Every one of these "fly on the wall" type programs on the telly has plucked violins as the background music.

What is this infatuation with b****y pizzicato? Every time i turn the telly on to watch something......pluck, pluck b****y pluck!

thats the brief given out - endlessly!!

pizzicato is disturbing! that's it's point - to disturb a bit.
to exrtrap -
it is the background noise left behind from the beginning of time - very plucking disturbing

Sinatra recorded these tunes 4000 years ago - i know! i was there!
It's hard to accept that Sinatra was infact an alien from outer space! From a more advanced civilisation. From a forgotten past. When guys could sing.
But it's true.

It's become the symbol for 'intrigue' I suppose. I've always thought it must be a weird, soul-destroying job to choose the music for those cheap reality shows. Imagine having to find bits of songs that seem to match the content of the show, then fading it in and out at key points? "Right, he ate a beefburger there, so we need an 'oops!!!' record scratch put in at 20:47, to show he went off his diet". They probably have them all filed according to keywords.

Another annoying thing they're expected to do is splice music to fit the content. No music is spared this. They'll splice Allegri's Miserere (once jealously guarded by the Sistine Chapel choir for hundreds of years) with some crap Charlotte Church tune. Or they try to OD the viewers by cutting Mozart's requiem with Verdi's, in an attempt to create a blood-vessle bursting climax. Or they'll chop a bit of verse out of a Hendrix song so it no longer resolves properly but fits the time limit.

And nowadays, really crappy title music has actually become a style, which is probably firmly demanded. If you did a decent theme tune and a natural-sounding production, they'd probably ask you to redo it with crappy synthetic instruments or just refuse it because it doesn't have 'that' sound.

Just when i thought it was safe to go back into the water.

Just been watching "Rolf's animal clinic".......once again, pluck, pluck, pluck!

Is there a hardware gate,vst plugin,compressor,limiter, ANYTHING THAT CAN REMOVE PIZZICATO?!!!

ARGHHHHHHHHH!

Yep, it's the pits isn't it?


Martin

--------------------
YewTreeMagic

I alway find Tom & Jerry good for hot pizzicato action. Especially if there are ants stealing a picnic.

--------------------
Instant gratification is actually pretty good. It's fast as well.

It takes all sorts doesn't it?


Martin

--------------------
YewTreeMagic

People use that expression as a complaint or a form of mockery, but... yes it does! For instance, the world desperately needs people who are prepared to live on oil rigs, or to dive into sewers to unblock pipes clogged up with OUR sh*ts!!!

There is some great butchery going on with the Hitler series on BBC1. Endless shots of Austria,and German triumphalism needs endless germanic music. But instead of the usual highlights from The Ring, we get Beethoven and Schubert and everyone else. Startling openings stitched onto emphatic final cadences.

I dont want to be reminded of Nazis everytime I hear anything German. Just use any old orchestral library or film fodder, there must be more than enough of it.

Why the greatest works ever written that have nothing to do with Hitler? Oh yeah - mainly German. German = nazis.

--------------------

You don't often get pizzicato with Nazis, though. Which is a shame: I am sure they stole some picnics at some point, and without resorting to the use of ants.

--------------------
Instant gratification is actually pretty good. It's fast as well.

Quote Chaconne:

---

instead of the usual highlights from The Ring

---

To each their own of course but as far as I'm concerned bless them for that small mercy

--------------------
Strictly project and just for fun

I think this thread has stumbled upon a great solution and indeed in large part it is thanks to the inspired, if slightly off-the-wall, mind of SecretSam. Consider:

The greats of the musical arts do not deserve to be associate with the Nazis simply due to the misfortune of shared geographic origin. (Indeed this applies to pretty much all of German culture, people etc...)

Pizzicato, on the other hand, is far more suitable - it can be disturbing, as noted above, but also comical, and indeed a more upbeat piece (I'm picturing something akin to e.g. bits of the 2nd mvmt of Debussy's string quartet) set to some grainy monochrome videos of goose-stepping it could only be interpreted as the sort of ridicule that such an obnoxious set of ideals rightly deserve.
Furthermore, as Sam observes, the Nazis may well have stolen picnics. And given that by all accounts they were a fairly unpleasant bunch, I don't think we can discount the notion that they may have tried to train ants, and indeed even other insects as well, to relieve allied soldiers, or any of the many groups they chose to persecute, of their hard-earned lunches.

Ergo, pizzicato should only be used on TV for Nazi documentaries. In this way, one can largely avoid this fest of pluckery simply by not watching the History Channel, and the greats of the Classical and Romantic music can be spared the ignominy of this errant association*.
Pizzicato can then be reserved for use elsewhere in appropriate musical contexts away from TV, and everyone wins (except the Nazis).
As a statement of logic it is a touch tenuous I admit, but we can surely overlook that given the all-round positive results

*Sadly I'm sure there are, and will continue to be, plenty of TV programs that feel the need to defile Beethoven et al.

