Ralph Towner Playing Jim Pepper's Witchitaito

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houseisland

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I have met Ralph Towner twice in passing.

My general impression is that he is a cold and very serious person. The other members of Oregon, Colin Walcott, Glen Moore, and Paul McCandless were very relaxed, open and friendly.

I also knew someone once who was friends with one of Towner's students - it was reported through this grapevine that Towner is stern and demanding task master and that he despises New Age Music, this dislike strange and not strange - strange since he with Paul Winter was responsible for the genre's creation and not strange in that the genre is often vague and noodlely - DADGAD can make a whole lot of nothing sound far out, profound and mystical (edit: self criticism here as much as anything else -been there, done that, bought the T-shirt).

Anyway, you don't have to be a "nice" person to be a genius - it is not a prerequisite. I have Ralph's books. I have most of his recorded output. Anytime I want to get really depressed about the inadequacies of my playing, I go and try sight reading one of his tunes or just listen to him on the stereo. :blue:

Here he is doing Jim Pepper's lovely tune, Witchitaito, on a Guild 12 string: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_13j5GoNDU
 
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charliea

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Easy to tell he's real artistic and everything. Got long nails, and uses lots of pained facial expressions. Sure tipoffs.
 
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charliea said:
Easy to tell he's real artistic and everything. Got long nails, and uses lots of pained facial expressions. Sure tipoffs.
Click to expand...

Hah! LOL. I love your highly perceptive sarcasm :applouse: :glee: , and you are bang on, except that Towner is not posturing - he is what he appears to be.

He has chops to burn and being extremely well educated, he as an immense depth of theoretical knowledge. He knows exactly what he is doing at all times. There are great technical subtleties to his playing that are not immediately apparent on the 12 string which kind of natively operates like a piano with the sustain pedal pushed down all the time. Towner has absolute control over things like note value (duration and pitch - you do not hear notes going flat at the end of their duration because he does not stop them by releasing tension with his left hand nor do you hear open strings continue to resonate past their appropriate duration, nor do you hear much in the way of sympathetic resonance from open strings unless he wants it there). He is very much in control or controlled/contolling. And his music is cold (edit/afterthought: academic, technical, classical, even dry, depending upon your tastes). If you are looking for warmth, humour, levity, laughter, warm sunny days, the spiritual, even love in your music, don't go here. It is music from the head not the heart/soul. If you find mathematical formulas or lifeless crystalline icy arctic/antarctic landscapes beautiful ..... well .... I mean we don't even get any cute little arctic foxes, polar bear cubs or penguins here, not ever. The closest things I have ever seen him do that might approach humour are: 1. sticking the cover of a book of paper matches between the strings of his classical guitar to create a fuzztone and then do something that might have been a bit of self-mocking grandstanding - but nobody laughed because nobody knew what to make of it - Ralph's deadpan stony visage gave nothing away; and 2. remove the face panels from an upright piano, start to pluck the strings with his hands, and start to go off on an improv spoken-word/poetic rant against Jack Dejohnette who had apparently sold Oregon a "used" lemon of tour van/truck - it could have been funny except that it was angry and bitter below the thin veneer of humour.

Edit: Whether you like him and his music or not, and I can see/understand why many might not like him and his music, I politely suggest that there might be a lot you could learn from it about chord voicing, articulation of notes, orchestration of individual voices, the successful carrying forward of a piece, say for example a Bill Evans piece that was intended for piano, where the guitar would seem to lack requisite number of voices and harmonic versatility to accomplish this task, etc., etc.

I stand by my initial position: genius/cold. Further edit: and I will add "real artistic and everything" not as a concession but because you are right.
 
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