Sympathies Enlarged: A John Cage Forum

John Cage Centennial Celebration (with friends)

2012-01-10T17:30:00.003-05:00

John Cage is coming to Cincinnati!
From Jan 20th-April 20th, the Carl Solway Gallery will exhibit works by John Cage, including prints, drawings multiples and scores. The gallery's 50th anniversary celebration will feature works by numerous artists affiliated with Cage (Yoko Ono, Marcel Duchamp, Allen Ginsberg and others) and includes a series of free Thursday evening concerts. According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, "Solway has said no one was more influential in helping to shape his personal life and professional career than Cage."

And while you're out and about, The Cincinnati Art Museum will be featuring an exhibition by Nick Cave, entitled "Meet Me at the Center of the Earth." Apparently, this is supposed to be the largest-scale presentation of the work of Chicago-based Cave to date. Combining aspects of sculpture, fashion design, dance and video art, Cave has created these super-neat-o "soundsuits." They're full-body, form fitting suits layered and textured with various metals, plastics, found objects and even dyed human hair. The best part? They're designed to rattle, swish, and resonate in rhythm with the movements of the wearer. The exhibition runs from Jan 2st1-April 29th.

I gotta get me one of those suits...

Music Smoothie

2011-09-25T18:52:00.004-04:00

The musical tradition of a people and place serves as a sort of identity for many. They hear it and can say, there, that's me, that's my family. Nowhere is this most evident than in populations straddling cultures. There's no shortage of that in America, even today. First, second, even third generation immigrants to the USA bring with them or have grown up saturated in a musical tradition that identifies their heritage. And as they come into this new place, they have to decide what they pass on to their children, what they will embrace and adopt of their new home. And "home" is a loaded word. Do I belong here, or is my real home back there? And does embracing this new place make me a traitor? Should I worry about losing my roots?
This is illustraded quite clearly in the music of American Latinos. Mambo. Salsa. Tango. Hip Hop. Rock. It's all there and hybrids erupt regularly. The fusion of styles is a wonderful indication of how two cultures have been reconciled by these people. How they can at once embrace their new home while celebrating their heritage. Latin hip-hop, combining familiar Carribean beats with a hip-hop language makes one wonder why the two weren't put together before. Latin Rock is a relatively new phenomenon on the scene that is coming to prominance with the advent of Latin Rock Stars in America and elsewhere. It's also served as inspiration for the new musical In the Heights, which incorperates all these rich and complex musical styles into a story that explores this very topic (it was also winner of 4 Tony Awards, including best musical of 2008).
Latin rock star "Juanes" is just one musician that has married LAtin and American Rock traditions and is bringing them into the spotlight. Influenced by the music of Metalica, Iron Maiden, and Led Zepplin, Juan Estiban Aritizabal received his first electric guitar at the age of 13 and at 15, began playing in a heavy metal. Signed to a record label and releasing 4 albums over ten years, the group finally broke up. Juan, changing his name to Juanes, moved to Los Angeles and began exploring a unique and personal music style that would blend his heritage with the rock music he loved. He composed tunes that blended rock/pop with Colombian folk rhythms. His lyrics spaned a wide variety of topics, but he resoled to only sing in Spanish.
He was an instant hit in Columbia, and after several years, had established himself as a significant player on the international pop music scene. Called by some "the most successful and influential Latin music ambassador ever," the Los Angeles Times named Juanes "the single most important figure of the past decade in Latin pop music."

"I sing in Spanish, but I play guitar in English," says Juanes. And it's helped him to reconcile the tough subjects of music, love, family and country.

Science and Free Jazz

2011-09-16T10:26:00.000-04:00

The World Question Center and Jazz
An intriguing reply to the World Question Center question of the year, which is "What scientific concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit?

Andran Kreye
Editor, The Feuilleton (Arts and Essays), of the German Daily Newspaper, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Munich

Free Jazz
It's always worth to take a few cues from mid-20th-century avant-garde. So when it comes to improving your cognitive toolkit Free Jazz is perfect. It is a highly evolved new take on an art that has (at least in the West) been framed by a strict set of twelve notes played in accurate factions of bars. It is also the pinnacle of a genre that had begun with the Blues just a half century before Ornette Coleman assembled his infamous double quartet in the A&R Studio in New York City one December day in 1960. In science terms that would mean an evolutionary leap from elementary school math to game theory and fuzzy logic in a mere fifty years.
If you really want to appreciate the mental prowess of Free Jazz players and composers you should start just one step behind. A half a year before Ornette Coleman's Free Jazz session let loose the improvisational genius of eight of the best musicians of their times, John Coltrane recorded what is still considered the most sophisticated Jazz solo ever — his tour de force through the rapid chord progressions of his composition "Giant Steps".
The film student Daniel Cohen has recently animated the notation for Coltrane's solo in a YouTube video. You don't have to be able to read music to grasp the intellectual firepower of Coltrane. After the deceivingly simple main theme the notes start to race up and down the five lines of the stave in dizzying speeds and patterns. If you also take into consideration that Coltrane used to record unrehearsed music to keep it fresh, you know that he was endowed with a cognitive toolkit way beyond normal.
Now take these almost 4:43 minutes, multiply Coltrane's firepower by eight, stretch it into 37 minutes and deduct all traditional musical structures like chord progressions or time. The session that gave the genre it's name in the first place foreshadowed not just the radical freedom the album's title implied. It was a precursor to a form of communication that has left linear conventions and entered the realm of multiple parallel interactions.
It is admittedly still hard to listen to the album "Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation by the Ornette Coleman Double Quartet". It is equally taxing to listen to recordings of Cecil Taylor, Pharoah Sanders, Sun Ra, Anthony Braxton or Gunter Hampel. It has always been easier to understand the communication processes of this music in a live setting. One thing is a given — it is never anarchy, never was meant to be.
If you're able to play music and you manage to get yourself invited to a Free Jazz session, there is an incredible moment, when all musicians find what is considered "The Pulse". It is a collective climax of creativity and communication that can leap to the audience and create an electrifying experience. It's hard to describe, but might be comparable to the moment when a surfer finds the point when the catalyst of a surfboard bring together the motor skills of his body and the forces of the swell of an ocean start in these few seconds of synergy on top of a wave. It is a fusion of musical elements though that defies common musical theory.
Of course there is a lot of Free Jazz that merely confirms prejudice. Or as the vibraphonist and composer Gunter Hampel phrased it: "At one point it was just about being the loudest on stage." But all the musicians mentioned above have found new forms and structures, Ornette Coleman's music theory called Harmolodics being just one of them. In the perceived cacophony of their music there is a multilayered clarity to discover that can serve as a model for a cognitive toolkit for the 21st century. The ability to find cognitive, intellectual and communication skills that work in parallel contexts rather than linear forms will be crucial. Just as Free Jazz abandoned harmonic structures to find new forms in polyrhythmic settings, one might just have to enable himself to work beyond proven cognitive patterns.

The All Sound

2011-09-14T10:22:00.004-04:00

I've been reading quite a bit lately on Einstein's contributions to physics with his theories of general and special relativity. Naturally, such readings have led me to further readings on string theory and it's general concepts. And so I wish to comment on some of the implications that string theory has to Cage's "All Sound" music.

String theory operates upon them premise that all matter and energy (for Einstein tells us these things are synonymous) is composed of strings and these strings are vibrating. think of it like the strings on an instrument, say a cello string that has been tuned by stretching the string under tension. Depending on how the string is plucked and how much tension is in the string, different musical notes will be created by the string. These musical notes could be said to be "excitation modes" of the cello strings.

In a similar manner, in string theory, the elementary particles we observe in particle accelerators could be thought of as the "musical notes" or excitation modes of these itty-bitty elementary strings. As in cello playing, a string must be stretched under tension in order to become excited. The strings in string theory are floating in spacetime, they aren't tied down to an instrument, but they do have tension.

Without becoming too bogged down in the theory, one can simply say string theory holds that everything is composed of these vibrating strings of energy. In Cage-speak, that is to say that the universe is composed of music, a grand cosmic symphony, if you will.

And so, as Cage implied, who are we to claim that this "sound of the universe" is not music? And how can you argue? He's got math and physics backing him.

Buffoon Bassoon No More!

2011-09-04T20:41:00.004-04:00

Who knows what a bassoon looks like? Okay, okay. Now, who can tell me the last time they heard a bassoon played outside an orchestra? Yeah, that's what I thought.

Despite being super-hard to play and pretty cool looking (8 feet of wooden tubing all coiled up on itself is pretty neat, in my opinion... or maybe that's just me) the bassoon has been the proverbial clown of the orchestra for literally hundreds of years. How'd that happen, you ask? Well given that it was so hard to tune (especially in ye olde days) and that it was very difficult to master, composers didn't write solos for it early on. Then the likes of Hyden, Grieg and Beethoven began to characterize the sound of the instrument as comical, featuring it as the "baffoon" of the piece, the indication that something had gone comically awry. This precedent was quickly adopted and has hung on for ages. Think Mickey Mouse dancing with broomsticks in Fantasia. Yeah, that's the bumbling role that the bassoon has been playing for forever.

Well, tired of having their instrument typecast, players of the bassoon have decided to fight back and to rebel against the stereotype of the bassoon as solely comic relief. Ever heard a bassoon play jazz? Country? Pop? Rock? No, you haven't... until now.

Mark Eubanks, teacher of bassoon at Lewis & Clark College, jams in a group called the Bassoon Brothers. Based in Oregon, the group has released three albums with some less traditional bassoon songs — including Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze," featuring a bassoon with a pickup and an amp. And yes, it's as cool as the idea sounds.

Ben Wendel is another musician giving the bassoon a makeover. He also plays the saxophone, but lately he's been jazzing it up on the bassoon. He says the instruments limitations make improvisation that much more interesting.

And last year, a quartet of classically trained bassoonists, who call themselves The Breaking Winds (not helping the bassoon's reputation with a name like that, in my opinion), donned wigs and outrageous costumes to perform a Lady Gaga tribute — the video of which quickly went viral on YouTube.

These musicians aren't in any way trying to change the sound of the instrument, as each of their ventures appear to use the bassoon to its full potential, to revel in its "bassoon-ness." Yet they are making it very clear that the "double-reeded bedpost" is much more versitile than it has been given credit for.

Courtesy of composer Pauline Oliveros

2011-08-13T07:54:00.000-04:00

This was shared on Google+ by the composer Pauline Oliveros (Deep Listening Institute). I am certain Cage would have approved.

Symbolism and Music

2011-07-27T04:25:00.003-04:00

John Cage was not a fan of symbolism - at least if you believe what he said in the album Indeterminacy. He preferred to take things as they were rather than pretend they stood for something else. But, there's a distinction to be made between what is symbolism and a strange way of looking at something. Symbolism is putting a dog in a painting and saying it represents fidelity. There is an alternative, which is drawing a faithful dog.

The same thing can happen in music. You can compose a sheet of music that symbolizes a bird - you can make a C represent a the coo of a dove - or, you can just say that you composed a dove singing and it happens to be the note C. The difference probably lies in your intention; one is forcing an entity to take on the role of something else, the other is recognizing that in an entity exists this other thing. One is the idea of creation, the other is the idea of recognition. You can say that you were able to recreate some entity in another format, or you can say that you found this same sound here that you found over there. You can take credit for the action, or you can give credit to the sound. Or you can not worry about things like this. None of these options are better than the others.

The idea of hearing a dove singing the note C is recognizing an inter-connectedness between these things. The note C is never going to be a Dove, but you can realize that there is an intimate relationship between those two things. You can realize that with everything though.

One last note about this recognition thing: Capt. Beefheart did the something very similar when he produced the lyrics - "Fast and Bulbous - That's right, the Mascara Snake - Fast and Bulbous also tapered". This is not a symbol of a woman crying with her mascara streaking, it is a woman crying with mascara streaking. Capt. Beefheart happens to see those words are those things. Those words aren't representing that woman's face, they are that woman's face.

Do not concern youself with Music

2011-07-25T15:25:00.004-04:00

Music is a game of looking at dead people. One looks at dead people and points out how they were influenced by other dead people and how they all built upon each other contributing to some grand ideal, which is Music. Then live people, people who are making sounds and trying to figure out Music, they are criticized and scrutinized without end and never receive the vindication of being called Music until they are dead people. The only way to win at being Music while still alive is to never try to make Music. And in those cases, it's probably not what you were going for anyways. It's really ironic that the more genuine an artist is, the more their work will be claimed for some other thing. And it's not that this is inherently a bad thing, but it must be frustrating at times to be Georgia O'Keefe.

And this isn't to deny tradition. Those things are culture and will lead to their own variants. Tradition is a better word for what I like about Music. Tradition, in whatever manifestation it has, will lead to expression of culture which is a powerful thing. Tradition is the development of a culture as interpreted by the participants in that culture. Music, as I have been taught it, is the preservation of dead culture at the expense of contemporary culture. This is where my cynicism comes from, and perhaps it is unfair. But, whenever I hear somebody decry some sound as not being Music I want less and less to participate in Music. They can have their special thing called Music, I will concern myself with that which makes up Music.

And this isn't to say that music is bad, just Music.

World Listening Day is July 18th

2011-07-17T07:12:00.013-04:00

Monday is the birthday of Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer, a founding figure in the discipline of sound ecology. In honor of Schafer, numerous organizations and individuals with an interest in sound ecology are observing World Listening Day by organizing soundwalks and other activities designed to heighten awareness of the audible world. Here is a randomly generated quote from Schafer's classic work The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World, in which Schafer responds to Bishop Berkeley's familiar question about the sound of trees falling in forests:

"... as a matter of fact, when a tree crashes in a forest and knows that it is alone, it sounds like anything it wishes-- a hurricane, a cuckoo, a wolf, the voice of Immanuel Kant or Charles Kingsley, the overture to Don Giovanni or a Maori nose-flute. Anything it wishes, from past or distant future. It is even free to produce those secret sounds which man will never hear because they belong to other worlds..."

If a tree falls in the woods...

2011-07-16T21:22:00.005-04:00

I've been thinking a lot lately about music in outer space. That is, what it means to be sound, to have sound in a vacuum. When such is the case, it makes music, sound, this thing that we've objectified into not some thing, but necessitates that it be only recognizable as a phenomenon that does or does not happen. What we can hear as a distinct sound on Earth, is actually a series of waves, a vibration initiating from a single source of impact. These waves need a medium to travel through, such as water or solid or, as is normally the case, air. Without a medium, this phenomenon cannot take place and the sound, as we recognize it, does not exist. Thus, sound cannot be a thing so much as it is an occurrence.

And so the experience of sound and music in space is a unique one, one that bears that age-old and cliched question: if a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Or rather, in our case, if an impact occurs but there is no medium to transfer the vibration, is a sound made? Does sound happen? And when can it be said that a full-fledged sound has actually happened? How far must the vibrations travel? And must they make it all the way to the human ear drum, or is traveling a little way, but stopping short of the ear drum sufficient? That is to say, must a sound be received and interpreted in order to have occurred?

Such questions also bring into question other oft-objectified phenomena, like color. Being the reflection and absorption of different wavelengths of light, color cannot, then, exist if there is no light. Light cannot be interpreted if not received, and so if color isn't received, can it exist? And what of the colorblind, of organisms capable of "seeing" and thus interpreting different wavelengths of light invisible to the human eye?

Does sound exist?

Does color exist?

And if sound doesn't exist, what does that mean for music?

The Music of Alaska and the Whole Earth

2011-07-15T08:37:00.004-04:00

"Art embraces beauty. But beauty is not the object of art, it's merely a by-product. The object of art is truth. That which is true is that which is whole. In a time when human consciousness has become dangerously fragmented, art helps us recover wholeness. In a world devoted to material wealth, art connects us to the qualitative and the immaterial. In a world addicted to consumption and power, art celebrates emptiness and surrender. In a world accelerating to greater and greater speed, art reminds us of the timeless." -- John Luther Adams

Jimmy Giuffre on "Free Fall"

2011-07-12T09:26:00.008-04:00

From Jimmy Giuffre's liner notes for his 1962 album of "three-sided music", Free Fall:

"... Given: the urge to enter new realms, glimpse other dimensions, reach the absolute. Given: the visions from thinking on such things as... gravity, Monk, electricity, time, space, the microcosmos, leaves, chemistry, power, Gods, white-hot heat, asteroids, love, eternity, Einstein, Rollins, Evans, the heartbeat, pain, Delius, Scherchen, Art, overtones, the prehistoric, La Violette, wife, life, voids, Berg, Bird, the universe...

...We come to NOW and this album. YGGDRASILL!!!

Is this what Kant meant when he said "seek always to expand rather than to narrow your horizons"?

Pi Day!

2011-03-14T16:03:00.003-04:00

Happy pi day! That is, today is March 14th, or 3/14. In celebration of the well-known irrational number, musician Michael John Blake decided to compose a musical interpretation of the figure. First, he composed the piece in C, and then assigned each not a number, beginning with C as #1, D as #2 and so forth. In the end, the composition plays through the sequence up to 31 decimal places. (3.14159... you get the picture). Numbers have been assigned to chords as well and he also claims to have used pi as inspiration for the tempo, which is at 157bpm, or half of 314.

I hear he's put a video of his performance up on Utube, if you care to see it. Several instruments are involved.

The Residents: ego without an identity

2011-02-12T13:00:00.000-05:00

Since the 70s, a group of west coast (maybe?) sound artists have been releasing albums and multimedia works under the groups name The Residents. Over sixty albums, more than a couple of music videos and short films, three CD-ROM projects, ten DVDs, seven major world tours later, their audience still doesn't know who they are. And so I find myself asking, what would Cage think of this. Their work aside, -which is admirable in its own right- this ego they've created via the mystery of their identities combined with elaborate costuming and self-promotion most surely goes up there with the egos of Beethoven and Bach... but is it really ego if they refuse to tell you who they are?

By keeping their identities out of their work, they inhibit the listener to place upon their art an identity to which it is attached, and any association with figures or persons is imposed by the listener, unvalidated by the creators themselves. They create an odd parody of the cult of personality promoted and utilized by so many musical groups, while at the same time freeing the listener/viewer to observe the piece on its own merit, without having to separate the experience of the art from its creators -an easier thing to do when you don't have a clue who they are.

Fun to think about. Interesting. Anonymity allows for the art to stand on its own merits, without being propped up by its artist. I like that. Reminds me of the "dance without music" idea.

Dialogue Revisited

2011-01-21T16:46:00.003-05:00

The concept of a musical dialogue has been visited on this blog before, but today, I'd like to consider specifically the dialogue that takes place in free jazz music.

