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Topic ClosedNobel Prize for Literature goes to Bob Dylan

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The T View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 25 2016 at 08:19
Originally posted by Atavachron Atavachron wrote:

Originally posted by The T The T wrote:

How low the standards of singing have fallen... (my opinion of course). 

Not really;  few people think, have ever thought, Dylan has or had a good voice.   They didn't care because they recognized his unique offerings.   I'm going past that and proclaiming his singing superior (IMO, however one qualifies that) to modern singers such as, say, Mark Knopfler, a Bob Dylan emulator if there ever was one.



Mark Knopfler is another musician I would never qualify as a good singer. 

This is the thing for me: Dylan doesn't sing. He kinds of speak with rhythm and some hint of melody. Obviously it depends where I'm coming from in musical background but I'd say any person I know can sign as well as Dylan. It doesn't require any musical training (I don't want to say talent because I guess you have to at least be able to stay in key). 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 25 2016 at 08:51
.......

Edited by rogerthat - October 25 2016 at 08:54
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 25 2016 at 08:54
Originally posted by rogerthat rogerthat wrote:

Originally posted by SteveG SteveG wrote:

Originally posted by rogerthat rogerthat wrote:

[QUOTE=SteveG] ^Roger, there's a difference between having a screechy high voice and a nasal voice. Screechy high vocals go with hard rock and heavy metal. Nasal vocals go with nothing.

So are you telling me that Stevie Wonder or Bon Scott are just screechy (which they are not in the first place) and not nasal (which they absolutely are)?  
Singing through the nose and not from the back of the throat is a Dylan technique. Bon is screechy and pitches high on Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, but not through the nose. With Wonder, I don't know where you, or others, get the notion that he's nasal. His singing, when high, is quite flat, and that can be annoying. Perhaps its time to upgrade your listening equipment if you feel that these other singers are even remotely on the same plane as Dylan.
 
To help you distinguish, listen to anything sung by Dave Cousins and compare it with Stevie Wonder and tell me who actually sings nasal.

We are talking about different kinds of nasality here.  Yes, Wonder doesn't literally sing through the nose nor do Scott or Meine.  In that sense, they are not nasal in quite the same way as Dylan.  But there is an inherent nasality in their voice and perhaps YOU need to upgrade YOUR listening equipment if you can't hear it.  ;)  Now don't bite because you were asking for it there.  Compare a pure voice like Engelbert Humperdinck with Wonder and the difference is obvious...or at least should be.  It is in that context that I said nasality by itself does not equal non singing/poor technique.  Some singers just have a more nasal voice than others even if they use good technique and Wonder obviously uses good technique because he's still got it after all these years.


Edited by rogerthat - October 25 2016 at 09:06
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 25 2016 at 09:02
Originally posted by The T The T wrote:

This is the thing for me: Dylan doesn't sing. He kinds of speak with rhythm and some hint of melody. Obviously it depends where I'm coming from in musical background but I'd say any person I know can sign as well as Dylan. It doesn't require any musical training (I don't want to say talent because I guess you have to at least be able to stay in key). 

I agree with this but this mostly also has to do with the nature of the music itself.  Many Johnny Cash songs are also like this (the difference being Cash has a much better, way more powerful voice). Yes, anybody who can hold a key can sing Dylan but it is also not possible to sing these songs any other way.  Jeff Buckley covered one Dylan track; horrendous, oversang it to death. I don't believe you could ask Dylan to suddenly stop singing gentle country-rock and perform Script for a Jester's Tear on stage but he wasn't even trying anyway.  Also, even John Lennon is only a little better that way.  Anybody can sing Imagine or for that matter most of the Lennon-rendered tracks on Beatles albums (at least Macca uses something that could be called range).  Lennon just gets away with it because his voice is more pleasant than Dylan.  There are plenty of celebrated but fairly mediocre/average singers in rock.   


Edited by rogerthat - October 25 2016 at 09:05
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 25 2016 at 09:10
^I agree that Cash had a much more powerful voice. Also, you're right: I can't imagine Dylan's songs being performed by any proper singer, there's not enough melody or at least a sense of contour to warrant a true vocalist. 

