Pi Day!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.