Mind the Gap: November 2009 Archives

I acknowledge that this little gadget 1) caught my attention because I was procrastinating. And then very quickly 2) I was sucked in by the extreme pro and con reactions some commenters had to a video that is, at root, simply a demonstration of a very cool (if expensive) piece of technology.

Though for some reason the Eigenharp has drawn a few comparisons with toys like Guitar Hero, in truth it seems like a mash-up of ideas re: real-time digital interfacing for effective music performance. Further research turned up this show-and-tell video which really makes the instrument's capabilities seem extensive, even if some of the timbres it delivers hurt my teeth a bit. Dudes will jam in basements, and it's more compelling viewing to see them rock these "bassoons from the future" than watch as they stare into blue computer screen light while furtively...scrolling.

Still, if commenters can be trusted (ahem) it seems that even in the 21st century there are audiences unwilling to see this as legitimate music making. I'm not sure why that is, especially when we are not talking about professional livelihoods but about personal creativity (albeit for those with a fat wallet--the Eigenharp retails for £3,950). Whatever got us here, this fence disturbs me but also makes me wonder why this is the line where some have chosen to dig in their heels. Commenter djb0622 noted it in a way that particularly smarted in an age where definitions are fluid and there's supposed to be an app for everything: "knowledge of key signatures and chord theory do not make a 'real' musician. it makes a western classical composer."

Friend of Mind the Gap John Pippen sends in this photo snap from a recent visit to the Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. I can't help but wonder/wish that these were someone's record bins, and that I could reach in and see what was stored under each tab. It looks like a totally reasonable filing system for music these days, and one that's way more intriguing than the usual distinctions.

Yes, yes, borders between genres have been ripped up a bit. So have the fences between a lot of things. And while I'm sure there are those in the room who think it wise to fight these trespasses in art, food, and society, I have never had much interest in that side of the conversation (or arguments about what we call it when it happens, though I am sympathetic to the plight). What I have always been interested in, specifically in the area of music, is what each camp needs to learn from the others in order to create great work and how they effectively (socially and professionally) go about doing it: sharing recording knowledge, improving composition chops, polishing performance skills, gaining business acumen. In the 21st century, if everyone wants to not only build their own art, but also create their own frames, that's great and amazing and exciting stuff, but that also takes a great deal more skill to pull off well, no? Or it requires a better kind of tag-team playing and creating than we have ever yet seen, but are perhaps perfectly poised to achieve. 

Even though the weather has turned cold, I am thinking tonight of summer camping trips to Lake Erie, and more specifically of my adopted grandfather singing old Scout songs with as much gusto as he could manage on the 15th repetition, all in the name of making the travel time go a bit faster for the eight-year-old kid (me) in the back seat.

Oh, the cannibal king, with the big nose ring, fell in love with a lusty ma-a-aid. And every night, by the pale moonlight, across the bay he'd wa-a-ade...

Admittedly, some of the lyrics would not make for nursery-friendly group sing-alongs these days, but I loved the tune so much that I made a habit of crying out for encores, requests that my adult self can hardly believe were always honored. Now that's love.

It's often noted how a familiar smell can transport you across decades in a flash, but  it's amazing to me how deeply the roots of a sonic memory can grow and how powerfully they can do something similar. I find this especially true when it comes to the sounds of once familiar routines. Those same camping trips were also colored by the comforting habits of pre-dawn mornings in a small pop-up camper. The open and shut of the flimsy aluminum door, a heavy footfall on the detachable red felt step, the pop of a cupboard door when a jar of instant coffee was retrieved. It was the excited boil of an electric kettle that carried real meaning, however, and the clink of a spoon against a mug that signaled morning had come and another day's adventures were about to begin.

Last week I was at a dinner party when a guest to my left suggested I update my thinking about the gender gap from a glass ceiling to a window. Something on par with the views afforded by the floor-to-ceiling sashes at Jazz at Lincoln Center, perhaps?

I promised I'd think it over and have been ever since, though I admit it has me troubled like a riddle I can't quite parse. Am I to take away from this visual analogy that rather than unsuspectingly hitting my head, in 2010 I can expect only to have to bloody my fist on the forward charge? With a well-applied heel of my hand to the frame of the window, can I nudge it upwards with a little patience and minus any permanent damage to myself or the transom? All these scenarios demonstrate some interesting parallels when it comes to interpreting the state of play out there as far as gender politics goes. Look and see what's around you, note all that has changed (Gail does the research, January cracks the jokes). Maybe question if the window is really even there at all (well, if you want to get all mystical about it, at least).

