Coloring Sheet Music

In the spirit of returning to our analysis class, here is a neat visualization of some Bach:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipzR9bhei_o

I think uniting musical and visual art can be not only fun (Fantasia!), but also enlightening and useful to us as musicians. Whenever I worked on a Bach fugue, my previous piano teacher would have me use colored pencils to draw lines through the various voices. The result wasn't very artistic, but it was definitely helpful.

Christmas Music 2.0

Joey's post on the visual interpretations of music led me to find this video.

Words cannot even begin to describe it...

Christmas Music

There are about a thousand of these out on youtube and I love watching them! I hope you are in the mood for a little early christmas.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szLmAPW39uE

I suppose this would be combining music with the visual arts in a really different way! Also I think they look really cool.

Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir

I love this piece by Eric Whitacre and this recording is spectacular. This was his second "vitual choir", the first of which performed "Lux Aurumque". Many thousands of videos were submitted and 2052 performances from 1752 singers from 58 countries were selected and combined to create this. I think this shows one positive impact of technology on music. The internet allowed these voices from all over the world that could never be combined otherwise to come together and create something beautiful across time and space. Enjoy :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WhWDCw3Mng&ob=av2n

Dance: Finding Your Vibration

Am I allowed to do two posts? Oh well, I like this idea better, and I know you guys were all waiting for me to do something dance related....anyway....just like we're trying to find our own way of expressing ourselves (not just what we're told to do for technique, or what's politically the "correct" way of playing our instruments, voice included) dancers are always trying to find ways of expressing themselves...finding their own style, "swag" if you will. I'm relating to that one Arthurian Philosophy phrase of "anything that exists has its own vibration." The video I'm showing you guys is a jazz dance, all the girls whom I've had the pleasure of dancing with for the past year and a half. I had a chance to do this dance, however, its time conflicted with my HS jazz band.....needless to say I regret not doing it. While you're watching the dance, obviously everyone is doing the same movement, but if you watch closely, each girl is doing the movement a bit different whether they're expressing the emotion differently or physically doing the movement differently. Enjoy!

Dirty Diana :D

Does Google Represent?

I decided to conduct a short experiment in light of the 7th point on the Bill of Musical Rights, which says, "The European tradition of music is only one sound. All other cultures and traditions deserve equal attention.

Under Google Images I searched "music." The first 70 pages only included images with European classical notation (like the image in this post - it was the first result on my search), or Western artists/genres. I did not see any Indian sitars or Chinese guqins.

Next I typed in "musical instruments." This was a little more promising by showing some African drums and Indonesian folk instruments within the first few pages. But try it yourself and notice the ratio of European classical instruments to other ethnic cultures. It's a little overwhelming.

Happy Birthday!

With everyone sharing pieces with intense emotions, the first song that came to my mind was "Happy Birthday!" Sung at birthdays everywhere (well everywhere to the average, geographically inept American), this song embodies pleasurable emotions.

So here is a version that everyone can enjoy. I would venture to say that it impossible to not start bobbing your head or stomping your foot.

Happy Birthday!