harmonicminer

This is a crosspost with MusicalGod.

And despite the comment of the talking head at the end, this reborn musician did not “save himself.”

So, I was plowing through some old disks, trying to locate a musical project that a client from years ago seems to want to remix.

While I was at it, I ran across a definition of music that I’d written many years ago, when a professor essentially forced me to do it, even though I thought it was an impossible task.  For the record, I still think it’s an impossible task.  But, for your entertainment and derision, and because I can’t think of anything better to post today, here it is:

Music is sound, created by a human being or surrogate (such as a computer programmed by a human), designed to be heard and understood at some level other than language. It isn’t just explicitly referential sound effects (as in the work of a foley artist for film). It isn’t a more or less accidental result of some other process, whose main purpose isn’t the creation of sound (as in the sweetly purring motor that is “music” to the mechanic’s ears). It is sound created primarily to be experienced as sound, designed to he heard without a specific extra-musical meaning attached to its elements. (This doesn’t mean that a given composition can’t have a program assigned by the composer to some element or other. It does mean that there is no automatic understanding of extra-musical meaning built into the “musical language” itself.) Its closest linguistic analog is poetry, as opposed to prose. Its closest physical motion analog is dance, as opposed to athletics of a team or solo nature. Music itself is neither language nor dance, though it partakes of certain similarities, having to do with the ways that events are organized temporally.

If communication requires a shared language with clear definitions for terms, music is NOT communication. It is possible to listen to a language that one does not know, recognize that it is a language, and yet understand nothing that was said, not even emotional overtones or context. In such cases, the only thing that is communicated is that no communication is taking place, beyond the fact that someone is trying unsuccessfully to communicate! When we listen to a musical style whose basic precepts escape us, we usually still know it’s music, or at least that it was intended to be.

Different kinds of music depend on different kinds of listening on the part of a presumed audience. Therefore, except in the most general of terms, no single kind of listening can be termed “musical listening”, without reference to the particular type of music being heard.

If you enjoy this sort of philosophical wool-gathering, you can find more of it here, on another site that I haven’t been maintaining much lately…  probably because I have little that’s new to add to the topic, that I haven’t already written and posted there.

No, it’s not a new competitor for the iPhone.

A few of my musician friends are attempting to invent a conceptually new musical instrument we will call the Shacklephone.  It will have keys, strings, a brass mouth-piece, frets, a slide, a bassoon mouthpiece, valves, a bell, a resonating body, and a sustain pedal, not to mention a MIDI interface, balanced audio input/output, AES/EBU digital audio interface, wordclock i/o, SMPTE timecode i/o, 64GB of RAM and a satellite transmission capability.  There will be Bb Tenor Shacklephones, Eb Alto and Eb Contrabass Shacklephones, and, of course, C Melody Shacklephones.  It will be the only musical instrument that is all things to all musicians.  There will even be drum and Shacklephone corps, using anti-gravity-equipped marching Shacklephones.  The special F Gospel Shacklephone will automatically scoop all notes.

Who needs physical modeling synthesis when you’ve simply included something of all the instruments?  Much like the music of Scriabin was supposed to have done, but didn’t, the Shacklephone will usher in the new age of enlightenment and agape love among all humanity.  The very age of Aquarius, with a dose of galactic alignment thrown in for good measure.

Professional design assistance is needed.  Anyone who would like to submit artist renderings of the proposed instrument could share in the royalties from the (doubtless) extensive sales anticipated for it.

The first prototype is scheduled to be rolling out of the Shacklephone factory sometime in the year 2012, and will be delivered to Yo-Yo Ma, who is developing a method book for novice Shacklephonists.  Bono has requested one so that he can Shacklephonically pursue world peace.  Persistent rumors at the Huffington Post suggest that Bill Clinton, the first black president, plans to appear on late night TV playing the Bb Marching Shacklephone (we all know of his fondness for astroturf…  shoot, didn’t he have his pickup truck bed lined with it?) as he tries to help Hillary unseat Obama in the 2012 elections.  I don’t think it will help, but it will be fun to watch.  He was always good at playing the blues.

