Tony Scott - Music for Zen Meditation

In the late 1950's, Tony Scott was one of the top (and few) bebop clarinetists. Scott made some musical connections in Japan and in 1964 joined with two classical Japanese musicians for a recording. Although Scott was already a seasoned improviser, his collaborators, Shinichi Yuize and Hozan Yamamoto, were not. Inspired by Zen meditation, the group recorded a number of duet improvisations, a solo by Yamamoto and collective piece by all three members.

Featuring Tony Scott on clarinet, Shinichi Yuize on koto, and Hozan Yamamoto on shakuhachi, this is a timeless album. The improvisations are genuine and introspective. Each careful pluck and bend of the koto strings on "The Murmuring Sound of the Mountain Stream" sounds like a rain drop hitting the water. Scott's subtle attack and dark, smooth tone make his instrument sound more like the bamboo shakuhachi than a clarinet. This album is recognized as the first ever New Age music.

Jazz this week[end]!

Tonight in Milwaukee is Joe McPhee and Ken Vandermark as part of the Parasol Fest. Details about Parasol Fest at IMprovised SOund and Sugar Maple Bar. I found this great video of one of Vandermark's groups called the Vandermark 5. Check it out!

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The Umbrella Festival is going on in Chicago through this Sunday. I'm hoping to at least get out there on Friday to see Ernest Dawkin's New Horizons Quartet, Matthew Shipp, and The Roscoe Mitchell Quartet. Saturday's lineup looks great too. Check out the flyer and program.

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It doesn't stop there! Thursday in Madison is the new first Thursday gathering at the Project Lodge. This month featuring Caroline Davis (saxophone) and Dave Miller (guitar), two established Chicago musicians along with regulars Patrick Breiner (tenor sax) and Luke Polipnick (guitar).

New Way to Bend Guitar Strings

ok, i guess this isn't so "new" anymore, but i just came across it. a neat modification to a guitar to allow pulling down the guitar to bend a string. ingeniously called the "string bender". you tube video here: Invention of the StringBender (B-Bender) guitar

Sudoku

See if you can derive the number for this spot:



I've already determined that only 3 or 7 can fill this spot. I've highlighted in yellow the lines that already contain 7. Now one of the green boxes must be 7 which eliminates the possibility of 7 in the original square. So... I know it's 3!

Modern Music in 3D: Nathaniel Bartlett's Marimba + Computer

Last night, I saw Nathaniel Bartlett perform at the Overture Center in Madison, WI. Armed with a marimba and a computer full of custom PD programs, Bartlett explores a free form style of music through sounds moving around a 3D space. The performance was an extended work called "Blueshift". Bartlett introduced the piece by asking the audience to listen more for the timbral and spatial aspects of the music rather than traditional pitch and rhythm. The room was shortly filled with sparse marimba notes and the splashes of reverb laden cymbals. The cymbal tones appeared to "move" around the room, an element that Bartlett seems to concentrate heavily on.

The 3D listening space is provided by a so-called "cuboid" arrangement of speakers. It consists of eight pieces, four on the floor laid out in a square around the audience and four twelve feet off the ground. A bass speaker off to the side provides the low frequencies whose location are more difficult to detect.

The role of the computer in this work is to play samples and move the perceived source of the sound around the listening space. The marimba controls this via floor mics and serves to trigger the samples as well as alter their movement trajectory within the listening space. Bartlett has integrated a few MIDI pedals to enhance control of the computer generated sounds. Many qualities of the samples were being modulated, from pitch shifting of rain sticks to short echoes and delays akin to modern experimental electronic music.

I spoke with Bartlett after the performance and he elaborated on some details of how the sounds are controlled. The marimba notes are analyzed by the computer for both pitch and loudness. The interesting part is that these not only control one possible change in the sound, but a set of possible changes. How the choice is made wasn't exactly clear; whether it is random or not. He also mentioned that neural networks were involved in some of these decisions, but again, the details were not clear. This is an interesting style of music aided by a unique use of computers. I'm looking forward to hearing more of Bartlett's music as well as checking out some of the capabilities of PD.

Also see "Nathaniel Bartlett: Solo Marimba + Computer-Generated Sound Projection" published in Percussive Notes Aug/Sept 2009.