When I was a kid, the only ASL that I ever saw related to music was the lady in the lower right corner of the screen during the Methodist Church’s broadcast of their Sunday morning service. She would sign the entire service including the lyrics to what the choir was singing… which, as lovely an idea as it is, didn’t really grab me. Well, wouldn’t you know it, closed-captioned television was able to bring television to the deaf. It never did anything for music though…
In recent years, however, there has been a spate of individuals interpreting songs into ASL and posting these videos to the ‘tubes. Isn’t that great?
There are a ton of these videos out there and they are surprisingly awesome… even the songs that seem trite and silly become something special when someone who is trying to bring these songs to someone who won’t otherwise enjoy them is trying to translate them… and that creates something new and entirely different.
Here’s a duet of “Lucky” by Jason Mraz and Colbie Caillat:
Well, such videos have inspired such things as this (“A Perfect Day” by Jim Jones which has brought back the people signing in the lower right-hand corner):
What put that all in mind, however, was me re-stumbling over an ASL interpretation of Marilyn Manson’s “The New S#!+”
This is yet another thing that probably wouldn’t have happened without the internet: Music Videos for the deaf. That’s just freakin’ awesome.
So… what are you listening to?
Right now, I’m listening to this.
I am listening to my two-year-old singing the ABCs on seemingly endless repeat.
Perfect practice makes perfect execution.
I don’t get it. Deaf people can’t hear the music. They might as well just be reading the lyrics, right? Is this something that actual deaf people enjoy, or would this be a good entry for a blog called “Stuff Hearing People Like?”
Or reading poetry, which is usually better than song lyrics, since it can’t be carried by a catchy tune.
There’s the experience of an onomatopoeia that can’t be translated…
It seems wrong to not even try. You can point out the difference between, oh, a limerick and a haiku. Something like the quiet murmurs in “the buzzing of innumerable bees” doesn’t fully translate in text but you can get *SOME* of that across if you try when you won’t if you don’t.
It’s only their ears that are broke, not their bones. Plenty of stuff you can hear through your feet, if you put ’em on the subwoofer.
I don’t know that music is necessarily explainable to deaf folks… but to explain that “it’s like watching dancers with your ears” gets you closer than shrugging.
There are two very different experiences watching the duet and the Marilyn Manson video, for example… and I think both do a good job of communicating the content.
Beethoven had to cut the legs off all of his pianos and let the piano just rest flat on floor. By placing his head flush with the wooden floor, he could discern these vibrations and instantly transfer them to the music he had written. Also, if you hand me a sheet of music, I can read it as though I’m reading a book. It could be an entire symphony score with brass and strings and percussion–it doesn’t matter. This is not a particularly difficult thing to do. Music is like a foreign language–once you completely immerse yourself into it, these things just start happening without any effort needed to develop this skill. The same would also apply when composing music. It’s completely unnecessary to test and experiment on an instrument when writing music. When a 10-year old Mozart heard “forbidden” music at the Vatican, he just went back to his room and sat down and wrote all 15 minutes of it by memory–every single note was perfect!! This was very, very complex music. Four lines–bass, tenor, contralto, and soprano–such genius is just unfathomable and impossible to explain. That’s why I always say, you don’t need faith to believe in God, you just need Mozart. Could you even imagine creating something so special, a divine masterpiece, that not even the hand of God could possibly improve it? Like the Chartres Cathedral. Like Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, etc,etc
something so special, a divine masterpiece, that not even the hand of God could possibly improve it?
Blasphemy.
Not that I personally am offended, but still.
No religion.
My apologies. It wasn’t really about religion so much as hypocrisy.
(I’m somewhat disappointed that “no politics” and/or “no religion” hasn’t become a running joke…)
Just because:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_atheists_in_music
Bartok, Berlioz. Lemmy.
Blasphemy? Okay, sorry. I should have included Handel, Byrd, Josquin Des Prez, Chopin, Brahms, ughhh, oh MOZART!! Leaving him off the list is truly blasphemous so I thank you for bringing it to my attention. Obviously, just an oversight.
Now, kidding aside, I still stand by my words, James. For strictly experimental reasons, I’ve rewritten lots of music–mostly Bach and Beethoven with innumerable changes of harmony and counterpoint and leading themes and melodies. What I find is that the moment I leave the score and inject the slightest deviation of harmony and/or counterpoint, it sounds awful, bordering on hideous. The miracle and genius of these guys is that they knew exactly what the next note had to be. It can be no other. If you look at old scores of Beethoven works, you’ll see constant rewrites, corrections, additions because he just knew what works and what doesn’t. And I think people innately know this. There were thousands of musicians and composers during this time period, yet people gravitated towards this music because it so deeply and profoundly, moved them. And the seemingly effortless compositions of Mozart never cease to stun, move, bewilder, and love. Mozart’s music has the effect of coming from the heavens and gently landing upon the earth whereas Beethoven’s music has the effect of emanating from earth with both deep sorrow and deeper ecstasy and rising to the heavens.
