YEARS from Bartholomäus Traubeck on Vimeo.

A tree’s year rings are analysed for their strength, thickness and rate of growth. This data serves as basis for a generative process that outputs piano music. It is mapped to a scale which is again defined by the overall appearance of the wood (ranging from dark to light and from strong texture to light texture). The foundation for the music is certainly found in the defined ruleset of programming and hardware setup, but the data acquired from every tree interprets this ruleset very differently.

A movie about Glennie’s life and music, Touch the Sound (2004), moved me profoundly. The film steps slowly, observing Glennie as she plays a lone snare in the middle of Grand Central Station, ticks out a percussion masterpiece on an ashtray, water glass and plate in a Fuji sushi bar, creates a symphony with junk found behind her family barn in Scotland, watches/listens to a Zen monk raking gravel. Between clips, Glennie is caught in contemplative moments, explaining her philosophy of sound and vibration, about how sound is so much more than hearing.

Footage of her collaboration with master guitarist Fred Frith at an abandoned sugar factory is woven through. In one segment, Glennie is on the ground floor on marimba, Frith on a catwalk 100 feet away, the two of them communicating delicately through the echoing space. By halfway through, the raw emotion of the piece is apparent in Glennie’s face; by the end, she’s in tears.

Her 2007 TED Talk, How to listen to music with your whole body: is powerful.

Take a quiet night, chillax, rent this movie, and re-think how you think about sound.

Decemberists, “Calamity Song”

Whilst record cover sleeve art has always received plenty of attention (and rightly so) I believe that center labels have been somewhat neglected … To keep the focus solely on the artwork I have purposely not included any information on the music, artists or date of publication as most of that should be self explanatory from the images.

All three performances are worth listening to, but the big surprise was drummer Glenn Kotche of Wilco, removed from his usual habitat and throwing down something totally unexpected. Kotche plays a prepared drum kit laced up with rubber bands, screws and springs, tuned cowbells, and a fruit bowl, as well as a couple of traditional percussion instruments.

… percussionist Glenn Kotche of Wilco performs “Monkey Chant,” his retelling of the ancient Hindu epic the Ramayana–using different instruments in his drum kit to convey different characters. And after explaining how he once wrote a string quartet on the drums, he plays one more composition: “Projections of What Might.”

Kotche’s piece starts at 8’30″ in — or 12’00″ if you want to skip the introduction to his kit — so scrub past the Buke and Gass warm-up and dive in. It’s quite long, so leave this page up in the background and go about your business, or close your eyes and swim – it’s intense and wonderful. Kotche actually plays two pieces here, sandwiched by a brief conversation about how he orchestrates pieces for Kronos Quartet — on the drums. Apparently, a spiritual descendant of Harry Partch is behind the Dad Rock tradition.

More on Kotche at glennkotche.com

In 1953, fresh off the success of Waiting for Godot, Beckett bought a plot of land near the hamlet of Molien, in the commune of Ussy-sur-Marne, about forty miles northeast of Paris. There he built a cottage for himself with some help from a group of locals, including a Bulgarian-born farmer named Boris Rousimoff. Over the years, Beckett and Rousimoff became friends and would occasionally get together for card games. Rousimoff had a son, André, known as Dédé, who was something of a physical marvel. By the age of 12, André was over six feet tall and weighed 240 pounds. No school bus could hold him, and his family lacked the means to buy a car big enough to schlep him back and forth to school in Ussy-sur-Marne. Enter Boris’ old card-playing buddy Beckett, who owned a truck and was more than willing to pay his friend back for his help with the cottage by giving a lift to his enormous pituitary case of a son on his drives into town. Years later, when recounting his conversations with Beckett (which he did often), André the Giant revealed that they rarely talked about anything besides cricket.

Elvis Costello, “Waiting for the End of the World”

John Coltrane, “Giant Steps” (animation by Michal Levy)

Unfortunately, like so much of the world’s great music, 4’33″ has been copied to YouTube by copyright-disrespecting pirates, and millions of internet users can now listen to the piece in its entirety without paying a dime to the artist or label for the privilege. Fortunately, YouTube builds in protection mechanisms against copyright theft, so that content owners can cause the audio to be stripped from infringing videos without taking down the post entirely.

Here at Stuck Between Stations, we believe that strict copyright enforcement is the cornerstone of a rich musical economy, and we applaud the vigilance of Warner Music Group in ensuring that the audio track of this illegal posting of one of Cage’s most important works has been removed.

If you believe 4’33″ deserves more respect than ever this year, please consider supporting the Facebook campaign to make it Christmas number one for 2010, just as ‘Killing In The Name’ was in 2009.

Jaw hit the floor when I realized that instructor Aldrine Guerrero was teaching the lesson from the very same bench at Jo Jo’s where we had just been sitting a few days ago. Of all the bazillion lat/long coords on earth, how could these two come into perfect alignment? Kismet, baby. My rendition of Summer Breeze didn’t turn out anything like Aldrine’s of course, but I did make pretty quick progress on the track. But the more I learned about Guerrero, the more I realized this was someone I definitely wanted to watch. Such a laid-back guy, totally living the Aloha thing, who seems to want little more than to help others learn great ukulele technique.

So I jumped at the chance to go see Guerrero play at Da Silva Ukulele in Berkeley on a recent summer night in Berkeley (sans breeze). Da Silva has an excellent uke building woodshop, hosts a buch of different lessons, and features a regular roster of evening performers. Was not disappointed – Aldrine started his set big by absolutely blowing the lid off off Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On.”

Watch Aldrine’s right hand about halfway through the video – his speed and accuracy are just blinding. And oh yeah – Guerrero’s got soul coming out his ears. If you think of the ukulele as an instrument meant for simple, playful strumming and not much else, time to get your ears expanded:

(Apologies for shooting this in portrait mode, and for hitting record part-way through the track – this was the fist time I ever became “that dork recording tracks on a phone from a live performance”).

Guerrero continued to blow our doors as the night went on, both with his originals, and with covers of George Benson’s “Breezin’” (OK, a bit cheesy but a great show piece), Carlos Santana’s “Europa,” and Jimi Hendrix’ “Little Wing:”

A couple more Guerrero videos are available in my YouTube channel.

If you want to get your uke on, and don’t have time (or the money) to take proper lessons, check the lessons at ukuleleunderground.com – they offer both free videos and a more structured learning course through Ukulele Underground University.

See also: A Welsh Onion Flute for Trying Times

I always liked bonsai trees, and I was curious to try the approach I used for “Music from a Tree” on a smaller scale, so I bought a bonsai and recorded this little experimental piece.

To determine the key I used the lowest note I could play and recorded the rest around it.
Besides playing the leaves, I used bows of different sizes, a piano hammer and a paint brush.
As far as microphones I used my Røde NT6, a customized stethoscope and tiny MEAS piezo transducers.

I played all the sounds and rhythms only with the bonsai, I didn’t use any synthesizer or samplers to create or modify the sounds. I hope you’ll like it.

More of Stocco’s sessions here.