One Man Shows You How to Play Kraftwerk’s “The Robots” with Just One Synthesizer

in Music | March 8th, 2018

Clau­dio aka Doc­tor Mix runs a YouTube chan­nel where he uploads tuto­ri­als on mix­ing and pro­duc­ing music, reviews of audio gear and instru­ments, and hawks his online mix­ing and mas­ter­ing ser­vice. But the above video caught our atten­tion. Using just one syn­the­siz­er, the brand new *ana­log* Arturia MatrixBrute (what a name!), Doc­tor Mix recre­ates the Kraftwerk hit “The Robots.” (Which, if you are a long­time read­er of this site, you know we love.)

Doc­tor Mix builds up the song piece by piece, and while the orig­i­nal band used sev­er­al dif­fer­ent synths to cre­ate the track, the MatrixBrute is able to han­dle every­thing, as it has a sequencer/drum pads built in, and pro­gram­ma­ble sounds that in this sup­ple­men­tal video, Doc­tor Mix will sell to you. (He even is able to use a vocoder with the machine to into­nate its Russ­ian lyrics: “Ja tvoi slu­ga / Ja tvoi rabot­nik”)

It all looks so easy, doesn’t it?

When Kraftwerk record­ed Man Machine, the 1978 land­mark album that leads off with “The Robots,” they had accu­mu­lat­ed years’ worth of synths and oth­er equip­ment, along with synths that had been cus­tom-built for the band, like the “Syn­thanor­ma Sequen­z­er” made by stu­dio Mat­ten & Wiech­ers to han­dle the repet­i­tive loops they start­ed using on their pre­vi­ous album Trans Europe Express.

Along with that and elec­tron­ic-drum pads (first seen on TV in 1975), the band also used the Moog Mini-Moog, the ARP Odyssey, and a Roland Space-Echo, which pro­vid­ed the vocoder sounds.

At the time, band mem­ber Ralf Hüt­ter said of the mak­ing of the album: “We are play­ing the machines, the machines play us, it is real­ly the exchange and the friend­ship we have with the musi­cal machines which make us build a new music.”

But we’ll hand it to Doc­tor Mix: the Arturia MatrixBrute is a good ol’ fash­ioned ana­log machine, and a lot of the new gear reviewed on his site shows that the warm tones of ana­log equip­ment is hav­ing a renais­sance. Warm up those vac­cu­um tubes, kids, the oth­er sound of the ‘70s is back!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kraftwerk’s First Con­cert: The Begin­ning of the End­less­ly Influ­en­tial Band (1970)

The Case for Why Kraftwerk May Be the Most Influ­en­tial Band Since the Bea­t­les

Pio­neer­ing Elec­tron­ic Com­pos­er Karl­heinz Stock­hausen Presents “Four Cri­te­ria of Elec­tron­ic Music” & Oth­er Lec­tures in Eng­lish (1972)

Kraftwerk Plays a Live 40-Minute Ver­sion of their Sig­na­ture Song “Auto­bahn:” A Sound­track for a Long Road Trip (1974)

The Psy­che­del­ic Ani­mat­ed Video for Kraftwerk’s “Auto­bahn” from 1979

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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The Original Noise Artist: Hear the Strange Experimental Sounds & Instruments of Italian Futurist, Luigi Russolo (1913)

in Art, Music | March 7th, 2018

When you hear the phrase Art of Noise, sure­ly you think of the sam­ple-based avant-garde synth out­fit whose instru­men­tal hit “Moments in Love” turned the sound of qui­et storm adult con­tem­po­rary into a hyp­n­a­gog­ic chill-out anthem? And when you hear about “noise music,” sure­ly you think of the dra­mat­ic post-indus­tri­al cacoph­o­ny of Ein­stürzende Neubaut­en or the decon­struct­ed gui­tar rock of Light­ning Bolt?

