Grand Junction Symphony's Grand Start

Last night I attended the Grand Junction Symphony's season opening performance with Martha House. The program was entitled The Three B's, but its not the three B's that you are probably thinking about. The B's were Hector Berlioz (roman Carnival Oveture), Bˇla Bart—k (An Evening in the Village) and Johannes Brahms (Concerto No. 1 in D minor for Piano and Orchestra). The big event of the evening was the introduction of the Yamaha concert grand piano which was brought to life by the guest artist pianist Jon Klibonoff.

The Man In Black

Just heard on NPR. Johnny Cash has died.

So sad. Sixty years as a top performer. From Sun Records with Elvis, to successfully covering Nine Inch Nails. Always gritty and dark. A man without a genre, but influenced countless who flowed.

Björk at 10

Salon has a great article on Björk. Note: in order to read the whole article you have to click through some advertisements.

It is mystifying that Björk has had such success with such unconventional songwriting. She has produced her share of catchy choruses, to be sure ("Hyperballad," "Venus as a Boy"), but even hardcore Björk fans would be hard-pressed to hum most of her songs. Even in some of her more accessible material, there are surprises in store: The melody to "Human Behavior," her first single, is in an entirely different key from the bass line.

I started to listen to Björk in about 1994 when I tuned into the evening programming on the cutting edge music station of L.A. KCRW. One of the programs always started with Björk sing It's oh so quite, and it hooked me. I am slightly surpized that people find Björk difficult to listen too or understand. I feel very at home in her soundscapes and disjointed mythical lyrics.

Toby's Music Night

I am attended another Music Night at Toby Farley's home. Toby has quite the computer music setup. We have been working on a project that we call our Band. Of course, it is mostly just a small collection of friends messing around making noise on computers. (Which at one time described the Beatles too.) Toby is rather passionate about getting his friends into making computer music so he has been buying everyone music software for their computers.

Of course, Toby is on Windows and I am on Mac OS X so we have not had a musical common ground. Until, Toby got into Reason which is a cross platform sythetic computer based music studio. And Toby gave me a copy! Thanks Toby.

Now to learn this software. I have learned that music software is very complex.

First a solid back ground in music theory is helpful, which I don't have. Then a knowledge of traditional studio setups is useful, again I don't know anything about this. And finally, the GUI of music software is fairly different and specialized from other GUI's that I have used. (This is similar to how the GUI of PhotoShop is so complex because it is designed for the professional graphics artist.)

Midi files from hell

For those of you with MIDI enabled web browsers here is a ticket to hell.

Lyric heard at Higher Grounds

That pretty much summarizes my problems with the news production industry.

Lion Vibes

Our local reggae band Lion Vibes had a terrific second concert.