¿Cómo suenan cuando están solos?

En el caso de The Turtles simplemente gloriosos:

En el caso de The Ronettes más rockeras y simplemente más todo:

Acero Sagrado y otros Gospels

Aunque el r'n'r siempre ha sido condenado por los evangelistas gringos (blancos) como "la música del diablo", hay otros sabores del cristianismo que rockanrolean duro y desinhibido.

Prueba 1: Los exponentes del Sacred Steel cuya capital mundial es Ohio.


Prueba 2: Los Blind Boys Of Alabama cantando Amazing Grace con la melodía de The House Of The Rising Sun.

¡PRAISE THE LORD!
¡TESTIFY, SISTER!

A Veces Una Cuerda Es Demasiado

Pero a veces una sola cuerda es perfecta.

El Rey De Una Cuerda:

Una Buena Brújula

Joi Ito, jefe del Media Lab del MIT habla en WIRED sobre el impacto que ha tenido internet y el desarrollo tecnológico en la cultura y ofrece nueve principios para orientarse en éste terreno.

Ito: It’s not necessarily going to be all good. Just look at media. The transformation of media is rocking the business models of traditional media. It’s not necessarily a good thing to put newspapers out of business because we need them for democracy, but not all the stuff that happens when you overthrow dictators and push innovation to the edges is good. That fact is, it is [happening].
Wired: And in the face of that we ought to do what?
Ito: What you need to do is understand these changes are happening, and build systems and governments and ways of thinking that are resilient to this kind of destructive change that is going to happen. It’s a kind of change that is really hard to predict, it’s really hard to control, so how do you as a human being, or as an organization, survive in this chaotic, unpredictable system where planning is almost impossible?
Wired: Please tell me you have an answer.
Ito: There are nine or so principles to work in a world like this:

1. Resilience instead of strength, which means you want to yield and allow failure and you bounce back instead of trying to resist failure.
2. You pull instead of push. That means you pull the resources from the network as you need them, as opposed to centrally stocking them and controlling them.
3. You want to take risk instead of focusing on safety.
4. You want to focus on the system instead of objects.
5. You want to have good compasses not maps.
6. You want to work on practice instead of theory. Because sometimes you don’t why it works, but what is important is that it is working, not that you have some theory around it.
7. It disobedience instead of compliance. You don’t get a Nobel Prize for doing what you are told. Too much of school is about obedience, we should really be celebrating disobedience.
8. It’s the crowd instead of experts.
9. It’s a focus on learning instead of education.

We’re still working on it, but that is where our thinking is headed.

Conflicto Generacional

Batman y Robin tienen una discusión de estilo rocanrolero en Detective Comics #458.

Glen Branca Habla: La Mente Crea La Música

Glen Branca habla sobre su famoso "incidente" con John Cage y sobre su práctica de composición.

I don't think the music is about the instrument. It's about the mind. The Mind creates the music, not the instrument, not even the musician.

La entrevista extensa en New Music Box.

Celtic Frost - A Dying God

Documental sobre Celtic Frost durante la gira Monotheist y su posterior disolución.

Metal para Hombres Solos

Leviathan, Xastur y Striborg revelan su filosofía en un documental de tres partes. Nada llena de terror el corazón de tus audiencias como las guitarras procesadas por el POD 2.0 que usan por lo menos dos de ellos.
Black Metal's unexplored fringes

In the darkest shadows of Black Metal

Everybody Dies Alone.

Érase Una Vez En Noruega

Excelente documental sobre la tragedia que define el Black Metal contemporáneo: el verdadero inicio de Mayhem y sus devastadoras secuelas.

¿Qué hace Perfecta a una Canción?

De New York Magazine: Four Musical-Theater Composers Explain What Makes a Perfect Song

Cole Porter, “Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye”

 Chosen by Gabriel Kahane (February House)

“There’s no love song finer / but how strange the change from major to minor / ev’ry time we say goodbye.”

