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SurfGuitar101 Forums » Surf Music General Discussion »

Permalink Oct. 2014: What is "Surf Music?"

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This current, pervasive usage of "surf/surfy" is problematic, an instance of shift of meaning that renders the term nothing more than shibboleth - a sign passed between hipsters that they are "with it". We may note that flat wound strings are coming back into vogue as "surf/garage influence" becomes requisite among hipster guitarists who use fuzz and spring reverb to produce sounds that work with their mostly vocal arrangements.

But that is just describing what we don't mean by the term. To me, surf music has to have a certain bravado, even a macho guitar technique. It requires a guitar that accommodates a hard downstroke tremolo picking technique. Without guitar attack, there is no surf. Which is why hipster bands are misappropriating the term, since they never, ever have strong guitar players.

And let's not leave out the drums! Surf drumming has much more in common with the styles of jazz and big band than rock since the mid60s. It's rooted in a mid XX c feel for rhythm irrespective of more recent trends in dance music.

I think the spirit of surf music remains rooted in a primitive exuberance typical of midXX c modernism. It has SoCal beaches and dancehalls in its DNA, and the imprint of the founding generation persists.

Tuck wrote:*

JakeDobner wrote:

Yeah, I personally consider the Beach Boys a surf band. I'm really just ruling out bands nowdays being surf and having a lot of vocals.

Exactly. Modern pop bands called "surfy" are seldom anything like surf. It's a perverse and awkward shift in meaning of the term that has to be watched out for constantly. Too late to do anything about it, but let's not fall over it. It's not so much the vocals that are wrong in that stuff as everything else. And yet ... I prefer no singing. It kind of gets in the way of the guitar.

Squink Out!

JakeDobner wrote:

I didn't mention surf music in conjunction with the sax! Also, read all the posts in the thread for more explanation.

Slick Replied:
I read the whole thread and your post still doesn't make sense, although that might be intended.

East Coast Executive Director Of The Society Of Incompleted Projects

Last edited: Oct 16, 2014 16:00:56

JOBeast puts it quite succinctly when he says "Without guitar attack, there is no surf."

Slick

East Coast Executive Director Of The Society Of Incompleted Projects

As typical of surf guitar playing as tremolo and tremolo glissandos are, I don't think they are required, anymore than shaping the notes with the tremolo (vibrato) bar vs. bending is. They're just techniques that are used and attract notice. It is definitely true that the playing style should be bold and bravura. As much as you can manage and/or stand. Molto con machisimo or whatever that would be in Italian would be on all the sheet music if there were much of it.

JOBeast's comments on drumming are spot on, I think, but I think I've noticed bands where they use a more modern approach to the drums. It may be a case of faute de mieux where it occurs.

psychonaut wrote:

To paraphrase Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's quote about defining obscenity:
I shall not attempt to define Surf music, but I know it when I hear it.

What he said.

The Mystery Men?
El Capitan and The Reluctant Sadists
SSS Agent #31

A much respected surf guitarist opined to me at a local bar show that many contemporary surf bands 'lack soul'. I think what he was indicating was a tendency, faute de mieux to shelve some salient features, like the Big-Band-informed drumming technique & sound, for a somewhat slavish devotion to standards. Something is being lost in the brave attempt to hold onto other stuff.
But I am not despairing – there is more reinvention of surf music going on now, and more cross-pollination of genres & techniques than ever before. Players are generally more 'up on it' than they have ever been.

Squink Out!

We here like music that is "surf" to us and if several persons share similar taste and they speak loud enough that becomes the group's definition.

I grew up on the East Coast and was playing instrumental bands starting in about 1962. I don't think I knew the words "surf" then as regards music -- but we did surf on Gilgo Beach.

We played what I today call "pre-surf" -- Ventures, Dwayne Eddy, etc, but when Pipeline, Wipe Out, etc. came along we started calling -- and more important others starting calling what we were playing -- "surf music."

My band The Abstracts continued to include those songs in our repertoire, but the group itself became known for its original vocals numbers and we never considered those surf.

But here is the interesting thing... When in 2011 the German company Break-A-Way Records released an album of all our studio stuff (dated 1964 - 1966) reviewers took note of the surf influence. Not we -- they. That included domestic reviews such as in Ugly Things magazine and European mags such as UK's Record Collector.

When I, about six months or so ago, decided to 'get back to my roots' I spoke of again playing "surf music." Only since starting to read this website did I personally differentiate between "surf" and "pre-surf." But I've never bought the notion of it being all instrumental. I didn't see it that way in the '60s and I don't see it that way now. No apologies for that -- I was there then and those were then my thoughts and feelings. Why should others (some of whom weren't even playing guitar back then) change my current POV?

Here is an unused on the album mastering from the 2011 album of the band doing "Pipeline" at Columbia's Studio B back in late 1964...

Pipeline by The Abstracts

Call it -- and the band -- what you will. Smile

-don

image

Still rockin' after all these years!

Last edited: Oct 16, 2014 19:38:02

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