ON GIGS

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Over the course of our involvement in music—well before Central Limit—we’ve performed our fair share of gigs. Retirement parties, family barbecues, church gatherings, hotel openings, university functions, and of course, weddings. I’m sure the Pops Alumni audience knows well: these are rites of passage for up-and-coming musicians. Although being background music for the crackle of hors d’oeuvres and yuppies networking is no one’s thought for a vehicle to show off virtuosity, that was the strange appeal to me for playing gigs. The music was tried and tested, easy enough to learn in a few days, and no one was paying attention. So for pop songs, I’d rebel against the terrible arrangement by adding a double stop or changing a note to make it more like the original. For the third repeat of a tedious Methodist hymn, I’d make up a countermelody on the spot (Psalm 96:1). One time, I had a gig with a cellist, and we were given binders with songs that didn’t match. The cello book had a song I really liked, so I asked her to play her part and I played the melody from memory. It was great! Even when I started working full time, I was always happy to take gigs. It wasn’t about the extra money, but rather the sheer joy of playing music with my friends and contributing to someone’s lasting memory.

But as with many aspects of life, the past year has brought on a significant re-evaluation of my understanding of gigs. I remember distinctly an episode from high school when my orchestra teacher, normally supportive in all other ways, expressed dismay at our string quartet having taken a local gig at a wedding. Confused, I asked him why it was such a big deal. I can’t remember his exact response, but the essence was that some people relied on gigs to make a living, so each one we took was taking away an income source from someone who needed it. It was a lot for a teenager to comprehend.

Now I’m an adult (numerically, at least), and I’ve had the privilege to make more friends through music than I ever thought possible. Inevitably, many of these fit into the category my teacher referenced all those years back. And over the course of this year, I’ve seen them have to cancel concerts, then cancel entire schedules, then settle for the lag and diminished sound quality of Zoom, then plead on social media for any semblance of support from a tone-deaf government. I realized what my teacher had meant, and subsequently I began thinking about what it meant for me, a part-time musician with a full-time job, to be taking bookings for post-pandemic events. But the last thing I want to do is try to come off like I’m speaking for a life I don’t understand. So, I asked an expert. Dr. Katri Ervamaa, cellist and chamber coach extraordinaire, and faculty at the University of Michigan Residential College, graciously provided the following suggestions for meaningfully supporting full-time and gig musicians during these challenging times. For transparency’s sake, I asked her for actions outside of buying merch and records. Below are her quotes:

-       Subscribe to and/or attend virtual events – and if there is a tip jar, utilize it.

-       “If there is a non-profit in your area that supports musicians, donate to that. A union local will be a good place to start.”

-       You can also hire entertainment for live events (I know some friends played Christmas parties on Zoom for example). Or commission them to record a track for a live event

-       Also, there’s never been better access to lessons, since you can study almost literally with anyone!

-       Some high profile people like Alban Gerhardt and organizations like cellobello have set up really interesting online events interviewing and talking about instrument-specific issues

-       And, if you see anyone playing on the streets busking with a collection jar, definitely donate!

-       I also try to chip in to every GoFundMe project that I come across.

Katri also mentioned several amazing musicians--local to the Michigan area!--whose links are in the bottom of this post.

With the vaccine on the way, there is hope that live music will soon be back in our lives. But it will surely be a while before things return to full normalcy. And there’s no reason why the new normal can’t truly be new, as in better than before. A starting point for that can certainly be finding ways to support friends and neighbors whose livelihood depend on music gigs, so that they can continue to perfect their uniquely human endeavor.

Hope you all had a great holidays, and Happy New Year! Pops Love!

Fangbo Yuan & Lexi Hamlin 1/1/21

Central Limit was founded in 2018 by Fangbo Yuan (Data Science ‘19) and Lexi Hamlin (BCN ‘19). Fangbo played in Pops for all eight semesters of undergrad and served as Technical Director from 2016 to 2019. Lexi spent her senior season with the orchestra and is now applying to dental schools.

