. OK, let’s move on here.

This is page three in the xeroxed copy, Music, The Brain, and Ecstasy by Robert Jourdain, 1997. Again, Australia comes up here, very interesting. “Octave equivalence is the only truly universal harmonic phenomenon. No ethnomusicologist has ever found a culture where human beings don’t agree.” That means all of us. “That octaves aren’t similar. The only discrepancy is certain Australian aboriginal groups never sing in octaves, but seldom range outside a single octave.”

I don’t want to say primitive, modern, whatever, but there are amounts of it. What’s most interesting is actually in Greece, which became the scales of western Europe, and in China actually at about the same time, all this stuff was discovered and constantly refined in the same way. These two totally independent cultures, which had no contact with each other, figured this out. We’re going to get to the Chinese bells in a minute.

There’s one other interval. Here we go. Building scales, right? “There’s one interval that appears to be universal and this is crucial to making scales, and thus to making melodies work. This frequency is exactly midway in an octave.” What’s concert A? 440 Hz. Go up an octave. What happens when you take a guitar string and you cut it in half? Go up one octave, right? 440 Hz up one octave is 880 Hz. What’s the halfway point between 440 and 880? 660. Right? We knew you knew that.

It’s actually really basic to anyone, but we’re really going to put it into formal terms now and see how it all relates to what we’re doing. Sounds so pedantic. So embarrassing.

“Most ethnocologists believe that this middle note is found in the music of all cultures, suggesting the brain may be inclined to categorize it.” Of course it’s a reason. There’s a harmonic vibration, 440, 660. “There’s some controversy. Some pre-technological cultures only make tones through sound. Even in the West, we no longer” – we’ll consider this in a moment.

This is called a fifth. [plays keyboard] Basically, if you look at do- We’re going to build a scale. [plays music] For people who are singers, you- Sing me a fourth. You should. Who knows “La Marseillaise,” the French national anthem? Sing the first phrase. Wait, someone who hasn’t- Who’s French here? Français. Come on. I’m serious. Somebody? [plays music]

That’s a fourth. [plays on keyboard] All right. What about a fifth? [plays on keyboard] Who knows the theme from Star Wars? Seriously, that’s such a standard thing. Star Wars, somebody sing Star Wars. The 5th. Yeah, there we go. [sings Star Wars theme] That’s the fifth. This is the closest thing you will get in nature to an absolute pure harmony, except for the octave. [plays on keyboard] That’s the octave. There’s your 5th. [plays on keyboard] Right? It also gives it that slightly Chinese sound. It’s sort of like, what’s that thing... You know that funny little... I’m trying to think of it. There’s a funny little game with sticks. I can’t remember the name but you keep on adding a stick. All right. You know what, we’re going to have to do this. No, you know what, I’m just going to have to turn this around. Let me show you here. OK? We’ve got this. [plays on keyboard] We find the midway point. All these notes don’t exist. Why did we get a scale that says [sings] do re mi fa so la ti do? Do, do re mi fa so la ti do. Why isn’t it do re mi fa so la ti do [sung differently], or do re mi fa so? Why isn’t it that? Why do we accept that this is the correct way to play notes?

Audience member

It sounds nice.

Daniel Wang

Almost, right. Especially out of tune. Thank you. We have nothing here. We have only these two notes. We’re in year 3000 BC. How do we find the next notes on the scale? [plays on keyboard] We know this sounds good. Star Wars is another five thousand years before it comes around. [inaudible comment] Exactly. Thank you. I’m so glad someone said that. Now, we’ve got another note and we know for sure that this note is harmonic, right? This note is harmonic and this is harmonic right? Now, we’ve got a G here, let’s go up an octave. [plays an octave] Right? Now we’ve got two notes in the octave. What can we do with these two notes? Someone else, don’t answer. What am I going to do with these two notes? Keep on going on, right? This is the circle fifths. What’s the mid point between G and G? D. Now, I’ve got three notes in my scale. What do I do with the D? What’s the fifth of D? [plays] Right? [plays Star Wars theme] Let’s move it down a bit. Now we have A. What’s the 5th of A? E. Thank you. Someone knows their stuff here. Wait, there’s someone here that’s a classical opera blah blah blah thing, right? You? What are you doing here anyway?

Audience member

I don’t know!