As compared to improvisational jazz in general, free jazz tends to not emphasize so much the give and take of play between musicians. Whereas the saxophonist and the bass may respond and contribute to each other's playing, free jazz lets them do their own thing... but what does this mean in terms of the musical dialogue? Is there one?

I can think of at last three ways to view this. The musicians can be playing their respective instruments, without regard to what anyone else is doing, and this can be seen the same way one might regard a group of people each talking out of turn, not listening to what the other is saying, but instead talking over everyone else. This can be interesting, if somewhat confrontational-seeming in nature.

A second way of looking at free jazz like this would be the way John Cage and Merce Cunningham intended their collaborative efforts to be seen: As mimicking real life. That is to say, just as interesting sounds and sights can be encountered in the everyday world, and just as these things can occur simultaneously and independently of one another, so too can a performance exhibit to equally interesting, yet unrelated happenings, without their being in conflict, necessarily.

Yet another way this free-jazz performance could be viewed is as the activity of individuals who are so comfortable with each other that they feel no need to hold a formal dialogue, instead pursuing their own musical realizations while in the company of one another. It's much the same way that two best friends can hang out together and feel no compulsion to converse, or even participate in the same activity. Rather, the comfort level achieved by the individuals is such that they can enjoy each other's company in silence, doing separate things together. Even this creates a sense of community, communicates the solace of being in the company of another.

Regardless of which approach is taken -and given the individuals participating, I might say that all are possible and each is as likely as the other- even free jazz creates a sort of "dialogue". Whether this means they're shouting over one another, speaking as if the others weren't there, or saying whatever they want because the others are there, the final product is a forum into which voices contribute.

I also like the idea that the audience can influence the actions of the musicians, and I wonder to what extent the audience is able to play a role in free jazz. I would expect that their influence varies, much the same way the musicians allow themselves to be influenced by each other and respond accordingly.

Braille the Musician

2011-01-08T12:58:00.002-05:00

This January was the 202nd birthday of Louis Braille, the well known creator of the Braille alphabet and writing system. But what I recently discovered -and maybe I'm the only one in the dark, but maybe you also didn't know- was that Braille' s system was not originally confined to written language. Rather, when he initially designed it, Braille intended for the system to be used to write music as well (which, when you think about it, really makes sense, because a blind person can't read sheet music). A musician himself (he played piano and organ), Braille became acquainted with many blind people who liked to play music -surprise, surprise- when he started his famous school. When he designed his alphabet system, it was only natural that he would also create a musical system to go along with it (which raises the question of whether a person reading his written music could play a two-handed instrument...).

With technological advancements, Braille's musical system has become less and less needed, and fewer and fewer people actually use it anymore, but in 1829, he published his book entitled Method of Writing Words, Music and Plain Song by Means of Dots, for use by the Blind and arranged by Them. Words, music and plain song all with just 6 dots. The above picture is the braille translation of three quarter notes.

Pi on the Piano

2010-12-20T06:32:00.001-05:00

There are five widely recognized mathematical constants. These include, 1, 0, π and the natural number, e. Mathematician Leonhard Euler related all five of these constants in what many consider to be the most beautiful equation in all of mathematics. This mysterious relationship is sometimes called the "Magic 5 Equation" as reads as follows:

e to the power πi+1=0

So why the math lesson? Well, a man by the name of Tom Dukich appears to have "sonified" these mathematical constants in a work called Pi on the Piano, Eee with a Queeka and other math sonifications. Some of the pieces are audio only, some have accompanying visuals, and others are visual only. Here are some of the pieces as described on Dukich's site:

"1-Pi to 500 Decimal Places: Piano Solo. Audio with keyboard graphic. A good one to start with to familiarize yourself with how these sonifications were done. The same digit to pitch mapping was used in most of the following songs. The zero is usually not played as a note but shows up as a rest of the same duration as the notes in the particular piece. (3:11)

2 - Pi to 1,000 Decimal Places: Piano Solo. Audio with pi matrix. About four notes per second. (4:19) Update: Also an improvisation by Chis Mear based on this piece.

3 - Pi to 1,000 Decimal Places: Piano, Bass, Flute. Audio with graphics. A more complex mapping than the first two. (4:15)

4 - Pi's Digit Matrix for the First 100 Digits. Video animation, no audio. Visually explores the digit pattern in the first 1,000 digits of pi. (0:47)

5 - e to 500 Decimal Places: Piano Solo. Audio with e matrix. (1:47) "

These involved descriptions indicate some involved mathematical composition process, which Dukich doesn't go into detail describing (sooo it may not even exist and he just wants you to think he was using a complex system... maybe). You can listen and watch them for yourself on his site at http://www.tomdukich.com/math%20songs.html

Whales: the other musical mammal

2010-12-19T06:14:00.000-05:00

As previously alluded to on this blog, it is well known and studied that birds can be musical, that they can enjoy singing. Well, a recent study published in the journal Science credits the birds, as well as our aquatic singing relatives, the whales. The study's analysis of whale song shows that whales share some of the same acoustic techniques and follow the same laws of composition as those used by human musicians. Whale songs even contain rhyming refrains as well as similar intervals, phrases, songs durations and tones. And just as humans use rhyme, so too do whales implement rhyme as a mnemonic device to help them remember complex material. According to this particular study, the researchers state that whales physiologically have a choice: they could use arrhythmic and nonrepeating tunes, but instead, they sing.

Captain Beefheart

2010-12-18T04:46:00.010-05:00

Sympathies Enlarged has just learned the sad news of the passing of musician and painter Don Van Vliet (Captain Beefheart).

Mel Blanc did a million voices, but our next artist just did one, but it's heck of a voice. Don Van Vliet was born in Glendale, California. He stopped performing in the 80's and focused on his painting. He was a really good painter, but I wish he made more records. This song is about a frozen treat, and a corvid. Wanna know what a corvid is? It's a type of bird. Crows, ravens, jays, and magpies are all corvids, and they are some of the most intelligent of all the birds. Here’s a song that goes as straight as the crow flies.

Bob Dylan,from Theme Time Radio Hour

Read more here.

Silent Night

2010-12-08T20:23:00.002-05:00

Every year, the English public votes on the holiday song of the year. For the past several years, the song chosen has been heavily influenced by the decision of music critic, Simon Cowl, on his television show, The X Factor. The premise of the show is to choose a winner among competing vocalists, and the release of this winner's album has -not by accident- occurs just before the public is asked to pick the nation's holiday song. Many have felt that the public is being manipulated because of this, and that the spirit of the nation's pick is being undermined by commercial interests.
So this year, in protest of the direction the contest has taken, several big-name artists have submitted a collaborative effort for nomination: They have rerecorded Cage's 4:33. Need I say more?

The Vegetable Orchestra: truly organic sound

2010-11-22T19:42:00.002-05:00

I've written on this blog before about the car orchestra, the group that reconfigures old car parts to make the most awesome instruments. In this way, they exemplify recycling at its greatest. Now, I introduce you to the epitome of multitasking: the vegetable orchestra.
The veggie orchestra is an experimental musical group which fashions its unique instruments exclusively out of an assortment of fresh produce. They whittle flutes and whistles out of parsnips and carrots, they bang on beets and eggplants and blow into bell pepper horns. It's all pretty colorful and impressive. And here's the best part. After the performance, they make vegetable soup, which is offered to members of the audience. How incredibly wonderful is that? The best dinner and a show combo I've yet to encounter.
The Vienna-based group's website states that the orchestra strives to deliver a performance where musical styles can fuse without boundaries. "[C]ontemporary music, beat-oriented House tracks, experimental Electronic, Free Jazz, Noise, Dub, Clicks'n'Cuts - the musical scope of the ensemble expands consistently, and recently developed vegetable instruments and their inherent sounds often determine the direction."
They perform all over the world and their newest release is entitled "Onionoise" and came out this past September. Check out their website at http://www.vegetableorchestra.org for photos of their performances and of their wonderfully creative veggie instruments.

Music as a Social Adaptation (or, The "Auditory Cheesecake")

2010-11-10T10:08:00.006-05:00

The psychologist Steven Pinker once described music as the "auditory cheesecake," meaning that it is an invention that tickles the brain like cheesecake tickles the palate. "Cheesecake packs a sensual wallop unlike anything in the natural world because it is a brew of megadoses of agreeable stimuli which we concocted for the purpose of pressing our pleasure buttons."

So what evolved pleasure buttons does music press? One possibility considered by Pinker includes language, which shares with music the unusual property of being rule-based and recursive and with the power to take a limited stock of units (words of morphemes for language and notes for music) and combining them into a potentially infinite number of structured sequences. However, music gives pleasure through its sound, and language usually doesn't -we typically enjoy it due to what is said, not what it sounds like (On the other hand, there's a pleasure to singing, which has combined the best of music and language...).

But other scholars have proposed music as an adaptation, making the further claim that it exists because it was somehow reproductively advantageous to our ancestors (though the fact that it gives pleasure is not denied). Daniel Levitin, a prominent psychologist who supports this theory points to the idea that synchronous song and dance evolved as social adaptations, helping to establish community and aiding in certain forms of communication. He stresses the importance of music's role in movement, which backs up the theory that the genes of those who created and enjoyed music were able to outcompete the genes of those who couldn't.

Most languages have just one word for both singing and dancing -they aren't exclusive (much to the chagrin of Merce Cunningham, I'm sure). When people listen to music while sitting perfectly still, parts of the motor cortex and cerebellum -areas of the brain that control moving the body's ability to move around- are active. This is why we so often rock and sway to music, an impulse that can be somewhat irresistible, especially to small children. Thus, a theory of music that neglected its relation to movement would be a misstep.

Regarding natural selection, studies have produced evidence that if you move in synchrony with other people, you tend to liked them more, feel more connected to them, have a tendency to be more generous to them. In short, song and dance are the ultimate team-building exercises. This can very well explain the emotional rush that people get from going to a concert or being at a rave. This effect of music may explain why religion is so connected to dancing and music. It has the ability to establish, affirm and maintain a sense of community and solidarity.

All this considered, the potential evolutionary pattern would be that those individuals that could create and enjoy music hung out together, formed communities and cared for one another more easily and more often than those who couldn't. Consequently, the music lovers were more likely to prosper and reproduce. Suddenly, "survival of the fittest" becomes "survival of the musically-inclined."

World Music Fest: Music Outside!!!

2010-10-23T20:22:00.003-04:00

Today was a very special day, and unless you are an especially informed person, I'm sure you may not know what made today so special. So I'll tell you. The World Music Fest was held today in Covington! A celebration of music, dance, visual and culinary art from around the world, the world music fest brings together musicians and performers of all different styles to share the musical traditions of the globe. Last year, Eastern and Turkish influences were the highlight, and my experiences this year lead me to applaud the merits of "gypsy jazz" and the combined Russian/Turkish/French music traditions.
Of particular interest to me is that many of the acts this year were performed outside, opening themselves to the outdoor sonic atmosphere. On this particular Saturday, more than a few motorcycles, a fire truck, the rumbles of passing cars, airplanes, bicycles, and toddlers added to the music. At one point, there was a rest in a cellist's performance that was filled with a marvelous tinkling of a spoon stirring in someone's mug. The "unwrapping" of music and exposing it to the outside world -a world that may or may not be at rapt attention- allows an audience to see just how integral music can be in the world, and reciprocally, just how well the sounds of the world can fit into music.
Of note were two performers named Sasha and Sylvan who played for an hour on guitars commonly referred to as "cassaroles" (for the loud and obnoxious sound they project, like a saucepan, the French decided). A wonderfully playful duo, they men led the audience through French and Italy, Slovenia, Romania and Russia with a trip to Alabama for good measure.
Their stylings reminded me of playful banter, of a precocious dancing of these two guitars around each other, each allowing the other to lead before taking its place in the forefront once again. Several of the pieces were performed with lyrics in French, which add another level of experience, especially if you don't speak the language (and an embarrassingly exciting novelty for one, like me, who does).

verdict: 5 John Cage mushrooms for the World Music Fest! =} =} =} =} =}

Vox Arcana

2010-10-13T18:54:00.002-04:00

I went to the Vox Arcana concert on Monday with Tim Daisy who we got to meet as part of our freshman fys class. I really enjoyed the concert. The played many new songs along with a couple they played last year and our freshman year. Even the songs I had heard before and very different twist this time around. Tim Daisy did amazing things with his percussions, his style is best described as organized chaos. The way he mixes the use drum sticks and different brushes along with pans creates an interesting combination of sounds. the large xylophone (not sure of the proper name) was very enjoyable, and added a new twist to their performance. He and the other musicians created many different sounds throughout their performances that I did not expect to hear from their instruments. Overall it was an excellent concert that left me feeling very Cageian afterward.

Cage and Cummings

2010-10-07T20:14:00.002-04:00

I found out recently that, aside from using other composers' work by playing it upside down, Cage wasn't above using the work of poets either. Cage once set a Cummings poem in his work, Forever and Sunsmell.

Wherelings whenlings
(daughters of ifbut offspring of hopefear
sons of unless and children of almost)
never shall guess the dimension of
him whose
each
foot likes the
here of this earth
whose both
eyes
love
this now of the sky
--endlings of isn't
shall never
begin
to begin to
imagine how (only are shall be were
dawn dark rains snow rain
-bow &
a
moon
's whis-per
in sunset
or thrushes toawrd dusk among whippoorwills
or
three field rock hollyhock forest brook
chickadee
mountain. Mountain)
whycoloured worlds of because do
not stand against yes which is built by
forever & sunsmell
(sometimes a wonder
of wild roses
sometimes)
with morth
over
the barn

Sounds just ripe for use by Cage, right? And to be honest, I rather admire that he used what was made available already by other artists, composers, musicians and writers of his time. It only makes sense that if you're to work with only sounds that already exist, with instruments and tools that have already been invented by someone else, beginning with thoughts that are inevitably influenced by the work of others, then it follows that the work of others can be included. It's part of the array of tools at your disposal. And besides, the faculties of genius lie in perceiving the usual, that which already exists, in an unhabitual way. Perhaps these preexisting works are just waiting to be perceived in such an "unahabitual" way.

Acoustic Ecology

2010-09-30T06:34:00.006-04:00

Readers of Sympathies Enlarged will enjoy this page from Wire magazine on the many uses of field recordings and the continuing importance of acoustic ecology.

The Sublime

2010-09-20T07:20:00.005-04:00

A friend brought to me the idea yesterday that people may like music so much because it is the easiest way for a visually-biased culture to attain the sublime. I'd never quite thought about it this way before, but I think I have to agree. It could be that the reason so many are easily mesmerized by music is that sonic phenomena works on a plane that very few of us are well accustomed to operating on in such depth, and yet are very receptive to. Rather, we are proficient at categorizing and sorting visual art into preconceived categories, but music takes us by surprise. We can't so easily associate the physics of acoustics with that which we normally encounter, and for many, it's difficult to conceptualize, to put music into a nice and compact little box.

Because our species is so dominated by visual stimuli, and our culture is so biased with its various uses of this means of interpreting the world, music can capitalize on our less-refined auditory senses. It's an encounter of something heavily weighted in that which is outside our operating comfort zone, and when our cochlei are stimulated by the vibrations transmitted in the air, we are more easily able to attain that state in which all is beyond possibility of calculation, measurement or imitation for the moment.

It reminds me of the same way humans so frequently encounter the sublime when we talk about our conceptualization of God. Our ideas of who God is are so vast and unfathomable, that they aren't easily grasped in the normal sense. We revert to analogies and metaphorical comparisons to those things that we do know, but that never adequately describe that which is so beyond our usual parameters of understanding. We are pressed to prove the existence of something so hard to explain and yet we know beyond doubt that is exists because we do experience it directly.

John Cage's Birthday 2010

2010-09-05T09:30:00.005-04:00

Today is John Cage's birthday. Sympathies Enlarged is spending the day listening to Cage's works for prepared piano. Here is a link to a wonderful performance of Cage's "Dream" by pianist Stephen Drury.

Letting smells be themselves...

2010-08-10T16:27:00.003-04:00

I was thinking today about smells. I like smells, in general. The olfactory experience is a fascinating one. And then I began to think that, in much the same way we regard sounds as musical or cacophonous, we regard smells as those fit to be appreciated, and those that aren't. Think about it. It's socially acceptable to profess a love of the smell of oregano, bread baking in the oven, pine sap, lavender, spices. They even make candles scented to mimic the smell of sugar cookies, various fruits and flowers, even "midnight breeze," whatever that is. There's an entire industry developed around the nose and millions upon millions are spent each year on perfumes, colognes and aftershave. But all of these smells marketed to the public are those deemed to have met a certain standard.
I understand that some smells trigger the gag reflex and that the reaction of disgust to various odors is a natural and perhaps evolutionary response (protecting us from dangerous or unsanitary things), but there are other smells that are found to be pleasant by many -or maybe only a few- that aren't being bottled. How about fresh-cut grass, new crayons, or charcoal? These aren't bad smells. Personally, I must confess to a love of the smell of rotting leaves and fresh-tilled soil.
It's been proven that smell is the human sense most efficient at triggering memory, and therefore it would naturally follow that the sense of smell would be most subject to having value attributed to it by positive or negative association. I don't eat goetta, would never eat it, and knowing the composition of the stuff makes the possibility even smaller, but the smell reminds me of my grandpa, and so I like the smell. The smell of Listerine and rock dust remind me of my dad, and I like those smells, while catching a whiff of "new car," eau de toilette or canned mixed vegetables is automatically off-putting due to some negative association (the particulars of which I'm not willing to discuss). And so it leaves me rather surprised that these scents are often overlooked in the mainstream. Why should it be acceptable for flowery scents to be sold in lotions, bubble bath and perfume while sawdust, basil and rainwater remain in their original forms.
In the spirit of John Cage, shouldn't we embrace the possibility of all smells to be perfume? Should all smells be regarded as equally smellable?

The Grandaddy of Electronic Instruments

2010-07-13T10:34:00.003-04:00

Ever heard of an instrument called the theremin? Well, if you haven't it'd be a good one to remember in case you're ever on Jeopardy, because it's a rather significant development in the advent of electronic music, in my opinion. It was invented by a physicist, actually, in the 1920s named Leon Theremin and was the product of a government-sponsored research project on proximity sensors. See, you don't ever actually touch the theremin to play it. Instead, you just sort of hover your hands over it and move them back and forth and up and down changing pitch and volume. So, just think what people would have thought of this thing back in the 1920s: "Oooooh! Super-futuristic magic! It's the cat's meow!" -or something like that.

