Jingle Bells Dementia Test

It's a tradition at Mixed Meters, part of our yearly war on Christmas (and on all the other solstice holidays as well).  Yes, it's a piece of music based on Jingle Bells.

Jingle Bells Dementia Test © 2017 David Ocker - 335 seconds

This season's offering takes inspiration from a test for senile cognition.  It's a real medical test.  Now that I've reached a "certain age" this test has been added to my yearly physical. 

You are given three unrelated words to remember followed by a distracting task - in the doctor's office that would be drawing the face of an analog clock at ten minutes after eleven.  Then you are asked to recite those three words from memory.  If you can remember them you are declared compos mentis for yet another year.  Hooray, I've got my marbles.

In the case of Jingle Bells Dementia Test, the distracting task is watching my video and listening to my music.  Much more difficult.  The words flash on and off very quickly.  Please pay close attention if you want to score well on this test.

The video is a long sequence of two-second clips, each one excerpted from the videos I have shot over (nearly) an entire year.  That's right, two seconds from every video - the good ones, the bad ones, the outright mistakes.  For me the result is kind of a year-end highlight reel.  You should be so lucky.

Luckily for all of us, I lost my previous camera returning from Hawaii in April (thanks United Airlines).  That was before I could download the pictures of the trip to my computer.  Otherwise there would have been lots and lots of two-second clips of lava and ocean waves.  Later I bought a new point'n'shoot to carry around in my pocket.  A better one.

To make this piece even more absurd, the short clips are presented in exact chronological order.  There was no shuffling things around to make a better presentation.

The last clip, the Crow's Aria, is the only exception to the 2 second rule, although it does adhere to the chronology rule.  I shot it in mid-December - it was too good a finale to add anything after it.  The crow is presented exactly as it was recorded, without video or audio manipulation of any kind (except for the fade out).

You might notice a particular non-Jingle-Bells-y musical leitmotiv associated with certain appearances of crows in Jingle Bells Dementia Test.  You're probably familiar with the magical minah bird from old Warner Brothers cartoons (I watched them on TV as a kid).   If so you will understand the reference.  If not, watch this 1943 cartoon short.  Be aware, however, that thinking on political correctness was very different back then.  More info about the Minah Bird here.

Finally, we end our broadcast with a story about another kind of political correctness - the farcical War on Christmas, as imagined by the fools at Fox Nudes: 

“Jingle Bells,” one of the most well-known Christmas carols in the world, is now being called racist.    A Boston University theater professor claims the Christmas carol has a “problematic history” because it was originally performed to make fun of African Americans.

If you want to read the original paper click here.  If you want to read about the right-wing backlash directed at the author click here.

In case you're wondering, Felix Mendelssohn (author of the minah bird/crow motive) never heard Jingle Bells.  He died ten years before Jingle Bells was composed.  One wonders if Felix ever witnessed a performer in blackface.

Post-rational Jingle Bells

Humans need holidays. Otherwise our lives would get just too bleak.

And what could be more bleak than the winter solstice in the northern latitudes?

Consider the facts . . .

• There's not nearly enough sunlight.
• It's cold cold cold every day.
• Snow everywhere.
• Spring will never come.

How did those pre-Europeans cope with such adversity?  They decided to kick back near a fire to overeat and overdrink.  Maybe sing some cheery songs.  After they'd done that for a couple years - or a couple of centuries - they had themselves a solstice holiday.

Of course, the nature of this particular holy day has changed over time.  Pagan holiday became Christian holiday became Capitalist holiday.  Whatever.  It's a holiday no matter what your religion.  And it comes just when you need it most, during the dark time.  Go ahead.  Turn on all the lights.  Drink too much.  Give useless gifts.

This year - given our recent presidential election - a lot of people (including myself) really need a good holiday.  Current events have stopped making sense for us.  And there's no expectation that the news will be getting better in the future.  It's going to be an awfully long time before America's political winter is over.

I've dubbed this the "post-rational" period of history - everything seems beyond reason.

And when life makes no sense, you need holiday music that makes no sense.

That's why I'm offering you my piece called Post-rational Jingle Bells.  It's just another installment of my yearly series of incomprehensible Jingle Bells arrangements, a Mixed Meters holiday tradition since 2006. 

Click here to hear Post-rational Jingle Bells by David Ocker - © 2016 David Ocker - 322 seconds

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Curious about the picture?  Here are a couple Mixed Meters posts on the subject of bio-geography:
Stalking the Christmas Penguin
Stalking the Christmas Penguin 2
Christmas Zoology

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You may be surprised to learn that one or two other musicians, besides myself, have dealt with the Jingle Bells Question.  Here's a version narrated by the composer Juan Garcia Esquivel directly from his Space Age Bachelor Pad.  I particularly like the line "There is a lovely view of Venus tonight."

Here's a Mongolian folk ensemble playing the tune.  It looks genuinely cold where they are. Watch for a guy with a rifle.

Finally, to hammer home the post-rational aspect, here is a Walmart commercial.

JB-AFAP Jingle Bells, As Fast As Possible

I haven't posted a 30 Second Spot in, like, more than a year.  (One year and four days to be precise.)

'Tis the season for my annual contribution to the War on Christmas, and let me tell you, this is not my best work.  It is scored for bass guitar, bass tuba, bass drum and sleigh bells.

The one thing JB-AFAP has in its favor, however, is short length.  You could listen to it twice in one minute - and that includes 10 seconds of silence.

