School of Visual Arts Presents 99 Hours of Free Photography Lectures

in Photography | March 29th, 2017

FYI: Last week, pho­tog­ra­ph­er Dan Cul­ber­son flagged on Red­dit a trove of free pho­tog­ra­phy lec­tures avail­able on School of Visu­al Arts’ rich YouTube chan­nel. Elab­o­rat­ing, the pho­tog­ra­phy blog Petapix­el writes:

Tons of hour-long lec­tures can be found on the channel’s Images, Ideas, Inspi­ra­tion playlist, most of them pho­tog­ra­phy relat­ed and all of them fas­ci­nat­ing.

You’ll find some­thing for every­one on this channel—from a lec­ture by gallery rep Mar­git Erb talk­ing about her close per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al rela­tion­ship with the great Saul Leit­er, to a talk by Dancers Among Us pho­tog­ra­ph­er Jor­dan Mat­ter, to Jack Hollingsworth’s fas­ci­nat­ing talk titled “Small Cam­era Big Results.”

There are a total of 99 videos in that playlist alone—approximately 99 hours of edu­ca­tion, inspi­ra­tion, and ideas.

Above you can watch Jack Hollingsworth’s lec­ture, “Small Cam­era Big Results.” He has “trav­eled to over 20 coun­tries and shot over 400,000 images with his iPhone,” and here he dis­cuss­es his iPhone pho­tog­ra­phy tech­nique, and all the apps he uses.

Find more lec­tures on this Images, Ideas, Inspi­ra­tion playlist. Also find cours­es on dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy in our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via Petapix­el

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Google Makes Its $149 Pho­to Edit­ing Soft­ware Now Com­plete­ly Free to Down­load

An Intro­duc­tion to Dig­i­tal Pho­tog­ra­phy: Take a Free Course from Stan­ford Prof/Google Researcher Marc Lev­oy

Learn Dig­i­tal Pho­tog­ra­phy with Har­vard University’s Free Online Course

The His­to­ry of Pho­tog­ra­phy in Five Ani­mat­ed Min­utes: From Cam­era Obscu­ra to Cam­era Phone

How to Take Pho­tographs Like Ansel Adams: The Mas­ter Explains The Art of “Visu­al­iza­tion”

1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

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Stephen Hawking Auditions Celebrities to Provide His New Voice: Lin-Manuel Miranda, Liam Neeson, Anna Kendrick & Michael Caine

in Comedy | March 29th, 2017

Stephen Hawk­ing’s com­put­er-syn­the­sized voice is dis­tinc­tive. You know it when you hear it. But, after so many years, it’s time for a change. That’s the premise of this short com­ic bit, cre­at­ed for Com­ic Relief’s Red Nose Day. Above, watch A‑list celebrities–everyone from Lin-Manuel Miran­da and Liam Nee­son, to Anna Kendrick and Bill Gates–audition to become the new voice of Prof. Hawk­ing. You can see how it plays out.

Red Nose Day (just held on March 24th this year) is a fundrais­er to help strug­gling peo­ple in coun­tries around the world. You can donate to the cause here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load the Soft­ware That Pro­vides Stephen Hawking’s Voice

Before Siri & Alexa: Hear the First Attempt to Use a Syn­the­siz­er to Recre­ate the Human Voice (1939)

Mon­ty Python’s “Argu­ment Clin­ic” Sketch Reen­act­ed by Two Vin­tage Voice Syn­the­siz­ers (One Is Stephen Hawking’s Voice)

Stephen Hawking’s Lec­tures on Black Holes Now Ful­ly Ani­mat­ed with Chalk­board Illus­tra­tions

Free Online Physics Cours­es

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Great Filmmakers Offer Advice to Young Directors: Tarantino, Herzog, Coppola, Scorsese, Anderson, Fellini & More

in Film | March 29th, 2017

One-to-one rela­tion­ships do not exist between the medieval Euro­pean Guild sys­tem and con­tem­po­rary labor unions or pro­tec­tion­ist rack­ets…. Nev­er­the­less, guilds were very much like both those things in some ways. They were also voca­tion­al schools, where young aspir­ing arti­sans could, with the right skills and con­nec­tions, appren­tice them­selves to mas­ter crafts­men, hope to receive decent train­ing, and look for­ward to becom­ing guild mas­ters them­selves should they per­sist.

