So i was talking with Kevin about Humboldt Park Cello Project, and actually mostly we were bemoaning the state of music appreciation and the lack of serious classical outreach to underserved youth in Chicago and he was saying he’d be down to volunteer an hour or two a week to give free lessons if it was to a student who wouldn’t otherwise be able to participate.  So maybe Humboldt Park Cello Project could become Humboldt Park String Project, or even Humboldt Park Music Project…? If a handful of adults could volunteer an hour a week to teach a lesson, and we could collect instruments from donation, I think we could get a pretty cool program going!  What do you think?   Might have to partner with Rumble Arts because there’s no room at Soapbox for a piano.   Well, there’s space but no room in the budget.   I think with myself and the  folks I know we could definitely offer piano, guitar, violin, viola, cello.   Half-hour lesson right after school?     This will be awesome.  What do you think?  Also, does Soapbox need to be a non-profit to ask for donated instruments?

check him out.  made skillz. outta Berlin.   Auss Berlin.

http://www.myspace.com/koffcellotronics

Had the first Soapbox String session tonight!  A solid event, but small.  It was a good time– jammed on bass, cello, electric cello w line6 delay.   I want to try out more pedals next time, and invest in either the fishman or realist pickup so we can have multiple amplified instruments.  And with a couple  upper strings there, we’ll have a really great group!

Ironically, it was hot in heaven.   The Heaven Gallery, that is.  And so were the celli.  Organized by the obviously talented and versatile cellist Nora Barton, the eight cellists  performed a series of selections that ran the gamut from Bach to Briggs.

Based on my own past performances, I have a place in my heart for Bach interpretations  and was  therefore thrilled to see the concert opener– an interpretation of the first Bach Cello Suite in G Major.  In their version, each of six cellists took a movement, passing the suite across the stage.   Wasn’t this art at its finest?  Just as the reader of literature, the conductor of orchestras or the viewer of paintings draws from the work something unique to their own perspective, their own past and present, here the the individual performers each interpreted the  notes penned by  Bach over 200 years ago.  They gave us six interpretations, at once ancient and modern — totally in the moment.    Very cool.

Other highlights included two works by younger composers– Taylor Briggs and Matthew Shelton (cello and mbira!),  a fantastic, terribly technical yet beautiful duet by Efrain Amaya, and the finale, Bachianas Brasileiras No 5 featuring all eight celli and soprano Caitlin Shirley.   I’m still singing Villa-lobos’ haunting vocal melody.    Here’s to more cello concerts!

7:30pm, Wicker Park.

No, you can’t eat it.   It’s not a food.

Sat in with Orange Drink /Zirafa for a hot minute at last night’s Soapbox Session.    It was great.   A good, positive move toward getting back into more live playing.   And the OD dance sets are pretty much my kinda thing.   Ostinato lines, slowly descending.   Dope harmonies.    I kinda played too loud.  Cuz Soapbox live room sounded so siiiiick.

Wowo this group looks cool.  A new music orchestra founded by a couple of Roosevelt composition students.    Too bad we have to wait till January for their next concert.

http://www.chicagocomposersorchestra.org/

http://www.suntimes.com/entertainment/music/2595130,SHO-Sunday-composers15.article

is pretty awesome.   he’s all over the place stylewise

And, he achieves the seemingly impossible with this remix, somehow re-inspiring Drake’s sleepy “Forever”.

Drake Forever (Nosaj Thing Remix)

and here’s Aquarium.

http://rednicko.com/100725/nosaj-aquarium.mp3

He’ll be at the Sonar Festival here in Chicago.

So the article in Scientific American’s “Mind” issue summarizes a bunch of research on the relationship between music and language — exploring the role of the sounds we heard while in the womb, our first language, and subsequent musical training.

A few studies suggest that music exposure affects the perception of “prosody” — the natural melody of speech by tuning the auditory brain stem.   Alterations in speed, pitch range, volume and phrasing in speech are what convey emotion and the nuances of meaning in all languages, and children who have received musical training are at an advantage when it comes to interpreting this kind of content.

The authors cite additional research showing that music study may accelerate reading ability, since decoding the spoken and written word are related mental tasks.

Tonal languages really are tonal, according to one study that compared musically trained English-speakers to untrained English speakers as they listened to Mandarin Chinese.  There was a high level of activity in the  auditory stem for the musically trained English speakers,  proportional to the length of study and the age at which they began.

Another study investigates perfect pitch, a skill found in 1 out of 10,000 Americans.   The study divided music conservatory students at USC into three groups:  English speakers, East-Asian English speakers, and East-Asians who were fluent in a tonal language.   The researches tested all groups for perfect pitch and found that it was rare in the first two groups — 8 percent of those who began musical training before age 6, and 1 percent who began training between 7 and 9.   In the tonal language speaking group on the other hand, 92 percent of those who started training before age 6 had perfect pitch , and 67 percent of those who began between 7 and 9.

So if the tessitura of the cello and human voice really do have so much in common, my suspicion is this:

If you put all those wires on the scalps of cellists, there’d be even *more* auditory stem activity than in the average musician.   An even higher awareness of prosody.

Rock the cello!

Buuuuhhhh.    If you google “cello and human voice” there’s like 8.5 trillion sites that claim the cello to be “the instrument closest to the human voice”, “the most expressive instrument in the orchestra” , etc., etc.

But is it true?  I mean ya sure, the cello does sort of sound like a voice but I need some hard data here. I need spectral analysis.

Because if it really is true, the cello deserves mad more props than it’s getting.

Why?    I bought the Scientific American Special Report “MIND: Behavior, Brain Science, Insights” at the airport to read the article titled “Music and Speech: A Deep Bond”.

Check back for what it said.