The Blindboy Podcast - How buildings create music

Episode Date: April 28, 2021

How the shape of Notre Dame Cathedral changed western music via Pythagoras. How mountains slowed down heavy metal music Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello and welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast, you stunted Duncans. If you're a brand new listener, maybe go back to some earlier podcasts so you can familiarise yourself with the lore of this podcast. If you're a regular listener, you know the crack. I've got a brand new chair but it's starting to be noisy. And this is a brand new chair and I'd say, I don't think it starting to be noisy. And this is a brand new chair, and I'd say,

I don't think it needs to be oiled, but I'd say what happens, I need to go at it with a screwdriver and tighten a few screws, because that's an unacceptable level of noise, and I'm not even a minute into the podcast. Hopefully it'll behave itself. This week's podcast is going to be about,

it's a hot take art music specifically it's about sound it's about music and music's relationship with architecture this week's podcast is almost a continuation not a continuation but

it's a cousin of a podcast I did two weeks ago about the relationship between stereo sound and 11th century painting and the discovery of perspective. This week's podcast is quite similar. Before we consume the blistering flesh of this podcast, just a couple of updates. I mentioned a few weeks back that I was having trouble with my Achilles heel. A lot of you were messaging me on Instagram about my Achilles heel.

So what I did, I went to a physiotherapist. I finally went to a fucking physiotherapist. I didn't think I could go to a physiotherapist. I thought they were all closed down because of COVID, but they're not. So I went to a physio. I've been having trouble with my Achilles heel for nearly two months. When I'm running. I love running.

I can't run as much because my fucking heel is sore. Now I assumed my Achilles heel was in bits. Because the gyms are closed. Gyms have been closed since about December. So because of that i've been running a little bit more because i can't go to the gym so i thought okay i've been putting more strain on my feet therefore my achilles heel is sore turns out that's that's only half the case so what the physio told me which is really interesting my achilles isn't fucked because i've been running more

it's because i haven't been going to the gym right so when i was going to the gym lifting weights and running when i was in the gym i'm doing all these weights and i'm developing muscles on my legs on my my arse, on my back, my shoulders. I'm developing these muscles on my body. Now I do a little bit of weights at home but it's not as good as the gym. My weights aren't heavy enough, I don't have access to machines. And something happens psychologically when you step into a gym. When you're in a gym and you're in a space of weight lifting, you just lift more.

So my muscles are shriveling away, right? So basically, when I was lifting weights, I had all this muscle on my body. And this was acting as shock absorption for when I ran. body and this was acting as shock absorption for when I ran so when I was running my 10k muscles on fucking muscles in my shoulder my fucking shoulder were absorbing shock of impact on the ground and now that these muscles are effectively gone when I run the 10k the shock isn't absorbed and my poor old Achilles heel is taking all of it. And now I've got an inflamed Achilles heel. So that was eye-opening for me.

That was amazing. I didn't know that something like my fucking feet, that muscles on my back or muscles on my shoulder would influence the impact on my feet. So that was fun to learn so basically what i'm doing is i'm upping my exercises at home to try and strengthen those muscles and i'm hoping some people are saying the gyms are going to open mid-may all right people who are like personal trainers and shit they're of the opinion that gyms will reopen mid-May. But they're not sure. What do they know? They just kind of have a hunch based on their industry.

So let's hope that happens. So I exercise because of how it makes me feel. I go to the gym and I run because of the unbelievably positive impact it has on my mental health. Exercise is 50% of my mental health without question but because I don't have access to it at the moment my mental health is suffering I'm more prone

I'm more sensitive I'm more sensitive to shit that wouldn't normally upset me or cause me anxiety or cause me to be sad so how would I describe it my emotional boundaries are weakened at the moment that's basically it and that's kind of shit because there's a pandemic as well but I'm coping so the other thing I did this week is I've been complaining

about social media for the past while in particular twitter so i finally fucking i haven't gotten rid of my twitter i handed my twitter over to someone else to manage i was talking with my agents and i'm supposed to be doing a fair bit of creative work at the moment on several different projects and i'm not my creative output isn't what it should be because Twitter is making me feel like shit even even though I took it off my phone I only was checking it once in the morning and putting a post in and then keeping it on a laptop even that was enough to make me feel like absolute shit. And it's not necessarily because people are being mean to me. It's just Twitter.

Twitter operates on an algorithm that pushes people towards fighting, basically. Twitter is a social media app. The algorithm is designed to reward people who engage in combat and points are awarded for combat and all combat is acted out as a type of performance and there's points going for how well you perform but it's twitter incentivizes, hostility, combat, disingenuousness. It pushes arguments in a direction where there's deliberately no nuance. It pushes people towards deliberately misinterpreting the other person in bad faith to facilitate the economy of combat and it pushes people towards extreme black and white thinking so that more arguments can occur and when this happens twitter earns more money it's that simple it's a video game

where we manufacture the most hostile version of ourselves for points but we don't know we're doing it that's why i don't get pissed off necessarily with people on Twitter it's just these are the rules that are set out by a joint corporation and I'm also noticing as well the negative impact it's having almost on the world so if you look at news articles right so a lot of news articles they'll speak about a story and then in the news article they will refer to what people are saying online about the story or about the topic and they get most of these what people are saying online from twitter right but here's the thing with twitter as i've mentioned because the algorithm encourages such negativity twitter's a bit like um when people are driving cars when someone's in a car

