The Beyond Vocab Incantations

1:05 What's good, everybody?Scoobert Doobert here.Today I want to talk about magic spells, incantations, or another way to put it is musical vocabulary.This has been something I've been really thinking about a lot, a lot, a lot lately, is especiallywith LLMs and AI and everything like that, we're talking to this thing.I recognize that the acuity of speech, the ability to say something really, really specifically

1:31 is growing in power.As we are asking these things in our work and eventually, in our lives and every momentof our lives to do stuff, they can get really tripped up if you're notspecific enough.And that's the reason why we have complex terminology because it's able to compressa very specific thing into one specific word.It's like when I say dissonance.That doesn't just mean that it's like conflicting notes.

2:10 It's a certain kind of conflicting notes versus resolution or consonance.But you can get really specific.So you might have heard of syncopation, which is like funky rhythms, funky beats, but what

2:29 about a polyrhythm where you have two different kinds of meters playing on top of each other?Same idea of what is a hemiola?It's a typically polyrhythm, but it's like a tied musical rhythm and what you haveto have a reference.I think it's like that.That was the most perfect example, but that's basically a hemiola.

2:58 But what I'm saying is that even something like a backbeat or ghost notes, some of thesethings to a non-musician would be like, what is a ghost note?Well, those are the little notes that are not as intense as the hard articulations, thestrong transients, the big attack moments.These are powerful words.They are not merely vocabulary.

3:29 They indicate something in music that you can accomplish, and you can call forth fromyour other musicians, from LLMs, whatever type of intelligence you might be working with.I mean it more with humans, but when you see two pros talking, they can speak the samelanguage.Sometimes that language is without speech, you know, you just need to learn the otherperson's noodles and go, oh, okay, I got it.

3:54 But when you're composing, when you're working across instruments or you're working in instrumentsthat you are not as familiar with, if you're able to reach into the bag of tricks, you reallyare saying spells to each other.You are changing the way that they are approaching the same note.Oh, that's a grace note.What is a grace note?You can give a little grace.

4:18 It's a note that is just kind of falling into the next note.It is, you can call it a slur or a glissando.I say all of these, or you can go back and forth between the two notes and call it a trill.I don't say this to flex musical terminology.

4:39 I say this to describe that if you learn these words, you are compacting context, youare compacting meaning, and that allows you to speak to another type of intelligence,more gracefully, more specifically, and you can get the kind of music that you have inyour head into someone else's head.It's like, oh, isn't that just language?

5:04 I mean, of course, of course, but if you say, oh, no, I'm kind of looking for morelike a call and response thing.That reaches back to the rock history that we're talking about in a bunch of this pod.But you are calling forth a response.You are calling forth a musical tradition, a history, a style.It is richer than I play a note and then you answer some notes.

5:31 It is saying, I am reaching in to work song and rock and roll in the blues, and I'm goingto pull some of that out, even if I'm in a different genre.But call and response is going to make me do something different than, oh, I'll playthis and then you just play that.Or if you tell somebody, oh, I really like kind of the counterpoint that you're doing orthe counter melody that you're playing on the bass.

5:57 That redefines the bass part from being a bass part and turns it into something thatis connected to the melody.So just by saying that to a bassist, you change their frame of reference and what they'refocusing on to the singer.These are powerful words and producers do this all the time.This is one of the reasons why producers can seem like magicians and maybe look likemagicians or recruitment.

6:24 But a lot of what they're doing is subtle context engineering, they're doing, they're movingpeople's frames of thought and attention to different areas and they are using specificwords to be able to capture the right kind of vibe.

6:43 And there's this whole tradition with Italian words like crescendo, diminuendo, pianissimo.I love Italian.I will learn to speak it someday.But the borrowed words, they're borrowed because they're perfect because crescendo, you canjust feel it rising up.

7:08 There are so many dynamic words and they're often abbreviated, but this is a great thingto borrow from classical music because you can very much get on the same page of am I attackingand then you're getting quiet and then getting loud again, am I just going loud and loudand loud and loud?Am I going loud and then getting a little quieter, diminuendo, diminuendo, diminuendo,

7:28 diminuendo, diminuendo, you gotta say it's annoying, pianissimo, very quiet, fortissimo,very loud and expressive, expressive.Even just the form and structure kind of side of things of like, oh yeah, hit the bridge,I know what a bridge feels like.Oh, the song is kind of through composed, I know what that's going to be like.That means it goes from A to Z.It's supposed to feel non-repetitive, it can be repetitive.