But long before “noise” became a term of art for rock crit­ics, before the record­ing indus­try exist­ed in any rec­og­niz­ably mod­ern form, an Ital­ian futur­ist painter and com­pos­er, Lui­gi Rus­so­lo, invent­ed noise music, launch­ing his cre­ation in 1913 with a man­i­festo called The Art of Nois­es.

“In antiq­ui­ty,” he writes (in Robert Filliou’s trans­la­tion), “life was noth­ing but silence.” After pre­sent­ing an almost com­i­cal­ly brief his­to­ry of sound and music com­ing into the world, Rus­so­lo then declares his the­sis, in bold:

Noise was real­ly not born before the 19th cen­tu­ry, with the advent of machin­ery. Today noise reigns supreme over human sen­si­bil­i­ty…. Nowa­days musi­cal art aims at the shrillest, strangest and most dis­so­nant amal­gams of sound. Thus we are approach­ing noise-sound. This rev­o­lu­tion of music is par­al­leled by the increas­ing pro­lif­er­a­tion of machin­ery shar­ing in human labor.

Not quite so rad­i­cal as one might think, but bear in mind, this is 1913, the year Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” pro­voked a riot in Paris upon its debut. Rus­so­lo took an even more shock­ing swerve away from tra­di­tion. Pythagore­an the­o­ry had sti­fled cre­ativ­i­ty, he alleged, “the Greeks… have lim­it­ed the domain of music until now…. We must break at all cost from this restric­tive cir­cle of pure sounds and con­quer the infi­nite vari­ety of noise-sounds.”

To accom­plish his grand objec­tive, the exper­i­men­tal artist cre­at­ed his own series of instru­ments, the Intonaru­mori, “acoustic noise gen­er­a­tors,” writes Therem­invox, that could “cre­ate and con­trol in dynam­ic and pitch sev­er­al dif­fer­ent types of nois­es.” Work­ing long before dig­i­tal sam­plers and the elec­tron­ic gad­getry used by indus­tri­al and musique con­crete com­posers, Rus­so­lo relied on pure­ly mechan­i­cal devices, though he did make sev­er­al record­ings as well from 1913 to 1921. (Hear “Risveg­lio Di Una Cit­tà” from 1913 above, and many more orig­i­nal record­ings as well as new Intonaru­mori com­po­si­tions, at Ubuweb.)

Rus­solo’s musi­cal con­trap­tions, 27 dif­fer­ent vari­eties, were each named “accord­ing to the sound pro­duced: howl­ing, thun­der, crack­ling, crum­pling, explod­ing, gur­gling, buzzing, hiss­ing, and so on.” (Stravin­sky was appar­ent­ly an admir­er.) You can see recon­struc­tions at the top of the post in a 2012 exhi­bi­tion at Lisbon’s Museu Coleção Berar­do. Many of his own com­po­si­tions fea­ture string orches­tras as well. Rus­so­lo intro­duced his new instru­men­tal music over the course of a few years, debut­ing an “exploder” in Mod­e­na in 1913, stag­ing con­certs in Milan, Genoa, and Lon­don the fol­low­ing year, and in Paris in 1921.

One 1917 con­cert appar­ent­ly pro­voked explo­sive vio­lence, an effect Rus­so­lo seemed to antic­i­pate and even wel­come. The Art of Noise derived its influ­ence from every sound of the indus­tri­al world, “and we must not for­get the very new nois­es of Mod­ern War­fare,” he writes, quot­ing futur­ist poet Marinetti’s joy­ful descrip­tions of the “vio­lence, feroc­i­ty, reg­u­lar­i­ty, pen­du­lum game, fatal­i­ty” of bat­tle. His noise sys­tem, which he enu­mer­ates in the trea­tise, also con­sists of “human voic­es: shouts, moans, screams, laugh­ter, rat­tlings, sobs….” It seems that if he didn’t sup­ply these onstage, he was hap­py for the audi­ence to do so.