Few orga­ni­za­tions like that exist today. But there is per­haps one indus­try in which—with the right con­nec­tions, skill, and persistence—a lucky and tal­ent­ed few rise through the ranks to mas­tery: the film indus­try, where a video store clerk, Quentin Taran­ti­no, can achieve last­ing fame and for­tune, as can for­mer part-time pro­jec­tion­ist, Wes Ander­son. Many direc­tors who came of age in the six­ties and sev­en­ties went the tra­di­tion­al route of film school, but one, Wern­er Her­zog, took a bandit’s way into the craft, steal­ing a cam­era from the Munich Film School, feel­ing that he “had some sort of nat­ur­al right for a cam­era, a tool to work with.”

Her­zog has cre­at­ed his own guild sys­tem, of a sort, with the Rogue Film School, a rough, infor­mal course, among oth­er things, in “guer­ril­la film­mak­ing.” Steal­ing cam­eras is not ruled out. But you’ll have to learn the tech­ni­cal stuff on your own. What mat­ters, most, Her­zog says, is that film­mak­ers “read, read, read, read, read.” These are direc­tors who have bor­rowed from oth­er direc­tors and films, and also from books, music, paint­ing, etc., dri­ven by an obses­sive and per­sis­tent desire to learn. And you’ll find them all in the super­cut above, in which Taran­ti­no, Ander­son, Her­zog, and oth­er “mas­ter film­mak­ers” like Scors­ese, Cop­po­la, Felli­ni, Welles, and more offer short, yet pro­found pieces of advice to aspi­rants.

We begin with Taran­ti­no, who argues that pas­sion is all you need to make a great film. “You don’t need to go to school” or know any of the tech­ni­cal stuff, but you do need to appren­tice your­self, with pure devo­tion and tenac­i­ty, to cin­e­ma. You won’t hear this from many of the oth­ers, but Ter­ry Gilliam also rec­om­mends a sec­ondary trade, maybe as a plumber, anoth­er pro­fes­sion that involves appren­tices and jour­ney­men work­ing their way up. It’s cer­tain­ly a trade that involves great skill, but to hear these direc­to­r­i­al guild mas­ters tell it, no oth­er pro­fes­sion asks for as much dri­ve and pas­sion as the movies, and appar­ent­ly you don’t even need to know what you’re doing at first. See the com­plete list of inter­vie­wees below.

QUENTIN TARANTINO: 00:00
JERRY LEWIS: 00:40
TERRY GILLIAM: 01:15
JOHN CARPENTER: 01:40
PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON: 02:30
FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA: 03:54
FEDERICO FELLINI: 04:52
WERNER HERZOG: 05:56
WES ANDERSON: 07:22
SIDNEY LUMET: 07:50
JOHN LANDIS: 08:58
MARTIN SCORSESE: 10:15
GUILLERMO DEL TORO 11:38
ORSON WELLES 14:55

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wern­er Herzog’s Rogue Film School: Apply & Learn the Art of Gueril­la Film­mak­ing & Lock-Pick­ing

Wern­er Her­zog Offers 24 Pieces of Film­mak­ing & Life Advice

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Advice to Young Film­mak­ers: Sac­ri­fice Your­self for Cin­e­ma

Aki­ra Kurosawa’s Advice to Aspir­ing Film­mak­ers: Write, Write, Write and Read

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Hieronymus Bosch Figurines: Collect Surreal Characters from Bosch’s Paintings & Put Them on Your Bookshelf

in Art | March 28th, 2017

Few painters have cre­at­ed as rich a world as Hierony­mus Bosch did in The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights. The late 15th- or ear­ly 16th-cen­tu­ry trip­tych, which depicts the cre­ation of man, the licen­tious frol­ick­ing of all crea­tures on a par­a­disi­a­cal Earth, and the sub­se­quent fall into damna­tion, draws a scruti­ny — and caus­es an amuse­ment — as intense as ever. As we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, you can now take a vir­tu­al tour of the paint­ing (there’s even an app for it), see it brought to life with mod­ern ani­ma­tion, and hear the song tat­tooed on the pos­te­ri­or of one of the work’s many char­ac­ters.