8:00 It's supposed to feel less like we are doubling back.Same way, like verse chorus, oh yeah, standard, standard pop form.It's like, okay, I got it.I know that the chorus is supposed to be bigger than the verse, oh, but it's A, A, B, A.Oh no, okay, that's a little different.That's like classic, like Beatles-y kind of thing.You can come out with a band and that A section can feel like a chorus and that B section

8:21 feels more like a bridge, a middle eight.But all these words, they're packed with history.When you tell me your bridge is a middle eight, I'm going to play it completely differentlythan if you tell me it's a bridge.In the same way, they'd be like, oh yeah, this is the recapitulation of the melody.It's like, okay, I'm going to play that a certain type of way because it is a recapitulation.

8:42 You know, it's like, it's very classical, but it's important.We're bringing it back.We're developing this melody and we're recapitulating it.But just the, all of those things, when you tell me, if I'm just sitting there, I'm ina studio session and somebody is, you know, instructing me on how they want me to comeup with a part.So there's just chords in front of me.

9:05 They say, I'm looking for something that's a little bit more like monophonic, one line.I don't just think, oh, okay, I'll play single notes.I think I'm going to play kind of like a monophonic synthesizer.The choice of vocabulary that you give to me is going to influence not just the notesthat I play, but the articulation that I'm going to play with.Play with.It was very legato.

9:27 It's very swoopy, the very technical term of swoopy, but legato means I'm going to articulateless.There's going to be less of intense transience, it's going to be flowy.It's going to be like you're holding down the sustain pedal of the piano.And all of those words are all decisions.And when you make more decisions about your own music, it becomes more like what you havein your head.

9:53 And also, if you make some decisions for me, you're setting me up as a studio musician,you plug in whatever musician, you're setting this musician up to be successful within acertain box of like, I'm looking for this kind of a thing in this world.You can leave fuzzy edges for the artist to be the artist, but when you make some decisionsyou anchor that artist into a tradition, into a style.

10:19 And you usually want to do that, because you usually know what you want.And that's kind of your role as the artist is to collapse the potential, like things thatyou could do, especially for these great musicians, like some of the people, like better thanI am, some of the people that have been on this podcast that know every style, you know,

10:39 they're just like experts in all of this stuff and studied all over the world and, youknow, toured everywhere and played in all these different types of bands.If you know a little bit of that vocabulary, you're going to be able to get a really specificthing out of that player.And you can ask them, of course, but there's a power in these words.It goes beyond vocab flashcards.It goes into like a spell.

11:10 Every time we speak, every time we instruct, we are shifting the other person's mindset,emotion, style.You're shifting the history that they're reaching into, mindset of my academic, and itlets you have more control and it gives the other person a lot of respect.So I'm not saying you have to speak all fancy.I'm just saying that all of these words, they go beyond sounding fancy.They go into realm of magic.

11:58 If you want to hear some magic, you can go listen to my music, I'm just getting kindof a kind of music.All music is magical, including my own.You can go to scoobertdoobert.pizza, a very serious site, scoobertdoobert.pizza and youcan see all of my links, or just look me up on Spotify.But I really do believe that even just self-talk and putting yourself into different places, sometimes

12:24 knowing that these articulations and dynamics are even possible, that they're even outthere can open up doors, the doors of perception.

12:35 It isn't funny, you say the doors of perception, I'm like, okay, Jim Morrison, the lizardking.Now I start going down all of these weird little things, these little associations.That's part of what lyric writing is as well, is you can be alluding to all of thesedifferent things that just the magic of a few words can elicit.If you enjoyed this podcast, I invite you to read it five stars and have some great

12:57 guests coming up.I've been loving all of the guests this year, I always love my guests and it's justbeen super fun to get to hear from all these different perspectives and musical heroesand learn from their words.I hope you have a great week and I'll see you next time.