Music as participatory revived by Beck Hansen in his book of sheet music

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Play This Song

Beck's countercultural "Song Reader."

Jeff Johnson | posted 10/28/2013

With no ties, with no plans,
your last dollar in your hands.
Take a picture and send it back,
to someone you used to know.
—from Song Reader, "Old Shanghai," by Beck

There is a picture in my mind's eye of me in 1970, nearly fourteen years old, holding the first phonograph record I was allowed to buy with my own money, James Taylor's Sweet Baby James. My parents were both musical and owned a varied, though not extensive, assortment of records. Records were considered a luxury, something you sat down and listened to, whereas music was always something to participate in—and there were many opportunities to do so in our church and school choirs. There were piano and voice lessons, too, which meant that music (full of all of its glorious wrong notes) contributed to the soundtrack of our family's life. On the family piano rested a small stack of songbooks and sheet music which eventually included the songbook for Sweet Baby James. We each had our favorites, and even though the availability of recorded music was becoming more widespread, this was primarily how music was experienced in our home.

The same year I was learning those James Taylor songs, Beck Hansen (aka Beck) was born in Los Angeles to a father who was a Canadian, a musician and a follower of Scientology, and to a mother who was one of the infamous "superstars" of Andy Warhol's entourage. Now in his early forties, Beck has forged an impressive body of work often categorized as "alternative" that has nevertheless enjoyed significant mainstream success. He has had four platinum-selling records, including his 1996 Odelay, which was Rolling Stone's Album of the Year. His eclectic style offers a full range of musical and lyrical experimentation that has been greatly dependent on the production and recording techniques of modern studio recording.

Yet for the past decade and a half he has fostered a project of an entirely different kind: "an album that could only be heard by playing the songs." That is, playing them yourself. Song Reader features twenty new songs by Beck in sheet music form, beautifully designed and packaged in a hardcover sleeve. With this collection he hopes to open up his music, welcoming "the possibility of letting people work with these songs in different ways, and of allowing them a different accessibility than what's offered by all of the many forms of music available today."

As a fellow musician/recording artist thoroughly entrenched in the modern way of making music, I was slightly suspicious of this project when I first heard about it. It struck me as a bit gratuitous—the kind of thing that a self-absorbed superstar might indulge himself in because he'd temporarily run out of good ideas for a properly recorded work. But I was wrong in that initial judgment; I think Beck is on to something here. With this compilation, which includes two instrumental pieces as well as number of songs with lyrics, he raises a very important issue:

Songs have lost their cachet; they compete with so much other noise now that they can become more exaggerated in an attempt to capture attention. The question of what a song is supposed to do, and how its purpose has altered, has begun to seem worth asking.

Beck goes on to observe in his preface to Song Reader that the 1937 Bing Crosby recording of "Sweet Leilani" "was so popular that, by some estimates, the sheet music sold 54 million copies. Home-played music had been so widespread that nearly half the country had bought the sheet music for a single song, and presumably gone through the trouble of learning to play it." Such a communal response, Beck observes, must have "felt like some weird convergence. That time is long gone, but the idea of it makes one wonder where that impulse went."

Seventy-five years later, most people's experience of actually participating in music will be observed at the local Karaoke bar or with some band-replicating video game experience. But Beck wants us to actually play his songs, in any way we can:

Don't feel beholden to what's notated. Use any instrument you want to. Change the chords; rephrase the melodies. Keep only the lyrics, if desired. Play it fast or slow, swung or straight … . These arrangements are starting-off points; they don't originate from any definitive recording or performance.

Many people—young and old, amateur and professional—have taken Beck at his word and have uploaded their performances of these songs on YouTube.

I find Beck's music an acquired taste. There are a lot of his songs past and present that I just don't resonate with. The same was true working through this collection. Yet there are some real gems here, like "The Last Polka" (watch Hanna Silver's performance of this on YouTube) and "Old Shanghai," which I took the time to record my own version of.

It should also be noted that Song Reader has another significant aspect to it. Beginning with an excellent introduction by music critic Jody Rosen, we are taken back into the early 20th century to explore the once rich and varied character of sheet music in all its wit, artistry, commercialization, and absurdity. Beck has emulated that era by including on the back page of each individual song sheet additional written and musical whimsies, such as "The Secret To Music Is Hygiene"; "Instrumentals for The End Of The World"; "Songs You Can Take To The Bank!"; and "Songs You Won't Be Able To Get Away From and Otherwise Inescapable Melodies," which include:

I Know We Just Met (But I've Been
Following You for a While)
I Dug Through Your Trash, OK?

Beck has a good sense of humor, but his intent with these whimsies is not to mock times past but rather to prod us to reflect on what it is to have music in our lives. Music is not just a soundtrack for whatever it is we are doing; if we participate in it instead of simply consuming it, it will make living richer. Rosen writes in his introductory essay:

Today's biggest hits are measured less in chart rankings or sales figures than in the way they ripple through the digital firmament—in the viral tributes they unleash, the dance routines, the parodies, the earnestly emoted cover versions, videotaped and uploaded to YouTube. We have returned to the parlor room, with the laptop camera taking the place of the upright piano.

I would take it one step further. Singing and playing songs together doesn't just make life more interesting, it can make life truly sacramental.

Not long before the golden age of sheet music, a folklorist named Alexander Carmichael (1832-1912) used his journeys as an exciseman covering the Gaelic-speaking areas of Scotland to collect and record the many prayers, hymns, poems, proverbs, songs, and sayings of the region. Carmichael organized them (with the help of his daughter and grandson) into what would become the Carmina Gadelica. Oral traditions of singing and speaking were woven into the daily lives and faith of these people, and because of Carmichael's passion we can weave their legacy into our own lives.

Beck writes that his "songs … are here to be brought to life—or at least to remind us that, not so long ago, a song was only a piece of paper until it was played by someone. Anyone. Even you." That's really good. But even better is when our participation with a song—given to us in the written or oral form—brings us to life.

Jeff Johnson is a recording artist. He established ArkMusic in 1978. His newest recording is Winterfold, featuring Irish flutist Brian Dunning and American violinist Wendy Goodwin.

Copyright © 2013 by the author or Christianity Today/Books & Culture magazine.
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Copyright © 2013 by the author or Christianity Today/BooksAndCulture.com.
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