Bosch not only cre­at­ed a world with The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights, he pop­u­lat­ed it thor­ough­ly. And despite the human-cen­tric sto­ry the work appears to take as its basis, the cast with which it retells it extends far beyond mere human­i­ty: the pan­els fea­ture not just wildlife of all shapes and sizes but a vari­ety of myth­i­cal grotesques, from imps to chimeras to hybrids of man and ani­mal to much more besides. He drew from the same sur­re­al imag­i­na­tive well to fill his oth­er paint­ings, and you can now pull out a few of these col­or­ful, men­ac­ing, pre­pos­ter­ous, and dark­ly humor­ous char­ac­ters your­self in col­lectible fig­urine form.

Though “not a big knick­knack per­son,” Dan­ger­ous Minds’ Tara McGin­ley admits to dig­ging this selec­tion of “tiny objects” straight from the mind of Bosch, all “kin­da cool-look­ing in their own obvi­ous­ly weird way” and none “too expen­sive. The fig­urines start at around $45, depend­ing on qual­i­ty, size and detail.” (You can find them on Ama­zon.) She high­lights such issues as “Hel­met­ed Bird Mon­ster,” which accord­ing to man­u­fac­tur­ers Para­s­tone fea­tures a sev­ered foot “swing­ing from the bird’s hel­met refer­ring to the hor­ri­ble cor­po­ral pun­ish­ments which could be expect­ed in hell.”

“Dev­il on Night Chair,” one of the most rec­og­niz­able denizens of The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights’ third pan­el, comes cast in his famous posi­tion, “eat­ing a per­son on a chair where he will excrete the human remains.” The con­sid­er­ably less sat­is­fied “Fat Bel­ly with Dag­ger” comes from the third pan­el of a dif­fer­ent trip­tych, The Temp­ta­tion of Saint Antho­ny, the dag­ger in his bel­ly show­ing “the con­se­quences of intem­per­ance. His eyes look out at you in acknowl­edg­ment.” Its mak­ers promise that “you will look at it in won­der as to how Bosch’s mind con­ceived of such an unusu­al lit­tle fel­low.” Have a look at Dan­ger­ous Minds’ orig­i­nal post and Ama­zon’s Bosch fig­urine page for more infor­ma­tion on how to obtain them, whether for your­self or as gifts for friends and fam­i­ly. They cer­tain­ly won’t look at them the same way they do Hum­mel fig­urines.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Cre­ates Stun­ning Real­is­tic Por­traits That Recre­ate Sur­re­al Scenes from Hierony­mus Bosch Paint­ings

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Hierony­mus Bosch’s Bewil­der­ing Mas­ter­piece The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights

New App Lets You Explore Hierony­mus Bosch’s “The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights” in Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty

Lis­ten to a Record­ing of a Song Writ­ten on a Man’s Butt in a 15-Cen­tu­ry Hierony­mus Bosch Paint­ing

Hierony­mus Bosch’s Medieval Paint­ing, The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights, Comes to Life in a Gigan­tic, Mod­ern Ani­ma­tion 

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Download 437 Issues of Soviet Photo Magazine, the Soviet Union’s Historic Photography Journal (1926–1991)

in Archives, Magazines, Photography | March 28th, 2017

The ear­ly years of the Sovi­et Union roiled with inter­nal ten­sions, intrigues, and ide­o­log­i­cal war­fare, and the new empire’s art reflect­ed its uneasy het­ero­doxy. For­mal­ists, Futur­ists, Supre­ma­tists, Con­struc­tivists, and oth­er schools min­gled, pub­lished jour­nals, cri­tiqued and reviewed each other’s work, and like mod­ernists else­where in the world, exper­i­ment­ed with every pos­si­ble medi­um, includ­ing those just com­ing into their own at the begin­ning of the 20th cen­tu­ry, like film and pho­tog­ra­phy.