Got half a minute?  Merry Melodies to all.

Click here to hear JB-AFAP (Jingle Bells, As Fast As Possible) by David Ocker, © 2015, 30 seconds

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My personal history with Jingle Bells as an expression of my seasonal musical disaffections is almost as old as Mixed Meters itself.  Here's a complete list of the Jingle pieces so far:

Jungle Bells (2006 - 209 seconds)
Jingle Bulls (2006 - 231 seconds)
Jingle Bills (2007 - 30 seconds)
One Note Open Sleigh (2008 - 38 seconds)
A Combination of Jingle Bells and the Internationale (2009 - 327 seconds)
Solstice Lights (2010 - 640 seconds)
Jingle Bells - The Long Version (short version) (2011 - 212 seconds)
Jinglemonics (2012 - 247 seconds)
The William Bell Overture (Jingle Tells) (2013 - 390 seconds)
Jiggle Belts (2014 - 75 seconds)
JB-AFAP (Jingle Bells, As Fast As Possible) (2015 - 30 seconds)

Jiggle Belts

Although it's been very quiet around Mixed Meters lately this blog does have some traditions worth preserving.  One of these is my annual encounter with Jingle Bells.

J.B. is a simple tune, useful as a musical starting point because everyone knows it.  Also it is "seasonal".  It evokes winter: snow and cold and darkness and a sense of gloomy despair that these short days might never start getting longer again.  It all adds up to a good reason for a big party.  You build a fire, get drunk and beat on some drums.  Before long, you're having a night of wild sex.  Anything to stay warm.

J.B. also evokes Christmas.  This is because anything which evokes cold and snow has been co-opted as a Christmas ornament.  Houses are decorated with white lights meant to resemble icicles. Penguins, polar bears, reindeer, snow men, igloos and Santa Clauses are called out to serve the Capitalist Christian Solstice holiday.

Music is called on as well.  As a non-Christian and a musician living in a mindlessly Christian society I have often found all the Christmas music unbearably oppressive.  So I've made an effort to cope by hollowing out a little space for my own musical interests in the galaxy of Christmas music.  It makes me feel a bit better.  Your mileage may vary.

This years offering is called Jiggle Belts, if only because I'm running out of Jingle Bells puns.  It's not so much an idyllic sleigh ride in a one horse open sleigh as it is a subversive unrelenting drag race between people with noisy powerful machines who need to shed a few pounds.  Enjoy:

Click here to hear Jiggle Belts, © 2014 by David Ocker - 75 seconds

Other Christmas music references I have enjoyed.

The Little Drummer Boy Game  - anyone can play this at Christmas time.  (You lose the moment you hear any version of The Little Drummer Boy.)  (So far, this year, I'm still a winner.)

Here's a poem by Charles Bukowski on the subject of classical music radio, Christmas and people:

Finally - a list of past Jingle Bells pieces from Mixed Meters and me.  Merry Happiness everyone.  The days will start getting longer soon - trust me.

Jungle Bells (2006 - 209 seconds)
Jingle Bulls (2006 - 231 seconds)
Jingle Bills (2007 - 30 seconds)
One Note Open Sleigh (2008 - 38 seconds)
A Combination of Jingle Bells and the Internationale (2009 - 327 seconds)
Solstice Lights (2010 - 640 seconds)
Jingle Bells - The Long Version (short version) (2011 - 212 seconds)
Jinglemonics (2012 - 247 seconds)
The William Bell Overture (Jingle Tells) (2013 - 390 seconds)
Jiggle Belts  (2014 - 75 seconds)

All works © David Ocker

The William Bell Overture (Jingle Tells)

Traditions are a bitch.

I've created some traditions while writing this blog and these have become my own little bitches.  I'm completely responsible for them.  No one else will celebrate them for me.  They're my personal sacred rituals.  Obsessive compulsions.  They demand fulfillment.  They will be served.  If I miss a year, these observances will haunt me for ignoring them.  I just know it.

One such Mixed Meters tradition is the yearly Jingle Bells piece.  These have taken various forms since 2006.  I take pride in making each new one as different and unexpected as possible.  As this autumn wore on, closer and closer to the winter solstice, I searched for a musical idea which would be both new, to me at least, and also include the trope known as Jingle Bells.

At one point I was driving while thinking on this issue.  The announcer of our local classical radio station introduced the overture to Gioachino Rossini's final opera William Tell.

If you had been with me in the car you might have seen the proverbial compact florescent bulb light up over my head.  I had had an idea: I could combine the music of the William Tell Overture with the melody of Jingle Bells.  I knew instantly that this idea would work.

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Ideas are a bitch.

At least the good ideas are.  I suspect that is how you know that an idea is a good one, by how it behaves.  Bitchy ideas, like bitchy traditions, will grab your brain with their soft little fingers and not let go.  Later, if your final product is not good, blame will not rest with the idea.  The culprit will obviously have been an insufficiently talented composer.  Good ideas, by definition, are blameless.

Here is a video about an artist who has been very successful in the art of having ideas (John Baldessari) narrated by a musician with the most gravel-toned voice (Tom Waits).  Why am I including it here?  Because much of the soundtrack is from the William Tell Overture.  Duh.  (Fun video.)

You might already know the William Tell Overture.  It is the epitome of a music appreciation course curriculum, a classical warhorse, a trite chestnut, a hackneyed tone painting that needs no description because it describes itself.  I bet it would be hard to find someone so musically illiterate, so tone deaf that they can't hear the musical depictions of a storm, birds singing or horses galloping.