That has to do with the music itself: simplistic at max, nothing of interest. 

Dylan's type of music is a unique art I have to say: technically not brilliant, musically irrelevant, but lyrically good (if not Nobel-worthy) and with other values. I just would call it something else. 


Edited by The T - October 25 2016 at 09:12
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 25 2016 at 09:12
Originally posted by Dean Dean wrote:

^ technically it depends on where in the mask area the bulk of the resonance occurs and the timbres those areas add to the overall sound. Wonder uses a combination of throat and "front of face" (for want of a better description) which includes palate, cheek and nasal areas that adds brightness to his voice and that varies by how he places his tongue within his mouth while singing (just watch his vids). As I implied before with Dylan's speaking voice, his technique is limited to being predominately nasal cavity resonance because his tongue is comparatively inactive while he speaks and sings and that blocks throat resonance.

Yup, front of face is dead on right.  You can't produce that Stevie like bright, sweet tone without feeling the resonance in the 'mask' as it is called.  He uses it a lot in his singing and not always when going very high, even in mid fourth octave notes.  So does Klaus Meine and it is much more pronounced in his case.   
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 25 2016 at 09:13
Originally posted by The T The T wrote:

^I agree that Cash had a much more powerful voice. Also, you're right: I can't imagine Dylan's songs being performed by any proper singer, there's not enough melody or at least a sense of contour to warrant a true vocalist. 

That has to do with the music itself: simplistic at max, nothing of interest. 

Dylan's type of music is a unique art I have to say: technically not brilliant, musically irrelevant, but lyrically good (if not Nobel-worthy) and with other values. I just would call it something else. 

Knopfler probably did even less singing than Dylan but he was a talented guitarist, so there's that.  
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 25 2016 at 09:24
I think most Dylan songs benefit from having someone else sing them, but that's just my personal view. 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 25 2016 at 09:40
Originally posted by Dean Dean wrote:

I think most Dylan songs benefit from having someone else sing them, but that's just my personal view. 

No, that is a great version. What I am saying is you can't try to literally sing, as in extensively embellish the melody of, a Dylan song and create ebbs and crests where there ain't none. Drake is not really trying too hard to do un-Dylan there and that's why it works. 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 25 2016 at 09:50
Originally posted by The T The T wrote:

Dylan's type of music is a unique art I have to say: technically not brilliant, musically irrelevant, but lyrically good (if not Nobel-worthy) and with other values. I just would call it something else. 
I don't think it is musically irrelevant, without the music it lacks a dimension that "traditional" poetry carries, with any song (whether by Dylan or anyone) the two go hand in hand not because that's how we are accustom to hearing them, but because that's how they were created. It is rare for a lyric in printed form to leap off the page (in the way that a Byron or Hughes poem does when we read it) unless you know the tune that accompanies it.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 25 2016 at 09:53
^That's what makes it unique in my view. You're right the music is not irrelevant, but purely as music it is...poor? Simplistic?  It's a conjunction of simple music and simpler poetry that generates a form of art that is neither music nor poetry. 

Edited by The T - October 25 2016 at 09:55
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 25 2016 at 09:58
Originally posted by The T The T wrote:

^That's what makes it unique in my view. You're right the music is not irrelevant, but purely as music it is...poor? Simplistic?  It's a conjunction of simple music and simpler poetry that generates a form of art that is neither music nor poetry. 

