Archive for Music & Sound
September 10, 2008 at 10:00 am · Filed under Music & Sound, Technology & Computing
As an amateur synthesist, I have always been intrigued by electronic means of creating sounds. Normally I work with buttons, sliders, and keys on modern digital equipment, every parameter conveniently shown on an LCD panel or computer screen. Long before computer-based, programmable synthesizers, though, there were analog synthesizers that were “programmed” by stringing patch cords across a panel that looked like an old-fashioned telephone switchboard and fiddling with dozens of twitchy knobs. But these early modular synthesizers were still not the beginning of electronic music. Go back a few decades further and you find a device with such a stunningly elegant user interface that it could be played without even touching it. Meet the theremin, the world’s first electronic musical instrument.
Just a Bunch of Hand Waving
The theremin was invented by a Russian engineer named Lev Sergeivitch Termen (whose name was later anglicized to Leon Theremin). Termen was doing research involving […]
Original post by Joe Kissell
April 23, 2008 at 10:00 am · Filed under Music & Sound, Science & Nature, Mind & Body, Language & Literature
I have always enjoyed finding (or making) connections between things that don’t seem to go together. So I have a special fondness for metaphor—especially when it’s indirect and novel. A number of years ago, a friend suggested we go out to dinner together. I asked what kind of place he had in mind, and he said, “Oh, I was thinking we’d go to a green restaurant.” I didn’t know what relevance a restaurant’s color could have, and the usual metaphorical meanings of green (“environmentally sensitive,” “inexperienced,” “nauseated,” etc.) didn’t seem to apply. Noticing my confusion, my friend explained his unusual usage of the term. “There’s a class of restaurants,” he said, “whose décor consists mainly of antiques hung on the walls and brass railings. There’s always a central bar, a lively atmosphere, pub-style food, and an excessively cheerful wait staff. You know the type—T.G.I. Friday’s, Chili’s, Bennigan’s, Applebees…” I nodded. […]
Original post by Joe Kissell
April 21, 2008 at 10:00 am · Filed under Music & Sound, Society & Culture
When I was in high school, I had an alarm clock that I truly hated. It was not merely loud, it was hideously, harshly loud. It sounded pretty much exactly like a smoke alarm, and had precisely the same effect: it scared me senseless every time it went off. I’d wake up, all right, but in such an anxious state that I came to associate the early morning with feelings of terror. Knowing a thing or two about electronics, I decided to perform surgery on the clock and modify it so that instead of making noise, it would flash a bright light in my face when the alarm went off. My modification worked—at least in the sense that the light flashed at the appointed time. What I hadn’t thought through was the fact that at the time the alarm went off, my eyes would be closed (and, more often than […]
Original post by Joe Kissell
April 11, 2008 at 10:00 am · Filed under Music & Sound, Mind & Body
In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, one of the main characters is an alien named Ford Prefect from a planet near Betelgeuse. Although he looks, talks, and acts more or less human, there are many things about earthlings that puzzle him, such as the fact that they seem to talk all the time—even if only to repeat the obvious. Over the course of several months, he comes up with a number of theories for this behavior, one of which I found particularly insightful: “If human beings don’t keep exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working” (p. 49). I’ve frequently noticed, on the one hand, that many people like to surround themselves with sound all the time (making their own if all else fails); and on the other hand, that contemplation is a foreign and uncomfortable concept to most of us. An increasingly popular way […]
Original post by Joe Kissell
March 28, 2008 at 9:00 am · Filed under Music & Sound
When I went to my first Moxy Früvous concert in San Francisco in 1998, the sum total of my knowledge about them was: (a) they’re Canadian; (b) they had written an interesting song about the (first) Gulf War; and (c) a couple of my friends liked them. This was not much to go on, and consequently I approached the concert without any expectations at all.
The band consisted of four guys in their late 20s or early 30s, who mingled with the audience in the club before the show as though they were close personal friends with all 400 or so of us. Then, as the music started, I noticed something that hardly ever happens at concerts: I could actually understand all the words. This shouldn’t be remarkable, but you know how it is at concerts. The fashionable idea of a good live mix is to have every channel turned up […]
Original post by Joe Kissell
January 14, 2008 at 10:00 am · Filed under Music & Sound, Clever Ideas, Society & Culture
The acoustics in my apartment are lousy. I have too many work deadlines. The dollar-to-euro exchange rate is depressing. It always rains when I want to go for a walk.
It’s not hard to come up with things to complain about, but who wants to listen to someone else complain? The surprising answer: just about everyone, as long as the complaints are set to music and delivered in four-part harmony by a choral ensemble. In the past few years, musical groups called complaints choirs have sprung up all over the world, drawing sell-out crowds (and Internet fans by the hundreds of thousands).
Read the full post (778 words, 8 images)
Original post by Joe Kissell
July 27, 2007 at 10:00 am · Filed under Music & Sound, Decay, Clever Ideas
by Morgen Jahnke
The 20th-century American composer John Cage was well known for his experimental approach to making music. His most famous composition, titled 4’33” (four minutes and 33 seconds), playfully widens the boundaries of what is considered music. The piece consists of four minutes and thirty-three seconds of structured silence (although it was written to be performed for any length of time), during which time listeners are drawn to discover the ambient sounds going on all around them.
This idea that music can be found in unlikely circumstances has resonated in the works of other composers who followed Cage. In a similar, but unique vein, a group known as the Vienna Vegetable Orchestra, or more simply the Vegetable Orchestra, creates music from an unlikely source: fresh vegetables.
Playing with Food
The orchestra, consisting of 11 musicians, a sound engineer, and a video artist, was first formed in 1998. Since then, the group has […]
Original post by Morgen Jahnke
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