Harry Partch in the News

It isn't often that the main subject of my scholarly inquiry ends up at the center of a feud between rock musicians. So imagine my glee when I discovered this single this morning:
That's right, Beck has posted a song called "Harry Partch" over on his website. Granted that listening to it he borrows from minimalism as he does from Partch, but he's got some sounds that mimic Partch's plectrum instruments and he plays around in a justly tuned toolbox.

Evidently the single was inspired by an argument between Radiohead and The Fiery Furnaces. Radiohead recently released a single called "Harry Patch" in honor to the oldest WWI British Soldier who died this summer. The lead singer of Furnaces responded:

"'Oh, please listen to our new song about Harry Patch'. You brand yourself by brazenly and arbitrarily associating yourself with things that you know people consider cool. That is bogus. That's a put-on. That's a branding technique, and Radiohead have their brand that they're popular and intelligent, so they have a song about Harry Patch. How's the song? Is it 48 notes to the octave? What does it have to do with Harry Patch? Oh, my wife says I am being very rude. She doesn't like me insulting Radiohead. She's afraid they will send their lackeys through the computer to sabotage us. But they needn't worry -- we are a band that sabotages ourselves."

Yes, he mistook Harry Partch for Harry Patch. That's ok, I do it all the time. Still, it made for a great moment in the sun for good ole Harry.

Sam Continues His Plan for World Domination

Monday night,we were all sitting at supper, eating and chatting when the topic turned to Sam's day at school. We innocently began asking him what he had done when under his breath he mentioned kicking. Shocked, Joy and I looked each other for a moment before Joy cautiously asked:

"Sam, did someone kick you?"

Sam turned and looked at Joy for a moment before he started laughing maniacally. In between his laughs, he managed to say, "No, no one would kick me!"

That's right, Sam is so sure of his place on the playground that it is a hysterical thought just to contemplate someone kicking him.

*sigh* He was probably laughing because we had been laughing all through supper, but still, we though it useful to talk about how we should solve our frustrations through nonviolent means. You know, like mind control.

Autotuning as Internet Meme

I've written before of my serious problems with autotuning when it is hidden from the listener and we're allowed to believe that singers can actually hit the notes they are hitting correctly. But what of obvious uses of autotuning like T-Pain? Or those Carl Sagan mashups Stephen has been posting the last few weeks? Well, in order to understand those, I think we need a lesson from Weird Al:

Know Your Meme: Auto Tune (featuring "Weird Al" Yankovic) from Rocketboom on Vimeo.

Sam Plays Games

Joy and I are gamers from way back and since having Sam, have been looking forward to the day when he was ready to play games. Since this summer, he's been mildly interested in them, but over the past two weeks, he's become obsessed. He has been pulling games out of our game drawers and asking to play them, particularly "Bitin off Hedz," a dinosaur game where you try to make it to the end of the board without another dinosaur throwing rocks at you or, ahem, bitin off your hed.

"Bitin off Hedz" is a silly game and perfect for letting off steam after a long week, which is exactly how we used it in graduate school. For Sam, he is just eager to march around with dinosaurs and throw rocks. He and Joy have played it almost every day this week and I'm sure I'll play a few games myself today. But my favorite part of this whole adventure was when he told Joy he wanted to play that "Chia Pass" game. She looked at him with a confused look until she realized that he was misreading the company's name that makes "Bitin off Hedz" - Cheapass Games.

Yeah, that's totally our new name for that company, replacing what my cousin used to call it - Cheapbeep games.

Teaching at the Speed of the Internet

I'm always trying to make music history come alive for my students, so when a colleague mentioned that she wanted to get some pianos tuned in historical temperaments for her advanced ear training class, I jumped at the chance to have my early music history students experience the temperaments for themselves. Our piano technician tuned three harpsichords for us, one in just intonation, one in meantone, and one in Kirnberger well temperament. He then took the time to explain to the students why these various temperaments existed and the types of music written for them (if you'd like to know more details, let me know in the comments). Once he was finished demonstrating, he invited the students to come and try out the harpsichords. One student came down and tried a bit of Scarlatti, another played a little Bach. Then, one of my jazz studies majors, decided to try a little improv on the Kirnberger and modulated all over the place. Now, all of these temperaments have keys that aren't fully in tune, though the well tempering does make all keys usable; just some are more usable than others. When he modulated, he was able to find all the bad keys and the result was amazing.

After the demonstration, we headed back up to the classroom and discussed the various instrumental genres that wrote in those temperaments. When I got back to my office after class, a student had e-mailed me the following video:

That's right, a friend of his videoed my jazz student and then posted it to youtube while we were walking back up to the classroom. My classroom is instantly expanded where the students can now go back and hear the temperaments whenever they want. Technology is truly changing teaching.

New Listening Journals

In case you are interested (and have a burning passion for Josquin or Palestrina), my students have all posted their latest round of listening journals. I need to figure out a way for them to stream musical examples to make the journals that much more engaging, but they are fun to read as they are. Enjoy!

More Fun Historical Tidbits

Yesterday, I brought you a bit of musical history restored. Today here's a bit of musical history that you no longer have to dig for. Life Magazine is all on google books and all searchable. That means that the legendary review of Cage's percussion concerts from the early 1940s is now available at the click of a button. I've long had the text, but now I also know that pictures of the ensemble rest side-by-side with "the single slice of have that serves five!"