@rhythmatist .. Thanks, I'm just plain Dead Grateful for the link.

 

I'm not sure if my contributions are fitting this thread. If not, feel free to tell me and I'll delete the post.

But "History of Music" got me, and I will go a lot more back in time. For example, the following is based on the oldest written composition of a song ever found. It's dated 1400 B.C. - and to listen to something some guy created over 3000 years ago, makes me feel so much more connected to ancient times. Before starting the video, I want to remind you that "While Dumbrill’s interpretation is
highly conjectural, it is widely believed that the notation of the music refers to
diatonic intervals and a scale within a particular mode". In other words, it comes close, but is not exactly what that guy composed in 1400 B.C.

Spoiler: The Oldest Known Melody

But we can go even deeper into the past. Imagine the world 40,000 years ago. Can you? There's no farming yet, so it's all about living in caves, hunting for food and following the prey. Or is it?

Spoiler: The oldest known modern human instrument

Pentatonic man, pentatonic!

So music is an invention of the modern human, right. Wrong! We are going back 60,000 years. Here's a flute created by Neanderthals

Spoiler: Neanderthal Bone Flute

What most surprised me is the fact that you can play modern tunes on a 60,000 year old flute! We seem to have some kind of genetic feel for music, that must have been implemented in the DNA long before modern human or neanderthal, but their common forefathers. I wouldn't be surprised if we would find flutes from 2,000,000 B.C. (that's the date, scientists currently estimate the Homo Erectus, our ancestral species, first used fire to make a meal). And even on that flute we might be able to play the Bolero...

 

@tulamide thank you! Yes your contribution is very fitting, welcome and excellent !

I will add my content every few days or so or as the op when i find something interesting but yes in the meantime it is great to hear the experience and knowledge of the community here as well. Hopefully others will do the same to make this a really interesting and useful thread to follow.

As an aside....how did you format your post with the drop down spoiler thing ? I like that.

 

That's simple! Just click on "Insert..." (the icon before the floppy disk) and select "Spolier" from the menu. Fill in a title if you like. Then place the cursor in between the tags and select "Media" for the video. I made it so, because I didn't want to waste so much space for the videos.

 

ah OK i see now
yes i was thinking that was a good idea when placing several vids.
thanks!

 

I believe that we are music made manifest within the context of flesh and bone and sinew, body as well as soul, vibrating and vibrated by the cosmic consciousness into existence, and at all times doing our best in a call and response relationship to maintain and emulate our connection, to hold dearly and tenderly in rememberence of our sonic origin. We resonate both literally and figuratively with all of existencence. We can listen to or play any genre from classical orchestration to the heaviest, sickest and headbanging Deathcore, but it is all just an attempt at remembering, to have and to hold once again what most of us soon forget after we are again born into this plane of existence...that creation began with a sound and we are all riding that original wave, are that wave and will always be that wave. Surf's up, everybody down to the beach!

 

@superliquidsunshine .....truly poetic and deeply thought provoking !!! Thank you

Have you seen The Ascent of Man episode The Music of the Spheres? It looks at the evolution of mathematics, tracing the impact of Pythagorean thought on the Islamic empire, Moorish Spain and Renaissance Europe. Pythagoras discovered that harmony in music was governed by exact ratios. Well worth a watch!

"Surf's Up
Aboard a tidal wave
Come about hard and join
The young and often spring you gave
I heard the word
Wonderful thing
A children's song"

 

Thanks for the kind words, Bethy.

And onward and upward towards the historical aspect of your thought association , the music of Surf's Up was of course written by a genius wearing the face of Brian Wilson, the words penned by another, Van Dyke Parks. One of my childhood heros, Leonard Bernstein, said this about the song and the singer, On the “Inside Pop” television special in 1967, Leonard Bernstein described the song: “There is a new song, too complex to get all of first time around. It could come only out of the ferment that characterizes today’s pop music scene. Brian Wilson, leader of the famous Beach Boys, and one of today’s most important pop musicians, sings his own ‘Surf’s Up.’ Poetic, beautiful even in its obscurity, ‘Surf’s Up’ is one aspect of new things happening in pop music today. As such, it is a symbol of the change many of these young musicians see in our future…”. Brian Wilson and the Beatles, including Sir George Martin, forever changed the way we think, appreciate and the way we make music. Incorporating many varied genres into their work helped to free us in regard to what is acceptable in the way of popularized music, created bridges between different generations of listeners and made it safe to experiment with technology, something that is all the mainstream in our culture today.

