Acoustic Instrumental Harp Guitar Solo by Stacy Hobbs at the — unlikely but wonderful — 3rd Annual International Harp Guitar Gathering.
February 14th, 2010
plant orchestra
Luke Jerram’s Plant Orchestra allows plants to occupy a larger space in our consciousness.
Although imperceptible to the human ear, plants create sound. Using specialist microphones water can be heard as it flows slowly up the stem of a plant. If trees are suffering from drought, scientists can measure acoustic emissions that occur caused by cavitation and embolism within the plant.
The sounds created during the day are different to those at night and they alter with the seasons of the year. Amplifying the acoustic emissions of plants using dozens of special microphones we will reveal to the public this new and hidden acoustic world.
The choice to receive visitors at night time is my favourite part of the project; with the light and ambient noise low, the power of the plants’ new voices is magnified.
Read more about it at Jerram’s website.
January 24th, 2010
it’s slinky
Here’s something new to do with a slinky: make Star Wars sound effects. (via silentlistening — great blog!)
January 7th, 2010
it’s a wuzzy line and its getting wuzzier
“The Unbroken Thread” is the latest and greatest musical-science-mashup by youtuber MelodySheep. Uplifting!
See also: Previous Attenborough-related posts
January 5th, 2010
caught in the act of make-believe
Miles Davis. Photo: LIFE
Brian Eno on Miles Davis (and music in general):
When you listen to Miles Davis, how much of what you hear is music, and how much is context? Another way of saying that is, ‘What would you be hearing if you didn’t know you were listening to Miles Davis?’ I think of context as everything that isn’t physically contained in the grooves of the record, and in his case that seems quite a lot. It includes your knowledge, first of all, that everyone else says he’s great: that must modify the way you hear him. But it also includes a host of other strands: that he was a handsome and imposing man, a member of a romantic minority, that he played with Charlie Parker, that he spans generations, that he underwent various addictions, that he married Cicely Tyson, that he dressed well, that Jean-Luc Godard liked him, that he wore shades and was very cool, that he himself said little about his work, and so on. Surely all that affects how you hear him: I mean, could it possibly have felt the same if he’d been an overweight heating engineer from Oslo? When you listen to music, aren’t you also ‘listening’ to all the stuff around it, too? How important is that to the experience you’re having, and is it differently important with different musics, different artists?
Miles was an intelligent man, by all accounts, and must have become increasingly aware of the power of his personal charisma, especially in the later years as he watched his reputation grow over his declining trumpeting skills. Perhaps he said to himself: These people are hearing a lot more context than music, so perhaps I accept that I am now primarily a context maker. My art is not just what comes out of the end of my trumpet or appears on a record, but a larger experience which is intimately connected to who I appear to be, to my life and charisma, to the Miles Davis story. In that scenario, the ‘music’, the sonic bit, could end up being quite a small part of the whole experience. Developing the context – the package, the delivery system, the buzz, the spin, the story – might itself become the art. Like perfume…
(via peter serafinowicz’s twitter page)
October 17th, 2009
Janacek’s Love Letters
From NPR:
At age 63, Czech composer Leos Janacek began his most unusual writing project — a constant stream of more than 700 love letters written to a married woman 37 years his junior. It’s remarkable, considering that the young woman, named Kamila, expressed little feeling for Janacek or his music.
Even so, Janacek filled his letters with passion. At an age when most people slow down, Janacek, fueled by his own unrequited love, went into high gear. He composed some of his best music, including the String Quartet No. 2 — called, appropriately, Intimate Letters.
Commentator Rob Kapilow pinpoints a section from the third movement of the quartet which he says reveals much about Janacek’s unique sound-world. The passage is actually a musical portrait of Kamila, one that Janacek described to her in a letter: “It will be very cheerful, and then dissolve into a vision of your image, transparent, as if in the mist.”
You can hear Janacek’s String Quartet No. 2, Moderato, and read more from this article, on the NPR website.
Incidentally, the latest avant garde project compilation includes some Janacek — Mladi.
