A couple of friends and I went to see the documentary film Mellodrama last night, which was all about my favorite musical instruments, the Chamberlin and Mellotron.
When you press a key on one of these instruments, it plays a tape of a cello (or a flute, or an orchestra, or various other instruments) playing the note you want to play. They were invented with the idea that organists could play the sounds of the orchestra in their homes, but they quickly found their way into recording studios and rock bands, who liked their haunting, ethereal sounds.
The most famous example of a Mellotron sound is the flute at the beginning of Strawberry Fields Forever. . .
. . .but there are countless other famous examples, like the flutes in “Stairway to Heaven” and the lush string parts in “Nights in White Satin” by the Moody Blues. It’s all over the Fiona Apple albums, as well as Aimee Mann, Micheal Penn, Led Zeppelin, Crowded House, and. . .well, maybe you should go ahead and check out this playlist on Rhapsody. Listen to the music around the vocals, and the way the instruments interact. If you hear things that sound like flutes, or lush orchestras, or solo cellos and violins, or vibraphones, it’s probably a keyboard instrument like this instead.
I wish I was lucky enough to own a real Chamberlin, but for now I’m content to have the sample CD from Mellotron Archives, which gives me a ‘best of’ collection of the most widely used sounds, without the expense and hassle of owning a famously unreliable and cantankerous instrument. Those sounds continue to be my not-so-secret weapons on many of the songs I produce and play on. This documentary is a fascinating look behind the scenes of a very interesting set of instruments, which was the first incarnation of the idea of sampling as we know it today.
Whether you’re a musician yourself, or simply a music fan who likes to know how music sounds the way it does, this will offer you some great insights into one of the most influential instruments out there. Lots of well-known people are in the film, including Jon Brion, Brian Wilson, Michael Penn, Patrick Warren, Brian Kehew, Matthew Sweet, and many others. I urge you to track the film down and watch it.
Earlier today, I heard someone mention the phrase, “We only use ten percent of our brains,” and that got me thinking of a number of reasons why that statement isn’t true. First of all, most human beings are very highly evolved, and every part of our bodies (with the possible exception of the coccyx) has a specific function and purpose. Things that don’t serve any purpose get evolutionarily ‘weeded out’, you might say, and tens of thousands of years of that process have left us pretty dang streamlined.
Different brain functions are handled by different sections of the brain, so while at this very second you may be using only ten percent of yours by watching television, or by having sex, or by reading this blog, you’ll be using different parts of it to know where your limbs are (without looking), or to recognize your childrens’ faces, or to simply keep your balance, or to recognize subtle social cues, or to play the cello. You’ll have used your entire brain in just a few minutes without even, dare I say, thinking about it.
Where did the ten-percent myth originate, and why does it persist? According to Barry Beyerstein, it seems to be a skewed modern outgrowth of an idea put forth by Victorian-era psychologist William James, who was fond of saying that people rarely achieve more than a small amount of their potential. From there, the idea spread into the public vernacular, where it somehow morphed into ‘ten percent of their potential’, and then into ten percent of the brain. Once that meme spread out across the world, it never really went away, despite the enormous scientific and technological breakthroughs on the subject during the intervening decades.
I love to find out about the modern discoveries that prove how ‘plastic’ and changeable the brain is, especially following a brain injury. If you lose your sight, for example, your brain will learn to process things you TOUCH with the visual cortex. A friend of mine used to have a little blind cat who knew her way around the entire house, could walk right over to you wherever you were, could jump to window sills (and even knew which window sills had decorative stuff in them she needed to avoid, or were sills that she was unable to jump to), and could even climb up and down the fire escape without ever missing a step. My own cat, who had normal vision, wouldn’t go near the steps of the fire escape because she could see how steep the angle was, and how high up our third-floor apartment really was, and it was all too much for her. The blind cat would run up and down without a care in the world. She had the place completely mapped out in her brain, and knew exactly where everything was.
The ten-percent theory seems to rank up there with other misinformed phrases like ‘sweat like a pig’ and ‘eat like a bird.’ Pigs don’t sweat, which is why they lie around in the mud to keep cool, and birds have to eat twice their own weight every day in order to have enough energy for all that flying. My favorite thing to say, when someone says they eat like a bird, is, “Oh, really? Twice your own weight every day? Or do you mean you peck at the food on your plate, without using your hands or utensils?”
The good news, possibly the most heartening of all about the brain theory, is that if you DO only use ten percent of your brain, but you use it to think about THE Brain, that should bump you up to at least a good fifteen or twenty percent right there.
2010 has been very strange. At the beginning of the year, I was still on blogging hiatus, so it took a while to get back up to speed. Springtime was crazy, with lots of great musical endeavors and memorable trips. By the summer, both my life and this blog went into overdrive, when I really started writing again, and found my full stride while sharing a bit too much about my childhood. Suddenly it was October, which is the month of my birth, but this year was also the month of my stepdad’s death, which has sent everything into a tailspin since then. A surreal trip to Yakima for the funeral was followed by multiple trips to Seattle, both for gigs and for family functions.
There were some standout moments from this last year that didn’t manage to make it into the blog, for various reasons. For example, here’s a video of a particularly interesting recording session that I was lucky enough to be involved with, albeit in a small way. A local singer-songwriter, who is also a friend, put the word out on SocialNetwork that she wanted to create a cacaphony of 50 pianos, all playing an F chord at the same time. I jumped at the chance. She rented a piano showroom downtown, and my friend and I (and forty eight or so other people) joined in to participate. I brought my camera to capture a bit of the action.
