Alternate Endings

Hilary Hahn wants to be an astronaut too!

I'm With The Band

Artist Brian Marshall used found objects to create a robot band. (They've even got names!: Gamon sings vocals, Johnson's got lead guitar, Ritan plays the bass, and Topper on drums. Awww cute.)
If you're in the area, you can see his show at the RedMohawk gallery in Wilmington, DE on January 29th.

(via neatorama)

Catty Smile / Oscar Wilde Confrontation

Thing Three:

“The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation.”
- Oscar Wilde

(via thinkexist)

It Is The Distant Future / We Are Robots

Thing Two:
The Beethoven Scanner! Now THIS is a scanner. The various music departments in my life should look into it.




(via everyoneforever)

Cello Song

Schools start up again today. I'm so excited to learn about Contemporary Opera, I could sing! (Although it wouldn't be pretty.)
For those of you who are not about to embark on such a fascinating term - I thought it might be nice to have "HUMOR" as the order of the day.

Thing One:
The Well-Tempered Limerick (1979) by Virginia C. Albedi
(A set of 141 limericks on the subject of string quartets.)

Quartetto Loquacio

Some ladies decided for fun
To play Opus Eighteen, Number one.
But they talked and sipped sherry,
Became wondrous merry,
And never got past the first run.


Note to a Maestro

The string section sends its regrets.
We're tired of your raving and threats.
Rehearsal's a chore
And a tedious bore.
We're off to play Haydn quartets.


Geriatric Special

In the scherzo we thought we had made it,
But Mrs. Brown's discords delayed it.
Inside of her eye
A speck floated by
Which she thought was a run, and she played it.


(oh so many more!, courtesy of Chamber Musicians of Northern California)

This Is Not the Greatest Song in the World / This Is Just a Tribute

MJ on top of a mountain? The Norweigan Alpine Ski Team has a great sense of humor.

That is all.



(via trendhunter)

Always Wrapped Up In Her Books

Confession: I love fictional novels about real musicians.

Confession Part 2: I have a particular weakness for Clara/Schumann/Brahms novels. The story is such a soap opera - writers love it! - and I've read them all:


Good Things I Wish You by A. Manette Ansay (2009)



Trio and Trio 2 by Boman Desai (2004, 2006)


Longing by J.D. Landis (2005)
By the way: this is my pick! "What a good book," says the english/music major.


Clara: A Novel by Janice Galloway (2004)

I once walked into a secondhand book store and came out with the only new full-priced book in the store because it was a Clara/Schumann/Brahms novel. The owner nicely pointed all that out to me, but Trio is hard to find and this one was signed so what-could-I-do. Anyway, now the bookstore owner and I are friends; I browse the music section, and his pet cat hides behind the stacks and pounces on my feet when I least expect it.

(If you know of any others, you should pass them along.)

Won't You Take Me To / Funkytown

(via Funky Lunch)

Home Grown Tomatoes

The Vienna Vegetable Orchestra:

"The Vegetable Orchestra performs music solely on instruments made of vegetables. Using carrot flutes, pumpkin basses, leek violins, leek-zucchini-vibrators, cucumberophones and celery bongos, the orchestra creates its own extraordinary and vegetabile sound universe."

It just never gets old!

Say, Have You Met Lydia / Lydia, the Tattooed Lady

Yes, I have a tattoo. And yes, it is music-themed. It is nerdy, but then again, so am I - and I've got nothing on these people:









(Please note that I had to go through a lot of pictures of seriously questionable body parts to get these for you. I hope you are appreciative.)

(so many more music tattoos)

You're My Favourite Book

Aeroplain is "electronica fusion" by Massimo Fiorentino - and their first album is inspired by Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle! Each song corresponds to a different section of the book.
I am so excited, I've pulled my copy off the bookshelf and put Minimalism: Origins on hold (sorry, Edward Strickland).

You can download the album for free here, or listen to full previews at last.fm.