These two medi­ums, along with radio, also hap­pened to serve as the pri­ma­ry means of pro­pa­gan­diz­ing Sovi­et cit­i­zens and car­ry­ing the mes­sages of the Par­ty in ways every­one could under­stand. And like much of the rest of the world, pho­tog­ra­phy engen­dered its own con­sumer cul­ture.

Out of these com­pet­ing impuls­es came Sovi­et Pho­to (Sovet­skoe foto), a month­ly pho­tog­ra­phy mag­a­zine fea­tur­ing, writes Kse­nia Nouril at the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art’s site, “edi­to­ri­als, let­ters, arti­cles, and pho­to­graph­ic essays along­side adver­tise­ments for pho­tog­ra­phy, pho­to­graph­ic process­es, and pho­to­graph­ic chem­i­cals and equip­ment.”

Sovi­et Pho­to was not found­ed by artists, but by a pho­to­jour­nal­ist, Arkady Shaikhet, in 1926 (see the first issue’s cov­er at the top). Though its audi­ence pri­mar­i­ly con­sist­ed of a “Sovi­et ama­teur pho­tog­ra­phers and pho­to clubs,” its ear­ly years freely mixed doc­u­men­tary, didac­ti­cism, and exper­i­men­tal art. It pub­lished the “works of inter­na­tion­al and pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­phers” and that of avant-gardists like Con­struc­tivist painter and graph­ic design­er Alek­sander Rod­chenko.

The aes­thet­ic purges under Stalin—in which artists and writ­ers one after anoth­er fell vic­tim to charges of elit­ism and obscurantism—also played out in the pages of Sovi­et Pho­to. “Even before Social­ist Real­ism was decreed to be the offi­cial style of the Sovi­et Union in 1934,” Nouril writes, “the works of avant-garde pho­tog­ra­phers,” includ­ing Rod­chenko, “were denounced as for­mal­ist (imply­ing that they reflect­ed a for­eign and elit­ist style).” Sovi­et Pho­to boy­cotted Rodchenko’s work in 1928 and “through­out the 1930s this state-sanc­tioned jour­nal became increas­ing­ly con­ser­v­a­tive,” empha­siz­ing “con­tent over form.”

This does not mean that that the con­tents of the mag­a­zine were inel­e­gant or pedes­tri­an. Though it once briefly bore the name Pro­le­tarskoe foto (Pro­le­tari­at Pho­tog­ra­phy), and tend­ed toward mon­u­men­tal and indus­tri­al sub­jects, war pho­tog­ra­phy, and ide­al­iza­tions of Sovi­et life dur­ing the Stal­in­ist years. After the 60s thaw, exper­i­men­tal pho­tomon­tages returned, and more abstract com­po­si­tions became com­mon­place. Sovi­et Pho­to also kept pace with many glossy mag­a­zines in the West, with stun­ning full-col­or pho­to­jour­nal­ism and, after glas­nost and the fall of the Berlin wall, high fash­ion and adver­tis­ing pho­tog­ra­phy.

Fans of pho­tog­ra­phy, Sovi­et his­to­ry, or some mea­sure of both, can fol­low Sovi­et Pho­to’s evo­lu­tion in a huge archive fea­tur­ing 437 dig­i­tized issues, pub­lished between 1926 and 1991. Expect to find a gap between 1942 and 1956, when pub­li­ca­tion ceased “due to World War II and the war’s after­ef­fects.” Aside from these years and a few oth­er miss­ing months, the archive con­tains near­ly every issue of Sovi­et Pho­to, free to browse or down­load in var­i­ous for­mats. “Dig deep enough,” writes pho­to blog PetaPix­el, “and you’ll find some real­ly inter­est­ing (and sur­pris­ing­ly famil­iar) things in there.” Enter the archive here.