The last section - the horse business - now apparently known to online music databases as "the finale from the William Tell Overture" - was for decades the theme of a radio and television show called The Lone Ranger.  That's how a bit of the opera William Tell, part and parcel of the European white-guy classical music canon, became an inextricable element of American culture.

The overwhelming majority of Americans have no interest in Italian operas written in 1829 about sharpshooter Swiss patriots.  Heck, most Americans have no interest in the first half of the overture, the part which doesn't sound like a horse.  Most Americans are not fans of classical music.

Classical audiences do seem to enjoy having a laugh at the expense of their favorite music.  People like Gerard Hoffnung, Victor Borge, Peter Schickele and Igudesman and Joo have given them the chance.  It's gotten to the point where making fun of classical music has its own long and hallowed tradition.

Another famous musical comedian, Spike Jones, didn't play to a classical audience the way the others did.  He played to a pop audience who actually were familiar with some of the classics.  I guess times have changed.  Here's his classic William Tell parody:

Apparently the tradition lives on elsewhere.  I discovered this on YouTube:

Here's a fun anecdote, found in the L.A. Times, about Arnold Schoenberg and the Lone Ranger:

Nonetheless, Schoenberg adapted to California life with surprising ease: He listened to UCLA football on the radio, wore wacky polka-dot ties and once made fun of a student's composition by galloping around the room and shouting "Hi-yo, Silver!"

And here's an article about a major orchestra performing live during a horse race.  Can you guess which piece they programmed?

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Meanwhile of course there's also Jingle Bells.  It is only a few decades younger than the William Tell Overture - but still pretty old and even more a part of our culture.

I was sitting in our backyard a few weeks ago reading.  We live on a corner so that there's a sidewalk on the other side of the hedge.  People walk up and down but can't see into our yard.  As I was reading I could hear a young girl's voice.  She was singing Jingle Bells to herself as she walked down the street.  She seemed very happy.

Her happiness now is the formative stage of her Christmas nostalgia later in life.  Nostalgia is powerful magic and seems like an essential part of both Christmas music and Classical music.  Here's the definition of nostalgia:

a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations

Nostalgia is what advertisers evoke when they use Christmas music to sell us stuff.  Someday that girl will wonder why she can be manipulated into spending money so easily when she hears Jingle Bells and other Christmas tunes.

Here is Jingle Bells being used to sell sexy underwear for men.  I'm guessing that this ad is designed to convince mostly women, not men, to buy these as gifts.

Here's a chart (from here) which encapsulates the interaction of the Christmas music industry with Baby Boomers' nostalgia for their childhoods.

The Baby Boomer part of the hypothesis is probably wrong simply because everyone, not just Boomers, has nostalgia.  These songs have been part of every subsequent generation's childhood.  Still, for all the harm we Boomers have actually done to our society over the last few decades, we might as well take responsibility for screwing up Christmas music too.

One thing to remember about these twenty songs is that they are all under copyright.  Someone - probably big corporations - owns them.  The corporations receive money each time they are played. It would not be surprising to learn that the same corporations own many of the radio stations surveyed for the data behind this chart.

The William Tell Overture and Jingle Bells are still in the public domain.  I expect Disney Corporation is probably busy trying to bribe congress into changing that.  Until they succeed, however, I am free to combine those tunes in any manner I want and even claim my own copyright over the result.

What I have actually done is to make an "arrangement".  My William Bell Overture (or you can call it Jingle Tells if that pleases you) is not really an original David Ocker composition.  Younger generations might prefer to call it some sort of old-fashioned classical music mash-up.  Science Fiction geeks might enjoy the image of creating a hideous musical mutant by splicing the melodic genes of Jingle Bells into the harmonic and formal structures of William Tell.

Whatever name you give the final piece, my original idea did in fact turn out to be a bitch.  And I have managed to celebrate another year of my personal, bitchy holiday tradition.  Also, please forgive the cheap synthetic orchestra sound.

Click here to hear The William Bell Overture (Jingle Tells) - © 2013 by David Ocker 390 seconds

I do sort of wish that I had waited a few more days before starting on this project.  I might have come up with a better idea.

P.S. There is no truth to the rumor that this piece was once entitled "I Saw the Lone Ranger Kissing Santa Claus".

Jinglemonics

As my contribution to home front morale in the continuing War Against Christmas this is the first of two musical offerings - the annual Mixed Meters composition based on the familiar pagan hymn Jingle Bells.

This 2012 opus is entitled Jinglemonics (a made-up word with no previous Google search results).  The title alludes to the prominent use of the band-pass filter which gives a general feeling of cheap electronica music.  Enjoy.

Click here to hear Jinglemonics - © 2012 by David Ocker, 247 seconds

And while I'm on the subject of Mixed Meters' Christmas Memes (starting in 2006), it does seem that the notion of Christmas Penguins is slowly starting to disappear.  Sure, I still notice them but they're not nearly so common as in previous years.

I found this set of used Christmas Penguin Salt and Pepper Shakers in a second hand store in San Juan Bautista California.  Just where you'd expect to find them.

Are you wondering what, 'xactly, a "Christmas Penguin" is?  Basically it is any depiction of a penguin in a scarf or winter hat especially if it's intended as a cute allusion to seasonal cold weather.  Extra points if the penguin is shown near a polar bear, igloo, moose, Santa Claus or other icon peculiar to the Northern Hemisphere.  It's a geography thing.

