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Elise Hall and A Modern History of the Saxophone
The following is an interview with Dr. Adrianne Honnold, an ethnomusicolgy professor at Lewis University. Her book The Legacy of Elise Hall: Contemporary Perspectives on Gender and the Saxophone is available here online for free. The role of establishing one’s unique sonic profile That’s something that is really important to a lot of jazz musicians
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Sentimentality vs Sincerity
Sincere adj Containing no element of dissimulation or deception; not feigned or pretended; real, true. Sentimental adj Of literary compositions (occasionally of music or other art): Appealing to sentiment; expressive of the tender emotions, esp. those of love. Oxford English Dictionary Sincerity and sentimentality may not seem like opposites to most people, but often when
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Holiday Music
25 days ago I wrote about Christmas music, and focused more around the significance that music has on the holiday itself. Now, I want to focus on the music itself. Christmas has long been connected with music and has produced some of the most iconic music. Back in the 40s, 50s and 60s, making a
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Christmas Music
It’s December 1st, which is the beginning of my threshold for playing/listening to Christmas music. I do this not due to a dislike for the music, but in order to not come to any distain for the Christmas classics. There are only so many Christmas songs, and they are relatively simple, so listening to them
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“Swinging” by Wassily Kandinsky
“Swinging” by Wassily Kandinsky, Oil on millboard, 1925, The Tate Gallery 1978-80: Illustrated Catalogue of Acquisitions, London While it might seem strange that a painting is being featured on a music, focused webpage, understanding Kandinsky and this painting will resolve this conflict, although even if this were a different piece by a different artist I
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Songs of Last Week 5
Tres Que Quedaron – Agustin Pereyra Lucena This song, besides being an incredibly good Bossa Nova piece by one of my favorite guitarists, has a very interesting introduction. The intro sounds like a modern Lo-Fi song, yet the album was released in 1988, where Lo-Fi was just emerging, and, based on the rest of his
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Minimalism in Music
Minimalism noun : a style or technique (as in music, literature, or design) that is characterized by extreme spareness and simplicity -Merriam Webster I disagree with this definition. Minimalism may be spare but it is not simple. A thing’s existence is as complex as it’s non existence. I define minimalism as
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Accessibility at the Cost of the Artist Process
Art has and always will have some sort of a barrier to entry. This is by it’s nature, but there have been all sorts of tool created throughout history to lower this barrier to entry, and while many have succeeded, they also raise the ceiling and push their medium forward. One prime example of this…
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Vocals Can Take Away From a Song
I listen to a lot of instrumental music. I also am studying a lot, and not having vocals is nice when writing an essay (or a blog post). But there comes a time in which vocals are welcome. I don’t think it’s fair to just listen to classical music without giving other forms a try.…
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Songs of Last Week 4
This song is very interesting in that it is audibly minimalist. I am a fan of a lot of songs that are musically minimalist; I think making such a song can more difficult than something more musically complex. This song is impressive in the way it incorporates the main guitar melody throughout the entire song,…
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Making Instruments
Before the industrial revolution, painters had to mix their colors. They needed a base, some common types were oil, water, and tempera (egg yolk), pigments, and to place to mix them. Back then, one could easily go their entire lives without seeing a specific color on any physical objects (they still had beautiful sunsets though),…
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The Jazz Ontology: A Solution to Part of a Larger Problem
A while ago I read “The Jazz Ontology: A semantic model and large-scale RDF repositories for jazz” by Polina Proutskova et al. The title should be pretty self explanatory, but for the sake of comprehension I’ll provide a quick summary. Essentially, the current, widespread system of music classification and archival is not fit for the…
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Going Fretless
A couple months ago I decided I wanted to experiment with microtonal guitar. For those unfamiliar, microtones are notes in between the 12 natural notes of the western chromatic scale. First I looked online, like one does, for microtonal or fretless guitars to no avail. Every guitar microtonal or fretless guitar was significantly out of