and someone cuts off in front of you you can get very very angry very very quickly and scream at the other person but if there was no car if someone walked in front of you in a queue you simply wouldn't do that you wouldn't get as angry

you'd have a bit more empathy and compassion and understanding and you wouldn't start screaming but when you're in your car you start roaring and screaming and I don't really know why that is I think the car shelters you but think of it this way imagine news media wanted to report on people's reactions to certain subjects. But they only ask those people while they're furious in their cars during an instance of road rage. That's what Twitter is doing to the world. And it's one of the reasons why you'd be of the opinion that everybody is just outraged at everything right now. Because a lot of that information, that data is being gathered from a video game that encourages outrage because a giant corporation makes money from that

outrage data and it's it's amplified over the past year obviously two things have amplified it obviously there's a pandemic people are at home a lot don't have as much contact with human beings in real life where there's things like nuance empathy um tone twitter is divide of tone so if if you read one angry statement on twitter the next statement you read by another person you will interpret their tone as being angry even if they aren't and all these things are amplified right now also the removal of donald trump from twitter so donald trump and a load of large right-wing accounts were removed which i thought would calm twitter down but it didn't what it did is in the context of a video game it removed some very large baddies so now the combat has become infighting so all these things for me means that even to passively

use twitter um it just feels it doesn't feel it doesn't feel nice at all it's not pleasant and it makes me feel a bit blue. And I don't even get that much of a hard time on Twitter because I'm very happy with the block button. I do a lot of blocking. But I've fucking 250,000 followers on Twitter. So that's overwhelming right now. That's really fucking overwhelming. So for the time being, I'm no longer managing my twitter account

i have someone managing it for me and i'm still gonna tweet but what i'll be doing is sending them the tweets and i might check in every so often but mostly i'm going nah someone else has can take that job for me while i focus on my fucking work and my mental health and not allow this not allow this thing to fucking encroach upon my emotional boundaries you know so I'm really happy with that decision I'm very happy with that decision and you might be listening going man just delete your fucking account delete your account what are you worrying about a social media site for, I'd love to delete my account, any other circumstances, I would just, I'd be gone, done, I don't need it, but I'm an independent fucking artist, and like I said, I've got an account with fucking a quarter of a million

followers, I need that for my job, I need to have that platform, so I can tell people when I've got a podcast out, or when I've got a podcast out or when i've got a book out or whatever the fuck so i can't just delete the fucking thing even though i would i would love to and i feel so envious i'm seeing so many people people people who i respect people who i respect as thinkers are just leaving the site in droves, just going fuck this, I'm not dealing with this shit, and I envy them greatly tell you what I'm loving though TikTok, videos of funny

cats and dogs, roaring laughing at my phone, I do enjoy that greatly, Twitch is good crack too and Instagram, I'm enjoying Instagram Instagram has it's problems, Instagram has a lot of problems around body image and stuff like that and people presenting very unrealistic representations of how they look or their lives

and then the impact that this has on people's self-esteem. So Instagram has a lot of problems. I don't have to deal with that because I've got a fucking bag on my head. I don't have to worry about posting selfies and people thinking I look like a hunk or not. What I like about Instagram is people are just nicer. People behave a bit more like they would in real life. No one's going to outright call you an absolute prick. And the thing is, people do argue on Instagram and Facebook. But when people argue on Instagram and Facebook, it's kind of cringy. Like it is in real life.

You kind of don't want to stick around and watch. You get kind of a second-hand cringe. Like if people are having a heated argument in a shop, you know, at first you're watching and going, oh, this is interesting. And then you're like, no, this isn't even an argument. This is two people who are very hurt and now it has nothing to do with the argument.

I want to leave the shop. Facebook and instagram is a bit like that and if you've ever gotten into an argument on facebook like everyone's gotten into a facebook argument argument with a stranger about something underneath an article when you get into a facebook argument and have a heated exchange with someone you don't know, you end up walking away from it going, what the fuck did I do that for? What a waste of an evening. The fuck did I gain from that? Most people get that reaction from a Facebook argument, but not Twitter.

When you get into a big fight with somebody on Twitter especially if the person wins you walk away having convinced yourself that you're just after achieving something which is very fucking dodgy that's not healthy that's dangerous and I tell you the reason that is because I looked it up Twitter have deliberately manipulated their algorithm so that when you get likes on twitter or retweets it specifically targets the part of your brain that makes you feel important so that's what separates twitter twitter is set up so that it makes you feel like you are worthy and important and essentially all you're doing is screaming at a stranger and another thing with twitter that it does is on facebook if you get into too heated an argument with a stranger

people who actually know you in real life can see it okay because that's the nature of facebook and instagram on facebook and instagram you'll add people you actually know in real life so if you're screaming at dusselig from mullingar then people you work with are gonna see you doing it so you don't or they might even step in and say calm down man will you why are you screaming at him and that would be shameful and embarrassing on twitter nobody has any real friends on twitter with twitter what you have is your performance is friends with another person's performance and the idea of someone you know in real life finding your twitter account is is mortifying so all that together adds up to a pretty a pretty depressing experience

for anyone who has to watch so i'm out of the game for a while until my emotional resilience is back to a place where i can participate healthily because twitter can be good crack too and i think twitter will go back to being good crack once the the pandemic lifts and life returns to normal because then people can have a balance they can be like okay i'm gonna do one hour of behaving like an absolute maniac on twitter and then i'm gonna meet real people in real life and I'm going to go to a pub and I'm going to have that balance and while I'm in the pub I understand that if I was to behave in this pub the way that I do on Twitter I'd be asked to leave but we don't have that now you just have

100% Twitter mania all day so what I want to look at. With this week's podcast is. It's a music history podcast. I want to look at. The relationship between. Music and. Architecture. Right. Music and architecture.