See bunches of previous Mixed Meters' Christmas Penguin pictures.


Harmonic Tags: 3 Minute Climax. . . Jingle Bells. . . Christmas Penguins

Jingle Bells - The Long Version

The most hallowed Mixed Meters' musical tradition is probably the yearly winter Solstice piece based on Jingle Bells.  Theoretically these efforts of seasonal spirit should appear around the "Holidays".  For the last couple of years, however, they have been woefully late.

The previous one, Solstice Lights, a video composition, was not posted until the summer Solstice, a full half-cycle of calendar behind.  Had it been any later, I guess it would have become an early post for this year.

The 2009 Jingle Bells musical composition, entitled A Combination of Jingle Bells and the Internationale, was posted on May 22, 2010.  (That post has links to even earlier Jingle pieces, if you're curious.  It also has lots of pictures of Che Guevara.)

This year, for my 2012 New Year's Resolution, I resolved to be more timely about fulfilling this tradition.  And so I have.  But be warned: I have accomplished this feat by creating a work that is 85% total silence.
 

It's called Jingle Bells - The Long Version.   It has origins in two different but equally geeky computer issues:

1) For a long time I have been wanting to create some original System Sounds.   Those short beeps and zings that a computer uses to say things like "You can't click here" or "There is some sort of a problem." or "You have spam." were really starting to annoy me.  The operating system provided few alternative options and those didn't have much variety.  I figured a self-styled creative guy like myself ought to be able to make more interesting sounds himself.

2) I upgraded my copy of Sibelius, the program I use to compose music.  About a dozen years ago I started with Sibelius 2 and each subsequent version since has been an evolutionary improvement.  Much to my surprise, the latest version, Sibelius 7, introduced a completely new structure.  Someone, no doubt looking out for my own good, took every single command (of which there are many) and tossed them like a salad.  It is like a whole new program, nothing is where I expect it to be.  Any long-time user facing the daunting re-learning curve might simply go back to the previous version and never upgrade again.

I sought a way to combine these issues.  Could I re-learn this entirely new-but-still-old  program by using it to create some original system sounds?

Such sounds need to be exceptionally short.  They also must be interesting, complex musical events.  I quickly came to think of them as little musical compositions, pieces no longer than two seconds.  You'd think these super short works would be an easy task for a guy like me who has already spent lots of time writing short pieces, namely my series entitled Thirty Second Spots.  You'd be wrong - writing a one second piece is a really different ball game.

I gave the idea a go.  After creating maybe half a dozen such sounds, some of which have become my regular system sounds, I had another idea.  Could I use this new stone to kill yet a third bird - my impending deadline for a Jingle Bells piece for 2011, the one I had resolved to post promptly this year?

And that's how the idea for Jingle Bells - The Long Version was born.

I would take one chorus and one verse of Jingle Bells, a tune familiar to anyone who lives in a Western, Christmas-dominated culture, divide it into short segments, embellish these segments into rich system-sound-like events and play them in proper order separated by long periods of absolute silence so that, when they do happen, they become interruptions to whatever other sounds might be happening at the moment.  In other words, these interruptions would function just the way real system sounds do.

A normal playing of Jingle Bells ought to last less than a minute.  I figured that if I stretched that out to six or seven minutes it would seem interminable.  I was wrong.  I kept making it longer by adding more silence until it was twenty-three and one half minutes long.   This makes the melody pretty obscure but you can follow the tune if you concentrate.

It turns out that this 23-minute Jingle piece combines well with other music.  I'm someone who often listens to two or even three Internet radio streams at the same time.  Adding the system sound interruptions of Jingle Bells - The Long Version to such a mix often results in excellent musical synchronicity.

In other words, every so often one of the bongs or tweets from my piece blends exactly into the musical moment.  This is especially true if the music is in G major or a similar key.  I urge you to try it yourself:  put Jingle Bells - The Long Version on continuous play, put on some other music and stay open to what might happen.  Baroque music works very well.  (Sorry, the online player I'm using doesn't seem to have a continuous play function.  I guess you'll have to figure out how to download the mp3 file to try this trick.)

Click here to hear Jingle Bells - The Long Version - © 2011 David Ocker - 1409 seconds.

I pushed the idea one step farther.  Once I had completed Jingle Bells - The Long Version, I imagined shortening it to a short version.  Using the Truncate Silence feature of the fine, free audio editor Audacity, I removed all the silences.   The new version is musically identical, except that it only lasts 3 minutes and 32 seconds.  That's just 15% of the original.   Only the silence has been changed.

I entitled this shortened version Jingle Bells - The Long Version (Short Version), a name which, after a few drinks, smoothly rolls off the tongue.  It's online for you to hear, but the link is elsewhere.  You'll have to hunt just a bit.  Nothing too difficult.

We at Mixed Meters have become accustomed to observing "the Holidays"  from the viewpoint of non-celebratory outsiders.  It was pointed out to me recently that Christmas is the only Christian holiday which is also a U.S. national holiday.  As a non-Christian American, I'm pleased that the Christian aspects of Christmas seem to have paled somewhat in recent years.

Meanwhile, December 25 continues to thrive as the high holy day of our real national religion, Capitalism.  This is when we Americans are supposed to show our patriotic faith by over consuming.  They tell us that all our spending is for our own good.  And we believe them.  We have faith.

