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Digging4Gold: Record Collecting or Pilfered Music?
Imagine for a moment that you are an explorer traveling to West Africa in search of new soundworlds to capture and bring with you back home. You’ve come equipped with a recording device and a mind open to cultural difference; in fact, you’re open to being changed by your encounters abroad “in the field”, as an anthropologist would call… 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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From The Archives: Answering Machine Music
About eight years ago, I composed three electronic music pieces, This Would Be The Time, Have You Any Thoughts?, and All About Affect. The pieces are built around the sampled sounds of voice recordings left on my answering machine. (Do you remember answering machines?) There is nothing new in this: French radio engineer Pierre Schaeffer explored the idea… Continue reading
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Notes On Music Criticism from Tony Herrington
If you have an interest in writing about musical experience (as a student, critic, academic, or simply as a music blogging individual) you may find Tony Herrington’s notes on music criticism particularly edifying (I know I did). Herrington is a contributor to The Wire, one of the best sources for insightful writing about exciting new… Continue reading
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The Neuroscience Of Music
In a recent article posted on his always interesting neuroscience blog at Wired magazine, Jonah Lehrer writes about the neural basis of how music listening makes us feel emotion (or at least the semblance of emotion). Citing a recent study in the journal Nature Neuroscience, Lehrer discusses how music stimulates a brain region called the… Continue reading
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Bad Music, Good Music: How We Assess Sound
How do you know when some music is just plain bad? Not bad as in really good (“That was badass!”) or badly performed, badly executed, but just stylistically bad–bad as in: “That’s terrible, awful music.” What do we mean when we utter such a harsh critique? And–to paraphrase Napoleon Dynamite’s brother in the scene in… Continue reading
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Views From A Flying Machine
My new collection of music Views From A Flying Machine is now available on iTunes and CDBaby. Continue reading
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Microsoundscapes In Sylvain Chomet’s The Illusionist
For me, there is something magical in just about all animation in how it abstracts reality and transforms it into something other–something more vivid and thus more hyperreal. Sylvain Chomet’s movies The Triplets Of Belleville (2003) and The Illusionist (2010) partake in this tradition while also bringing new things to the viewer’s attention, including, surprisingly enough, a… Continue reading
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From Quadraphonic To Good Enough Sound
Why did quadraphonic sound never catch on? Was it because no one wanted to have to set up four speakers instead of two? Was it just too expensive and cumbersome? Was it because its various formats were incompatible with one another? Or did folks somehow collectively decide that stereo was good enough? Quadraphonic or “Quad” sound was first… Continue reading
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On Audio Cassette Technology
Today I went to a local dollar store to buy a plastic storage bin and while at the checkout counter I noticed they were selling Maxell blank chrome cassette tapes. I did a double take–it was a little like seeing an old friend for the first time in years–and almost tripped over myself while waiting… Continue reading
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