And I want to look at. How. Music. How certain music is shaped depending on where that music physically is performed or comes from about two weeks back i did a podcast where i looked at visual art i looked at um paintings from the 1200s. How in western painting when western painting discovered perspective, linear perspective

right, the representation of 3D space and a 2D surface this started off by a painter called Giotto in the 1200s and how humans discovered perspective in paintings when humans started to draw in the presence of architecture and buildings, right?

I've been doing some research that points towards a similar kind of vibe with music, which is really, really interesting. I want to explore some of that i'm going to be speaking mostly about western european music okay so because that's important to point out music is universal to all cultures around the world, okay? So I'm going to focus on Western European music this week. I won't, like... The contribution of music from parts of Africa in particular to modern music is absolutely gigantic, okay? And I don't want to...

It's an area I haven't fully researched yet. So I want to make sure that when I do speak about music from Africa that I give it the proper respect that it deserves. So I'm not erasing music from Africa or Asia if I don't mention it this week. I'm specifically focusing on Western European music and its relationship with architecture. So music has been around for as long as humans have

been around okay i said that before you're talking 50 000 years if not longer but when i say western music you can kind of one starting point in history is you can kind of trace it back to a fella called pythagoras in ancient greece And Pythagoras was a mathematician and a philosopher. Who was, he was knocking about around. 500 years before Christ. No, 600 years before Christ. So Pythagoras, you're talking almost 3000 years ago. Now Pythagoras, you know Pythagoras' name because you learned about him in school.

When you were studying maths. Pythagoras is very because you learned about him in school when you were studying maths pythagoras is very very important to mathematics but what pythagoras also did is he's considered the first person in western history to arrive at a science around music around what music is okay Pythagoras was like asking the question of if you have like a little guitar or a little flute or the human voice why do some notes just sound really fucking nice why do some notes sound really nice and why did they mix perfectly with other notes together to form chords what what what what's that about so what pythagoras started doing is he started getting like strings like the string on a guitar and pythagoras found that certain lengths of string produced certain tones and when these lengths of string were literally symmetrical

the tones that they produced would harmonise with each other. He realised that musical notes are essentially mathematics that music is symmetrical vibrations of air and this symmetry makes you feel emotions so if you think of it in terms of aesthetics we as humans we like to look at things that are balanced okay shapes and patterns that are symmetrical that are balanced we experience this as beautiful okay and the same thing with fucking music a nice little melody is the same as a drawing that's balanced and symmetrical. So Pythagoras can be credited with Pythagoras' scale. And that's basically, if you think back in school when you were a kid and you were learning music, do, re, mi, fa, so, whatever the fuck. I'm not going to try and do it in tune, because I'll be off tune.

But you remember do, re, mi. That's Pythagoras' scale. And that's the basis for all of Western music. When you play a piano, when you press a key on a piano, that key is attached to a string. And if you open up a piano, or if you look at a harp, a harp is a good example.

A harp and the shape of it it's loads of different strings and all those strings are certain lengths and each every length of that string produces a note but because the harp is made perfectly symmetrical all those strings are the exact length of perfect notes in the western scale music is mathematics when it's having fun and that's what pythagoras figured out and formalized pythagoras also kind of founded a religion called pythagoreanism and is that what it was called was it pythagoreanism pythagoreanism yeah and the followers of pythagoras pretty much believed that mathematics was like the language of god that the cosmos and the universe the true language

of beauty and the universe and balance and god the language of god is mathematics not just in musical notes but also in shapes and angles and geometry sacred geometry the followers of pythagoras were like we've cracked the code of how god or the gods speak. This is their language. It's geometrical shapes and symmetrical vibrations of air that we call music. Now, the other thing with the followers of Pythagoras and his religion, some of it was quite mad.

So what you get from Pythagoras and the Greeks in general is the foundations of western thought this obsession with empiricism and rationality to the point that there were some really strict rules within pythagoras's religion that he was being so rational that the rules were actually irrational for instance if you followed pythagoras you weren't allowed to eat fava beans because beans made you fart so pythagoras believed that the nature of farting was was would create an imbalance that would so pythagoras was so obsessed with symmetry and balance that he believed that if you breathe in,

you're breathing in life. So therefore, if you fart, you're expelling life. So if you eat fava beans, you're farting yourself to death. You're creating imbalance in the universe. Pythagoras also drowned one of his followers because he spoke about an

