People with no taste still need music

Here’s what I worked out today, small though it may be…

If you typed “People with no taste still need music” into Google this morning, it returned 0 hits. How is that possible? You need this key.

I could give you a full explanation pointing to either the hipster stages of grief (e.g. denial that Avril Lavigne likes Sleater-Kinney & was/is romantically involved with the guy from Nickelback), or the necessity of reactionary attitudes in progressing art, or pointing out the role that popular music plays in allowing for personal attributions of music intent (check Kelley’s dimension of consensus), or the certain hope I have that the Lauper-Spears-Swift line will prosper for decades to come.

These are all true enough, but you can work that out for yourself, you just need the key:

people with no taste still need music.

If that doesn’t make you smile, I don’t know what will.

A critique of the statistical conclusions in the Witherspoon Institute’s teaser on SSM & sexual morality

 

I recently read the Witherspoon Institute’s teaser article about attitudes toward seven different aspects of sexual morality in America from an upcoming study by Mark Regnerus. Regnerus concludes that

“Churchgoers who oppose same-sex marriage sense that they are out of step with the rest of the nation about sex and relationships. (The numbers above reinforce that.)”

I want to briefly re-analyze his reported data to show you why the reported data, if anything, show the direct opposite of this conclusion.

We’ll start with the first survey item, “Viewing pornography is OK”. Regnerus reports that 31.4% of the population agreed or strongly agreed with that statement. So what is the majority position on pornography? Regnerus’ own data show that 68.6% of people do not agree or strongly agree that viewing pornography is OK (to work this out, take 100%, the total population, then subtract 31.4%, the population average for agree or strongly agree). Now it might be that the majority position is that people do not think pornography is OK, but we don’t know that for certain because the 68.6% may also include neutral people and those who are undecided, which might drop 68.6% down to below 50%. The key point is this: whatever the majority population position on porn is, it is not that viewing pornography is OK.

If we then look at all the survey items, taking the majority to be the usual 50%, and then look at the population findings reported by Regnerus, we find that the population does not have a majority of people agreeing or strongly agreeing on any of the seven issues.

To state this again, the population overall does not have a majority of people who agree or strongly agree with any of the sexual morality statements.

Now, if we look at the majority position among Christians who oppose SSM and then compare it to the population majority, we find that Christians who oppose SSM hold the majority position on most issues (that majority position not being to agree or strongly agree with any of the seven statements):

The exception (highlighted in bold above), is that churchgoing Christians who oppose SSM think couples should stay together for the children but the population doesn’t think so.

Overall, if we look for a simple majority, none are in the direction reported by Regnerus. His conclusions are the opposite of what his data actually show. However, I would strongly advise not taking my conclusions at face value either. There are many other holes in Regnerus’ research, from the fact that the population results double-dipped and included the Christians as well, to his misunderstanding of how population based samples can still be biased (and I strongly suspect the real devil is in the detail on this point), to the ambiguous questions (I could disagree with the statement “Porn is OK” either because I think viewing porn is terrible or because I think it is wonderful, not merely OK).

In fact, the holes are so big they probably would fill the Albert Hall, and I would ignore these findings completely, because there is every chance this research is just as dubious as Regnerus’ other research. However, if you do take the numbers seriously, then the conclusions are as follows:

1. The majority sexual opinion is nowhere near as sexually liberated as one might imagine (the majority position is not to agree or strongly agree with things such as porn or abortion, but it is to not stay together for the kids).

2. Christians who oppose SSM hold the same majority position as the population on 6 out of 7 issues (the difference being that they would still stay together for the kids).

How to play guitar like Slint – Nosferatu Man

I recently had the pleasure of seeing Slint live in Boston and it cleared up some of my misconceptions about how they play guitar. Here’s how to really play the high guitar riff from “Nosferatu Man”.

Notes on the tab:

(A) The harmonics used here are not directly above the third and fourth frets, they are a little to the right of the third fret, and a little to the left of the fourth. They are also very quiet, so Pajo plays them with a lot of distortion to beef up the volume.

(B) In order to bend the note at the end of the phrase, Pajo moves his left hand over to the string behind the nut and pushes the string down (see here, Pajo is on the right side of the screen).

That is not the what the internet said (see here for the common tab) but, now, yet another problem with the internet is fixed.

And here are two reflections on their style:

1. Slint are more elegant than you think. Playing a melody line out of natural harmonics is quite wonderful; simple to play but difficult to conceive, which is almost the definition of elegance.

2. Slint do not use pinched harmonics, which is a minor point of disagreement with Scott Tennent’s otherwise wonderful 33 1/3 book on Spiderland. Instead, they use a lot of the natural harmonics (the 3rd and 4th fret harmonics are also used at the end of “Good Morning Captain”). In fact, whenever you hear the squealy sound of the Nosferatu Man lead (as in the B-section of “Breadcrumb Trail”) it seems that Pajo is simply playing natural harmonics with a Boss Heavy Metal pedal (at least, that’s what I recall from his pedal board).