Here it is in all it's glory...
http://gloriousnoise.com/2011/brian-wilsons-annotated-surfs-up-lyrics

 

Thanks for the link!

Yes big Brian Wilson fan too. Though i wasn't there when the Beach boys were big i lived on the California coast later on so did my fair share of surfing growing up.....not too well i admit but at least i got a nice tan and beach blonde hair
Last year when i came to the UK i had tickets to see Brian Wilson in concert with America as guest band. Was really looking forward to it then that bio movie about him came out and he cancelled the tour to publicise it in the States. I wasn't too pleased with him i can tell you! Especially as it meant i also missed America too because of it. I guess I forgive him though seeing as though he did play a big part in changing the face of music history lol

 

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OK class ! quiet down now and sit to attention please !

I couldn't decide between two shows this week so in the end decided to include them both for your delectation !

Part 3 in the series:

I always think the perspective of time lends itself well to our understanding so its always interesting to hear what people have to say about what was going on around them and how they created music. So this week i listened to a couple of fairly diverse topics. The first may appeal to those more interested in electronic music and the second more for the classic rockers
1. The House of the Windy City - Dance Music's Forgotten Heroes
2. The First Time with Roger Waters


The House of the Windy City - Dance Music's Forgotten Heroes


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Presenter and DJ Dave Pearce travels to Chicago to hear how a country traditionally resistant to dance music finally got it. The US invented it and then ignored it. Today with electronic dance music estimated to be a $20 billion industry, what do those who started Chicago House in the early 1980s think of this new scene?

House music grew out of black gay clubs in Chicago in the early 1980s. We hear from Robert Williams who started the legendary Warehouse club where the scene got its name. He brought in Frankie Knuckles to DJ and Dave Pearce hears how he would create his own edits to keep the crowd dancing all night.

In Chicago we track down Rocky Jones, founder of DJ International, who put out some of the very first records. What was his reaction when he found out the few thousand records he put out were driving a cult scene in the UK? With contributions from The Pet Shop Boys, DJ Marshall Jefferson and DJ Pierre we hear how the sound of Chicago topped the charts in the UK.

But in America a lot of house music wasn't played on the radio because it was viewed as gay music. As Hip Hop became the dominant musical form, Chicago House was pushed out to the suburbs. DJ Black Madonna takes us on a tour of one of the few remaining house music clubs. While here in the UK a new generation of house music artists like Disclosure have found an audience and a following. They tour the world playing their own interpretation of Chicago House.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07jys1t


and

The First Time With Roger Waters


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This week's guest Roger Waters is a singer, songwriter, and composer, who was a founder member of Pink Floyd, one of the most acclaimed and beloved British bands of all time. He helped lead the group in the creation of some of the best, biggest selling and most ambitious albums in popular music history. He's also made his mark as a solo artist and currently holds the record for the highest grossing tour for a solo musician ever.

Here Roger talks about a youth obsessed with blues, jazz and R&B, and his early songwriting influences like Hoagy Carmichael, Bob Dylan and John Lennon. He looks back at his relationship with his childhood friend Syd Barret, who would join the Pink Floyd in 65. He recalls the post-Syd Floyd, the creation of legendary albums like Dark Side Of The Moon and his uneasy relationship with the fame that followed. Roger also focuses on The Wall - the 1979 concept album inspired by that relationship -- and how he revisited the album in 2010 for his epic record breaking Roger Waters: The Wall tour, which also inspired a live album and a feature movie. He also talks about his famously acrimonious split from Pink Floyd, and more positively his new material.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07lg0f7


Enjoy one or both !......and remember pay attention now as there will be a test at the end of the semester ​

 

....quick follow up on the Joe Meek radio show from earlier in the thread.
Here are links to a good TV documentary on YouTube about him:

part 1

part 2

part 3

part 4

and for your purely listening pleasure The Joe Meek Story - 50 Original Recordings

 

Last edited by a moderator: Aug 12, 2016

Coming thick & fast now ....

Part 4 in the series...

The History of Psychedelia

Four 30 minute episodes. A chance to hear writer and comedian David Quantick examining the lasting impact of psychedelia on music and popular culture, from the 60s onwards.

This one is far out, trippy and very cool man !