Same dinner party, but this time the guest seated on my right is explaining how lost he has felt  ever since a new music director came on board at his orchestra. The new maestro was great, he acknowledged, but he was just so...so different, you know? "As in Wife Swap different?" someone inquired. And we all paused and tilted our heads and imagined what that would look like, and how close it already was to how things run in many orchestras, what with the game of musical chairs played by new hires and guest visits and the like. Drama all around. The Reality TV part, though? Well, we all laughed nervously for a second about that, and then the guest on my right disappeared to make a few phone calls. Hmm.

Aside: Though no one smokes at dinner parties anymore, you should be able to smoke at concerts, "other than, you know, the Symphony Orchestra,"--performances which are apparently not "hardcore" enough to warrant lighting up.

When it comes to the new music/experimental side of my iTunes library, it doesn't often happen that a once-heard track echoes in my ears as I walk the city streets. But trips outside the boundaries of my professional genre areas do sometimes adhere to my brain as if playing through phantom earbuds on endless repeat. Usually it's a line or a turn of phrase that isn't even particularly remarkable, but it will lodge--lodge, I tell you!--in my skull.

Of late it wasn't Jay-Z as the new Sinatra that was hard to shake, but Alicia belting it out in Times Square (guess I was a little homesick or something).

And then, though Taylor clearly didn't want to talk about it, I couldn't stop her from telling me--over and over again.

La, la, la, so yeah. And if you're worried things are getting a little light and flaky around here, go get caught up on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.

Do internet memes perplex you? Do you just not care enough to follow (or do you need your kids to explain) that thing with the cats, that squirrel, or Kanye at the mic?

Well, there's a site that will do it for you, and it will even parse the Auto-Tune trend trajectory (though admittedly the "how" does not illuminate the "why").

In (finally) setting up a blog aggregator for myself a couple weeks ago, I realized how far behind I've fallen since the days when my Friday Informer deadlines kept me on a regular hunt for great online content.

However, now that I am properly outfitted with a consumption method, I love finding out who is reading what and why. But it's also making me wonder: Is anyone regularly reading blogs anymore, or have they been traded in for your TweetDeck? Who ranks as the best of the bunch you are following, and how are they feeding you?

Yes, the "Painfully Honest and Epic Mobile Home Commercial" is more, um, well, more everything.

[via BoingBoing]

But the one designed by Rhett and Link of "I Love Local Commercials" for Ray's Midbell Music of Sioux City, Iowa, capitalizing on the "band rap", is awkwardly poignant as well.

Now, I hear the LA Phil has the community cultural advertising thing down, but some other towns might need a hand in the marketing department. I'm not sure if these guys are open to such a project, but just imagine the possibilities if they showed up in your neck o' the woods.

Okay, admittedly this is a Gap commercial, of all things, and extrapolating large life lessons from it might be a little lame and more than a bit misguided, but it got me thinking about the role of art--as in: is the ultimate goal of art always to shake up our private worlds and ways of experiencing things, to let us mentally knock over a mannequin in the middle of a department store, so to say? And what about our arts institutions? Do we need them to be the staunch, quiet pillars and white walls of unchanging non-intrusive presentation, or could they use a radical redecoration in the way they do business as well? (Not that I'm suggesting we necessarily get extreme about it.)

Speaking of stirring up the dust, the NEA's own Rocco throws a hypothetical punch behind agency support for artistic areas such as hip-hop and graffiti. Cool, right? Gawker explains why this may not be such a great idea.

Some years ago Carnegie Hall asked me to draft a composer profile/program note for Idiot Divine, a solo show of Rinde Eckert's they were putting up in Zankel Hall. I didn't know much about Eckert's work before preparing for our quick interview, but I remembered that phone call for a long while afterward both because of what he had to say and the fact that he could be so philosophical with a phone in one hand and a spatula in the other (he was simultaneously chatting about theatrical devices and cooking dinner for his wife).

As it turns out, that conversation merely hinted at what this artistic polymath and self-confessed philosopher has to offer his audiences. I've been having a grand time digging much more deeply into his work as I put together the materials for this month's NewMusicBox cover story on him, which we posted today. His interview is brimming with great quotes, but here's a crash course that includes as much performance footage as I could pack in:

As per usual, editing choices had to be made and I didn't get to include one of my favorite Rinde Eckert tracks in the final production. Thanks to blogging, I'll be able to correct that in this space. This is "Carlo Dreams" from Eckert's song cycle Four Songs Lost In A Wall, which appeared on his 1997 release Story In, Story Out.