(Image: Pitchfork Media)

How to play guitar like Fugazi – Waiting Room

It’s hard to find any good stuff on how to think like a Fugazi guitarist, so one Friday night I sat at home and worked out the “7 Songs” EP for myself. Here’s an analysis of the first song, “Waiting Room”.

There are only four parts to learn: the verse, the pre-chorus, the hook and turnaround, and the chorus. In itself, this simplicity should suggest Fugazi’s key trick: elegance.

Verse

The verse is a simple set of two notes being played at a time (F# chord to C# chord). But note that this is played in such a way as to avoid the power chords one might expect. It suggests to me that the actual guitar line came first, not a chord structure. (The intro is also the verse, and in the final line of the verse Ian holds down an E-shaped F# barre chord to drive into the chorus instead of returning to the C#.)

Pre-chorus

The pre-chorus is three chords (if we exclude the pre-hook and turnaround). The first C# is super-easy to play, just bar your index finger over the three strings on sixth fret, and perhaps put your ring finger on the eight fret. This chord is like an open G chord transposed up and I think it may be a favourite of Ian’s because it allows him to shift between playing the chord and then single muted notes on the E and A strings (check out his playing in Sieve-Fisted Find, for example).

Second chord is the G# octave, which makes it the third of the E chord. Playing it as a slide up gives it a little ‘pop’.

Third chord is the surprising choice of a common E-shaped B barre chord. Don’t be weird always.

Turnaround & hook

Open E chord slidingup by the F octave into F#. This use of an open chord is a common technique in Fugazi. We see a similar common D chord in “Bad Mouth” and “Bulldog Front”. Chords with more than two strings (and open chords in particular) are often used as accent chords. In this case, it first introduces the chorus and next time sits behind the “be-cause they can’t get up” hook.

Chorus

Back to F# and C# but this time done with a standard E-shaped barre F# chord and then the same C# from the pre-chorus (I told you Ian loved that shape).

(Don’t forget to put the turnaround and hook at the end of the chorus)

There are four lessons to learn from this:

1. Play less. Across the course of the song, Fugazi builds this song by playing very few notes at the beginning (it is very hard to convince guitarists to play a two-note riff like the verse, trust me). They build from these double notes to full chords. Note how each section builds a bit bigger than the last, but often using the same underlying chords.
One reason for this is simply that Fugazi use a lot of distortion, and more notes can sound so messy that it would initially disorient the listener (a trick Fugazi later use to great effect on songs such as “Facet Squared”). Tim Gane made a similar point about this with the Farfisa organ, Stereolab would only play two notes on that organ because three or more sounded too out-of-tune.

2. Have some variety in ways to play chords. Ian has some go-to chord shapes that are ‘his’ that other people don’t usually use (e.g. the G-barre shape from the pre-chorus, the open chord for accent, and the unused octave shape which we can get to later). The Edge makes a similar point in “It Might Get Loud”, he has his own way to play E that sounds good to him.

3. You might not need to write as much as you think. In song-writing school they suggest you write a set of verse chords, then a chorus, then a bridge. This is not how to play like Fugazi. There are repeats all over the place, from the chords in the verse being the chorus chords, to the turn-around being used both out of the pre-chorus and into the chorus. Repetition is a friend.

4. From figure to straight. Note how this song goes from a unique guitar figure (in the verse) to outlining the underlying chordal basis for that figure (in the chorus). In other words, be weird, but then bring it back into focus. (Guitar manuals often say to get more rhythmically complex across a song, Fugazi actually tend to get simpler as you get to the chorus, not trickier)

Given these tips, you can probably work out some more Fugazi songs from live videos. You might even start to identify Fugazi songs from still photos, such as this one of “Waiting Room“.

(Image: Dischord Records)

Statistics in the BBC Sherlock’s “A Study In Pink”

In “A Study in Pink”, Episode One of the new Sherlock, the cab driver has been giving people a chance to pick one of two pills. The driver has been given the non-poisonous one four times in a row, and now it’s Sherlock’s chance.

The cabbie maintains “Four people in a row? It’s not just chance”

Sherlock says it’s “luck”.

The internet is full of people who are amazed at the cabbie getting it right four times in a row and Sherlock himself seems finally to be impressed by the cabbie’s skill. But should we be impressed?

If chance is really operating, the probability of getting one guess right is 1/2. If you have two events, this is 1/2 x 1/2 = 1/4. So, by the time you guess a 50:50 situation right four times, it drops to 1/2 x 1/2 x 1/2 x 1/2 = 1/16 (or .0625). Now, the conventional level where statisticians say that there’s more than chance operating is 1/20 (or 5%). In other words, the cabbie really hasn’t done anything significant so far; his luck (.0625) is not rarer than the conventional levels statisticians assume via chance (.05).

However, had the cabbie killed five people with the same method, his luck would have been rare enough (.03125) that we, like Sherlock and the internet, might be impressed and think the cabbie really did have a trick up his sleeve. Unfortunately, Watson shot him before we could find out.