irrational number a number that didn't I'm shit at maths so I can't really understand this but a number that didn't balance in accordance with Pythagoras's rules which to me would suggest that he would also get very angry if someone played a musical note that wasn't exactly in tune. That Pythagoras had strict rules around what is in tune and what is not in tune. Pythagoras also had two types of followers, right? There was the Acoustomatikai and the Mathematikai. So Pythagoras would meet with these followers in person and he would explain to them higher mathematics,

what he believed to be the language of the gods, and that was a great privilege. But for the rest of the followers who didn't get to hear the advanced higher mathematics, the language of the gods, Pythagoras would only appear behind a veil or hidden behind a wall speaking so he's a good example of he was so obsessed with rationality and balance that he actually behaved in quite irrational ways other things that can be attributed to Pythagoras is like the five second rule for

food he was like if food fell on the ground after a certain time you couldn't eat it. Also there's this bizarre trend amongst young men on the internet today usually incel lads called the no fat movement where men don't masturbate because they believe that to masturbate is to give away your power and strength through your bodily fluids. Pythagoras started that. He believed that there was balance within your body and that sperm was explicitly connected with your soul and that when you masturbate, you're actually shooting your soul off onto the ground and creating imbalance. So a lot of Western empiricism and Western thought. And western culture is founded upon.

Pythagoras. And also of course formalized western music. And this is 600 years before Christ. And right there is the foundation of the western music scale. And I say. I'm saying western because. Just for instance in Africa. In certain African cultures,

their music skills aren't the Western music skills. They have notes that are between Western notes. And we've been conditioned in the West to hear music only on the western music scale so sometimes if you listen to music from west african music traditional music from like mali or even north african music from morocco sometimes to our ear it sounds out of tune because we've been conditioned to this western music scale and i won't get into this because it's too big. I'll save it for another podcast. But also some Irish traditional singing. Also does not adhere strictly to the Western music scale. Because there is a theory that Irish music has its roots in North Africa. But I'm not going to get into that on this podcast.

But the traditional Western music scale is rooted in pythagoras's scale so what western culture took from pythagoras and moved on into into christianity we'll say is that mathematics is the key to sacred aesthetics that to use mathematics when you make music or to use mathematics when you design a building is to aspire to a divine sacred language of the gods so this was carried forward into into western architecture into how cathedrals were built and what i want to examine is the relationship between music that developed in early medieval cathedrals and how they related to the literal architecture of the cathedrals they were built in and how this all ties back into Pythagoras.

Before I do that, because I want it to be uninterrupted and I want to get into flow, I'm going to do the ocarina pause. Now, interestingly, the ocarina, which is a South American instrument, this is an instrument that does not adhere to Western Pythagorean fucking musical scales. The ocarina will bend, the notes will bend in a fluid fashion, and it will explore multiple notes rather than sticking strictly with a western scale so here's the ocarina pause on april 5th you must be very careful mar Margaret. It's a girl. Witness the birth.

Bad things will start to happen. Evil things of evil. It's all for you. No, no, don't. The first omen. I believe the girl is to be the mother. Mother of what? Is the most terrifying.

Six, six, six. It's the mark of the devil. Hey! Movie of the year. It's not real. It's not real. It's not real. Who said that? The first omen. Only in theaters April 5th. Rock City, you're the best fans in the league, bar none.

Tickets are on sale now for Fan Appreciation Night on Saturday, April 13th when the Toronto Rock host the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at

torontorock.com Bending and sliding all over the place doesn't give a fuck about Pythagoras. So that was the ocarina pause that meant you heard an advert for something that was algorithmically generated depending on what you've been searching for on the internet alright

support for this podcast comes from you the listener via the Patreon page this is an independent podcast alright no advertiser can tell me what to speak about, what to make podcasts about no advertiser can tell me what to speak about what to make podcasts about no advertiser can tell me what to do and this is all possible because it's listener funded so um if you like this podcast and it's helping you along and you're getting entertainment from it and you're enjoying it all i'm asking for is to consider paying me for the work that I'm doing. This podcast is my full-time job,

and it's very time-consuming to put it out each week and to do the amount of research that I need to do to do it. And I love doing it. I fucking adore doing it. But if you're enjoying it, just consider paying me for doing that work. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month. That's it. You just say to yourself, if you like my podcast and you met me in real life would you buy me a pint once a month

if the answer is yes you can patreon.com forward slash the blind buy podcast now if you can't afford it no problem you can listen for free you can listen for free but if you can't afford it,

you're paying for the person who can't afford it. So everybody gets a podcast. I earn a living. What more could we ask for? That's perfect. It's a model that's based on soundness and kindness. Everyone gets the same podcast. And it works fantastically.

And I've been, I'm a professional artist for the past fucking 10 years longer. And the Patreon is the first time ever that I have a regular reliable source of income. And what that does for my sense of security and my ability to plan is fucking phenomenal. Because before that, I was just beholden to fucking, will I get a television commission? Will I do this? Do I have to go and do fucking will I get a television commission will I do this do I have to go and do a different job for a while Patreon means that

I get to be a full time fucking artist because I have patrons so thank you so much to everyone who is a patron thank you so much it's life changing for me like the podcast recommend it to a friend subscribe to it leave a little review alright all that shit fucking helps

catch me on Thursday nights on Twitch at half 8 where I'm making a live musical to the events of a video game as a never ending art project, it's good crack so, back to the theme of this podcast which is

how architecture influenced western music. I want to speak now, I want to move on from Pythagoras to the 1100s, right? Which is 2000 years after Pythagoras, the 1100s in Europe, the early medieval period. I want to speak about Gothic architecture architecture. Gigantic gothic cathedrals. Now the thing with gothic architecture is, so if music is mathematics having fun, gothic architecture is mathematics having a wank.

