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Music in 2008: the best of times, the worst of times
2008-06-05 08:10:00
In some of my posts I've lamented the current state of music: the erosion of audience attendance at performances, the rampant music piracy that further dilutes musicians' earnings, a music industry that is increasingly driven by the tastes of 13-year-olds. But is it really worse for musicians than ever before?
More About: Music , Times , 2008

Musical wit in ?When Pigs Fly?
2008-05-30 07:14:00
Apart from cartoons, it is uncommon to hear music used in a humorous way. Part of the reason may be that, while it's relatively easy to write funny lyrics, it's much harder to make music sound funny. The 1990s musical When Pigs Fly, conceived by Howard Crabtree and Mark Waldrop with lyrics by Waldrop and music by Dick Gallagher, used clever lyrics and site gags to great effect, especially when juxtaposed with its rather straightforward Broadway musical style, but there was one number that used humor in an especially creative way.
More About: Musical

The earth is a musical instrument
2008-05-28 07:17:00
In 1996, geophysicist Frank Scherbaum teamed up with composer Wolfgang Loos to release "Inner Earth : a seismosonic symphony" (Traumton Records), a recording of natural seismic signals from the earth that Loos rearranged for the CD. The remarkable sounds that are produced -- at once electronic and natural -- are strange and mesmerizing. As Scherbaum writes, "The fault beats, the volcano whistles and howls, and the Earth rings and hums."
More About: Musical , Instrument

The five main types of instruments
2008-05-27 07:07:00
Many of us are familiar with the classical system of categorizing the sections of the orchestra as strings, winds, brass and percussion. A more precise system -- known as the Sachs-Hornbostel system -- categorizes musical instruments according to how they produce sound.
More About: Instruments , Main , Types

Translating the Arctic into sound
2008-05-25 01:19:00
What would the Arctic sound like if it could be expressed musically? John Luther Adams is a composer who created an installation at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks that reflects that environment, called "The Place Where You Go to Listen."
More About: Sound

Soundings - an interactive sound environment
2008-05-18 06:04:00
Here is the design for Sound ings, my concept of an interactive sound environment in which visitors influence the sounds while they proceed through the structure (see diagram below). There are five main sections. The first is the circular drum room, with a labyrinth pattern inscribed on the floor. An oculus at the center of the ...
More About: Environment , Interactive

Make music while you wait in line
2008-05-17 22:34:00
As part of her graduate studies at New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program, Jury Hahn created MegaPhone, a live multiplayer video game interface for public spaces that players access with their cell phones.
More About: Music , Make , Line , Wait

The bees have stopped dancing
2008-05-16 08:40:00
All across the world, but especially in North America, honey bees have been disappearing, succumbing to Colony Collapse Disorder. No one quite knows why, although everyone has a theory: a virus, global warming, the stress of commercial transport, pollution, exposure to insecticides, or any combination. It's a big problem because we rely on bees to pollinate one-third of all the produce we eat.
More About: Dancing , Bees

Different languages perceive rhythm differently
2008-05-16 08:38:00
I've written before about a study of French and English that revealed how the rhythmic organization of language affects melodic patterns. One of those researchers teamed up with fellow researchers from the Neuroscience Institute of San Diego the Kyoto City University of Arts to further study how rhythm in language influences musical rhythm. They discovered that speakers of different languages perceive rhythms differently.
More About: Languages , Rhythm

Where ?music? comes from
2008-05-15 09:24:00
The word "music" derives from Greek mousike, which originally referred to any of the arts governed by the nine Muses (or mousa), daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne. But although musical expression is a universal human trait, the concept of music is not universal. Some languages, including many West African languages such as Yoruba and most Native American languages from North America, do not have a word for music.
More About: Music

The atomic guitar
2008-05-10 09:50:00
Scientists at Cornell University have constructed the world's smallest guitar out of crystalline silicon, twenty times smaller than a human hair.
More About: Guitar , Atomic

