I’ve neglected you, dear blog. Here’s a few thoughts I circulated in an email awhile back, and decided to put it up here.
I’ve been noticing over the last year or so what seems to be movement afoot of people who are bringing music to storytelling in new ways. I tend to find it as I’m perusing WMBR’s stacks prepping for my radio show, and maybe you’re on to it, too. I’m loving these new approaches and thought I’d share/attach the latest, Charles Spearin’s “Happiness Project,” which is a collection of some of his Toronto neighbors who frequent his front porch in the summertime. He says, “I wanted to see if I could blur the line between speaking and singing and write music based on these “accidental melodies.”
Others in this vein include Phillip Bimstein (esp his homage to baseball, “Bushy Wushy Rag“) and the Matthew Herbert Big Band whose new CD “There’s Me and There’s You” includes “the sounds contributed by Palestinians of their favorite of their most hated sound…”
I love live radio best, and I’ve spent 19 years in a “secret corner” producing a live show on WMBR, MIT’s all volunteer, free-form station. In the Margin of the Other is an exploration of my wide-ranging musical tastes merging with sound/art and writing. I aircheck every show and listen to most of them but sometimes things slip by… like this show from last August, 2006. I was on a long, leisurely drive last week with my friend Adi and pulled this one up randomly on my iPod. I was surprised by what happened in one of the breaks. Surprised because I didn’t remember it (a consequence, I think, of being on air and in-the-moment), and surprised because it is little recapitulation of Arriving is Leaving from Between Here and Gone. A margin inside the margin.
I applied for a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship. Didn’t get it, but here is the audio that accompanied my application. I pulled it out last Friday to play for an ad-hoc listening group that meets from time to time here in Boston. I got some great feedback, and one of the most interesting parts of the discussion involved how producing with editing software (ProTools/CoolEdit Pro, etc…) compares to work produced live…the relationship of the presentation to music, sound elements, the difference in emotional impact… The majority of the group were station-based or national program producer-reporters, and hadn’t produced live radio before. Between Here and Gone is a “live” production. Me in a studio with a mixing board and a CDRW. I wrote out the script, picked out music and (rough) audio tracks, hit the “record” button on CD recorder and opened the mic.. mixed it all live. It took me about 5 “takes” to get what you’ll hear here.