But maybe this year, every American will take 23.5 minutes out of their hectic schedule of spending and eating, giving and taking to listen to my new version of Jingle Bells.  The total relaxation time would amount to over 13,000 years.  It would be a huge step towards national sanity.  What a pipe dream.

Finally -  a word about the pictures.   Besides the annual Jingle Bells permutation, Mixed Meters has a Christmas zoology thread.  In other words - we investigate which cute animals people use to personify their holidays.

It's commonly known that Christmas has forgone sheep and goats and camels in a manger in favor of reindeer, polar bears, igloos and snowmen.  You just have to look around to prove how extensive this shift from "Birth of Jesus" holiday to "Winter Solstice" holiday has become.  Even so, a few years ago, I was astonished to see that penguins were becoming regular Christmas animals.

Of course penguins are not mentioned in the bible.  What bothered me was seeing them portrayed next to reindeer and polar bears and igloos.  Penguins are found in the northern hemisphere only in zoos.  Americans are famous for lack of geographical knowledge.  I feared that if we saw penguins and polar bears cheek by jowl in "holiday" displays every year, we would start to believe that those animals actually lived together in the wild. 

This year I found only a few penguins hanging out with northern hemisphere wildlife in front yards, stores displays and advertisements.  But I did find a "Chris-mouse" (thankfully not a "Christ-mouse") and, for the first time ever, two different types of Hannukah bears - some white and some brown, both wearing yarmulke and tallis. Needless to say, I am unaware of any bears appearing in the Book of Maccabees, religious or otherwise.

Other penguin-centric Mixed Meters posts you might enjoy:
Stalking the Christmas Penguin
Stalking the Christmas Penguin 2
Christmas Zoology
Christmas in October (which also deals with Halloween and table grapes)

An early Mixed Meters post
In which tomorrow is probably the Solstice

War on Christmas Tags: Jingle Bells. . . system sounds. . . Sibelius 7. . . War on Christmas. . . Christmas penguins. . . hannukah bears. . . hanukkah bears. . . Chanukah bears

Solstice Lights

Today, precisely at 5:16 P.M., is the Summer Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere.  Summer solstices are the kind with a long day and a short night.  Elsewhere, somewhere far away to the south, today is the winter solstice: short day / long night.

In general, I like summer solstices better than winter.   That's because I'm the kind of guy who works at night and sleeps during the day but still wants to be awake for at least a few daylight hours.  During the depths of a Los Angeles winter the sun stays up just long enough for me to keep my nocturnal schedule but squeeze out an hour or two of waking daylight.  That way I avoid SAD - Seasonal Affective Disorder.

There is one thing I don't like about the Summer Solstice: I know it means that the days will start getting shorter again bit by bit.  I believe the familiar yearly cycle will repeat yet again because it has done that so many times before.  I assume that eventually I will confront winter darkness one more time.  Then, at the Winter Solstice, I will take heart in the notion that days will begin to lengthen bit by bit.

"So what else is new?" I hear you ask - because this is not a particularly new idea.  Solstices and equinoxes were clearly known thousands of years ago to observant people who dragged huge stones forming massive structures so precisely positioned according to astronomical events that not even modern egos can deny that they must have known exactly what they were doing.

I wonder how many millennia before Stonehenge or Chichen Itza some human genius first consciously noticed the yearly cycle.  That must have happened an unimaginably long time ago.  That genius, whoever he or she was, probably also thought that lighting bonfires on the Winter Solstice was a good way to convince our friend the sun to return.  Whatever rituals were performed, they always worked.  The days always started getting longer.  And religions were formed.  Winter Solstice is a time of holidays in many different cultures.

Lights (like those bonfires) are an important aspect of the Winter Solstice celebrations and have gradually morphed in meaning through the ages.   In our electrified times strings of colored bulbs (or LEDs recently) are displayed on many houses.  These lights served as the first inspiration for my video piece, Solstice Lights.

The inspiration came indirectly from the Point'n'Shoot In My Pocket.  While on my daily walk I tried to take video of my neighbors' blinking Christmas lights.   Alas, Mister Point'n'shoot could not focus properly in the dark.  When I saw the results on my computer screen I knew instantly that I would use these glowing abstract circles of color in a piece of some sort.

I first assumed that would be a Jingle Bells piece - my yearly compositional effort to claim some personal control over the seasonal onslaught of Christmas music.   (Previous Jingle pieces are still available for listening.  You can find all the links at the beginning of last years Jingle post A Combination of Jingle Bells and the Internationale.  Lots of fun pictures of Che Guevara as well.)

Indeed, Solstice Lights does have one brief moment of Jingle Bells.   But the work took on a different cast after the death of my friend Arthur Jarvinen in October 2010.  Upon hearing the news I knew immediately that I would need to write a memorial piece for Art.

Arthur himself wrote several memorial pieces.  His very affecting gong solo Out of the Blue, one of the pieces performed as his own memorial service, was a tribute to composer Randy Hostetler who died at a young age.  Art wrote 100 Cadences, a  string quartet, in memory of his teacher Stephen "Lucky" Mosko.  That piece is very Feldman-esque in feel if not in length. 

The most amazing example of Jarvinen memorial work is a beautiful set of pieces called Three Gymnopédies (which will be performed next month by the Pittsburg New Music Ensemble - along with another of Art's works Little Deaths.)  Each of the Three Gymnopédies is dedicated to the memory of a person who died by gun violence.