Daniel Wang

OK. There’s the E. [plays] Right? E. Right. Let’s just do this all the way through just to prove this actually works. [plays] Right? That’s the octaves. B to B. Whats the midpoint of B, what’s the fifth of B? One, two, three, four, five… We’re done with all the white keys, we move on to the black keys. Midpoint is G flat. OK? Now, just move down an octave so we can keep on playing upwards. Midpoint is this. [plays] Midpoint. All right? Midpoint is here. Move up, and then here. [plays] Then, midpoint goes to here. Am I right? Hold on. [plays] There’s the midpoint, now we’re talking B flat in here. B flat. I think I skipped something here. [plays] No that’s right. B flat. Move to F, is the 5th. (Notes) We’re still correct, and then F, F. Midpoint is C. We’re back, right? In theory, circle 5ths should be perfect. Am I right? We just made a whole circle. Every note harmonizes with the other. Actually, this is totally wrong. In nature, there’s a very weird discrepancy. On a keyboard it may sound right. Let’s look mathematically at what we just did.

I was really afraid we would never get heavy but now you know I’m not just here bullshitting you. OK. Here we move onto, let’s see, the scales. Quick point, why am I saying this? We have to recognize, first of all, why the notes are even there in the first place, and second of all, why an equal temperament scale, which is exactly whatever computer program, Reason, blah blah blah... I shouldn’t be saying this because Propellerhead [company behind Reason] actually wants me to work for them. Don’t by any software. [laughs] What you’ll get out of any equal temperament anything, that’s all you’re going to get. You’re never going to get the fine colors. It’s like somebody is asking you to do a painting with only red, blue, yellow, and green. You don’t have purple, you don’t have green, you don’t have pink, you don’t have any of the finer shades.

Let’s take a look at tuning in and for anybody who is seriously into electronic music, I have to recommend [holds up book *Tuning In by Scott Wilkinson] This is the Bible. This book, although I don’t have all the pages inside, shows you all the different possibilities. There are a hundred different ways that this [plays keyboard*]. This could be split up besides into 12 equal notes. All those colors in between are every shade of purple, and pink, and brown and gold. Every color you could possibly imagine is there, only we don’t use it because the more we get sucked into midi, and especially, big no-no, Auto-Tuners. Which you know, Christina Aguilera, “Aah,” and you know everything is perfectly tuned, everything is perfectly in pitch, Beyoncé, whatever. Sounds like shit. And there’s a reason for it.

Let’s take a look. Tuning in, and here we have the sense. This is a perfect equal temperament keyboard here, interval, zero to 1200. On the right side you pure incent of purer, which means pure ratios. What is this? What is 440 and 880 in the middle? It’s a half, right? You might say 440 multiplied by three is... Let’s do this, 440 Hz equals Hz, next octave up is 880 Hz, how do I get here, multiplied by three times two. 440 Hz, go up an octave, take it in half, equals 660.

OK, so lets look mathematically how we derived with the modern-day scale and how actually there’s this discrepancy which shows us this keyboard is not quite right. We go to the next page which is page 12. Are we there? The famous Pythagorean Comma. Pythagoras is also the man who invented the Pythagorean Theory. Does anyone remember geometry from school or whatever? OK, what have we done here 12 times? We’ve gone up. We should come back to zero. We’ve taken 440 and we’ve basically gone up one time three halves. This is what we did now in math. We multiplied 140 by three so we get 660, right? We did this 12 times. Am I right? OK? What we have is here, three halves, to the 12th power, right? Three half, by three half, by three half, by three half, by three half. We’ll bring it down.

We went up about half an octave every time. We’re going to reset it to the original. You just have to take this for faith because I can’t draw it out. The keyboard would be too long if we did this. OK, seventh, we should come back to zero. Does this actually make zero? No. It is equal to exactly this number – looks strange, 531,441 divided by 524,288. Anyone have a calculator here because I couldn’t find one? Somebody has a computer on? Does somebody have a computer?

Gerd Janson

Richard can do this in his head maybe?

Daniel Wang

Mathematics professor? I’m serious, I would like to because if we look at the numbers we can actually look at how far off we are. Can somebody do this right now? Please, OK, so let’s multiply the number A 440 by this ratio. OK, 440 multiplied by this, what is the result? 440, a concert, ah, I’m not a perfect pitch. That wasn’t it. This multiplied by this, huh?

Audience Member

446.

Daniel Wang

About 446, right? What happened? We thought we were playing perfect harmonies and everything was going to end up exactly back in the C, but it didn’t did it? It’s actually still, honestly, if I had the answer I would be a genius. This is one of those mysteries in nature that’s actually never been solved. It’s one of the, I think, the strange, mystical, beautiful things in music and mathematics, these irrational numbers. We don’t know why it is but a fifth is perfectly harmonious with a one, but if you keep going up fifth, it comes closer and closer to harmonizing with the original one. But it never actually makes it. It’s a spiral. This is where we’re looking here. If you read down the paragraph ...

Gerd Janson

Danny?

Daniel Wang

Yeah.

Gerd Janson

Where is the emotion in this equation?

Daniel Wang

Where is the emotion in this equation?

Gerd Janson

Yeah.

