String Theory Media

mom, lawyer, musician?

From Salon, a nice and insightful exchange between a musical soul and an empathetic advice columnist. The subject: why we practice an instrument when we know we're not very good or even aspiring to mastery. Her husband ("Where do you think this is going?") doesn't get it. She does:

I practice my lessons for a while and then I find that I just hold the guitar and I strum through the chords I know over and over because I can and because they seem so beautiful to me when I don't try to make them into a song -- I can't believe this delicate instrument can make such a lovely sound. I have loved learning about the guitar -- it makes listening to music a whole new experience for me and makes me want to be able to do it even more.

I daresay the learning makes one not only a better listener to music, but to everything, like advice. Besides, she wants to learn Richard Thompson's "Dimming Of The Day." There's all the encouragement you need right there.

hot doc alert: page, white, edge

Oh dear, this looks good...

infatuated with the iphone

Yeah I know I'm two years behind the curve, but in keeping with my new life rule -- Wait Til Version 3.0 of Anything (except love) -- I got the iPhone 3Gs about two weeks ago. I'm enjoying music on the go more than I have since the early days of the Walkman. Having access to Pandora over the open air is a wonder. I've used the little guy as a drum machine and enjoyed the wonderful Bloom app. But there's so much more to try, like this for example:

new stuff: trey anastasio's 'time turns elastic' performed solo acoustic at the barn

New but not new from STM, Trey Anastasio recently posted this video we produced on his website. It's a live take of an epic song called Time Turns Elastic that we shot in the spring of 2008 as part of a project with Trey and Orchestra Nashville.

Trey and Nashville's Don Hart worked together to scale this solo composition up into a full orchestral suite, which premiered at the Ryman Auditorium last fall. Trey is performing it with symphonies around the country, and his band Phish is about to release an album of the piece scaled to the instrumentation of their legendary jam band. It's a remarkable work. Don't expect to get it on first listen. I was glad to work on this edit with Anne because it got the music really in my head and under my skin. The extended solo guitar passages are extraordinary. I'd like to express my gratitude to Trey and his folks for letting Director of Photography Harry Butler and I visit the famous Barn in Vermont where Phish has made so much music and which is now a wonderful artist retreat under the auspices of his foundation the Seven Below Arts Initiative.

public tv alert: the music instinct

Last night my dad called to tip me off that a music-and-the-brain documentary was airing on PBS. I caught the whole second hour of "The Music Instinct: Science & Song," and it's must-see-TV for the musically curious, so watch for repeats and visit the fabulous website. It covered theories about music's origins, its relationship to language and motor skills, and it even included Brian Greene, the physicist and author who popularized string theory (yay!), talking about the very fabric of the cosmos being (theoretically) made of ridiculously small vibrating strings. The show tapped all the big authors I've written about here over the past couple of years, like Oliver Sacks and Daniel Levitin. Most folks will relate to the chapters dealing with music therapy and the power of music TRAINING (not so much listening a la the "Mozart Effect") in human cognitive development. The film was a survey of a new and fast-widening field of study that touches numerous disciplines, and it did an admirable job hitting a lot of emerging discoveries in rapid-fire fashion. But it just shows that there's a lot more work to be done not only in these vital fields of research but in translating that research to the public, because to not know the power of music is to dis-serve children, the elderly, Parkinson's patients, stroke victims, and really everyone. We stand ready to make any documentary in this field anyone would like to finance.

new stuff: the road to bonnaroo on wpln

Yesterday morning WPLN aired my feature on the Road To Bonnaroo contest, which sent three Nashville rock bands to a stage at Bonnaroo.

Radio intro: The CMA Music Festival and Bonnaroo, the area’s two biggest music festivals, wrapped up Sunday night. But that’s about all they have in common, with different music, different fans and different business models behind them. While the CMA Fest is a direct outgrowth and promoter of Music Row’s country music industry, Bonnaroo has had only a slight relationship with Nashville’s emergent rock and pop scenes. But as WPLN’s Craig Havighurst reports, some are hoping to change that.

