Blogging the Journals! Your thoughts?
Welcome to the new MW&Pianos Blog! Go ahead and post and scream and shout! I know you want to!!! :-)
posted by Meg @ 5:30 PM
7 comments
Monday, March 14, 2005
About Me
- Name: Meg
- Location: Farmington, Maine, United States
I am meg I go to U Maine Farmington I am a music/writing major. I love music, Italia, living, traveling, school, researching, apples (computers and the fruit sure), VW beetles, tons of stuff...
7 Comments:
Hi Meg,
Thanks for doing this. If I'm going to give the option of waiving the journal writing for a week, we need to draft some requirements for the Blog.
Journals encourage engagement and reflection on the class material. The also add a different form of student expression. How would you design the Blog so that the spirit of these goals are met? Anyone?
Again, this is an idea, not a requirement. At best it will become a one-week option. Those preferring to stay with journals will have that option.
Also, post under 'other' and enter your first name.
Steve
Ok guys, I found this great article in PC Mag yesterday, and it inspired me.
(PC Mag March 8, 2005)
Evidently there is a pen computer that you can use to write on special electronically enhanced paper. I guess...
Anyway, if I got the gist correctly, there is even some kind of program like this for a piano keyboard. More research necessary before I can make this clearer.
So:
Make electronic "paper" that can be drawn on, and erased, so I can draw musical "fields" such as circles for drums, and key shapes for pianos, etc. Then these shapes can be linked to certain sounds, and the paper at the appropriate drawing can be struck, playing a note or percussive sound.
Imagine, if you will, a stage with a "blackboard" or marker board, or... whatever, or multiple surfaces etc. even the floor, made of this electronic paper.
Here is the perfect opportunity to combine visual and musical art, other than popular music's light shows and projections.
An artist can paint or draw something, and the musician could come out and play it.
This is also inspired in part by The Blue Man Group, who use much visual stimuli in their concerts.
Igrai
Hi Meg and Igrai?
Evan and Josh both *really* want to do the Blog thing, but would be more comfortable using the Blackboard Discussion group area.
Meg . . . would you mind moving there? Depending on how this goes, we could--after a week on Blackbaord--come back to this Blog.
What do you think?
And on the PC Mag article, very interesting. There is also software that will modify your pitch (when you play, say, a piano) and transfer it into colors or designs--depending on how you program it.
The visual arts is in the middle of a technology revolution that music--in spite of its claims--is only beginning to embrace. And by technology, I don't mean iPods, but technology at the creation stage, like image-rendering software or computer pens.
Steve
igrai do you go to Farmington?
just a question
Okay, i think that would be awesome... anything you touch makes a noise..
You know those jackets Burton Snowboards put out with the controls to the iPod on it...
Wouldn't that be cool if there were like touch panels or something or like motion control on it so dancers could wear these suits and make all kinds of music and rhythm with their motion.. oh that would be awesome. (i think i am dreaming...)
Oh there is that thing too.. Kinda like a theremin but i am not sure what its called, but u tap in the air around it and it can tap out your rhythm.
I know i kinda got off the coolness realm there but I love all those awesome concepts for new ways to make music... oh well ill comment on something more um... interesting later.
Yeah, I like the Theremin too actually, yes steve, I go to UMF, sorry, this is Evan, Igrai is of course, russian imperative for "Play", what you tell the dvd player when it is acting up.
Anyway, as to the theremin, there is this great player I've heard on a Flecktones album, their three disc set actually. She has perfect pitch, which I'm sure comes in handy considering there is no basis for pitch with that machine.
I would like to take a piano to some isolated tribe in south america or africa, and see what the people there would do with it. I found it interesting that America was established after the piano, but of course, those first americans new about harpsichords and all that of course. I wonder what those tribespeople would think, having no preconceived notion of how this thing is to be played, or what it even sounds like.
of course, the question is, how to get such a monstrous beast of a piano through the jungle. maybe a safari-clavi, designed for an elephants back, or Llama.
Evan
Ok, I know I have a one track mind when it comes to music some how Radiohead fits into everything for me... Its my flaw in life.. WELLL one of the members of Radiohead, Jonny, Plays the Ondes Martenot.
This is an early electronic instrument from the early 20th. Messiaen, who wrote Turangalila Symphony features this instrument in it and a few of his other compositions. The Ondes is just like a theremin but you can control it with a ring that corresponds with the keyboard it has...
This is the basic overview.
http://www.obsolete.com/120_years/machines/martenot/
If your up for French, I interviewed this gentleman back in high-school for a research project i did then. He is one of the leading players (really nice guy!) in the world (played with Radiohead on one of their Canal + shows taped in France)
http://www.chez.com/cslevine/ondes/index.htm
that last link can also link you to the modern version of the instrument called the Ondea. Once I get out of school, or before them if i save up the money, i am going to buy one of these fine instruments... and try to master it! There are very few of them in the world due to their price mainly. It would be nice to start seeing the instrument in America! Its basically a cross between a theremin, a violin, and a synth.. And the best thing about it is, its vibrato is just AMAZING!
until next time...
mego
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