Episode 44 - Gig Faces, Zebra Finches and Acid Horn

How We HearEntertaining Noises
Written by Steve Pretty

Two people, one gig, very different experiences. Steve explores the pleasures and pitfalls of listening closely, tests our ears against zebra finches, and picks up a tenor horn for Jeremy Deller’s Acid Brass.

Hello, musically curious people

I can be having a wonderful time at a gig while looking as though I would rather be almost anywhere else. This is not necessarily a useful quality in a person you have chosen to go to a gig with.

Part of the explanation is that I’m often trying to work out what the musicians are doing. I might be following a bass line, wondering how a particular sound is being made, or noticing the way one part fits around another. Meanwhile, the person next to me might be dancing. Same music, same room, quite different evenings.

For this episode, journalist Jo Caird and I compare notes before and after a Beirut gig. Does understanding more about music make it more enjoyable? Can it get in the way? And can you stop analysing something when analysing it is part of your job?

I’m inclined to think that learning more gives us more ways in, rather than taking the pleasure away. Richard Feynman’s thoughts about the beauty of a flower, introduced to me by Robin Ince, provide a useful starting point. Knowing something about how a thing works needn’t stop it being beautiful. But Jo and I also talk about the value of letting a gig wash over you without trying to take it apart.

There are practical things to try along the way. We return to Stevie Wonder’s Pastime Paradise to listen for a detail that can change the feel of a familiar recording. A shell and a very generous helping of reverb offer another reminder that the note is only part of what we hear.

Then the Listening Lab takes us somewhere rather different: zebra finches. A study comparing human listeners and songbirds asks how we recognise patterns when pitch and tone colour change. The interesting question is what we attend to when those clues disagree. With a singer, a synthesizer filter and a wah pedal, we explore how much can change even when the note stays put. You can have a go at the researchers’ listening task yourself via the link below.

Finally, I swap the audience for the stage and pick up a tenor horn for The Listening Project Presents: Jeremy Deller’s Acid Brass at Simple Things Festival, Bristol Beacon, on 7th November 2026. Preparing Strings of Life means slowing things down, checking what I’m actually playing and negotiating some unhelpful muscle memory. We follow that practice through to the gig, so you can hear how it turned out.

Perhaps the useful thing is having a few different ways to listen, and being able to move between them. And remembering that a fairly alarming gig face is not always a reliable review.

In this episode

  • Why two people can hear the same gig so differently

  • Richard Feynman, curiosity and the beauty of understanding a little more

  • What learning instruments, harmony and production can change about listening

  • A shell, a room and the effect of reverberation

  • Hearing a familiar detail differently in Stevie Wonder’s Pastime Paradise

  • Jo Caird on enjoyment, analysis and my resting gig face

  • The Listening Lab: pitch, tone colour and zebra finches

  • Changing a sound with the voice, a synth filter and a wah pedal

  • Getting to grips with the tenor horn and practising Strings of Life

  • From the practice room to Acid Brass live at Bristol Beacon

Music in this episode

Stevie Wonder - Pastime Paradise. A familiar recording becomes a listening exercise: what happens when we focus on a part that has previously stayed in the background?

Strings of Life and Acid Brass. I work on the tenor-horn part before joining the live performance. The episode includes footage from the gig at Bristol Beacon, part of Simple Things.

Companion listening

Three tracks to revisit after the episode: Stevie Wonder’s Pastime Paradise, Beirut’s Nantes, and Strings of Life from Acid Brass. About 11 minutes of listening, with a different thing to pay attention to each time.

Open the Episode 44 companion playlist on Spotify

  1. Stevie Wonder - Pastime Paradise. Follow the voices towards the end. Does attending to them change the feel of a recording you already know?

  2. Beirut - Nantes. Try one listen following the vocal line, then another concentrating on the accompaniment. This is a companion choice for our gig conversation, not a claim about the setlist.

  3. Williams-Fairey Engineering Band - Strings of Life, from Acid Brass. Follow the repeated figure and listen to the way the brass parts fit together. This is the album recording, rather than the live performance I play in during the episode.

