by Shanell Dupras
CDs, MP3s, LPs. These are the words most of us are familiar with when buying our music in the 21st century. Any other forms of music are inconvenient. In a day and age when everything is all about the convenience, Beck has decided to do a little experiment; to go back to the inconvenient; to release his next album only as sheet music. This new album, titled Song Reader, consists of 108 pages of music notation and original art. What’s intriguing is that the only way to hear the songs aloud are to both read and play them yourselves, or sign up for a mailing list to hear other fans’ renditions. The one question on everyone’s mind is: will it work?
There have already been plenty of different opinions on Beck’s little experiment, some very positive, some – not so much. Some comments online so far have been “Beck, get your lazy ass in the studio and make your own album;” “Releasing something that only appeals to a small percentage of your fan base is a huge step backwards;” “And the gold medal for pretentiousness goes to Beck!!!” It appears that the fans are so far not too keen. It’s obvious as to why; for any fans that aren’t able to read notation this is a slight slap in the face.
The question remains: will this work?
Professionals appear to be hopeful. Wade Nelson, a Rhetoric and Communications professor at the University of Winnipeg believes that “it’s both clever and smart-assed (in the best possible way)… Of course, it doesn’t solve any problems, and perhaps creates a few, but that doesn’t mean that the project isn’t worthy of attention. And at the very least, it gets people talking about the current state of affairs in the music industry.”
Nelson is one of many who would have to wait until these songs are recorded before getting to hear them. “It unfortunately takes too much of an effort to consume, and I suspect that most folks are not invested enough in this sort of thing to actually make it happen for themselves.” Song Reader is worth trying, but will it be worthwhile?
Zane Zalis, a composer – who has worked with the WSO – and high school music teacher, has a slightly more optimistic view of Beck’s efforts: “I welcome it. I embrace the idea. I think it will be a challenge for most people in popular culture.” As a composer, Zalis sees the good in sheet music that recordings alone may not offer. “The eyes catch what the ears miss and the ears catch what the eyes miss… I think the power comes when the two come together… the notated word has a lot to offer, the recording has a lot to offer.” As of right now, Beck has not announced the release of a recorded album with these tracks; however, some fans don’t seem to mind.
Rather than recording the album himself, Beck has decided to let the fans do it instead. Beck has recently launched a website called songreader.net, where fans can sign up and submit their versions of his songs. Even before the album’s release, some fans have showed interest. The last time I peeked at the page (and this number is most likely different now), there were three versions of the song “Do We? We Do” as well as four versions of the song “Old Shanghai,” all using the exact same notation, with drastically different results. One band, Bradley Dean Whyte and the Perfectly Violent Dream, has gone so far that they not only wished to record “Do We? We Do,” but has hopes to produce the entire Beck album, and play concerts with the material as well.
One thing’s for sure; Beck has seen more publicity than he has in quite some time due to this attempt. Zalis hopes that this project will spark interest in young music lovers to learn how to read notation, but has hesitations; “I don’t think we can [go backwards], but I do know that we seem to embrace something new and novel, get excited, then our short attention spans take off and we go do something else.”
This has sparked our interest, but for how long? And will any fans use this as an excuse to learn how to read music notation?
Song Reader appears to be an interesting project, but along with it come plenty of possibilities, plenty of slaps in the face, and plenty of questions. Before deciding to take on the challenge that is Song Reader, Zalis has a few questions to ask yourself first: “Are you willing to go through this to achieve the reward? Do you see the reward great enough? Is it really about the Beck piece or about learning the symbolic code of a language so that you can enjoy many others?”
This, and many other questions, will have to wait to be answered until the release on December 7th.