I’m not saying they were at God’s level. But I am saying, God would probably be one of their groupies.
(I’m somewhat disappointed that “no politics” and/or “no religion” hasn’t become a running joke…)
Aaaagh! I’m unfamiliar with the rules, if there be any, of your sub-blog. Was terribly afraid I’d offended.
I’ll go and pray to Rick Perry for forgiveness for my dullness.
I don’t really *HAVE* rules to the sub-blog. It’s more that I want a place of respite from important things.
On the main page should be a place where people can scream and tear into each other and compare each other to Nazis/Soviets and then, come here, and say “listen to this guitar solo”.
Religion and Politics and whatnot get in the way of that. We think about our ideals instead of how awesome stuff is and how awesome it is to share it.
I want this place to be a place where we share awesome stuff with each other without having to worry about politics or religion or whatnot.
Also, there’s something in the craft of lyric writing which can be profound when done right. The emotional weight of music is so heavy that lyrics are often an aforethought, but they can still move me as much as the music every now and then.
I was actually thinking about this the other night, when I heard Paul Simon’s Graceland on the radio. I’m neither a huge fan nor detractor of that song, and tend to think of it as OK. But I was struck by this line, which occurs at the point when the narrator is picking up his son from his ex-wife’s house:
“She comes back to tell me that she’s gone –
as if I didn’t know that, as id I didn’t know my own bed;
As if I didn’t notice the way she brushed her hair from her forehead.”
I find that line deeply moving; there are simply so many things about loss and yearning and regret, packed into just a few simple images.
I suspect you can be deaf and that line can still mean something.
That’s very interesting, Tod. Although I can read sheet music and hear it in my head without being around any musical instrument, I can not hear voices and music at the same time and be able to give any meaning to the words. They could be sung in English or Aramaic, it wouldn’t make any difference. I absolutely love the human voice, could sit through 10 straight performances of the St. Matthew Passion but the verbal part of my brain that processes words and their meaning, completely shuts down. I couldn’t, even if my life depended it, recite the words of a single rock song. I only hear the sound of the sung words never the meaning. Go figure.
I read an interview with Paul Simon on the craft many years back. [Sorry, can’t find it.] But the sound of the words was an intentional part of the craft: “d” is brooding:
A winters day
In a deep and dark December
There were others, and I probably incorporated them into my own songwriting and remember them even if I’ve forgot. “G”s and “K”s are gutteral, cacophonous, stark, words of action: go, come. “S”s are soft, sneaky. “M”s are mysterious; the mountain murmurs…
Hi Tom–great to hear from you. Sometimes I forget you are first and foremost, a musician!
And a very interesting (and poetic =mysterious mountain murmurs—nice) take on the relationship between words and music.
I guess that’s what my brain takes in regarding music, words, and lyrics–the sound and not the meaning of words. If it were reversed, I’d lose the music for the words–would never want to do that!
Hope you’re doing well. Said a prayer for your beloved Middie. Just saw in the paper the other day that the world’s oldest dog has passed into dog heaven. Age: 26 years and 7 months. Now that’s a life well lived! See ya.
Cheers, mate and thx. Behave yrself.
“Behave yrself”. Heh, Heh, Heh.
I promise. I’m one word away from Dr. Saunders scalpel. Two strikes and a few foul balls lead to much greater scrutiny regarding my admission to this august and genteel League.
Broken mirror,
a million shades of light
The old echo fades away
… the fact that this can be so impressive to survive translation… yeah.
I don’t think it did. There wasn’t actually an original Japanese version.
Agree. It’s a very beautiful line, Tod. He is truly a masterful lyricist and the lines Tom provided are exquisitely evocative.
Funny how so much of music is filled with deep, unattainable, yearning. I firmly believe Beethoven would not have been as great and creative had he not lost his hearing. His deep sorrows and joys are inseparable. His constant shaking his fist at Fate delivered this bounty of incomparable musical treasures. Just listen to this opening of the Archduke’s third movement:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNilXnhltdE&feature=related
Ahhhh, I’m in heaven when hearing this! And the variations spun off this main theme are so gorgeous. This is not the Dionysian Beethoven, rather the mystical, tender, Apollonian side with heartbreak and tender, nocturnal longings…
I think I get it. There’s a degree of artistry involved, more like dance. Some people are better at it than others. Go back and watch that first video, the duet with Jason Mraz and Colbie Caillat. After you’re satisfied you have a feel for the emotion of the song and the way both artists express it, put the video on mute, so you have an idea of what the deaf or hearing-impaired listener would experience.