It could only be written by someone who does both music and lyrics. It’s in the final sixteen bars of the song, and “major to minor” is on the subdominant and the minor subdominant—the four to the minor four—and it’s a thriller. He’s coloring the lyric in an incredibly clever way and also a way that’s really emotionally satisfying, in addition to having gorgeous harmony and a great tune.

Frank Loesser, “Joey, Joey, Joey” from The Most Happy Fella

Chosen by Michael John Lachiusa (Queen of the Mist)

“Like a perfumed woman / the wind blows in the bunk house / like a perfumed woman / smellin’ of where she’s been / smellin’ of Oregon cherries / or maybe Texas avocado / or maybe Arizona sugar beet / the wind blows in.”

It tells you everything you need to know about the character: his choice of words, color, his mood. The character himself is sort of louche, and there’s a sensuality to the music; you hear his longing and his desire to move on. He’s got a great appetite that can never be filled, and you feel that void. It’s a novel in a nutshell.

Stephen Sondheim, “If Momma Was Married” from Gypsy

Chosen by Marc Shaiman (Hairspray)

“Momma / please take our advice / we aren’t the Lunts / I’m not Fanny Brice / Momma, we’ll buy you the rice / if only this once you wouldn’t think twice.”

It’s so complicated but effortless. Look at all the inner rhymes there—“once” and “Lunts,” and all the “ice”s, and the wordplay of “once … twice,” you have to wonder what comes first. As a lyricist, I know you often start with the last line and work backward. And the playfulness of the Jule Styne music, a melodic waltz, is perfectly matched.

David Yazbek, “Here I Am” from Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

Chosen by Jason Robert Brown (The Last 5 Years)

“I’ve been kinda missing Mom and Daddy / sort of been a spin since Cincinnati / the morning flight, a major bore / but then they open the cabin door and / zut alors! Here I am.”

Yazbek has to introduce this person, Christine, whom we don’t really know, set up that we’re on the French Riviera, and establish that she’s a klutz. In five or six lines, and you can understand it. The music has weird harmonic shifts you don’t expect, the melody itself rising in a very satisfying way: “Mom and Daaaddy, Cincinnaaati.”

¡Restringe Variables!

Brian Eno habla sobre retringir variables, instrumentos y estilo:

In modern recording one of the biggest problems is that you’re in a world of endless possibilities. So I try to close down possibilities early on. I limit choices. I confine people to a small area of manoeuvre. There’s a reason that guitar players invariably produce more interesting music than synthesizer players: you can go through the options on a guitar in about a minute, after that you have to start making aesthetic and stylistic decisions. This computer can contain a thousand synths, each with a thousand sounds. I try to provide constraints for people.

Todo Metal Proviene de SLAYER

(via ideologic.org)

This is very amusing! Swiped from Talkbass forum:
Since some of us old guys remember Slayer, I'll use them to explain the Metal Genres:

Progressive: Slayer takes some Jazz lessons

Avant Garde: Slayer takes Jazz lessons with Sun Ra

Black Metal: Slayer repackaged for teens

Christian Metal: Slayer with lyrics from Hillsong

Death Metal: Slayer with Cookie Monster on vocals

Technical Death Metal: Slayer with Cookie Monster on vocals, and Yngwie on guitar

Doom Metal: Slayer with a hangover doing Black Sabbath covers

Drone Metal: Slayer in the special ed classroom

Stoner Metal: Slayer with Jimi Hendrix on LSD

Glam Metal: Slayer with eye shadow and lipstick

Gothic Metal: European Slayer

Groove Metal: Slayer with a backbeat

Industrial Metal: Samples of Slayer played over a dance beat

Neo-Classical Metal: Slayer hanging out at Starbucks

Nu Metal: Slayer hanging out at the Mall

Symphonic Metal: Slayer meets the Boston Pops

Thrash Metal: Slayer

Viking Metal: Slayer meets Thor

Folk Metal: Slayer meets Lilith Faire

Funk Metal: Slayer with slap bass

Grindcore: Slayer with the vocals slowed down, and everything else sped up

Metalcore: Slayer with a breakdown in the middle

Melodic Death Metal: Slayer learns a major scale

Nintendocore: Slayer joins the A/V club

Post Metal: Slayer Muzak

Rap Metal: Slayer goes to the hood, but then goes back to the burbs
__________________
My Bass Shop
jivesound.com

