Porteño internet chess amigo and fellow guitarist, Horacio Villa sent me a link with the recommendation that I watch a couple of videos of the charango player Oscar Miranda. There is some very elegant playing here by a big man on a small instrument – particularly in the final minute of the first video. At one point the cliché “his hands are moving too fast to see” is literally true.
Also of interest to me is the posture of Horacio Castillo in the very first video of this sizeable collection. I have found myself intuitively using this posture – which contravenes classical orthodoxy - over the last few years. However, I do not pass it on as standard to pupils for the simple reason that I’d already been playing for more than 30 years before falling into it and I remain unconvinced that it would offer enough stability to allow a beginner truly to relax the shoulders, arms and hands. Is this simply an untenable case of do as I say, not as I do?
Right at the bottom of the page you can hear a cheerful audio file of the puzzingly entitled milonga, Y no entendieron nada (And they didn’t understand anything) by Eduardo “Toto” Mendez (interestingly put together, trilingual website). If you’ve ever wondered what a Uruguayan accent sounds like, there is a short video of him enthusing about the first ever Festival de Cuerdas de América. I’d never come across Eduardo Mendez before and a little research on YouTube threw up this short, comical video of a recording session with some pals. I tried embedding the video twice and while it had all the appearances of success, pressing Play elicited the message “Sorry, this video is no longer available.”
Everyone has their own favourite YouTube moments but I’ve never seen a claim to having grouped together The 50 Greatest Arts Videos on YouTube. However, there are some crackers here – chosen for The Guardian by Ajesh Patalay.
For some time now I have suspected that my piano colleagues have been been harbouring too narrow a view of what potential means in prospective pupils. All becomes clear here:
I like to get an early night on a Sunday because you never know what Monday mornings can throw at you. This morning, a group of P7s announced that we were all going to die midweek. Never fear, I was on the case and knew they were referring to the switching on of the large hadron collider at CERN – I’d done my research, you see. I was able to pacify them by reassuring them that the mere switching on of the machinery was quite safe and that, although a beam of particles was going to be introduced into the collider on Wednesday (webcast here), there was to be no collision of protons. Conditions similar to those just after the Big Bang would not be simulated this September - we would not be dying this week. One promised to sue me if we did – I suspect he doesn’t even have a lawyer. Anything to get out of practising.
The unlikely event of science bringing civilisation to an end is scheduled for Tue 21 October – so at least we’ll have had a holiday – although I question the value of a full day’s in service just before entering a black hole. Were we to exit a black hole, intact but in another universe – would we expected to try our best to make it to school? Would we get travel expenses? Normally, in cases of nature interfering with our professionalism, one is encouraged to tune into local radio for details. Increasingly, though, I find local radio and the end of civilisation difficult to tell apart.
In the even less likely event of my serious treatment of the subject leaving some blanks in the science, let the groovers in the CERN Rap Team explain:
If your memory of a song you’d like to play is a little vague, or your harmonic ear challenged, why not turn to Chordie? The front page defaults to alphabetical search by artist, but you can change this to browse by song.
Having made your choice, you’ll be taken to a version of the song containing lyrics, chord names and guitar chord diagrams e.g. Downtown – written by Tony Hatch and performed by Petula Clark (cited as the most successful British female solo recording artist).
Should the key turn out to be unsuitable for your voice, there is a transpose function. The song, originally in E is shown here in the key of G. Should your mandolin-playing cousin show up, the chords can transcribed – like this. It is even possible to see the chords for left-handed players.
Even if you don’t play, and assuming that the lyrics are accurate, this might also be one way of avoiding mondegreens.
If you’re too young to remember this song, here is a video of Petula Clark performing it in 1964. If nothing else, you’ll be struck by how dancing styles have changed in the last 44 years!
I’m not really sure what musical dreams are being sold in this video by John Q. Walker – particularly from 9′ 55” to 11′ 18” - but it’s certainly interesting. Without giving the game away, it sounds like a comprehensive, cross-referenced database of musical nuance and human emotion would be required. Perhaps it’s entirely natural to be incredulous of possibilities which lie far in advance of your own lifespan - although in this video interview he concurrs with the estimation of 10 -20 years.
However, there is some great footage of a young Glenn Gould playing some of Bach’s Goldberg Variations (his first of two recordings, separated by 26 years) and some lovely photographs.
This Youtube video shows the Aria and Variations 1 – 7 from the later recording of 1981. May I recommend the elegant, lyrical fireworks from 7′ 14” to 7′ 50”
I strive not to stray too far from the music/education area if I can avoid it, but occasionally something so impressive comes along that I feel I have to flag it up. I just heard on Radio 4’s Material World about a project by staff in the University of Nottingham’s School of Chemistry, to create a Periodic Table of Videos. Each one could be sought out on YouTube, but it’s easier to find them on the team’s dedicated website. This really is a labour of love of which would surely have touched the heart of the table’s originator, Dmitri Mendeleev.
Professor Martyn Poliakoff has one of the bets science hair-dos of all time!
You can listen again to the programme until Thursday 4th August or download a podcast from the website.
There is another artistic representation of the Periodic Table here – flagged up by Brian a while ago.
Most people – even those with no formal musical education – are familiar with the term octave, even although they might struggle to define it. This short series of facts might do:
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each note makes the air vibrate at a given speed (frequency) e.g. 440 cycles per second or 440 Hertz (HZ)
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the ear judges pitch by an awareness of the speed of these vibrations
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if the frequency of a note doubles – the pitch goes up an octave (8ve)
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if the frequency of a note halves – the pitch goes down by an 8ve
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this relationship of half/double makes notes fit so well together that upon hearing them simultaneously, many listeners perceive only one note
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for this reason the notes share the same alphabetical name
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moving some of the notes of a melody into a neighbouring 8ve is called 8ve displacement and many composers use it to conjure a sense of strangeness while retaining a sense of the familiar
Octave displacement can seem nearly as odd for the performer as the listener. For most people, it would be easier to do this by reading or memorizing rather than improvising and most would agree that it would be easier on an instrument than with the voice. That’s why this seems so amazing - particularly from 0:29
Having signed up for updates from National Year of Reading (not the town - the activity) I received an e-newsletter today containing this advert for the campaign:
Pressed for geographical associations conjured up by the guitar, most people would cite Spain or perhaps Latin America when thinking of the nylon-strung guitar; Britain & U.S.A when thinking of rock, and perhaps the Celtic nations and U.S.A when imagining traditional or country music. Do you ever wonder what people, whose culture is not related to any of these, get up to on the guitar? Have a look at the work of Enver Ismailov from Ukraine:
