Writings of Brian Lee Beshore

How I Discovered Music I grew up in sunny Southern California, first living in South Pasadena and then, at around the age of five, we moved to La Canada. This was originally a little hamlet tucked into the foothills next to Pasadena, before they put the 210 freeway through. At that time, La Canada was a very rural place and, to me, actually quite magical. There were large groves of Oak trees and a wilderness sort of park next to a swamp, which was bordered by the Jet Propulsion Laboratories, or JPL. It was here that I discovered my intense love of nature, spending countless hours romping through the park or the foothills. I was infamous for carrying about live creatures in my pocket; a legless lizard, a turtle or a frog or two. I would always ask whatever hapless adult neighbor I saw if they wanted to see ‘my critter.’  In the spring, when the tadpoles hatched at the park, my friends and I would carry buckets full of frogs back home. The park has now, alas, become a frisbee golf c...

The History Of Rock ‘N’ Roll The Oxford School Dictionary defines Rock ‘n’ Roll as; “a kind of popular dance music with a strong beat, originating in the 1950s.” But let’s dig a little deeper, shall we? This same dictionary gives two verbal definitions of rock; 1; “to move gently backwards and forwards or from side to side; to make something do this.” 2; “to shake someone or something violently.” And, in the same book, the first verbal definition of roll; “to move along by turning over and over, like a ball or wheel; to make something do this.” One could postulate, literally a large rock or boulder, embedded into the ground at the top of a hill and some force comes along to rock it, gently backwards and forwards or from side to side, until it becomes loose and moves along down the hill by turning over and over like a ball or wheel, perhaps dislodging other rocks in its path and causing an avalanche. Movement. Change in the environment. We’re looking at a catalyst of some kind that cau...

What Is Alternative Rock Music? This is a rather interesting case history as Alternative Rock was a direct response to what was seen, at that time, as the commercialization of Rock and Pop music. I have previously posted articles on this blog having to do with what was originally a counter culture effort being seized and utilized by business interests. This was simply big business recognising that a market existed in the supposed youth culture and effectively attacking it to the point where the youth culture reigned supreme and other age groups became marginalized. Alternative Rock can properly be considered a subgenre of basic Rock n’ Roll. It began in the nineteen seventies and became more popular in the eighties and nineties. Some of the groups that got the ball rolling, so to speak, were R.E.M., The Smiths and Nirvana. Wikipedia has a very detailed article about this era.  In defining what they were doing, Alternative Rock groups introduced different other musical elements int...

You Can Learn Music Perhaps you’ve gone to a concert and fantasized about being able to ‘shred’ on a guitar, like the lead guitarist you were listening to. Or maybe you were listening to some artist on the piano and you wished that you could play the piano like that. What usually holds the average person back is what I call the ‘myths’ that abound in and around music. They mostly exist around learning music, since anyone who has succeeded in mastering an instrument has learned the falsehood of these myths. One of the most prevalent myths is that you need to have ‘talent’ to play an instrument and, if you don’t, well, just forget about it. The other very prevalent myth is that you need great sacrifice and must spend years and many hours a day to learn an instrument. The third thing that really messes people up is tying into some really bad teaching ideas. What do I mean by this? Well, learning an instrument is really no different than learning any other sort of skill. I like to compare...

     The Book Of Music Basics      Chapter One; The Great Divide      Probably everyone is familiar with the theory of the right brain and the left-brain. The theory goes that the left side of the brain handles logical sorts of things such as mathematics, while the right side of the brain is more intuitive and connected to emotions.      A person will often be able to tell you what side of his brain is the dominant one. It is often offered as a bit of brag and also an excuse as to why they are always late or something.      Interestingly, if you take a look around the music scene, you can spot musicians and even musical genres that seem to be more right-brained or left-brained.      This seems to hold true despite the fact that the theory says music is processed in the right brain. I don’t doubt this but I think you will see my point about musicians and musical genres appearing to be either right-b...

   The One True God       Chapter 1; The Gods Throw a Party.       Another cloudless day; the face of Ra dominated the sky with his fierce yellow fire while the golden serpent of The Great Mother undulated between the trees. Seemingly, riding upon her back was a thin band of blue sky playing hide and seek among the dunes.       It was a great day to be alive. And this was a very special day out of all the great days to be alive that I had amassed in my seventeen years of life; I was standing on the steps of the Temple with my admissions paper in my hand. The wax seal was melting a little and running, so I rolled the paper up to keep the seal from the face of Ra in hopes that this would serve to preserve it better.      Behind me were the three great arched doors of the Temple.       To think that some people believed that candidates actually had to choose a door or answer three questions to be admi...

     Mother       Ian adjusted his field glasses and looked out at the arid wasteland that started just under his chin and stretched out to the horizon. Behind him the jungle stopped abruptly as if something had taken a great chunk out of the Home World, leaving the white sand dropping away and turning to ochre as it approached the horizon under the setting sunlight.       Behind him there were bird calls, in front of him only the occasional sizzle of sand running downwards.      It wasn’t natural, something had created it and Ian kept wondering what it was. He was pretty certain that there was a deep crater or canyon out there in the middle of this desert as you would see plumes of dust rising vertically once in a while, but it was impossible to say if this was a sign of Others or just air currents kicking up.      There was no going out there to see though, as the desert was still one of the many Forbidden...