The audio feature can be streamed HERE.

the obamas bring the swing

Evidence mounts that the Obamas grasp not only that jazz is worthy of America's first living room (a no-brainer for even presidents low on brains), but that it's a language to speak to young people about a whole range of vital cultural and historical questions. Monday saw Michelle Obama host 150 high school jazz students to the White House for a day of music and seminars with five members of the Marsalis family and Paquito D'Rivera. The NYT's account describes breakout workshops on "American History and Jazz," "Syntax of Jazz," "The Blues Experience," and "Duke Ellington and Swing." (The WaPost account is HERE.) Most educators would pat themselves on the back for merely putting kids in the same room as jazz performers. But sophisticated music takes sophisticated context, and those topics are ones that every American kid deserves to be immersed in as part of their regular education, not a once-in-a-lifetime visit to the President's house.

This comes just as the National Endowment for the Arts reports (again) that Americans are attending less live fine arts music of all kinds. The number who  reported seeing live jazz fell a staggering 28% between 2002 and 2008. Less than eight percent of us said we attended a jazz event last year. For classical music it was 9.3 percent, versus 13 percent in 1982. Lacking any support whatsoever in the mass media, jazz (my pet cause) will not penetrate the skulls of kids without exposure, inspirational leadership and conversation. The Obamas are bringing it, and it's incredibly exciting.

And what about the rest of us? What are we doing with our time if not experiencing the greatest achievement of American music and one with swing, blues and funk to boot? Going to Fan Fair I guess.

echo site watch

Last Friday, before Bonnaroo distracted my attention, I posted thoughts on the surprise shut-down of Echomusic sites. Some surfing today indicates that indeed some sites are going through major transition.

• Rissi Palmer: www.rissipalmer.com
• Kingbilly: www.kingbilly.com
• The Road Hammers have moved to MySpace
• The Readings have moved to WordPress with the help of Strategic Blend.
• Wade Bowen: www.wadebowen.com
• The Foxymorons: www.foxymorons.com
• Jeff Bates has moved to FanCue

At the same time, plenty of echo sites remain live, but if you know of others outages, drop them in the comments box.

darknet: echo artist clients face imminent web shut-down

When news broke in April that Echomusic of Nashville (popularly known as echo) was being closed by parent company Ticketmaster Entertainment, it was reported (all too briefly) as a story of some 60 lost jobs on Music Row. What hasn’t been reported is that early next week, on June 15-18, between 100 and 200 echo clients – most of them small or mid-level, independent or indie-label bands and artists – will see their websites go dark with no refunds and no ability to transfer their sites seamlessly to another host.

The echo platform, touted by the company for years as a unique integration of web site, e-mail list, merchandise sales and fan connection tools, was built on an architecture so proprietary and one-of-a-kind that sites “powered by echo” must be re-built from scratch. This is according to current and former Echo employees, as well as artist managers who are currently scrambling to rescue their artists’ vital presence on the web.

         “It’s shocking,” said the manager of a prominent Americana singer/songwriter who has at least a three-year relationship with Echo. “You’d think with all the years and money he’s put in they’d maybe go not the extra mile but just the extra half mile. . .We’re really being left with no options.”

music journalism apocalypse

A few months ago, after much procrastinating and buying newsstand copies, I subscribed to JazzTimes and have been loving it. Having columnists Gary Giddins, Nat Hentoff and Nate Chinen in one place every month would have made the subscription worth it by itself. Except that now, according to an announcement from the publishers, they are becoming the latest in a string of music magazines to cease or suspend publication. Late last year it was No Depression, the elegant and always substantive bible of American roots music, which retrenched on the web after 12 years in print. Last month, Performing Songwriter, an iconic magazine that put the creative process and the DIY movement in the spotlight, folded its tent after 16 years of being independently owned and operated. Also recently, R&R, once a competitor and compliment to Billboard, was shuttered, leaving the industry without one of its most analytical sources of reporting. And Harp. And Blender. And the wonderful Paste recently had to put out an online tip jar to survive.

This rash of fatalities is not, of course, because people are less interested than they used to be in music or reading about new music. Rather it's a toxic confluence of recessions.