October 17th, 2009
hungarian rock
Like space candy for the ears:
Hungarian rock by Gyorgy Ligeti, (1923-2006) an hungarian composer, performed in a barrel organ by Pierre Charial. The painting in the video is “goldrosa” by Josef Albers (1888-1976).
October 7th, 2009
a glorious dawn
A tribute to Carl Sagan and Steven Hawking by colorpulse:
It turns out that autotuning can make clever people tuneful as well.
September 29th, 2009
musical archaeology
And so in late 2009, 30 years on from the day it was created, we can all enjoy some of the most beautiful music made for some of the greatest TV ever produced. (Jonny Trunk)
Fact magazine has the story of how Jonny Trunk rescued from obscurity the soundtrack of David Attenborough’s 1979 tv series “Life on Earth”, composed by Edward Williams. Trunk has compiled a reissue due out soon (Nov 2).
The story behind the unearthing of this music is quite an interesting read (read it at FACT). I’m excited to hear this!
Speaking of Sir David Attenborough… The BBC website has recently issued a collection of his favourite clips from all the tv he’s done with them.
September 10th, 2009
on passion and music
Benjamin Zander could scarcely be more passionate as he delivers this talk on passion and music. Highly entertaining!
May 16th, 2009
Synecdoche Karioke
This song “Little Person” is essentially the theme song of Synecdoche, NY, Charlie Kaufmann’s new film. I saw it yesterday and just hearing this tragically beautiful song now is enough to take the wind out of my lungs and fill them with water! It’s an indulgence of misery. Must be careful to moderate it.
The song is part of a mesmerizing soundtrack by Jon Brion.
April 18th, 2009
proof of music as a universal language?
The isolated Mafa people of northern Cameroon were recently involved in putting to the test the idea of music as a universal language.
A team led by Thomas Fritz visited the Mafa people and played excerpts from Western music intended to evoke one of three emotions: happiness, sadness, or fear. The listeners were pre-screened to make sure they had never been exposed to Western music. The experimenters showed the listeners images of faces expressing each of these emotions, and asked the listeners to point to the face that best represented the emotion conveyed by each excerpt.
Read the full article for the results of the research, and for the accompanying music clips (which are a fascinating supplement to the article). via kottke
March 15th, 2009
back to meds
Pal Rob Lovelett made a new track that I enjoy: Back to Meds (download).
I posted about another of his tracks before. More tracks here. Also a talented drawer and animator, check out his website.
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February 4th, 2009
mood-based mp3 player
Ever wanted to listen to some music on your mp3 player but weren’t sure what would quite fit the mood?
Colorsonic is an MP3 player that uses color indication to play music based upon certain moods.
Music is loaded to the Colorsonic like an ordinary MP3 player and converts the songs to color associations chosen by the user. Colors are assigned individual emotional states and playlists correlating to those states can later be accessed by selecting that color on the device.
As an added bonus, the hole in the center of the donut shaped product is used to magnetically store earbuds.
Fun design idea.. Would like to see how practical it is in reality.
Colorsonic mp3 player by rhea jeong, via neatorama
January 26th, 2009
your funeral, my trial
Here’s Sonny Boy Williamson performing Your Funeral My Trial to what transpires to be an audience of apparently zombified souldead white people.
The ease with which he executes this flawless performance is remarkable. Effortless cool!
Speaking of which, here’s Howlin Wolf talking about the blues:
December 11th, 2008
optel & knyp
Another gem found at Reuben Miller’s blog.
Hannes Coetzee is a guitarist from the Karoo region in South Africa. Born in 1944, he is mainly known for his unique playing technique using a spoon in his mouth to play slide guitar. This playing technique is called optel and knyp. Coetzee reached a broader audience when David Kramer’s documentary Karoo Kitaar Blues was released in 2003.
On the style of playing:
With his left hand he would play the chords. With his right hand he played in optel-en-knyp fingerpicking style. (In Afrikaans, optel, or “thumb” refers to the bass line; knyp, or “pinch” refers to the technique of playing the higher strings.) He held a teaspoon in his mouth. With the teaspoon, he slid out the melodic line.