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7/4

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  1. Hmm...I do have a lot of change I was going to coinstar and use as spending money instead of sticking it in the bank.
  2. November 28, 2006 String Theory By ANDREW C. REVKIN, NYT “I think best in foam,” Douglas Martin said as he sorted through a heap of pink violin-shaped slabs in the kitchen-cum-workshop of his snug colonial house in southern Maine. Each piece of foam was a template for an experimental instrument he had built or was preparing to build, but none used the traditional spruce and maple favored through most of the hallowed 500-year history of the violin. Mr. Martin, 63, whose day job is designing sleek rowing shells that slice through ocean surf, is consumed in spare moments by a similarly unorthodox pursuit: abandoning age-old norms of acoustic instrument design as he chases his conception of the ideal violin sound. A dining table was strewn with rough-hewn violins built of balsa wood and graphite fibers, some with the standard instrument’s familiar curves and narrow waist, but others boxy and ribbed, as if they had been built inside out. In art school in the 1960s, a professor once tossed one of Mr. Martin’s sketches on the floor and scuffed it up, urging him to abandon caution, and he clearly absorbed that notion. When a violinist tried an instrument at a recent workshop and one of its blunt shoulders got in the way of his wrist, Mr. Martin summarily sawed off the corner and sealed the opening with a scrap. He might be mistaken for an eccentric dabbler, except that he is far from alone. From Australia to Germany to Maui, there is something of an explosion under way in the use of science and new materials to test the limits of instrument making. And the traditional violin-making and violin-playing world is taking note. Last year, Mr. Martin passed around one prototype, Balsa 4, at an annual workshop on violin design at Oberlin College by the Violin Society of America, a group of builders. When it was played and run through an array of tests, the instrument’s responsiveness and punch startled the gathering, several participants said. Joseph Curtin, a director of the workshop and a builder from Ann Arbor, Mich., who received a 2005 MacArthur Foundation “genius award” for his violin designs, wrote about Mr. Martin’s work in the society’s newsletter, saying “the traditional violin became obsolete in early July of 2005.” In an interview, Mr. Curtin said that was only partly a playful exaggeration. It will be a long time before balsa and graphite become the materials of choice, he said. But he added that Mr. Martin and other experimenters were legitimately challenging longstanding notions of what makes a great acoustic instrument, and whether past masters’ work represents a sonic pinnacle or merely the best that could be achieved with traditional materials. Some of the new designs are mass-produced, with companies (many founded by former aerospace engineers) turning out hundreds of synthetic weatherproof guitars and instruments in the fiddle family. Others, like Mr. Martin’s, are one-off prototypes. (He has sold only three.) In almost every case, a central goal, particularly in the resonating top or soundboard most responsible for an instrument’s voice, is a mix of stiffness and lightness. This combination increases an instrument’s ability to turn the energy in a vibrated string into waves of appealing sound. That is where unconventional materials come into play. Layered graphite fibers and carved balsa are very stiff but far less dense than the traditional choice of spruce. “Wood reached the limits of its potential in the first half of the 18th century,” Martin Schleske, a leading violin maker from Munich, asserted in a recent lecture in Germany. “I have no doubt that if Stradivari were alive today with the same force of innovation, he would have already discovered the fascinating acoustic properties of graphite fibers and would have ushered us into a new golden age of violin making.” This month, Ingolf Turban, a touring concert violinist, compared Mr. Schleske’s latest violin, which has a top made of a mix of spruce and graphite, with a 1721 Stradivarius by recording passages from Mozart’s Violin Concerto in D Major with each. He told Mr. Schleske he preferred the new one. “I have never been playing any violin with such a singing E string,” Mr. Turban said in a testimonial. “It is no longer like playing violin but like singing.” Some instrument makers and researchers are using science to deconstruct the dozens of kinds of vibrations and waves that interplay in a violin or guitar to create their distinctive sounds. Working with Mr. Curtin and several other violin makers, George Bissinger, a physicist at East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C., is using medical-imaging gear, laser scanners, arrays of microphones and computers to measure and model how the parts of a violin react once energy is introduced by a bow, fingertip, pick or, in the laboratory, the repeated taps of a tiny hammer. Depending on many interrelated variables, from the force exerted on the strings by the player to the stiffness, density and shape of an instrument’s parts, a layered field of sound emanates, sometimes containing dozens of distinctive overtones and harmonics. Some sounds disperse in the air evenly in all directions, while others — especially high notes on a violin — push outward in a particular direction, funneled by the shape of the instrument. Particularly important, Dr. Bissinger said, is determining which factors translate the side-to-side sawing of a bow on a string into vertical motions of the violin top. “Up and down is what matters,” he said. Other vibrations travel in the body — at different speeds reflecting the orientation of wood grain — setting up all manner of ripples and bouncing waves and