here<\/a>.
<\/p>\n\n\n\nI read that article many years ago, and was fascinated by it. Not only was it an insight into a glimpsed and glamorous world I yearned to join (I was studying film music back then), but it also seemed to resonate in other ways. I\u2019d long realised that several of the things I loved or was good at when at school had something in common: patterns. I studied mathematics at university, and at school I\u2019d been pretty good at German as well as English \u2013 and I now work in software engineering. It seems to me that a facility with patterns links all of these\u2026 and it also links them to music.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Having already convinced myself that music was similar to spoken language because of its structured nature, reading Murch\u2019s essay and seeing dialogue and music put at opposite ends of a spectrum and labelled \u201cencoded sound\u201d and \u201cembodied sound\u201d gave me a bit of a jolt. But it made me pause and question why I\u2019d hitherto placed music into the same box as writing and speaking.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019d already been performing in bands for some time, and was beginning to become comfortable with playing keyboards. If you\u2019ve learned to drive, to ride a bicycle, or to solve a Rubik\u2019s Cube, then you\u2019ll know that after enough practice the object feels like a literal extension of your body. This is how it is with musical instruments too, except that when it comes to a musical performance \u2013 especially in front of an audience \u2013 there\u2019s another layer to it all: the instrument is speaking your words, in its own voice.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Obviously this is metaphorical. Music is not a literal spoken language, but it does have spelling, syntax and grammar. It has meter; tone; inflection; volume. In my view, the musician\u2019s act of creating the sound from the instrument is like an author\u2019s relationship with a fictional character.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I play a solo in a band, it\u2019s as if the keyboard is making a speech while I stand there churning out the pages and handing them over just in time for each sentence. I\u2019m writing the dialogue. That nobody can actually read what it says is arguably moot because it\u2019s written in soul language, not brain language.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, here\u2019s the question that occupied me after my phone call: what happens to this analogy when I scat-sing?
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For those in the dark, I\u2019m not speaking of the sort of sounds you hear when the great Louis Armstrong is holding court, nor of the astonishing balletic syllable-dancing of Ella Fitzgerald \u2013 in those cases the idea is to imitate an instrument. The scat singing to which I refer is similar, but more like a duet. You and your instrument sing together, usually in unison.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In my experience and humble opinion, scatting a solo is one of the most sublime experiences available to a stage musician. Whenever I\u2019ve felt the need to do it and let rip, there\u2019s invariably been an almost tangible and strangely magical connection to the audience. A few people may cheer or clap a little, or the level of background conversations may drop suddenly as people begin to listen. Why is that?
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Perhaps scat-singing a solo is like subverting the form in fiction. If you\u2019re reading a story and the main character breaks off to speak to the author, there\u2019s a sense of discontinuity \u2013 but quite often appreciation, too, if you\u2019re the sort of reader who revels in that sort of game. And if you\u2019re listening to someone play a solo in a band you might not be consciously aware that there\u2019s a language to the music \u2013 but, deep down, your soul knows it. So, when the scat begins, the fourth wall is broken: what was once music is revealed to be, after all, something with a spoken structure to it. Admittedly, there may not be any real words involved \u2013 the performer is mimicking the music with vocal approximations, using what sound like random syllables or nonsense words, but are actually a loving tribute to the instrument being played.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I find it hard not to compare this to an author taking a cameo role in their own story \u2013 or perhaps writing notes in the margin to explain the character\u2019s actions. Either way, the writer is involved in an unexpected way, just as a scat-singing soloist is drawing attention to their spooky prescient ability to predict what the instrument will \u201csay\u201d next.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of course, I can\u2019t do it here, because blogging is a monologue. Here, I\u2019m the main character and breaking off to talk to myself might be seen as misplaced egotism \u2013 so I\u2019ll have to be content with an instrumental rhapsody.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\n…the fourth wall is broken: what was once music is revealed to be, after all, something with a spoken structure to it.\n<\/div>\n
Continue reading “Now… Scat!”<\/span>…<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":202,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_FSMCFIC_featured_image_caption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_nocaption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_hide":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":false,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5,13,10],"tags":[9,14,7],"class_list":["post-199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-journal","category-music","category-writing","tag-music","tag-scat","tag-writing","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/miketorr.com\/writer\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/TORYELS.jpg?fit=415%2C418&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/miketorr.com\/writer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/miketorr.com\/writer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/miketorr.com\/writer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miketorr.com\/writer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miketorr.com\/writer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/miketorr.com\/writer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":204,"href":"https:\/\/miketorr.com\/writer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199\/revisions\/204"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miketorr.com\/writer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/miketorr.com\/writer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miketorr.com\/writer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miketorr.com\/writer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}