After Russolo’s first Art of Noise con­cert in 1913, Marinet­ti vio­lent­ly defend­ed the instru­ments against assaults from those whom the com­pos­er called “passé-ists.” Oth­er recep­tions of the strange new form were more enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly pos­i­tive. Nonethe­less, notes a 1967 “Great Bear Pam­phlet” that reprints The Art of Nois­es, the effects aren’t exact­ly what Rus­so­lo intend­ed: “Lis­ten­ing to the har­mo­nized com­bined pitch­es of the bursters, the whistlers, and the gur­glers, no one remem­bered autos, loco­mo­tives or run­ning waters; one rather expe­ri­enced an intense emo­tion of futur­ist art, absolute­ly unfore­seen and like noth­ing but itself.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sovi­et Inven­tor Léon Theremin Shows Off the Theremin, the Ear­ly Elec­tron­ic Instru­ment That Could Be Played With­out Being Touched (1954)

Meet the “Tel­har­mo­ni­um,” the First Syn­the­siz­er (and Pre­de­ces­sor to Muzak), Invent­ed in 1897

The His­to­ry of Elec­tron­ic Music, 1800–2015: Free Web Project Cat­a­logues the Theremin, Fairlight & Oth­er Instru­ments That Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Music

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

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Mozart’s Diary Where He Composed His Final Masterpieces Is Now Digitized and Available Online

in History, Music | March 5th, 2018

We have a ten­den­cy to regard Wolf­gang Amadeus Mozart’s music as hav­ing emerged ful­ly formed into the world, not least because we hear it per­formed almost exclu­sive­ly in a high­ly pol­ished state of near-per­fec­tion. That makes any glimpse into the process of its cre­ation all the more valu­able, and the British Library has now pro­vid­ed us with much more than such a glimpse: at its site you can now read Mozart’s own thir­ty-page musi­cal diary, a record of “his com­po­si­tions in the last sev­en years of his life” and thus “a unique­ly impor­tant doc­u­ment” in the his­to­ry of clas­si­cal music.

The British Library notes that, dur­ing the peri­od from Feb­ru­ary 1784 until Decem­ber 1791 that the diary cov­ers, Mozart “com­posed many of his best-known works, includ­ing his five mature operas, sev­er­al of his most beau­ti­ful piano sonatas, and his last three great sym­phonies, as well as sev­er­al famous less­er works.”

The pages you see above and below this para­graph come from his com­ic opera The Mar­riage of Figaro. “It was a tur­bu­lent time of his life, with finan­cial crises, fam­i­ly tragedy, and his ongo­ing unsuc­cess­ful search for a per­ma­nent court posi­tion.” Enthu­si­asts will have tak­en notice that those years also con­sti­tut­ed the last sev­en of his life, before his ear­ly death at age 35.

But the flame that burns twice as bright, to coin a phrase, burns half as long, and we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture some of the for­mi­da­ble musi­cal accom­plish­ments Mozart attained before even reach­ing ado­les­cence. But it some­how feels even more of a won­der to see writ­ings in the actu­al hand of the mature Mozart, at the height of his com­po­si­tion­al pow­ers. You can read the musi­cal diary he wrote in two dif­fer­ent for­mats: as a stan­dard web site with details about the viewed pages and his­tor­i­cal con­text from Mozart’s life pro­vid­ed below each set of pages, and a zoomable, page-flip­pable brows­er with option­al audio notes. If you’d like a sound­track to go with the read­ing expe­ri­ence, a cer­tain 127-hour playlist of Mozart’s music sug­gests itself.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear All of Mozart in a Free 127-Hour Playlist

Hear the Pieces Mozart Com­posed When He Was Only Five Years Old

Read an 18th-Cen­tu­ry Eye­wit­ness Account of 8‑Year-Old Mozart’s Extra­or­di­nary Musi­cal Skills

See Mozart Played on Mozart’s Own Fortepi­ano, the Instru­ment That Most Authen­ti­cal­ly Cap­tures the Sound of His Music