The Bagman's Gambit

Carnegie Mellon University offers a bagpipe major. Seriously. The CMU School of Music makes bagpipers practice in the basement of another building, but it's legitimate.
(The sound of bagpipes always make me want to join a gathering crowd in the dead of night and walk barefoot in single-file procession. Oh, wait: been there, done that. Carleton, you are something else.)

Nick Howard, the only graduating bagpipe major in America in 2009, shows you how it's done:



(CBS article, 2006)

Real Men

Kay Stiefermann

Norman Garrett


LADIES AND ALSO GENTLEMEN:

Barihunks: "This site is dedicated to any hunk who sings in the baritone and bass/baritone range. Singers must be professional, semi-professional or serious students with real potential."

Be still my heart.

I Can Do Anything You Can Do / Better

I've been reading Susan McClary, so... I'm on a music-feminism kick again.
Cheryl is a beat boxing champion - and she's a girl. (In case that wasn't obvious.)

(Me, I can't even whistle properly.)

Breathe And Sing Along / Should I?

Kamraan Z. Gill and Dale Purves from Duke University have a new study:
"A Biological Rationale for Musical Scales."

Here's the abstract:

Scales are collections of tones that divide octaves into specific intervals used to create music. Since humans can distinguish about 240 different pitches over an octave in the mid-range of hearing, in principle a very large number of tone combinations could have been used for this purpose. Nonetheless, compositions in Western classical, folk and popular music as well as in many other musical traditions are based on a relatively small number of scales that typically comprise only five to seven tones. Why humans employ only a few of the enormous number of possible tone combinations to create music is not known. Here we show that the component intervals of the most widely used scales throughout history and across cultures are those with the greatest overall spectral similarity to a harmonic series. These findings suggest that humans prefer tone combinations that reflect the spectral characteristics of conspecific vocalizations. [italics added] The analysis also highlights the spectral similarity among the scales used by different cultures.

You can read the rest of the article here.
How wonderful! Plus, now you can walk around and talk (relatively) knowledgeably about "conspecific vocalizations."

(via Deric Bownd's MindBlog)
(special thanks to M.Burns)

You're the Piano Man

In which: Li Jian redesigns the doorbell. Play some tunes while you wait!

(via trendhunter)

There's A Drumming Noise Inside My Head

Drum machines, drum machines: Moby, how did you get to be the bee's knees?

(via Gizmodo)

Three Little Birds / Sat On My Window

Jenny Lind.
What. A. Babe.
They called her "The Swedish Nightingale" for her clear soprano voice. Mendelssohn and Chopin both had little crushes. Hans Christian Anderson? Madly in love with her. She was the star of the world premiere of Verdi's "I masnadieri," she toured America with P.T. Barnum, she founded and funded music scholarships.
And she has a soup named after her:

Jenny Lind Soup
(recipe from soupsong)
1/4 cup diced rutabaga
1 Tbsp butter
1 Tbsp flour
1 cup chicken stock
4 ounces Gruyère cheese, grated
1/4 tsp sage, crumbled
1/2 cup heavy cream, heated
salt and white pepper
1 egg, separated, with egg white whipped to stiff peaks

Stew the rutabaga in water until completely soft, then mash completely. Melt the butter in a saucepan, stir in the flour, and cook into a roux for several minutes. Whisk in the stock, bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes.
Whip the egg whites and set aside.
When about ready to serve, whisk the cheese, rutabaga, and sage into the soup. Cook over medium heat for a couple minutes, then remove from heat and stir in the heated cream. Season to taste. Last, whisk in the egg yolk and pour into soup plates, topping with a spoonful of the beaten egg whites.



Wow. That sounds sort of disgusting.

(more on wikipedia)

Kitchen Song

And here's Mr. Cage mucking about the kitchen, making noises, talking about Yoko Ono and vegetarianism. All in a day's work, my friends.