Translator: Claire Ghyselen Reviewer: Anne-Sophie Matichard My grandfather was the organist in an Italian church, and we shared this epic love for Italian opera and the Beatles. Also, Queen, Bohemian Rhapsody was a big one. Just that opening melody, the way the sections kind of happen seeming randomly but come together to form this perfect coherent statement.
When I was four or five, when I remember hearing it for the first time, I didn't necessarily identify with the lyrical content, because I hadn't killed a man. (Laughter) But it was electrifying, and it was really familiar, familiar like the other lyrics that go, "He was strumming my pain with his fingers Singing my life with his words". Then later going on to say, "I felt he'd found my letters and read each one out loud".
How does a great song do that? That song came from a poem that Lori Lieberman wrote on a napkin while she watched Don McLean in a concert for the first time. How does a great song lay out your emotional experience as if the songwriter had been eavesdropping on your internal dialogue.
Like they were strumming your pain with their fingers and hitting you like a memory. I've been obsessed with this as long as I can remember. The taking of something in the inner world, silent, formless, and finding a way to convert it into a shareable, perceptible sonic language, via rhythms, harmonies, beautiful noise, lyrics, whatever will get you there.
I call it "translation". The reason why it's a big deal is because if the songwriter gets it right, then chances are that he or she gets it right on behalf of the listener also. It's a very powerful thing in a world where we don't always have the tools or the context to express the fullness of who we are.
Music has this unparalleled ability to take all of one's pain, pull it into a single frame and invite us to relive it with all of the joy of the experience and none of the suffering. Like a wind turbine converts the wind's kinetic energy into electrical power, the songwriter has an ability to convert the emotional experience, the human experience, however transitory, and convert it into redeeming beauty long after the pain has past. I have some machines over here, just let me get up.
This one here -- (Piano) if we can get a little bit more sound in here. This is D minor, a great mind once said that it was the saddest of all keys. I don't know why, but it makes people weep instantly.
You can do amazing things with D minor. (Piano) But the thing about D minor is that it's not sadness itself. It does not create the sadness.
The thing is that we carry the sadness already, that D minor seems to be a harmonic match for a particular kind of sadness. I've spent my entire life trying to accurately convert the human experience into sound. And for that conversion, we either need to find or build a sonic vocabulary.
When I was a kid, I drove my very, very patient family insane. I had this 80's keyboard that had the horrible drum sounds, the synth choirs, the fake marimba. And I had this double cassette tape player, and I would record all the drums to one side, all the drums of my arrangement to one side, then the drums and the base to the other side, the drums and the base, the vocals and then the horns and whatever - And it's tape, so each dub, you multiply the hiss that's there, so in the end, you are left with this (shhhh) sound in the background.
A kind of R&B-Caribbean-pop-bossa number arranged by a very odd eight-year-old. (Laughter) I loved how the parts interweaved; I loved how, within a chord, a single note can have the final word on the way you are caused to feel, or at least which part of your emotional experience it matches up to. In songwriting, just like in language, in order to express a feeling, you absolutely have to capture and seize the thought, the experience, the memory, the feeling inside the mind and be able to understand it.
But in language, we are often using ready-made templates, reaching for the nearest possible word and then adjusting our thoughts accordingly. But in songwriting, just like in art, just like in any accurate or faithful self-expression, sometimes we have to push a little further than that, beyond the linguistic templates. Sometimes you have to get inside the cracks that exist between the words, or at least between the feelings that already have names.
And you have to kind of blindly and bravely feel your way around that very non-illuminated space until you stumble across the light switch in the hope that none of the monsters are real. In art, in faithful self-expression, you go until you've lit up the dark space. Singer-songwriters are often teaming up with music producers.
In very broad terms, music producers are like the interpreters of the artist's vision, guiding where the song goes in its recorded form. I've worked with a lot of great music producers and we've made some great music. But it's always been tricky because this idea of translation goes beyond the realm of good or bad.
