The Good Musician

I’ve been reading Sounding the Inner Landscape: Music as Medicine by Kay Gardner. She references Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of music and the sciences. I once had a teacher who said that music was like mathematics in technicolor.
Gardner also illustrates the relationship of the chakras to the overtone series. When you produce a pure tone, either vocally or instrumentally, it sets up vibrations that are strong enough to be heard, occurring mathematically on a vibrating string. Going from the root to the octave, the fifth, fourth, third, and so on…
This is one of the most effective, quick warm-ups for …read more

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The last time I heard Mose Allison live was at the Continental Club in ‘85 or so. I discovered Mose at college in ‘63, and the first time I heard him on 33-1/3 vinyl I could have sworn he was black. I was astonished when my friend showed me the cover. As I listened more closely, I was amazed at his unusual piano style, a fusion of jazz and blues. He hums and grunts along with his piano solos, kinda like Glenn Gould does in his definitive Bach recordings.
It’s a distinctive style that no one has been able to …read more

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This was on the wall of a rehearsal room I recently inhabited.
1. Thou shalt attend thy rehearsals with steady faithfulness.
2. Thou shalt not touch graven metal with thy bare hands.
3. Thou shalt not take thy sharps and flats in vain.
4. Remember thy performance dates and keep them holy.
5. Honor thy director that thy days be long upon the land.
6. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s bell assignment.
7. Thou shalt not tap thy foot with exceeding loudness.
8. Thou shalt not steal thy neighbor’s pencil.
9. Thou shalt return thy bells to their …read more

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Lois Perkins Chapel, on the Southwestern University campus, was a little bit of heaven for serious music lovers last Friday evening. An enraptured audience participated in a Cathedral Evensong service much like Felix Mendelssohn would have experienced. Bishop Joe Wilson celebrated with a slightly abridged version of the 1853 Anglican Book of Common Prayer, and the audience enjoyed a sonic and cerebral treat in the performance of new scholarly editions and rarely heard Mendelssohn works for chorale, boy soprano, and organ.
Organist John Schmidt chose the Sonata in A Major, Op. 65, No. 3 as the prelude to the evening. AVAE, …read more

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Here is a video which is significant in that

the cellist was one of my longest-standing, dearest friends
it’s an excellent example of a jazz-classical-pop ’60’s mashup
that’s my black cat, Saturn, in the window
shows our corner of Topanga Canyon
great example of John Martin’s classical guitar
great example of Wilson Fisher’s writing/singing for 12-string guitar
that was my life

Listen to all the Green cuts, accompanied by photo-montages of the band and what the life of a musician was like in the ’60’s

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It was dead still calm, wet-blanket so’s you couldn’t breathe. Linus, who I swear has the intelligence of an eight-year old, got in my face, yowling something about “Run! Take cover!” and when he’d done his best, he zipped down the stairs to snug up in his favorite dry hidey-hole.
Forty-five minutes later, a giant started blowing on 200-year old oak trees, stripping them of all their ball moss and dead ends, and then it turned into a whole army of giants whooshing through the sky.
OK. Maybe this is getting serious, like when you go to a concert and expect …read more

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I was thrilled to see that my new friends, the White Oak Trio, now have two videos up. This is exciting, because now every Good Musician can hear what a piano trio is supposed to sound like. Not only that, one of the videos interposes an interview with the group and live performances. Listen, and you’ll learn oodles about what goes in to making good music, and good music being made! This is a group to follow closely…

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Miles Davis and Ella Fitzgerald represent the ultimate in jazz. These two icons had a long career that impacted several generations of musicians. Every Good Musician library should have pretty much their entire discography.

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The Internet Archives music collection has mp3 recordings of everything from Enrico Caruso and Galli-Curci to Laurie Anderson and the Grateful Dead. The sub collections go all the way back to cylinder recordings.
You can also find old radio show archives, such as Fibber McGee and Molly, the Whistler, and the Bob and Ray show. I remember hearing all these on long car trips when I was a child. Bob Elliott is comedian Chris Elliott’s father.

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Bad joke. Hang around music departments long enough, and you’ll hear all of them. What’s the difference between a violin and a viola? A viola burns longer. Is that not just cruel? It’s an egalitarian type of dark humor, though. The original voice part of the “mi-mi-mi” joke was a tenor, so see? Spreads the joy.
Back to meme. My second meme, to be precise. My first was from Kay at Kay’s Thinking Cap, and the challenge was to name five things you know now that you never dreamed of twenty-five years ago.
Scott from Metal Martyr tagged me, …read more

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