Daniel Wang

If we believe, this is difficult, do we accept on faith that harmonious music such as [plays moody keyboard chords] feels a little better than [plays dissonant keyboard chords], well not that necessarily, let’s say [plays moody keyboard chords again]. We accept on faith that this sounds prettier than [plays dissonant chords again]. Well that’s some dramatic there. That’s not really fair is it? All right if we stepped out on faith then we proceed. This is what we’re saying, the beautiful, we have to accept that vibrations working in harmony with each other is beautiful. 440, so we have what? Oh, so we have this. We have rather than this, we have this. [drawing on board] This is what the circle of fifths actually looks like or you might say it’s like this. This is 440 Hz. Can everybody see this? OK, this 880, right?

This is a circle of fifth, ideally. This is equal. You might say equal temperament. It’s not ideal actually. What is the reality? It’s 446, 880 divided by two is 440. It’s 446 something. How do we reconcile this? Well, we’ve gotten a little extra thing here, right? That little part. That’s called, and by the way, there’s a name. Thank God this is actually working because I’ve only done this once in my whole life for an audience.

There’s the Pythagorean Comma [points at chart]. It just means it’s an anomaly. It’s something we can’t explain. It’s an extra little like a human being born with a tail. What do you do with it? You’ve got to cut it off. Well, you know, you’ve got to use it somehow. Why don’t we take this little Pythagorean Comma, these little six Hz, and spread it evenly over this.

This should be 12 notes, right? We’ve got 12 notes here. Sorry, [counts to 12]. right? What if we take that little red part, which is the Pythagorean Comma, and go, “You get a little bit, you get 1/12th, you get 1/12th, you get 1/12th, you get 1/12th, 1/12, 1/12, 1/12, 1/12.” We spread it out. That way we’ve knocked this thing off and we’ve created the circle. A perfect circle. An equal temperament scale. But the problem is...

Audience Member

I was just wondering how the mean tones works?

Daniel Wang

The mean tones, you’re saying like the...

Audience Member

Mean tones?

Daniel Wang

Exactly what we’re going to get to, actually this ... I don’t actually have it all here. Right, we knocked off equal temperament. This is where Bach says, “And why did we create the equal temperament?” Because if you actually had a scale, which was pure, look at how uneven this thing is. Very good. We’re going to get to this in a minute, look at all these numbers, in an equal temperament, if you want to modulate from key to key, if you want to go from [plays chord on keyboard] to [plays higher chords on keyboard], you need to have the same distances between all these. Otherwise the more you move up, the more you’re going to get out of tune. If you want to come back to the original note you played, all right, “One Note Samba” now, “One Note Samba, what are the lyrics?

Audience Member

[sings song]

Daniel Wang

Can you translate what you were just saying? What did you just sing in English? What do the lyrics mean? [inaudible answer] How lovely. Other rules are soon to follow but the note is still that note. [sings melody]

Audience Member

Who wants all of the notes go to alone and ...

Daniel Wang

Yeah, go to a lonely end.

Audience Member

It’s a forest people with relationship. If you want everybody you will still be alone.

Daniel Wang

In the end I think there’s also, when you come back to that one note, if you don’t know whatever them play the note, you know? The whole song is actually like a key. This is corny again. I found out what these keys were. I hope you all take these keys home and just use them, right? You come back to the one note and then that’s it. [addressing other man in audience] You seem to know, please. Hello, expert!

Audience Member

I don’t know how to translate.

Daniel Wang

Right, so we come back to the note. All right, we’ll take that for faith. If we want to come back to the note, we know at the end, starting from one note, then we have to make this equal temperament scale. Now it’s interesting, the mean tone question, we realize there actually had been other scales. You know that. For example, name off three of them. There have been names of other scales besides equal temperament.

Audience Member

10-tone, even tempered.

Daniel Wang

Actually I’m thinking about 12-tone scales. It’s still 12 tones: do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do.

Audience Member

Pure.

Daniel Wang

Pure, wonderful, another? Whole tone scale is not a 12-tone equal temperament scale but it’s a scale. I might say OK, pure tone, pure minor scale. What are some other ones. I’m blanking out. I can’t remember. Here’s how to do it. A mean tone is another one. We know now some things on this scale harmonize better than other notes with a scale like [plays keyboard], right? If this 5th is so important in making melodies, why should it get equal. This is evil, OK? This is the evil Pythagorean Comma, which makes impure harmonies. What if we distributed this thing a little bit evenly.