Leck Mich Im Arsch (“Kiss My Ass”): Lis­ten to Mozart’s Scat­o­log­i­cal Canon in B Flat (1782)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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An Animated History of Goth

in Music | March 5th, 2018

“Is your teen goth­ic?” Don’t laugh, it’s a seri­ous ques­tion. If your teen is a goth, there are a few paths avail­able to you, and not all of them good. Let’s con­sid­er some, shall we? You might, in the course of some research, come across a resource called the Par­ents Uni­ver­sal Resource Experts—or P.U.R.E.—which is not a par­o­dy Evan­gel­i­cal band invent­ed by DEVO. You will learn things like “the pre­dom­i­nant col­or of goth­ic cloth­ing is black” and “the goth­ic atti­tude is one of sad­ness and depres­sion.” So far, so total­ly unhelp­ful. This much is obvi­ous, but what should you do?

Sur­pris­ing­ly, P.U.R.E. goes high when oth­ers go low, and coun­sels that par­ents should accept their teen’s goth lifestyle, “espe­cial­ly if it is not harm­ing them.” Good advice. Even Oprah took the high road, sort of, in 1993, let­ting goth teen guest Jim calm­ly “shut down haters” who called him “depress­ing and weird,” one of the haters in ques­tion being his mom. Don’t try to change your goth teen, get to know them by learn­ing about the his­to­ry of goth your­self. Reach back to the his­tor­i­cal and lit­er­ary ori­gins with this video, dig deep in the crates with this under­ground playlist…

…or just get a quirky gen­er­al out­line of the basics in the Pitch­fork ani­mat­ed video above, which cov­ers the genre from its begin­nings before the inter­net, when it had a very spe­cif­ic set of ref­er­ences unlike such lat­er iter­a­tions as “90s Talk Show Goth,” “Mall Goth” and “Cyber­goth” (a sub­set which, on sec­ond thought, prob­a­bly war­rants an inter­ven­tion on the grounds of aes­thet­ic abuse). In the sev­en­ties and ear­ly eight­ies, goth meant Siouxsie and the Ban­shees, The Cure, Bauhaus, The Damned, Joy Division—the biggest but by no means only names at the begin­ning of a dis­parate move­ment that arose nat­u­ral­ly from punk.

The Pitch­fork playlist above offers a thor­ough musi­cal overview of those ori­gins, reach­ing back to a true orig­i­nal, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, whose campy hor­ror schtick in “I Put a Spell on You” opened doors for Peter Murphy’s vamp­ing in “Bela Lugosi’s Dead,” Lux Inte­ri­or’s spooky psy­chobil­ly deliv­ery, and for­mer gravedig­ger Dave Van­ian’s the­atri­cal per­sona. (The dead­pan teens in the video at the top cite Siouxsie Sioux and her band as the first goths, but many a fan will tell you it was The Damned). With­out the next cuts from the Doors and the Vel­vet Under­ground, we might not have had the Cure or Joy Divi­sion, among a few hun­dred oth­er goth and goth-like bands.

Then it’s the usu­al cat­e­chism of clas­sic goth rock any edu­cat­ed goth teen can rat­tle off at a momen­t’s notice: The Birth­day Par­ty, Soft Cell, Swans, Killing Joke, This Mor­tal Coil, Dia­man­da Galas, Dead Can Dance, Cocteau Twins, Coil. But per­haps your teen has only picked up the baton where the playlist leaves off, with late­com­ers (and arguably not-goth-at-all-but-ew-emo band) My Chem­i­cal Romance, or with the post-goth (if you will) Karin Driejer’s project Fever Ray? If so, con­sid­er imme­di­ate­ly sit­ting your teen down and play­ing all of these key tracks. They may hate you in the moment, but will sure­ly thank you lat­er. (Miss­ing here is Nico’s Mar­ble Index, an album so bleak, most goths can’t even sit through it).