Links & references

Listening Lab: humans and zebra finches

People and performances

Demonstration clips and credits

The short video examples illustrating changes in tone are drawn from:

Support the show

If you’d like to help keep Steve Pretty On the Origin of the Pieces independent, you can support the podcast on Patreon.

For new episodes, live dates, videos and other musically curious material, visit originofthepieces.com and join The Open Ear Dispatch. You can also explore the episode map to find another place to start listening.

Zebra finch artwork: Janet’s Photos (2012), CC BY 2.0; cropped and background removed.

Full transcript

Transcript prepared from automatic captions and lightly edited. Some overlapping speech may be imperfect.

Hello, my name is Steve Pretty. I'm a musician, composer, and performer from London. And welcome to my podcast, Steve Pretty on the Origin of the Pieces.

This is the show that helps you to hear, understand, and enjoy music in new ways.

Hello, musically curious people. Great to be back in your ears again. Hope you're doing well. Uh today's show is about the way that we listen changing what we hear. Might sound a bit abstract, but uh we're going to explore that in a variety of different ways. We're going to talk about how if you tune your ears into a particular thing in a song that you've known really well for many years, you can get a whole new dimension on it. We're going to talk about how two people going to a gig together can have a fundamentally different experience of it because their ears are listening for different things or they're there for different reasons.

And finally, we're going to look at how we listen differently to zebra finches. It's that kind of show. Uh it's what we do here. But today, what I want to open the show with is is actually the words of a physicist. uh the great physicist Richard Feynman, a fascinating bloke, a few problematic uh attitudes, but but also some very very uh important contributions to science. But he had an incredibly curious mind. This quote was introduced to me uh some years ago by my friend Robin, who again has been on the show, a wonderful comedian and uh broadcaster.

It's quite long, but I think it does bear reading in full because there's lots of interesting stuff in there that I think is relevant to what we're talking about here with music. So Feynman said, "I have a friend who's an artist and he's sometimes taken a view which I don't agree with very well." He'll hold up a flower and say, "Look at how beautiful it is." And I'll agree, I think. And he says, "You see, I as an artist can see how beautiful this is, but you as a scientist, oh, you take this apart and it becomes a dull thing." And I think that's kind of nutty, which by the way, I think is a really great way of describing that.

First of all, the beauty that he sees in it is available to other people. And to me too, I believe, although I might not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is, but I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I can imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside which also have a beauty. I mean, it's not just the beauty at this dimension of 1 cm.

There's also beauty at a smaller dimension. The inner structure also the processes the fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting. It means that insects can see the color. It adds a question. Does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which shows that the science knowledge only adds to the excitement and mystery and the awe of a flower. it only adds.

I don't understand how it subtracts. So that is a very beautiful quote and a very inspiring quote for me I think as a kind of relentlessly curious person about all kinds of things but of course especially music which is why we're here. And I like to think about that with music, right? And people ask me why why I make the show or why I I'm so passionate about communicating this love of music and this love of digging deep into music. And people say, "Well, doesn't that kind of ruin the enjoyment of music for you if you, you know, once you dig into it?" And I and I, I always refer them back to this Feynman quote because I have learned over well nearly 25 years of being a professional musician and many years before that of, you know, learning music and and enjoying music since since I was a kid, the the more I dig into music, the more it unlocks for me in all sorts of different ways. and the more I understand what I do know, but also understand a bit more about all the things I don't know.

And I find that fascinating and endlessly endlessly inspiring um and sometimes provocative. It makes me change the way I listen. It makes me change the way I even approach thinking about what music can do can be. So for me, what that looks like is started out really as a trumpet player. Then I started really getting into jazz and that's when I really started practicing and I learned so much about the trumpet and about about jazz um and about improvisation and about that approach to music which I I I still love and still do a lot of.

Of course I spent a long time in India over the years and I studied tabla, the the Indian tabla drums there for a couple of months um when I was in my early twenties. got really into Indian classical music and that completely unlocked a whole different side of of music for me, a whole different understanding of rhythm. Then more recently in the last 15 years or so, I've got much more into music production on the computer, things like Logic, Ableton Live, um, Pro Tools, these sorts of thing, mixing.

