Following up on Debussy’s “Claire De Lune”, I’ve taken on another of the greatest hits of the classical canon that my ear does not intuitively understand: Erik Satie’s “Gymnopédie No 1“.
My first question is, what is a gymnopédie? This appears to have been some kind of late nineteenth century hipster slang vaguely referring to the way that young people danced around naked in ancient Greece, which, whatever.
On to Satie. Speaking of hipsters, the title of this painting is “the Bohemian.”
The music in”Gymnopédie No 1″ is simple enough, at least rhythmically. Unlike “Claire De Lune,” I have no trouble counting my way through it. The phrase lengths are weird, though, and the overall structure is diffuse and hard to get a handle on.
Once again, I grabbed a MIDI file off the web and dropped it into Live. I split the MIDI into three “stems,” the melody, chords, and bassline. I picked some dreamy synths for each part. So far, so good.
Drums are tough in triple meter, because the basic oom-pa-pa rhythm is so stiff and corny. First I tried my only satisfying triple-meter groove sample: the intro to “Contemplation” by McCoy Tyner. But the jazz waltz feel was too lively and complex, so I abandoned it and switched over to 4/4. I ended up using three different beats: “God Make Me Funky” by the Head Hunters, “Alberto Balsam” by Aphex Twin, and a tambora loop from a sample pack by Simón Mejía. Here’s the result.
Let’s take a look at the structure, as represented in my Live session. I extended the intro and the orange “interlude” section in the middle, but otherwise it’s as Satie wrote it. I put section divides wherever I felt them. The opening melody is a twelve bar phrase (six bars in my session), which is a bit unusual, but the thing that was really throwing my ear off is that second purple part, which is a seven bar phrase (three and a half bars in my session.)
The harmony seems deliberately designed to frustrate a sense of forward motion and resolution. I thought I was just imagining this, but apparently that was Satie’s intention. Alison Armstrong informs me that this piece was written as a reaction against ragtime music, and it certainly succeeds in being not-ragtime. Brian Eno cites Satie as a precursor to ambient music, though “Gymnopédie No 1” is a bit too interesting to be truly ambient. Maybe if you Paulstretched it?