What if instead of making equal temperament, [counts to six], dah, dah, we cut it unevenly so we have maybe, so the fifth maybe gets only a little, little bit of evil Pythagorean Comma. Let’s say the seventh note, the [plays keyboard], like that note is used much less on the scale, that gets a little more Pythagorean Comma. We still have the same six Hz here of stuff we have to get rid of or we have to do something with it, but we put it in different places in the scale. That’s where we get these scales, like mean tone, exactly what she’s talking about. Mean tone I think actually, there are different definitions of it. There are different ways to spread it.

I think if you’re talking about a pure minor scale, then you take this little bit and you just ... There are three or four notes you don’t use. They get all the evil stuff. The good notes stay good. The good notes stay pure. In mean tone I think it’s distributed evenly so each one gets proportionate to how much. It’s like the first one gets eighth, the next one gets sixth, the next one gets fourth. Now that we’ve established that. Where do we go? Do you want to take a little breathing break because I realize this is getting a bit academic and heavy. It’s not so much fun, fun.

Gerd Janson

It is, and I think there is a second lecture this afternoon too.

Daniel Wang

It’s 3:00 now. I was supposed to finish at 2:00?

Gerd Janson

Yeah, and we have lunch now.

Daniel Wang

OK, I didn’t want to keep everybody. Hold on. Let’s see how much we have to go through because after we do that we may not have so much. All right, well actually, since we’ve got through discovery of scales, oh, yeah, let’s move quickly here. Then we can move onto the Theremin thing. Then we might already be almost done. OK? Harmony, what if we were talking about whole tone scales? What if we divided the scale, instead of in 12 notes, which seems to be what the human ear can most closely distinguish into different numbers, let’s say we made a scale with 14 notes, [hums scale], which ones would be the ones that would give us the closest pure harmonies in music? We have the graph here from the same book. It’s actually calculated by... Does anyone know who Wendy Carlos is? Wendy Carlos, OK. Does anyone explain? What was her most famous record? Please?

Audience member

Switched-On Bach.

Daniel Wang

Switched-On Bach, right, where she played one note at a time on a synthesizer. This was of course also the invention of the Moog synthesizer. We’re going to get to this. She also became the composer of A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Tron. She did a lot of work. She also was a male to female transsexual by the way. She discovered at some point she wanted to be a woman. Oh, I have the records from her. How can I forget this. She actually calculated various scales. Here we have them. I’m going a long ways to explain why we should simply throw out our computers and try to play this human music as possible but I think this is an interesting way to do it. You probably won’t here this again for the rest of your life. She did several records which involved micro-tonal tunings. These are what you see on the graph. She’s experimenting with things which are Balinesean, Balinese, yeah, slendro scales, pelog scales, and also with pure mean tones. She even explains here, with her own voice, what’s wrong with our equal temperament scale and what you can hear. Let’s play this record. This is the voice of Wendy Carlos demonstrating the sounds that she made. All right, do you want to play this? You can’t quite tell whether it’s a man or a woman actually.

(music: Wendy Carlos – unknown)

This is what I’m saying. I know it’s very hard-pressed to see this right away, but we’re talking about colors here. We’re talking about painting. A painting with different colors other than red, blue, yellow, green. Now, move on because I don’t want to be here any more than ten minutes, fifteen minutes. Can we do this? Then we can just listen to records or talk or have questions. Sorry, I hope it’s not too long.

What is the proof that this makes any difference at all? Why can’t we just listen to loud rock, crass techno, whatever, and just beat our brains to death? Secret Life of Plants. Who made the album? Thank you. It’s a bit like hippie stuff. Some of the science in here is dubious, but it’s got some very interesting things to say about what music does. Let’s look.

Page 14. We’re on page 15, 16, and 17 now. It talks about this crazy woman who – maybe she’s not so crazy; I think she’s very sane – who played different kinds of music to plants and charted how they grow. How much water they used, how the roots developed. This is the ‘60s.

[reading from book] So, for each of these species, Singh played several ragas. We’re in the ‘60s, we’re in Indian music. ”From this experiment, we concluded in this Indian magazine, he had proven beyond any doubt that harmonic sound can affect the growth, flowering, fruiting, and sealed yield of plants.” This woman, I think in America, tries to duplicate this. We’re on page 16 now. We don’t know who she was, but she did us a great service.

In the first experiment, “Trying to pinpoint musical note conduct – she tried an F note and played it without interruption, unremittingly for eight hours in one chamber and three hours intermittently, on and off in the other chamber. In the first chamber, her plants were stone dead within two weeks. In the second chamber, the plants were much healthier.” If you play one note and pound it at people over and over – well, if you do it to your plants, your plants will probably die. That’s the point. I seriously doubt that it would have a different effect on human beings except we hardly realize it because we live for a 100 years or so, well, 80 years. Let’s move on. It gets even more interesting.