 

via PetaPix­el

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Rus­sia in 70,000 Pho­tos: New Pho­to Archive Presents Russ­ian His­to­ry from 1860 to 1999

Thou­sands of Pho­tos from the George East­man Muse­um, the World’s Old­est Pho­tog­ra­phy Col­lec­tion, Now Avail­able Online

Down­load Russ­ian Futur­ist Book Art (1910–1915): The Aes­thet­ic Rev­o­lu­tion Before the Polit­i­cal Rev­o­lu­tion

Behold a Beau­ti­ful Archive of 10,000 Vin­tage Cam­eras at Col­lec­tion Appareils

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Jim Henson’s Commercials for Wilkins Coffee: 15 Twisted Minutes of Muppet Coffee Ads (1957–1961)

in Food & Drink, Television | March 28th, 2017

Drink our cof­fee. Or else. That’s the mes­sage of these curi­ous­ly sadis­tic TV com­mer­cials pro­duced by Jim Hen­son between 1957 and 1961.

Hen­son made 179 ten-sec­ond spots for Wilkins Cof­fee, a region­al com­pa­ny with dis­tri­b­u­tion in the Bal­ti­more-Wash­ing­ton D.C. mar­ket, accord­ing to the Mup­pets Wiki: “The local sta­tions only had ten sec­onds for sta­tion iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, so the Mup­pet com­mer­cials had to be lightning-fast–essentially, eight sec­onds for the com­mer­cial pitch and a two-sec­ond shot of the prod­uct.”

With­in those eight sec­onds, a cof­fee enthu­si­ast named Wilkins (who bears a resem­blance to Ker­mit the frog) man­ages to shoot, stab, blud­geon or oth­er­wise do grave bod­i­ly harm to a cof­fee hold­out named Won­tkins. Hen­son pro­vid­ed the voic­es of both char­ac­ters.

Up until that time, TV adver­tis­ers typ­i­cal­ly made a direct sales pitch. “We took a dif­fer­ent approach,” said Hen­son in Christo­pher Finch’s Of Mup­pets and Men: The Mak­ing of the Mup­pet Show. “We tried to sell things by mak­ing peo­ple laugh.”

The cam­paign for Wilkins Cof­fee was a hit. “In terms of pop­u­lar­i­ty of com­mer­cials in the Wash­ing­ton area,” said Hen­son in a 1982 inter­view with Judy Har­ris, “we were the num­ber one, the most pop­u­lar com­mer­cial.” Hen­son’s ad agency began mar­ket­ing the idea to oth­er region­al cof­fee com­pa­nies around the coun­try. Hen­son re-shot the same spots with dif­fer­ent brand names. “I bought my con­tract from that agency,” said Hen­son, “and then I was pro­duc­ing them–the same things around the coun­try. And so we had up to about a dozen or so clients going at the same time. At the point, I was mak­ing a lot of mon­ey.”

If you’re a glut­ton for pun­ish­ment, you can watch many of the Wilkins Cof­fee com­mer­cials above. And a word of advice: If some­one ever asks you if you drink Wilkins Cof­fee, just say yes.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jim Hen­son Teach­es You How to Make Pup­pets in Vin­tage Primer From 1969

Jim Hen­son Cre­ates an Exper­i­men­tal Ani­ma­tion Explain­ing How We Get Ideas (1966)

Jim Henson’s Orig­i­nal, Spunky Pitch for The Mup­pet Show

Jim Henson’s Zany 1963 Robot Film Uncov­ered by AT&T: Watch Online

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Watch 450 NPR Tiny Desk Concerts: Intimate Performances from The Pixies, Adele, Wilco, Yo-Yo Ma & Many More

in Music, Radio | March 28th, 2017

In times past, hap­pen­ing upon just the right radio sta­tion, record store, or tape trad­ing com­mu­ni­ty were some of the few serendip­i­tous ways of dis­cov­er­ing new music. And in those days, one faith­ful cura­tor of inno­v­a­tive new sounds, BBC DJ John Peel, nev­er dis­ap­point­ed. Because of a law lim­it­ing the amount of record­ed music radio could play, his name became syn­ony­mous with the hun­dreds of inti­mate per­for­mances punk, new wave, reg­gae, and oth­er bands record­ed live in his stu­dio. While the “Peel Ses­sions” will for­ev­er live in leg­end (stream some here), the man him­self passed away in 2004, and the musi­cal land­scape he helped cre­ate has changed irrev­o­ca­bly.