Internet music: blessing or curse?
2008-05-07 06:29:00
I just learned that April 19, 2008 was Record Store Day, an opportunity to celebrate independent record stores. As record stores slowly vanish across the country, it is perhaps telling that April 19 came and went with little fanfare, Perhaps, like me, the event was invisible to you, too. And I?m sorry I missed it, because I value the place of music stores in our culture. But it got me thinking about how music is accessed and sold these days.
More About: Internet , Music , Curse , Jethro Tull , Blessing

Why do birds sing?
2008-04-29 06:10:00
Researchers who study birds know that the quality of the birdsong is a good indicator of fitness. Evolutionary biologist Marlene Zuk, writing in the entertaining Riddled With Life: Friendly Worms, Ladybug Sex, and the Parasites That Make Us Who We Are, describes how disease and parasites drive the evolution of showy colors, structures and behavior. She and a colleague theorized that female birds use these features to select males who are more parasite-free, and thus species with more parasites should have evolved flashier colors and songs to distinguish the fittest males. Indeed, their research showed that brighter bird species had more parasites, as did those that sang more musically complex songs. In another study, researchers discovered that the type of immunity exerted an influence on birdsong: the number of song bouts was higher in birds with better cell-mediated immunity (general immunity that aids wound healing) and the length of the bouts greater in birds with better humora...
More About: Birds , Sing

The hypnotic, unusual sounds of “Looping I-VI”
2008-04-25 08:36:00
Four years ago I encountered an unusual CD that immediately grabbed my attention: Frank Bretschneider’s Looping I-VI (And Other Assorted Love Songs). Not music in the conventional sense, it was more a collage of periodic, abstract electronic sounds reminiscent of the kinds of sounds scientists have recorded from outer space sources such as other planets and pulsars. Bretschneider works as a musician, composer and video artist in Berlin. His work is known for precise sound placement, complex, interwoven rhythm structures and its minimal, flowing approach. He performs at music and media festivals around the globe, and his website credits him with 24 solo and collaborative CDs. The tracks on Looping evolve and blend seamlessly into one another. The music is hypnotic and, despite the electronic sounds, there is an organic quality that raises it above the level of its less interesting, minimalist brethren. If you are adventurous in your musical tastes and looking for something out...
More About: Sounds

Dangerous music
2008-04-21 05:46:00
Essays warning about the danger of certain kinds of music stretch back at least 2350 years to the time of Plato and Aristotle. The concept of ?ethos? ascribed certain ethical characteristics to each of the different Greek modes. Plato believed the Dorian would positively mold character because it helped make men stronger, but he warned against the Lydian mode because it enfeebled the mind.
More About: Music , Dangerous

Gemini Soul releases ?Radical? music video
2008-04-12 07:20:00
Attempting a different kind of music video to reflect its unique take on cyber jazz, Gemini Soul this week released a radical version of the song "Radical."
More About: Video , Music , Egypt , Music Video

An earthquake can rock your world
2008-04-06 23:38:00
April in San Francisco marks the anniversary of the great earthquake and fire, now just over a century behind us. It's a good time to ponder how an earthquake can rock your world in more ways than one.
More About: World , Earth , Earthquake , Rock

What musicians face on a regular basis
2008-04-06 20:17:00
A friend who sings with a band in another city related this story to me recently. They were given the opportunity to open for a well-known R&B artist whose heyday was the late '70s. They would not be paid, but it was a great opportunity for exposure.
More About: Face , Regular , Musicians

Odd and amusing instruments
2008-04-03 03:47:00
Oddmusic is home to unique, odd, ethnic, experimental and unusual musical instruments and resources.
More About: Instruments , Amusing

Facebook eclipses MySpace
2008-03-23 08:04:00
Facebook has overtaken MySpace in number of unique visitors, according to comScore (Silicon Valley Insider, March 18). This news thrills me because I despise MySpace ever since an incident in summer 2006.
More About: Myspace , Facebook , Eclipses

Performing live on the Internet
2008-03-20 19:04:00
Second Life (SL) debuted in 2003 but has taken off over the last two years, with participants reportedly numbering more than 13 million. Developed by Linden Lab, SL is a three-dimensional version of the Internet . What's cool for musicians is that virtual venues have been created specifically for the purpose of live music performance.
More About: Live , The Internet