They wondered if the plants would simply succumb to fatigue or boredom or simply have been driven out of their minds. I got into botany in Germany because the whole city is full of forests. When you think about plants, they’re curious, because plants shouldn’t be able to hear anything and that’s what everybody’s objection. Plants have no ears. They don’t even have a brain, so what’s happening here? Let’s move on.

“But they were not indifferent to musical forms. They’re exposed to Haydn, Beethoven, and Brahms, and other 18th and 19th century European scores. They grew toward the transistor radio. Even twining the leaves lovingly around it.” I think some of this is kind of like hippie. “But the rock broadcast, the squashes grew away from the rock broadcast and even tried to climb the slippery walls of their cage.” Interesting. Let’s go down.

“The rock music caused some of the plants to grow abnormally tall and put out excessively small leaves, or they were stunted. The ones listening to classical were flowering. Even during the first week, the rock stimulated plants.” I think she’s using certain kind of rock here. She must be playing Led Zeppelin because I think – loves the Rolling Stones. There’s a lot of great music. By the way, another thing that came to thought, mind. Human beings do have sexual organs. Plants do too, but rock says something to us sensually that I’m not sure – I think plants wouldn’t care, actually, about Rolling Stones talking about ... What’s the woman? “Honky Tonk Woman.” Plants are reacting to very innocent, naïve manner. “We’re using much more water than the classical music plants, but apparently enjoying it less.” They’re sucking up all the resources they can, but they’re still dying faster than they... Here’s some more of the evidence.

She’s playing them Led Zeppelin, Vanilla Fudge, and Jimi Hendrix. “Plants leaned away from this cacophony. They were going the other direction. She rotated the pots in 180 degrees and the plants were leaning away again from the music.” Now here it gets interesting also. She plays percussion music to them. “The percussion, in one case, causes a lean, ten degrees away from the plants when it’s just banging throngs. But, when the same music is being played by violins, the plants lean toward the speakers.” I can’t explain all this stuff for you. I’m just presenting to you. It says something about music. Maybe it says something about what we’re making, I don’t know. Let’s go on.

I don’t totally buy all of this. We have to question this too. We have to question the science. It says that the best growth was from Indian raga music and there may be some argument for this. First of all, you notice modulation – I don’t want to say modulation’s not natural, but modulation. When we’re playing with an equal temperament scale, which is jazz and classical and all this stuff, it actually goes against natural scale. It’s not as pure, the harmony. Furthermore, a lot of the rhythms are very simple. A waltz is [sings beat]. 3/4.

With raga music, they seem to grow the best because raga music is rhythmically very complex. Does anyone know how to count the raga beats? It’s just like we were counting four, four in the dance room. One two three four, one two three four, that’s all of right now, Western rock, whatever. Indian classical music works on, I forget the name of it. A raga is the rhythmic section. It’s a sequence of patterns. I learned this because my friend in high school was this girl who was trained in South Indian dance. We learned how Vishnu destroys the world by opening up his eye and burning you with divine thunder.

Every time we watched an Indian dance concert, she would count. It would be one two... By the way, you know what? I’ve forgotten completely about the blues demonstration. I’m so sorry. We have a blues player here who can do... Will you do that for us later perhaps? Sorry. Totally forgot.

This is how you count a raga. One two three. It might be three and four, three and four, five and seven. It would be one two three, one two three four, one two three, one two three four, one two three four five, one two three four five six seven. Back to the top. One two three, one two three four, one two three, one two three four, one two three four five, one two three four five six seven.

This would be the cycle of the dance and everybody follows with all their gestures. You can see how rhythmically complex this can get. Furthermore, the scales of Indian music – although people say there are 41 to 53 tones, actually, musicologists have found that it falls basically along 12 tones. In other words, it’s basically very closely related to what we have here, but there are smaller tones that are decorations. It’s like a blue note when you’re singing in jazz. It’s like “Aaaaah,” you kind of go off. A blue note.

Playing this music, the plants seemed to grow the best. Let’s move on here and see what happens with something very close to what we’re doing. Jazz music. We’re talking about Indian ragas. “Reaction to Ravi Shankar, they started reaching towards the source since classical music and they bent almost 60 degrees towards the speaker, surprised from jazz. When the plants heard recordings by Duke Ellington and two discs by Louis Armstrong, 55 percent of the plants still leaned 15-20 degrees toward the speaker.”

There’s hope. Music with great harmonic progression can still have a great sense of rhythm, even if it’s a simple 4/4 rhythm and, at least for the plants, it’s something positive.

Gerd Janson

So jazz is a teacher? Yeah?

Daniel Wang

Jazz is a positive thing. Well, obviously Armstrong on Duke Ellington. All right, so it goes on and on, but I think we’re finished with that piece. And let’s see what else we should cover.

Gerd Janson

Any questions about plants and music?

