They’re only human. Great musicians can fall back on signature sounds, or a motif, as readily as any hack whose run out of ideas while jamming in the basement. As a “now playing” example got me thinking, whether by design or default, Ornette Coleman, on “The Ark,” from from his excellent Town Hall, 1962 can’t help but play the 4-note theme that’s best known from his electric free-jazz breakthrough “Dancing in Your Head.” Go back to the earliest Coleman recordings and you’ll hear him play that 4-or-so-note run. That’s the essence of Ornette Coleman, his Colemanessence, if you will. All the other millions of free notes he and his bandmates have played for the last 50-plus years might be meaningless to all but hardcore jazz explorers like our very own “Boom Boom” Buskirk if not for our ability to trace – and cling onto – the development and recurrence of that 4-note motif.
Then I got to thinking, Pete Townshend was the first rock musician that came to mind who had such a distinctive motif. For him I’d say it’s the suspended fourth he uses with his chords. It’s something he must have picked up from Phil Spector arrangements, which often hinge on the suspended fourth note (eg, “Then He Kissed Me”), and it’s there in early Who songs like “I’m a Boy,” eventually serving as the driving force in the entire Tommy album and, with a twist, Quadrophenia. As much as his windmill power chording, Townshend’s reliance on the suspended fourth chord is his signature sound.
Can you identify signature sounds that best define the works of other musicians? I don’t mean something as broad and obvious and Bo Diddley and his beat but something more subtle that is prevalent and even expected in the sounds this musician creates. Without actual sound samples to post, just point to a part of a well-known song that represents that artist’s signature sound.
np – Ornette Coleman, “The Ark”
The only thing I can think of at the moment is my own crutch: the min7 chord.
Perfect, Hrrundi. Our own crutches are also open to discussion. My crutch is the double-stop (or double-bend) about 6 notes into any solo.
I don’t have the musical vocabulary to properly identify exactly what they’re doing, but:
1. ELO songs are often redeemed for me by Jeff Lynne’s bridges. I think he goes to a minor II a lot (Telephone Line, Sweet Talking Woman, Living Thing) but I’ve never sat down with a guitar and tried to figure it out.
2. Todd Rundgren also has a signature trick. I haven’t listened to him in a long time so the only example that I can give is the bridge in Open My Eyes. I think it might be the harmonies that create a very distinct Todd sound. I also noticed it on the first Pursuit of Happiness album, produced by Todd. Is that a signature sound or a musical crutch?
Neil Young likes songs in E minor with the pinky playing a “D” (third fret on the “B” string).
He also likes the open C major 7.
He deploys both so frequently, that a friend of mine who was taking guitar lessons from me referred to them as “the Neil Young chords” and wrote a joke Neil Young song by putting both together. It worked.
Sorry in advance for geeking it up around here but I refer to certain chords as “Keith Chords”.
You know those chords where you play an open A chord, then add a D (I think) on the B string and an F# (I think)on the D string to play the IV, then slide the whole thing up a full step to play the V?
While we’re talking about the seminal rock guitarists:
the second half of the solo in “Whole Lotta Love” is basically a Whitman’s sampler of riffs that Page would play over and over again. One of them even appears prominently in the solo of “In through the out door’s” “Southbound Saurez.”
Can lyrics be a signature riff? What are Dylan’s signature lyric riffs?
That goofy “Eee-ohoh” that Sting sings a lot, especialy with The Police.
Early Dylan had a habit of separating the subject of a sentence from the rest of the sentence. Here are some examples:
Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn…
Georgia Sam, he had a bloody nose…
I got this graveyard woman, you know she keeps my kid
But my soulful mama, you know she keeps me hid…
Cinderella, she seems so easy…
Now Ophelia, she’s ‘neath the window…
Dr. Filth, he keeps his world
Inside of a leather cup…
You get the idea.
I don’t actually know how to play anything, but I can almost always tell Keith playing a Keith Chord from everyone else except Mick Taylor. The thing that cracks me up about Keith is that he has about a zillion guitars, and live he plays at six different ones every show. Each and every one sounds exactly the same as soon as he picks it up, so what’s the point?
Good stuff so far. The Rundgren harmony on the break makes a lot of sense. The Neil Young Cmaj7 is right on. The Keef hammer-on chord has been his raison d’etre since the mid-70s. BigSteve even identified a Dylan lyric-phrasing motif. What else you got, Rock Town Hall?
I don’t think it really fits, but the lyrical signature thing reminds me of a Springsteen post here from whenver his last album came out that spurred me to go find 20+ examples of Bruce using some variation of “[he/she/the judge/the man] said, ‘Son…'” in song lyrics.
That Springsteen reference reminds me of this item from the blog-o-shpere:
The Day Bruce Springsteen Ran Out of Inane Childhood Stories to Talk About Before Starting a New Song
http://www.johnnyamerica.net/archives/2007/05/22/21.19.47/
“shakespeare…HE’S in the alley way…”
well, one of my own ‘crutches’ is, when playing a first position G chord, to slide up to the 5th threat on the E and B strings as a fill.
Damon Albarn, of Blur, likes to use only major chords, whenever possible, even if it’s done in a way that’s a little unnatural. Chemical World or Country House are examples.
The quintessential ‘tell’ in all of jazz guitar: Wes Montgomery’s high-string-octave soloing.
By the way – did you ever see Wes Montgomery’s right thumb? Most guitarists will use a plectrum or finger-picking in addition to the strum with the thumb. But everything you’ve ever heard-all the chording and runs and yes the high string octave soloing that Montomery ever played-was perfomed with only that thumb. There’s some videos now available on dvd from Danish tv and the like: get em from the liberry if you can…his pick-thumb is an evolutionary phenomenon – hooked, almost like that bad guy in the ‘I know whatchaz did last summer’ shows…
Next exhibit in the jazz wing of RTH: Art Tatum’s signature three-second-run-from-the-tipply-top-of-the-keyboard-to-the-bottomly-bass-while-playing-every-note-in-whatever-the-scale.
Monk’s flammed chords, the pianistic equivalent of a drummer hitting a drum with two sticks at ALMOST the exact same time.
“The thing that cracks me up about Keith is that he has about a zillion guitars, and live he plays at six different ones every show. Each and every one sounds exactly the same as soon as he picks it up, so what’s the point?”
Different tunings. There’s standard, open E, open G and maybe some others.
The open-G guitars allow him (and you!) to play those “Keith chords” across five strings instead of a paltry three. And his open-G guitars don’t have low E strings, because the E would drop down to D and would always be the fifth of the chord and he says he muted the E for years before he realized if he’s never going to play the strong, why bother having it?
He may have a Nashville-tuned guitar too.