But per­haps you are your­self an elder (I kid) goth par­ent of a bud­ding goth teen? If “suddenly”—as Elec­tron­ic Beats’ Daniel Jones writes in “Find­ing the Right Albums for Your Goth Teen”—“there’s this hor­ri­ble, weird ver­sion of you who’s slight­ly taller and dis­plays enough of your own par­tic­u­lar quirks that you can nev­er quite tell if you’re being sub­tly made fun of”? Well, first, let me just say to you, hap­py 42nd anniver­sary of goth! You’re wel­come. Next, you should fol­low Jones’ advice. Bypass the 80s and 90s, he says: “Just give that teen some Cocteau Twins and Coil and tell them nev­er to be like Mor­ris­sey.” We’ve got it cov­ered above (no Mor­ris­sey to be found).

Then you must intro­duce your teen to con­tem­po­rary goth art like the sin­is­ter dada cabaret work of for­mer 60’s heart­throb Scott Walk­er, the har­row­ing noise of Pruri­ent, doomy, sludgy met­al of Neu­ro­sis or Sunn O))), and the cav­ernous­ly scary riffage of Ash Bor­er (“Can you imag­ine being a teen and hear­ing the beau­ty of ‘Rest, You Are the Light­ning’ at the exact same time you get your peri­od or first pubic? Prob­a­bly you’d grow up to be a pro-skater.”) Go on, embrace your goth teen, but prob­a­bly not with your arms. Do it with Walker’s “The Day the ‘Con­d­u­ca­tor’ Died (An Xmas Song).” Show your teen you mean busi­ness, and, as one YouTube com­menter sug­gests, “put this on next time you have a din­ner par­ty and just stare at your guests.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“A Brief His­to­ry of Goths”: From the Goths, to Goth­ic Lit­er­a­ture, to Goth Music

Three-Hour Mix­tape Offers a Son­ic Intro­duc­tion to Under­ground Goth Music

Watch The Cure’s First TV Appear­ance in 1979 … Before The Band Acquired Its Sig­na­ture Goth Look

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

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Elton John Proves He Can Turn any Text into a Song: Watch Him Improvise with Lines from Henrik Ibsen’s Play, Peer Gynt

in Creativity, Literature, Music, Theatre | March 5th, 2018

I’m not a lyric writer. I get all my inspi­ra­tion from look­ing at the writ­ten page. — Elton John

Inspi­ra­tion is one thing. Act­ing on it is anoth­er. Sir Elton’s out­put seems to go beyond his mag­i­cal com­bi­na­tion of tal­ent, work eth­ic, and train­ing. He claims to have tak­en all of 30 min­utes to com­plete “Your Song.” In his 2005 appear­ance on Inside the Actor’s Stu­dio, excerpt­ed above, he passed his genius off as some­thing akin to a par­ty trick, call­ing on the audi­ence to pass up a book—any book—as source mate­r­i­al for an ins­ta-song.

Giv­en the num­ber of stu­dent actors in the audi­ence, it’s real­ly not so sur­pris­ing that the first vol­ume to hit the stage was Hen­rik Ibsen’s 1867 verse play Peer Gynt.

Magi­cians height­en the dra­ma by demand­ing absolute silence pri­or to a dif­fi­cult trick.

John swings the oth­er way. The result­ing impro­vised tune is all the more impres­sive for his off the cuff, raunchy text-based pat­ter. It’s hard to imag­ine Ibsen play­ing so fast and loose with lines like:

Every­thing spites me with a vengeance

Sky and water and those wicked moun­tains

Fog pour­ing out of the sky to con­found him

The water hurl­ing in to drown him

The moun­tains point­ing their rocks to fall-

And those peo­ple, all of them out for the kill!

Oh no, not to die!

I mustn’t lose him. The lout!

Why’s the dev­il have to tease him?

What might Metal­li­ca or Iron Maid­en have con­jured from such mate­r­i­al? In John’s hands, it becomes a lush, emo­tion­al­ly charged bal­lad, the moun­tains and fog apt metaphors.

In his book Inside Inside, host James Lip­ton names this as one of “the two most astound­ing impro­vi­sa­tions in the his­to­ry of Inside the Actors Stu­dio.” The oth­er was Robin Williams mak­ing mer­ry with a pink pash­mi­na shawl.