Daniel Wang

It’s dubious science? I admit, I think there might be something funny about it. [inaudible comment] I think it depends on the piece, but it’s true that a lot of what Jimi Hendrix... the rhythm is so alive. A lot of it is very uneven, it’s not a regular... and maybe what the plans want is easy listening, maybe they want Burt Bacharach and muzak in the elevator, you know? And Jimi Hendrix is something human. We have a brain, and that’s something else, and that makes us appreciate things with a social level, and a context, and complexity. We know Jimi is doing it on purpose, Jimi could play muzak, you know, but he’s chosen not to do that and that’s what excites us.

Gerd Janson

What I don’t get, is the role of this place for your personal feelings and emotions for music, you know? Like, I never liked Jimi Hendrix, for instance. No matter what he did. It just doesn’t appeal to me –

Daniel Wang

I think this is where we get into the question of taste, too.

Gerd Janson

I don’t think that I’m dying from that.

Daniel Wang

I can only say anecdotes here, and I think we all have anecdotes about taste. I’m a big Carpenters fan, and I’ve never been the biggest fan of the Beatles, even though I know intellectually they’re very well written songs. “Strawberry Fields” is a great song.

Gerd Janson

I hate the Beatles.

Daniel Wang

OK, well that’s why we’re friends, Gerd! But, you know, I know intellectually... It’s just that when I hear the Beatles singing with that [makes a nasally voice] it’s just like, “Oh God, please," this is like, “just sing in key.”

And when I hear Karen Carpenter sing [singing sweetly], it’s great!

Gerd Janson

But I hate the Carpenters also.

Daniel Wang

There we go, but here comes the story! My gay friend goes to a Carpenters convention in England, two thousand singing gay men, “Isn’t Karen Carpenter the greatest singer of the 20th century?” And I think, “Yeah. She sure is!” I don’t want to say it’s gay men, I think it’s something about male/female too, I think male hormones do something which, you know. Where you have to have this, you know, and there’s a way that... you know, and it’s all valid.

Annie Lennox. I know you’re an Annie Lennox fan. [speaking to someone in audience] You know what happened when my friend went to an Annie Lennox concert, you’ve never been to one, right? Five thousand screaming lesbians, all with short hair, “Annie Lennox.”

You can’t argue with it, that’s the way nature is. And same with emotion, too. I can’t tell you exactly why I think Karen Carpenter’s voice is beautiful, but it’s very harmonic, it has a certain tone range, it’s actually deeper than most woman’s voices, Karen Carpenter’s voice is almost like a cross between a man and woman, right? Actually, that’s how she did [singing], “We’ve only just begun...” They had her singing half an octave higher, and I think the producer, Herb Alpert, said, “All right, down an octave.”

You guys have probably seen the move or something, Karen Carpenter’s story [singing], and hit, record it right away. That really was the story. I wasn’t there but... That’s one of the mysteries of the universe, whether you find something beautiful, and there’s a thousand reasons, you know. I think as we travel more, as we expand your tastes, we also learn to appreciate more and more different things. And that’s what going to clubs is about, right? It’s like, “I didn’t know this was beautiful, but I found out it was beautiful on a certain Sunday morning raving my head off E.” Question?

Audience Member

I’ve wanted to ask this for quite a while, actually. When you speak about, play it live or organic music, whatever you want to say, from my point of view, I think I force myself to listen to certain to things that I find cheesy or that I don’t really like at first. Would you say that is a way of exploring music, that is your way of exploring music?

Daniel Wang

Absolutely. I think of course you should forget about shame, like, “Oh my god, if my friends hear me listening to this.” The Carpenters, for one thing. You know, music is music, and what kind of social and political significance people attach to it, I’m sorry but that’s their problem. Especially what I’m saying is also this: if this were normal, if I’m talking to people at MTV this would be different. We here in the room are people who are going to produce music and distribute music. Now I’m getting really political. I think we have a much bigger role in leaving aside our egos and our personal preferences like, “I’m a rocker, I will never listen to the Carpenters.” Of course you just have to forget about that and say, “I hear the harmonic content of what the Carpenters are doing and I’m going to try and use that, but I’m going to do it in a different way. I’m going to use my electric guitar and jam the hell out of this thing.” You know, right? I think that’s a proper answer to that.

Have you got the Theremin MPEG ready? OK, what I discovered... and we were watching this Nightingale thing, right? And I actually found the Nightingale, not kidding. After realizing the reason why we didn’t go through all this, of why the equal temperament music and all this computer music and looped music was naughty enough for me, one day in the shop where I was working, a girl came in and started playing the Theremin. Does anyone know what the theremin is? Most of you know what it is, for most of you who don’t, the theremin is the first synthesizer. It was invented in 1917, it’s a box and you play it without touching it. The scientist who invented this thing was Léon Theremin. He also invented the radar. What is a radar? You go into a field there’s a noise, right? There’s a [makes noise] when you go in here, there’s a blip on the map. He also invented the first color television.