Quote Josif A. Soterίou:

---

And nowadays, really crappy title music has actually become a style, which is probably firmly demanded. If you did a decent theme tune and a natural-sounding production, they'd probably ask you to redo it with crappy synthetic instruments or just refuse it because it doesn't have 'that' sound.

---

Have you read Paul Farrer's latest column?

--------------------
I know where my towel is.

No, in fact, I had to look him up. I've expressed this opinion on here before somewhere back there in my approaching 700 posts. Why, did he say something similar?

Quote Logarhythm:

---

Pizzicato, on the other hand, is far more suitable - it can be disturbing, as noted above, but also comical, and indeed a more upbeat piece (I'm picturing something akin to e.g. bits of the 2nd mvmt of Debussy's string quartet) set to some grainy monochrome videos of goose-stepping it could only be interpreted as the sort of ridicule that such an obnoxious set of ideals rightly deserve....


...programs that feel the need to defile Beethoven et al.

---

The Can Can?

--------------------
Ohm's Law states, "Your PA isn't as powerful as you think it is".

Ants notwithstanding, there is a link between Germanic culture and National Socialism. Germany had enjoyed a culturual hegemony for at least 200 years, and Germans in music, art, philosophy and numerous other areas DID feel that they were the elite. Hitler quoted Wagner, Nietche and others on many occasions. After the war, one of the main stated premises of the Avant Garde was to break the reliance on the culture which had led to National Socialism and forge art anew from first principals.

So its not so much that Beethoven et al can be blamed for the Nazis, but to disclaim that the social and cultural domination of Germany over European culture had anything to do with their feelings of superiority would be churlish.

Now how about some col legno in 5/4?

--------------------
Daniel Davis
Edinburgh Recording Studio Windmill Sound

Quote Daniel Davis:

---

So its not so much that Beethoven et al can be blamed for the Nazis, but to disclaim that the social and cultural domination of Germany over European culture had anything to do with their feelings of superiority would be churlish.

---

You could easily level the same charge against the Swedes, never shy to advance a general understanding of their certain knowledge that in fact it is they who are the Master Race. And Finland, a relatively new nation, deliberately went about defining its national identity through culture. Co belligerents with the Nazis they may have been, for a while. But that was not through choice and nobody could accuse them of being aggressive apart from (successfully) defending their borders against Russian invasion. And then there are the French, who still don't get why nobody has ever recognised them as the Master Race...

Germanic culture has had an enormous impact but so have many other European cultures. The reality is the main players in developing all those cultures through the centuries routinely traveled between European capitals/cultural centers (and St Petersburg) and all influenced each other. I'd always understood the Nazis were born out of the bitterness and humiliation of the Storm Troopers, who felt betrayed by their military leaders after conceding the 14/18 war, combined with hyper inflation. Nothing to do with culture at all. But in promoting themselves they tried to hitch a ride on Wagner/Nietzsche etc. in the same way the UK still tries to borrow a shine from what happened here in the 1960s.

--------------------
Strictly project and just for fun

somehow we won!
Can Can is way too fast for Sturmtruppen.
Pizzicato helped to win the war!

Ok - pizzicato won no wars - tht was just silly. I was gluing a large lancaster bomber and the cat distracted me ..

Did you know that slurred pizzicati is known as "hammering-on" to guitarists. Well i didn't!

Some audio people take it very seriously of course - Inharmonicity - apparently. Plucking audio science!
But from a composers point of view?! i'd love to hear more from composers.
'intrigue' is used - but totally overworked. I like the disturbing aspect - the mad in pizzicato - very handy/

It's all poignant daydreamy longing to me.
Where would the 1:51 in ABC's Look of Love be without it? That's what pizzicato means to me.
Go on you know you want a spin:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdC6Yop3XbI

Well, whenever i hear pizzicato now (when used on the fly on the wall type programs) i think of austere times. The first time i noticed it was around the time the so called "credit crunch" began, and private companies were (and still are) being paid obscene ammounts of money to get people into work that wasn't\isn't available.

For me "pluck, pluck, pluck" = hard times.

i gotta add....the only thing worse than that is what i call "tension trumpets"..every time something "tense" is about to happen in a movie or tv show ...out come the trumpets....makes me want to put my foot through the tv and send steven speilberg the bill

--------------------
www.myspace.com/onemanandalaptop

Quote paul tha other:

---

i gotta add....the only thing worse than that is what i call "tension trumpets"..every time something "tense" is about to happen in a movie or tv show ...out come the trumpets....makes me want to put my foot through the tv and send steven speilberg the bill

---

In the 18th/19th Cs if you wanted to signify an otherworldly authority you made him a bass-baritone and gave him trombone accompaniment.

Times change, cheap cultural symbols prevail. Sometimes they work though, for better or worse.

--------------------
Composer;
www.ogonline.org