more ripples. In instruments built entirely of meshed graphite fibers, the vibrations move uniformly, offering both challenges and opportunities to instrument makers. Another important influence, particularly on low violin notes, is the movement of air in and out of the f-holes, Dr. Bissinger said. If the dimensions are right, the air sloshes forward and back like disturbed water in a bathtub (or air in an organ’s pipes) at rates that increase the instrument’s volume. The materials in the body matter because they determine how much of the energy imparted to an instrument moves into the surrounding air as sound and how much is dissipated as heat within the matrix of molecules that make up the instrument’s body. That damping effect is not all bad, guitar and violin makers say, and may be one of the characteristics that give a mellow tone to older instruments in contrast to the almost metallic brightness sometimes heard in new ones. In September, Dr. Bissinger ran three days of tests on two violins built by Stradivari and one by Guarneri del Gesù — worth a combined $14 million or so — as well as instruments by Mr. Curtin and Sam Zygmuntowicz, a violin maker from Brooklyn. By comparing the response of the legendary instruments to the new ones, and to data from a batch of bad student violins, Dr. Bissinger said, he is trying to develop an anatomical guide of sorts, revealing which features determine the qualities of which parts of a violin’s sound, from the lowest notes to the highest trills. “I like the bad ones as much as the good,” he said. “How can you know beautiful if you don’t know ugly?” Dr. Bissinger said that the experiments with balsa and carbon were clearly helping expand understanding of the boundaries of violin sound, but that they have “a tall hill to climb” to compete in the marketplace with traditional instruments, which have already shown their ability to last 300 years and hold up to the pounding of a Paganini solo. At the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, another physicist, Joe Wolfe, has assembled a team that is testing whether an instrument’s age or the amount it has been played change its sound. In interviews, instrument players and dealers expressed a conviction that vintage does matter, and several theories have been proposed for how aging changes the structure of wood in ways that affect sound. But Dr. Wolfe and Ra Inta, another member of the Australian team, said that rigorous experimental evidence was scant, with a couple of recent studies, for example, offering conflicting findings. They have a long-term study under way on two identical violins built by a local maker, Harry Vatiliotis, from the same 80-year-old slabs of spruce and maple. One is sitting nearly untouched in a museum and the other is in constant use in the hands of a concert violinist. But it will be many years before enough time has passed to determine if all those vibrations from continual bowing have altered the wood in substantive ways, the researchers said. Such scientific analysis has produced some trepidation among traditionalists, Mr. Curtin said. “There’s a kind of a nervousness that the mystery will go out of it, the bubble will be pricked and it’ll all just be ordinary. It’ll be technology. There’s almost a cultural sense that the violin is the last repository of mystery. The fact that we don’t understand the violin adds to its allure.” Mr. Curtin, who is also experimenting with balsa but is laminating a thin veneer of tougher spruce on top, said such fears were unfounded. “To me, understanding always makes things more interesting, not less. That’s been true for biology. I think it’s the same with acoustics.” The work on new materials is driven variously by simple passion and curiosity, as in Mr. Martin’s case, and commerce, as companies hunt for ways to make better mass-produced instruments. (Student violins are notoriously hard to play, discouraging learners just when they should be inspired.) Another goal propelling some builders toward synthetic materials is the prospect of creating fine-sounding instruments that can endure abuse and the vagaries of weather that can destroy an old wood model. John A. Decker Jr., a physicist and aeronautical engineer, created his weatherproof and resonant RainSong line of all-graphite guitars after moving to Maui in 1981 to manage an Air Force observatory. He found that the extreme Hawaiian humidity and heat ravaged his classical instruments. The top guitars, with nary a fleck of wood in sight, sell for more than $2,000 and have showed up in the hands of performers including two longtime rockers, Steve Miller and Daryl Hall. Dr. Decker said the most responsive possible guitar soundboard would be one with infinite stiffness and zero mass, so that the energy from the slightest tug of a finger on a string would translate most efficiently into moving air instead of diffusing as heat in the structure of the instrument. Graphite fibers allow the top to be pared to the minimum mass and eliminate the need for supporting braces required in conventional wooden guitars, he said. He said there were always trade-offs, and aesthetics is surely one. “Graphite is not a very romantic material,” said Dr. Decker, who builds wooden classical guitars in spare hours. “It doesn’t have grain and swirl and flame and all the things that koa and quilted mahogany do. On the other hand, you know what the thing is going to sound like, which from the musician’s point of view is better.” For Mr. Martin, the experimentation is ultimately driven by his search for a sound: a soaring, enveloping sound he recalls vividly from childhood summer nights around a campfire in Cohasset, Mass., when a friend’s dad pulled out an old Italian violin. “The sound of that instrument just burned in my brain,” Mr. Martin said. As of last weekend, he was still in pursuit, having just started on Balsa 15, with no end in sight.