The finest example of a gothic cathedral is Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Do you remember it caught fire there in 2019? Notre Dame Cathedral was built in the 1100s and the purpose of Notre Dame and gothic architecture in general is

so it takes the mathematics of Pythagoras to create something which is more than just beautiful. It's the theatre of spirituality. It's a gigantic, towering building that is adorned in the most beautiful, symmetrical shapes and twists that for anyone seeing it in the 11th century

it transcends anything that could be made by man if you get me gothic architecture applied mathematics to aesthetics to such an extremity that you you would mathematics is the language of god you would this is something that has been built by god through the hands of human beings that was the purpose of gothic architecture you have to realize this is the 1100s there's no fucking television architecture you have to realize this is the 1100s there's no fucking television there's no paintings weren't even good yes because we spoke about that it took the 12 1300s for paintings to start looking nice fucking Notre Dame Cathedral in the 1100s would have taken your breath away and you would have truly believed this is that the language of God God created this fucking building because I've never seen anything like this in nature when you step into the space

it towers so high above you that it just makes you submit you feel fucking tiny then you've got these gigantic stained glass windows rose windows with light shining through it and these biblical uh biblical stained glass

windows so it's shock and awe it's theatrics the building itself is the theater of spirituality and it would have been so mind-blowing that when you stepped into that space the awe at the purpose it's it's beautiful music but it's made of stone it took pythagoras's obsession with symmetry and geometry and and it human beings response to things that are lovely and symmetrical as being beautiful and use that in a theatrical fashion to make you feel you're in the fucking house of god and god is here and you are tiny and you must submit and you're kind of going why ultimately it's propaganda it's the 1100s it's france all right the normans are the most powerful people in europe and also what you have is the crusades you have christendom right the christian nations moving beyond the the message of christianity

which is of peace and love and around the 1100s you have the Crusades, so the peace and love is kind of disappearing, and you have these increasingly wealthy Western nations inventing modern capitalism and colonialism. And basically saying, oh the Bible, well most of that shit happened over there in the Middle East, I think we better go over and take it. So that's what the Crusades were. But really what were the Crusades? It was the birth of of colonialism and capitalism and you see the the modern banking starts to emerge at that time and invading other lands and extracting the wealth and bringing it to back to europe to make even bigger and bigger cathedrals and to create the to create the spectacle of wealth but calling it

holy so ultimately Notre Dame Cathedral and Gothic architecture cathedrals are giant sites of obedience it's this building is made from the language of god mathematics this building is beautiful and will fill you with awe but its size is also fucking terrifying and it can crush you and you must obey and you must donate and you must support the crusades and kill the infidels but back to the architecture of notre dame church right so if you were I doubt if peasants were even allowed in but if you were someone who was allowed into Notre Dame church in the 1100s and you were there for mass or whatever the the spectacle would have got you in two ways the spectacle that would have made you feel spiritual um it operated in with space and time

so the space is an obvious one. That's the literal cathedral. You're there, you're standing there and there's a mad thing that happens in large cathedrals where you look up and you think you've reached the ceiling but you haven't and you keep going up and up and up with your eyeline until you finally reach the ceiling and you feel like falling backwards. That's a story, that's a narrative, that's deliberate.

You're staring up towards the heavens until eventually you feel weak not to mention that literally everywhere you your eye meets in the cathedral is exceptionally beautiful you're seeing geometrical shapes uh in either in the windows or in the plaster work or in the architecture inside you're seeing geometrical shapes that you've that you simply don't see anywhere else incredible perfect beauty so that's how space is was used in the cathedral to create a transcendent spiritual sense of awe the way that time was used was how music was used within the cathedral. So the interesting thing about Notre Dame Cathedral is that you can nearly trace the history of classical music of the past 1,000 years

to the space of Notre Dame Cathedral. And this is what I find interesting. This is what I want to speak about. So, Western music by the 11th century, now I'm not talking about folk music, but what would become classical music, was dominated by almost exclusively the human voice, right? Because music was happening in churches and cathedrals that were becoming increasingly larger. larger so if you imagine yourself in a gigantic church imagine you're on your own and you you shout you say something you're gonna hear your voice echoed back to you multiple times that echo might even last three seconds which is very long so that means in monasteries churches cathedrals

you can't really play musical instruments you definitely can't play drums because if you try and play a drum in a cathedral the echo will be so echoey that your own drum will sound out of time so what happened with music is the only the only music that was happening was chanting

Gregorian chant loads and loads of monks chanting together as part of mass chanting a sacred chant like chanting the gospels and the chant

would work within the architecture of the room you're shouting at the wall and the wall is bouncing back at you and you're creating this droning feedback loop of just chanting thinking monks singing and this is what music had become because of architecture and where it was being sung and you wouldn't really have instruments with that just the human voice because that's what the space demanded so essentially you have

lots of male voices singing to a space because that noise is being reflected back at them so you have all these long notes so i'm going to play you now an example of the type of chanting that would have existed in the 9th 10th century before Notre Dame Cathedral, right? So here's an example of kind of standard monastic chant. So clearly what you can hear there with that chanting is that that's a type of music that it's only really going to work in a large space like a church or a monastery okay you need that music is born out of the fact that the people singing it are in a building with a large amount of space that will give an echo back but what becomes really really interesting is with Notre Dame Cathedral the style changes

completely and something new is birthed from it so because Notre Dame cathedral is simply so huge that when you step into this space remember I said it's about space and time so you step into this space and you look up and it just keeps going up and up and up and there's different layers when the monks started to chant in Notre Dame. They found that just sticking with the same note. With kind of a low. A low rumble. Didn't work anymore.

