improvisation
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On Gary Marcus’s “Guitar Zero”
About five years ago I began playing acoustic guitar. I played off and on for a while, learning chord shapes, and trying (without success) to build callouses on my fingertips. I also experimented with alternate tunings and used a capo, recording a number of chord progressions I thought sounded interesting (hear the audio file at Continue reading
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Intangible Things: On Victor L. Wooten’s “The Music Lesson”
New Age : “an eclectic group of cultural attitudes arising in late 20th century Western society that are adapted from those of a variety of ancient and modern cultures, that emphasize beliefs (as reincarnation, holism, pantheism, and occultism) outside the mainstream, and that advance alternative approaches to spirituality, right living, and health” Victor L. Wooten’s Continue reading
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On Evanescent Materials In Solid Containers: The Flaming Lips’ “7 Skies H3”
The Flaming Lips recently released a 24 hour-long song called “7 Skies H3.” I’m actually listening to a stream of it right now on a website (http://flaminglipstwentyfourhoursong.com/) as I write these words. I like this music. So far–30 minutes in–it’s been a lot of long feedbacking tones on guitars, washes of cymbals, and vocal wails Continue reading
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From The Archives: Chords And Beats
Five years ago I wrote a series of pieces for piano and electronic sounds (percussion, bells, sub bass, pads, etc.) called Chords And Beats. The “chords” were improvised on piano, the “beats” and other sounds played on the keyboard to trigger non-piano sounds. Sometimes the chords came first, sometimes the beats came first. Whatever the Continue reading
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Some Notes On The Usefulness Of Improvisation
“The problem with improvisation is, of course, that everyone just slips into their comfort zone and does sort of the easy thing to do, the most obvious thing to do with your instrument.” — Brian Eno My friend Lee is always asking me to write music for him to sing over–“we just need an A Continue reading
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On David Sudnow’s Ways Of The Hand
They don’t seem to make books like David Sudnow’s Ways Of The Hand anymore, but then, Sudnow, who died in 2007, was no ordinary explorer of musical experience. Trained as a sociologist, Sudnow took a turn inward in the late 1970s and wrote Ways Of The Hand (1978/2001), a remarkable insider’s phenomenological account of learning to improvise jazz Continue reading
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Musical Collaborations: Ballaké Sissoko and Vincent Segal
Mandinka kora music is among my favorite sound worlds. The kora is a 21-string harp-lute traditionally played by oral historians in many parts of West Africa. I travelled to Mali (home to many Mandinka people) in 2002 to learn to play the kora. Though I didn’t get all that far in three weeks, I learned Continue reading
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Euphony Groove And The Prospect Of New “World” Music
From 2000-2006 I was part of a most interesting (to us, anyways) music ensemble called Euphony Groove. Euphony, meaning “wellness of voice” and groove, “a rhythm that repeats” formed the group’s mantra: music can make us well, over and over again. Euphony Groove brought together musical traditions and sounds from Turkey, North Africa, China and Continue reading
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Electronic Music and Gaming Theory
In this week’s New Yorker there is an article by Nick Paumgarten on the Japanese video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto that unpacks the magic behind such Miyamoto game creations such as Super Mario Bros. and Legend Of Zelda. Game designing is a creative endeavor that few people besides Miyamoto have mastered. (Though the American Will Wright, designer of Sims and Continue reading
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Brian Eno on Improvisation, Computers and Music
One of the reasons why musician and producer Brian Eno’s words are worth reading is that he often has timely things to say about music and says them in a way that makes sense and makes you pause and think. In a recent Pitchfork interview (my second Pitchfork-related post in a week), Eno discusses strategies for improvisation and the Continue reading
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