Because of the possibility of Shacklephonio-political implications, the factory’s location will remain undisclosed until the first production run is complete and delivery has been made.  This should help avoid the appearance of former ACORN workers now employed by the Office of Universal Care Health Enforcement (OUCHE) trying to shut the place down to protect Obama’s re-election prospects…  since, of course, when the new age dawns, no one will be voting for him.

Wait:  didn’t I hear something else about the year 2012?

Must remember.

The following is a prime example of taking a phrase in scripture and making too much of it… while also suggesting that God is impressed with the volume of our music

You are familiar with the exhortation that music in worship is summoned to be skilful music (Ps. 33:3). We are not permitted to just throw anything together and call it good. But skill is not the only characteristic we are told to cultivate. “Sing unto him a new song; play skilfully with a loud noise” (Ps. 33:3).

There is a temptation when churches pursue excellence in music, and that is the temptation of becoming music snobs. And when that happens, a party spirit sets in and we start feeling superior to those who praise God with three chords maximum. But holding on to what we know about musical excellence, what do these brothers and sisters do that is better than how we do it? Well, frequently, contemporary worship music is louder than what we do. This is a clear and identifiable superiority. The Bible says that we are to worship God with shouts, with cymbals, with percussion, with noise. This is as much a biblical standard as that of playing skillfully—all the earth is to make a loud noise and rejoice (Ps. 98: 4); the cymbals are to be loud (Ps. 150:5); those who trust in God are to shout for joy (Ps. 5: 11); God ascends with a shout (Ps. 47:5).

God does not just want quality in music; He wants quantity. And to take pride in the quality if it is mumbled is just as wrong headed as to take pride in the noise apart from excellence in execution. We don’t get to pick and choose, and lord it over those who pick and choose a different deficiency. Adulterers on Mondays and Wednesdays do not get to feel superior to adulterers who sin on Tuesdays and Fridays.

So clap your hands, all you peoples, shout unto God with a voice of triumph.

OK, gimme a break here.  Equating the importance of musical taste to the choice of day to commit adultery is so far over the top that it would be an understatement to call it hyperbole.

But louder is better? More Godly?

NIV renders Psalm 33:3 this way:

“Sing to him a new song;
play skillfully, and shout for joy.”

A better approach to this is to acknowledge that part of playing skillfully is to play softly when required… and that, in context, “shouting for joy” in musical performance most likely means playing or singing it like you mean it, and not just going through the motions. Playing and singing like it matters. Like you’re doing something important, not merely reciting musically by rote, but being personally, completely involved in what you’re doing, namely worshipping God with music.

But simple, sheer volume? So, if one Marshall stack represents salvation, does a double stack represent sanctification?

I don’t see any amps in this picture.

Welcome to Practical Musicianship I.

Iran: Artist gets five year jail term for musical Koran

An Iranian artist has been sentenced to five years in prison for having put the Koran to music. According to ‘Fardanews’, the Iranian authorities considered the move “offensive to Islamic morality”.

Mohsen Namju is accused of having ridiculed the Koran, “reciting it in a western and anti-Islamic style”.

One of the major experts on recitation of the the Koran in Iran, Abbas Salimi, reported the musician to the Islamic court in Tehran.

The court found the artist guilty for having breached “Islamic morality”.

After the sentence, Abbas Salimi was reportedly “very satisfied” and underlined the importance of “defending the sacredness of god’s book”.

“No-one should be able to ridicule it,” he said.

Under Islamic law, music is allowed if it does not result in provoking the faithful.

Combining the recitation of the Koran and popular songs, like the Iranian artist, is not tolerated under Islamic Sharia law.