So Theremin demonstrated his instrument to Vladamir Lenin, who promptly began taking lessons and sent Theremin off on a world tour, showing off his instrument (while at the same time doing some undercover reconnaissance for Russia in the U.S. -you know, multitasking). The theremin was shortly after manufactured for public use, because surely, it would become the next big craze. Each big wooden box included an instruction manual complete with photographs demonstrating the proper way to use the instrument. Though not a real commercial success due to a certain stock market crash in 1929,the theremin still fascinated people. In the 1930s, Lucie Bigelow Rosen and her husband, Walter, took up the instrument and worked to provide financial and artistic support that would further popularize the instrument.

The theremin has a sound that's thought to be eerie by many, and so it's commonly put to use in movie soundtracks like those for The Day the Earth Stood Still and Spellbound . It enjoyed a resurgence in popularity on the avant-garde scene and in psychedelic rock music.

So now you know and have no excuse to not win all that money on a popular TV game show.

All I ask is that, when you do, remember who gave you the answer to that double jeopardy question.

Plato: Composer and Closet Pythagorean

2010-07-06T06:58:00.003-04:00

Plato, a heretic? No, surely not! But according to Jay Kennedy, a scholar from Manchester, England, this could very well be the case. If one examines Plato's works in their original scroll from, one will notice that every 12 lines there is a passage that discusses music. According to Kennedy, this is something that likely wouldn't have gone unnoticed by Plato's readers. Unlike today's 8-note scale, the Ancient Greeks used a 12-note scale, and so it's postulated that, by using the aforementioned pattern, Plato could have been trying to communicate some sort of musical message.

What sort of message? Well, Kennedy thinks that, just maybe, Plato could have secretly been a Pythagorean. No, this has nothing to do with trigonometry -I don't think. See, Pythagoras and his followers believed that mathematics and music were the keys to the universe (oh, but of course!) Because the beauty we hear when we hear harmonies can be attributed to certain mathematical ratios, witnessing such beauty was the experience of the perception of the direct mathematical order underlying the world. Pythagoras worshipped this mathematics and for some reason, were viewed as weirdo heretics. In fact, they were violently persecuted because, obviously, such believers were working to overthrow the gods of Olympus.

This being the reality of the situation, Plato couldn't come out and tell people he was in agreement with these guys without fear of being banished or worse, and researchers think that he may have embedded a hidden message in his works (in The Republic, at least). It's even hypothesized that it could be a melody or score embedded in the text.

Plato, a composer and secret code expert? I like him better already!

Dr. Dimento Show Off the Air

2010-06-24T08:54:00.003-04:00

Since the 1970s Barret Hanson (aka Dr. Dimento) has broadcast the weird and wonderful of the radio world. Beginning with quirky songs like Sheb Wooley's "Purple People Eater" and Barnes & Barnes "Fish Heads," Hanson moved on to frequently spin the music of Spike Jones, Monty Python, and Frank Zappa, ultimately forming what would become a cult radio institution. The funnier the songs he played, the more popular the show got, and listeners even began sending in their own parodies and comical works (a sixteen-year-old, accordion playing Weird Al Yankovic, for one).
But all good things must come to an end, I suppose, because this June, the show was finally taken off of the air. When I heard this, I was gravely disappointed, because I'd never heard it, but I needn't have worried. The Dr. Dimento Show will, like many other things, continue on the Internet. Hanson thinks this is a better fit anyway, because his show never scored too well with the common demographic.
Imagine that.

Swing Low

2010-06-24T08:53:00.003-04:00

I had a friend once who I sang with in select choir. I was an alto, but she was a bona fide female baritone -not tenor, but baritone. She hit the low notes in a way I couldn't have hoped for and, as this was at a time when many of the boys in the group were struggling with voice changes, this girl could often hit lower notes than even they could.

So I thought of her when I heard about Roger Menees, a gospel singer who's just made his way into the Guinness Book of World Records for hitting the lowest note ever recorded. In February, at a recording studio in Carbondale, Roger hit an F-sharp at 0.393 hertz (Sorry, Madison, but I think he's got you beat on this one.) To be fair, a note that low isn't very functional. I mean, it's not like any opportunity would arise in a vocal ensemble performance to swing that low. If anything, it's more of a physiological wonder. Roger says himself that "thins is the slowest vibration that you can make with your vocal chord -the slowest vocal pulses with the greatest interval in between them." In fact, the human ear can't even determine that the note is an F-sharp, and Roger says that he's shattered electro-voice speakers by hitting so low of notes before.

I heard the recording of this record-winning low note, and it's true that it sounds more like a low refrigerator vibration than anything, or some sort of machine feedback.

John Cage would be proud.

Playing the Music Space

2010-06-13T08:50:00.004-04:00

If the experience of a live musical performance is taken holistically, (the only way it should always be taken, best-case scenario, in my opinion) one must consider the space in which it is being performed. The instruments and voices you're hearing are meant to be a focal point, yes, but there's often so much potential for other sonic phenomena to affect the experience. The acoustics of a concert hall or other music venue are generally considered to be important (by some musicians more than others, I'll admit) because it affects the way the music will be heard. A small wood-paneled room is going to sound drastically different from a carpeted theater, and will also differ from an outdoor performance, one in a school gymnasium, or one taking place inside an airplane hanger.

Too often, though, it seems that the acoustics or sonic contributions of the space are ignored entirely, or they are manipulated such that they are rendered silent. With all this potential for variation out there, it strikes me as disappointing that artists don't play with this variable more. Being able to not only play your instruments but also to play the performance space seems an exciting creative concept to consider. Perhaps this is why garage bands are so infamously horrible. The musicians, confined to practice in a garage, sound great within the confines of their aluminum box, but when heard outside of the car port, the quality is altered (okay, perhaps I'm a bit too gracious here, but I'm trying).

But just think of the possibilities! Perhaps musicians could work the vibrations of the aluminum siding of an airplane hanger to their benefit, not to mention the marvelous echos that are sure to ensue. Or how about staging an outdoor performance near a waterfall or a forest where artists can play with the birdsong or frog chirps. And I'm reminded of a certain group notorious for playing bagpipes in cavernous wells and such... Then there's the ever-Cagean component of indeterminacy that can be thrown in when you incorporate such less-easily controlled sonic phenomena. Imagine playing improv with a thunderstorm or the train...

Itty Bitty Instrument Makes a Mighty Comeback

2010-06-04T19:01:00.002-04:00

There's a new documentary out called The Mighty Uke: The Amazing Comeback of a Musical Underdog by Director Tony Coleman. The film travels all over in search of artists who play the instrument, and finds it in the hands of a rather eclectic bunch. From virtuosos like Israel Kamakawiwo'ole to the likes of Paul McCartney, to elementary schools in Canada and even a man who claims that the uke led him to discover hip hop, this documentary hopes to illustrate how this tiny Hawaiian instrument has built culture and community over the years and how, thanks to it's simplicity and affordability, it's making a comeback in popular culture today.

Robot Orchestra

2010-06-01T06:30:00.001-04:00

It's amazing, really, the variety that one can experience in different musical performances. Go to the Cincinnati orchestra and you're watching over fifty people playing instruments. Go see an electronic music artist and you could be watching one guy making music on his laptop computer. Now, if you go to the California Institute for the Arts you will see something somewhere in between- that is a room full of music students at computers and machines making robots play music. Ajay Kapur, a music professor at the school, offers a class in which students learn to build robots and become prat of the Kametic Machine Orchestra. Kupur claims that he's not trying to teach kids to be programmers,, but rather to help them to become better artists in a world increasingly dominated by new technology.

But the performances by the students and their robots are a far cry from the "lone guy at the laptop" performance and these robots are far removed from the player piano. Aluminum boxes, wires, gears, mallets, drums, and skateboard wheels are just some of the components one will see, and these robots aren't just playing what they've been programmed to play. No, in the spirit of John Cage, there's a bit of uncertainty involved. Rather than programmed to simply play music, the students have programmed their robots to improvise. This essentially means that the students are never quite sure how the robots are going to respond. In this respect, Kapur claims that playing with the robot orchestra is a lot like playing with other people. You never quite know what they're going to do next.

And to those who claim that Kapur is teaching his music students to replace themselves with robots? He says that he doesn't think of the robots as replacing human musicians, but rather as instruments that can make sounds that humans can't. For example, one person could play three drums at a time with two sticks, but a robot can have seven arms...

The Confines of theTraditional

2010-05-23T20:14:00.005-04:00

I've mentioned on this blog before that I generally like Celtic music. I find, however, that this "traditional" genre is often dominated by "traditional" songs. That is to say, that most experiences that I've had with Celtic music have been in the form of various renditions of old Irish tunes. I'm sure that if I looked hard enough, I would find original works in the Celtic music genre, and I have, but these have been in the minority. And so I started wondering why those genres steeped in tradition, like Celtic, bluegrass, even classical to an extent, seem to be stuck, so to speak,. It seems that the same tunes are played over and over and little innovation, little creative originality is seen in these genres. One definitely doesn't see this in rock, rap, jazz, etc. but when you start listening to Celtic, or classical, people seem to be content to play the same songs that someone wrote a long time ago over, and over and over again.

Perhaps this is how the genres maintain their integrity. I've discussed how the lines between musical styles become blurred and it would seem that as little deviation as possible would result in these different genres remaining separate. Playing the same songs would facilitate this, I suppose, but then I wonder whether the sacrifice of potential is worth it....

You don't run into this with dance, I must note. Dancers seem to be able to keep well within a dance style without repeating the same choreography. "Traditional" French or Russian ballet, hip-hop, clogging, jazz -all types can maintain a degree of "integrity without hindering creative contribution. (then again, on might object to the definition of "integrity" that I employ).

Makes me wonder where these "traditional" styles of music would be if the focus tradition were relaxed just a bit...

Stutter Music

2010-05-03T17:37:00.005-04:00

Today I was thinking about stuttering. I mean, in general-that is, I wasn't contemplating whether or not to do it. I found myself remarking at how lots of disk-jockeys turn records such that they seem to stutter their music. Can you make instruments stutter? I'd like to hear that. Actually, these musings started while listening to The Who on my way to school today. A friend had commented on how the lead singer purposely stutters (I think) in the song "My Generation." And then ensued the thoughts about dj-ing and whether or not you can get instruments to stutter and how I think I'd like to hear stuttered music. It seemed to work for The Who -I mean, I liked the "stutter effect" in "My Generation". Perhaps stuttering should be seen as a speech impediment, but an musical asset. And just think what you could do with a lisp...

Denis Brown

2010-04-26T07:08:00.007-04:00

In my recent adventures in random musical selection, I've found myself listening to several reggae collections, the majority of which feature Bob Marley. I also found myself "jammin" to a CD or two by a man by the name of Denis Brown. Now, it may just be my unique ignorance to the musical world, but the name "Denis Brown" meant nothing to me (it's not even a particularly interesting name, what with my uncle being named Denis and my being acquainted with many Browns in the neighborhood). And then I heard the name mentioned on the radio as I was driving to school one morning. I hadn't realized that this Denis Brown character was a man often referred to as the authority of the genre, the "Reggae Mozart", if you will.

Denis Brown has been refered to as reggae's child prodigy and is hailed by the likes of Marley himself as the best and most influential reggae singer in the world (and they met when Brown was only 11 years old). Born in Jamaica in the late 50s, Brown became an international superstar, cut his first hit "No Man is an Island" (which even I've heard of, so it must be big) when he was only 11 and over the next three decades released 75 albums. His popularity in the musical world ultimately paved the way for other well-known reggae singers and, though he died in 1999 at the age of 42, Brown continues to serve as an inspiration to many artists.

And so, I had another one of those embarrassing, "I can't believe I didn't already know this" moments....

Bad Boys

2010-04-26T07:08:00.004-04:00

So, when someone says the phrase "bad boys," I'm sure the images that come to mind vary among individuals, but I can be fairly certain that most don't immediately think about opera -or perhaps more unlikely, musical theater. But if you're at all familiar with the opera scene, you'll have to agree that "bad boys" are in no short supply in the theater. I mean, think about it: Don Giovanni, Don Juan, Sweeny Todd? Opera is chock-full of villains (that's what the baritones are for, right? Ii don't think I've ever heard a tenor sing a villainous role, but I digress...) Bryn Terfel, bass-baritone singer, has recently pulled together some of the more classical, evil roles in traditional and contemporary opera and compiled them onto a new record entitled -ready?- Bad Boys.

He, himself, contributed vocal talent to the record and you can read his recent interview with NPR on the subject at http://www.npr.org/. Just search for "Bad Boys."

Sun Ra Arkestra Pays Homage to Icelandic Volcano

2010-04-22T15:43:00.003-04:00

The current incarnation of the Sun Ra Arkestra, led by Louisville's own Marshall Allen, has been grounded in London by the volcanic ash problem. They are preparing a special "volcanic performance" to commemorate the event. See the details here.

Martha Graham

2010-04-20T20:34:00.005-04:00

While writing a paper for the spring honors seminar, I was required to briefly report on the life and influence of one of Time Magazine's top one hundred people of the twentieth century. Thus far, I'd reported on physicists, psychiatrists, musical composers, successful businessmen and several musicians, and so jumped on the opportunity to write a paper on the life of a dancer/choreographer. Martha Graham was listed as one of Time's most influential people of the twentieth century, and though I knew she was instrumental in the development of modern dance, I wanted to know why she would be on this list... and then I was embarrassed that I didn't already know.

Graham was greatly influential in the dance world and the art world at large, forcing dancers and artists to reexamine what dance was and what it should or should not do. She pioneered a new approach to dance that required the creation of an entirely new vocabulary to describe and talk about it, using motion as a means of expressing emotions in an unprecedented way. Her career was a long and successful one that ended in her receiving various accolades and recognition toward the end of her life, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the nation. In spite of all this praise, however, Martha was rather discontented with the way she was being received by the public. She wanted to be remembered as a dancer, but the world saw her largely as an innovative and original choreographer. This perception was probably exacerbated by Martha's insistence on performing into her later sixties. Unable to execute dance that carried with it the energy and power that hallmarked her earlier work, her later performances simply highlighted her role as an expert choreographer and not as a dancer.

But this frustration regarding Martha's memory was also due to her largest contribution. She is remembered as a choreographer and not as a dancer in great part due to her influence on her fellow dancers. Graham served as teacher and inspiration to names such as Erik Hawkins, John Butler, and even -ready for this?- Merce Cunningham. She is remembered not as a dancer, but as an instrumental and powerful impact on the great dancers that would change the world after her. She is remembered for creative work that would inspire other artists to push the limits of art, for serving as stimulus for original thought. And though she was discontented with the fact that the world didn't recognize her as a dancer, i think that had she known and understood the role she was, in fact, playing, she might have been a bit more appreciative. Had she known the true effect that her work as a choreographer -not as a dancer- was having and would have on the world, she might have been okay with her memory.

A Warning to Listeners of Loud Music

2010-04-16T07:25:00.002-04:00

We've been told that listening to loud music will ruin our hearing, will annoy the neighbors, may even get the police called, but did you know that it might result in animal abuse? Yes, my friends, your listening to loud music might just result in some poor animal being caused trauma and distress. At least, that's what one man found out recently while staying in a motel in south Carolina. He hadn't been the one blaring the beats, some other guy had. He'd complained and thought the confrontation was over, but was tapped on the shoulder a few hours later and turned around to see that he was face to face with a four-foot python. The disgruntled pet owner had apparently not appreciated being told to turn the tunes down and so decided to introduce the man to his pet snake. The man claims that the snake's head was squeezed so that its mouth was open and swears it tried to crawl into his mouth (pure bull hockey, if you ask me). But, the poor guy probably peed his pants as he crawled back to his room. The snake's owner was arrested and charged with assault.

So, let this serve as a warning. Be careful around whom you turn up the volume, because it's just as likely that some complaining neighbor might own a pet snake as well.

The Car Music Project (aka Recycling at its Finest)

2010-04-04T20:12:00.004-04:00

When Bill Milbrodt's car, a 1982 Honda Accord, was on its last legs back in 1991, it had about 200,000 miles on it. Had Bill wanted to repair it, it would have cost much more than it was worth, and had he wanted to trade it in, well, no one would have wanted it anyway. But rather than scrap it, Bill decided to be environmentally responsible. Bill decided to turn the car into music.

He had the car dismantles and, with the help of metal sculpter, Ray Faunce, spent the nest 18 months creating brand new instruments out of old car parts. And boy, you should get a load of these musical wonders. There's the exhaustaphone, and strutbone (constructed from the struts, shifter linkage and exhaust system and played like -get this- the trombone), accompanied by percarsion, which consists of a fifteen-foot diameter circle of racks from which springs, gears, windows, pistons, etc. hang (in total, it's about 55 percussion instruments). In addition, these are drums made from wheels and cymbals made from floorboards. There's the tank bass, made from the gas tank, and the "air guitar" made from the air cleaner and brake calipers. It looks like a banjo without frets.

With awesome instruments in tow, Bill formed a band he called the Car Music Project, and the group has gone on to wow critics with their avant-garde resourcefulness. Likened to Frank Zappa and other experimental superstars, the group is composed of talented musicians, the likes of which have played before with John Cage himself. And really, what's not to love? They had me at recycling.

You can find out more and hear a sampling at www.carmusicproject.com/

Mozart's Requiem

2010-03-27T08:49:00.006-04:00

I would call this a diatribe, but that would be a lie. It's less of a diatribe than a very long-winded enthusiastic response to what I feel to be a performance worthy of much more.

So, I suppose this preface is more of a warning of the hopelessly pathetic gushing that is to come and I urge any readers who have the inclination, to skip reading it without any feelings of remorse -or in the worlds of Cage, "if any one is sleepy, let him go to sleep."

