WRONG NOTES: a blog of ear reverence
Wrong Notes collects posts on music, art, culture and fun stuff. Also included: news about the Ear Reverends.
Wild and nature sounds
For the first part of this week, I spent each night sleeping next to a pond on the big island of Hawaii. And, each morning at 5am, thousands of birds started off their day with a fantastically simultaneous and cacophonous conversation about the rising sun and whatever else birds go on about each morning.
Half-asleep, I tried to make some recordings of what I was hearing. If any of the recordings turn out, I'll post some sounds here. But, one thing I was wondering about while recording was how much of the low humming sound of the electric generator motors was going get picked up by the microphone.
Being able to hear this hum reminded me of a good article I read recently by my favorite writer in Wired, Clive Thompson, on how man-made noise may be altering earth's ecology.
The article features info about bio-acoustician Bernie Krause, who makes field recordings of natural places unpolluted by the sounds of humans. Krause has a pretty great website, Wild Sanctuary, that features his field recordings and also his music.
Wild Sanctuary also offers what it calls a Sound Map, as an add-on for Google Earth, that lets you click on locations around the world and hear their sounds—I'll have to check that out!
Katnip Kollege
This is a great, 1938 Merrie Melodies cartoon.
Blank Cassette Tape J-cards exhibit
The cassette tape gave us so many things.
Polar Alert Studios Top 100 is an online visual exhibit of cassette tape J-cards. The exhibit makes me think about the cassette as an emblem of not only an era of modern music, but as an emblem of an era of graphic and visual art.
btw, Wikipedia has a lowly article on the J-card. Right now, it’s a pithy bit of info if you know nothing, but it currently feels like a toss-off entry in the bigger scheme of things.
Bambi Meets Godzilla
I always remember the first time I saw this when I was a kid. Brilliant.
Louis Armstrong’s Collage Art
Louis Armstrong made more than 500 hundred collages on reel to reel tape boxes.
The Paris Review has an online preview of its article on Louis Armstrong’s Collage Art, including images of several example reels. Looks so good, I’ll probably pick up a copy of the magazine so I can read the whole article and see all the images.
Seattle performance of Glenn Branca’s Hallucination City, video
I've been interested in Glenn Branca's music for many years, and finally got to see a performance of one of his works.
Branca's Hallucination City: Symphony 13 for 100 Guitars was performed at a private Seattle Art Museum party at the Olympic Sculpture Park. Although I couldn't get in, the performance was outside—so, with a relatively sizable crowd of people, I listened from the fence perimeter.
I Played in Glenn Branca's Hallucination City and All I Got Was Mass Hypnotic Transcendence is a review of the event in The Stranger, which has lots of good details about the piece and this particular performance.
I'd like to track down a good interview with Branca, or read some of his writings, to better understand his intentions relative to performances vs recordings of his music. I wonder if there's a lot more to be experienced than what I've come across. But, I definitely got something out of the performance that I hadn't gotten out of recordings—maybe this bit of video that I shot will give you a sense of how these works expand into big spaces.
Get the Flash Player to see this video.
Coming up, kicking-off the new Wrong Notes
This new incarnation of Wrong Notes is going to become a group blog, after we get past a couple technical hurdles. So, beyond any posts specifically about the Ear Reverends, a bunch of us will be posting things of interest for the Ear Reverends (including you!).
As the tech stuff gets worked out, I’ll kick-off posting some such things of some said interest!
Err or Man CD / Book now available at CD Baby
The Err or Man CD / Book can now be purchased online via CD Baby.
The CD Baby page for Err or Man just went live this evening. Although there is a lot more of Err or Man still to come on this website, I think it's safe to say that Err or Man is now available—anyone who is interested can hear it and see it.
Just to be clear, you can now buy a copy of Err or Man, the new CD by the Ear Reverends. Yes, really!
nearby posts:
Wrong Feeds
Wrong Pasts
- December 2008
- November 2008
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- July 2008
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- September 2007
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