Pequeño puede ser Mejor

En el blog de Seth Godin:

If your goal is to make a profit, it's entirely possible that less overhead and a more focused product line will increase it.

If your goal is to make more art, it's entirely possible the ridding yourself of obligations and scale will help you do that.

If your goal is to have more fun, it's certainly likely that avoiding the high stakes of more debt, more financing and more stuff will help with that.

(...)

Don't be small because you can't figure out how to get big. Consider being small because it might be better.

1-10-100... Inovación

Peter Tu en el blog de investigación de GE describe el método de Stephen Voltz y Fritz Grobe para la inovación aplicada al arte del performance:

Their method follows the 1-10-100 principle.

It takes one experiment to spark a concept.
By experiment 10 one should have fleshed things out and have defined a direction.
By experiment 100 one hopes to have found something that is sublime.

The four rules that they espouse are:

1) seek variation – explore the possibilities.
2) be obsessive – keep focused until one finds something special.
3) be stubborn – don’t give up until you work through the problems.
4) set limits and work within them – unconstrained innovation meanders and wonders, only by setting limits does it force one to dive into the depths of a concept.

Their thoughts are somewhat reminiscent of “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”, where the key idea is to have an obsession with quality and to always have a good pot of coffee close at hand.

Aprende Música con Estrellas del Rock Potosino

Con el increíble Fernando Charó:




Y el poderoso David Juarez:



Muchas lecciones como éstas (con celebridades locales de la música) en el canal de YouTube y el website de www.virtuosso.com
¡Apoya el talento local y aprende música!

Maestra en Beatlesología

Mary-Lu Zahalan-Kennedy se ha convertido en la primera graduada de la Maestría en Artes en estudios de los Beatles de la universidad Liverpool Hope. Para la obtención del grado se estudia "el sonido de estudio, las composiciónes de los Beatles y cómo Liverpool ayudó a darle forma a su música. La MA examina el significado de su música y como ayudó a deinir identidades, cultura y sociedad".

Prototipos Artísticos

El especialista en interfáces de usuario Aza Raskin explica en su blog los puntos al considerar al crear un prototipo y lo resume a lo siguiente:

1. Your first try will be wrong. Budget and design for it.
2. Aim to finish a usable artifact in a day. This helps you focus and scope.
3. You are making a touchable sketch. Do not fill in all the lines.
4. You are iterating your solution as well as your understanding of the problem.
5. Treat your code as throw-away, but be ready to refactor.
6. Borrow liberally.
7. Tell a story with your prototype. It isn’t just a set of features.

A pesar de los intentos de Iannis Xenakis la música todavía no está tan formalizada (por lo menos para los músicos pero no es secreto que la industria se mueve en géneros bien definidos) como los lenguajes de programación de computadoras, pero éstas observaciones de diseño pueden ser muy útiles en el intercambio de ideas musicales.

¿Qué clase de cultura musical podría emerger si las obras se tratan como "prototipos" en lugar de piezas terminadas?

Moda, Creatividad, Inovación, Propiedad Intelectual

www.readytoshare.org
En donde se habla sobre las virtudes de la carencia casi total de propiedad intelectual en el mundo de la moda. Entre ellas:

• Aceleración de la inovación creativa
• Democratización de la moda
• Establecimiento rápido de modas globales
• Obsolecencia inducida

Y cómo se protege la industria de la moda de la piratería por medio de la inovación y la dificultad de copiar sus materiales y técnicas de producción.

