Stevie Wonder
The first song in our set-list that we’re learning is I Wish by Stevie Wonder. To understand Stevie Wonder’s style more thoroughly, I had a look at some artists he has been inspired by. In an article from SFGCM written by Clint Johnson as a part of celebrating black history month, it is stated that Stevie Wonder was inspired significantly by Marvin Gaye. Reportedly, Stevie Wonder stated “Marvin was the person who encouraged me that the music I had within me, I must feel free to let [it] come out” at his funeral. Gaye wrote about political injustice and personal concerns, which spoke to Stevie wonder in ways. Both have written songs that could be considered emotionally vulnerable, covering topics like romance and relationships in general.
Marvin Gaye’s music would be considered to be soul, funk and at some points, jazz. There are clear genre links between Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder’s music and many compositional ideas and techniques Gaye used would have likely helped Stevie Wonder come up with ideas in similar styles.
After listening to several of his albums from over the years, it’s evident his style and sound has changed subtly and slowly. Part of that will be because the way music is recorded has changed and his voice and character has changed with time. I also think his inspirations had changed over time which will have impacted what ideas he wanted to explore and what he found interesting.
Though the song’s studio recording was released in 1976, this live performance from 2011 is a great example of how Stevie Wonder’s music sometimes feels timeless. It’s also great to study from, since you can sometimes see what each musician is doing at points where their instrument is featured. The vocal energy is high and some parts are improvised and added to entertain the audience. The drummer is very enthusiastic and adds appropriate and interesting fills and the stabs in the outro are sharp. I highly doubt we can create an energy like this performance did with such a small band and venue, but it’s good to see the potential of the song from the original artist.
I found a band who covered this song live for a wedding with a very different sound, which sounds more similar to what we’re working with.
Some additions like backing vocals during the chorus add a lot despite being subtle and harmony during the drum and vocal only section. I think we should try this as a band to see how it goes. The band’s stage presence gradually improves throughout the performance. Though I don’t think this is something we will struggle with as a group, it’s good to take note of what looks good on stage in context with the style to check that what we do looks okay. Our parts differ from this version as there are two people on keys and two guitarists, so hopefully our texture will be much thicker while maintaining coherency and a good amount of natural feel.
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Our second song in the set-list is RHCP’s Aeroplane. At this point in RHCP history, Dave Navarro was the band’s guitarist, meaning the guitar part of this song differs greatly to what most RHCP listeners are used to. The album it came out part of, One Hot Minute, was released in September of 1995. This album is the only album of theirs to feature Navarro’s work. I’m researching Navarro specifically as its his part that me and Isobel are working on together, and I think it’s beneficial to understand why this album sounds so different from their others and how we can better our understanding of the song’s style in order to play our own version of it, since it’s not a perfect and exact cover.
Seemingly the guitarist found that he disliked and was influenced very little by funk, which was the foundation of the band’s style. In the end he reflected on the experience of being a band member positively but saw it as a pointer of what he could be exploring instead. The technical simplicity of the rhythm guitar part has elements of funk, but the solo wouldn’t classify as a funk solo in particular. The use of a wah pedal on the layered melody part which has a pattern of returning to very few notes is clever. It gave it an interesting sound and added space to the song, and abolished the idea of the song being classified as funk since this is a very psychedelic rock sound. Due to Navarro’s place in the band, the album and band’s style strayed from funk and shifted closer toward psychedelic rock.
Mark Ronson & Bruno Mars – Uptown Funk
Based on information from this NPR article from an interview, I have found that the song started out as a jam and was developed in Bruno Mars’ studio. Since it was so different from what was on the radio normally at the time, the jam had to have plenty of hooks and interesting characteristics, like how aspects of funk interact with an ordinary pop song for the time and how the bass and guitar has a funky feel due to the stab chords separated by mutes and the bass has emphasis on short duration notes and extended notes in other areas.
Both Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars primarily write music in a pop style, so their collaboration and introduction of some aspects of funk wasn’t unusual. Mark Ronson collaborates often with big names, like Duran Duran on their All You Need Is Now album and Amy Winehouse’s Valerie, so he has worked alongside artists in the past and successfully made super well known songs, which was the case with Uptown Funk. The song was awarded the Brit Award for British Single of the Year, as well as two Grammy Awards, Record of the year and best pop duo/group performance.
Its popularity means our final song will be recognised by the majority of the audience and this increases the chances of audience interaction occurring on a large scale.