And yet, Peel’s ani­mat­ing spir­it lives on, most espe­cial­ly in NPR’s Tiny Desk Con­certs, live in-stu­dio per­for­mances record­ed “at the desk of All Songs Con­sid­ered host Bob Boilen.” Since 2008, Boilen has invit­ed estab­lished and up-and-com­ing artists alike to his desk, cap­tur­ing loose, unguard­ed, stripped-down, per­for­mances that sound like they’re hap­pen­ing in your liv­ing room.

Gui­tarists unplug, drum­mers trade their sticks for brush­es, and we not only get to lis­ten to old and new favorites; we get to watch them—like the Pix­ies at the top—up close as well. This per­for­mance, from 2014, gar­nered “the largest crowd we’d ever assem­bled for a Tiny Desk Con­cert,” writes Boilen, and fea­tured newest mem­ber Paz Lenchan­tin trad­ing her bass for vio­lin.

Where the Pix­ies usu­al­ly fill are­nas with their eeri­ly-qui­et-to-deaf­en­ing­ly-loud songs, the group fur­ther up, Dirty Dozen Band, can eas­i­ly fill pub­lic squares, foot­ball fields, and parade routes with­out stacks of over­driv­en amps. Hear­ing them explode in Boilen’s office with their ram­bunc­tious funk is a real treat, as is the larg­er-than-life voice of Adele, above, scaled down to col­lege cof­fee­house lev­els of close­ness.

Though Tiny Desk Con­certs often show­case pop, hip-hop, folk, coun­try, and indie stars—like Wilco, below—and even clas­si­cal stars like Yo-Yo Ma, above, it just as often intro­duces us to musi­cians we’ve nev­er heard, or seen, before, and gives us the chance to get to know them with­out the usu­al trap­pings of mar­ket­ing and boil­er­plate PR, or loud, crowd­ed clubs with bad acoustics and no vis­i­bil­i­ty.

The cur­rent home­page fea­tures a hand­ful of incred­i­bly tal­ent­ed musi­cians you’re unlike­ly to run across in most major venues. At least for now. Had he lived to see Tiny Desk Con­certs, and its preser­va­tion of a radio cura­to­r­i­al tra­di­tion, John Peel, I think, would have been proud. See more per­for­mances from The Nation­al, Susan Vega, Yusuf Islam/Cat Stevens, Steve Ear­le, and many, many more—450 con­certs in all—at NPR Music on Youtube.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stream 15 Hours of the John Peel Ses­sions: 255 Tracks by Syd Bar­rett, David Bowie, Siouxsie and the Ban­shees & Oth­er Artists

Hear a 9‑Hour Trib­ute to John Peel: A Col­lec­tion of His Best “Peel Ses­sions”

Peter Framp­ton Plays a Tiny Desk Con­cert for NPR, Fea­tur­ing Acoustic Ver­sions of His Clas­sic Songs

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Hear Jimi Hendrix’s Virtuoso Guitar Performances in Isolated Tracks: “Fire,” “Purple Haze,” “Third Stone from the Sun” & More

in Music | March 27th, 2017

A gar­den of musi­cal curiosities—lush with rar­i­ties, out­takes, obscu­ri­ties, and live per­for­mances span­ning the globe—Youtube has ful­filled many a super­fan’s dream of instant access to record­ed musi­cal his­to­ry. One rar­i­fied bloom, the iso­lat­ed track, can prove a divi­sive strain. Why, aes­thetes and purists ask, rip a per­for­mance from its set­ting, place it before lis­ten­ers in a way musi­cians nev­er meant for it to be heard? Though at times expressed in ranty tones, the crit­i­cism has mer­it.

