Tag: music

~ Mark

You can afford to expose yourself to uncertainties in art that you wouldn’t allow yourself in real life. You can allow yourself to get into situations where you are completely lost, and where you are disoriented. You don’t know what’s going on, and you can actually not only allow yourself to do that, you can enjoy it.

From a Punk interview with Brian Eno circa 1976, via A Piece of Monologue.

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~ Mark

“Have you ever wondered what Dark Side of the Moon would sound like if Pink Floyd had written it for NES, instead of for a rock band?” (via) Interesting to hear which songs remain affecting, and which ones don’t translate so well.

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Q&A: David Lipsky | Mark Athitakis’ American Fiction Notes

~ Mark

From an interview with David Lipsky (via), here’s David Foster Wallace on the philosophical depth of country music:

Because that’s like pretty much all there is, when you’re tired of listening to Green Day on the one college station. And these country musics that are just so—you know, “Baby since you’ve left I can’t live, I’m drinking all the time.” And I remember just being real impatient with it. Until I’d been living here about a year. And all of a sudden I realized, what if you just imagined that this absent lover they’re singing to is just a metaphor? And what they’re really singing to is themselves, or to God, you know? “Since you’ve left I’m so empty I can’t live, my life has no meaning.” That in a weird way, they’re incredibly existentialist songs. That have the patina of the absent, of the romantic shit on it, just to make it salable… But that if you cock your ear and listen real close—that it’s deep, you know?… That we find, that art finds a way to take care of you, and take part. Kind of despite itself.

Q&A: David Lipsky | Mark Athitakis’ American Fiction Notes

Note by Note: The Making of Steinway L1037

~ Mark

Note by Note: The Making of Steinway L1037. This was interesting, but not a must-see. You get to know the multi-national cast of employees that put them together up in the Steinway factory in Astoria, Queens, NYC. There are also some scenes from the public showrooms and artist relations (patient employees help sensitive musicians searching for an ineffable something).

The scope of the actual construction is impressively broad–there are giant chunks of wood that just get absolutely manhandled, and there are tiny little fiddly bits that get tweaked and retweaked over a span of weeks. I used to work with my Grandpa in his workshop, and if you spend any time with smart carpenters, you catch on to the clever devices or tricks they invent to make the job easier. There’s some cool custom-made-for-the-job timesavers in the movie if you look for them.

The downside to all the behind-the-scenes stuff is that while you see a lot, they don’t explain a lot. E.g. you see a foreman selecting wood, but you don’t know what kind of wood it is or what kind makes it better than other chunks. I don’t know that I wanted a narrator intoning facts over all the footage, but it’s a shame that so much is kept at arm’s length. Maybe a more probing interviewer could have helped. If you’re really interested in the details, I think you’re better off reading something like the A Romance on Three Legs: Glenn Gould’s Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Piano.

Why you’ve never really heard the “Moonlight” Sonata. – By Jan Swafford – Slate Magazine

~ Mark

The audio examples are really fascinating. (via).

When composers wrote for these instruments they sometimes loved them and sometimes chafed at their limitations, but in any case they wrote for those sounds, that touch, those bells and whistles. From old instruments, performers on modern pianos can get important insights into the sound image that Mozart, Schubert, et al., were aiming for. But music from the 18th and 19th centuries doesn’t just sound different now than on the original instruments; some of it can’t even be played as written on modern pianos.

Why you’ve never really heard the “Moonlight” Sonata. – By Jan Swafford – Slate Magazine