So, the Cincinnati Ballet's performance of Mozart's Requiem premiered last night at the Aronoff center for the Arts. It can hardly be said that the ballet was a dance interpretation of Requiem, but then the playbill seemed to have a difficult time describing it also, calling it a "non-narrative drama," which seems like a contradiction in terms to me. In fact, a very clear narrative is evident, with an obvious conflict encompassing the first half and an evident resolution in the second.
A minimalist set was used to its full potential, with the artistic director, Victoria Morgan, relying on several props suspended from the ceiling and the illumination of objects in the background to convey messages regarding the situation playing out onstage. Light was also artfully used to suggest changing venues while allowing the audience to perceive a change in scene and in mood. The scaffolding that filled the background of the stage and the bare, uncluttered dance space worked well within the theme of the ballet, accentuating the ideas of harsh reality, without the pretenses of of something more beautiful, even superficially. The ultimate transition from darkness to light at the climax of the performance was also artfully communicated through these minimalist means, with a sparse use of modern art pieces and a generous helping of light and color cues. Costuming was similarly simple, with dancers attired in black or white, leaving the dance itself to speak, without interruption or background noise provided by costume (female dancers did, however, wear their hair down, using its movement with the choreography to emphasize the emotions inherent in the dance).
The choreography itself was likewise stunning, contrived of classical technique without any of the oft-attached classical conventions. Modern dance influences were ubiquitous throughout the performance, glimpsed in the tendencies of dancers to use combinations in ways that were unexpected, often filled with allusions to crude contortion, yet with ease and athletic finesse. The emotions portrayed through the movement in the first half of the performance were immediately apparent. Tension, angst and struggle -both internal and external- were common elements in all of the dancers' motions as they made their way across the stage, sometimes charging and leaping in desperation or anger, sometimes limp and listless like marionettes or rag dolls. The use of lifts was liberal and also worked to enforce the ideas of pain, with female dancers posed in such a way that suggested struggle or unwilling compliance. A stark contrast between the powerful and the powerless was made evident in such movements.
The second half of the show was immediately a contrast to the first, yet with references to the struggle encountered in the later. The company began clad in white with a solemn march in circle formation, dancers sometimes exhibiting those puppet-like movements, but with a clear soberness, hinting to a desperation for some sort of salvation. Then, two figures dance to the middle of the circle, shouldering red capes and garbed in a simple, white attire that makes the rest of the company appear to be clothes in a dingy yellow. Their fluid movements free from any of the stress and tension thus far seen in the other dancers, the two figures dance with each other, as opposed to against one another, their movements working in a harmony and paralleling to create a sense of content equality, rather than a power struggle. Their mirrored motions and lifts that convey a sense of flight starkly contrast the dancers who had thrown themselves about the stage earlier. The pair represents freedom and redemption and as the act progresses, the sense of puppetry and struggle dissipates. Though the rest of the company never reaches the grace of the two dancers in white and red, the transformation makes evident that a healing has taken place. Finally, the dance ends with the company following the two red-caped figures out into a painfully white light, away into a hopeful unknown.
Though paired with a legendary classical score, I can't express how pleased I was to find the accompanying ballet did not fall into classical ballet conventions. Yet I also greatly appreciated the adherence to technique and good ballet form as filtered through modern influences. The intense emotion conveyed and the subsequent freedom could easily have been executed in a generic sense, but doing so through precision and technique added a stylized flair that elevated the performance in an admirable way. I was also impressed by the powerful subject matter portrayed onstage and its presentation in such a way that made it accessible by all present without insulting the intelligence of the audience.
On a final note, I felt that this performance was a beautiful example of a dance and musical score that can each stand alone and independently. Undeniably paired with a fantastic score, the ballet could easily have been overshadowed by the musical performance, the dance being relegated to a mere echo. Thankfully, this was not the case. The artistry and mastery that was displayed onstage rivaled that which was taking place in the orchestra pit. This could have been disastrous under other circumstance, becoming a battle for the audience's attention. I'll admit that the music sometimes failed to permeate as my attention was fully absorbed by the visual phenomena, but in the end, I think an excellent balance was struck as the two stand-alone performances succeeded in creating an epic dialogue. What could have been a fight for the spotlight became a veritable duet in which both parties maintained beauty and integrity.
I left the theater feeling tingly in my elbows, weak in my knees, and light in the head. Unable to speak about the performance and yet unable to think of anything else, I've concluded that it might be worthy of recommendation to any readers of this blog who have managed to get all the way to the end of this long-winded, excessively wordy play-by-play.
It really was quite wonderful.

Sounds of the Cell

2010-03-10T07:12:00.004-05:00

New technologies bring with them new sonic phenomena all the time. Cage was autely aware of this and embraced it as a perquisite of progress (and later changed his mind a bit on the issue, but we'll overlook that for right now). I was thinking about this the other day and decided that one such technology that has undoubtedly brought with it its own "soundtrack," as it were, is the telephone. With all man-created sounds, the telephone has introduced noises into popular culture that today are universally recognized. The dial tone, the busy signal, various recognizable rings, even the "low battery" sound on many cell phones has become largely self-evident. It's amazing how these sounds have become so ingrained into our upbringing in this country that their identification is now second nature.

The Seedy Seeds (and others)

2010-03-07T10:04:00.002-05:00

So picture a group of three musicians. Now imagine a mixture of guitar, precession, banjo, accordion, and occasional kazoo offered by these musicians. Trust me, it's marvelous, and I'm lucky enough to be able to say this from personal experience. The eclectic group, the Seedy Seeds, performed last night at the Southgate House in Newport, Kentucky. The group shared the stage with local bands Come on Caboose and Margot & the Nuclear So and Sos, but clearly stole the show with their fun, upbeat performance. Their self-introduction taken from their webpage is as follows:

" The Seedy Seeds don't know you, but they already like you.

With a completely original sound and presentation, including

banjo, accordion and toy keyboard beats, The Seedy Seeds

create upbeat, melodic, danceable indie music that is equally

at home alongside pop-punk, alt-country, and lo-fi."

The band was allegedly formed in 2005 when members Mike and Margaret threw around the idea of performing as a group with the instruments they owned but didn't exactly know how to play at the time. Percussionist, Brian, joined in 2008 and the group has been writing, recording, and performing music ever since. In addition, the group has been the recipient of three Cincinnati Entertainment Awards, including Best Live Act, Album of the Year and Best Indie/Alternative Artist.

You can go check them out at http://www.theseedyseeds.com/.

And I think you should.

The Solo Album

2010-03-03T18:05:00.003-05:00

Have you ever listened to the work of a group and liked it, and then found out that one or more of the members have a solo album out? Or, how about this: the band breaks up and then one or more of its former members releases an album? Or what about: one of the group members leaves in a huff and the next month releases a solo album just to spite the other members, it seems? Regardless of the circumstances, I'm sure everyone has a least heard of this happening before and lately, I've been thinking about what these solo works say.

Many will attest to the trend that most of these albums are never any good. Perhaps this is so, but what I'm more interested in is what they say about the artist and what they contributed to the group while they were in, and what they do now that they're out. The most recent example of this that has caught my interest is the Beatles -which isn't recent at all, but I'm a little behind on these things. After the breakup of the Beatles, John and Paul went on to release their own solo work, and while listening to a sampling of each of these, in conjunction with the work the Beatles were turning out while together, I began to wonder...

John's influence is very heavily seen in the work that the Beatles did together, and this is perhaps easy to see because of his lead vocals in so many of their songs, but when listening to Paul's work, one is able to see the creative contributions he added to the group's work also. Part of me also wonders if the solo works of each respective artist are actually representative of each man's contributions to the group, or if they are what they are because each man decided to take advantage of the opportunity to do something completely different. And how much influence did the Beatles have on each man's solo work? It's all very convoluted and I'm not sure that these guys could have told you themselves.

I did, however, come to some personal conclusions which are completely subjective and possibly ignorant, but I will state them here anyway. I listened to Paul's Tug of War and John's Mind Games and, based on these works, decided that Paul is more like Mozart and John like Beethoven. What do I mean? Well, Paul's work seems to be more laid back, fun, and freely creative, while John's work always seems to be reaching for some objective, angsty, trying to make a statement, and is all around much more serious. If these men were painters (yes, painters, because I'm biased toward the visual arts) Paul would be a Georgia O'Keefe, painting things simply because they were beautiful and John would be Keith Herrig, constructing works with images and symbols aimed at communicating a specific message.

And now I can't help but wonder about the painting techniques of George and Ringo...

Happy Birthday Chopin!

2010-03-01T18:16:00.002-05:00

Yes, today is Chopin's birthday. I heard a piece on the radio today about his funeral march (you know, "dun dun dun-dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dunnnnnnnnnn"). It's become ubiquitous in popular culture and parodied by everyone from Monty Python to Porky Pig. Funny how just a few notes can be almost universally recognized that way... I also learned that this march was actually inspired by/a variation on a funeral piece from an Italian opera -and it's sad that the world can know the variation so well, but I can't even remember the name of this particular opera. Oh, well.

Rock is For The Birds

2010-02-26T04:43:00.012-05:00

John Cage would surely be pleased by this exhibit, which can be visited at London's Barbicon Centre. Céleste Boursier-Mougenot has created an installation in which 20 pairs of zebra finches are housed in an aviary furnished with, among other items, an array of Les Paul electric guitars. A video of the resulting interactions between birds and guitars is posted on the exhibit website, and is required viewing for soundscape enthusiasts. The following text is taken from the Barbicon website.

Trained as a musician and composer, French artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot creates works by drawing on the rhythms of daily life to produce sound in unexpected ways. His installation for The Curve will take the form of a walk-though aviary for a flock of zebra finches, furnished with electric guitars and other instruments and objects. As the birds go about their routine activities, perching on or feeding from the various pieces of equipment, they create a captivating, live soundscape.

Perfectly Imperfect

2010-02-20T10:14:00.004-05:00

I think it's interesting how we, as a culture, have somehow managed to come to a consensus on what constitutes a good singing voice. With so many people having so many different sounds, it's amazing how we seem to think that there are common traits that make a voice nice to listen to. Then again, we've done this with physical appearance too, and there's plenty of variety there, so I really shouldn't be surprised. And just how different physical attributes are viewed as beautiful by different cultures, so too, are ways of singing. In many Asian cultures, a woman's voice is supposed to ring in her head as she sings, creating a high-pitched and piercing sound. In certain African cultures, low, melodious, almost guttural styles of singing are the norm. There's really quite a bit of variety out there as far as styles, or methods of singing go, and it's kind of a shame that we aren't more accepting of them in this country.

Anyway, I recently read an article about an opera singer, Maria Callas, whose voice has been wow-ing people for ages, and this in large part, due to its unconventional nature. In the 1950s, Callas was performing as Brunhilde in Wagner's Die Walkure. It was a role which required a heavy voice, something that played to Callas' strengths. And then, on short notice, she was called in to play the part of Elvira in Bellini's I Puritani, perhaps the antithesis of Wagner. What's more is that many people thought she couldn't pull it off. Callas was a dramatic soprano, and this role called for an impressive high range and a fluid, fast delivery, which is usually difficult for more dramatic singers. But Callas pulled it off and did so with a voice no one had before heard.

Her rise in the opera world was controversial as most people couldn't yet fathom how this singer appeared to have two separate voices, a bewildering range that many had never before heard. And it's this uncommon ability that is believed to be the cause of her decline. As opera singers go, Callas's voice began to deteriorate while she was still pretty young and it's believed that this was due to her lack of technique essential to maintain her ambitious vocal endeavors. Critic and voice teacher Conrad Osbourne explained it as such: "It's very unusual to combine those two ways of singing and to extend the range over that wide of a compass. And if your structural technique -I'm talking about the way the voice is balanced and structured so that when you throw a lot of energy into it, the way an athlete does, the coordinations that respond are balanced and efficient- isn't true all the way up and down that very wide range, then you're inviting some trouble." But many feel that this recklessness and the imperfections it brought into her performance was what set Callas apart. It made her extremely distinctive and expressive, allowing her complexity and flexibility.

As many of her fans would say, her voice was perfectly imperfect.

Love Songs Revisited

2010-02-12T18:33:00.002-05:00

I was thinking today, with Valentine's Day coming up and everything, about love songs... again. Prior discussions in the blog have concluded that the label "love song" is applicable to more than what initially comes to mind. That is, the verdict held that break-up songs, good-riddance songs, songs of unrequited love, songs of frustration with a significant other and the more obvious "you're-my-soul-mate-and-I-love-you" songs all qualify.

But upon reflection of this seemingly broad definition of a love song, it occurred to me that, perhaps it's still not broad enough. This collection of love songs fails to recognize that there are other kinds of love out there other than that which immediately comes to mind on Valentine's Day, and I think that these are worthy of inclusion.

The Greeks had this all figured out. They were very specific when they spoke of love, which I suppose comes in handy when you want to make very clear just how you love someone (no, "I like you, but I don't like like you" problems). They actually had four different words for love:

1.) Eros (air-ose)- a passionate love, a sensual desire or longing

2.)Philia (fil-ee- uh)- a friendship-type love, dispassionate and virtuous

3.)Storge (store-jee)-a natural affection, like the kind of love that parents have for their children

4.)Agape (uh-gah-pay)- a selfless, giving love; utter contentment

Those songs considered "love songs" should be able to run the entire gamut and not be confined to any one definition -but they often aren't. I mean, a song about a father's love for his son wouldn't qualify in the minds of most people. I don't think that's fair.

And personally, I think the stigma that surrounds Valentine's Day would be less and that more people could let themselves enjoy the holiday if all four kinds of love were equally represented. I love making and giving valentines as much as the next eight year old, but all the mushy-gushy, ooey-gooey, lovey-dovey romantic stuff isn't for me. And besides, a holiday with so much chocolate involved should be for everyone, right?

Another Kind of Dialogue

2010-02-08T19:33:00.003-05:00

I had the opportunity today to see the Brotherhood Singers perform in Steigerwald. A Capella has always impressed me, but after all this thinking about improv and the communication required between musicians, I'm seeing it in a whole new light. Just how well must these guys know each other to be able to sing like that? I know they rehearse and everything, but I'm sure they can improv too. Isn't that kind of how a Capella got its start anyway? I just have to admire the communication that goes on to be able to play off one another's voices that way. And the rules of musical dialogue must still apply: don't monopolize the conversation, let others' voices be heard if they have something important to say, take turns letting each other lead while playing a more supportive role yourself...

It's neat to get to see this all played out using a voice as opposed to an instrument, but then again, I think that these men use their voices in such a way so as to be regarded as musicians rather than singers...

John Cage and Hollywood

2010-02-06T08:21:00.007-05:00

Readers of this blog might be interested to learn of the presence of a couple of John Cage compositions on the soundtrack to Martin Scorsese's new film, Shutter Island. The great Robbie Robertson, former guitarist and songwriter from The Band, produced the album. Robertson is quoted in the press release as saying "this may be the most outrageous and beautiful soundtrack I've ever heard." One suspects that Mr. Robertson has heard his share of outrageous and beautiful soundtracks, so this is definitely an album worth looking into.

Striking a Balance

2010-02-06T07:05:00.002-05:00

Have you ever listened to a CD from a new group you'd never heard before, listened to the disk all the way through, and not even realized that you'd gone through twenty songs because, really, they all kind of sounded alike? That happens quite often when I choose at random CDs to listen to from the library, and it got me thinking about how there's a certain balance that must be struck when a musical group or artist works on becoming established. This balance is between the objectives of making each piece new and innovative, keeping it interesting, and being consistent enough so as to establish a certain sound by which they are recognized.

This is why I appreciate the merits of a mix CD. Each song is -hopefully- different from the one before it and very rarely does the ear get tired of listening to the same kind of sound again and again (not saying it doesn't happen, though -especially if the artists chosen subscribe to a certain musical genre). The experience is a far cry from, say, listening to an AC/DC album all the way through, where, when you've listened to one song, you've heard them all.

And yet, there's merit to the idea that the public should be able to hear a song and say to themselves, "Hey, isn't this so-and-so?" Wanting that recognition is totally understandable. It's a mark of style, the same way people can look at a painting and say, "Hey, isn't that a Van Gogh?" The important thing for the artist, no matter the medium, is to make sure that their audience doesn't get tired of it. Variety is nice. Then again, I'm sure the audience can get attached to an artist's style and expect that when they listen to their work. It serves as something reassuring to come back to, because they'll know what to expect.

Unless, of course, the artist initially chooses to be consistently inconsistent from the get-go...

Arbitrary Lines

2010-02-05T07:05:00.001-05:00

There are too many arbitrary lines drawn in life. Designating some sounds and music and others as noise, deciding that this piece is jazz and the others are not jazz... it's as if we feel the need to put everything in a box, a category, just because it's the easiest way for us to understand it -regardless of the fact that it doesn't fit. It's like trying to put a cloud in a box. You can try, and I suppose you could do it, but is it still a cloud in there? Personally, I think you lose something when you do that. To try to slap labels on facets of the human experience is to overlook the fact that it is made up of a continuous spectrum. Though when split up into parts, it undeniably becomes easier to recognize and analyze, to divide it up is to miss out, to impoverish oneself.

Igor Stravinsky

2010-01-30T20:44:00.002-05:00

I recently wrote a paper on Igor Stravinsky for a class, and until doing the bit of research this paper required, I was familiar with Stravinsky's major works (mostly his ballets), but hadn't fully appreciated just how controversial he was in his day. He was like Cage, in a way; willing to try anything and everything out. He dabbled in neoclassicism and modernism, experimented with different methods of composition, accused his contemporaries of being "wrong," and then proceeded to change his mind. Finally, he concluded that his music should be about the music, rather than about an arbitrary narrative or agenda assigned to it. Then again, he would also go on to compose circus music for Ringling Bros., but a guy's got to eat, right?

I wonder if he and Cage ever had the opportunity to meet...

... and what Cage would have thought of Coco Chanel...

It's a Clarinet! No, it's a Saxophone! No, it's a...

2010-01-30T07:34:00.002-05:00

It's pronounced "zah FOON." And what is it? Well, it's a bamboo sax that was invented over two decades ago over in Maui, Hawaii. A cross somewhere between a saxophone and a clarinet (though I think it looks more like its mom, myself) it's a bit like a fancy travel-sized hybrid of the two. What used to be a job for a whistle, the xaphoon can be taken anywhere and played any time the mood strikes (note: "any time" doesn't mean that there are not times that are not so appropriate -that is, musicians should use their discretion) and it sounds so much fancier than a whistle. It uses a tenor sax reed and has a chromatic range of two octaves, allowing it to have a more sophisticated sound than other simple instruments of the same size. Woha! Move over harmonica! This little guy is sure to be the instrument of choice among vagabonds, hobos, outlaws and men who get paid to lead the mice out of town.

It's now being marketed as a "Pocket Sax," in fact and I hear that many people are growing more and more fond of it. There are apparently three xaphoon-only instrumental CDs out there and Paul Simon, it's said, used the instrument prominently in his 2006 U.S. tour.

Personally, I think it's cute. And it comes in fun colors (red, green, blue, and probably pink), so what's not to love?

Bubbles, Bubbles Everywhere

2010-01-23T07:05:00.010-05:00

I've got two words for you: bubble organ. Yeah. Pretty awesome, right? And apart from just sounding cool, this thing is real. An arguably "musical" instrument, the bubble organ was built by Aaron Wendel as an attempt to explore the sounds of bubbling inside of tubes and how this sound could be control ed for the purposes of musical composition. Built from pieces of old furniture, wood and rain collected from the alleys and dumpsters around his apartment, Aron's bubble organ is truly a 100% recycled machine- but that's not all!