Think­ing of the “iso­lat­ed track” as pure solo vir­tu­os­i­ty does great injus­tice to the process­es that pro­duce these per­for­mances. As musi­cians well know, whether live or record­ed at sep­a­rate times in the stu­dio, most group per­for­mances result from count­less hours of rehearsal, revi­sion, some­times numb­ing rep­e­ti­tion, and devi­a­tions that become stan­dard over time.

For any band that plays togeth­er reg­u­lar­ly, parts emerge from the matrix of group dynam­ics or musi­cal “chem­istry.” Throw a dif­fer­ent musi­cian into the mix, and oth­er indi­vid­ual per­for­mances change as well.

That’s not even to men­tion the role of pro­duc­ers, record­ing and mix­ing engi­neers, etc. on shap­ing and refin­ing the sound. Many stu­dio pro­duc­tions nowa­days come from the lay­er­ing of beats, sequences, and sam­ples pro­duced in iso­la­tion from each oth­er. The results can sound ster­ile and inor­gan­ic. But in the 60s and 70s hey­day of album-ori­ent­ed rock, it was about the band, and almost no one put togeth­er bands that bet­ter com­ple­ment­ed his play­ing than Jimi Hen­drix. Con­verse­ly, no one played gui­tar like Hen­drix, in any con­text.

I would offer this in defense of hear­ing iso­lat­ed tracks from Hen­drix, or from Fred­die Mer­cury and David Bowie (who bucked the trend and wrote, arranged, rehearsed, and record­ed “Under Pres­sure” in the same night), Paul McCart­ney, Grace Slick, or any oth­er huge­ly tal­ent­ed per­former: We know these songs well enough already. So many of us have inter­nal­ized how their parts fit togeth­er into some­thing greater than them­selves. To have the indi­vid­ual tracks revealed only enhances our appre­ci­a­tion for the whole. When we return to the full arrange­ment we may hear nuances and quirks we’d nev­er noticed before, and notice afresh how these moments call and respond to the oth­er play­ers.

The iso­lat­ed Hen­drix gui­tar tracks here are sub­jects of study and appre­ci­a­tion, for gui­tarists, musi­col­o­gists, crit­ics, and ordi­nary fans. They allow us to hear very clear­ly what Hen­drix was doing in these songs under his cap­ti­vat­ing vocal deliv­ery, Mitch Mitchell’s rolling fills, and Noel Redding’s trav­el­ing lines. We gain a new appre­ci­a­tion for his rhythm play­ing, his deft tran­si­tions, and how his cool under­play­ing in vers­es made space for his indeli­bly flashy leads and intros.

Is it arti­fi­cial? Sure, but so is the record­ing process. And so is excerpt­ing parts of, say, Cit­i­zen Kane or Ver­ti­go to ana­lyze their edit­ing, cam­era work, or use of col­or. We don’t do it because we only want see part of the film, but because we want to bet­ter under­stand the tech­ni­cal intri­ca­cies of the work as a whole. Hear Hendrix’s iso­lat­ed gui­tar takes above (with some faint bleed from oth­er instru­ments) in “Fire,” “Pur­ple Haze,” “The Wind Cries Mary,” “Span­ish Cas­tle Mag­ic,” “Stone Free,” and, my per­son­al favorite, “Third Stone from the Sun.”

You can lis­ten to many more iso­lat­ed Hen­drix per­for­mances, and those from sev­er­al oth­er musi­cians, at the Dai­ly Motion chan­nel of Joh Phe. Then, by all means, return to the full record­ings and see how lit­tle bits of col­or, shape, and tex­ture that you hadn’t heard before now leap out at you.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Grace Slick’s Hair-Rais­ing Vocals in the Iso­lat­ed Track for “White Rab­bit” (1967)

Decon­struct­ing Led Zeppelin’s Clas­sic Song ‘Ram­ble On’ Track by Track: Gui­tars, Bass, Drums & Vocals

Jimi Hen­drix Plays the Delta Blues on a 12-String Acoustic Gui­tar in 1968, and Jams with His Blues Idols, Bud­dy Guy & B.B. King

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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