Because it was so big. It wasn't. Their song was fine for a smaller church. Or a cloister. But their song wasn't reflecting. The spiritual majesty and the sheer size of Notre Dame Cathedral a cathedral which is fundamentally based on looking up until your fucking neck hurts and you submit and the singing was part of the spirituality and remember the singing again it's mathematics but what gets really

interesting is the the birth of like western classical music the next 1000 years of western classical music starts in Notre Dame Cathedral because the monks they start to harmonize with each other they have to kind of go how do we sing we sing this chant in such a way that it sounds tall? Not only does it sound tall, it sounds like it's getting increasingly tall and increasingly beautiful. So what gets birthed is called polyphony. Multiple melodies existing at once once going in increasing height I'll play an example now of the type of chanting that started to develop in Notre Dame Cathedral around the 1100s So what you have there, when you compare that to the snippet I showed you there about a minute ago, The snippet I showed you there about a minute ago.

Chant has gone from this kind of low rumble. To something that's now much more decorated. With multiple different notes. And the notes are climbing in scales. The notes have movement. And it was to reflect the size of the church you couldn't just sing flat anymore you needed to to reflect the decoration in the church and most importantly the size as your eyes look up towards the ceiling and that's a load of a load of lads singing but that then lays the foundations for what becomes classical music and orchestras in a couple of hundred years time you know it's violins

it's orchestras doing that same complexity so a fucking building created that complexity of singing and what they find really fucking interesting that style is called florid organum that's what that is the notre dame style is called florid organum and the mathematics of that style of singing was corresponding with the mathematics of the architecture within notre dame Cathedral which is just fucking mad like no one sat down and decided we're going to we're going to sing

the architecture of this church like no one said we're going to we're going to sing and the mathematics of how the melodies and notes are arranged are going to be quite similar to the mathematics of how this church is notes are arranged are going to be quite similar to the mathematics of how this church is constructed.

They were simply going, we're aspiring to spirituality. We're aspiring to the language of God. But the church was designed using that Pythagorean philosophy of mathematics is the language of God. The symmetry of the space influenced the symmetrical vibrations of air that was the music. And that there was a huge breakthrough in what became modern Western music.

Massive. And it's hard for us to appreciate it, because again, how do you put your head back to what it was like in the 1100s but that was a sea change moment that went on to influence everything that went beyond it and and that shit fascinates me that fascinates me about music how music organically develops to reflect the space that it's been created in and no one's deciding upon it it's just it's harmony and balance music is mathematics vibration and air moving through time so why should it not match up with the very surfaces with the mathematics of the surfaces that it's bouncing off you can't see music if you could see music you'd see it as all these symmetrical strings

fucking flying around the gaff but those strings are touching physical objects and coming back and our brains find the balance now something similar this is where my hot take is now this is where I'm going off the fucking rails I'm going for something a bit mad

but I believe something similar happened. In the 1990s. There's a desert in Southern California. Called the Palm Desert. It's. It's near Coachella. The Coachella Festival.

Happens near the Palm Desert. And. There's not a lot in the Palm Desert. It's a fucking desert. It's very flat. It's incredibly hot. There's not a huge in the palm desert it's a fucking desert it's very flat it's incredibly hot there's not a huge amount of people living there there's not a lot to do there so you have this flat desert

with occasional mountains or rocks okay and a type of music emerged from this desert in the early 90s a type of heavy metal music that was unlike any other metal that came before it it was quite different and quite strange but very influential so a kind of scene emerged with just bored teenagers in the palm desert

where they were playing they were playing rock music they were playing rock music. They were playing rock music and metal. Now, the thing with rock, hard rock and metal, it's quite fast. Like, by 1990, you'd had Megadeth and fucking Metallica doing very, very fast, heavy metal music. Before that, you would have had Black Sabbath, ACDC doing hard rock. So the thing is with the Palm Desert, there was a band called Kios, right? K-Y-U-S-S.