In a 2012 inter­view with NPR, John went into the nature of his col­lab­o­ra­tion with his long­time word man, Bernie Taupin. Unlike oth­er lyri­cists, Taupin does not think in terms of verse and cho­rus, leav­ing it to John to free the song from a wall of text:

It’s just a blank—well, not a blank, but it’s a piece of paper. In the old days, it was hand­writ­ten. Then it got typed. Then it got faxed. Now it gets emailed. And it’s no sug­ges­tions, noth­ing. And we’ve nev­er writ­ten in the same room. I don’t know if peo­ple know that. But he gives me the lyric, and I go away and write the song, and then come back and play it to him. And I’ve nev­er lost the enjoy­ment or the thrill of play­ing him the song that I’ve just writ­ten to his lyric.

If you’d like to fin­ish what John start­ed by fur­ther musi­cal­iz­ing Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, the com­plete script can be read here. Or lis­ten to the 1946 radio adap­ta­tion star­ring Ralph Richard­son as Peer Gynt and Lau­rence Olivi­er as the Troll King and a but­ton-moul­der, below. Also above, you can watch John turn instruc­tions for using an oven (yes, that dai­ly appli­ance) into song.

via metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Elton John Sings His Clas­sic Hit ‘Your Song’ Through the Years

Tom Pet­ty Takes You Inside His Song­writ­ing Craft

Enjoy a Blue­grass Per­for­mance of Elton John’s 1972 Hit, “Rock­et Man”

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on March 20 for the sec­ond install­ment of Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain at The Tank. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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David Sedaris Creates a List of His 10 Favorite Jazz Tracks: Stream Them Online

in Jazz, Music, Radio | March 2nd, 2018

Image by WBUR, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

You can’t read far into David Sedaris’ writ­ing with­out encoun­ter­ing his father Lou, a cur­mud­geon­ly, decades-and-decades-retired IBM engi­neer with a stiffly prac­ti­cal mind and a harsh word for every­body — espe­cial­ly his mis­fit son, ded­i­cat­ing his life as he has to the qua­si-occu­pa­tion of writ­ing while liv­ing in far-flung places like Paris and rur­al Eng­land. Even now, solid­ly into his nineties, Sedaris père keeps on pro­vid­ing the six­tysome­thing Sedaris fils with mate­r­i­al, all of it — once pol­ished up just right — a source of laugh­ter for the lat­ter’s many read­ers and lis­ten­ers. But Lou has also giv­en David some­thing else: a pas­sion for jazz.

“My father loves jazz and has an exten­sive col­lec­tion of records and reel-to-reel tapes he used to enjoy after return­ing home from work,” writes Sedaris in one essay. “He might have entered the house in a foul mood, but once he had his Dex­ter Gor­don and a vod­ka mar­ti­ni, the stress melt­ed away and every­thing was ‘Beau­ti­ful, baby, just beau­ti­ful.’ ” He then goes on to tell the sto­ry of how his father once attempt­ed to train young David and his sis­ters into a Brubeck-style fam­i­ly jazz com­bo — a hope­less dream from the start, but one that has since enter­tained his fans around the world. (Not that Sedaris has­n’t pro­vid­ed some of that enter­tain­ment by per­form­ing com­mer­cial jin­gles in the voice of Bil­lie Hol­i­day.)

Appear­ing on a guest DJ seg­ment on Los Ange­les pub­lic radio sta­tion KCRW, Sedaris told of how his father intro­duced him to jazz: “I remem­ber see­ing the movie Lady Sings the Blues, right, and think­ing Diana Ross did such a good job. And my Dad say­ing, ‘Oh boy, you’ve got a lot to learn,’ and then him play­ing Bil­lie Hol­i­day 78s for me… and then him tak­ing it back even fur­ther and sit­ting me down to lis­ten to Mabel Mer­cer. He real­ly did give me quite an edu­ca­tion and it’s the music that’s stuck with me.” As for the first jazz album he ever heard, he names in a recent Jaz­zTimes inter­view Charles Min­gus’ The Clown, the one “with a close-up of a clown’s face on the cov­er” that still, in his esti­ma­tion, “looks so mod­ern and it sounds so mod­ern.”