  3. Ordered these from CD Universe today, mostly Nonesuch Explorer reissues: 1 Debussy: Images, Estampes / Paul Jacobs 1 Debussy: Preludes for Piano, Books 1 & 2 1 Debussy: Etudes for Piano, En Blanc & No 1 Bali: Music From The Morning Of The Worl 1 Bali: Gamelan Semar Pegulingan-Gamela 1 Java: Court Gamelan 1 Bali: Golden Rain 1 West Java: Sundanese Jaipong & Other Pop 1 Java: The Jasmine Isle: Gamelan Music 1 Bali: Music For The Shadow Play 1 Java: Court Gamelan Vol. II 1 Java: Court Gamelan Vol. III 1 Complete Gamelan In The New World
  4. Man that's cool. I feel like I should take a trip down there to see it in person.
  5. I saw them at the end of the Works tour without the orchestra and it was exciting!
  6. I thought UK was a mediocre band. Guy Without Bruford.
  7. Now you are the one who is nuts. How do you spell pretentious? ELP. Bah! The track Tarkus is one of their pieces.
  8. Have you seen him lately? He doesn't look dead? He has a real large forehead. Seriously, this is another Steve Howe who played baseball.
  9. Be careful Rod, he'll call you a fuckwad.
  10. Jack Kerouac by 268 days. interesting.
  11. I don't think this was posted: November 11, 2006 MUSIC REVIEW; A Musician With a Language All His Own By BEN RATLIFF The strongest aural image from Thursday night's concert of Julius Hemphill's music at the Miller Theater came from a cello. It was played by Erik Friedlander, and it was a toothy, driving, rhythmic ostinato over Pheeroan akLaff's 11-beat drum rhythm, which sounded like an asymmetric James Brown beat. On top of that was Marty Ehrlich, playing alto saxophone, and Baikida Carroll, playing trumpet, phrasing the spare theme cleanly and then taking off into solos. Mr. Hemphill was a jazz saxophonist, but the cello's prominence in one of his greatest pieces of music -- instead of, say, a saxophone's -- as well as the collision of time tricks and funk and open space all say something loud and clear: composer. The piece was ''Dogon A.D.,'' from Mr. Hemphill's album of the same name, released in 1972. (He died in 1995.) This is one of the greatest records of the last 40 years in jazz, though not too many people know it. It first came out on Mr. Hemphill's own label, Mbari, and was reissued more widely in 1977. ''Dogon A.D.'' didn't engender a school of jazz formed in its own image; it isn't obviously virtuosic, and not enough people heard it anyway. Its copyright situation has prevented it from having ever been issued on CD. The Miller concert, rightly, presented the entire album, all three long tracks of it, mixed in with other pieces in other, completely different instrumental formats. Mr. Hemphill's work is smart and sweet-tempered and immensely likable, but it's all over the map. To represent it decently, the Miller concert, part of the ''Composer Portraits'' series, required a whole squadron of musicians from different disciplines: that ''Dogon A. D.'' setup; an all-saxophones sextet; a classical solo pianist; and Ethel, a classical string quartet. To get the fullness of his activities, there could also have been an orchestra, poets, dancers, actors and film. But within practical boundaries, the concert was just right -- a broad and accurate representation of some of Mr. Hemphill's best work, ending with the cast of 14 parading through the audience. Mr. Hemphill, a gifted saxophonist both dry-toned and expressive, grew up in Fort Worth and spent his early 30s as part of a multimedia arts collective in St. Louis, the Black Arts Group. This was where he first saw the possibility of composing through such varied formats. He composed and conceptualized like crazy, and he managed to develop his own harmonic language, too, really mastering it toward the end of his life with his saxophone sextet. (Mr. Ehrlich leads it now, in Mr. Hemphill's name.) You can tell a sweet-and-sour Hemphill voicing in a second, just as you can with Ellington. The sextet poured out those voicings in some of Mr. Hemphill's loveliest pieces -- ''The Moat and the Bridge,'' ''Three Step,'' ''Jiji Tune'' -- and some shorter, cerebral ones, too, like ''Impulse'' and ''Opening.'' Mr. Hemphill wrote with very strong rhythmic feeling, even without a rhythm section. He rearranged some Charles Mingus pieces for string quartet, and that little triptych -- the seldom-heard ''Mingus Gold'' -- was performed with intensity on Thursday by Ethel. But he also internalized the grammar of rhythm and blues and gospel. The concert's closing piece, ''The Hard Blues,'' has a baritone-saxophone bass line right out of Doc Pomus's ''Lonely Avenue''; Alex Harding, the baritonist of the saxophone sextet, motored the whole band with its descending stepwise motions. The concert showed, too, that he wrote music that had nothing whatsoever to do with jazz or recognizably American expression. ''Tendrils'' was performed by three flutes and clarinet, improvising off springboards of long-held notes; ''Parchment,'' played by the pianist Ursula Oppens, with flowing bitonal lines, was straight-up post-Debussy classicism.