While I didn't feel capable of writing a fourth Gymnopédie, I did want to create a piece with the feel of timelessness within some sort of cyclic structure.  After a period of collecting musical ideas, mostly in my head, I began work by assembling the video.  Then I composed the music.  The cycles within Solstice Lights are marked by harmonic overtone arpeggios.

Eventually I realized that a fragment from Arthur's piece Goldbeater's Skin, one I performed many times in the past, would fit perfectly into what I was writing.  The opening of the Goldbeater's Skin melody occurs twice, at 7'15" (simultaneous with Jingle Bells) and also at 8'16".   Solstice Lights was finished almost three months ago.  It was not until yesterday that I had the notion of posting it here to coincide with an actual solstice.

Solstices are about long cycles of time.  They are markers of the behavior of natural phenomena like the spinning rock on which we live and the moving bright light in the heavens.  Together these define the thing we call a "year".  Years are real things, not an artificial division of time into segments.  We humans use years to measure our lifetimes.  We often celebrate these yearly cycles with lights of some sort.

Arthur Jarvinen was someone keenly aware of the limits of the human lifespan, not just his own.  You can find references to death throughout his writing and his music.  Some are obvious, come covert.  He may not have known exactly how or when he would die, but I believe he knew all along, somehow, that he would not live into old age.  These are the things I thought about while writing Solstice Lights.  I hope my music communicates those ideas.

If I had to guess at his reaction, I would say that Art would not particularly have liked Solstice Lights, had he been able to hear it.  Like me, he was someone with strong personal independent opinions about music.  In writing it, however, I tried to remember something I heard him say several times, "You have to do your best work."  That's what I tried to do.  I'm certain Art would have understood that part.

Solstice Lights - music and video © 2011 David Ocker 640 seconds
I suggest playing this in high definition (480p) and full screen if possible.

A previous MM article about solstices.
Previous MM posts about Arthur Jarvinen. 

Last fall Carson Cooman composed a piece entitled  Journeybook: in memoriam Arthur Jarvinen for mixed sextet (bass clarinet, soprano sax, soprano voice (or trumpet), drums, violin and cello).  It was performed by the ensemble thingNY

Solstice Tags: Solstice Lights. . . David Ocker. . . Arthur Jarvinen. . . music video

Christmas Zoology

Mixed Meters is surprised to find himself once again documenting the ascendance of a new cute and cuddly animal into the pantheon of Christmas zoology.

A few years ago I noticed for the first time that penguins were being used as Christmas ornaments. I'd never seen that before. This year I found new examples. (Click on them to enlarge.)

This subject has come up before:
2006 (in which I ask how the Los Angeles Zoo put penguins into the wrong hemisphere)
2007 (which also deals with Halloween snowmen and frankengrapes)
2008 (where you can watch a video of 49 microwave ovens playing Jingle Bells)
2009 (one lonely picture: the Christmas penguin which adorns my desk year round)

Many more pictures can be found on my Flickr Christmas penguin page.

The animals most associated with the Christmas story ought to be camels, donkeys, sheep, goats and wise men.  All of those are on the Chistmas endangered species list.  Especially wise men.

Instead, most decorations include very different animals - Santas, reindeer and sometimes polar bears.  All of these are reminders of the north pole, suitable for a solstice celebration.

Penguins remind us of cold weather in a pleasant way, but they do not come from the northern hemisphere.  No one seems to be bothered by this.  I wonder how many people assume that penguins and polar bears actually do live together in the wild because they now see so many penguins at Christmas time.

Snowmen, of course, are common Christmas animals as well.  I suppose you can find snowmen in either hemisphere - but never in the wild.

Our friend Vasily Radashevsky asked me recently "Would a polar bear eat a penguin?"  A trick question.  The answer is "probably, if it had the chance."  The chance is remote.  One of them would have had to travel almost half way round the world first.  Or maybe they both escaped from the same zoo on the same night.

To be fair, none of this years pictures show penguins with igloos, or standing at the north pole or meeting polar bears over soft drinks.  Maybe the fad is passing.

Even so, when I see a Christmas penguin, I sill can't stop myself from snapping a picture.  When Leslie sees one she always points it out to me.  I wonder if there are any Christmas songs about penguins yet.

This year's LA Philharmonic online holiday greeting features penguins, Petroushka, snow in downtown Los Angeles and a new aisle in the center of Disney concert hall.

And here's visual proof that tiny polar bears and line dancing penguins can love one another if they have sugar water and Beach Boys.

Cute and Cuddly Tags: Christmas Penguin. . . Christmas Zoology. . . Christmas decorations

A Combination of Jingle Bells and The Internationale

Mixed Meters returns to the airwaves with my Jingle Bells-related musical offering for the 2009 holiday season. Listen to A Combination of Jingle Bells and The Internationale by clicking here.  Or keep reading.

It has become a yearly Mixed Meters holiday tradition to compose and post a piece of music based on Jingle Bells.  The previous pieces are

• Jingle Bulls (read or listen) 2006, 231 sec.
• Jungle Bells (read or listen) 2006, 209 sec.
• Jingle Bills (read and listen) 2007, 30 sec.
• One Note Open Sleigh (read and listen) 2008, 38 sec.

Why Jingle Bells?  Because it's simple, everyone can identify it instantly and it has an unassailable association with our greatest annual holiday of corporate marketing and excess consumption.

Why Christmas?  Because, as a non-Christian, every year Christmas music makes me feel isolated and this is my way of taking a bit of control over it.  If you like traditional Christmas music, seriously, you won't like these pieces.

