Here is a video of our final performance of Expanded Music; this concert was based mainly on improvisation, combining both music (with our instruments) and dancing. The idea was to join together two different Steinhardt classes and on top of that, to be able to connect with the University of Tromso in Norway and Queen's University Belfast in UK and all together create a whole performance of live improvisation from every location.
The result was great, it was quite amazing that we were able not only to be in contact but to make music all together, even if we where miles apart. Also, the dance improvisations gave each performance a different and special meaning making the concert something very special and never seen before.
Here is an edition made by my wife, who was recorded the performance.
This is the piece that I played for you on the third week of Expanded Music class with professor J. Gilbert. Its called "From within" and it was composed by Michel Camilo, one of the greatest exponents of Latin jazz in the world. He studied here in New York City, where he became a renowned pianist.
A while ago I made my personal transcription of this piece, which I'll like to share with you; here is the video of my interpretation of the song. I did this back at home in Chile, I hope you enjoy it! :)
If you are interested in the transcription, just contact me!
The Merengue is a musical and dancing style originated in Republica Dominicana.
One of the projects I'm developing related to Braille music is the creation of a music book with excersises of Piano Merengue written in Braille music. The idea behind this is to connect the music accademic studies with Popular music, a repertoir that needs to be expanded and available for everyone.
The use of the piano in Merengue music consists basically in the use of complementary rhythms alternating your both hands, These complementary rhythms are played on conventional chords without many tensions above the seventh. While these grooves consist mostly on rhythmic figuration on a given chord, you can also find grooves with melodic deployments in them, in which case the gradual movements are privileged. The most important thing about this is that when you play Merengue you have to think about the piano almost as one more percussion instrument of the band.
I made this video to show you all the basic Merengue styles played in Piano.
The charango is a stringed instrument created in the region of the Andes situated between Peru, Bolivia and Chile, it has five pairs of strings and an acoustic wooden box, although traditionally it was made with the body of a "Quirquincho" which is a species of armadillo from the Altiplano (as shown in the photograph).
I attached an interpretation of the Chilean charango player called Freddy Torrealba who I think is the greatest exponent of the instrument in my country, mainly due to the use of a superior technique in service of the folk music tradition. The song is called "Camino a Potosi" (Road to Potosi)
Ñamkelen is a word that comes from the mapudungun which is the language of the Mapuche people, it refers to something that is fallen, obsolete or forgotten. In this song there are only two sentences which are "mataste dioses con tu religión, que maldad!" (you killed gods with your religion, such evil!) but with them is more than enough to deliver an extremely powerful message. This is an open demonstration against invading cultures that, with the promise of evangelize and "modernize" the aboriginal peoples, end up killing them both physically and culturally, and all its traditions and identity becomes something Ñamkelen ...
This video is of the full album, the song Ñamkelen is on minute 27:33...
About the topic of meaning and music, and what music can bring to image (weather if it's a film, short, etc.) my wife and I made this very simple and homemade short movie, where you can see how important music can be when combined with image, and how by only changing the music one simple action or scene can have a completely different meaning.
Following my previous publication about Music and Humor, I want to share with you this video of the John Wilson orchestra performing the music from a whole episode of Tom and Jerry, where they also combine the musical performance along with typical "cartoon noises" played by the percusionists in the back. Here they are also appealing to the audience imagination and memories of this famous cartoons.
This is a sound representation of the Mario bros game being played; we have the very well known music of the game, and also the sounds that you would hear if you were playing it, according to the stage that each music represents.
This video game and it's music are in the collective imaginery of almost everyone, since it
was so popular, which gives the audience a role on the performance as well, since we are appealing to their minds who are imagining the scene, so the noises actually make sense because they are associated with a particular image or situation of the game.
Following this idea, at the end of the video I play a curious Japanese instrument called "otomatone" ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qecPQ0FB-64 ) which helps us enter into the midi sonority, typical of the video games of the 90s.
Here is a video of a concert I did with a friend in Chile for Piano and Musical Saw (along with other unconventional instruments), where we did this, with not only a musical purpose but a humorous one.