Bjork strikes the right chord on Tibet
2008-03-19 02:59:00
So China 's feelings are hurt by Bjork 's actions at a recent concert where she shouted "Tibet !" after performing the song "Declare Independence."
More About: Chord

A musical map of the world
2008-03-18 05:23:00
One of my favorite blogs is Strange Maps, which recently posted this "World Beat Music" map of the world with the continents outlined by musical notation on staves of music.
More About: Musical , The World

The torture playlist
2008-03-12 05:56:00
Investigative reporter Justine Sharrock, writing for Mother Jones magazine, discusses how the military has used music as a form of torture to break down detainees without leaving any physical marks. Widely used at Guantanamo and in Iraqi prisons such as Abu Ghraib, the technique involved playing an endless loop of music cranked up loudly just shy of the level capable of rupturing eardrums, depriving the prisoners of sleep.
More About: Islam , Playlist , Torture

Language and music
2008-03-02 09:22:00
Language influences music. Many languages throughout the world are tonal; that is, they use tone/pitch to distinguish words. These languages include most sub-Saharan African languages, Chinese dialects, Southeast Asian languages such as Vietnamese, Thai and Lao, scattered New Guinean languages, and a sprinkling of American Indian languages from the Amazon basin, Central America and North America, including Navajo. Interestingly, languages have both lost and acquired tonal qualities over time. (more…)
More About: Music , Language

Humor in music
2008-03-02 07:22:00
Given how prominent humor is in our culture, it’s surprising that it doesn’t appear more often in music. With some exceptions, artists tend to steer clear of humor or use it sparingly. Joni Mitchell covered the jazz tune “Twisted,” a humorous take on split personality that ends with the line “Two heads are better than one.” Others have used humor to make a point in songs that aren’t humorous per se. Tori Amos uses a line from an Eagles song in “Springtime of his Voodoo” and sings “Standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona, and I’m quite sure I’m in the wrong song.” In “The Waitress” she sings “I want to kill this waitress,” then “but I believe in peace, bitch.” And who can forget the name of her ill-fated band, Y Kant Tori Read? (This calls to mind the ironic band names launched by the punk movement, such as Dead Kennedys, Chrome Dinette, and perhaps the best of all, The The). (more…)
More About: Humor , Music

Free promotional resource for musicians
2008-02-24 07:26:00
Andrew Dubber writes an excellent New Music Strategies blog devoted to helping small-medium music businesses and independent artists use new online technologies and strategies in order to make money and thrive in the new environment. The site also provides a Newswire service that delivers daily links to articles about the latest developments in the music industry. He describes himself as a lecturer, author, speaker, broadcaster and new music enthusiast, and also teaches and does research at Birmingham City University in the U.K. Best of all, Dubber has made available a free e-book for download, “The 20 Things You Must Know About Music Online“. Based on a collection of his postings, the e-book helps musicians understand how the industry is changing and how to adapt and thrive online. This is an invaluable resource for any musician or independent music business wanting to have a successful web presence.
More About: Free , Resource , Musicians , Promotional

All-purpose love song
2008-02-24 03:51:00
Does it seem like the same love song keeps getting recycled? If I were a singer, I’d be nervous about accidentally singing a line from a different song since the words are so interchangeable. But then it probably wouldn’t matter. Listening to these songs, it appears there is nothing new to say, so I thought I would save writers the trouble and create an all-purpose love song. The lyrics below are assembled from existing songs over the past 40 years, each line from a different song. (more…)
More About: Love , Song , Purpose , Love Song

Is a recession coming?
2008-02-21 07:47:00
If you ask this question of a musician, the answer you’ll likely get is, “It’s already here.” In my band, Gemini Soul, we’ve noticed a dramatic slowdown in performance opportunities. (more…)
More About: Recession

The genius of Herbie Hancock
2008-02-16 20:47:00
Herbie Hancock has been recording albums for more than three decades, exploring a variety of different directions in jazz while maintaining an interest in the interface between jazz and popular music styles.
More About: Herbie Hancock , Genius , Herbie