Why am I posting this in May?  Because here at Mixed Meters time has no meaning and the new piece wasn't finished until the end of January anyway.  Things happen when they happen.

What's with the title? The title  A Combination of Jingle Bells and The Internationale directly reflects the structure of the music.  These two familiar themes are presented prominently (but not lovingly) within the texture of the music, in combination.

Why two themes?  By combining two famous themes, which I chose more for their cultural references  than for their musical content, I hope to create some sort of meaningful dialogue expressed through music.  It's an audacious attempt and not entirely successful except for the occasional listener who cares passionately about the themes themselves.   Most often a composer who wants to convey meaning just adds text or lyrics.

Anything else besides the two themes? Yep. There's plenty of my original material as well.  The most notable being a melodic fragment which reappears several times.  You'll hear that first at 2 minutes 19 seconds.

Previously I did a similarly two-themed piece called Wagner and Schubert Have Intercourse.

What's The Internationale? The Internationale is a musical anthem of socialist and communist movements.  At one time it was the national anthem of the Soviet Union.  It is not as universally recognizable as Jingle Bells unless you happened to grow up in a Communist country.  If you're not familiar with it, I suggest you listen to one or two of the mind-boggling number of recordings found at a website called Russian Anthems Museum.

The Internationale appears first in A Combination of Jingle Bells and The Internationale at one minute and 17 seconds.  All the music up to that point is my own.

Here are a few lines of lyrics, with which no real American could ever agree, from verse 3 of The Internationale:

The state oppresses and the law cheats
The tax bleeds the miserable
No duty is imposed on the rich
'Rights of the poor' is a hollow phrase

What other melody did The Internationale remind you of? As I was composing I couldn't help but notice similarity to a theme by Johannes Brahms.  The Brahms will be familiar to ex-clarinetists everywhere.  What the heck, I put that in too.  (No idea what I'm talking about?  Listen to the first 10 seconds of this and then listen to A Combination of Jingle Bells and The Internationale at 3'38".)

Why The Internationale?  Because, as an anthem of godless communism, it seems like a good opposite to the anthem of godly capitalism, Jingle Bells.  And having it be in the public domain helps me avoid any capitalist guilt.

What does Sergei Kuryokhin have to do with this piece?  Kuryokhin was a Soviet pianist, composer and avant-gardist who passed away in 1996.  Last December, when I was casting about for a theme to pair with Jingle Bells (and also planning to write my post Sergei Kuryokhin - Pianist of Anarchy) I heard The Internationale referenced in two of his large ensemble performances recorded in 1988.  "Perfect," I thought.  The words "A Combination..." in my title are a small homage to Kuryokhin's wonderful solo piano album Some Combinations of Fingers and Passion.

What does Che Guevara have to do with this piece?  Nothing.  But I needed pictures for this post and Che, an icon of communism, has become a potent icon of capitalism.  That duality seems to reflect the two themes in my piece.  I previously discussed Che-based marketing in my MM post Che's Brand.

The Rolex ad shows him wearing a watch that today would cost at least $5,000.  (Anyone want to contribute a translation of the German?)  It came from here.  The Peter Griffin/Che Guevara drawing came from here.  The Mad Magazine cover came from here.  The woman wearing only carrot bandoleros is apparently Che Guevara's granddaughter in an ad for PETA.  Read about it here.  The Photoshopped Che Visa card came from here and the Che Santa from here.

No more delays.  It's now time to listen.  A Combination of Jingle Bells and The Internationale  327 seconds  Copyright © 2010 David Ocker

As an encore here are two non-Jingle holiday related pieces of mine from the first Mixed Meters Christmas season.  They were written in the same Christmas spirit as the others.  (Yes, the first dozen seconds of these two pieces are identical.  The titles are both apocryphal lyrics from the song Winter Wonderland.)

• And Pretend That It's A Circus Clown (read or listen) 2005, 36 sec.
• Until The Alligators Knock Him Down (read or listen) 2005, 40 sec.

And then there's this solo bass clarinet arrangement of a piece often heard at Christmas.  The performance is from 20 years before Mixed Meters was born.

One Note Open Sleigh

A 30 second spot based on a familiar holiday tune. The melody is reduced to bare bones or less, a small nubbin, smelly and harsh to the touch. It's disrespectful and not in the holiday spirit. In other words, what you expect from Mixed Meters about this time of year.

Click here to hear One Note Open Sleigh 
Copyright (c) 2008 David Ocker -- 38 Seconds

Want more Mixed Meters holiday music mash? How about Jingle Bills or Jungle Bells and Jingle Bulls or Until the Alligators Knock Him Down or And Pretend That It's A Circus Clown. Nothing uplifting here.

The last two titles are references to the song Winter Wonderland. Read a deconstruction of the lyrics in the post Winter Wonderland Diagnosis for Murder! at the blog Surrealpolitic for surreal times.


The picture (click for full size) STOCKING STUFFERS
Left to right :

• A Christmas Penguin skating
• A Yellow Rubber Duck in a Santa Hat (or is it a jaunticed walrus?)
• A Christmas Tree
• A Snowman
• Some Jingle Bells

30 Second Spots - Jingle Bills

It's become a Mixed Meters Tradition to post some of my original holiday music - this year again based on a tune you'll recognize. What could it be?


It's just the right length for holiday music (30 seconds exactly). It will leave you in a state of unsatisfaction, wanting more; asking for another 5, maybe 10, seconds at least.

