String Theory Media

your brain on music city: a "field trip" at soundland

Readers of the blog know that I have a passionate interest in music and the brain, and somebody must have noticed because I was asked by the organizers of SOUNDLAND (Next Big Nashville) to put together one of the event's "Field Trips" about this vital, fascinating subject. Here's the official blurb for THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON MUSIC CITY:

We all love music, but WHY? How does it work? How is it possible that a composer drawing lines and dots on a manuscript paper could move somebody to tears in another country 100 years later? Only in the past decade or two has neuroscience really begun to describe how we process music and why it affects us emotionally. In this brisk, multimedia experience, you'll meet a writer, a researcher, an audio innovator, a music therapist and a record producer with synesthesia, each with a perspective on this fast-moving fusion of science and art. 

We're going to have a mind-blowing demonstration provided by High Emotion Audio, insights from researchers, fun facts and some surprises. This one-time-only event takes place on Friday, Sept 23 at noon at CRAFT Studio, 709 2nd Ave. South. I wish we could open this to the public, but entrance requires a SOUNDLAND VIP Pass (well worth it for the amazing lineup of bands and events) or a valid student ID. I do hope to see you there. If you want to know more, just email me. 

 

music and my daughter, part 5: no batteries

FongChong is musical, no doubt about it now. She picks up on themes and can sing them back. It’s one of her most fetching qualities. In fact she sings pretty regularly now – most every day. The “Bamboo La-La” song is probably her finest work so far. BaaaambooLaLa, Bamboo La, and over and over with some improv rapping, set to a perky tune. It’s cute and rhythmic and better than the Scenic Ride song in her piano method book, although Scenic Ride has its allure. It’s a minor tune in the key of C major which is kind of rad. And already FC is tapping through it with ease, singing the notes accurately as she goes. I’ve tried to get her to pay more attention to the form (nerd dad at work) and to playing with a steady, manageable groove. That evokes a certain amount of pushback: Dang it, as soon as a tune starts to feel easy it’s my sacred birthright to rush the snot out of it until I make an inevitable error.

I sit with her most days and without too much reminding or prodding, she’s doing maybe 20 minutes of piano per diem, if you count the bonus visits that spontaneously happen from time to time. She’s protesting less, and in general her basic default position continues to get sunnier and breezier. She’ll focus with improbable intensity on her wee fingers, splayed one per key around Middle C. I can practically see the nerve impulses travel down her arm as she tries to get her digits to do something new.

world of bluegrass: 99% of life is showing up

There’s less than a month to go until this year’s World of Bluegrass (WOB), the annual convention of the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA), and I’m very much looking forward to seeing friends and colleagues between Sept. 26 and Oct 2. IBMA is perpetually the subject of discussion, debate and drama, largely because bluegrass has become a diverse music with an extremely diverse constituency. That, to my mind, is the best thing about it and the key to its special place in American culture. But my point here is to offer a couple of updates on the state of things and to encourage everyone with any kind of interest in American roots music to attend WOB this year, especially if you’ve never been or taken some years off. I think for a variety of reasons it may be the most important year for this event since it moved to Nashville in 2005.

new work: the gibson guitar raid on npr

My story offering background and context on the recent raid at Gibson Guitars in Nashville and Memphis aired Wednesday on All Things Considered. I'm working on a longer version of the story for Premier Guitar that will get into some of the details we couldn't address in five minutes on the air. There has been a huge amount of comment on the raid and it's been fascinating to watch the issue get picked up by conservative bloggers who've turned the issue into a case study in big government run amuck. Their case is built on the grounds for the recent raid, which seized Indian rosewood that Gibson says was a routine shipment from the biggest source of legal rosewood in the world. The government's search warrant affidavit addressed the wood not as an endangered species but as a technical matter of tariff codes and how much labor had been applied to fingerboard blanks in India versus the U.S. It has thus been easy to cast that as a case of the Dept. of Justice hassling an American company because it's giving too much work to American workers. I admit it's weird. Because the Madagascar wood seized in Nov. 2009 is much more suspect as it relates to the environment and endangered forests, yet charges have not been filed nearly two years later. More shoes are going to drop in this case. And the fate of perhaps the most important instrument company in American history hangs in the balance.