And as soon as I discovered mixing, I started doing some mixing for bands I was involved with and then and then doing it for other people, of course. And I'm now thinking when I'm listening to music or uh or making music myself, I'm thinking about the sound of the drums, the sound of the kick drum, the sound of the snare drum, the sound of the bass, all these things. Reverb is another huge one, right? Reverb that the where a sound is situated, particularly when I'm playing shells because you can really only get a couple of notes out of a shell.

So, if I'm playing a note in this room here, it's nice, you know, it's cool sound. But if I then put some artificial reverb on it that makes it sound like I'm in a cave or in a huge space.

It fundamentally changes the nature of that sound. Now, I've talked again on this podcast before about my experience playing shells in the Natural History Museum and how one note on a shell can uh can make someone cry because it's the confluence of one note and the room that it's in and the resonances of that room and the the the sound of that room being as important as the note that goes into it. In practical terms, there's a couple of other things like um for example, Stevie Wonder is in in the news as I'm recording this because he's on tour.

Unfortunately, I didn't manage to get tickets for this, but I'm a big Stevie Wonder fan, and he's doing a 50th anniversary tour of Songs in the Key of Life, in my opinion, one of the greatest albums ever produced. And there's a track on that uh called Pastime Paradise, which I'm sure you know, if you listen to Pastime Paradise, I remember the first time I realized having known that track for many years, that there was um a choir on it. Not just a choir, but a choir of Hare Krishnas singing Hare Rama, Hare Rama over the end of that track.

And in the show notes, um, I put a link to that track and and exactly where that comes in and you'll hear what I mean. Maybe you knew that. Maybe you've heard it before if you know that track. Maybe you haven't. Uh, and maybe that is a a thing that you will discover about it. So, I'm not just talking about kind of nerdy, you know, music musician stuff here. I'm talking about the more you learn about these things, the more you deepen your listening and focus your ears into what you're listening to and your brain and spend time uh dedicated time listening to stuff, um the more you can get out of it.

So, that's my pitch for what this show is. However, my guest for today's show throws all of that into question. and all of that grandiose stuff I've just said about curiosity and Richard Feynman and all this stuff because today I'm talking to my partner Jo. Now this was recorded about 18 months ago. We were going to a gig um at Brixton Academy. It's a band called Beirut. Very very good band called Beirut. Um and we'd had a number of musical experiences over the years. this obviously we've had a lot of musical experiences but a couple in particular where uh Jo we during the gig Jo would comment that was really worried that I was not enjoying it because I would have uh resting gig face as as I call it.

So this is me and my partner of about 20 years Jo who is a journalist which becomes relevant later on in the conversation having a chat in a cafe before the Beirut gig uh about 18 months ago. So, we're about to go to a gig uh at the Brixton Academy and uh the last the last gig we went to together after we had a kind of conversation afterwards where um you essentially told me that I wasn't any fun to go to gigs with and I understand that and you I'm sure you're right.

But I I just sort of wanted to before have a bit of before and after because yeah, we're about to go in and I wanted to ask you about why that was. It's not that it's not that you're no fun to go to. is that you are a bit more uh difficult to go to gigs with. have you you there there's more to think about taking you to a gape than someone else because of the way that you engage with music as a musician and as a music producer and as a performer and while uh those of us who are non musicians uh well I don't want to generalize for me a gig is a situation where I am uh hearing the music and I'm enjoying the vibe and I'm usually dancing or moving my body in some way and uh and I feel joyful about that if it's a good gig.

Whereas you even if you are feeling joy doing that, you manifest it by standing still with your arms crossed or your hands in your pockets with a grumpy face on. And so if you're really enjoying a gig and you look over to the person you are there at the gig with, you're having a great time and you look over and that person has got has got that face on it and and always has that face on. It's just it it it means there's that's a sort of energy pull.

Yeah. Away from what you're watching. And there's and there's a sort of feeling even though I know that that's what you do at gigs and that you're a very open-minded gig and you have very broad taste, it still if if anyone else had a face like that at a gig, you would think this person hates this gig. What have I done taking this person to this gig? And so I have to overcome that thought process and remember, no, no, it's not that he hates it necessarily.

