Backwards
2009-05-23
Let's think backwards for a while.
Start with this brilliant reverse-reverse performance video. (Make sure to watch the whole thing.)
Only after you've seen that can you appreciate how much work Jeroen Offerman put into Stairway at St. Paul's.
I love that Fela Kuti never performed songs after he had recorded them. (Backwards record-release?)
Has anyone heard a truly backwards song structure? (Chorus, Chorus, Bridge, Chorus, Verse, Chorus, Verse?)
Not backwards, but I always admired that Dancing Queen starts with the pre-chorus (“You can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life...”).
The backwards romantic relationship is used sometimes in movies: start fighting immediately (hate eachother at first), then merely annoyed, then in love, then passionately physical, then notice things they like about eachother, then co-exist. Another variation is Benjamin Button, of course.
See the brilliant Memento, where the story is told backwards, showing the ending first and the beginning last. (If you've seen it once, see it again. It's even better the 2nd time.)
The dot-com era had plenty of backwards businesses: start by making a ton of money (IPO), (now have 500 employees), then build solid business infrastructure, then spend a lot of money marketing, then figure out what you really have to offer, (now only 100 employees), then try to make a profit, then brainstorm really good ideas, (now only 10 employees), then close the business, and the founders go work for someone else.
(Also there are reversible business models, but that's mirror-image, not backwards.)
What else can go backwards?
Thanks to Joano Lippi for the Stairway link.
Awesome stuff! Check out The Pharcyde’s “Drop” music video too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co3qMdkucM0
Cool! Love it! Thanks. -- Derek
Hi ! Derek Sivers.
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Okay..well..my music 'career' seems to be going backwards quite nicely: I had a song that was going to be covered by a name singer, then they passed on it. Following that another near miss, now I can't get it even heard. I sold less CDs this year and haven't played one gig since Xmas 2008. I have also managed to earn less money this year than the year before that, and again the previous year. So - each year my earnings are going backwards.Excellent. As it turns out, Jimi Hendrix and I have one thing in common: he once walked into a room and declared ' I'm the Backwards Man'.
"Sweet Home Chicago" doesn't have a bridge, but it does start with 2x thru the chorus - kinda backwards. And puts Chicago in California in the original lyrics... that's just weird. :o)
Someone else who does the backwards singing really really well is Tara Busch - see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxqYGox0NNk
Here is an application of backwards thinking. Imagine your business as you want it to look like at year x. What did it have to look like 3 months before that? And what about 6 months before that? .. all the way to now. It helps you determine the critical steps.
Does this mean that the retreat from tomorrow has already begun?
I think learning can go backwards. You start out young, thinking you know almost everything and that you'll just keep growing wiser as you get older. Yet somehow, we discover the more we learn, the less we know. Life can deliver wake-up calls that challenge us to "unlearn" patterns from our past so we can then start anew. What a great thing in life!
Great example, Paige! Love it! -- Derek
How about inverted? I had a TS10 that one could reverse the keyboard so the low was to the right and the high was to the left. I had considerable fun pretending it was correct and listening to the result. The rules of music are the same regardless of the direction or the tuning. I consider this a law. The keyboard functions if played right regardless of the tuning. Bach realized this and it is one of the fundamental principals of counterpoint. Oh! I got the Star Spangled Banner before he got the middle. I wonder how many others did. Nice exercise.
Kamran explained a version of what I was going to suggest. I don't know if it has a legitimate title, but The Tubes called their 1981 album The Completion Backwards Principle. Start with a finished product or idea and enumerate all the steps required to achieve the goal, in reverse order, until you get to the first step. It's really a good logic exercise to go through; Z depends on completing Y, which depends on completing X, which depends on completing W, etc.
...nice observation about Dancing Queen, Derek.
Very interesting concepts. Although you do have to wonder why somebody would want to spend that much time learning stairway to heaven backwards. Seems like A LOT of work.
I write all my songs backwards. Start with the lyrics, add guitar parts and lastly drums. Usually when I go to record the songs, I start with the drums and build from there (cuz that's the correct way to do it, or so I was taught) but it can be done either way. Also, several of my spngs start with a chorus, which I learned from the Beatles and Sir George Martin but I'd never considered ending on a verse before. I'll have to try that sometime. Thanks, Derek.
As long as we're talking about doing things backwards, my friend Tom mixed one of the songs on his first solo album backwards. He put both versions on the cd, the regular version is called Love and the backwards version he called Hate. Thought I'd throw that in.
This kind of reminds me of the creativity exercise where you write with whichever hand you do not normally write with, in order to access a different part of your brain, and hopefully some new creative material. I think there's also an exercise where you write backwards with your regular writing hand, with the same goal.
Definitely reminds me of the great X-Files episode "Redrum", where a man charged with killing his wife wakes up in jail and lives the days backwards to the day of the murder, which he does not remember.
More fun backwards TV here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Backwards_Episode
The intro in the Hendrix song Experienced was laid down backwards and holds thought the song. Hendrix played and recorded in the normal fashion, but had it put to his album in reverse.
I recorded a song called Dream that’s all verse , it was going to be acappella, as the rest of the players froze up and couldn’t play along until I asked them to just play sound effects and it went down well enough. So far I have done that, just play sound effects, on a few songs and have ended up with some satisfying results, so I guess this would be a kinda sideways approach instead of backwards. Any angle works if it produces some fresh stuff. K.W.
P.S. how about circular?
Cool video. Reminds me of Enigma's "Return to Innocence" music vid conceptually. There's a great book by Alan Lightman called Einstein's Dreams that poetically illustrates time.
Kitting socks can go in either direction. : )
Derek!!! You inspire everyone ...you are a muse/magician/musician and a businessman! Are you an 'old wise soul' that has 'cometh' to push us 'young ones' onward?
Joy
http://www.judyjoyjonesshow.com
"You can dance, you can jive..." - So THAT's what Abba has been singing all this time??? I never knew that!
And yes, Memento is definitely better the second time around(although I've seen it a couple more times since then ;-)
hello derek just a few key words:Paschar on dyslexia , barbers wall clock , strephosymbolia , www.scribd.com ,I`m in the process of building a website some what like elgooG.com , I own a wrist watch like the picture of the pocket watch posted here except the face is a perfect mirror image, back in the 70`s I played a trick on my high school principal, I reworked his wall clock to look & run backwards because of his comment that there is not enough time to teach you punks anything (he learned he was wrong) & never said it again ,