my four year old brain
when i was little, until i was old enough to join them, i used to watch my parents play in the orchestra. it was often a treat because it was usually past my bedtime. i am pretty sure i remember using some of that time to explore delta high school's stairwells and make forts under the bandroom risers. but i also spent a considerable amount of time watching the rehearsals from the middle of the auditorium in the red velvet-ish seats.
this fascination i have with sound goes all the way back to then. maybe even earlier, but the first true memory i have is from age 4, so that's all i can really verify. i remember wondering why it was that i could look at each player and then hear that instrument. at the time, i thought that there was something magical about actually picking a player that then somehow caused their instrument to be audible. that was how it seemed, anyway. what other explanation could there be? i would close my eyes and hear the ensemble, but the moment i would look at someone, the ensemble could be deconstructed. as i grew older i would start to play more sophisticated games with myself during the rehearsals. i would close my eyes and without opening them navigate around and try to hear individuals without looking at them. this came in very handy later on when i started actually playing in ensembles and needed to listen without seeing.
i still listen this way - navigating and visualizing and exploring. i think this is why it took me so long to get into rock and punk and other genres. maybe i'll think about that for another post.
back to physics...the thing that still blows me away is the fact that music and sound, when it gets to our ears, is nothing more than 1-dimensional (2-D if you count time, which you must), fluctuation about a zero point. and yet, by some unspeakably complicated yet ridiculously effortless mathematical process, our brains can deconvolve out of that 2-dimensional "compression" a hundred or more individual sounds, if they were originally there, and others that are introduced in the combinations. and if you practice and use two ears and high-end audio equipment, you can deconvolve a lot more than that.
the connection between these two senses - aural and visual - is still something that keeps me up at nights and keeps my mind occupied on airplanes (it's always good to have an incessant burning question when one is forced to sit in airplanetubes). why haven't we exploited this more? why are we so far behind when it comes to using the aural and visual together to represent, explore, and convey information? why is audio almost always relegated to conveying "feeling" or "intent" when used together with visual media? why doesn't science use more audio?
i was just on a plane today, and i've been working on my sonification project, so these things are fresh. one of these days i might post a post here that is about actual music you might be interested in, but for now, i'm deep inside my psychoacoustic world.
as an aside, i was also thinking on the plane about microtonal music (still left over from last week's explorations of the harmonic table), and wondering whether anyone had or would ever be able to pull off commercially successful microtonal rock. i couldn't think of any bands that had done this. of course, being on a plane far far above the interwebs, you're forced to wonder longer about things than you otherwise would. when i got to my hotel tonight i googled microtonal rock. this led me quickly to this website that confused me greatly. is there a direct connection between microtonal music and all of these topics down the left side of the page?
Body Mind and Soul
Faith and Belief
God and Religion
Law of Attraction
Life and Beyond
Love and Happiness
Peace of Mind
Peace on Earth
Personal Faith
Spiritual Festivals
Spiritual Growth
Spiritual Guidance
Spiritual Inspiration
Spirituality and Science
Spiritual Retreats
More Wisdom
Alternative Health Sitemap
Ayurveda Archives
Buddhism Archives
Hinduism Archives
Mysticism Archives
Paganism Archives
Parapsychology Archives
Religion Archives
Sanskrit Archives
Spiritual Archives
Sustainability
Theology Archives
Theosophy Archives
Yoga Archives
Even more Wisdom
2012 - Year 2012
Affirmations
Astrology
Aura
Ayurveda
Chakras
Consciousness
Cultural Creatives
Diksha (Deeksha)
Dream Dictionary
Dream Interpretation
Dream interpreter
Dreams
Enlightenment
Essential Oils
Feng Shui
Flower Essences
Gaia Hypothesis
Indigo Children
Insurance
Kalki Bhagavan
Karma
Kundalini
Kundalini Yoga
Life after death
Mayan Calendar
Meaning of Dreams
Meditation
Mesothelioma
Morphogenetic Fields
Psychic Ability
Reincarnation
society
Spiritual Art, Music & Dance
Spiritual Awakening
Spiritual Enlightenment
Spiritual Healing
Spirituality and Health
Spiritual Jokes
Spiritual Parenting
Vastu Shastra
Womens Spirituality
Yoga
Yoga Positions
yikes. the best part of this little investigation, though, was discovering that my friend elaine walker's band, zia is mentioned in the "microtonalism in rock music" section on the microtonal music wiki page. a couple years ago she made a music video up on devon island, where i will be going next sunday.