It seems to me watching it on mute that Ms. Caillat is significantly more emotive with her face and hand gestures than Mr. Mraz. I get the impression that she is expressing genuine emotion where he is moving through a recital or a translation. She also uses her body, wagging her shoulders in a way that suggests she is tapping her feet, which is indicative of rythym. I can tell that as she signs she also sings.
Perhaps she’s simply more fluent in ASL than he is.
Hopefully, though, a hearing-impaired viewer won’t rely on Youtube’s closed captioning, which does not do such a good job with this duet:
That sounds like a “this is what rock and roll sounds like!” rant.
Jaybird–keep forgetting to ask you this–the only video game I’ve ever played was Donkey Kong. Any recommendations for a neophyte–you know, just to get my feet wet? Ever try a baseball video game? The only reason I’ve never gotten into this is because I could easily imagine myself playing these things for 20 hours a day–probably even occasionally, 24 hrs a day.
I would suggest “Out Of The Park Baseball Manager”.
You’re not playing baseball, you’re playing managing a team. Just google “out of the park baseball” and you’ll get there.
Thanks so much, Jaybird. Sounds like fun. Can I sue you for causing chronic sleep deprivation is it gets out of hand?
What would you say is the very top of the line game? Or for that matter, what is your very favorite of all video game out there? Thanks.
One of my faves is by Peter Sinfield, lyricist for King Crimson and ELP. This is from his solo album nobody ever heard:
http://www.justsomelyrics.com/1019172/Peter-Sinfield-The-Night-People-Lyrics
Gargoyles chewing on dead cigars
Stack chips in crystal halls.
Sequinned starlets scent their breasts
Till the single finger calls.
Rhinestoned strippers strut and peel
For the cochineal stockade.
The gangster roars his crew applauds
At the punter’s fun parade;
All worshiping the jaws of night
Where the piper is never paid.
Champagned freaks in denim shirts
Snort energy in spoons.
Laughing girls ask zodiac signs
But their eyes sing lonely tunes.
It’s four o’clock the wine is flat
The coffee has long gone cold,
The rustlers pay their last respects
Then drive away blindfold . . . . . .
Dead the hollow dreams of night
Turn grey, dissolve . . . .dissolve . . .
[See link for the full boat, which I see he now reads as a poem.]
[But the music kicks ass too.]
I watched them muted without first watching them with the sound, so as not to have my perceptions colored by information which an actual deaf person wouldn’t receive. And I just didn’t get much out of it. Granted that I was missing out on ask the semantic content, since I don’t…read?…ASL, but I don’t get the impression that subtitles would have helped much.
I get the idea of sign-language poetry–which is to say, poetry designed with the visual esthetics of sign language in mind, but I don’t
…don’t think that a straight-up translation is a particularly good way to get there. Was typing this comment on my phone and got stuck with the text box scrolled up and unable to scroll it back down to finish.
There’s the deaf as in “born that way and have never heard anything” and then there’s the deaf as in “acquired hearing loss”.
I can imagine familiar songs being signed to one might enable one to hear the song again.
I agree. Sometimes when I’ve been out on my little runabout boat–sadly, I must report it went up in flames with me in it–Coast Guard said I was about ten seconds from being blown to smithereens (sorry–such happy news could not have been delivered hereabouts!) but after I’ve turned on the stereo, and am just riding around listening away to this music, sometimes it turns out the stereo wasn’t even on because the batteries were dead or not even in the stereo. Odd. On the other hand, it could save me lots of money on batteries. It’s impossible to willfully recreate, though–it either happens or it doesn’t.
I have been a fan of Aly’s “Singing” in ASL for a while. She is a very talented individual and I think brings a lot of ASL-awareness to the hearing community.
Sadly she has also run afoul of copyright law, given that her videos contain entire songs many of which are not licensed for full play on YouTube. This has mutated into a “YouTube hates deaf people” kind of championing when really, I think, it’s about following the rules (whether or not we agree with them) related to the broadcast of copyprotected content.
That said, it was her videos (and those of “Captain Valor”) that got me re-interested in ASL, got me to sign for a student singing “Re: Your Brains” at a choir concert, and got me into an ASL 1 class as part of my never ending continuing education.
That is great! Music videos for the deaf. When I looked videos, I have remembered a film «The Legend of Frankie Wilde – the Deaf DJ».
It’s a good news for the deaf. I was pleasantly surprised by this music videos. I am glad that such videos exists.