Well, as long as it has melody (and Dylan songs do have discernible verses even if they seem to almost run along in a procession) and is performed with the help of musical instruments, it is still music, very much so. I get that you don't like Dylan (and I don't like the music either) but I can't say a song like Blowin' in the wind is just poetry recital, it does have a melody.  It just doesn't have the elegant shape of a great melody like Whiter Shade of Pale.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 25 2016 at 10:10
^I can agree with that. 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 25 2016 at 10:19
Originally posted by The T The T wrote:

^That's what makes it unique in my view. You're right the music is not irrelevant, but purely as music it is...poor? Simplistic?  It's a conjunction of simple music and simpler poetry that generates a form of art that is neither music nor poetry. 
That's simply because the lyric was written with the musical accompaniment. The song-melody line needs the underlying bass and/or rhythm line accompaniment to make musical sense and vice versa. It's quite difficult to explain what I mean by this, (but it's in practically every Beatles song - these songs were written by two musically illiterate writers and "break all the rules" yet when you look vertically through each song, from sung-melody to guitar accompaniment no rules are actually broken), in these kind of singer-songwriter songs the tempo and rhythm moves melody along on the horizontal axis but the harmonic content of each beat is resolved on the vertical axis - it's like (figuratively but not literally) a nice harmonic chord in the song becomes incomplete if you remove a horizontal layer from the recording. Dylan isn't unique in this, a lot of lyricists who compose at the piano or with guitar in hand work in this way and you'll notice that the rhythm of the accompaniment stays in step with the lyric whereas songs written separately don't always do this.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 25 2016 at 10:45
Originally posted by Dean Dean wrote:

^ technically it depends on where in the mask area the bulk of the resonance occurs and the timbres those areas add to the overall sound. Wonder uses a combination of throat and "front of face" (for want of a better description) which includes palate, cheek and nasal areas that adds brightness to his voice and that varies by how he places his tongue within his mouth while singing (just watch his vids). As I implied before with Dylan's speaking voice, his technique is limited to being predominately nasal cavity resonance because his tongue is comparatively inactive while he speaks and sings and that blocks throat resonance.
I agree. What Dylan does with paralysis of the tongue is not the same as "projecting from the face", as is the want of most pop singers. All the better, as I would hate if Macca sounded like Pavarotti.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 25 2016 at 16:09
Originally posted by SteveG SteveG wrote:

Originally posted by Atavachron Atavachron wrote:

If one equally eviscerates Jon's and Geddy's and Phil's voices, sure.   But when it comes to those singers, most prog fans forgive, forget, and give a wink to their friends with a cheery "That's not a lady singing, I swear!"   They don't really have much choice, do they, if they want to listen to a third of the progrock cornerstone bands.
Anderson and Lee sing high. Anderson is not a distraction to me. Geddy, especially early on, is. But the main problem with Dylan is that his nasal vocals are so forced that they have become a caricature. Geddy may sing like a hinge but it's genuine and not a vocal shtick. As for Knopfler, his vocals are real, and naturally, are much less nasal, if at all.

Dylan's vocals are anything but forced.  That's how he sings (a right bit better than most people I know who "sing").  If it weren't for Dylan's caricatures, Knopfler would never have even started singing, I'd wager.   Plus a whole slew of S/S's that realized they had something to offer even thought hey weren't vocally gifted.

But ultimately what's being completely missed is the simple fact that the man could sing, flat out, no bullsh*t sing.  Not liking his voice has nothing to do with it, and I think that pisses people off.



Edited by Atavachron - October 25 2016 at 16:14
"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."   -- John F. Kennedy
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 25 2016 at 16:30
No one's pissed off. Stern Smile
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 25 2016 at 19:04
Maybe it's me who used to be pissed-off that he was much better than I and my community of aggressive chop-oriented rockers gave him credit for.

"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."   -- John F. Kennedy
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 26 2016 at 04:10
^Now I'm pissed off. Stern Smile
 
LOL Just kidding David. I really feel that Dylan's vocal technique is a shtick that worked extremely well for him. But ultimately, his vocals are an acquired taste. If you've acquired a taste for his singing, more power to you. I'm not in that camp but as said before, Dylan is as important to rock music as the Beatles.
 
However, as an aggressive chop oriented rocker, I think his guitar playing sucks too. Wink
 
 
Btw, Dylan did pave the way for limited singers from Hendrix to Knopfler. Smile


Edited by SteveG - October 26 2016 at 04:13
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 26 2016 at 05:15
His harmonica playing sucks and blows. LOL
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