Moksha & the Saw of Damocles

March 3, 2012Uncategorizedcountry, eastern, gladyshulot, household, hudost, instrument, moksha, musical, orchestra, saw, sciemusical, tenor, theramin, theremin, tomfinkgorebagg

http://i668.photobucket.com/albums/vv44/gritpr/moksha-1.jpg

Thanks to someone who gave me a wonderful birthday gift, which I will soon replace with another just like it, Moksha, of the amazing “Country Eastern” musical experience, Hu Dost — which is currently on tour — now has an official musicalsaw.com tenor musical saw to add to their List of Mystical Inventory. Here’s an example of a musical saw used in a highly technical manner:

Back in 1949, I heard my music teacher at Camp Woodland, Grant Rogers, play the musical saw; then Joe Hickerson played it, after which Joanna Cazden, Louise deCormier and, as I remember it, Happy Traum or Geoff Kaufman tried it.

Well, heck-darn, I asked for, and got, a musical saw for my 70th birthday last December 27th.

When I first encountered the musical saw it was immediately post-war, World War II (which is the Roman numeral “II”, not the Arabic numerals which we use today, as in “World War Eleven”, as some kids insist on calling it) when instruments made of steel were almost unobtainable, and was amazed at how much like the newly invented Electronic Theramin it sounded. Here are some stunning examples: Continue reading →

Multitracking your voice in the 21st century

March 2, 2012Uncategorizedacapella, appetite, barbershop, cellphone, daniscool, dannyfong, html5, julienneel, monetize, Music, playlist, sgtsonny, sing, song, sonnyvandeputte, technology, tinpanalley, tracks, trudbol, video, virtual, virtualbeck, vocal, youtubegorebagg

How to use all this new cellphone, video and html5 technology? No sweat; here’s one suggestion…video yourself as a choir, adding ALL the parts into the whole, one by one. The conclusion I came to is that this very talented kid has a hell of a lot of time on his hands. I spend more than 5 minutes making a Tin-Pan Alley Hit on youtube and I feel like I’ve failed. Enjoy. He’s really quite exceptional. I hope he monetizes the hell out of his efforts!

Here’s more to tantalize and whet the appetite for multitrack a capella vocals… Continue reading →

Great Jazz Group Disguised as Rockers

March 1, 2012Uncategorizedfolk, jackiemcshee, jazz, johnrenbourne, Music, pentangle, rockgorebagg

Yep, you guessed it; hadda be Pentangle.

But that’s not always what Pentangle sounded like. Continue reading →

Holy Modal Rounders

February 29, 2012Uncategorizedfolk, gerde's, greenwichvillage, holymodal, morayeels, Music, peterstampfel, seductions, shop, slavery, unionizedgorebagg

Remember Peter and Antonia Stampfel and the Holy Modal Rounders? Probably not, but if you saw them on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In in 1968, they looked like this:

http://youtu.be/vkjJs5gKtFs

A few weeks later, Continue reading →

What Ever Became of Gayle McCormick???

February 29, 2012Uncategorizedband, bread, cover, easyrider, guitar, mamasandthepapas, mccormick, Music, original, piano, rock, smith, vocals, weightgorebagg

http://youtu.be/O6atUODsWGs

Gayle was stunningly drop-dead gorgeous, bursting with positive energy and expansiveness that enabled her to become one of the biggest stars of the Los Angeles rock scene — but then, suddenly, bam! She dropped out of sight, leaving a legacy with “Smith” and a few indie singles that made the charts to #44, not an impressive showing. What the heck-darn happened to her, anyway? Continue reading →

Problems in World-Making

February 27, 2012Uncategorizedcostume, development, fred, game, igotrhythm, juniorjiffy, post, worldgorebagg

I thought you might like to listen to comedy barbershop quartet Fred sing I Got Rhythm — which they sing in strange non-rhythm — while you’re reading this post.

This is a post for my Junior-Jiffy World-Maker students, but anyone can learn from it:

Most of the problems for game-makers almost always is one of three possible go-wrongs:

1. Failure to follow directions by the numbers — by far the most common problem. See Calculus to cure this illness of jumping ahead of yourself.

2. Failure to follow directions precisely, meaning it’s an Attention Problem; some folks dress their attention up in spectacular costumery, not realizing that they have nowhere to go.

3. Failure to follow directions at all, meaning that they wanted to do it differently and THEREFORE better.

Do try to remember that running ahead of the PoG makes you vulnverable and generally means someone else has to go back to where you fell into a pile of crap and dig you out. Don’t be a hero. You’ve waited this long to learn how to make a world, surely it will wait a day or two. This whole universe took less than a weekend, and with a little practice, you can do it, too!

Sandy Denny — Long Forgotten

February 26, 2012Uncategorizedabuse, alcohol, booze, drugs, early, fairportconvention, influential, judydyble, lyrics, Music, prescription, rock, sandydenny, videogorebagg

Sandy Denny was without a doubt the greatest rock vocalist of the late 1960s, including everyone you can name, yet she’s totally obscure, wiped off the face of the Earth, the Forgotten Queen of Acid Rock. Why??? The answer is crystal clear … Continue reading →

Tonight With a Twist

February 23, 2012Uncategorizedacapella, barbershop, hudost, quartet, rendezvous, tonight, twistgorebagg

Here’s one of those things that was unusual enough to make me stop what I was doing, which was preparing for tonight’s concert with Hu Dost, and post this piece:

Here’s a followup if you’d like to hear more from Rendezvous! Barbershop Quartet:

Not bad, eh? They have plenty of singing power to go the distance; I predict that all these guys will hit the bigtime!

Breakthrough Tonight!

February 23, 2012Uncategorizedandroid, app, blackberry, browser, cell, iphone, ipod, matrix, phone, quantum, smartphonegorebagg

Wow! What a night! What a breakthrough! You can use your ammies, matrix and superbeacon to exponentially expand the quantum effect, but you can also use it as a plain app on a smartphone. If you don’t have a smartphone yet, you can play it from this page on your cellphone’s browser. Many cellphones don’t browse the internet very well, which is why this must be issued as an app.

Here is this week’s Matrix Modification:

http://youtu.be/3JNMDEiBvLE

Creepy Bardo Space With Song

February 21, 2012Uncategorizedacappella, bardo, chatter, distraction, sing, song, spacegorebagg

Notice the people walking by from right to left on the stairs behind the girls. Note the sounds of monkey-chatter all around. Note the feeling that you’re attending your own wake. That’s the feeling that this scene should evoke in you.

And another thing … How would you like to perform under these circumstances??? These kids are worth a lot more and deserve a lot better!