Another memorable moment from this last year was Trek in the Park. This theater group gets together every year to re-create a famous episode from the original Star Trek television series. This year’s was Space Seed, in which we meet the infamous character Khan (who returned in the movie The Wrath of Khan). It was a very well-done production, with live music and everything. . .and it was all free of charge. Here’s the climactic fight sequence between Kirk and Khan.
IrishBand released our self-titled EP this year, as well as an amazing animated video that a friend created for us. I would post that here, but our band name is very unusual, hence the pseudonym. To celebrate, we went to Port Townsend, Washington (the hometown of three of the band members, and an adopted home away from home for the rest of us) to play a CD release party and catch the Rhododendron Festival and parade and everything. It’s always a huge party weekend for PT, and this year was the tenth reunion for PT High School, which included Violinist and a bunch of other friends, so I actually went to the reunion barbecue in Chetzemoka Park during the afternoon, since I knew so many of the people there. (God forbid that I actually go to any of my own class reunions; I haven’t yet.) I also performed in the parade, in disguise, as an honorary member of Nanda. I’m the guy with the Mexican wrestling mask, playing the bass, miming along to the dance music that was blaring from the speakers in the back of the truck.
I had the opportunity to see the Oregon Symphony perform many times this last year, with some pretty big-name performers. Violinists Midori and Hilary Hahn, violinist Pinchas Zukerman and his cellist wife Amanda Forsyth (who, incidentally, gave a cello master class at the Old Church that afternoon, which I also attended, even though I’m far from being a cello master) who performed Brahms’s Double Concerto together, and a number of others. This month, I have a ticket for pianist Emanuel Ax’s concert, which I’m very much looking forward to. Yo-Yo Ma performed here a month or so ago, but his concert was sold out in the spring, only a few weeks after tickets went on sale. Curses.
So it’s been a good year, overall, but I’m really hoping that 2011 is better, or less confusing at the very least. I have lofty goals for the upcoming year, which include finding a job, finding love and a real relationship, taking care of some things that have been dogging me for a while now, and producing more CD’s. I have a bit of news on the music front, actually. A friend of mine hurt her arms a year ago, and has since been unable to play the piano, but that hasn’t stopped her from singing, or from writing lyrics and melodies, or from having tons of ideas. She e-mailed me at some point to ask what people in her position do in the music business. I told her I don’t know about ‘the music business’, but I’d love to give the songs a listen, and that maybe I could put music to them. She sent me some mp3’s, and I instantly felt like I knew where the songs should go. They felt familiar without being predictable, which is always a good sign. That was about two months ago, and we already have five or six collaborations in the works. Pretty awesome and exciting.
In other news, December is the fourth anniversary of this blog, so it seems appropriate to have a little birthday party, no? Come on, let’s have some sis-boom-bah.
So anyway, on to the Best Of. Here are the lists of what I consider to the best entries BFS&T has to offer from this past year, which naturally includes a list of the most interesting dreams, as well. Enjoy!
THE ENTRIES:
SteamCon – the steampunk convention in Seattle in which PolishCellist and I played, and had a total blast doing so
Just in case this wasn’t enough for your insatiable appetite for blog entries, here’s the Best of BFS&T 2009 entry, for your gluttonous pleasure.
Thanks for being here and reading all this, and for supporting this blog for such a long time now. I really appreciate it. I hope we all have an excellent New Year’s Eve, and Day, and that 2011 allows us to learn, and to grow, and to change for the better, a little bit each day.
Wow, I just realized that it’s been weeks since I’ve written anything. It’s been a crazy month, full of trips to Seattle, and gigs, and recording, plus a healthy dose of holiday cheer (um. . .yeah) in addition to all the usual Everyday Life stuff, which hasn’t left me feeling very compelled to write lately. I’m essentially doing you a favor, by sparing you the minutiae of all of that.
Money has been a bit tight, after a flurry of gigs with little or no pay. That’s frustrating, because while I love all the people I play with, it’s really hard to keep a high level of motivation when you put your heart and soul (and time, and energy, and gas, and expensive musical instruments) into something and you’re compensated with gratitude. . .which is great, don’t get me wrong, but gratitude doesn’t pay the bills.
About three months ago, I managed to scratch both of my eyes within a week of each other. That was a pretty miserable couple of weeks. Why am I bringing that up now? Because a couple of nights ago, I scratched my right eye again. Driving to rehearsal that evening, in rush hour traffic, through the rain and fog, didn’t do much to improve the situation, either. Last night’s unpaid gig was really great, and really fun, but also really painful, and I had to reschedule tonight’s dinner plans for Sunday night instead.
I feel like I’m being a CrankyPants lately, instead of my usually indomitable self. I did have a bunch of excellent dreams last night, however, which were a saving grace after my scratched eye kept me awake for much of the night. I’ll have to include them here, once I decide how to share them.
I have two funny things to report. The first is that last night, after the gig, I was loading my instruments to the car in a torrential downpour, which is still dumping on OurFairCity as I’m writing this. A homeless guy walked up with a small spray bottle and offered to wash my window. “I’ll do a real good job,” he said. I was unable to keep from chuckling a little as I gestured to the sheets of rain. “I’d say it’s getting taken care of already.”
The second thing is someone I overheard when I was at the grocery store this afternoon, buying a new headlight bulb for my car. (On every other car I’ve had, changing headlight bulbs has been a breeze, but on my Honda, it’s a gigantic pain in the ass. . .but I digress.) This person was talking into her cell phone, and I can only imagine the other end of the conversation. I’ll leave you with this:
“Remember that time I karate-kicked you in the face? On accident?”
“Coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad: whether from great personal success, or just an all-night drive, we are the sole survivors of a world no one else has ever seen.”