He might hate it, but it could just be that he loves it, but he's just doing this face. And then I'm in my head about whether I've chosen the wrong gig to take you to. And what how does this reflect on me? Am I an idiot for enjoying this music in such a simple way? So that's we haven't been to a gig together. No, that's not true. We did go to a gig together since then. We went to a and we had a we've had this conversation a couple of times recently.

So, the one I'm thinking of is when we went to see um Maribou State, but then we went to see that German guy doing electronic hind and we had But that is a perfect gig where you can just sit there cuz that was a seated gig. That was fine where you where you you know everyone was doing that face in that gig and that was that was I had no problem. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But the Maribou State like everyone else at Maribou State was uh was not everyone else.

People were mainly quite drunk dancing around. I mean, it was ali so it was 5,000 people all doing their thing. Yeah. And so being this guy, I didn't have my arms folded. Yeah. You had your arms around me. Yeah. Which is obviously nice. But yeah, but if you're sort of doing that face and it's right close to me. Yeah, it's true. The sort of intense vibes are a bit much. Intense. So we'll see. So the challenge for this gig is for Steve to do a different face.

Oh, is it? No, it isn't. You can do whatever face you want. Okay. I I see if I see what I can do, but I think you have my full permission to film my face. I will try not to put put on a face in either direction and but I think like so just to explain that a little bit is that I do we had this conversation uh where after Maribou and like I do enjoy uh gig. So, for example, I did enjoy that gig and I do enjoy most of the things we go to, but I I sort of enjoy it in an analytical way cuz I thought that, you know, the music I don't I'm I'm not what's interesting, especially as someone with a music podcast and things is I'm not a huge I'm not a music fan in the sense of being like a massive fan of bands or anything.

Like there's a few people who I'm a big fan of because of the impact that they've had on, you know, changing the game in music and people like Stevie Wonder, you know, like sort of Beatles and, you know, obviously like big sort of game Miles Davis, like big kind of gamechanging um genre changing acts, but in general, I'm not I'm not a sort of big follower of particular bands or particular musicians, but and so as a result, I I kind of struggle For better or worse, I struggled to get excited about specific acts necessarily partly because of being in the you know being in and around the music industry for years and and I so you know being kind of adjacent so I wasn't involved with the Maribou State gig but lots I had lots of friends who were in who were in it and part of the part of the show and part of the band and whatever and so and so I if I'm seeing a show like that I'm enjoying it and I'm enjoying the music and it was good it was good fun but I'm I'm thinking Oh, that's an interesting choice they'd made there with the lighting or that's an interesting thing there.

And I suppose the reason I wanted to do this on the podcast is that I wanted to I wanted to talk about I'm not I'm not trying to turn everyone into a grumpy gig-goer. I think it's more about like cuz I feel like the more the more you know about something in lots of ways the more you can get out of it. But there is there can be a risk if you are if you become too immersed in it that you become not not exactly cynical but like jaded or whatever you know and I we go to a few quite a fair few gigs uh and then also in over the summer I see a lot of live music at festivals and things and so I'm kind of in analytical mode for how they're presenting the gig like if I was that this artist how would I present this gig?

Oh, that's an interesting thing they've done with the screen or with the lights or with the um Oh, they're playing that song now. Oh, what's the band? What, you know, what's the lineup of the band? They brought musician these musicians in. How are they doing this? You know, so I'm sort of analyzing all these things which I am enjoying, but I'm not I don't want to encourage everyone to, you know, to to get into that mindset because that is that is that's too too far along the line.

But I do think but also it depends on what sort of gig it is because I think that the mindset that I'm in for something like Maribou State is not the right is is obviously not the right mindset for that band. But it is the right mindset for lots of other music where you you want to be actively listening and actively thinking about these things and getting your your brain going. And so I think I'm just I was in the wrong listening mode for that.

Yeah. Well, I mean the I suppose a gig for you can can be a busman's holiday essentially. Mhm. And for you for you to Busmen do like taking holidays though. They do. Even busmen need holidays. But um yeah, and I mean I don't I don't think listeners to your podcast are going to are going to start doing that face at all they go to because I mean I've been you for 18 years and have listened to plenty I've had plenty of conversations with you about music and also and I I mean I think about I think about music we've been together so long that it tried to separate the two but I think about music much more analytically than I used to as a result of conversations with you and just just being around music in professional musicians.

