We here at The Van Burens are all not only students of the game of music but we also love to teach the game anywhere and to anyone, in the hopes of helping people grow as musicians, advancing the common knowledge, creating new inspirers and simply bettering the world. We also do it for money. (Speaking of which, anyone in the South Shore/Boston area looking for music lessons can email us here at vanburenmusic@gmail.com or at our subsidiary KeySmith Music at keysmithmusic@gmail.com)
With that in mind, I present the first in a possible series of posts which dive into the actual music of The Van Burens from the perspective of the musician. Now as a music teacher, I must emphasize that the best way to really get to know any music is to listen as much and as attentively as possible, which is why I suggest listening to The Van Burens’ Eager EP (provided streaming here in the sidebar (—>) or for download from iTunes) constantly throughout the day… even in the bathroom – nay, especially in the bathroom. I can’t stress this enough: listening to The Van Burens music is of utmost importance to anyone claiming to study music. It’s basically a prerequisite. That said, as a working musician I also know that sometimes it’s more fun to just get some sheet music and start playing. Purists might call it cheating, but it can be just as edifying as listening. As one of those purists, I’ve decided to entitle the series “VB Cheat Sheets: Van Buren Music Volume 1: The Eager EP: Rise of the Machines”.
In addition to the educational side-effects, this series also gives me the rare chance to use a cool music rendering JavaScript API known as VexFlow. Check out the website here. To work, it requires enabling JavaScript on your web browser, which must also be HTML5 capable.
One might assume, given that the name of this sweet music rendering software is VexFlow, that for the first of the VBCSVBMVITEEPROTM series, I would choose the Van Buren song Flow. To that I say quit making so many danged assumptions. Instead to kick it off, we examine a section of the (presumably) Burenhead favorite Jeffrey’s World. This section serves as the first major break from the verse leading towards the first pre-chorus and subsequent chorus of “rides” and has been given the VB appellation “the First Uncle Louie” (the second being after “Webley” (I was originally going to direct you to a video of the Howie Mandel animated series Bobby’s World here for etymology of the section names, but in doing a little research – very little – I realized that the name Uncle Louie doesn’t come from Bobby’s World. Bobby’s uncle was named Ted, which apparently the Van Burens were too lazy to look up at the time. Actually I think we just wanted so badly to connect Louie Anderson to the idea.)) It starts at 2:36 with Pinky repeating this 6/8 line, which is also called a “noogie” in Van Burenish, as Bobby’s uncle Ted or Louie or whatever was known for dishing out a good noogie:
P. Bear and McGee then enter with a 4/4 beat and the bass notes: E, F#, G, A, B, C, B, D, D# all whole notes except the D is a half tied to an eighth note and the D# is a dotted quarter. Smitty joins in after one time through the progression with a patented SmittyPicked line, which repeats like Pinky’s line, but starts on beat three, creating a pleasing displacement:
At the start of the next progression, the Pinkster brings in the devastation with the left side of the board, setting the stage for my always epic entrance. This is one of my favorite lines that I’ve written, probably because it has that familiar vaguely-sounds-like-something-you’ve-heard-before quality. And while I’m pretty sure it is original, if anyone happens to find that they wrote a line like this way before I did, please don’t sue! Our lawyers will already be busy with John Tesh. Anyway here’s how it goes:
I was having trouble getting some things to work so there are two missing ties: between the last note of the second stave and the first note of the third, and between the last note of the third stave and the first of the fourth.
Be sure to play it twice, holding out the last E over the first bar and a half of the second time through. It also sounds best with increasing intensity throughout, when you’re jamming at home.
“The First Uncle Louie” ends with a Pinkman noogie break which blasts off into the first pre-chorus, which I’ll leave to the reader to transcribe.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this first look under the musical hood. Stay tuned for more Cheat Sheets to come. Until next time: Keep listening, and keep playing.
P.S. Be sure to catch us this weekend in Maine at the Harvest Fest in Harmony Saturday evening at 6 and Sunday morning at 10:30 and then Sunday night at Carmen Veranda’s in Bar Harbor.