Bersuit Vergarabat, Sonido, Semiótica, Ritual y Espectáculo

Semiótica musical en la revista TRANS. El sonido rock como eje de identidad en la música de Bersuit:

El Rock como un ritual adolescente. Trasgresión y realismo grotesco en los recitales de Bersuit
Silvia Citro

Se aprecia así una tendencia a un creciente eclecticismo musical, no obstante, la apropiación de estos otros géneros siempre se efectúa desde aquello que los miembros de la banda identifican como "sonido rock". Se trata de citaciones melódicas, rítmicas y de forma musical que al ser ejecutadas por la instrumentación básica del rock —la articulación de "batería, guitarra y bajo eléctrico" que define su fisonomía tímbrica y rítmica— y ser procesadas por sus características tecnologías sonoras, adquieren esos rasgos que hacen que "suenen como rock". Esta interpretación de los miembros de la banda parece confirmar parte de aquella apreciación de Frith (1999: 19) acerca de que en la actualidad, "el rock describe menos un estilo musical (o un contenido) que un valor auditivo", aunque, como veremos, para Bersuit los "contenidos" ideológicos sí son una variable definitoria.

Académicos Vs. Black Metaleros

En el New York Times:

Thank You, Professor, That Was Putrid

By BEN RATLIFF

Published: December 15, 2009

"Hideous Gnosis," a six-hour theory symposium on black-metal music, commenced on Saturday at Public Assembly.

The bald, beefy moderator, Niall Scott of the University of Central Lancashire, approached the podium in darkness. "It is my revolting pleasure," he susurrated, pulling on his long goatee, "to introduce Professor Erik Butler, who will present his paper 'The Counter-Reformation in Stone and Metal: Spiritual Substances.' "

And Mr. Butler, an assistant professor of German studies at Emory University, talked about black-metal music — in its second-wave, largely Norwegian form — as a cryptic expression of Roman Catholicism. He started with the 16th-century Council of Trent and the early modern church. He quoted lyrics from the face-painted, early-1990s Norwegian black-metal bands Gorgoroth and Immortal; he framed black metal as respecting some of rock's orthodoxies, as opposed to the heresies of disco and punk; and he spoke of black metal's preoccupation with "the abiding and transcendent: stone, mountain, moon."

(...)

"The purest black-metal artist is one who's unknown and inaccessible," said Nicola Masciandaro, a professor of medieval literature at Brooklyn College who organized the six-hour event.

In a way, black metal runs on a very old cultural motor: loss of faith, and the hysterical fear and sadness that come with it. But it has become one of rock's best modes of resistance, which is why it persists, why recent books and films about it have found an audience (like Peter Beste's photo essay "True Norwegian Black Metal" and the documentary "Until the Light Takes Us") and why it has inspired a new American wave of bands, including Nachtmystium, Krallice, Wolves in the Throne Room and Liturgy.

(...)

During a Q. and A. period Mr. Hunt-Hendrix was challenged by Scott Wilson, a professor from Lancaster University, who, like Mr. Scott, had traveled from England to attend the conference. Mr. Wilson wondered, skeptically, if transcendentalist black metal just boiled down to "all you need is love."

"I'm not so interested in defending anything I say," Mr. Hunt-Hendrix replied. "I only like to be judged on whether it's interesting or not."

But perhaps the day's most profound lecture came from Mr. Scott, who spoke in priestly cadences about black metal as part of the ritual of confession.

"The black metal event is a confession without need of absolution, without need of redemption," he said. It is, he added, "a cleaning up of the mess of others." He invoked the old English tradition of sin eating by means of burial cakes, in which a loaf of bread was put on a funeral bier or a corpse, and a paid member of the community would eat the bread, representing sin, to absolve and comfort the deceased.

"Black metal has become the sin eater," he intoned. "It is engaged in transgressive behavior to be rid of it."