But do you think do you think that's detracted or added to your Oh, added. Interesting. Definitely added because I will notice something like Oh, I don't I mean, you mentioned something on the podcast about like someone playing the bass cuz you I can't remember. Um, but listening to I will notice something like a bass line or or particular percussion line and I think and that's to do with active listening rather than just letting something kind of wash over me. Yeah. But but also it does depend on context, doesn't it?

Because if you're in a if you're in a some some music is an intense visceral Mhm. experience that's to do with communing with those around you and maybe you're going to be less inclined to have to to tune into the analytical nature of of of the music. Yeah. In those gigs or maybe not. And also it's just a personal thing, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you know, maybe if you weren't a musician, you would still be doing that at gigs.

I mean, there's plenty there's plenty of people, mostly men, I have to say, who stand at the back of gigs looking at cross. Yeah, that's definitely true. So, I mean, that's just sometimes that's it's just resting bitch face. It's true. Resting bitch gig face. You don't have the parallel would be when I was writing a lot about theater, I found it I was seeing so much theater that I found it very difficult to just purely enjoy something cuz I mean I was I was reviewing theater but also writing talking to artists about what the work they were making.

And so if I was seeing a show it was quite it was often quite difficult to to just let myself be taken by the the story. Yeah. because because I was thinking about the types of things that a normal audience member wouldn't think about inside baseball for me. So I think I think to a degree if it's part if it's your job you are going to switch it. No, I think that's definitely true. I but I suppose I suppose the point of wanting to talk about it about this phenomenon on the podcast is just to sort of interrogate that because I don't want to turn people who listen to this show into uh resting bitch gigs.

But, you know, but I but I but that said, I do think there is a lot to be gained from deeper listening in. And again, it depends on what you're listening to. Depends on what the gig is. But I think there are some gigs that really benefit from being able to listen more closely and more deeply and and and think about things in a more active way. And there are other things other gigs that uh benefit from just letting it wash over you and letting it, you know, be an experience in itself without analyzing it.

I think I think in in being more engaged does add to the experience of it. Um but but also even if you're I think even if you're watching a b a gig I think if you're watching a gig that you're not enjoying and for some reason cannot get away from that gig. Yeah. That actually it being able to then be like what is it I what is it that I don't like about this and being able to be quite analytical is at least at least you're not bored then.

No. Well, that's true. Not recommended. Your listeners go and see lots of games. No, no, but I remember I remember taking you to a gig years and years ago. The it was when um um uh it was it was at the South South Bank for uh one of the meltdown festivals and it was the Master Musicians of Joujouka from um uh Morocco, I remember. And you you were really angry. I don't remember. Yeah. You've taken me to taking me to a few gigs that made me angry.

We had you had like we had we had sort of we don't really argue much. We had quite a big argument after that because you were really angry about it's like but it sounds bad. It's because it's just a very different way of making music. I find it fascinating. I mean it sounds it sounds crazy to our ears. Really interesting unusual. It's sort of mountain music from from Morocco. Um uh and it it's incredible but it is strange to listen to very challenging to listen to.

And yeah, and it was a gig with um so Ornette Coleman was the artist who's a sort of one of the pioneers of free jazz and it had Flea from the Chili Peppers on bass and it was it was quite a weird gig overall because it was the Master Musicians of Joujouka and then Ornette Coleman with Flea on bass. I'm not into free jazz. That's never No, but the Master Musicians of Joujouka aren't you know they're not free jazz. No, I feel like I need to go listen to the master.

But but what's I'd be interested in is whether you would be less angry about that now. Um let's test it. Let's you booked a gig that you think I might hate. Yeah. Perfect. And we'll go and have a really nice romance test. Perfect. Okay. Well, we're going to sign off and go to this gig now and uh see what my face does and report back afterwards. Report back afterwards.