Like Central Limit: facebook.com/centrallimitmusic

Listen to Central Limit: soundcloud.com/central-limit and CentralLimitMusic 

COLLABORATING DURING CORONA

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I’m really grateful that technology has enabled us to keep recording music, even if we’re literally separated by an ocean. This has been been one of the undoubted joys of the pandemic era. Collaboration has always been a core tenet of both Lexi’s and my approach to musicianship. In this blog post, we thought we’d highlight a particularly fruitful collaboration 3,990 miles in the making.

In winter semester of 2019, I took a composition class with Mark Kirschenmann. That was one of the most transformative experiences of my life as a musician; through his all-genres-welcome approach, I got exposed to hip-hop producers, singer-songwriters, rockers, and experimental composers. And that was just my classmates. One of the ways Mark would help us get familiar with a new musical concept was dividing us into small groups. We would be given a target music theory concept to incorporate into an original song. Then it was off to the races--five people who barely knew each other, with mutually exclusive musical upbringings, writing a song in 20 minutes.

That’s how I got exposed to the creative process of Gretchen Andrews. At intervals in the semester, we would perform original compositions for the class. From that, I already knew that she was a skilled vocalist, with a style based on stripped-down classic rock. When we got split into groups, we started talking in more depth about our music, since we both brought guitars to class and had to figure out how to harmonize our parts. I found that her songwriting approach was a lot different from mine, but the resulting songs spoke for themselves. Eventually, our discussions about how to transition from 7/8 to 5/4 became invitations to swap original compositions.

From these meetings right before class, we discovered that we both had a vision of making music in an ensemble. I brought up Central Limit, and how we would love to work with someone who could actually sing. Lexi thought it was perfect to work with Gretchen while she spent the summer crushing the DAT. So before long, Gretchen and I made a rap song with Popsicle Adham Fattah, spent the summer working on original music, played an open mic for public access TV, and recorded a multitude of material in the Duderstadt center. Through it, I learned a ton as a songwriter and producer.

At the time, I worked atmospheric synth into every song I wrote. I didn’t think anything else was rich enough to capture a song’s mood. But for her music, Gretchen preferred the classic rock setup of guitar, bass, and drums. I perused a lot of rock from the 70s and 80s to figure out how they created such an all-compassing sound without anything explicitly ambient. Through producing Gretchen’s “Amnesia” and “Off-Book” (coming soon), I became comfortable with a stripped-down setup and realized that I was often using synth as a crutch. Gretchen’s songs told a compelling and emotional story without ambience to hold the audience’s hand. I loved it, and that influence has definitely made its way into upcoming Central Limit music.

Our Duderstadt recording session was a few days before Gretchen was set to leave for Spain. I had never collaborated with anyone remotely. I knew it was theoretically possible, but as we see now, timing, ensemble skills, and harmony are all hurdles for remote collabs. For a few months, we didn’t make much music as she adjusted to living and working abroad, and I sought to balance an intensifying full-time job.

When the smoke cleared, a novel coronavirus began ravaging the globe. It’s weird because remote collaboration was obviously possible the whole time, but the lockdowns provided more impetus to try it in earnest. Through email, voice memos, and time-zone-adjusted calls, we’ve  recaptured the magic of those afternoons in RC HUMS 350. It’s been amazing to see how we’ve grown as musicians in the intervening time. I feel that Central Limit x Gretchen highlights the essence of collaboration: open-mindedness, creativity, and having a blast above all else.

We hope to keep releasing new material, especially Gretchen’s originals, in the coming weeks and months. Central Limit is always open for collaborations; come say hi at centrallimitmusic@gmail.com!



Open mic (we play around the 1:00 mark)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sH_9xKKurKU

Gretchen’s soundcloud:

soundcloud.com/gretchen-andrews

Amnesia by Gretchen Andrews:

https://soundcloud.com/central-limit/amnesia

Central Limit is greatly disturbed and saddened by the recent events in Wisconsin and elsewhere that have formed a backdrop for all of our work this year. Being able to make music is a tremendous privilege; while it’s undoubtedly a great unifier, we know it’s not sufficient. We feel that the most meaningful thing to do, as Central Limit, is to be an advocate:

https://nymag.com/strategist/article/where-to-donate-for-black-lives-matter.html

https://www.house.gov/representatives

https://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

https://www.congress.gov/state-legislature-websites


Fangbo Yuan and Lexi Hamlin 9/1/20

Central Limit was founded in 2018 by Fangbo Yuan (Data Science ‘19) and Lexi Hamlin (BCN ‘19). Fangbo played in Pops for all eight semesters of undergrad and served as Technical Director from 2016 to 2019. Lexi spent her senior season with the orchestra and is now applying to dental schools.