It's not a rule, and it's definitely not for everyone. But for some, if the feeling translates into the song and the song into the record, then it stands to reason that when the artist hears the recorded song back, that some of that emotion of origin would be evoked, or at least somewhat - some emotion at all. And if not, then it's possible that something has been mistranslated or lost in the conversion.
And it's challenging. Tom Waits said it was like trying to capture birds without killing them. Sometimes you end up with nothing but a mouthful of feathers.
And so at that point, when I understood that, I realized I would have to become both fluent in songwriting and music production. My current live show is centered around these dazzling machines, which make for a very interesting futuristic style conversation to have with my Italian "nonna". (With Italian accent) "I no understand why you not play with human musicians.
" (Laughter) Human musicians. I do love human musicians, and I've played with real-life human ones my entire life, but in a production process, I've only ever accessed that sacred state of flow in solitude. You know, that state from which the really true stuff comes, and that's the only stuff that I kind feel at this point of my life is worthy of sharing.
Solo and surrounded by machines, I can kind of pretend that I am unwatched, unjudged, safe and free. And so, these guys make up the vowels, the consonants, the diphthongs, the slurs, the cadences and the swear words in my current sonic language. So over here is the drums.
(Drms) Just let me hook myself up further, let me be tethered, because I do not look like enough of a switchboard person as it is. (Laughter) Oh, hi ! This is Randa calling from TEDx.
(Laughter) Just wondered if would you like to partake in a survey on translation, yeah, converting the feeling into sound. OK. Those were the drums.
This is the bass. (Bass) Here we have a kind of analog synth. (Ethereal sound) This one here is a kind of synth strings that I like to play on this device (Ethereal sound) that I've asked the machine to be limited to a certain musical scale, that's F phrygian.
I could also play it over here. (Ethereal sound) But when I reduce exactly the notes that I am playing, it causes me to think about melody differently so it inspires something else when I'm playing it. Of course, we have the beautiful piano.
(Piano) Then you got this arpeggio kind of vibe. (Harpsichord sound) And this here is my vocal effect. So, I've got a little pedal down here that switches where the mike goes, or what source the sound is pulled from.
So if I just flick this switch - (Voice echo) . . .
in real time, and I can loop, of course, which means we take some parts and sort of have them play endlessly. The way it happens up here is that I construct songs and build them layer by layer, instrument by instrument. They stack upon one another, and each of the instruments is attributed to each of these faders.
So I can manipulate this myriad of buttons and controls that I've asked previously to do certain things so I can manipulate each one individually or the track as a whole. If I am not looping something live, then it's because - either there's something I don't want you to hear until I feel like it's time to come in, you know, or I don't want to spoil the reveal, or if I want the part to change all throughout the tune, or if there's something in the set up that makes me get into a certain mental space, to kind of get me in the zone. These guys are like my pet wolves, in that it's technology and technology is fickle.
And they often sabotage me, (Laughter) but it's the price that I am willing to pay for this feeling as close to the source as electronically, technologically, humanly possible right now, for as little as possible to be lost in the conversion, for the essence of who we are to not be lost in translation. (Music starts) (Singing) I used to play in a band [Inaudible] Something like that I used to play in a band [Inaudible] Something like that [Inaudible] Hmmm Hmmm [Inaudible] Hmmm Hmmm I was a rock star I was a rock star I never had a fast car I was a rock star I used to play in the band Hmmm, [inaudible] Something like that No need to get [inaudible] Hmmm [inaudible] Play the hi-hat [Inaudible] Hmmm Hmmm [Inaudible] Hmmm I was a rock star I was a rock star I was a rock star I was a rock star I was a rock star I get paid to play for real 20-inch drum and a bass head [Inaudible] 20 inch drum and a bass head 20 inch drum and a bass head 20 inch drum and a bass head 20 inch drum and a bass head (Music Ends) (Applause) Thank you. Thank you so much.