Hi today I want to comment on the relation between music and image, and how only by changing the music, the meaning of the image can change completely. We can see this in Film music. The best film scores are the ones that not only accompany what is happening, but the ones that add something else to the action, whether if it is something sad, melancholic, tension, etc. Also, with music alone we can be transported to a character's thinking, dreaming, imagining or even what he is feeling. For example, if we take the famous scene from Star Wars, when Darth Vader is arriving from a spaceship, and the doors slowly open so we can see him getting out from his feet to his head; the scene itself it's great because visually we have the character and the tension is built with the camera starting slowly showing him from his feet to his head, but the music adds Darth Vader's presence to the scene. If we would play this scene with a waltz, the result wouldn't be the same.
Here I leave some other examples of this.
First a scene from The Amazing Spiderman; where he is fighting against the Lizard at school. The first half of the scene we can hear action music (and a lot of fighting action as well), but at the end the director makes a joke, and we can see a librarian hearing classical music facing at the camera, whilest in the back we can see Spidermann and the Lizard destroying the room. There we can only hear what the librarian is listening, and the tone of the scene changes inmidiately, only by changing what we can hear.
Here is a scene from the film Amadeus, where Salieri is reading Mozart's works. As he turns the pages, we can hear the music that is written on the paper, which gives the scene much more richness and transport us to the character's mind and feelings much better as if we only saw him look at the music and changing the pages. We are on Salieri's head, just as Mozart's music is.
Hi, today I want to talk about the Lighthouse International school of music, where I'm going as an observer for my thesis project.
The Lighthouse is a music school here in Manhattan, dedicated only to teach music to blind and different visually impaired students. There, they learn to play instruments, have choir lessons and most importantly are taught to read and write Braille music.
They are lead by a great group of musicians and specialist to give the best learning enviroment and also they have the best facilities and technology available for this (Braille typewriting machines, Braille music printers, recording studios, etc).
Also they have one of the biggest Braille music librarys in the USA, and in America, where you can find almost all of the classical music pieces that you need made for visualy challenged students and in Braille music for blind students. They even send this scores to people with this needs from different countries.
This is a great place to learn and to study, and particularly for me, because of my future project both as a musician and as a teacher.
The next pictures are taken from the Dance class at the Lighthouse International:
With regard
to the reflection presented by John Gilbert in the course of Expanded Music, whether if
human language constitutes our reality or if our language is constituted by the
reality. We should know that certainly this question has no exact answer,
hopefully we will approach an answer if we adopt a clear stance about the
principles raised by phenomenology (Husserl). However, regarding the use of
spoken language in music, it is valid to extrapolate this and ask ourselves for
example:
The
language used in a song allows us to call it a song? I mean, is the the lyrics
what constitutes the song? And depending on this: Is the lyrics what shapes the
sentiment expressed in a song or the sentiment ultimately derives in one (or
many) lyrics?
For example
we have this beautiful lyric about the use of reason over the use of the heart:
Ah, cuánto tiempo perdido en pensar Ah, how much time lost in thinking
Que la vida se puede explicar That life can be explained
Con veneno intenté curación With poison I tried healing
¿Por qué confié en mi razón? Why did I trust my reason?
Ya en un mar de palabras me ahogué Already in a sea of words I drowned
Y fue en vano quererlas creer It was in vain wanting to believe them
Pero al fin el castillo cayó But finally the castle fell
Y adentro sólo estoy yo And inside there's only me
//: Vos ya sabías que todo es parcial / /: You already knew it's all partial
Que no hay mapa que enseñe a viajar That there is no map that teaches how to travel
Que es el alma quien debe cantar It is the soul that must sing
Que sólo un tonto se pone a correr That only a fool starts to run
Cuando la lluvia le besa los pies:// When the rain kisses his feet :/ /
Sirve el tiempo su mismo licor Time serves its same liquor
Que cada año acelera el temor That every year accelerates fear
Que en mi copa se amargue el sabor That in my cup the taste would be bitter
Si no oigo a mi corazón If I don't listen to my heart
And this is
an example of what we call "a song without words", but certainly not
without expression of deep feeling:
In my
opinion about what came first, the chicken or the egg, I think we simply have
to accept the idea that some things do not have a start or end point, but they
are both things at once. I believe that
adopting an idea of consensus between the two sides is as close to answering
our Hurrserlian question.