Like Central Limit: facebook.com/centrallimitmusic

Listen to Central Limit: soundcloud.com/central-limit and CentralLimitMusic 

THE MUSICAL ADVENTURES OF CENTRAL LIMIT

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MPAC is proud to present Fangbo Yuan (Pops Class of 2019) as one of our featured Pops Bloggers. Follow the adventures of Fangbo and Lexi Hamlin (‘19) as they navigate the new world of music in these Covid-19 times.

2020 was supposed to be an eventful year for Central Limit, the musical project I launched with fellow Pops alum Lexi Hamlin in the summer of 2018. We were coming off a year-long hiatus due to Lexi studying for the Dental Admissions Test (DAT), and 2020 was going to see us make up for lost time. We had it all planned out--shows in coffee shops, open mics, boba shops, private events, and venues all around Metro Detroit. We were going to release a boatload of new music, and liven up our old material with fresh violin arrangements. All of it would be promoted online, maybe even on a dedicated website...Not to mention, we had finished our arrangement of “Endless Summer” for a small chamber group, ready for submission to the NPR Tiny Desk Concert.

We all know what happened next. As the world ground to a halt, venues shut their doors. Our friends (aka musical collaborators) dispersed around the country. I headed home from Ann Arbor to be with my family. Lexi doubled down in Royal Oak, in accordance with safety guidelines issued around the world. It’s nothing to complain about--I’m extremely grateful that I’ve still got my day job. Lexi aced her part-time classes and is getting a head start on dental school applications. But the fact is that we spent a lot of time and energy planning for an “Endless Summer” of Central Limit-related shenanigans. So I’d be lying if it wasn’t challenging figuring out what to do next.

Rehearsals themselves became hard to coordinate. For a while, we tried finding alternative ways to practice together--but confusing technology is confusing. (Write a shell script to create a virtual rehearsal room? HARD PASS.) Also, as the pandemic picked up in the States, many of our friends’ priorities shifted to things of more lasting importance. Tiny Desk would have to wait, just like live performances and rehearsals without lag or feedback.

Central Limit now has to shift its vision for 2020. But to what exactly? Of course, countless artists have been uploading solo stuff online, and streaming from their living rooms. A substantial subset of them have written songs specially about covid-19. For me, respectable as those efforts are, it isn’t a direction I want to pursue. I’ve seen firsthand that no amount of “uplifting” can erase the living nightmare people face when their loved ones come back from a shift in the hospital. What I’ve seen can work, though, is pure escapism.

I think there’s a reason people have gravitated to devouring all of Netflix, Disney+, and the old books and shows from their childhoods. As Loren Eisley wrote in a review of The Lord of the Rings for the New York Herald Tribune, “...the adult mind has, if anything, greater need for fantasy than that of a child…” That couldn’t be more resonant right now, and it’s a worthy mantle for Central Limit to take up.

In that light, we’ll release new music periodically, but it won’t be any different music than what we would’ve done. No special song for the times. And probably no live streaming either--let’s face it, what even is Central Limit? We just want to do our part to indulge people in some fun. And maybe even bring back some old Pops movie magic to help.

And that brings us to our first entry: “Fall Dream”, a song that lived as a chord progression for the better part of two years. Hope you enjoy the music and the accompanying video. And it would mean the world for us if you join us on our musical adventures, both on our online platforms and through this blog.

Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_crT3_bSMA

Fangbo Yuan and Lexi Hamlin 6/1/20

Central Limit was founded in 2018 by Fangbo Yuan (Data Science ‘19) and Lexi Hamlin (BCN ‘19). Fangbo played in Pops for all eight semesters of undergrad and served as Technical Director from 2016 to 2019. Lexi spent her senior season with the orchestra and is now applying to dental schools.

Like Central Limit: facebook.com/centrallimitmusic

Listen to Central Limit: soundcloud.com/central-limit and CentralLimitMusic