  12. Maybe she checks in once a day or once a week or once a month and reads through various threads. Maybe she has nothing to contribute to the music threads because there is so much knowledge here already. Maybe she prefers to lurk (like a lot of people do here). And when she finds something to comment on, she does. How would you know? In any case, isn't that the whole point of a forum? Does one have to chime in on every thread to be taken seriously or deserve to post in certain threads? I still don't see why it matters. Amen. Though it was kind of weird when she played the race card against Dan. Guy Dan's a bully. What do you expect when he starts pushing people around?
  13. Thanks and all the best to everyone who's struggling with some kind of health issue. It isn't the first time I've been through this crap. Ten years ago I thought I had a tumor in my left leg, fortunately it was't. No one should go through any sort of uncertain diagnosis. Hang in there folks, there's always hope!
  14. I'll get 'em. DMG has Black Saint.
  15. Thanks, label? Something else I should check out. I took the train into town with Bruce from DMG a few weeks ago and he was telling how wonderful the Hemphill tribute at Merkin was a few weeks ago. Another Jazz artist I should know more about.
  16. When I heard them here in NJ in '92 or '93, I remember hearing him rush up to the solo in Tank. It gave me the same feeling as wow and flutter on a bad turntable, but without the pitch problems. The first album came out in 71, Trilogy was their third studio album in '72 (w/Tarkus in between). I like those early ELP albums, but while I love them for nostalgia, most of the composing doesn't hold up. I heard a Emerson solo show a few years ago, too much focus on the Nice and way too many "let's see how many quotes I can fit in to a solo!" for me. He has a good ear for nice tones, but ya gotta back it up with something real.
  17. Thanks guys. I'm not too sure what the fatty liver is all about. I still have to see my internal medicine doctor about it, new blood tests on Monday (inc the liver enzyme levels that were elevated) should show some difference. I started antibiotics this afternoon. It's looks more and more like undiagnosed Diverticulitis which would unbalance things enough to affect the liver. About the fatty liver, I was about 30 lbs. overweight, I lost 12 in the past three weeks through a combination of diet, stopping drinking and being sick. I think once I get past the antibiotics and get some food in me, I'll gain a few pounds back.
  18. Well then, how about the "Lady Killer" do? That red one was all about lady killer.
  19. Thanks. I try. But I could tell you stories (as could the people who've known me "behind the scenes" for a long time) that would shatter that illusion pretty quickly.... Same here Jim, but I've tried to grow out of it. Plus I haven't been feeling too hot lately, I just can't get worked up into a rage.
  20. Here's my stats: Total Cumulative Posts 20849 ( 15.3 posts per day / 3.77% of total forum posts ) Most active in Miscellaneous - Non-Political ( 4821 posts / 23% of this member's active posts ) That Miscellaneous - Non-Political forum is very attractive and gets a lot of play. So for the sake of peas on Earth & Good Will Hunting, can we just let all this shit drop? Rainy Day dropped in, had her say, and if the past is any indication, it'll be a good while before she comes back unless the potshots continue, in which case, hey - you ask for it, you'll get it. Dan's here to stay, and he makes plenty of music posts (if he makes 37% of his posts in Miscellaneous - Non-Political, doesn't it then follow that 63% are music related?). So what say we all put aside this petty bickering and focus on what really matters - finding the one side that will get Big Al over the Bird hump. You're different. You're a nice guy without all that pent up rage ready to flip out. But watch out when discussing Bird.
  21. Lookie here!
  22. I'm the Gangster of Love.
  23. You haven't heard? I'm widely regarded as the forum police. And the fact is, Fuckwad in New Jersey, I participate in a wide variety of threads, and contribute regularly. I don't come by twice a year to tell you about race relations. And we're back on topic...maybe Dan can share a little bit about RAGE. Why he and Michael Richards are so angry and feel a need to call people names. Dan? Why all the anger and rage? We have a caller on line 9 from Planet Mars. Hello there and welcome to the Organissimo Rage Forum. Whaz up? caller: "The fact is, Dan does participate in a wide variety of threads, but they're mostly non-musical - just like his stats suggest. Who's he to tell anyone how to post? Plus, he doesn't seem like a very happy person." Exactly. Thank you caller #9, you're my favorite Martian. Dan? What do you say?
  24. At least part of the problem is a fatty liver (I was wrong), but I have no pain there. The other is the IBS I've had since July '05, Now that I'm having significant temps, my Dad's doctor is suggesting Diverticulitis. My appointment with the internal medicine specialist was canceled 45 min. before the appt., but I insisted that I get a doctor who would look at me that day. Naturally, she ordered more tests. I hope everyone had a nice holiday and they're feeling better.
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