So, I went to the gig. It was really nice gig. Really enjoyed it. We had a nice night out together and I thought we should have a bit of a debrief afterwards just to check how my resting gig face was. So, uh, back from the gig. Uh, couldn't film it. Uh, sort of wash up when we were there because it was pretty hectic at Brixton Academy. Uh, it was a good gig. Very good gig. How was my face? Usual. Usual. We we were sat down which made it quite different I think.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was less I mean everyone else's face pretty much was like that as well. Yeah. Well mainly I think I think it was it was not like a party gig. No, it was a sitting and listening gig. That's true. Um Yeah. And that does make quite a big difference I think. Yeah. So it wasn't I think Yeah. Your behavior was not massively different to everyone else's. No. Like you weren't moving around in your seat like I was moving around in my seat a bit.

Yeah. And you not very much. But that was okay. But it wasn't it wasn't sort of I mean it was it was a it was a nice gig but it wasn't like upbeat. It wasn't raucous. No. No. No. Um were you analyzing it or were you just listening to it? I was analyzing it a bit. Yeah. I think I I think I always do a bit now just think about the lineup and um and I'm kind of aware of the sound on things.

That was very good. Um yeah and the light show was excellent. It was um I was aware of course of you then like when you took a photo of your face and I think well that's like an additional analytical barrier isn't it? You're having to think about you're thinking about the gig but you're also thinking about your face thinking about the gig. I know. Well, I was wondering if you would take photos of my face. But well thing is my camera is so rubbish.

My phone is old. So I didn't um No, no, it's fine. But I uh Yeah. Yeah. So, I was trying not to not to put on a pose, but I did film myself a little bit. It's um No, it was it was it was good, but definitely things is slightly different when you're sitting down because you can be a bit more intense. Yeah. Okay. Well, maybe this experiment will continue. Yes. Go to go to a rave. Analyze the rave. Analyze the beat to the rave.

Yeah, exactly. I'm here for it. All right. Look me up. Now, here's a question. Would you and a zebra finch agree on which of these sounds go together? So, I'm going to play you three short clips and I want you to tell me which of the first two sounds the third one sounds most like. Now, here's sound A. Here's sound B. And here's the third mystery sound. So, here's what's changing. The mystery sound, sound C, which sounds like this, has got the same pattern of falling notes as sound B, which sounds like this, but the same tone color as sound A, which sounds like this.

Now, chances are if you're a human, which I imagine most of you are, then you'll have heard sound B as being most similar to sound C. But if you're a zebra finch, there's at least as good a chance that you'll hear sound A as being most similar to sound C. Now, I think that tells us quite a lot about how we understand music because chances are when you're thinking about music, you're probably thinking about the tune, the melody, right? And that melody is a series of pitch relationships.

But music is also very fundamentally about the tone quality of what is playing that melody. It might be the voice. It might be a different instrument. It might be a synthesizer changing a filter. It might be a guitar going through a wah pedal. And that changing dynamic of the sound. It might be me saying that's all the same note, but the tone quality of those that what's called the formant is changing.

And that is what the finches are hearing more than we are. We hear both of course as do the finches. But the finches identify a melody. That's what the result of this study is. At least as much by the tone quality of it, by the changing formants, the changing sounds within the note.

It's one of the things people talk about when they say this person's got a great voice. That's what we're talking about. We're talking about the tonal qualities of that voice. This might sound like a very elemental thing, but I think this little finch experiment that these scientists have done has proved something really deep about how we can hear music and how we can tune our ears into these different aspects and get more out of music overall. So, listen for a singer's tone, listen to a guitarist playing through a wah pedal, listen to a synthesizer player tweaking a filter to change the sound even though the core pitch is staying the same.

Listen to all of these different things and you will deepen your appreciation for each of them in turn and hopefully that will let you get even more out of your listening and your music making. So that was the first listening lab. Love to know what you think. If you go to originofthepieces.com or stevepretty on the socials, you can let me know whether you enjoyed that, whether you'd like to hear more.

Now, speaking of playing the same notes but with a slightly different pitch uh and sound, uh this week is quite unusual because this Saturday uh will have happened by the time you hear this, but this Saturday uh I have a gig for Acid Brass, which you may remember I did a feature on last year. I interviewed the brilliant Jeremy Deller uh whose project that was. He's the Turner Award-winning artist behind Acid Brass. And um yeah, it was really I really enjoyed that episode.