And you thought your local church was musically conservative. Along these lines: is there any equivalent to jazz in Islam?

Just kidding.

Organists have to learn to play the pedals, but this is ridiculous… in a good way.

A friend of mine, a classical guitarist, sent me the link to a post titled We need music to survive. It’s all worth reading, a meditation on the value of music.

One of my parents’ deepest fears, I suspect, is that society would not value me as a musician. I remember my mother’s reaction when I announced my decision to study music instead of medicine: “You’re wasting your SAT scores!” My parents love music, but at the time they were unclear about its value.

The confusion is understandable: We put music in the “arts and entertainment” section of the newspaper. But music often has little to do with entertainment. Quite the opposite.

After you read the rest of the article at the link above, you might pop over here.  You’ll note that I disagree with the author (at the link above) about some of the finer points of the relationship between “art” and music, but I’m in sympathy with his general point.  To me, the mere fact of music, that it exists at all, and is what it is, is a very deep mystery.

I spend most of my occupational time teaching these days.  It is the most recent step in a career evolution that has spanned 33 years and counting.  I was fortunate enough to have figured out ways of making my passion my vocation and thus have enjoyed a professional career in the music virtually all my adult life. There was a brief detour for a couple years in real estate investing or what is now called “house-flipping”.  The one good thing I can say about that is…I survived (just barely).

The full-time teaching chapter of my story has so far occupied about ten years, though I have taught in some capacity pretty much since I got out of college.  I suppose that means I’ve been around long enough to have formed some opinions and perspectives on the subject of learning, particularly in the area of music.  I freely admit the following observations are purely anecdotal, based on nothing more than my own life experiences and would not stand the challenge of academic rigor.

To put it bluntly, many college students with whom I come in contact on a daily basis display a disturbing lack of passion, curiosity, self-motivation or determination. There are very few young people I encounter with any real fire in their belly! Continue reading “E for Effort?”

It seems that there is no story where the demands of art cannot be impressed into the service of politically correct “creativity,” and this “SAMSON” AND OPERATIC INSANITY appears to be on the same general plain as a crucifix in urine, or maybe a star of David in pig blood.

In Belgium, a government-funded opera company is presenting a bizarre reworking of the Biblical story of Samson and Delilah. This “updated” version of a nineteenth century Saint-Saens melodrama depicts Samson as a Palestinian “freedom fighter”, not an Israelite, and portrays Delilah as a despicable Israeli agent, not a Philistine temptress.

In the climax of the production, Samson straps on a suicide vest and blows-up the Israeli “oppressors.” This politically-correct operatic indulgence follows announced plans by La Scala—on of the world’s most prestigious opera-houses—to produce a full-scale musical version of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” and by the Shanghai opera to offer a lavish, five hour singing-and-dancing adaptation of Marx’s “Das Kapital.” As the composer Franz Liszt once aptly observed: “All music is an insane asylum, but opera is the wing for incurables.”

Just a couple of observations, and a plug:

It WOULD be a government-funded opera company producing this trash. What private company would do it with the intent of making a profit? Of course, the Saudis will fund nearly anything that puts Israel and Jews in a bad light, and I’m just guessing that, much like Washington D.C., the Belgian government and lobbying apparatus is full of people on the Saudi payroll, who seem to own 1 out of 3 former congress critters and state department drudges.

As far as a Jewish Delilah goes, it would make more sense to cast Tokyo Rose as General MacArthur’s secret lover.

And the plug. The REAL story of Samson and Delilah, a story about sex and violence, and yet rated G.    “God Brings Down The House” is a particular show stopper.  At the link, just click the cover of Samson and Delilah, and then at the linked site you can play excerpts of the tunes.  Eat your heart out, Belgium.

I always said that jazz tells the truth.

Now Kathleen Stewart speaks truth to power.

It Ain’t Your Money To Spend

You may have seen this already, but it’s short, and worth revisiting. If it’s new to you, enjoy.