Almost a year ago, on February 5th of last year at exactly 15:02, I posted the first entry in this journal. Soon we will have two music posts per week, a new piece and one from a year ago.
I read the music of sound blog this Morning and he makes some interesting points regarding the iPad.
The iPad as a wireless controller for music:
the music of sound » Apps for your iPad? But what are the apps that you can’t wait to see re-versioned for the iPad? It obviously has huge potential as a wireless controller for music, and I don’t imagine it will be long before there is a virtual Monome controller/emulator as well as program specific remotes akin to the LaunchPad. I can also easily imagine something akin to the Lemur appearing on the app store, which to a small degree already exists with the iTouch MIDI apps…
The iPad as a wireless DAW controller (((Digital Audio Workstation – basically every computer-based recorder))):
But also the Dexter, which is a more DAW specific remote based on the same technology as the Lemur. In fact for ProTools it already exists as the ProRemote but expanding it for a larger screen will have a huge impact on its usability.
Then he points out that album artwork will look much better this size! The iPad screen is smaller than the old 12″ vinyl cover, but larger than a 7″ single cover:
Lastly, for engaging with music the iPad could make a great start back to the days of vinyl in terms of displaying artwork & liner notes….. well…. realistically back to 7? single territory at least…. the 12? LP still reigns supreme in that respect!
Jon mentioned to me today that the iPad will be the ultimate sheet music format. It will sit on a music stand, and you could store zillions of songs as PDF’s! He said, page turns will be effortless, the size will be smaller than any fake book, on and on- this is exciting. You could even sync a cursor to some sort of time code and “follow the bouncing ball” if you want.
I could see every Broadway band or classical orchestra storing their entire repertoire on iPads – they can interact with their scores without needing a mouse. And the possibilities for music students are endless. Imagine seeing the score and having a built-in metronome and being able to change the tempo of the piece one is practicing. Pianists won’t need anybody turning the page of their score….
Then I found this article and video about a fantastic project by guitarist Pat Metheny, a robotic orchestra or giant player piano + band, an Auto-Orchestra:
Robot Band Backs Pat Metheny on Orchestrion Tour Dozens of robotic band members will join jazz guitarist Pat Metheny on his next international tour. It’s the same backup band that accompanied him on his latest album, Orchestrion, producing sounds both familiar and alien.
I especially enjoyed this paragraph that ends the article:
Not only does the visual spectacle of robots playing along with Metheny’s always-impressive guitar work hypnotize the viewer, but it sounds great for the same reason live orchestras sound so much better than CDs: They’re essentially 100-point surround sound speaker systems housed in a massive acoustic space with its own resonances, and no home theater (well, no home theater without robot or human performers) can duplicate that sound.
Watch the video as it is really fasctinating. It’s essentially a very complex player piano. The other thought I had… this will be hell to set up at every gig, to maintain and troublecheck before every performance. Also, I would love to sit in the middle, where he sits, to really experience the music happening all around, something that will sadly get flattened by the need to amplify the performance through two stack of speakers…
Regarding this earlier post, where I wrote that I don’t see the separation of spirit and physical things:
I came across these words from Oliver Sacks, who I have mentioned a number of times before, from an interview with Wired Magazine, I believe:
I dislike both of those words, because for me, the so-called immaterial and spiritual is always vested in the fleshly — in “the holy and glorious flesh,” as Dante said.
Jon told me he saw Billy Bob Thornton on a TV show, asking another man to name a rock band after 1980 that we will listen to in a hundred years. The man named Bruce Springsteen to which Thornton immediately replied that Springsteen started in the Seventies. Then U2 and REM were brought up, but Thornton said that he could name at least 100 bands from the Sixties and Seventies that will be listened to a century from now.
I suggested Prince, but could not come up with much else. What about Jazz, can you name a bunch of young players? Easy to name the greats from the fifties, sixties and seventies, isn’t it. Could be I am not listening to Jazz radio… wait, there basically is no Jazz radio anymore… So, what happened with the record labels and with radio during the last decade and a half has something to do with it. But was that action or re-action?
Could it be that there is a relation between the downward spiral of art and music education in our schools, starting sometime in the Eighties, and the music and art scene? Has anybody studied the effect the lack of music/art education might have had on our culture in general? How about this: what if the lack of art/music education means that more people simply don’t know what a superior photograph looks like? If any photo of the Pantheon will do, why would the press, for example, hire a photographer to take a great photo of the place?
Maybe people have not been given the tools (((art-education))) to analyze a photograph? This came up in a conversation with a photographer friend, after our performance in Newport Beach today… And if a person knows near nothing about music, because the subject was never brought up in school, they also don’t know what it takes to play an instrument, the studying, the practicing, the discipline…. Therefore music and performance is devalued. And it’s not going to get better soon, as Californian government has promised to slash more of whatever is left of art and music in schools because of their budget crisis.
I find this inquiry as fascinating as a doctor might find dissecting a cadaver. Very complex, with lines crossing and double-crossing… a veritable hive of connections and layers. What is the origin? How is it connected? Which piece should I move first to strengthen the position? Which was the biggest mistake? I think it is safe to say that, as Dr. Sacks mentioned, we are a musical species – to deny that is to inhibit our personal and cultural growth. So, the first step is to not only provide arts education, but to attempt to really integrate it into the curriculum. We certainly don’t all have to become musicians, painters, photographers, but an appreciation and rudimentary understanding of the arts, and in particular music, would, I believe, enrich all of us.
Here is a little riff on Tradition and Originality:
Tradition and Originality are poles, extremes like the absolute and relative that in reality can’t be torn apart. There is a flamenco tradition, predated by the Arabic tradition, but there is also the guitar-tradition, the coaxing sound from any wooden box tradition, which includes all string instruments, etc. etc… Tradition is the rootsystem, Originality is the bloom. Tradition is the mountain you jump from to fly. And sometimes it works the other way aroud, too, when an original event becomes a new tradition. Tradition is craft to the originality that is art. All the study-pieces and etudes we play and practice are like sacks filled with sand, which we pile up to climb and jump.
Finished the book The City and the City by China Mieville on Friday morning. What a book, what a trip! Don’t know what to write about it. It was compelling, twisted, fantastic.