In Spanish, when we talk about playing music or playing an instrument, we actually use the expression " touch the music" or "touch an instrument" (if we traduce it literally) and this has exactly the same meaning as " play an instrument". Now, when we talk in Spanish about Braille music reading, the meaning of " touch the music" becomes extremely more literal, since we certainly need to touch the music with our fingertips to be able to play it. By having exposed this idea that we need a physical contact to play a musical idea, it occurs to me that for more resources, ideas and technologies to "expand" the boundaries of music that we have, this is useless if previously we don't have a good "touch" , I really do not see the need to expand the music outside of the body if by that we slowly forget that the importance of our relationship with sound it's precisely deep inside us; we are the most important, we are the body.
Following
what I pointed out in our class about our performance in December, I found an
example that comes close.
This piece is called "Panamericana" from the famous Latin jazz saxophonist
Paquito De Rivera. In simple words, the Panamericana is a set of highways that
connect the American continent from Alaska to Quellon (Chile). And as you will
note, in this piece the tour begins with the tango (Argentina), passing through
a Guarani group (ie, from Paraguay), as well as through the bossa nova (Brazil)
and other Central American rhythms. Of course none of these
"landscapes" is portrayed literally, since what is being valued is
precisely the fusion of styles as if it were the union of the peoples, marking
that the important thing is what unites us, NOT what divides and individualize
us.
In this opportunity I am going to share with you some information about Braille music, because my thesis project for my graduate studies is about teaching Braille music to blind children in my country, because there are almost non professors nor schools dedicated to this matter there:
Braille music system uses the same symbols used on literary Braille created by Louis Braille. This allows to notate music using Braille cells so that it can be read by blind musicians.
Braille music system, as literary Braille, is based on the use of six dots to configure one letter, abbreviation, or symbol.
This is a picture of the position of the six dots:
Almost all the music that exists can be translated to Braille music notation, because Braille notation is a very complete system that has its own rules and symbols that enables to describe all the music information found on the original notation.
Both systems of music notation, even though very different from each other, are equally difficult to learn. In my opinion, it is more on the execution where the difficulty on Braille music it’s bigger.
Here I leave an example from literary Braille made by myself, especially for you:
The
Pandeiro it is originally from Arabia. It came to Europe in the times of the
Crusades, known in English as tambourine. It suffered different local
adaptations, depending on the place and people that used it; some are more
square or round, some are made out of wood and other have metal, etc.
The
Pandeiro, which is the Brazilian version of the tambourine, was developed for
the Choro and Samba during the 20th century, and it was handmade. But the
luthier that created the Pandeiro as we know it today was Miguel Fasanelli.
The
technique developed on Brazil for the execution of the Pandeiro it is by far
one of the best examples on how an instrument can be completely adopted by a
foreign culture, bringing an endless number of new and wonderful different
characteristics on the performance, technique and confection.
Here it is an example of a musical piece
executed by the group “vocal sampling”; this song is titled “La negra Tomasa”,
you can tell that this piece is executed only with human voice, even the
percussion instruments are simulated with the voice. Following this example, I
want to share this reflection:
In its most primitive beginnings it is
estimated that the music was exclusively vocal, without the utilization of any
instruments. Until now it has not been possible to determined if primitive
singing was born out of the necessity to communicate from large distances or if
it was born out of the necessity of using a different intonation to communicate
with their gods; to say a pray or to thank them. As we all know, all
instruments at their beginning had an strictly vocal behavior (some even
doubled the voice), but with the passing of centuries, musical instruments were
slowly acquiring a bigger protagonism thanks to the sophisticated techniques
developed throughout the years. Nowadays, the sophistication level in the
confection of the musical instruments is total.
So, after all the above mentioned, I think it
is at least a bit ironic that in this era, we are thinking that the voice
should be the one imitating the instruments, when in fact since the beginnings
of music it has always been the other way around.
From the first syllables of the verses of this hymn called "Ut queant Laxis", comes the names of the musical notes of the modern Latin notation. This names were invented by Guido D'Arezzo in the eleventh century. He used the first syllable of each verse, except the last (Si): Ut, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La. Centuries later, Anselm of Flanders introduced the name of the missing note combining the initials of Sancte Ioannes. This is my way to say welcome to the beginning of my blog!
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