When Sedaris’ offi­cial Face­book page post­ed ten of his favorite songs, he came up with an all-jazz list includ­ing the work of Nina Simone, Anto­nio Car­los Jobim, John Coltrane, and oth­er lumi­nar­ies of the tra­di­tion. (He did not, of course, neglect Bil­lie Hol­i­day.) A fan turned it into a Spo­ti­fy playlist, which you’ll find embed­ded below (and if you don’t have Spo­ti­fy’s free soft­ware, you can down­load it here):

“I used to work in com­plete silence,” Sedaris tells Jaz­zTimes, but “about three or four years ago I start­ed lis­ten­ing to music [while I work], but not music with lyrics in it.” Much of the jazz he loves fits that descrip­tion, and he’s also, in com­bi­na­tion with the vari­ety of music-stream­ing ser­vices avail­able now, dis­cov­ered new jazz artists while writ­ing. Hav­ing put drink­ing and smok­ing com­plete­ly behind him — and hav­ing writ­ten about both of those expe­ri­ences — Sedaris retains jazz as one of the sub­stances that keeps him going. It cer­tain­ly seems to have worked for the man who brought the music into his life, whom Sedaris has imag­ined may yet out­live us all: “If any­thing hap­pens to me,” he says, “the one thing my father wants is my iPod.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

20 Free Essays & Sto­ries by David Sedaris: A Sam­pling of His Inim­itable Humor

Be His Guest: David Sedaris at Home in Rur­al West Sus­sex, Eng­land

David Sedaris Sings the Oscar May­er Theme Song in the Voice of Bil­lie Hol­i­day

Haru­ki Murakami’s Pas­sion for Jazz: Dis­cov­er the Novelist’s Jazz Playlist, Jazz Essay & Jazz Bar

The Best Music to Write By: Give Us Your Rec­om­men­da­tions

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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New York City Buskers Sound Just Like the Beatles

in Music | March 1st, 2018

From Matt Whit­lock comes a tweet fea­tur­ing Amiri and Rahiem Tay­lor, two New York City buskers, singing a spot-on ver­sion of The Bea­t­les’ “Eight Days a Week.” Close your eyes and imag­ine lis­ten­ing to John and Paul.

Accord­ing to their web­site, Amiri and Rahiem are twins from Bed Stuy, Brook­lyn. And although they grew up “sur­round­ed by hip hop cul­ture and all it’s glo­ry,” they had expo­sure to pop and funk, and they’ve steadi­ly built up a Bea­t­les reper­toire. You can find plen­ty oth­er Bea­t­les cov­ers by the twins on YouTube. Enjoy.

via Digg

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil Young Busk­ing in Glas­gow, 1976: The Sto­ry Behind the Footage

80s Pop Singer Jim­my Somerville Sur­pris­es Ger­man Street Musi­cian as the Busker Sings Somerville’s Hit

Bono and Glen Hansard Busk­ing in Dublin on Christ­mas Eve

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Hear Music Played on the Viola Organista, a Piano That Sounds Like a Violin, Which Leonardo da Vinci Invented, But Never Heard

in Music | February 28th, 2018

The most illus­tri­ous of inven­tors, Leonar­do da Vin­ci, was not moved by con­ven­tion­al ideas about suc­cess. He took com­mis­sion after com­mis­sion from his wealthy, aris­to­crat­ic patrons, cre­at­ed metic­u­lous plans, then moved on to the next thing with­out finishing—as if he had learned all he need­ed and had no more use for the project. The works we remem­ber him for were a tiny hand­ful among thou­sands of planned designs and art­work. They have the dis­tinc­tion of being his major mas­ter­pieces because they hap­pen to be com­plet­ed.