there were some other bands mentioned on that page that i'm sure most of you are familiar with, so i probably don't need to post links. from what i can tell, microtonal rock seems to be one of those things that is kind of a cool idea, but not all that great to listen to unless interlaced with considerable doses of normal 12-tone stuff. does anyone know of any exceptions in rock?
as another aside, i had dinner with justin saturday night at chuy's in houston. we sat outside, where they were playing a pretty standard classic rock mix. these are my favorite moments with justin because we play the game wherein he tries to help me guess the song that is playing, about which, of course, he knows everything. during our roughly one-hour dinner session, he knew every single band and song except one allman brothers song (without lyrics), but he figured it out pretty quickly on his fancy new iphone. the game is made much more entertaining by my stunning lack of familiarity with this genre (see above for a clue about what i was doing instead of listening to classic rock in the 70s and 80s). for instance, he had to tell me that the singer was steve perry before i could name journey as the band. and the only other bands i got were elton john (rocket man, for obvious reasons) and the rolling stones (because i recognized mick jagger's voice, not because i could recognize the song "painted black").
this got me to thinking - is there a way we could have a "name that tune" contest virtually on the NAP? cuz i'm pretty sure justin would win. and i'm pretty sure i would lose.
this fascination i have with sound goes all the way back to then. maybe even earlier, but the first true memory i have is from age 4, so that's all i can really verify. i remember wondering why it was that i could look at each player and then hear that instrument. at the time, i thought that there was something magical about actually picking a player that then somehow caused their instrument to be audible. that was how it seemed, anyway. what other explanation could there be? i would close my eyes and hear the ensemble, but the moment i would look at someone, the ensemble could be deconstructed. as i grew older i would start to play more sophisticated games with myself during the rehearsals. i would close my eyes and without opening them navigate around and try to hear individuals without looking at them. this came in very handy later on when i started actually playing in ensembles and needed to listen without seeing.
i still listen this way - navigating and visualizing and exploring. i think this is why it took me so long to get into rock and punk and other genres. maybe i'll think about that for another post.
back to physics...the thing that still blows me away is the fact that music and sound, when it gets to our ears, is nothing more than 1-dimensional (2-D if you count time, which you must), fluctuation about a zero point. and yet, by some unspeakably complicated yet ridiculously effortless mathematical process, our brains can deconvolve out of that 2-dimensional "compression" a hundred or more individual sounds, if they were originally there, and others that are introduced in the combinations. and if you practice and use two ears and high-end audio equipment, you can deconvolve a lot more than that.
the connection between these two senses - aural and visual - is still something that keeps me up at nights and keeps my mind occupied on airplanes (it's always good to have an incessant burning question when one is forced to sit in airplanetubes). why haven't we exploited this more? why are we so far behind when it comes to using the aural and visual together to represent, explore, and convey information? why is audio almost always relegated to conveying "feeling" or "intent" when used together with visual media? why doesn't science use more audio?
i was just on a plane today, and i've been working on my sonification project, so these things are fresh. one of these days i might post a post here that is about actual music you might be interested in, but for now, i'm deep inside my psychoacoustic world.
as an aside, i was also thinking on the plane about microtonal music (still left over from last week's explorations of the harmonic table), and wondering whether anyone had or would ever be able to pull off commercially successful microtonal rock. i couldn't think of any bands that had done this. of course, being on a plane far far above the interwebs, you're forced to wonder longer about things than you otherwise would. when i got to my hotel tonight i googled microtonal rock. this led me quickly to this website that confused me greatly. is there a direct connection between microtonal music and all of these topics down the left side of the page?
