★

Tritones and m2's are definitely regarded as dissonances in the present day ftr, at least in the context of tonal music. The blues would sound less blue if we could not hear tritones as more dissonant than major thirds.

― All along there is the sound of feedback (Sund4r), Thursday, June 13, 2019 5:47 PM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think flopsy’s point (?) was that we don’t hear tritones as dissonant as our ancestors did

I think flopsy’s point (?) was that we don’t hear tritones as dissonant as our ancestors did

We have Les Paul and Jim Marshall to thank for that, I think.

Voted "Girl Loves Me". It's just what grabbed me today.

I have to work with Blackstar. It's a challenging 2016 record; I don't think the comparisons to "Station to Station" are 'superficial'. I do hear echoes of his self-destructive cocaine fascism. In early press for the record Bowie evoked the Vorticists; he would surely have known they went fascist. The European Canon is certainly a huge part of "Blackstar".

I don't know how to feel about this. Fascism is innately a music of death, so it makes sense that this part of him, which he persuasively debunked time and again ("Quicksand" also a sharp rebuke to his fascist aspect), would resurface once again. And his fascism was always personal, always occult. Blackstar isn't a prophetic album.

How do most people hear tritones in the present day? The whole discussion began because a poster said they find it grating in the chorus of "I Can't Give Everything Away".

Grove Online article by William Drabkin is p interesting, actually. The history of the interval and how it has been regarded is pretty complex, although tonal instability seems to be its basic characteristic.

...Since the beginnings of polyphony in the early Middle Ages theorists and composers have changed their attitudes to the tritone and its use more than to any other interval.

In the medieval system of church modes the tritone was most conspicuous as the interval between the final and the fourth degree of the modes on F, the Lydian and Hypolydian. Conjunct progressions that outline the ascending tritone or the descending diminished 5th F–B are not uncommon in Gregorian chant (although tritone leaps are rare; see Gellnick), and the introduction of B♭ in plainsong notation [done to avoid the tritone] seems to have been a relatively late development. The first known use of the word ‘tritonus’ occurs in the 9th- or 10th-century organum treatise Musica enchiriadis, though it was not explicitly prohibited until the development of Guido of Arezzo's hexachordal system, which made B♭ a diatonic note, namely as the fourth degree of the hexachord on F. From then until the end of the Renaissance the tritone, nicknamed the ‘diabolus in musica’, was regarded as an unstable interval and rejected as a consonance by most theorists. In the 13th century it was classified as a discordantia perfecta, along with the minor 2nd and major 7th; and by the 15th century the Lydian mode was understood as having a flattened fourth degree (Tinctoris: Liber de natura … tonorum, 1476), that is, as being a transposed Ionian mode, as Glarean defined it in the Dodecachordon (1547).

Since the 16th century the instability of the tritone has led to developments in two directions. On the one hand, its presence in the dominant 7th chord in four-part counterpoint has made the authentic perfect cadence an even stronger affirmation of the tonality, providing an approach by semitone not only to the tonic degree but also to the 3rd (ex.1a). However, because it divides the octave into two equal parts, the tritone has also assumed the role of the tonally most ambiguous interval, as opposed to the 5th, which divides the octave into unequal parts and is (apart from the octave itself) the interval most fundamental to tonality: in particular, the tritone has come to be recognized as a basic substructure within the diminished 7th chord and the whole-tone scale (ex.1b–c). In the chorale Es ist genug (ex.2) Bach used the tritone embedded in the major scale to create an ambiguity in the relationship between tonic and dominant. Both Mozart and Beethoven used tritones thematically or motivically to divide the octave into equal parts (exx.3–4). In 19th-century Romantic opera the tritone regularly portrays that which is ominous or evil; an early instance is in the dungeon scene in Act 2 of Fidelio, for which the timpani are tuned A–E♭. Its importance in dramatic music led to further developments in the extension and suspension of tonality, particularly in Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde and Parsifal (see also ‘Tristan’ chord), the late piano works of Liszt and the music of Debussy (ex.5). In 12-note music, the fact that the inversion of the tritone at the interval of an octave yields another tritone (no other interval except the octave has this property) has proved fundamentally significant, both in theory and in practice.