Kios, one of them went down to farm Queens of the Stone Age, but Kios were hugely influential because they came up with this type of metal that was really fucking sludgy and weird and not like other metal. So here's the crack. When Kios were teenagers and they had a band together they used to do what were known as generator uh gigs generator parties which meant that they live in the middle of the fucking desert they have all this space it's roasting hot they don't want to gig inside they don't want to

gig in someone's garage so they used to perform like acdc songs they do cover versions of like acdc hard rock but they do it outside with a generator powering their fucking amplifier and all their friends would be around but the problem they found was because of where they are in the desert if you hit a drum or you play a guitar the area is so flat and the mountains or rocks are so far

that the echo comes back at you so strong that you almost can't play so what happened was kiosk were trying to jam acdc or led zeppelin and it just wasn't working they couldn't do it because the environment was reflecting the music back at them so the drummer would end up going out of time or the guitar player would end up going out of time so what happened was they had to slow down like ac dc tracks in time with the mountains in time with the reflection of the mountain they had to hit a drum or hit a guitar and wait for the mountain to talk back so they could find

a rhythm with the fucking mountain i'll show you what. I'm going to play you now a little snippet of an ACDC track. ACDC are an Australian hard rock band, fucking incredible, very heavy and very quick. And this is an example of the type of tune that Kios, when they were teenagers, were trying to play in the palm desert so that that song is riffraff by acdc 1977 after album power age absolutely incredible album and what you have there is an incredibly fast hard rock song which this band kiosk when they were teenagers were trying to play in this open space in the palm desert but they couldn't because how do you play metal that's that loud and that fast.

When you have all around you. Mountains that are answering you. The mountains are talking back. And you hit that drum and it bounces back. You hit that guitar and it bounces back. So you're going to go out of fucking time. So what Kios had to do. Without knowing it.

The only way to make. Music like that sound listenable. They had to slow down. In time with the mountains. They almost had to musically have a conversation with the mountains. And make the metal as slow as the mountains reflection would let them. And I'm going to play you now a kaya song from 1990 what 1990 is big bikes by chaos from 1990 and you know what can i say about that sound it's

still heavy but it's really slow and it's trudging along and that's what happens when you try and play fast ac dc and the mountains won't let you because it echoes back and you go out of time so you find the rhythm that works with the mountains and i think my hot take there is that's the same shit that happened in Notre Dame Cathedral the sound is the environment is writing the music and you don't even know it's happening the environment is writing the music for you but unlike in Notre Dame Cathedral where

the man made architecture the perfect symmetry and geometry of the cathedral is writing the music what you get there with chaos is you get chaos you get the fucking chaos of nature it's ugly it's imperfect it's fucking rock music it's jagged like a fucking rock it's unpredictable it's not perfect. And I just find that particularly beautiful because it's heavy and natural.

And that, to be honest, that's much closer to... If there was a god, that's much closer to god than the chant. Because god didn't make that fucking Notre Dame Cathedral

human beings made Notre Dame Cathedral because they decided that God's language is mathematics but if there was a God God made those fucking mountains God made that desert so that's the real music of God right there fucking stone or metal

and that's really influential there that slow heavy sound would have played a part in the development of of grunge music now i know grunge had been going but the music at kiosk influenced certainly like n Nirvana's album In Utero, music of PJ Harvey, and then beyond that, it would have been a big influence on new metal, like Sepultura, who are a new metal band that I love from Brazil, they have an album called Roots, and I hear, I hear Kiosk's sound in that album, and there's also tracks in roots where you can hear them playing with mountains you can hear them playing drums and getting reflections off mountains what so what what is what I'm fascinated with at all times is how does environment

become the hidden hand in writing music you know without knowing it the room the space that music is made in how does that shape and influence the fucking sound of that music? And it's what I'm trying to explore extensively over lockdown. If anyone has visited my Twitch stream, every Thursday what I do on Twitch is I write and create music using multiple instruments. I write and create music using multiple instruments while walking around the digital environment of the American West. I play Red Dead Redemption 2, which is a simulation of America in the 1800s, and I have this huge open world that I walk around digitally, but I write music and record it while I'm doing it to the events of the video game.

And the reason I'm doing that and what excites me about the process so much I'm not necessarily trying to write brilliant songs I'm trying to see what happens to music during a pandemic when the space that it's created in doesn't even exist it's completely virtual so the music that's being created is hyper real and that's what i'm doing with that project i consider that an ongoing an ongoing art project an exploration where it's not about it's about the process it's about the process and i don't think anyone else has fucking done it before I think I'm the first person to do it to to delve live into a virtual world and create music within that world and see what that music is according to the rules of a digital god the hyper real simulacrum god so there's two more examples of music that exists there's. There's loads.

There's loads. But here's two more that kind of really excite me. Of examples of music. That sound the way they do. And exist the way they do. Because of the spaces that they were born in. And the circumstances. So.

I did a podcast before. Called Frantic Cantor. Bowsie Gallop. Last year. Which is about the history of tin pan alley in america early american pop music from the 1910s right and the history of vaudeville and the influence of minstrel shows on american pop music and the influence of irish people on american pop music i did a full podcast on that called Frantic Cantor, Bowsie Gallop. Go back and listen to that.

But this example I'm going to play you now, this is a song from like 1922, I think, right? And this song, it would have roots in a vaudeville tradition. Now vaudeville was, it was, vaudeville shows would have happened in like the 1800s up until the 1930s right and what it was is it was generally for poor people and you would go to a theater and you'd see a vaudeville show and a vaudeville show would contain everything there might be minstrel show in it there might be a circus acts there could be a freak show there could be a comedian there'd be music it would be a variety of all different types of entertainment definitely

for the masses in a packed theater and that's what vaudeville was okay and it was a hugely popular form of entertainment for poor people in America so I'm going to play this song as a singer called Eddie Cantor and what I want you to take notice of it's just the way he's singing and as soon as you hear the way he's singing you're gonna in your head you're gonna go yeah that sounds like music from the 20s that way of singing. So that's Eddie Cantor. Oh, oh, oh my goodness, what a chassis. We went riding, she didn't walk. So that's Eddie Cantor, 1925. Now that's not particularly pleasant to listen to.