Beginning with two balloons attached to either end of a pipe that runs below the keyboard, the bubble organ is controlled by small plastic tubes that attach to this pipe, running through the keys that were created out of clothespins and Popsicle sticks. These keys pinch down on a piece of heat shrink tubing, essentially controlling the flow of each tube. The tubes running from the keys lead to a pool of water at the bottom of the box. On top of the plastic tube system inside the box rest PVC pipes covered by gutters, cut to resonate a specific pitch. When depressed, the air flow is allowed to move from the balloons through the tubes, bubbling inside the PVC pipe corresponding to the keys played.

Supercool instrument, right? Reminds me of Cage's Water Walk, where musicians blew air into water through straws to get that bubbling noise -only this bubble organ is admittedly much more elaborate. And probably more fun.

Soundworlds Conversations

2010-01-20T06:25:00.009-05:00

I just discovered a fascinating article chronicling the efforts of two avant-garde composer/improvisors to find ways of interacting creatively with the soundscapes of remote areas of Scotland. The idea was to have the musicians improvise in response to various specific sound environments found within these areas. This is a project that no doubt would have fascinated Cage, as it combines the practice of free improvisation with a Cagean openness to "letting sounds be themselves." One of the musicians featured in the article, renowned English saxophonist John Butcher, may visit us at Thomas More next fall. Please stay tuned to this frequency for more information on upcoming Thomas More experimental music events. See John Butcher's website for more information on his work.

Music and Lyrics

2010-01-16T05:46:00.002-05:00

I was thinking the other day about how the relationship between music and lyrics can be likened to the relationship between music and dance. Just as Cage and Cunningham held that dance and music could coexist independently of one another, so, too can music and lyrics. The separation of music and words is perhaps a bit more easy to swallow than the separation of music and dance, seeing as they're both sonic phenomena and certainly evolved independently of one another. So, this is no new and radical thought, but I got to thinking about how, as accompaniment to music, lyrics, like dance, seem to run on a spectrum with regards to their dependency on that music.

Some lyrics can stand alone and not seem to be missing anything at all. That is to say, with music they are lyrics, and without music, they become poetry or prose. Other lyrics, however, seem to be completely dependant upon musical accompaniment, sounding a bit absurd outside a musical context. These are likely the songs that one might try to sing to oneself, but find difficult because there's so much missing without the music present -or songs one sings anyway and no one else can decipher what it's actually supposed to sound like. Much like tap dance, there are lyrics that are sung with the music, outside the music, around the music, and in and out of the notes. And then, there are words that aren't sung so much for their content -unlike the aforementioned poetry- but for their own musical qualities.

It really is wonderful just how multifaceted words can be.

Lost in Translation

2010-01-10T07:57:00.002-05:00

Remember that game you probably played when you were a kid called telephone? Maybe you called it something else, but the basic premise was to sit in a circle (or square, or oblong shape, -whatever your geometric preference) and one person would begin by whispering a phrase into the ear of the person next to him. The message would be relayed in a similar manner until everyone in the group had received it and passed it on and it got back to the person who sent it. What generally occurred -and what made the game any fun at all- was that the message would have been misheard and/or paraphrased and/or misinterpreted and re summarized, so that by the time it got back to the sender, it was drastically changed from its original form. This type of message metamorphosis occurs outside of parlor games as well - we all know how stories, once told and retold and retold, tend to become fantastic caricatures of their former selves.

With the widespread conversion of music to digital form, this same phenomenon is happening to our favorite songs; that is, in going from vinyl, to CD, to itunes, some might argue that certain works have lost their integrity, or at least been changed enough from their original form for people to take notice. The process of digital compression is one factor in this change. Digital compression allows a song to go from being a very big sound file in its natural state to a very small file in your iPod — so you can carry your entire record library in your pocket. The challenge is to maintain the quality of a CD (or record), but to stuff it into a much smaller space, and here's where your calculus comes in. You start out with a very smooth sound wave to be stored in digital form. You want to reproduce a smooth curve with square blocks, which are the digital numbers (your 0s and1s). The only way you can make square blocks look like a smooth curve is by using lots and lots and lots of very, very, very small blocks so it ends up looking as if it's smooth. Using all of these blocks means lots of storage, so practically speaking, you end up using fewer, bigger blocks- which means you end up not representing that curve very smoothly at all.

Confusing, I know. Go back and read that again if you must. You'll get it. I promise.

The difference between the smooth curve and the rough edges you end up with in the digital recording, you can think of as "noise" because it's perceived as noise. It's heard as an error, something that wasn't there in the original recording. The trick is to take the noise — which is the loss of fidelity — and just make it so you can't hear it anymore. It's kind of like having a conversation in a quiet room, versus a conversation on a loud and noisy street. You're going to miss a few words as you chat by the busy intersection.

Okay, so there are technical barriers to overcome. That can be understood, but digital compression isn't the only culprit behind the change. One must also consider what has come to be called the "loudness wars." Basically, modern engineers tweak original recordings, editing so that it "jumps out" at you. This is nothing new. It actually goes all the way back to vinyl disk cutting, when one producer after another just wanted to have his 45 sound louder than the next guy's. This is still a motivation for some producers. If their record jumps out of your iPod compared with the song that preceded it, then they've accomplished their goal, and so in the process of this editing, quiet sounds become louder and louder sounds softer, and you can see where a song's integrity might be changed.

For example, the release of Metallica's album, Death Magnetic, last year caused quite a stir because it came out simultaneously to fans as a version on Guitar Hero. The Guitar Hero version apparently doesn't have all the digital domain compression that the CD has. So players of the game were able to hear what it could have been before this compression. The result was that 10,000 or more fans signed an online petition to get the band to remix the record.
I don't think that these "remastered" versions of music are necessarily bad, but they shouldn't be synonymous with the original works. There's danger in losing the originals if we accept reworked digital forms of music as simply replacements. It'd be like "improving upon" the Mona Lisa. Yes it would be restored, maybe there are even things that could have been done better the first time around that are fixed... but is it still the Mona Lisa? Is a reproduction the same as an original work? Is a forgery -even an excellent one- worth the same to you as the original? Even if DaVinci were the one to make the changes, I think there are still some who would take issue- and, as seen with the Metallica album, there are at least 10,000.

Choral Kinks

2010-01-08T07:30:00.002-05:00

I found out the other day that, back at the end of December, Ray Davies, frontman for The Kinks, had decided to pair some of the groups most popular songs from the 60s with a full choir. Now, I know that the instuments with which a piece is played can drastically change the way the piece is recieved, and this choir thing had me a little worried. But, turns out that much of the material Davies chose for his new choral album, comes from the group's 1968 record, The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society, which is composed of many simple songs with beautiful harmonies. All in all, it seems that the songs performed are well suited to a choral rendition... and that the New York City-based Dessoff Chamber Choir can do pretty well on little to no rehersal.

Why Beethoven is Wrong

2010-01-07T09:11:00.003-05:00

It was oft discussed in FYS and continues to be referenced in conversation, but I do not think that it was ever written in this blog what Cage meant when he said that "Beethoven was wrong." And so I thought I'd take the time to explain this statement in context and to record here what was being said when Cage uttered these fightn' words.

In the 1930s, Cage had studied with the Austro-Hungarian composer Arnold Schoenberg, who had settled in Los Angeles in 1933. It was during this time that Cage discovered his lack of aptitude for harmony and after two years of study, Schoenberg also saw this. Harmony, maintained Schoenberg, is an essential for writing music, an obstacle which Cage would always encounter if he continued to compose. If it were true that Cage had no feeling for harmony, as he so claimed, then, said Schoenberg, it would "become a wall through which [he] could not pass." In response to this, Cage recalled saying, "In that case I will devote my life to beating my head against that wall."

In his battle against harmony, Cage was not alone, finding two allies in the French composer Erik Satie and Anton Webern, a former student of Schoenberg's. It was after studying the works of these two men, Cage came to mount his attack on Beethoven. Cage reasoned that, in the field of structure, there has been only one new idea since Beethoven and this new idea was what Cage saw in the works of Satie and Webern. Beethoven defined the parts of a composition by means of harmony (already we see why Cage would develop a sort of vendetta with the man). In contrast, Satie and Webern define the parts of a composition by use of duration, time lengths. To this divergence in compositional relation of parts to the whole, Cage pose the question, who is right? He also provided an answer:

" I answer immediately and unequivocally, Beethoven was in error, and his influence. which has been as extensive as it is lamentable, has been deadening to the art of music."

One wouldn't be alone in questioning whether such a statement were simply a way for Cage to get around the issue of his personal handicap with regards to harmony, but even if this were so, Cage uses logic to back up such an antagonizing statement. As he saw it, regarding music in terms of harmony left no room for silence. If one considers that silence is the opposite of sound, it is therefore, sound's essential partner. Sound is characterised by pitch, volume, timbre and duration. Silence, however, can be characterized by duration only and cannot be heard in terms of pitch or harmony, but only in terms of length. And, I mean, who can argue silence's necessity to music? We even write notes for rests.

All this considered, Cage was drawn to the conclusion that of the four fundamental characteristics of the material of music, duration was most important... and that Beethoven is wrong.

Poetry and Music

2010-01-06T21:45:00.002-05:00

I read this today and decided it was too good to keep to myself. I would undoubtedly forget it eventually anyway. And so, here it is:

"All deep things are Song. It seems somehow the very central essence of us, Song... The Greeks fabled of Sphere-Hamonies: it was the feeling they had of the inner structure of Nature; that the soul of all her voices and utterances was perfect music. Poetry, therefore, we will call musical Thought. The Poet is he who thinks in that manner... See deep enough and you see musically; the heart of Nature being everywhere music, if you can only reach it."
-- Thomas Carlyle ("The Hero as Poet")

Ringing (and honking and buzzing) in the New Year

2010-01-01T07:17:00.003-05:00

Whoever it was who tapped into a niche market for what have come to be called "noise makers," must have been someone well-versed in the practices of good business. What is it that sets "noise makers" apart from any other maker of noise. Aren't there other gadgets that would suffice, toys that would serve the same purpose, objects perhaps even better suited to the job? The term "noise maker" would seem to apply to any object manufactured for the exclusive purpose of making noise. Umm, pardon me, but wouldn't any instrument apply? Or maybe this is a case of "all doves are pigeons, but not all pigeons are doves." Perhaps "noise maker" applies to instruments used for making noise, and not for making music, which explains why brass, strings and woodwinds are out, but doesn't explain why whiny two year olds don't merit the title...

Regardless, I think it's telling of our consumer society that we must go out and buy items specifically manufactured for "noise making" when most everyone has a perfectly good supply of pots and pans in the kitchen. And I can't help but wonder where that lucky dog who first told consumers that they needed special equipment for making chaotic and annoying noises is reclining now.

Sensory Overload

2009-12-28T06:31:00.005-05:00

Cage's 1966 piece, Variations VII, is a rather unforgettable production. Wanting to use sounds that were available at the time of the performance, Cage asked that 10 telephone lines be installed in the performance space (an airplane hanger, I think) by the New York Telephone Company. In addition, he had lines opened in various places in New York City, including Luchow's, the Aviary, the 14th Street Con Edison electric power station, the ASPCA lost dog kennel, the New York Times press room, and Merce Cunningham’s dance studio. Magnetic pickups on the telephone receivers fed these sound sources into Cage's sound manipulation system back at the hanger. Cage also had 6 contact microphones on the performing platform itself and 12 contact microphones on household appliances such as a blender, a juicer, a toaster, a fan, etc. Thirty photocells and lights were mounted at ankle level around the performance area, which activated the different sound sources as the performers moved around. The grand result was a technological, cacophonous, electrically powered extravaganza that had the potential to send certain individuals into bouts of hyperventilation. A true sensory overload.

Despite the regrettable lack of kitchen appliances, I might say that I'd experienced a similar "performance" yesterday afternoon, when I accompanied my brother to Kenwood mall. I haven't been to a shopping mall for about six years, and so had had ample time to forget just how unpleasant they are. Upon entering I was filled with a certain disgusted feeling as I walked past ridiculously clothed manikins and displays of shoes and handbags for which one might pay well over a sensible amount of money (and then found myself thinking of starving people in underprivelaged nations...). Shoppers ambled through from store to store, carrying their bags filled with new purchases (lots of Macy's bags. There must have been an after-Christmas sale), and all of the women seemed to be dressed rather similarly in straight-leg jeans with boots and long graphic t-shirts. The constant bombardment by vendors and salesmen attempting to sell you something, anything, was not to be ignored and was greatly unappreciated (though, truth be told, the glare I gave to the man trying to get me to buy a manicure package might have been a little harsh). But before I let myself go on to a diatribe regarding American consumerism as perpetuated by a capitalist society, let me get to something more Cagean.

While my brother made his purchase at the Apple store, I sat on one of the benches outside the shops, watching the zombies-I mean, shoppers -as they walked on by. As I sat there for what seemed like far too long a time, I closed my eyes and took in all of the sounds. There was a roaring tide of hundreds of conversations, some Christmas music playing back by the food court, a baby crying somewhere to the left, the sound of a child's echoing footsteps running on the hard linoleum floor. There was that guy at the kiosk practically shouting about the wonders that dead sea bath products will do for the skin, the techno music coming from inside a clothing store, and the sound of the automated directory, speaking in oh-so-polite tones. And then there were the smells. The perfume counter, the french fries and soft pretzels down at the food court, the pine-scented artificial Christmas trees, the chlorine at the fountain. I opened my eyes and took in the carnival of visual stimulation: bright red Christmas displays, flashing twinkle lights, the loudly dressed manikins and the mulling, also loudly dressed people.

This was definitely a Variations VII-type performance, though perhaps a more "multi sense" as the elements of sight and smell were added to all of the sounds. I realized that all of the constant, sensory stimulation must be used purposefully, likely to sell us things, as all other elements of shopping malls do. Regardless, the experience was largely overwhelming for those few moments and I was more than happy to see my brother strolling out of the Apple store with his computer program in tow.

For the record, I do not plan on returning to any shopping mall for quite sometime. And you can't make me.

True to Life

2009-12-22T07:04:00.009-05:00

Much of the philosophy behind Cage's work is centered around perceiving life as it is and yet as art- perceiving life as art. His use of indeterminacy further establishes this. Life's occurrences happen at random, with no preconceived orchestration, thus, composing a piece by use of indeterminate methods mimics this quality. Cage's desire to mimic life and stay true to indeterminacy is clear when one regards his attitudes toward recorded music. Once a performance has been captured, it is no longer a living performance. It becomes two-dimensional, a characiture of the real thing, and no longer mirrors the way life occurs, because the record will always perform the piece in the same way every time (unless your record player is dysfunctional, adding a degree of indeterminacy to the listening of the piece, but that's another matter altogether, for the real life experience wouldn't be of the performance itself, but would be a real life experience of the record played on this particular record player in your parlor).

Recording a performance is an attempt to capture and freeze a fleeting moment, a phenomena in time and space. Cage seemed to be aware that, in real life, one cannot capture such moments, that there are things in this world that are temporary. Life has a progression of sorts that does not always stop for as long as we might like. Leaves change from green to red and yellow, fall from the trees and will inevitably brown and crumble. Sunrises and sunsets will begin and end with or without our blessing. Children will progress into adults despite our demands that they stay as they are. We have put much effort into contriving ways to get around this steady march of time by, say, recording music or taking a photograph, but will always fall short of replicating the real life occurrence.

Perhaps Cage realized, and wanted others to see, that fleeting moments should not be lamented for their loss, but celebrated for their occurrence, however short it may be. That is, rather than regret having lost something, rather than brood over having had something that one can't keep, one should instead revel in the joy it brought while it was present.

Dancing in Silence

2009-12-21T10:50:00.004-05:00

Since learning of Merce Cunningham's approach to dance and his work with John Cage, I've had a heightened awareness of the degree of dependence that a dancer has on music. In my own experience, that dependence has been rather great and I feel at times handicapped my my reliance on music to dance to. Lately, I've made a conscious effort to dance without music, to focus on the movements alone, instead of the movements as a means to accentuate musical notes. I've also just finished choreographing a dance combination that was put together entirely without music. Let me just mention that the process was unbelievably frustrating, because choreographing with music is hard enough for me, but without music, you're starting from scratch, without any musical suggestions for movement. The process does, however, focus one's attention solely on the movement and, though I intend to dance this with music, I feel like this has helped in polishing the dance. You can concentrate on making the motions without music to distract.

Just like Cage's emphasis on sounds as ends in themselves, rather than a means to an end, Cunningham's focus was on the movement of the dancer. Conventional elements of dance structure were absent from his work: conflict and resolution, cause and effect, climax and anti-climax. Cunningham was not interested in telling stories or exploring psychological states, and yet this isn't to say that the theatrics were absent. Many claimed that the drama arose from the sheer intensity of the kinetics. Since he wasn't telling stories, Cunningham's dancers were never actors, never pretending to be anything other than themselves. He once said to his troupe that “you are not necessarily at your best, but at your most human.”

For me, that's scary. Uncomfortable, really. To get up and dance and not be anything other than me? To not become an actress or even a physical expression of the music takes away all feelings of security up on stage. I'd feel naked. And that's terrifying, and utterly wonderful, and yet still terrifying! What an experience for the dancer, let alone the audience. I think what Cunningham does with this is the same thing that Cage did with sounds. He puts the ordinary, everyday in a context that allows it to be viewed as art.

It's interesting how each man's medium can be so different and convergent all at once.

The Musical Box Again, and Jazz Police

2009-12-13T12:42:00.005-05:00

Once again, the The Musical Box blog is essential reading. This time around, a review of Saturday night's Dave Rempis and Frank Rosaly performance in Lexington. As Penny points out in her excellent post on this blog (see below), those of us who were lucky enough to have been at Friday's Thomas More workshop with Rempis and Rosaly witnessed something similar.

On another note entirely, apparently one must be very careful when performing contemporary or experimental jazz in Spain. It seems a disgruntled fan at a Spanish jazz festival called the police to report that the music he was being "subjected to" was not jazz. Indeed, it was some pernicious form of contemporary music that might in some cases prove injurious to one's health. The truly bizarre feature of the story is that the police responded. Read the details here as reported in the Guardian.

