Susan Doyle, The Soloist, and Modern Music

Even in America we were hearing so much about Susan Doyle that I went to Youtube and searched her up. Yes, she was good, but after so much buildup, I was expecting something of a Full Archangel and was disappointed to get only an angel. Really, on the Ten Scale, everybody was talking as though she were perhaps about a 9.8, and the actual performance was only like a 9.2. She knew how to sing, and she enjoyed it, but her actual ‘pipes’ weren’t really so perfect. Or maybe they actually are. In such walk-on auditions, people don’t have the opportunity to really warm up. I know for myself that it takes 15 minutes before I am sure of my ‘feel’ and it really takes a bit more than a half an hour before I can count on being somewhat inspired. It is probably the same for Voice as for anything else.

The really wonderful thing about Susan Doyle is what it bespoke of the audience and the English Public who received her so enthusiastically. It seems that people may be ready for some real music again. So ready for real music that they extended Susan perhaps more credit than she deserved. But that might be some indication of how tired people are of Rap and all that other crap. If it will help in anyway to bring us back real music again, even I will agree that Susan Doyle is the most perfect singer of all time. Jesus, I hope so.

Remember, about a decade ago… I have spoken of this movie before… “Hear My Song”, an English Movie. It threw to the forefront several very good baritones, singing popular songs and sentimental ballads. The movie really depended on people not turning away or being embarrassed to listen to what may have been seen as old fashioned, dated, passé. And the movie wasn’t a total failure… just the good vibes of that movie lead to a series of other English Feel Good movies. But I suspect that the young people stayed away in droves, feeling too superior to give yesterday’s music much of a chance. But maybe “Hear My Song” would have taken off better today. I think it would be the kind of movie Susan Doyle and her fans would enjoy. Maybe they need to put the picture into re-release.

Oh, and today I went to see the movie “The Soloist”. It’s a movie about a journalist who knows nothing about music who writes about a musician. It’s a movie made by film people who also know nothing about music. You think that journalists or movie makers would at least bother to look into their subject matter a bit. Instead they rely only upon their uninformed assumptions and baseless opinions … and if ignorance is good enough for themselves, then it is good enough for their audience.

For instance, the writer was surprised that the musician went from cello to violin without any training. Duh! Both the cello and the violin are 4 string fretless instruments with bows. The difference is only that one is bigger. Indeed, violins come in about 5 sizes, and they all play the same way. Beyond getting used to the different feel, there is nothing to learn at all in going back and forth between them all. I would think even a retard… oh, I mean even extremely special people could figure that out! Well, since they look so similar! But I suppose a writer would think formulaically that we all would be impressed with a musician who picks up an instrument without a single lesson. I think that is what they refer to as shameless manipulation.


Anyway, they probably hired a few consultants because movie didn’t get everything wrong. For instance, the violin family of instruments, with the curved bridge and the straight bow, well, only one or two strings can be played at a time… well, more if one strums down hard and fairly high up the neck, forcing a third string into the alignment. But the violins mostly play melody lines, and harmonies are done by orchestrating entire string sections together. So the movie included the orchestration in the background to give context to the melody line that The Soloist was playing. That was good.

But there was really vapid section of the movie which tried to present some idea of what Mental Ideation of Music might look like in the mind’s eye of some musical genius. They showed pulsating blotches of color. Honestly, how is one supposed to arrive at the ordered and precise and yet beautiful arrangement of music through shapeless blobs and random colors. That is not Ideation at all. Now, that is my criticism, but I must admit that I would have trouble presenting any better representation of Ideation. You see, ideation is not just a kind of visual thing, but it is also a shadow of the kinetic… mixing sight and sense of movement – feeling it in one’s mind’s eye as much as seeing it. The colors are not vivid, unless one is doing some particularly strong hallucinogens. But one thing the ideations are is exact. If one has a good understanding of the music… knows what one is listening to, then the ideations will be an exact representation. Good ideation provides for good improvisation, that is, if a musician has a good feel for the ongoing pattern of the music, then he can easily jump in and supplement the pattern without clashing with it. The ideation is ornamented without being changed in its essentials. So, really, the movie producers only had to present any kind of really exact imaginary representation of the music… even just presenting the musical notations in dynamic flashes… follow the bouncing balls of an entire orchestra… would have been better than the blobby pulsing arbitrary colors. They wanted to present the visualizations of a musical genius, but instead we got what a doper probably sees just before passing out in his own colorful vomit. Honestly, I can’t imagine why they did not edit that blobby crap out. The producers daughter must have come up with the idea or something like that. How many bad movie scenes are Production Holy Cows which can’t be touched for one reason or another?

Oh, here is another problem with Music and Hollywood. Why has Hollywood been lately seeming to do its best to correlate any particular genius with music with some kind of mental dysfunctionality. “Autumn Rush” was also about some musical nut-case, wasn’t it? Then there was the parade of movies about musical drunks, and musical drug addicts. Can’t we see a movie about a talented, successful, sane and socially well adjusted musician ( yes, I know, we would have to find one first!). Oh! I think they did… “Music and Lyrics” with Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore. It was a charming movie about music and musicians, and hardly a hint of any dysfunctionality at all. But, being about Popular Music, I suppose they intended for the audience to be dismissive of the whole thing… to just laugh at it… after all, it was just a comedy.

I suppose it leads us to wonder why it is so important for the American Media to project in almost a solid front that Fine Music is out of reach of the Normal, the Sane and the Healthy. Maybe they wish to discourage children from taking music lessons, although one can hardly imagine that the rate could fall any lower. The Public is being conditioned to suppose that sane and healthy children can hardly dare to hope to develop any talent, since they aren’t properly delusional or adequately troubled. And if they can’t play music, maybe the American Media People think the kids will buy more music, and if they know nothing much about music, then appealing to high levels of taste and discernment won’t be a problem for the Music Producers. Music Producers have never had it easier than they do today as far as worrying about overcoming the barriers of high taste and educated sensibilities. After all, Rap Music is the rejection of all that, isn’t it? Indeed, I can’t possibly be the only one to notice that music has gotten more and more primitive, simplistic and, well, cheap, over the last hundred years or so. It went from Orchestras and Opera, to Stage Bands and Vaudeville, to Big Bands, that weren’t really quite so big, to Swing Bands that were paired down even more. Then Rock and Roll came along which fired everybody, sent all the musicians packing, saving only a few guitars and a drum. Then even that got too much for Music Producers to want to pay for, and now every kid who can cuss in rhyme, to a depersonalized synthesized track operated by a mere technician, can be a Modern Music Rap Star. I guess the Music Producers pick which ever kid will work the cheapest. They charge the same for the product, the same as they used to charge for Music, but it costs nearly nothing to make… no chairs to set up… no acoustics to worry about… no drawing up sheet music for horn and string sections. No phone calls have to be made. Nobody gets hired. All the same money is made selling rhyming cuss words. They couldn’t get away with that kind of crap if good music ever became Normal again.

Oh, but that brings us back to the Susan Doyle phenomena. Isn’t she exactly the perfect blend of Good Music and Normalcy? And the Public loves her! Wow! The Public is finally coming around to defy their Media Conditioning, to feel their own true feelings. I wonder how the Media will fight it. I suppose they will try to get Susan Doyle to perform rap music…that Britain won’t really have any talent at all unless she can string together rhyming sequences of profanity just like all the rest of the Big Talent that is allotted to us in this modern day and age. It is a good thing that we all love this brave new world or it would all be rather sad, wouldn’t it?