But on that show, I played for that gig at EartH Hall in Hackney, and I was playing Cornet, which is basically like a a sort of slightly squashed trumpet, the same pitch as a trumpet, but a slightly mellower sound. But this time I have been asked to play this. We've got a gig in Bristol, Bristol Beacon. Um, and I'm playing this instrument, which you may not be able to see if you're if you're just listening, but if you're on the video, you can see this is like it's like a slightly larger um instrument than a trumpet or a cornet.

It's called the tenor horn. Uh and again if you can see me on video you'll see that unlike a trumpet or a cornet or a flugelhorn or some of those other uh smaller brass instruments the bell uh which is the you know the big bit at the top or the the front um this in this instrument goes up rather than forward to the audience. Um so it looks kind of like a tiny tuba really. It's like a you know I can hold it with one hand tiny tuba.

Euphonium is like a bigger version of this. A baritone horn is similar as well. Uh now these instruments aren't seen very much as well at least not outside of traditional British brass bands uh and sometimes marching bands and uh kind of concert bands, wind band. That's wind bands, that sort of thing. But they're quite an unusual instrument. You don't normally see them in the orchestra. Um you don't really see them certainly much in, you know, in pop and rock and jazz very much, but I think it's much maligned instrument, the tenor horn.

I think it's a beautiful instrument. It kind of occupies a similar role to the French horn. So sometimes you get French horn players who who play on tenor horn or or who start on tenor horn and then move to French horn. French horn's got quite a lot a bigger range if terms of pitches, lower pitches, higher pitches. But the tenor horn is really uh beautiful. I just give you a quick uh blast.

So it's quite a mellow instrument and you know brass bands traditional British brass bands are known known for their mellow quality often. Um, and so I think it occupies quite an important role in those sorts of bands. Uh, and of course for the acid brass project, um, it's a slightly different vibe because it's carrying some of these mellow melody lines in, uh, some of the the tunes. So yeah, I'm going to be playing this instrument. And one of the things about playing uh an instrument that you're not quite used to is well particularly as a brass player, as a trumpet player, it's not very often that you see trumpet players doubling up on other instruments so much um other than instruments that are at the same pitch like the flugelhorn or the cornet.

Um, now this has got um three buttons, three valves, same as a trumpet or cornet or flugelhorn, but uh because it's a in a different pitch. It's a tenor horn, so it's lower than the soprano um or treble type instruments that you get uh which are you know trumpet again, trumpet, cornet, flugelhorn, which are in the higher range, the the soprano range that that you know a soprano singer might sing. Um and then of course you've got alto. So you get things like the alto saxophone.

There is a you know alto horns and alto flutes and things not so common but then you get the tenor saxophone or tenor horn and here of course we have a tenor horn so you'll notice it is a bit lump lower than the trumpet so it goes fairly low

um and then can go reasonably high as well. Now, one of the one of the issues with this is that all of the the finger positions are the same as they are on the trumpet or the cornet or whatever, but the notes where they sit, where they feel like they are on the mouth, if you like, uh where the instrument sits, where the natural resonance of this instrument is is in quite a different place. So, when I'm playing or thinking of playing a a C for me, it's in a different place than it is when I'm playing on the trumpet.

It's all quite an abstract thing if you don't know if you don't play any these instruments. But because we as brass players have to pluck instruments kind of literally out of thin air and find where they sit just by our ears and our the the muscle memory of our lips and our breathing apparatus and stuff. Um it it can be a bit confusing when you switch between instruments. It's why people don't often switch between brass instruments very much, but I do like to dabble.

Anyway, so I have engineered myself a few gigs over the years, but this is the first time I've played tenor horn in public for a very long time, several years, and so it's a little bit terrifying because we're playing at the Bristol Beacon um with Jeremy Deller there, I believe. And it's it's, you know, it's quite a big big venue, quite a prestigious festival. We're playing there. Again, it will have uh been gone by the time you hear this, but um it's going to be a lot of fun, but it is, you know, it's I'm feeling the pressure a bit.

