^ Cale plays a Viola. It's an octave up from the Cello - a cello is the low groany instrument you hear on most traditionally-sad songs. The viola is higher in tone but played more like a violin is, though it's much larger in size. It has its own unique Clef in notation that is a bastard to learn to write for and, even now, still fucks with my head when I'm laying parts together. Generally Cale wanna-be's like Russell Senior of Pulp end up playing the violin instead.
I favour it in scoring for strings because it has a unique airy quality that I think of as pure 'smoke, wood and whiskey'. Since talented Viola players are very rare, it's very underused in pop music. Luckily, I'm connected that way, and he can understand what I'm after when I say "Play like the walls are melting".
Due to the difficultly of playing it, besides Cale and the Velvet Undgeround, I can only think of about three other notable uses of it in popular culture, in almost 70 years of rock music.
The most famous use I can think of would be in the Beatles' 'Hello, Goodbye' which has an arrangement for eight of the damn things, though they tracked it multiple times. (I think the story goes that McCartney told George Martin to get the top eight viola players in London to do it, and he said "You'd be lucky if there's eight top viola players in all of England.")
I suspect there's some varispeed involved in the track, but it gives it a unique quality that sounds like nothing else I've heard, even all these years later, though it's much more prominent on the original vinyl mix.
There was also a song in 2009 by fun. that made a feature of a the viola. Good album, but then they made a dumbed down second album and one of them shacked up with Lena Dunham, so I never listened to them again.
Other than that, the soundtrack for the video game 'The Last Of Us' pricked my ears up for favouring the instrument, though, like most of the instrumentation in the soundtrack, it has been heavily-processed, detuned and otherwise screwed up with.
A Cello is the low string instrument that enters at 0:56 in this track and adds to the emotional power of the track, though major respect for that masterful fucking vocal from Trace:
A cello is playing the theme here at 0:04 before it becomes doubled with a brass instrument - possibly a Frenchhorn? - at 0:13.
There's an awesome rhythmic use of dual cellos in this track, though, as with most 80's Kate tracks, there's a weird synthetic texture to them that dilutes the power they should have had, though, according to the liner notes, they're real.
I'd like to give it a crack myself because... being blunt here... Cellos seem to be a favoured instruments of Lesbians, with all the nastiness and misery that that entails. I can't remember the last time I met a male cello player, or a straight female one. It's always fat rolls, short dyed hair and sourness, and life is too fucking short.
I favour it in scoring for strings because it has a unique airy quality that I think of as pure 'smoke, wood and whiskey'. Since talented Viola players are very rare, it's very underused in pop music. Luckily, I'm connected that way, and he can understand what I'm after when I say "Play like the walls are melting".
Due to the difficultly of playing it, besides Cale and the Velvet Undgeround, I can only think of about three other notable uses of it in popular culture, in almost 70 years of rock music.
The most famous use I can think of would be in the Beatles' 'Hello, Goodbye' which has an arrangement for eight of the damn things, though they tracked it multiple times. (I think the story goes that McCartney told George Martin to get the top eight viola players in London to do it, and he said "You'd be lucky if there's eight top viola players in all of England.")
I suspect there's some varispeed involved in the track, but it gives it a unique quality that sounds like nothing else I've heard, even all these years later, though it's much more prominent on the original vinyl mix.
There was also a song in 2009 by fun. that made a feature of a the viola. Good album, but then they made a dumbed down second album and one of them shacked up with Lena Dunham, so I never listened to them again.
Other than that, the soundtrack for the video game 'The Last Of Us' pricked my ears up for favouring the instrument, though, like most of the instrumentation in the soundtrack, it has been heavily-processed, detuned and otherwise screwed up with.
A Cello is the low string instrument that enters at 0:56 in this track and adds to the emotional power of the track, though major respect for that masterful fucking vocal from Trace:
A cello is playing the theme here at 0:04 before it becomes doubled with a brass instrument - possibly a Frenchhorn? - at 0:13.
There's an awesome rhythmic use of dual cellos in this track, though, as with most 80's Kate tracks, there's a weird synthetic texture to them that dilutes the power they should have had, though, according to the liner notes, they're real.
I'd like to give it a crack myself because... being blunt here... Cellos seem to be a favoured instruments of Lesbians, with all the nastiness and misery that that entails. I can't remember the last time I met a male cello player, or a straight female one. It's always fat rolls, short dyed hair and sourness, and life is too fucking short.
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