It's hard for us to imagine a time when music didn't exist as recordings. It's hard enough to imagine life before those ubiquitous white earbuds, let alone a time before MP3s, before CDs, before cassettes, before records and phonographs. We are surrounded by music wherever we go: on the stereos in our vehicles, overhead in department stores, ringtones chirping from our pockets. But once upon a time music existed only as a live performance, as something that required your physical presence, if not participation.
Beck's latest "album" isn't a recording that you can listen to: it's a portfolio of sheet music, with twenty new songs written and arranged for piano, guitar, brass, even ukelele. Unlike other sheet music of popular songs, however, there is no "original" recording that amateur musicians everywhere will try to emulate, for professional singers to cover. These are songs that are meant for you to pick out on a keyboard, stumble through the syncopation and learn the lyrics, gather around the piano and sing together.
In the preface to this Song Reader, Beck Hansen writes about "Sweet Leilani," a song by Bing Crosby from 1937 which sold 54 million copies — of sheet music. It's hard for us to imagine any song or album today selling that many copies, let alone the sheet music for it. But there was a time, not so long ago in terms of musical history, when pop music was something you performed.
First, a bit about the physical object itself. Song Reader is a large folder with book covers. Each side of the folder holds 10 pieces of sheet music, as well as a preface by Beck and an introduction by Jody Rosen, also printed on sheet music–style paper and both well worth reading. There are little elastic loops in the corners that hold the sheet music in place. Every song has a cover by a different illustrator or artist. Some are drawings or prints, some are typography only, but all of them remind me of all the sheet music I had taking piano lessons, with the muted color palettes, sometimes bizarre illustrations. What's especially fun is the advertisements on the back covers: just like "real" sheet music, these have titles or snippets of other songs, more illustrations and ad copy. The difference is that all the snippets were also written by Beck under various pen names, and are mostly jokes of some sort. Visually, the whole package is wonderful, and even if you didn't play a lick of it, you could enjoy reading the lyrics, poring over the illustrations and all the details crammed onto the back pages.
In that way, it's a bit like the packaging you used to get with records and cassettes and CDs — remember those? The packaging itself was an important piece of the album — the artwork, the lyrics, the physicality of it. Digital albums still have covers, but there generally aren't these sorts of extras.
When my wife I opened up the Song Reader together to see what was inside, our eyes lit up. Not only was it gorgeous to look at, but the idea of an album that hadn't been recorded by the artist felt like a new adventure. What did this music sound like? Well, whatever we made it sound like. Both of us read music and play piano, so the folder has been sitting at our piano for the past couple of weeks, and every so often we'll walk by, pull out a song and plink around on the piano. I'm not yet up to recording myself playing or singing for you, but maybe when I do I'll post it to the songreader.net site and join all the others who have submitted their own performances. (You can, by the way, download one of the songs, "Old Shanghai," from the site to give it your own best shot.)
The songs hint at old styles, but often it's done with a wink or a twist of some sort. "America, Here's My Boy" sounds like one of those patriotic war songs, but the lyrics themselves are poignant and tragic. "We All Wear Cloaks," titled after a novelty song from 1855, is a bizarre romp in awkward 7/4 time that my kids love to sing along. There are shuffles and swings, folksy-sounding songs, and a couple of instrumental pieces. "Mutilation Rag" is a piano-only piece in which the right and left hands get in a fight, and all of the italicized phrases — normally Italian words like moderato and so on — are instead a play-by-play of the action. The tone for "Saint Dude" is abiding.
I've at least attempted every song once, but I've got a couple favorites that I'm trying to practice a little more — I've always had trouble playing piano and singing at the same time, except for songs I know really well. I've noticed that, despite the stylistic differences, a lot of the music has similar syncopated rhythms, like a sort of signature move. That said, the songs don't all sound like each other, and there's a good variety to play around with.
My wife doesn't want to listen to anyone else's recordings until she's learned a song her own way first, but I couldn't resist listening to a few here and there. One video in particular caught my attention, and led me to a site called Hambeck, in which a Japanese fan of Beck has an overwhelming amount of Beck-inspired fan art. Honestly, it's a little creepy, but the video is pretty amazing:
The other performance that really wowed me was "Rough on Rats" by the Portland Cello Project, a local ensemble of cellists, who performed a concert in December with a number of vocalists (and other instruments). I was delighted to discover that they performed all of the songs from Song Reader, and it's now available on iTunes as an album. But I'm saving that for later — after I've had a chance to come up with my own interpretation of a few more songs.
If nothing else, Song Reader will get you to think about music a little differently. On the one hand, it has become easier and easier to obtain recordings of music: it's so ubiquitous that it can seem cheap. On the other hand, the internet (and YouTube in particular) has made performers of us all: our heretofore private renditions are now shared with millions. Song Reader connects the dots between the old singalongs and today's online performances, and gives us something to ponder.
Disclosure: McSweeney's provided a review copy of Song Reader.