Improv Diaglogue

2009-12-13T06:39:00.006-05:00

If you were one of the unlucky few to not make it to Friday night's jazz performance, well, I have no words of comfort for you, because it really was as good as advertised and it's just too bad you missed it. Spectacular, really. Anyway, after performing a couple of numbers, Dave Remphis and Frank Rosaly opened up the floor for questions and over the course of a half and hour, I gained a new insight into the inner workings of improvisation.

Improv has always been bit of an elusive practice, to me. The concept makes perfect sense, but I never really understood the practical application, that is, I always thought that there was some sort of special understanding involved with it that I was just unable to grasp- that the musicians must just know something I don't. But after the conversation that took place on Friday, I feel like just a bit of light has been shed into the dark corner in which I always thought improvisation was hiding (and I came to realize that it wasnt actually hiding there at all). Frank and Dave described improvisational music -in the context of playing with other musicians- as a dialogue, a conversation between the instruments. For example, the saxophonist starts with a few notes, the drummer responds, the saxophonist responds to the drummer and so on. It was clear that both musicians on Friday were listening to each other, basing their next move on what the other was doing.

Frank emphasized that hearing what the other musicians are doing is crucial, as is knowing the musical personalities of those one happens to be playing with. He described this with a marvelous analogy about the complexities of conversations with other people. You have your friends with whom you can talk about politics, your friends with whom you can talk out your problems, those you can joke around with, ect. You have to know the musicians you're playing with in a similar manner, because if you try to converse with any of them in the wrong way, you mess things up. That is, you can't try to talk politics with the friends you normally goof off with, because the result is an awkward silence, or simply an uncomfortable exchange.

Knowing these "musical personalities" is also instrumental (bad pun, I know) when it comes to performing well. You can't play with someone who wants to dominate the space, because they, in effect, dominate the conversation and none of the other musicians are going to like that- especially if said musician tries to play over everyone else (Frank mentioned performing with guitarists who just keep turning the volume up on their amplifiers to stay in control of the exchange, much like someone who simply keeps talking louder whenever you try to make a comment). One can't play well with someone who always attempts to control the direction the performance is going, bringing it back to what they want to play, similar to a person who always tries to bring the conversation back around to what they want to talk about. When asked about solos, the guys said that you know when they're going to happen, because the other musician is playing something that takes precedence, that needs to be heard. I see this as what happens when one stops mid sentence to allow someone else's thoughts to be vocalized, because they deserve the floor at the time, because "hey, they might have a good idea- let's listen."

And now, improv is beginning to make perfect sense.... So does this mean that someone doing improv by themselves is performing a monologue?

I love analogies.

Rempis and Rosaly on The Musical Box

2009-12-11T08:57:00.003-05:00

Dave Rempis and Frank Rosaly are visiting Thomas More this evening for a performance/workshop on free improvisation. There is a nice article about them on The Musical Box. Please have a look, and stop by tonight if you are free and looking for some exciting music and discussion.

Kookaburra

2009-12-05T11:44:00.004-05:00

Back in preschool, we used to sing this song. Didn't find out what a kookaburra actually was until much later (assumed it was a bird, of course, but could never be sure). Recently, this childhood song to so many has been at the center of an intellectual property battle. That's right. And I wonder what'll be next... Ring Around the Rosy?

So, in 1981, Men at Work's "Down Under" became an international pop hit. Twenty eight years later, contestants on an Australian music-themed TV quiz show called Spicks and Specks were asked to guess what children's song "Down Under" contained. No one could figure it out. But guess which one it was. Yep. After the TV show aired, Larrikin Music Publishing filed suit against the two Men at Work members who wrote "Down Under." The "Kookaburra Song" was originally written by a Melbourne schoolteacher in 1934, for the Australian version of the Girl Scouts. According to Adam Simpson, who represents Larrikin Music Publishing in the lawsuit,

" 'Kookaburra' is a copyright work, just like any copyright work, and there are laws surrounding how it can be used." And I thought Girl Scouts were all about sharing. My bad.

Simpson claims that the laws governing fair use in the US are more restrictive in Australia and he's got quite an argument for showing that "Kookaburra" is used significantly in"Down Under." I'll let him explain:

" 'Kookaburra' is a four-bar song. Over half that song is used in 'Down Under,' which is the test of law."

Wow. Two whole bars. What a crime. Simpson says the publisher should collect royalties whenever the Men at Work song is played. Apparently, this happens more frequently than you might expect: Simpson says it's often heard in advertising and in such films as Finding Nemo, Kangaroo Jack and a Crocodile Dundee film (might I point out that the song heard is "Down Under" and not "Kookaburra," but apparently, it's all the same). At the moment, Strykert and Hay, from Men at Work, receive 100 percent of the royalties from "Down Under."

Most Australians think this is ridiculous, but when asked if the lawsuit is really worthwhile, Simpson simply replies, "Yes, it is, and I can't go into any details because — the financials, of course, are still very confidential." Oh yes, but of course. The financials.

What I would like to know is: who was the guy who wrote the question for that quiz show?

Orquestra de Guitarres de Barcelona

2009-12-03T19:56:00.003-05:00

The United States isn't a stranger to Spanish guitar. For years the music's character has been pervasive in this country, with musicians continually noting guitarits such as Andre Segovia as influences. It's musical heritage that extends as far back as the Renaissance in Europe and modern instrument manufacturers cite the 19th century Spanish advancements in instrument design as pivotal to the development of the modern classical guitar. But only just recently, one of Spain's newest guitar innovations has reached this continent: the guitar orchestra.

Last week, the Orquestra de Guitarres de Barcelona (that's Guitar Orchestra of Barcelona, if you really need to know) began its tour of the US. Conducted by composer Sergi Vicente, the orchestra consists of 25 musicians all playing the same instrument -the Spanish guitar. They began as informal ensembles of seven or eight guitarists and really just got bigger from there. Now, they're playing things like Bach's Brandenburg Concertos and Albeniz’s Suite Espanola No. 1, to audiences of 1700 or more.

Pretty cool that a group as big as that can all play an instrument that isn't normally played in numbers like that. Funny how some instruments are designated as fit to be played in large numbers and others are not. Violins, yes. Kazoos, no. Just doesn't make any sense...

They're actually playing tonight at the Norton Center for the Arts at Centre College in Danville and the show would have already started like... 15 minutes ago. Sigh. Organic chemistry homework gets in the way of everything.

Intention

2009-11-30T07:17:00.002-05:00

Many writings on the compositions of John Cage refer to his practice of composing without an agenda. Certainly, when juxtaposed with many classical composers, contemporary and otherwise, it appears that Cage writes his music without an agenda, a motive, and end in mind. But I don't think this is so. I think Cage always had an agenda, or perhaps that's not the word for it. I believe Cage wrote music with intention, and this intention was different from the intentions of the other composers to which he is often compared.

Instead of writing with the intention of manipulation, with an Alfred Hitchcock-inspired formula for controlling the audience's emotions, Cage wrote music with the intention of giving the audience an experience, allowing them to feel however they chose to. The ambiguity of his compositions, rather than acting as an indication of lack of intention, serves to reveal his intention. I think people just assume that the intention isn't there, because they aren't expecting to have to regard music in such a way. It's an indirect analysis, really. Rather than the music itself appearing to perform the action that its composer intended, one has to regard Cage himself, and ask "now why would he do that?"

So maybe it's more fair to say that Cage had an agenda, but his music didn't...

Rempis and Rosaly at Thomas More

2009-11-26T06:41:00.006-05:00

You are hereby officially invited to end the semester in a joyfully indeterminate mode as Chicago jazz luminaries Dave Rempis (alto and tenor saxophone) and Frank Rosaly (drums) visit Thomas More College on December 11th for a very special workshop on the aesthetics of free improvisation. Both musicians are very active in the Chicago "experimental jazz " and improvised music scene, and both are frequent collaborators with drummer Tim Daisy (Klang, Vox Arcana). Rempis plays with Daisy in Vandermark 5, one of the most celebrated and influential ensembles to emerge from Chicago in the past decade. 7:oo p.m in the Science Lecture Hall. See below for more on Rempis and Rosaly.

"During live performances, Rosaly is intensely animated, so much so that it seems initially distracting. He hovers over the drums in constant motion, his shoulders rolling and arms twitching in anticipation of his next strike. He puts his whole body into the drumming, and once he really kicks the songs into high gear, his curious postures no longer seem unusual but rather essential. Whether he’s pounding away intensely or simply laying out a delicate hi-hat pattern, his motions seem to translate the sounds into body language, and watching him feel the music in that way really conveys the physicality of what the band is doing." --- Michael Patrick Brady, Pop Matters

Rosaly’s drumming is easily recognizable, on record and live . It melts between the perfect complimentary player and the ultimate standout. His rhythms are unstoppable and perfectly timed. His solos are imaginative and expressive. --Adam Kivel, Consequence of Sound

DAVE REMPIS

Over the last decade, Dave Rempis has emerged as one of the most active

young players in the Chicago jazz and improvised music scene. Rempis

graduated from Northwestern University in 1997 with a degree in anthropology,

focusing in ethnomusicololgy, and a year spent at the University of Ghana, Legon

in 1995-96. Since 1998, his work with the Vandermark Five as the "other"

saxophonist has established him as one of the up-and-coming voices of his

generation, and has also provided him the opportunity to perform extensively in

clubs, concert halls, and festivals throughout the U.S., Canada, and Europe. His

own groups, including the Rempis Percussion Quartet, Triage, The Engines, The

Rempis/Daisy Duo, and The Dave Rempis Quartet, have toured regularly

throughout Europe and North America, and have been documented on the

Okkadisk, 482 Music, Solitaire, Utech, and Not Two record labels. In addition to

these groups, Rempis plays regularly with Ken Vandermark's Territory Band, The

Ingebrigt Haker-Flaten Quintet, The Outskirts, and the Rempis/Bishop/

Kessler/Zerang Quartet. His frequent ad hoc collaborations have included

performances with Paul Lytton, Axel Doerner, Peter Brotzmann, Hamid Drake,

Kevin Drumm, Paul Nilsson-Love, Tony Buck, David Stackenas, and Joe Morris.

As a founding member of the Chicago presenters' collective Umbrella Music,

Rempis curates a weekly concert series at Elastic, as well as the annual Umbrella

Music Festival, now in its fourth year. Rempis has also been named as a Talent

Deserving Wider Recognition in both the alto and baritone saxophone categories

in the annual Downbeat Magazine International Critics’ Poll.

www.daverempis.com

FRANK ROSALY

Frank Rosaly is a percussionist and composer currently living in Chicago. Over

the last 10 years he has become an integral part of the Chicago scene,

navigating a fine line between the vibrant improvised music, indie-rock,

experimental music, and jazz communities. He contributes much of his time to

performing, composing, teaching, and organizing musical events, while

managing a heavy touring schedule that takes him throughout North America

and Europe.

Frank is currently active in many different groups. Some of these include Rob

Mazurek’s Mandarin Movie, The Rempis Percussion Quartet, The Ingebrigt Haker-

Flaten Quintet, Jeff Parker/Nels Cline Quartet, Matana Robert's Chicago Project,

Fred Lonberg-Holm’s Valentine Trio, Keefe Jackson’s Fast Citizens, The Jeb

Bishop Trio, Jason Adasievicz’s Rolldown, Jorrit Dijkstra’s Flatlands Collective,

The Chicago Lucern Exchange, and The Daniel Levin Trio. Rosaly also leads his

own quintet, Viscous, featuring his original compositions. Other performances in

the recent past include collaborations with Peter Brotzmann, Tony Malaby,

Anthony Coleman, Paul Flaherty, Marshall Allen, Louis Moholo, Eric Boeren, Ken

Vandermark, Michael Zerang, and Walter Weirbos, among many others.

http://www.frankrosaly.blogspot.com/

Creative License

2009-11-25T06:46:00.007-05:00

Just what requirements must a musician meet to "do a piece justice?" Where are limits, the parameters, the lines within which the musician must stay in order to "depict" the piece he or she plays... and what happens to the piece when these parameters are breached? In all fairness, I don't believe a line really exists, but historian and music writer, Stephen Davies once wrote an essay on the idea of authenticity in a musical performance that I thought was noteworthy.

First off, by "authenticity" Davies means, specifically, musical performances as performances of a particular composition (this, in contrast to authentic with respect to a musical style, or genre). That is, authenticity of a performance as a member of the entire class of performances recognized as that same composition, or a group of ideal performances of that piece. In short, "authentic" is used to acknowledge the creative role of the performer in faithfully realizing the composer's specifications.

Definitions out of the way, Davies first addresses the importance of the recreation of sounds in an authentic performance, as opposed to the recreation of "milieu," as he calls it. When Tchaikovsky wrote Swan Lake, he was probably intending for the score to be played by musicians using the instruments of and in the conditions available at the time. Therefore a decidedly authentic performance would employ the these types of conditions, for example, use of the instruments contemporary to the period of composition, an ensemble the size of which the composer had specified, and stylistic interpretation of the score in light of the practices and conventions of the time it was written in. But all of this is aimed at the recreation of the sound that the composer intended and nothing else. The ambiance within which the piece would have been presented to the composer' s contemporaries is not necessary (which rids of the potential mutiny of the orchestra at the proposition that they don leggings and ruffs) and the authenticity of the piece performed within a concert hall in front of a large audience is the same as that of the piece performed within an eighteenth century salon.

This said, Davies notes that the acoustics of the place in which certain compositions are performed does make a difference, and so there are buildings more suitable for some compositions and not others. Playing Beethoven's fifth symphony in a garage will not be as authentic as it performance in a concert hall with acoustics modified to reflect those of a wood-paneled room in which Beethoven might have had it performed. BUT this isn't because of the fact that the performance is in a garage and not a concert hall, instead, it's because the performance in the garage sounds different than in the concert hall. No tights or ruffs necessary. And if you're performing modern music written for modern settings, well, many problems like this become non issues.

This emphasis on the recreation of sound established, Davies stresses that the authenticity of a performance is judged against an ideal performance of the composition, rather than any one definitive performance. The sound that the authentic performance aspires to create is the sound that is possible, rather than actual. The notes written in the score, the directions written by the composer all must be observed, but even when this direction is given, it isn't always straightforward as to which and how each note is to be played and/or modified. Thus, tendencies of the performers of the composition at one time need not be the same as those tendencies of a performance at another time for both to be considered authentic. Also, the sounds sought to be faithfully reproduced need not be identical to those sounds produced at any one performance. Yes, a CD and a live performance of the same piece are allowed to sound different and both are equally authentic. Vivaldi, as played by an orchestra in Nebraska, is allowed to be different and yet is considered just as authentic as Vivaldi played by the symphony in New York.

Finally, Davies talks about the role that the composer's intentions play in the creation of an authentic performance. Long story short, he says that only those intentions which are normally accepted as definitive byt the conventions in which musical scores are read are relevant to judgements of authenticity. Translation: any other intentions that the composer might have had can be completely and totally ignored -and the piece is still in the running for being called authentic. Mwwa ha ha ha ha ha!!! And I have to agree with Davies on this point. The experience of the composer in creating music is different than that of the performer's creating music and though the composer may have written a piece with a certain intention, once that score is down on paper, it takes on an identity of its own. That's the great thing (and perhaps frustrating thing) about art. Once it's out there, it's still credited to the artist, but the world can interpret the work however it so chooses.

So, I think Davies explains the authenticity of a musical performance much the way a professor might consider a history paper. The author has to have the facts right, has to stay within the parameters of what is accepted as non-fiction, but once those bases are covered, he or she is given license to deduce from the facts whatever they want -and it's still an acceptable research paper.

'A Love Supreme' With Strings

2009-11-20T18:49:00.007-05:00

John Coltrane's A Love Supreme is a jazz classic, powerful and seemingly untouchable since its conception... sort of. Just a few months ago, the Turtle Island Jazz Quartet is said to have done this iconic piece justice, and with strings, to boot. The group released A Love Supreme: The Legacy of John Coltrane in April of 2007, and they recently performed a live version, at the Merkin Concert Hall in New York City receiving a Grammy for their audacity in reworking the seminal album (and probably because it sounded okay too). An ambitious take on the music of John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk and others, the centerpiece of the album is, without surprise, a string quartet reading of John Coltrane's 32-minute, A Love Supreme.

What I wanted to know was how a group can "recreate" and do justice to a jazz piece by Coltraine. I mean, the fact that he's Coltrane set aside, there's quite a bit of improv to account for... But the Turtle Island Quartet's violinist and arranger David Balakrishnan explains their approach to A Love Supreme through each of the movements: "Acknowledgment," "Resolution," "Pursuance" and "Psalm." The first movement is simply a transcription of the entire Coltrane saxophone solo, only orchestrated for strings (already I'm impressed). The second and third movements incorporate their own improvisation over the rhythm section, and the last movement, Psalm, is supposed to be a prayer to God. It's said that when Coltrane recorded it at the end of 1964, he brought a Psalm to the studio and set it on a music stand, then played the prayer note for note. And, of course, uniting the composition, Balakrishnan uses the four-note figure "A Love Su-preme" that underscores the original.

I still have a hard time wrapping my mind around how one can "recreate" a jazz piece with so much improvisation, when the composition belongs to someone else... and I find myself slipping back into those musings on plagiarism and the blurry lines separating an original work from a remix, from a new original work altogether...

I've become convinced that arbitrary labels really have no place in music.

Making a Mistake a Masterpiece

2009-11-18T07:13:00.003-05:00

My sketchbook is filled with many things. Some good, others decent, some that will never see the light of day. But I like to keep my not-so-great sketches. Why? Well, for different reasons. Sometimes I don't like something initially, but can go back and see what I was attempting to do, or I can see what had inspired me to start the sketch in the first place. And -though these events are rare- I can sometimes go back and see potential in these sketches, and rework them into something that I do like.

I know lots of other artists have had their flops. Picasso's painting, The Guitarist, was found, upon x-ray analysis, to have a painting of a bullfight underneath it. Many famous painters would start a work, and stop, leave it for months, and then come back to it and rework it. So, what I got to thinking was, given the method by which Cage composed his music, is it possible for him to have ever had a flop? Did he ever compose a piece that just didn't work out? Or, did he ever compose something that he gave up on, came back to, and then was happy with it? Was he ever happy with it? Could he have been happy or unhappy with the way things turned out when he threw his I-Ching coins and derived a musical score?

Guess it comes back to that saying in Alice in Wonderland: "If you don't know where you're going, then any road will take you there." Given that Cage didn't begin with the end in mind when he started, he can't really be unhappy with what was turned out, right? I mean, if you try to remove all of your own tastes and preferences from a work, then you can't complain that it isn't to your liking when it's finished. And I don't think that was the point.