Let’s just play the thing, “Autumn Leaves Improv.” I met this girl who not only had perfect pitch, without playing keyboard she knows what the pitches are. She was 20 years old, she walked into the store and just started playing these boxes that we had in the store, not touching... mind you. Have we got it? There she is.

(video: Woman playing theremin)

OK, that’s a little hint of that.

Gerd Janson

The Nightingale.

Daniel Wang

The Nightingale, I met her. And then, there’s this movie. I was hoping we could show this, it’s all right if you didn’t come to B3 last night. You’re forgiven, because only one person showed up.

But please, see this movie if you get a chance. It’s all about hip-hop from ‘84, there was no gangster rap, there was nothing back then. This is music and dance in its purest form. If all the people in this movie were white, this would probably be like Gone With the Wind or Casablanca, but America... there you have it. It’s such an incredible movie and full of hope and everything.

This movie, we could show later. It’s about the invention of the Theremin. I got this box, and I just went crazy for two years and tried to learn to play it as she does.

(video: Daniel Wang playing Theremin)

Gerd Janson

How do you play this?

Daniel Wang

It gets into DJing too, what does the DJ do with the right hand? Right, pitch. The other hand? Fader. One is doing the pitch, the other is doing the volume.

What does a guitar player do with the left hand? Pitch. [mimics playing guitar with right hand] Volume. This box works exactly on the same principle: You have pitch, distance and... I really wish we had a Theremin here so I could properly demonstrate this, but you’ll have imagine.

[demonstrates with hands] This is the volume, as I get closer... and I’m just going to imagine this... you have about three to four octaves here, just like on a keyboard. It’s just free, there’s no spacing. You’re just doing it by your ear and you’re finding it, it’s a lot like singing actually. That’s what’s so fun about it, because suddenly you’re not restricted to this note. And if you’re going to play false notes too, you’re going to hear it. It’s just like a violin, are there frets on a violin? No, you do it by ear. [sings]

If my hand pulls away, I get volume. [singing] For example. [singing] Right?

Suddenly this instrument made sense. Because this girl taught me this, and we ended up doing demonstrations for Moog everything together, and we traveled together with him. I don’t want to show off, but it was very nice. Bob Moog was the nicest person I’ve ever met.

They taught me that whatever instrument you find, you just have to find the tonal note, you just find the root, and you find everything that’s harmonic to it, and it doesn’t matter if you’ve studied theory or not. Because, as it says on the sheet, all this stuff seems like it’s all academic or whatever, but theory is not a justification for the pleasure of music. The pleasure of music is there already, you’re going to enjoy it whatever it is, whether you know the theory or not. Theory is only there to explain your pleasure and help you expand it; everything that you can take home from this lecture, and from learning all the musical theory you can, it’s just going to make it better and more pleasurable. So why not do it? It’s harmless. Where’d we go now?

Gerd Janson

Any more questions?

Daniel Wang

I think that’s about it, really. OK, there’s two things down here we could talk about, but I think with you guys I feel it may not be necessary. The joy of the eight-track.

Gerd Janson

There is a question, actually.

Daniel Wang

Question?

Audience Member

I was just wondering if there were any VST instruments that allow you to program in scales?

Daniel Wang

Yes, I’m sure there are. You know, first of all there is a whole list of instruments that do it. I’m sure you can. Can you do Werckmeister tuning, just tuning, tone...

Audience Member

No, but can you make your own? Like in the Kurzweil, how you can program everything.

Daniel Wang

I don’t know, can anyone answer that question? Yes. Just, yes. Which software? Native Instruments. OK, that’s great. And you’re absolutely right. In a lot of classic models, Yamaha made a whole ton of them, like TX81Z, Kurzweil, and Roland Sound Canvas, which you get for like 300 Euros or something? You can tune every note individually. You’ve A-B-C-D-E-F-G blah, blah, blah, and you can go up and down, the numbers are a bit weird because they go by 60 and not by 100.

But you can kind of approximate. And you can say, “I know my fifth is a little flat in the equal temperament, I’m going to make it a little bit sharper.” And if you really look on the scale, look, it’s not tuning everything flat, it’s quite different from that. If you look on the chart that qw gave here, let’s just imagine that we’re doing this, because it’s good practice, it’s mental practice.