Click here to hear Jingle Bills © 2007 David Ocker - 30 seconds

Want more alternative holiday music?

The best Christmas song ever (seriously) - Joseph Spence does Santa Claus Is Coming To Town. There are some other good Christmas tunes here - like by Zoogz Rift.


Another great Christmas song - Santa's Secret by Johnny Guarneri and Slam Stewart.. More tunes in the same vein at that site also. (BTW - Santa's secret is something that he smokes.)

And of course I Want a Hippopotamus For Christmas. Doesn't everyone.


CHRISTMAS PENGUINS

I've posted a collection of pictures of Christmas Penguins at this link. Most have not not seen the light of Mixed Meters before. I have more pictures that I will add later.

Mixed Meters is one of the few blogs on the Internet (or anywhere else) to celebrate the elevation of Penguins into the Christmas Zoological Trio - Santa Clauses, Snowmen and Penguins. The Penguins are usually wearing a scarf or Santa hat - and are colored blue as often as black.

Last year's post Stalking the Christmas Penguin explains why Christmas Penguins will confuse the geographically-challenged American public.

Another MM post with pictures of Christmas Penguins. And another. which deals mostly with Christmas music at S'bucks. By the way, as far as I know, Starbucks never played a Hannukah tune this year, not that I expected one. But they did play one classical piece (just one) - Fur Elise by LvB. (That's one more classical piece than they play the rest of the year.)

Last year's Mixed Meters Christmas Music: two 3-Minute Climaxes - Jingle Bulls and Jungle Bells.


Santa, Snowman and Penguin Tags: Christmas Penguin. . . 30 Second Spots. . . Jingle Bills. . . Christmas Music

3 Minute Climaxes - Jungle Bells & Jingle Bulls

I have great difficulty with Christmas music. (Does it sound like my palaver is going to be dull? So skip to the end of the post and just listen to my 2 pieces of music, already, why don't ya?)

My seasonal music problem dates to my minority Jewish childhood in 1950's Iowa - when I was expected by my parents not to sing carols in public school along with my majority Christian classmates. Although I was expected by my teachers to stand there not making a fuss, preferably mouthing the words, holding a flashlight covered with red or green cellophane; a branch of a Christmas tree made entirely of children.

Our family tried to make Christmas as normal a non-holi-day as possible. It was not very possible.


My difficulties are compounded as an adult and a musician because some Christmas music is quite beautiful. Other Christmas tunes stick in your brain. These are insidious ear worms . This is a malady to which musicians are more prone than normal people. A few Christmas tunes are both beautiful and earworms - very dangerous!!

And of course some pieces have religious content - like proclaiming "Remember Christ, our Saviour, was born on Christmas day," which is not a thought I want to have. So I seriously berate myself over just humming the tune to myself.

Yes, I do have massive difficulties with religion. Any religion. Avoiding Christian music in the U.S., where 17 out of 20 people are Christian, is nearly impossible at this time of year. I know what you're saying "Just lighten up and deal with it". And I say you could have skipped ahead to the music.

I was amused to read this article (at an English website The Register) about an effort to protect shop workers from the dangers of repetitive Christmas music listening. I'm still not quite sure it's not a hoax because this could simply never happen in the U.S. Here's the first two paragraphs:

Christmas music in shops is "torture", the "forgotten pollutant" which shop workers must be able to silence for the sake of their sanity, according to activists, trade unions and a peer. The government is being asked to investigate the problem.

Campaigners and trades unions have spoken out about the playing of Christmas music in shops over an ever-extending festive period and the psychological effects that the repetitive tunes can have on staff who have no choice but to listen to it.

Last year I mixed-metered about Christmas music several times both in words and music, including a 30 Second Spot that's still available for listening: And Pretend That It's A Circus Clown. That has a companion spot Until the Alligators Knock Him Down.


This year I decided to pick a familiar Christmas earworm and use it as the basis for an entire 3 Minute Climax. I called it Jungle Bells. When I finished I still had ideas so I wrote a second piece on the same tune - and called that Jingle Bulls. But I'm not going to tell you what the tune is.

My intent was to take something lovable, familiar and pleasant and make ugly new music out of it. When Leslie heard Jingle Bulls she said "That's delightful." - so apparently, once again, I'm a failure as a composer. Next year, after I'm assaulted by Christmas muzak yet again, I'll certainly want to try another assault on Christmas music. Check back then for Jangle Bells and Jingle Balls.

click here to hear Jungle Bells

Jungle Bells: Copyright (c) 2006 by David Ocker - 3 minutes, 29 seconds

click here to hear Jingle Bulls

Jingle Bulls: Copyright (c) 2006 by David Ocker - 3 minutes, 51 seconds

Hannukah (or Hanukah, or Hanukkah or Chanukah) is not really the Jewish Christmas - but it serves as an excellent assimilationist foil during the "holiday season". (I heard someone at the supermarket this year call Thanksgiving & Christmas the "High Holidays".)

Apparently purveyors of foodstuffs think Jews celebrate every holiday by eating matzoh. This picture was taken last week at Bristol Farms in South Pasadena.




Explanation of 30 second spots


Earworm Tags: Christmas music. . . holiday music. . . Christmas carols. . . Christmas torture. . . Iowa. . . Bristol Farms. . . matzo. . . South Pasadena. . . Hanukkah. . . Chanukah. . . David Ocker. . . 3 Minute Climax. . . 30 Second Spots. . .Mixed Meters