So, I've been practicing away on this instrument this week to try and work out where everything is. And I thought I would just quickly take you inside my process for practicing um a hard tune. I don't know how many of you listening are musicians or instrumentalists um you know who who are practicing stuff and some of you this will be very obvious to, some of you may not play at all. But um anyway, I thought it might be just a brief interlude to um uh explain how I go about practicing something that's really difficult.

Now, probably one of the most difficult passages in this uh gig is a tune called Strings of Life, which is by Derrick May. Um, and this there is uh some of you may know it from the you know, the House of the Acid House scene. Um, and there is a little passage in this which is particularly fiddly on this instrument, particularly if you don't play the instrument properly like like me. And so, I'm going to play it extremely slowly and just see if I can

So that's the that's the passage. But unfortunately, it's got to go much faster. It's got to go more like

So that's the sort of speed I've got to play it. Now, the way to approach playing a difficult passage, whatever instrument you play, in my opinion, is to first really slow it down to the point where the rhythm isn't even really there. Particularly in a brass instrument where one of the trickiest things is connecting up all the notes and getting um finding where they are in the instrument, strange as that sounds, but because so much of it is done just with the lips and with the air, you have to kind of conjure these notes out of nowhere.

So,

So that's was pretty good actually. Often if I'd have split one of those notes, missed one of those notes, I would have gone back, slowed it down even more and tried to to do that. But what I'm trying to do there is get the get the melody in my head. So I try and sing it back if I can. Da da da da da ba boom. So, there's a tricky bit in that second uh bar there, but here we go again.

I'll try a bit faster

and then I'll gradually speed it up and gradually speed it up.

So, not very good. I'll go slower again.

So, I just missed a note.

So, now I got it. I'm going to go a bit faster again.

And faster again still.

And that wasn't very good. But this is the process that I would go through over I mean again, you know, it's just this one little passage, but I've got to play it over and over and over again um with the band. Uh and I I would I would go through this when I've been practicing it this week. I would slow it right down and then gradually speed it up, speed it up like I just have done, but probably over, you know, 5 or 10 minutes, but really incrementally slowing it down, then speeding it up, speeding it up, speeding it up until you can play it faster than you need to.

So, I'm going to now try and play it as fast as I can. Well, as fast as faster than I'll need to in the gig, hopefully. Um, let's see how this is and you can compare it to how it actually ends up uh in the gig. Uh, I'll play the footage after this. Here we go. Two, three. Sh.

And I've got to play that a load more time. So, I've got to work out where I breathe. Anyway, uh with the power of future me and video editing, here is how it went in the gig.

How did I do? Let me know. Drop me a line. Let me know what you thought. A huge thanks to Jo Caird and to Zhi-Yuan Ning and colleagues for that fascinating zebra finch study. Um yeah, and of course to Acid Brass and the Listening Project um for the the gig and the chance to play tenor horn in public. A rare occurrence indeed. Um I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you did, please do share it with your friends. It word of mouth is the the best way of spreading the word about this show.

Um drop someone a line on email. Again, if you go to the website originofthepieces.com, they can explore the map there. They can see episodes I've done from all over the world. They can dig into a particular subject. There's a whole new section on when I ask people what's the point of music. I've got a whole section on that. Anyway, so do dig in there, have a look and share it with someone if you can. Also, rating and reviewing really, really helps.

I say this a lot, but it stands true. Got a lot of great stuff coming up for your musically curious ears and eyes, I think. So yeah, the more people we can get listening, the more open ears we have. Speaking of open ears, my newsletter, if you sign up on the website, it's called the Open Ear Dispatch, and I've got little bits and bobs of listening exercises and fun stuff in there, as well as the ticket offers for my show at Wilton's Music Hall.

If you go to the Open Ear Dispatch, originofthepieces.com, you can sign up for that and get all the ticket offers uh and all the rest of it. The show is on the 10th March 2027. Super excited about it. features Beardyman, legendary beatboxer, and music technologist. Um, very excited about that show indeed. It's on sale now. So, go to originofthepieces.com. All the links are there for that. Meanwhile, thanks so much for listening. Stay musically curious and I'll speak to you in a couple of weeks.

Bye.

Steve Pretty
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Episode 43 – Dal:um: Korea, Strung Differently