To set the stage somewhat, Kasul and I were at a family celebration at my sister’s place, an hour away. Kansas’s “Carry On My Wayward Son” came on the PA, and I mentioned to Kasul that when I was a kid, I always thought the song was “Carrie, you’re my wayward son”. Dunno why.
On the way home, Kasul fiddles with his phone for a moment and we listen to Kansas’ “Leftoverture” and I’m struck by how the violinist can make their instrument sound both like a violin and a cello. Fast forward to yesterday, I’m working and I have my MP3 player going, listening to Kansas’ “Best of”, and I remember the question I had about the violin on the songs.
Turns out it’s a seven string electric violin, with the three extra strings tuned to get cello and viola notes, with some doubling going on so it sounds like multiple instruments.
So I’m having this conversation with Google’s AI overview, and in the style of chatbots, it keeps prompting me to ask it more questions about the various violinists that have been with Kansas, etc. But I’m already moved on from Kansas and have started with Jarrett’s “The Köln Concert”, and I mention this to it.
If a chatbot can get excited, this one gets excited. “OH! How did you like those opening notes?” It goes on to explain the back story of the concert, which it probably cribbed from Wikipedia. An 18 year old concert promoter, an opera house that wouldn’t allow jazz to be played during proper hours, a pianist in severe pain and abdominal distress after several hours in a small Renault driving from Zurich to Köln, having to play on an out-of-tune rehearsal piano with no low notes, inaudible high notes, and pedals that had to be stomped on to work. Jarrett had to be coerced to play, and he was forced out of his comfort zone to create something amazing. When he started playing, started creating, he no longer felt the pain.
Jarrett thought the idea of someone else playing this music was a mistake; it was a moment in time. But eventually someone did transcribe the full concert, every stomp, hit, note, run, ostinato and vocalization — because Jarrett was not a quiet pianist. He’d yell and whoop and all of these things were faithfully put into the transcription — “Here, two beats of inarticulate joy.”
While I was listening, the chatbot was prompting me — “let me know when you’re about halfway in.” and “Okay, here’s where his left hand is doing a rock ostinato while he’s searching for inspiration on his right hand.” It was a guided tour through the work. Of course, it was drawing from what humans had written about the piece; it knows nothing about music itself.
But it helped! I really did enjoy knowing what was going on at certain moments. Along the way, it was relating the story of the concert, what happened to that broken, out-of-tune piano that was used to record the most famous piano album of all time, the movies made about the concert, and all that.
So yeah. I’ve listened to the album any number of times, but this is the first time I listened to it as if I were there that night, in Köln, in 1975.
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