Okay, we’re looking at page 11 here. Look, how would I go on this keyboard and tune something to, something that’s closer to the natural harmonies? [singing] Major third, for example. [singing] That major third is a full 14 cents, 386 if not a 400. I would go right on that Roland, and I would do [plays keyboard]. I would take that “mi” and make it that much flatter. And you’d be amazed how different the music really sounds, it really works. It’s like, “This doesn’t sound anymore like a MIDI keyboard, it sounds like something else, it sounds better.”

Putting it all into practice. Now that you know, now that we know all these different parts, what do we have? We’ve got Chic, we’ve got drums: one track, or two or three tracks. We’ve got bass, we’ve got a riff: Rhythm, lead guitar, strings, and horns, eight tracks. Carpenters did it on 8 tracks. Oh I know, because in the xerox package we get this: In Touch for Men was a gay magazine in America from 1978. This was when people were taking interest in disco music. Peter Brown, who had a disco hit – and I have the record here – did everything on an eight track.

(music: Peter Brown – “Do You Wanna Get Funky With Me”)

If people can do this on this machine, what’s the problem we have today? The problem is not with technology, it’s with the concept and the way people think, and the way people approach music and the way they approach success also. MySpace and all that. But no more criticism. I think this is a positive, shining example that can be done.

Only as a joke, the next page is, “Gay report from Melbourne,” happens to be the same exact magazine four pages later. It serves no musical purpose, it’s just there to amuse you, because on the next page you see a bunch of gay people in Melbourne in 1978, wearing pretty normal clothes and doing a protest.

Gerd Janson

It looks like a freedom march.

Daniel Wang

It’s a freedom march. The time of innocence. No leather, no rainbow flags, they’re just wearing camel-colored sweaters and they’re just out [puts his hand in the air]. Back to the time of innocence again. Of course, in Sydney the first gay Australian bodybuilders’ association has just been formed, let’s call him, “Allen.” Why shouldn’t gay bodybuilders have their own club, too? And in three minutes, to sum up really quickly, following that.

Gerd Janson

If there are any more questions?

Daniel Wang

Does anyone have patience for a three minute blues demonstration? Yes, OK? Guitar player. Is he gone? Thank you, you’re there. And we can kind of put into action and see, this whole thing about one, four, five. But the most basic elements of a tonal scale being... You’re going to be playing the “E,” right?

It’s actually really simple to see on the keyboard how Blues from the ‘30s, ‘40s, ‘50s on became – this became jazz, disco, this became everything, and it comes down to three chords. It comes down to basic one, five, one, four and it’s just the way you play it.

Here we go. Can you give us your root note?

[audience member plays guitar]

Of course and it’s obvious to those who have classical training, but for anybody doing jazz or whatever, what are we doing here? We’re basically doing numbers, we’re doing one, four ... Benji wrote this out for me, thank you. One, four, one, one. Four, four, one, one. Five, four, one, five. Right? Hope you don’t mind using Roman. It’s really: One, four, one, one... four, four, one, one... five, four, one, five. That’s it. I mean, and anything in your head... It may take all the fun out of listening to dance music, for now on, you’ll listen to anybody doing a looped groove or something, and you’ll just be, “All they’re doing is ones.”

And honestly, that’s the way I hear music now. And, it hasn’t taken the fun out of it, because when you hear something really good, like Debussy, you realize, “Oh my god, I can’t just do one, four, fives anymore. He’s doing all the stuff. What is he doing?” But it’s fabulous.

I think you can see how easy it actually is once you look at anything just to break this down this way. You should take this into your composition, just spell out a bunch of numbers and play with them, and see where they go. [to guitarist] Thank you so much.

[applause]

Gerd Janson

Any more questions?

Daniel Wang

There’s a final... I’m not even going to get into it, but a final touch. Here. Studio acoustics. How many have DJed here in clubs with shitty sound? Not so many as I’d thought, OK. Well, I’ve attached this for your information. An article about studio acoustics about how to build your own studio, and what you need to watch out for. There are less DJs here, so I don’t think it’s so relevant, so I’m not going to really talk about it. How sound reflects from walls: Big flat walls are bad. Like you go to the big control rooms upstairs you notice they’re not parallel surfaces, it’s not: square, square, square, square, they’re kind of diagonal corners, so the sound doesn’t bounce in and double in on itself. So it doesn’t conflict. Also what kind of acoustic materials are used? Do I put carpet on the walls? Do I put big blocks on the walls. Is it OK if I have glass windows in my room? These are very, very relevant. Because, if you have proper acoustic, you will hear all the frequencies which are meant to be heard: you’ll hear the harmonies, which are there and what’s not there shouldn’t be there. If you have bad acoustics, you will hear nothing correctly. And that is the problem with 90% of the clubs today. But as I said, we are going to spend one minute on that, because there is nothing else to say about that. But here’s all this information if you’re interested in it, and I hope it helps. Thank you for staying with me to the end. [applause]