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!
