Trump as brass

September 15, 2024 @ 7:12 am · Filed by under Language and music

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Trombone, specifically:



See also:

Some relevant past posts:

"Poem in the key of what", 10/9/2006
"More on pitch and time intervals in speech", 10/15/2006
"'An essay towards establishing the melody and measure of speech'", 3/20/2016
"Trump's prosody", 8/8/2016
"Trumpchant in B flat", 10/2/2016
"Blues in Moore flat", 12/15/2017
"Emergency in B flat", 2/17/2019
"Dinosaur intonation", 8/28/2021
"Hummed 'I don't know'", 8/29/2021
"More 'I don't know'", 8/31/2021

September 15, 2024 @ 7:12 am · Filed by under Language and music


8 Comments

  1. AntC said,

    September 15, 2024 @ 8:00 am

    For (political) balance, presumably Kamala's utterances can also be rendered as a tone-row?

  2. Mark Liberman said,

    September 15, 2024 @ 9:31 am

    @AntC: "For (political) balance, presumably Kamala's utterances can also be rendered as a tone-row?"

    I don't have time today to remind myself of how use MusicXML and MuseScore, or to check whether my Sibelius license is up to date, etc. But if someone else (like you) does it, I'll join in.

  3. Andrew said,

    September 15, 2024 @ 11:23 am

    This immediately reminded me of Steve Reich's "Different Trains", where the "tunes" of spoken words are imitated by a string quartet. Perhaps he could compose a new work along the same lines with Trump's utterances; "Alternative Facts", perhaps.

  4. KevinM said,

    September 15, 2024 @ 11:45 am

    @AntC and ML: Try this
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GU5qQxiYbH0
    MonoNeon has also taken on a greater challenge:
    the highly articulated speech of CardiB. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQJeNl0b8g0

  5. Mark Liberman said,

    September 15, 2024 @ 11:47 am

    @Andrew:"This immediately reminded me of Steve Reich's "Different Trains", where the "tunes" of spoken words are imitated by a string quartet."

    Yes!

    Though in the performances I've heard, the spoken part is backgrounded, and the strings' "imitation" is a bit abstract, e.g.

    https://youtu.be/D_2PwYmmbXI?si=ox9_ua0jbgJXeeKs

  6. Barbara Phillips Long said,

    September 15, 2024 @ 7:26 pm

    There is also the setting with the Charlie Brown piano theme, as seen here:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SeMHr-sYuM

    @AntC —

    In my experience, musicians hear notes where I hear noise. One musician I knew talked about improvised singing around the droning note that a vehicle's engine created, much like the notes played by a bagpipe that also plays a drone. Over the years, I have heard other, similar observations from musicians. I think all of these musical reactions to Trump's remarks reflect a musical component in that section of the debate. He makes many speeches, but few of them are followed by similar flurries of musical imitation or accompaniment. So far, Kamala Harris does not seem to have produced remarks that are equally noteworthy to musicians.

  7. Roscoe said,

    September 16, 2024 @ 12:14 pm

    Scott Johnson gave I.F. Stone the string quartet treatment:

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dcnJE0Jlp3g

  8. Walter Underwood said,

    September 19, 2024 @ 6:52 pm

    Also "General Speech" for solo trombone, composed by Robert Erikson. That is MacArthur's "Duty, Honor, Country" speech.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HarmPImQrQY

    I first heard it on this recording, also see the liner notes.

    https://www.newworldrecords.org/products/new-music-for-virtuosos?_pos=1&_sid=61b52b7da&_ss=r&variant=31954485903439
    https://nwr-site-liner-notes.s3.amazonaws.com/80541.pdf

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