But what I'm interested in there is the way that he's singing and why is he singing that way. Because it sounds fucking ridiculous. And a lot of songs from that era. Are sung in that way. Like if you're no sooty. Like I ain't no sooty. Like utterly ridiculous.

It sounds unlistenably stupid. And you're wondering what the fuck is he doing. Why is he. Trying to sing through his nose. In that really strange way. Where he's trying to imitate almost a car horn. And I used to scratch head about this for ages and then i found out the reason is so in vaudeville shows they didn't so the the venue was packed right because it's cheap tickets and the whole place is full and you might have people stacked on top of each other and it was a poorer audience so people were drunk

people were rowdy it wasn't a bougie audience where they're sitting down quietly to enjoy the show they were participating they were screaming and shouting so you have this incredibly loud environment from the audience at a vaudeville show but the technology doesn't exist yet to amplify the performers so the performers have to perform using instruments and just their voice so how did they compete over a rowdy crowd so what would happen with the singers when a singer came out he literally had to get him a metal megaphone like a cone and often vaudeville singers had to sing through this metal cone so people would hear

them but in order to sing through the metal cone and for the voice to pierce over the shouting audience they had to sing like like that utterly ridiculous because it's the only thing that worked but then that developed into a style of singing which found its way onto the radio and then you have lads like eddie canter in 1925 when vaudeville is gone still singing that way over the radio and that's why some songs from the 20s sound utterly bizarre i can't even say the 20s anymore because we're in the 20s the 1920s sound utterly fucking bizarre like that because they had to sing through these metal tubes in in vaudeville clubs but then around the 1930s as a response to that ridiculous you also you you can't when you hear a song like

that too you you can't detach the extravagance and novelty of that from the economic boom of the 1920s 1925 the american economy would have been ridiculously strong and then there was a huge crash in 29 so the the silliness of that song would definitely have reflected the silliness of the times the roaring 20s you know but what you start to see then in the 1930s is the emergence of something that's the exact opposite completely of that style of ridiculous tinfoil singing and you get something that becomes what we now consider modern singing so you see the emergence of what's known as croning now this starts with jazz singers like Billie Holiday

Frank Sinatra could be considered the first croner and what croning was it's like if Eddie Cantor is screaming his fucking head off into a dustbin because they didn't have mics in the 1930s with the emergence of microphones. Now all of a sudden singers realise there's no audience. I'm singing for the radio and I can lean in very closely to the microphone and I can sing like a whisper,

in very closely to the microphone and I can sing like a whisper which is something that could never really have been done before in the context of live performance unless you're in a fucking tiny room with six people singers before the microphone they had to have giant lungs and they had to be able to shout so they could be heard in a live context but the microphone changed how we sing so crooners came about and were able to sing with this fragility and beauty and vulnerability and softness that we'd never really heard before and who I'm going to play you now just because I consider this to be the best example of crooning. Chet Baker. Now I'm not writing out Billie Holiday. I'm not writing out Frank Sinatra.

I just consider Chet Baker to be the finest crooner. He was a jazz performer. So this song is called My Funny Valentine. It's from 1951. And this here is the response to that Eddie Cantor shit. It's the sheer intimacy of the human voice because microphones are now a thing. My funny valentine

Sweet comic valentine Funny Valentine Sweet Comic Valentine You make me smile with my heart Your looks are laughable So what you have there is Chet Baker, 1951. And the music and the way the human voice is being used has changed completely because the site of where it's being performed. It's not in front of an audience. It's Chet Baker. On his own.

In a studio. With a microphone. Able to achieve privacy. I was saying intimacy. But really what I mean is fucking privacy. It's a singer. Able to explore music. with the context of privacy involved and the vulnerability that goes along with privacy and that really hadn't been able to

to have been done before unless you were at a very small party so I just wanted to include those last two examples because I couldn't fit them into the overall hot take about Gregorian chant and stoner metal from the California desert alright God bless I've used the word God loads this fucking podcast I'm not after getting into religion I'm not after getting into religion

when I say I was talking about God in the Pythagorean sense this fucking podcast I'm not after getting into religion I'm not after getting into religion when I when I say I was talking about God in the Pythagorean sense and sometimes when I say God bless that's just an Irish thing I am I'm still fucking uh I say agnostic because I don't like the I don't like the certainty of atheism There's a certainty about atheism that reminds me of religion. I just say I don't know fucking nothing. The only thing I know is that the universe is chaos. That's all I know. Do you know what I mean?

So I haven't gone all God on ye. Don't be worrying. Because I did mention a God quite a bit there. I had to do. It was the subject matter. Yart. I don't know what I'm going to be doing

next week I haven't a clue I won't promise you an interview I wouldn't mind one I wouldn't mind finding a decent guest and interviewing him

but if not I'll be back with a hot take I have a couple of boiling on the pot have a nice one enjoy the weather rub a dog. Center in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every

postseason game and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at TorontoRock.com Thank you. you you you you you you you you