The Man Who Fell Together     Chapter One; No Strings Attached    Ishmael awoke and looked around. He was in the dingy little attic loft above the Seine.  He could tell because the slanted ceiling was so close on one side of his bed that it nearly touched his face. He had a fear of rolling over in his sleep and getting stuck between the bed and the ceiling.     Once, he had awoken here and banged his head on the ceiling before he realized where he was. It had been a most unpleasant way to get oriented to this place again.    He carefully got out of bed and, leaning over, surveyed the little room. The sun was shining through the one window on the front wall and he could hear a tour boat going by outside. People were laughing and talking.  It was a pleasant sound.    On the wall, next to the window, was a dresser with a mirror and a couple of bookshelves that were full of various books and music; violin music, it would be....

V-World      Perry had just taken the hugest toke off the J when his mother knocked on his door.      “Perry! Are you decent? Can I come in?”      His computer chair squeaked under the strain of his corpulent frame as he leaned across the desk to snuff the joint hurriedly in an ashtray. He gave the ashtray a quick shove to send it sliding under an alcove of the desk.      “No, ma!” he shouted, releasing a copious amount of smoke into his own face. He fanned at the smoke with his hand while fighting the urge to cough so hard that his eyes teared up.      “I thought you were going out to look for work,” his mother called through the door.      “I'm looking online,” he shouted hoarsely, “it's more efficient.”      “Finding anything?”      “I'm just getting started!” he yelled. 'Jeeze, he thought, she's really on the rampage!'         It was probab...

  Having a Communication Breakdown If you’re ha ving a communication breakdown, any opinion is unpopular, and we’ve been in a communication breakdown for a very long time. What are some of the ways that one achieves a communication breakdown? Trust me, a communication breakdown is not something that occurs naturally; it is most definitely planned, worked on and achieved. One way, of course, is to put communication on autopilot and substitute identifying gestures and appearance for actual communication. Back in the day, it was a peace sign, a tie dyed shirt or a joint. “Are you cool? Are you hip?” ‘Nuff said! Given the correct outward trappings and social tricks, opinions and attitudes are assumed. One need not be burdened with the effort of actually communicating. In more contemporary times an extremely complex handshake will serve to bypass any need to communicate. And if you want to avoid any serious discussion about religion, just carry around a bible or wear a cross. These ar...

Composers Who Ignored Musical Trends When we think about the concept of musical trends we think of our present age since we have a vast media that keeps us up to date with the latest musical trend. Billboard and social media keep us up to date on what the latest trends are. It's interesting that musical trends apparently existed as far back as the sixteen hundreds. This is when the composer J. S. Bach lived and wrote music and in his day and age the musical public was mad for Italian opera. This is traced in an interesting article on Facebook called Musical Context in Bach's Era. Bach did not follow this trend but wrote his own style of music which was a complex sort of music involving counterpoint which is the play between melodies. He also made reforms in the musical tuning system which paved the way for later composers such as Beethoven and Mozart to create the highly expressive music that they did. We find at a later time Mozart running into a similar thing when he wanted...

Electra Upon getting it into my head to write a suite of music called ‘The Elektra Suite’ or ‘The Electra Suite,’ I decided to read up on Elektra so I could better organize the different movements of this suite. After all, rather than just write six movements, I thought it would be more interesting to kind of thematically link the movements by giving them specific titles and have each movement more or less match the mood of its title. First, I discovered that there were three main Greek plays concerning this character. It was obviously one story but told in three slightly different ways. Electra is the story of a woman who is the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. Agamemnon goes off to war and Clytemnestra kills him when he returns. Electra gets mad and kills Clytemnestra with help from her brother Orestes. Simple right? Oh no. Agamemnon had sacrificed Elektra’s other sister to have good sailing when he went off to war. Elektra is apparently not upset by this. Electra spends time...

Nothing Artificial      Simon sighed as the board meeting dragged on. He was certain that some of the other members were listening to the stock market on their bluetooths, or perhaps Taylor Swift.      Henry Green, the chairman, was sitting back in his overly large leather chair with his fingers steepled in front of his chest. The sun was beaming in from the huge window behind him, which overlooked the other city skyscrapers.      With his curly blond hair and boyish good looks, the scene was almost angelic, except for the dust motes floating in the sunbeams and settling on Henry.      How can there be dust motes in this room? Simon wondered. Someone needs to do a white glove inspection of this place, he thought.      Henry was patiently listening to Willy Provost giving an account of Sky Limited LLC’s modest growth and profit projections for the coming year, made longer by Willy frequently stopping to mop his sw...

The other day I came up with the concept of ‘Third Stream Music,’ to describe what I was doing compositionally. By this I meant the stream of so-called ‘classical music’ combining with ‘pop’ or ‘jazz’ music.  One cannot ignore the cultures behind these; one might be called ‘refined or civilized,’ and one might be referred to as ‘more primitive or freer.’ I really started thinking about these concepts when I heard a radio interview with the great Russian composer Igor Stravinsky who said something to the effect that he admired American jazz and was working to incorporate this ‘primitivism’ into his own musical compositions. And I thought, well yes, hasn’t this been the conflict all along? Both sides have their negative and positive aspects and each side is guilty of magnifying the negative aspects of the other; you can be ‘civilized’ into a slave state and ‘primitive’ just means they don’t know any better.  Or does it? I decided to Google ‘Third Stream Music’ because I felt th...