Body Mind and Soul
Faith and Belief
God and Religion
Law of Attraction
Life and Beyond
Love and Happiness
Peace of Mind
Peace on Earth
Personal Faith
Spiritual Festivals
Spiritual Growth
Spiritual Guidance
Spiritual Inspiration
Spirituality and Science
Spiritual Retreats
More Wisdom
Alternative Health Sitemap
Ayurveda Archives
Buddhism Archives
Hinduism Archives
Mysticism Archives
Paganism Archives
Parapsychology Archives
Religion Archives
Sanskrit Archives
Spiritual Archives
Sustainability
Theology Archives
Theosophy Archives
Yoga Archives
Even more Wisdom
2012 - Year 2012
Affirmations
Astrology
Aura
Ayurveda
Chakras
Consciousness
Cultural Creatives
Diksha (Deeksha)
Dream Dictionary
Dream Interpretation
Dream interpreter
Dreams
Enlightenment
Essential Oils
Feng Shui
Flower Essences
Gaia Hypothesis
Indigo Children
Insurance
Kalki Bhagavan
Karma
Kundalini
Kundalini Yoga
Life after death
Mayan Calendar
Meaning of Dreams
Meditation
Mesothelioma
Morphogenetic Fields
Psychic Ability
Reincarnation
society
Spiritual Art, Music & Dance
Spiritual Awakening
Spiritual Enlightenment
Spiritual Healing
Spirituality and Health
Spiritual Jokes
Spiritual Parenting
Vastu Shastra
Womens Spirituality
Yoga
Yoga Positions
yikes. the best part of this little investigation, though, was discovering that my friend elaine walker's band, zia is mentioned in the "microtonalism in rock music" section on the microtonal music wiki page. a couple years ago she made a music video up on devon island, where i will be going next sunday.
there were some other bands mentioned on that page that i'm sure most of you are familiar with, so i probably don't need to post links. from what i can tell, microtonal rock seems to be one of those things that is kind of a cool idea, but not all that great to listen to unless interlaced with considerable doses of normal 12-tone stuff. does anyone know of any exceptions in rock?
as another aside, i had dinner with justin saturday night at chuy's in houston. we sat outside, where they were playing a pretty standard classic rock mix. these are my favorite moments with justin because we play the game wherein he tries to help me guess the song that is playing, about which, of course, he knows everything. during our roughly one-hour dinner session, he knew every single band and song except one allman brothers song (without lyrics), but he figured it out pretty quickly on his fancy new iphone. the game is made much more entertaining by my stunning lack of familiarity with this genre (see above for a clue about what i was doing instead of listening to classic rock in the 70s and 80s). for instance, he had to tell me that the singer was steve perry before i could name journey as the band. and the only other bands i got were elton john (rocket man, for obvious reasons) and the rolling stones (because i recognized mick jagger's voice, not because i could recognize the song "painted black").
this got me to thinking - is there a way we could have a "name that tune" contest virtually on the NAP? cuz i'm pretty sure justin would win. and i'm pretty sure i would lose.
8 Comments:
Um. "Paint It Black."
We had name that tune contest for months on NAP, many of the podcasts for a while opened with a name that tune, the person who guessed would get to submit the following week's name that tune bit. I always thought it was an awesome part of the podcast. but if i remember correctly, interest in it just waned and eventually it was dropped. While I'm at it, I also really liked when the podcasts were composed of music submitted by everyone... maybe I'll start sending music for the podcast again.
Also, I think it helps in identifying all the parts of an orchestra if they are added one at a time. Like this.
Zia's Martian video is baffling.
from what i can tell, microtonal rock seems to be one of those things that is kind of a cool idea, but not all that great to listen to unless interlaced with considerable doses of normal 12-tone stuff. does anyone know of any exceptions in rock?
Lightning Bolt comes to mind. I'm not sure I recognized any 12-tone stuff in Health's set either. There's definitely a burgeoning movement of heavy percussive almost tone-dead music that I think takes elements of microtonality (sp?) and puts it to good use.
I'm for resurrecting the NTT on napcast and collective podcasts (and for mixing up the podcast in other various ways - ukulelecast anyone?)
I will personally not be producing any collective podcasts since the time involved would be utterly ludicrous. I assume this is why no one else does it. I presume it has little to do with waning interest. If you, Cherry, or anyone else, care to take the torch, I will be glad to submit Swedish death metal any time you like.
There is a "name that tune" on this most recent podcast. I mention that on my actual post, and I invite the listener to guess the piece of music on the podcast itself. Guess you have to listen to it, to have caught all that.
it's not that big of a deal to get songs from other people. you just send out a note when you need the songs by- wait while they fill up your inbox - and then put them together. the amount of time to sort them would take the same time as if you picked all of the songs yourself. or you don't even have to do that, you could just slap them all in there, done and done. would be kind of fun that way too.
well, i was thinking of something more real-time than the name-that-tune part of the podcast, although that was always one of my favorite things about the old podcasts.
i wish i could volunteer to pull together the podcasts, but i shouldn't. i would definitely contribute though.
justin, i approve of spontaneously combusting violins.
Post a Comment
<< Home