(These are currently only up or a limited time on the BBC site but let me know if you miss them and i'll see if i can help you out to hear them)





Episode 1:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01hc0fj
Episode 2:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01hjq6r
Episode 3:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01hjq6t
Episode 4:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01hjq6w

​

 

This is a fine documentary that discusses the impact of the bands, artists and assorted characters that inhabited the the high walled, energetic vortex called Laurel Canyon in southern California during the creative musical zenith of the late 1960's. It's a fun romp.

 

@superliquidsunshine ....great link my friend ! Thank you

and in a similar vein here is a great one I've actually watched several times !

Hotel California LA from The Byrds to The Eagles

the bearer of dreams or nightmares...
i was thinking to myself this could heaven and this could be hell...

 

What if I told you that the father of electronic music is pretty much unknown world-wide? What if I told you that there are hundreds of films with his sounds and music, that you are not aware of? What if I told you about a formant filter? Not impressive? Well, I talk about a formant filter in 1929! Got your attention?

In 1929 a scientist made an invention. His name was Friedrich Trautwein, and his invention was called the Trautonium. It was meant to be a musical insturment, but Trautwein was no musician. It was at that time, that the 19-year old Oskar Sala wanted to become a professional musician and started studying under Paul Hindemith. And Hindemith pointed Sala to Trautwein, telling Sala that Trautwein is looking for an aspiring musician. Together, Trautwein and Sala built the first instrument version of the Trautonium. From that day on, Sala didn't stop improving the instrument until he died in 2002, at the age of 92. In 1952 he got patented his Mixtur-Trautonium, which is the most versatile electronic instument you can think of.

The idea of the Trautonium is ingenius. Back to 1929. Something, we would call today a ribbon controller, generated the frequency. It was a long wire with a metal bar underneath. If you pressed the wire to the bar, the electrical resistance defined the frequency. The tone generator ("oscillator") was very tricky. At that time there were so called "Blitzlampen" (directly translated "Flashlights", but they have nothing to do with the camera light). They were used as lightning protectors. They had a condensator that built up energy, and at a certain level they gave away all of the energy in an instant. Trautwein and Sala used this behavior to create a waveform, we knowadays call a sawtooth, or saw. They then discovered that the human voice is also a sawtooth and that vocals are done with the resonance room of the mouth. They replicated that behavior - the formant filter was born. There are tape recordings of the very first session in 1930, where they tested the filter. If you take the time to search for it you will hear what you are used to hear today as well. A robotic sounding word spoken by playing the insturment.

The composer Paul Hindemith saw the possibilities of this instrument as something extraordinary and composed pieces for 3 Trautoniums. Oskar Sala himself made hundreds of compositions. I won't talk about noise generator, lowpass, bandpass and hipass filters and all the other fantastic developments for the Trautonium. In the 1950s, Sala realized how suitable his instrument was for films, and started working on them. Until he died, he made sounds and music for over 300 films. The most notable one probably the 1961 shocker "The Birds", by Alfred Hitchcock. All of the sound effects of that movie were done with the Mixtur-Trautonium and composed by Oskar Sala!

If you are interested in learning more about Sala, I recommend the Youtube channel of "Trautonist". There are english subtitles available (Sala was German). They made a long interview in 1997, 5 years before his death. You will also learn the downside of Sala. He was a lone wolf, he never trained a student in the Mixtur-Trautonium, and apart from his patent there is nothing about the inner workings of his instument. I the 90s, a professor and his students rebuilt the Mixtur-Trautonium with modern micro-electronic for Sala, but it was a pain in the ass. They had to always ask him about even the simplest circuits. He also said once: "Who wants to own a Mixtur-Trautonium, must build one." Well, as far as I know, there's only one who built one. He is now the only one playing a Mixtur-Trautonium.

Oskar Sala on missing the trumpet colors he was able to produce with his old Mixtur-Trautonium, but not with the new one, the professor built for him:

 

@tulamide excellent !!!!! thank you

 

Part 4 in the series:

How the BBC reported 11 seismic moments in the history of music



1. The birth of the Moog synthesiser, 1969
2. The first Glastonbury, 1971
3. Kraftwerk demonstrate "machinemusik", 1975
4. The death of Elvis Presley, 1977
5. The murder of John Lennon, 1980
6. The emergence of the New Romantics, 1981
7. Freddie Mercury dies 1991
8. The Battle of Britpop, 1995
9. The rise of streaming, 2013
10. Grime's resurgence, 2014
11. David Bowie dies 2016

http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/articles/19ea91f9-83b5-4033-b64b-21af12678fcb

Enjoy !



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