Had Leonar­do fin­ished all of his pro­posed projects, they would fill the Lou­vre. He was con­tent to leave many of his paint­ings unpaint­ed, sculp­tures unsculpt­ed, and inven­tions unbuilt—sketched out in the­o­ry in his copi­ous note­books, pro­tect­ed from theft by his inge­nious cryp­tog­ra­phy, and left for future gen­er­a­tions to dis­cov­er.

One such inven­tion, the Vio­la Organ­ista, might have changed the course of musi­cal his­to­ry had Leonar­do had the where­with­al or desire to build one in his life­time. Or it might have remained a minor curios­i­ty; there is no way to know.

Sketched out in note­book pages con­tained in the Codex Atlanti­cus, the design showed “an out­line of a con­struc­tion con­cept for a bowed string instru­ment which at the same time is a key­board instru­ment.” A vio­lin that is also a piano, sort of…. Hav­ing built a ver­sion of the instru­ment 500 years after its inven­tion, Pol­ish con­cert pianist Sla­womir Zubrzy­c­ki describes it as hav­ing “the char­ac­ter­is­tics of three [instru­ments] we know: the harp­si­chord, the organ and the vio­la da gam­ba.”

Zubrzy­c­ki spent four years work­ing on his Vio­la Organ­ista. A few years back, we fea­tured a brief per­for­mance, his first pub­lic debut of the instru­ment in 2012. Now, we have much more audio of this incred­i­ble musi­cal inven­tion to share, includ­ing a longer per­for­mance from Zubrzy­c­ki at the top of the post, Marin Marais’ Suite in B Minor, per­formed in 2014 at the Coper­ni­cus Fes­ti­val in Krakow. (You can see the full con­cert just above.) Despite these notable per­for­mances, and his notable cre­ation, Zubrzy­c­ki is not the first to build a Vio­la Organ­ista.

In 2011, Eduar­do Pani­agua, anoth­er musi­cian devot­ed to Leonardo’s instrument—which does indeed sound like a “one per­son string ensem­ble,” as a com­menter at this MetaFil­ter post noted—released a disc of 19 songs by Baroque com­posers, con­tem­po­raries of Leonar­do, played on a Vio­la Organ­ista built by Japan­ese mak­er Akio Obuchi. (Hear the full album on Spo­ti­fy above.) Accom­pa­ny­ing the album, writes Span­ish site Musi­ca Antigua (quot­ed in Eng­lish here via Google trans­late), is “a pro­fuse­ly illus­trat­ed book­let with eleven of the organ­ist vio­la pro­to­types that Leonar­do him­self devised,” with descrip­tions of the instrument’s oper­a­tion by Pani­agua.

Though Leonar­do him­self nev­er built, nor heard, the instru­ment, it did attract inter­est not long after his death. “The old­est sur­viv­ing mod­el,” notes Musi­ca Antigua, “is in El Esco­r­i­al and is dat­ed at the begin­ning of the sev­en­teenth cen­tu­ry.” Every ver­sion of the Vio­la Organ­ista worked from orig­i­nal design specs like those in Leonardo’s hand above, using wheels to bow the strings when the keys are pressed, rather than ham­mers to strike them.

It’s an inge­nious solu­tion to a prob­lem musi­cians had sought for many years to solve: cre­at­ing a key­board with rich dynam­ics and sus­tain. Whether Leonardo’s design is supe­ri­or to oth­er attempts, like the clavi­chord or, for that mat­ter, the piano, I leave to musi­col­o­gists to debate. We might all agree that the sound of his instru­ment, as played by Pani­agua and Zubrzy­c­ki, is tru­ly orig­i­nal and total­ly cap­ti­vat­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Leonar­do da Vinci’s Musi­cal Inven­tion, the Vio­la Organ­ista, Being Played for the Very First Time

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Vision­ary Note­books Now Online: Browse 570 Dig­i­tized Pages

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Bizarre Car­i­ca­tures & Mon­ster Draw­ings

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

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