I wonder how this works with other experimental composers. Not everyone goes as far as Cage in their method of composition, so I wonder how they go about deciding what is performance worthy and what merits flop status... And what is an experimental flop like?

Klang in Lexington Review

2009-11-18T05:02:00.003-05:00

Klang played in Lexington last night. Apparently, the band is equally comfortable in the soundworlds of Jimmy Giuffre, Benny Goodman, and, of course, John Cage. See the excellent music blog The Musical Box for a review. I hope to see everyone at the show tonight. It should be fun, and a nice chance for a Cage class reunion.

The Eye of the Storm

2009-11-15T12:46:00.004-05:00

My neighborhood is not a quiet place. In fact, it's a rather noisy suburb. The neighbor to my left rides a Harley, the neighbor to my right mows his lawn more than is probably necessary, and the neighbors adjacent to my backyard all own at least one rather vocal dog. My own family has three (sometimes four) dogs of our own to join into the chorus, my mother never learned to use an "inside voice" and my brother has to practice the electric guitar if he's ever going to get any good. It is therefore safe for one to assume that quiet time at my house is a very rare thing. Because it is. And that's too bad.

So in an attempt to find some sort of sonic solace, some reprieve from the constant audio stimulation provided by my "low-fi" neighborhood, I wake up very early on Sundays. Every Sunday morning I take a long walk just as the sun comes up and make my way down an old street that was probably, at one time, the only street in town. The houses on this street aren't so close together, there are no sidewalks, and there's a guy back there who has room enough for his four horses. In short, it's as close to a country lane as one gets in my neighborhood, and it's amazing how different it feels. Sunday mornings on this street make me feel like the world has slowed down, that everything has has paused to take a breath and -dare I say it- things are finally quiet. Without the traffic sounds and the barking dogs and the sound of children playing down the street, I can hear birdsong come to the foreground. I can actually hear the wind as it skims through the tree branches making the leaves whisper. I can pinpoint just exactly where each sound is coming from.

It's amazing how the quiet hits you, really. Hearing the absence of sound is just as powerful as hearing a very loud noise, and when I run into the quiet on this street early Sunday mornings, it feels like I'm someplace else. Like this soundscape is out of place, here in the middle of suburbia, and I realize just how used to the scoundscape I am. All this white noise around me all the time is something I've become so accustomed to that I really notice when it's gone. And I know, as I stand on this quiet street that the world around me is continuing to sound in its cacophonous way... even at 7:00 am.

It's what I imagine being in the eye of a storm must be like.

And I am aware that this post makes me look very hypocritical after my post yesterday.

Oh, well.

U2 Fined for Noise Pollution

2009-11-14T07:00:00.002-05:00

The City of Dublin has fined concert promoters MCD 36,000 euros (that's about $53,000) for breaching noise levels during their Croke Park concerts last July. Now, if I were Bono, it would seem that if I were asked to give a concert, noise would be a given, but the Dublin City Council levied the penalties against MCD for allowing U2 to exceed allowed noise limits on a number of occasions during the shows. Twelve times over three nights of concerts, U2 is reportedly responsible for breaching these noise limits, racking up 3,000 euros for each violation. Now, I can't help but wonder if anyone bothered to tell them they were running up the tab, or if they decided to send them the bill later as a surprise...

In addition to being party poopers about all the "noise" that comes with a musical performance (oh, heaven forbid!) the shows elicited many complaints from area residents. Apparently, they weren't too happy with the continuous 44 hours it took to dismantle the stage, and would have liked to have their park back sooner. I suppose I can understand their frustration, especially if they weren't all too keen on the concert being held in their backyard in the first place, but really, is the $53,000 necessary? But perhaps I shouldn't be so quick to judge. If some concert crew trampled by azaleas, I might seek retribution as well.

Then again, considering the 20 million euros amassed in profits from the three stadium performances, some don't consider these fines quite so bad. And apparently, someone enjoyed the "noise."

Cage-Inspired Jazz at Thomas More

2009-11-13T07:46:00.007-05:00

Our friends James Falzone and Tim Daisy from Vox Arcana are visiting Thomas More next Wednesday with Falzone's ensemble Klang (German for "sonority"). Falzone will deliver a talk at 12:30 on the topic of music and meaning, and the band will present a full concert at 7 p.m. Both events will take place in the Student Center. Klang's main inspiration is the sound of the 1950s groups led by the great jazz clarinetist Jimmy Giuffre , whose records are well worth checking out if you have not done so already. Klang has received numerous glowing reviews for their new album Tea Music, including a very nice article in the New York Times. Tim Daisy (drums) recently performed with the Vandermark 5 at the venerable Newport (Rhode Island, that is) Jazz Festival. By all accounts, the group's performance was a memorable one. Please come out and enjoy the energetic and creative music of Klang. Together we can work to make Crestview Hills the jazz capital of northern Kentucky. Brought to you by the Thomas More College FYS Program and the Friends of John Cage .

A Well Prepared Instrument

2009-11-08T18:34:00.002-05:00

A prepared piano is a marvelous instrument. It's hardly a piano anymore, really. You take a normal piano and alter its sound by placing objects (preparations) between or on the strings or on the hammers or dampers. The wonderful thing about this is that all it takes are some screws, washers, pie pans, or any other object you have lying around that you can stuff into your piano, to transform a mild mannered instrument into a super piano (or "supiano", if you will).

Having coined the term "prepared piano" himself, John Cage first prepared a piano when he was commissioned to write music for "Bacchanale", a dance by Syvilla Fort in 1938. He had been writing exclusively for a percussion ensemble, and then someone was so kind as to casually mention that the hall where Fort’s dance was to be staged had no room for a percussion group. In fact, the hall was exceptionally small and the only instrument available was a single grand piano (minor detail, right?). After thinking about it, Cage said that he realized it was possible “to place in the hands of a single pianist the equivalent of an entire percussion orchestra ... With just one musician, you can really do an unlimited number of things on the inside of the piano if you have at your disposal an exploded keyboard.” Exploded keyboard... yeah, no problem, right? So Cage prepared this single grand piano and even quipped that by preparing it, he left it in better condition than he found it. Not sure what the owner of said piano thought...

In Cage's use, the preparations are typically nuts, bolts, and pieces of rubber to be lodged between or entwined around the strings. Some preparations make duller sounds, while others create sonorous bell-like tones and the individual parts of a preparation such as a nut loosely screwed onto a bolt will vibrate themselves, adding their own unique sound. Often, the pianist would be instructed to pluck and scrape the strings of the piano directly, a technique that Cage himself said was inspired by Henry Cowell's experiments with the so-called string piano (and I thought all pianos had strings... silly me). And in the end, it really does sound like an entire percussion orchestra.

The first time I heard a prepared piano, I would never have guessed that, well, for one that I was hearing a piano, and for another, that a single musician was producing all of the sounds I was hearing. In addition, watching a pianist play a prepared piano is just so much more interesting. One can't expect any of the sounds emanating from the instrument -and I wonder if the pianist even knows what it will sound like- and the way the musician plays, banging on the keys with fingers and fist, reaching inside to pluck the strings, well, it's all very energetic and exciting.

Out of Context

2009-11-05T20:46:00.005-05:00

The earth is crammed with heaven

And every bush aflame with God

But only those who see

Take off their shoes

That's a poem by Elizabeth Barret Browning that I've always liked and I think it describes very well the way people regard the world. Beauty is always there, everywhere, in everything, but only those who stop to see it appreciate it. And there's a phenomenal difference between looking at things and really seeing them. Too many people simply look... and subsequently miss out.

The philosopher, Paul Ziff, wrote an essay examining on the possibility of anything to be art. (Really, anything. He begins the essay with the exclamation, "Look at the dried dung!") So what constitutes a work of art? According to Ziff, a work of art is simply something fit to be an object of aesthetic attention. In today's world, this is widely viewed as something built by man, tailored for the purpose of being viewed aesthetically. These works need not even be beautiful. Picasso's Guernica and Grunewald's Crucifiction are two examples of paintings that one wouldn't describe as especially lovely, and yet they are recognized as masterpieces without opposition. They are paintings done by man, and so they are art.

By chance, some objects of aesthetic attention are naturally produced and are not recognized as works of art. They are not artifacts, and are accordingly disqualified, as it were. That they are not artifacts does not suggest nor establish that they are unfit to be objects of aesthetic attention. In fact, the status of "artifact," in my opinion, says little about an object's suitability to be regarded aesthetically. There are many man-made objects that are not widely recognized as works of art: a watering can, a screwdriver, a green paper plate. And yet, placed in the correct context, society's perception of them changes such that they can be viewed and appreciated as art. Put that green paper plate on a pedestal in an art gallery, under just-so lighting and talk it up as a sculpture. Is it art now? Some would say so.

Perhaps the work of an artist is to present the world to others in the context that allows them to see it the way the artist does- or simply allows them to see it. Paul Ziff states it well when he says, "To suppose that anything that can be viewed is a fit object for aesthetic attention is not like supposing that anything can be put in one's mouth and is a fit object to eat. It is more like supposing that anything that can be seen can be read. Because it can. [...] Not everything has meaning, but anything can be given meaning."

The Color of Sound

2009-11-01T13:14:00.003-05:00

Synesthesia is a neurologically based phenomenon in which stimulation of one sense leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sense. All very scientific, but what I really want to talk about is how people with this condition (which occurs in one of every 200 individuals) can, when they hear music, see certain colors associated with the sound. It's often described as something like fireworks, with voices, traffic, music and all sorts of sonic phenomena triggering the experience of color and simple shapes that arise and then fade when the sound stimulus ends. And different sounds elicit different colors, changing hue and brightness with variations in pitch and volume. Individuals with this condition often disagree about which sounds correspond to what color, but many agree on certain things, like how louder tones are brighter than dull, soft tones, whereas higher tones are smaller and lighter than low ones, and low tones are both larger and darker than high ones. One synesthesiac described the sound of an acoustic guitar as shades of yellow, while an elcetric guitar was bright red.

There are actually composers with this condition who have incorporated color into their musical compositions. Russian Composer, Alexander Scriabin was pioneering the multimedia performance as early as the nineteenth century and used his perception of music as color in the composition process. Rimsky-Korsakov, who was a contemporary of Scriabin, was a fellow composer with synesthesia and the two often disagreed about which colors were created by which notes (both maintained that the key of D major was golden-brown; but Scriabin linked E-flat major with red-purple, while Rimsky-Korsakov favored blue). Even modern composers have utilized light shows in their performances, matching the music to specific colors.

Being a visually-oriented person, I find myself wishing that I could see music too. Even as one not having the experience of the dual stimulus provided by synesthesia, I find myself thinking about which colors match which sound. I think it would come down to pairing the feelings evoked by music and those by certain colors. Irritating sounds might be orange, fast tempos red, slow, sonorous bass, blue. And I wonder how much influence the power of association might have in this situation...

Someone once told me that the sound of flip-flops was definitely yellow, but I would have to say they're a rather annoying shade of pink.

The Power of Association

2009-10-31T08:04:00.001-04:00

Earlier this week, I posted about the power that association has to improve a runner's endurance. In addition, I believe that association is even more influential in the development of one's musical preferences.

So, here's my confession: I really can't stand much country music. At all. I don't like it.

And there's really no reason for this -except that I associate country music with rather unpleasant things... like motion sickness. And it's amazing how even songs that are musically beautiful and interesting can do nothing for me if they cross that "country music barrier" in my mind. There are very few country songs that I can enjoy, and when I do enjoy them, I have to try very hard. It's a shame, really, but I just can't help it.

I tried to listen to Indigo Girls yesterday and couldn't sit through even one song before I turned it off. I didn't like the Bon Jovi CD, Lost Highway, because it shared too many similarities with country music. Now, I'm probably making this sound worse than it is. I have no phobia, no irrational, psychological aversion. I can listen to country music without vomiting, but I feel like there's this certain barrier that prevents me from enjoying it the way others do, simply because of this association it has in my mind.

I think Cage was aware of this power of association, and therefore sought to remove all of his own tastes and preferences from his work - and in some cases removed all taste from his work- in order to allow everyone to experience it in as unbiased a way as possible. We all bring to our experiences our own set of "goggles," our own biases and preferences, a culmination of life experience that influences how we view the world. By removing his work from all those musical parameters set by society at large, Cage freed his audience of all the "baggage" associated with so much of the music that was out there, allowing them to experience it with the least amount of distortion from these personal "goggles." He introduced them to things never heard before, so that the audience could not have made associations regarding it and hear it for what it was, and not for what it meant.

And to my knowledge, no one ever vomited.

As an aside, I love Celtic music, which is really just Irish country music when you think about it... funny, huh?

Not a Contradiction

2009-10-29T11:11:00.005-04:00

The more I delve into my studies of environmental science, the more I think I share John Cage's way of viewing the world. Comparing his early to his later writings, one might think that he contradicts himself, that he's changed his mind with regards to his general outlook. He begins his career with the view that the world is beautiful, and that one only need open one's eyes (or ears) to what exists around us. His later writings take a more activist approach, a conservationist stance. In his How to Improve the World: You Will Only Make Matters Worse, he expresses an urgency, a desire resist the adultrative changes that mankind is bringing to the planet.

I don't think this later philosophy is a contradiction to his earlier one. Rather, I see it as an extension, a natural progression. Cage opened himself to the world and found it to be amazing. He spent his early career trying to get others to see the world as terrific as it is, without mankind's interference or meddling. Consequently, it only stands to reason that he would come to the realization that what he saw as so beautiful was threatened, and that it deserved to be preserved and protected. This later world view is simply the second stage of the first. To find enjoyment in the sounds of birdsong is to see the world as beautiful the way it is. To realize that the birdsong may disappear with the advent of a mini-mall and only the sounds of traffic in its place will no doubt spur one to protect the world and preserve the beauty that is.

I won't argue that he didn't change his mind about things. He said so himself. At first enchanted with the possibilities that electronic sounds presented, he later moved to an attitude that valued the preservation of natural soundscapes. He liked the sounds of traffic, but not to the extent that he would have the sounds of traffic drown out the sounds of nature. His belief that all sounds are created equal still stood, but he came to see that, all sounds being equal, no sound deserved to be trampled upon, to be eradicated or driven out by another.

I see the world as a beautiful place. I want others to see the world as a beautiful place. And if they do, I hope that they will also be moved to keep it that way. So many individuals just let life happen, without reflection, without opening their eyes to the world, which, in the words of John Cage, "is so terrific." The optimist in me wants only to show them this beauty. The realist wants to tell them how stupid they're being for not protecting it better. I'd like to think that Cage may have felt the same way.

Later:

Today was spectacular. Absolutely, without a doubt magnificent. I got out of organic chemistry lab early and sat outside to read. We spent all of my ES Research methods class outside collecting water samples and being outside, with the water and the ducks and all of the trees decked out in their flashy fall ensembles, a riot of color... it was simply wonderful. I walked to the parking lot, intentionally swishing through the leaves the whole way, admiring how they appear nearly fluorescent as they lay scattered on the green grass. I may or may not have even picked up an handful and thrown them in the air to see them flutter down again. The sky was so blue, the grass so green, the leaves so obnoxious in their fall colors that I actually did a little dance out beside my car (And then I found a present for me there, which brought me to the point of possibly exploding with happiness).

Perhaps I was wrong when I thought Cage's work devoid of inspiration. Perhaps it wasn't the work itself that was inspired, but the process that was inspired. I can't contain myself on a day like today, when I want to share the beauty of the world with anyone and everyone. That's what Cage's philosophy was grounded in: sharing. Perhaps he felt like I do today, and thought that the best way to share the glory of the world was to present the world to people in the way he did. Me, I have settle with a little happy dance next to my car, because I barely have time to write up a lab report...but I can do with that.

Vibrations

2009-10-28T21:12:00.002-04:00

Wednesdays, for me, are busy. School, then work, then over to the elementary school to teach ballet and tap to little girls before having my own dance class. This particular night, classes were rearranged such that I actually got a break in between teaching classes and starting my own. As I lay on the floor of the stage, I closed my eyes and listened to the music that the tap class was dancing to. I pressed my hands into the floor at my sides and felt the vibrations- but these vibrations weren't from the music coming from the CD player. I was feeling the vibrations from the girls' tap shoes. It was an interesting sensation to hear the beats from the CD and then feel the beats from the tapping. The vibrations were like a harmony, a compliment to the music I was hearing, rather than the simultaneous beat that is felt in time with music when you listen to it loudly.

I've always loved that aspect of tap dance. The fact that one can dance to the music, or with the music, or even outside of the music (and let me tell you, fourth graders have no problem dancing outside of the music). It's almost like singing along, or playing along with the music. Your tap shoes can be your own instrument and, I think, are a superior instrument in that they allow you to listen to music, play music, and dance with music all at the same time. It reminds me of the idea that John Cage and Merce Cunningham shared on how music and dance can be independent and simultaneous. Tap dance is definitely one of the more independant types.

A friend brought up in a discussion today that there's a distinct difference in the experience of music for the composer, as compared to that of the musician who plays it, as compared to the audience that hears it. I would argue that the dancer gets to experience music in yet another way that is different from all the others. I think a certain type of relationship is formed between the dancer and the music and such relationships exist on a spectrum, with the dancer and the music being partners on one end (as in tap dance) and the dancer and the music becoming one on the other. Both ends are quite enjoyable.

Why it Feels So Right

2009-10-25T13:16:00.003-04:00

Just as important to a runner as a pair of broken-in shoes is their source of motivation, inspiration and distraction: their music. Running with music has become so common that the two biggest names in both industries, Nike and Apple, have been joined at the hip with the Nike + iPod combination. So just what is it about music and running that feels so right?

Scientists have been working to find out more about this special connection between our ears and our feet and in a recent study, sports psychologists helped to create a half marathon in London that tried to find the perfect music mix of live bands based on research of human reaction to rhythm (Now, how cool would that be? Ultimate multitasking right there. Go to a concert and run a marathon all in one Saturday morning). This second annual "Run to the Beat" event was held a few weeks ago with 9,000 runners either enjoying the live music or listening to their own mix of tunes on their MP3. Scientists even offered a scientific selection of songs based on their findings. Wonder what that playlist is like...

According to the study, there are four factors that contribute to a song's motivational qualities: rhythm response, musicality, cultural impact and association. Surprisingly, a runner's response to rhythm is actually tied not only to how well it matches their pace, but more importantly tied to how well it matches their own heartbeat. Syncing running with music has been shown to improve endurance, allowing runners to require up to 7% less oxygen, and has a dissociation effect that results in a significant reduction in perceived effort.

But then again, it's not like we needed to be told that running to music was a good idea. Nice to know anyay, though.

