Saturday, September 23, 2017

Blog Post 3 - Waiting for humor in Nevada :-)



The Clouds Below – Waiting for Yesterday

This is a live in-studio performance by the band ‘The Clouds Below’ performing their song ‘Waiting for Yesterday’. This performance has two musicians using instruments from different worlds and eras – the hammered dulcimer contrasted with the bass guitar for instance. In addition to the range of instruments in use (including MIDI keyboards), the musicians are also making use of more recent innovations such as trigger pads. Both musicians are multi-tasking -  moving rather gracefully from instrument to pad to trigger. At times, they are playing two instruments simultaneously (one hand on each). Ableton Live is used for looping and layering and two MacBook pros are clearly displayed. The interface between two humans, ‘musicing’ with each other, using a combination of semi/traditional instruments but clearly also responding to the possibilities of the digital expanses mirrors to some extent the diversity and shared artistic threads of my team.

Reggie Watts: Humor in music

Watching Reggie Watts is profoundly disorienting, inspiring and…hilarious (although one doesn’t always know why). I love the way he moves through different personas from stand-up to avuncular to professorial with music infusing and permeating his entire act (an altogether too prosaic a word for what we witness).

His musicality is truly catholic (small c, in the universal sense) – and he channels it through a variety of mediums, fluidly moving between looped Sprechstimme, to McFerrinesque vocalizations and gleefully jumping behind the Nord Stage piano when the spirit takes him. I (and hopefully) my team might aspire to this type of ‘Big M’ musicianship, to the degree that our project emerges from the ‘dust of everyday life’ yet sparkles with artistic intentionality.


Creative string instruments performance |  TEDx

This performance is from a TEDx performance at the University of Nevada. The performer uses a combination of instruments and vocals mediated through an effects processing/looping pedalboard. The interleaving of acoustic instruments with extended technique (tapping, percussive…etc.) and electric instruments is connected to our group members’ backgrounds in instruments from both worlds. The inclusion of the human voice via song appeals to my ‘hidden identity’ as a sometime poet and songwriter. The genre fluid approach is a match for my own omnivorous cultural appetite!




No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.