For me, "Girl Loves Me" really communicates the dissociation and panic of an existential threat like knowing you have a cancer which will kill you soon. It commands my attention.

Played this lp last night and was again taken aback by how great it is. Also, I forgot how crappy the vinyl pressing is—very noisy. Is there a good quiet pressing?

As with many syncretic talents, Bowie needed the right band:

I was reading this interview with Matt Chamberlain the other day and he talked about the Heathen sessions, with just him and Bowie and Visconti, and how much Bowie fed off of what he was coming up with:

David is kind of like Tori, in that nothing is too precious and everything is permissible. You can try anything because if you don’t—and you just do what he wants—then what’s the point in having me there? He just let me go, and it was kind of mind-blowing. He would write a song and say, “Alright, what do you think”? And I would go, “Well, let me make a loop.” Then he and Tony would disappear and I would sit in the studio by myself. At the time, I was using a cheap Boomerang pedal to make loops and the whole time I was thinking, They’re letting me create the vibe of this song? This is a David Bowie record. Aaahhh!

It just occurred to me that people might be working with a general usage of "dissonant" as meaning something like "harsh/unpleasant/not belonging together". When discussing harmony, it refers to unstable harmonies that seek resolution and are an important element in tonal music. I don't believe that anyone hears #iv m7b5 as stable and resolved.

Harmony has multiple meanings as well

Man, she punched me like a dude

those last two WOOs! on ‘Tis a Pity
Damn

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I'm not a film star!

i'm not a gang starr!

we should do a ★ videos poll next

Tbh I feel like anyone not voting for the title ★ is fronting or taking it for granted.

the tension in the chorus before resolving with 'away' is the most magical part of the song IMO.

I saw NIN perform this on their last tour and it was pure magic.

Tbh I feel like anyone not voting for the title ★ is fronting or taking it for granted.

★★★★★★
★★★★★★
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★★★★★★

today i learned that a black star can be italicized

Like giancarlo esposito, sure

Title track through Sue is up there with Remain In Light for me in terms of all-time unfuckwithable Side 1’s

Er thru Lazarus that is, lol

3 hours left to vote

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

very surprised to see Lazarus so low (though i voted for ★)

Definitely surprised by those results. For me it's ★, Sue, Whore, Give, Lazarus, Girl, Dollar (the only song on the record I actually dislike).

glad Blackstar won

Black struck the kiss, she kept my cock
Smote the mistress, drifting on

and happy Tis a Pity placed so high

I still can't listen to this record though, I've barely revisited it since 2016. Just too much... I probably said this before but to face death with such dignity, strength, and risk. A truly remarkable man.

Sue is a really good song! Damn.

Yeah Sue is really something else. When I listen to the album straight through, by the time Sue is finished I usually need to turn it off for a minute and take a break to get my bearings

Is Turrican on holiday

You could put it like that.

it's more accurate to say that we're on holiday

Not banned is he? I assumed he was wisely stepping back from ILX for a while.

a little r and r at a ranch they call number 51

xp banned with extreme prejudice, I think he hit 55 before they pulled the plug

Oops.

The earlier version of "Sue", from the Nothing has Changed comp alerted me that Bowie was really back, and still much prefer it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NYgRuxO2sw

i was the only "girl loves me" vote?!?

i'm not decided between the "nothing has changed" versions of "sue" and "'tis a pity" and the blackstar versions. they're both good in their own way!

also "astronomy (8th light)" was robbed

I couldn't choose, but I might have voted for Girl Loves Me if I had been able to

xp, yeah i think the og version of sue absolutely destroys the blackstar version

It’s more highbrow, but I love the dirty drum’n’bass workouts of the album version. A little nod to Earthling which I still rate.