Primus

2009-10-22T07:19:00.004-04:00

I had the opportunity the other day to listen to Primus for the first (technically second, but who's that picky?) time. The CD was a collection of greatest hits, or something of that nature, and though lots of things struck me about the music, the first was probably... how democratic it was. Throughout every song I listened to, the instruments appeared to play an equal role in the creation of the music. The lead guitar wasn't actually "in the lead" as in "in the foreground" while all else is in the background. Rather, the drums, the bass, the electric guitar, they were all allowed an equal share in the presentation, without any one instrument being designated solely to the background (which I greatly appreciated, because the bass player, Les Claypool, is amazing).

This idea of democratic music reminds me of John Cage's democratic approach to sounds in general. All sounds are created equal. No one sound is more fit to be music than any other sound. All has potential to be music. A bit more extreme in its context, true, but I've a feeling Primus might agree with that.

The friend who introduced me to this band made the comment as we listened to the CD that he was somewhat disappointed that he had gotten their greatest hits collection, because it gives one a different experience of the band's music. I hadn't thought of that, but I have to agree. Picking the songs which someone out there deems best and compiling them into a CD of their own might serve to give the "highlights," but I don't think the Spark Notes version ever really does the novel justice. And besides, songs compiled onto an album such as this are taken out of context. Perhaps they weren't made to be played together, or in this certain sequence. It's just not the same.

So, to truly get this "experience," I decided to get one of their CDs from the library. I happened upon Sailing the Seas of Cheese, which, if anything, was worth checking out for the title and cover art alone. Then, come to find out, Les Claypool has led a bunch of side projects with just if nifty, if not better names, including, Les Claypool and the Holy Mackerel, Fearless Flying Frog Brigade, Oysterhead and Colonel Claypool's Bucket of Bernie Brains. And his newer release, Whales of Woe, came out under the moniker "Les Claypool and His Fancy Band." This one's supposed to incorporate everything from the saxophone to the sitar (perhaps the coolest looking instrument I've ever seen, by the way).

Big Apple Jazz

2009-10-20T07:10:00.004-04:00

I never cease to be amazed at all the apple varieties there are (of course, I never cease to be amazed by apples in general, but that particular amazement is not quite as justified). There are thousands of varieties and, if you're a horticultural geek like me you can spend hours pouring over seed and tree catalogues ogling the plethora of types and laughing to yourself at the funny names they have. Recently, a new conventional breed has been making an appearance. It's called the Jazz apple (I was getting around to music eventually) and much like its namesake, it's a hybrid of some great things(Braeburn and Gala, to be precise).

NPR's Take Five series recently showcased five jazz tunes related to this fall fruit. I'm not sure why they did it, because the whole thing was kind of corny, but it was fun for me to listen to. The songs included Stealn' Apples by Fletcher Henderson, Apple Honey by Woody Herman, Back to the Apple by Count Baise, Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree (With Anyone Else But Me) by Coleman Hawkins, and finally -my personal favorite- Scrapple From the Apple by Charllie Harper. I'm not exactly sure how one makes scrapple from an apple, and I'm not certain that I even know what scrapple is, but like I said, I enjoyed listening to it immensely.

Wow. I think this might be the most awkward post yet. I just heard this compilation of good jazz music and thought it was a great excuse to talk about apples too. But it's really not that much of a stretch, is it? Jazz is wonderful, apples are marvelous, it all works out.

Faith

2009-10-17T20:07:00.007-04:00

When we walk to the edge of all the light that we have

And take that step into the darkness of the unknown,

We must believe that one of two things will happen:

There will be something solid for us to stand on,

Or we will be taught how to fly.

I don't think that this has anything to do with John Cage or music, but I'm putting it here anyway.

Inspiration

2009-10-15T16:46:00.003-04:00

I've come to admire Cage's philosophy of compositition and music, his celebration of sound as beautiful without orchestration for man's purposes. In the world of composers, too often it seems that the sounds themselves are only means to an end, rather than ends in themselves, only tools by which the composer or musician communicates their message or expresses their emotion. In choosing to remove his tastes from his music, Cage allowed the sounds to be the meaning, rather than assign meaning to them. This, I find admirable.

But, I do sometimes wonder if this approach is lacking in something that seems so integral to creation. Inspiration. It's the stimulus behind artistic work, that which sparks the desire to create something beautiful. I don't think that Cage's approach to composing music through indeterminacy leaves room for inspiration because it attempts to take all emotion out of the process. Emotion and inspiration are inseparable. One can't be inspired without the impetus, the longing to express something.

In a way, I feel that this could be seen as a deficiency in Cage's work. I'm sure he would adamantly disagree with me. He would claim that the highest purpose is to have no purpose. He would insist that sounds need not be given purpose, that they can exist as they are. I wouldn't put it past him to say that I just don't understand the Zen of it all, and he might even sigh and shake his head at me. But I can't help it. Perhaps I'm a hopeless case, brainwashed in romanticism, but I believe that feeling is important to the artist and makes for some of the best artistic work. I know I couldn't dance if I felt nothing. I know I wouldn't paint either.

Maybe it's alright for Cage, but I just can't see keeping a desire to come back to my art if I weren't emotionally involved. Inspiration is, indeed, a beautiful thing.

Frogs in Australia

2009-10-11T19:34:00.004-04:00

This post is really just gratifying my inner science nerd, but it has to do with sonic phenomena, so I can justify its being here -or, that's my story, at least.

Australia's Frogs are having a hard time hooking up. Male brown tree frogs meet their girls by vocalizing elaborate mating calls. The sound of the male looking for a date hits the ears of the female tree frog and she chooses weather or not to pursue the guy -or that's how it's supposed to work. But lately, there's been some interruptions. Traffic noise and other sounds of city life, like air conditioners and construction noise, are drowning out the mating calls of male frogs in urban areas. These guys can sing their hearts out, but add the sounds of nearby traffic, and the serenade never reaches the female. The distance over which the male frog can be heard is cut dramatically by traffic noise from hundreds of meters, in some instances, down to maybe only 20 or 50 meters. Consequently, these frogs aren't hooking up and their population has seen a sharp drop recently.

Remarkably, some of these persistent Romeos have come up with an interesting strategy for making themselves heard. They're changing their calls to a higher, squeakier pitch, increasing the distance over which they can be heard. One would think this is the solution, right? Survival of the fittest? But the Juliets out there don't seem to agree. While the males have figured out how to make themselves heard above the noise of the city, scientists say this just may not be what the females are looking for. When females have a choice between two males calling, they tend to select the one that calls at a lower frequency because, in frogs, the frequency of a call is related to body size (So, the bigger frogs tend to call lower, and well, that's very attractive in a frog, apparently). In other words, the high talkers typically don't get the girls. Yes, brutally unfair, but true. Personally, I prefer tenors...

Nights in Aussie are noisy nowadays and female frogs can only hear a few of the males that are all calling in a group. So the number of mates she can choose from is reduced. The scientists describe it like being in a noisy cocktail bar and there are men everywhere. You can only see and hear the three that are closest to you. You either choose to go with one of them, or you spend more energy going to search the room to find someone who looks a little bit more promising. This results in the females doing quite a bit more hopping around, and the longer they spend looking for mates, the more time they're exposed to predators and the more energy they use. Not the best situation and infinitely more frustrating for those girls, I'm sure.

Yep, a bit of depressing news. But didn't even John Cage acknowledge the meddlesome nature of humans in his How to Improve the World: You Will Only Make Matters Worse? I'm sure no one took the time to consider the love lives of nearby frogs when they installed that new air conditioner. How thoughtless of us!

Emily Howell

2009-10-11T18:46:00.003-04:00

Haven't you heard? There's a new and mysterious classical composer on the scene. Her name is Emily Howell, and no one has ever seen her in person. Wanna know why? Its because she isn't a person. Emily Howell is a computer program created by David Cope, a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz (whose middle name just happens to be Howell). His program allows him to use letters from a computer keyboard, as well as musical input to "collaborate" with the computer in creating new music. The foundation upon which Emily operates is created from a database of musical composers, all mostly dead, classical composers. Emily is then able to analyse this data and then compose in the style of these composers without actually recreating any of their original compositions. Basically, when one collaborates with Emily, one is essentially collaborating with all of these said dead, classical composers to create new music. Pretty cool.

Now, I think Cage might have been a fan of this idea, given that the human composer would be involved as little as possible in the composition process, therefore removing his or her own tastes and preferences from the work completely. But then again, Emily is programmed with the "musical knowledge" of all of the great 18th century classical composers -most of which we can agree had massive egos and perhaps personal agendas or emotional messages they wished to push with their music. We know what Cage thought of this "pushiness" and his opinion of Beethoven... perhaps Cage would have programmed Emily's database with something else.

There's also the technical aspect to consider. From an indeterminacy standpoint, one might question the degree of chance involved with a program like Emily. When one hears her music, one can note that she operates off of patterns. She is, indeed, following the musical patterns most likely used by those composers that make up the data base from which she draws. It might also be noted that even computers can express a "personal preference," accessing memory and running operating patterns which they can most easily access and run (even ipod shuffles do it).

So maybe Emily isn't exactly "up to snuff"in the indeterminacy department, but her work is truly original and I personally think it sounds fantastic.

Moving away from the John Cage ethos for a moment, Emily Howell also presents some rather alarming questions. Is a computer program that composes its own (her own) work a threat to the human spirit of creating music? Emily's creator doesn't believe so. David Cope says that since computers can do only what humans program them to do, Emily is only as talented as the composers in her database and the programmers who dictate her method of analysis. Not to mention the feature that allows the operator to "collaborate" with Emily to create the composition. Though this may be true, and though Cage would definitely agree that human meddling is involved, I must disagree.

I see Emily as a formidable opponent to the human composer with respect to composition of a technically complex piece. Her ability to produce variations and spit out bar after bar of original and interesting material is admittedly intimidating. I don't, however, think that Emily's compositions can hold a candle to the very aspect of human composition that Cage sought to avoid -emotional involvement. The classical composers from which Emily's database is made filled their compositions with feeling and sentiment. When they are all mashed together and drawn upon, that feeling is convoluted and renders Emily unable to produce anything with the same emotional intensity that springs from the human composer. Technically interesting, Emily's pieces lack that underlying, magical quality that elevates music to an intimate and personal experience, for the composer, the musician, and for the listener. In short, Emily's amazing, but I don't think us humans have anything to worry about.

Oh, and if anyone's interested, Emily Howell's first record will hit stores next spring.

P.S. The picture up top is really a photo of Daft Punk (more on them later) but I thought it was fitting.

Cage at the Movies

2009-10-03T08:15:00.003-04:00

Having become acquainted with John Cage's philosophies, his views on music and of the world, and having gotten a sense of his personality, I somehow feel as though I've been privy to a small glimpse inside of his head. To study his philosophies brings one so close to something that seems so intimate, and though I will never meet him, I have a sense that I've gotten to know Cage personally -sort of. Anyway, seeing as, in reality, I didn't know Cage, I can only wonder about some things. And I do. Quite a bit. Feel free to call me a weirdo if you'd like, but I find myself asking "What would Cage do?" or "What would Cage have liked?"

Don't tell me I'm the only one who ponders these kinds of things. Didn't we all wonder what kind of doughnut Cage would have most appreciated on the last day of class? (Doughnut holes, wasn't it?) Well, I find myself doing that all the time. What was Cage's favorite sandwich? What would Cage think of reality TV? I don't believe he ever wrote about such topics, even in his tangents during his talks, so I can only wonder.

Most recently, I found myself wondering what kind of movies John Cage might have liked. Judging by his reaction to the Hallelujah chorus ("I don't mind being moved, but I don't like being pushed!") I doubt he would have enjoyed the big money Hollywood blockbusters. Hitchcock is definitely out -too much manipulation of the audience, too much orchestration. No, Cage seems to me like a guy who would like a film that emulates what life is truly like. Perhaps one with no plot at all. Like Napoleon Dynamite, maybe, but even that seems too much. He'd be interested in all aspects of the film, like camera angle, musical score (or lack thereof, which I believe he might have preferred), lighting... I'm thinking low budget, independent film. Or maybe he would like something more along the lines of the bizarre, like Huis Clos by Jean-Paul Sartre-but then again, there's an existential message behind that one. No, nothing that tries to communicate a meaning or moral. Gosh, this is tougher than I thought...

Okay, I've got it. Cage would probably most enjoy watching a movie made by just setting a camera up at a bird feeder or in a fish tank, an maybe moving it around at random, periodically. Yes that seems right. No meaning, no orchestration, no agenda. Just birds or fish living out their days, the only way they know how. And best of all, complete indeterminacy. Yep, I think I've got it right this time.... then again, maybe he was a fan of Star Wars...

Cross-Over Music

2009-09-30T07:36:00.005-04:00

Having only recently become in charge of the CD section at work, I've become aware that there are only so many categories under which we file CDs. Pop, rock, rap, world, country, folk, jazz, blues, vocal, orchestral, musical, opera, and "new" are the only labels available. I will readily admit that I am relieved that I am not the one responsible for deciding which CDs go under which category -that's the librarian's job. But I have to wonder... how con one possibly make such decisions. Music seems to constantly be in a state of change, and ever-evolving, blurry transition state. And because of this, there appears to be a spectrum lying under all these arbitrary labels. I mean, Elvis is not the same rock that AC DC is. So, the question I have is, where does one label start and another end?

I began to ponder this question when I checked out Bon Jovi's Lost Highway. It was filed under "Rock," and I initially thought rightly so. Bon Jovi = rock music. "You Give Love A Bad Name" is definitely rock music. But, as I put the CD in and started to listen, I thought, "this doesn't sound like rock... it sounds like... country?" Yes, what I heard coming from the speakers registered on my radar as country music. Granted, it wasn't Johnny Cash or Randy Travis, but more like the "country-rock" that's so common today. My initial reaction was disappointment, I'll concede (I am not a fan of rock-country anyway, ans was expecting to hear something... well,, more like rock), but it really got me thinking about how, after awhile, as musicians start branching out, trying new things and sampling from different genres, they may just "cross over" into another.

Now, I'm not going to debate who crossed into who's territory here (which would be an interesting debate, I'm sure) but I will question the validity of the labels placed upon music nowadays. What constitutes "rock, or "punk rock," or "hard rock," or "soft rock?" What criteria distinguish country, from rock, from jazz and to what extent must these criteria be met? Very subjective stuff here, I think. And as I mentioned above, I'm just glad I'm not the one who puts the labels on the cases.

Jethro Tull

2009-09-29T07:28:00.004-04:00

Umm, no, not the guy who invented the steel plow -that's what I first thought too. Jethro Tull is a British prog rock group from the 70s (yeah, big hair and everything), perhaps best known for their "mother of all concept albums," Thick as a Brick. Like other progressive rock groups of the time, (Pink Floyd, Yes, Genesis) Jethro Tull sought to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credability. This "elevation" in artistic credability often involved "concept albums", which -according to wikipediea- made unified statements, via an epic story or overaching theme for the album. I think Jethro Tull may have taken this to the extreme...

Look out John Cage, Thick as a Brick contained only one song that spanned a total of 43 minutes and 28 seconds (that's like 4:33 ten times). The recording used extensive overdubs and splicing to create two continuous record sides, and was finished in about a week with the group working diligently and freverently in their practice sessions. With influence from Monty Python's Flying Circus TV show of the 70s, it's without surprise that the group describe live performances of Thick as a Brick as "nerve-wracking and exhilarating, requiring much concentration" (and caffeine, I'll bet).

In addition to the album's unique song list, it also became famous for it's cover art. Done in a collage of a mock newspaper (complete with a crossword puzzle, even!), the cover depicts stories of the bizarre and absurd, and though I personally think the newspaper pages were too sensational to be mistaken for legitimate, apparently there were many who thought a real back-issue of a newspaper had been used. You can imagine what a stir that caused :)

Oh, and the picture up top? That's Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull playing the flute while wearing what looks like spandex.

Finding Creativity in Unexpected Places

2009-09-26T07:58:00.006-04:00

At work, I've been put in charge of the CD section (I'm also in charge of Adult Fiction, Teen Fiction, Adult Magazines, Teen Magazines, Comics, and Graphic Novels, but I digress...). Quite a chore, I'll come right out and admit, because the cataloging is very confusing and also because patrons are lazy and just stick CDs back in any old place. Well, two nights ago, I was filing returned CDs when I came across one that I recognized the cover art on. I'm not sure where I'd seen it before, but my recognition of any cover art is kind of a big deal (despite my admittedly feeble efforts to broaden my musical horizons, my knowledge of popular music remains limited). So I checked it out. It was When the World Comes Down by All-American Rejects.

Given that they're a popular rock band and making lots of money, I wasn't expecting anything profound. In fact I was expecting something pretty conventional... and was pleasantly surprised. True, they sound a lot like other bands I've heard, but as I listened to the CD in my car, I noticed some pretty novel things. Like Strings. They use violins and some other string instruments in some of their songs. Can't say I was expecting that. And the tambourine. Now, I know the tambourine has been in rock music for awhile, but you don't hear it so often anymore and, well it surprised me. I think, once, I may have heard a snare drum, there was definitely piano, and in some of their songs, they have large choral groups in the background singing harmonies, like church choir style. So, all in all I was pretty impressed with the group's usage of not-so-conventional tools (I won't go as far as to call them unconventional, but I've gotta give them some credit).

And, to allude back to that conversation we had about love songs quite a while ago, I was also surprised that the expected themes from a group of all men were largely absent. So often (too often), the story goes as such: the girl leaves, the guy is heartbroken, the guy proceeds to write sad songs about how he misses her and how he wants her back (some hard rock groups nowadays will have a song with more of a "good riddance" theme, but these aren't so common and are even less common from groups of all guys). Not so with the songs on this CD. Many of them express a resigned, unrequited love. Some are more of a "gosh you stupid girl, can't you see what's in from of you?!" type theme. And yes, the song on which this CD bases its popularity, "Gives You Hell," is that "good riddance" song mentioned before. All of this was actually refreshing. Personally, I get tired of the whiny, "I want you back" love songs, especially when a relationship is supposed to be a mutual thing. The guy should get a say in it too, rather than following the girl around like a lost puppy (no offense meant to the Beatles. "Puppy Love" is a very catchy song).

* Speaking of the Beatles, I have an embarrassing confession to make. So, a few years ago I danced to the song Blackbird, and decided that I really like it. Very pretty song (and I tend to develop a liking for almost any song I dance to). Anyway... I only recently realized that it was by the Beatles. Yes, I'm culturally estranged, I know. But I'm working on it!