Monday, May 07, 2007

Right now I'm grooving on...

  • ...bluegrass instrumentation, country influences, acoustic sonority, demanding instrumental part writing, and meandering melodic phrasing.

In other contexts, I've found myself to like
  • pop metal qualities, a subtle use of vocal harmonies, repetetive melodic phrasing, extensive vamping, minor key tonalities, and dirty guitar solos
  • varying tempo and time signatures, meandering melodic phrasing (again!), mixed acoustic and electric instrumentation, a composed melodic style, and many other similarities identified in the music genome project. (This station is not yet well developed.)

This Pandora website kicks ass.

9 comments:

august said...

For a while now, I've been trying to write a bluegrass poem. Not a poem that goes like a bluegrass lyric, but one that has bluegrass music -- melodic, and perhaps quite old, perhaps quite contemporary. It's one of the many ways that I feel like I'm off my groove lately, in life as much as poetry.

I don't recall if I've shared with you my one mandolin story. Seattle, 1996 (95?). It's a party -- the city is about to vote on a new stadium, a few folks in the kitchen have been, er, drinking (Red Hook is a fine brewery) and there are a couple of guys with mandolins, as happened more often in Seattle than it does in New York. Anyway, the rest of us (about five total) start, er, percussing. I play a salad bowl (striking it with a salad fork for a clack or with my palm for more of a bass sound). We improvise. We start singing. (I fill in mostly spoken word, because I can't sing. But I take credit for what turns into a catchy chorus -- A brand new..sta..di..um (harmony -with a retractable roof...). If I were denny I'd add little music widgets. Anyhoo, I forget why I put this last long bit in parentheses.)

Er, maybe you had to be there. Well, anyway, it's a good mandolin moment, and when I imagine your real life self, I imagine you fitting in pretty well at this party. Which in my mind is a compliment, but I'll understand if you feel otherwise. Carry on.

Keifus said...

This Sunday afternoon was the best I've had in a while. My wife picked up her fiddle for the first time in a while, and we made margaritas (on the rocks, decent tequila--none of this slushee crap) and played together on the back porch. Perfect weather, and the hated neighbors were herding the grandkids across their precious lawn. We drove 'em back in with our off-key and odd-tempoed hackery. It was great. We should have more moments like that, really.

A poem with a bluegrass feel sounds really, really challenging. There are a lot of notes in there usually, at least for the instrumentals. Maybe some of that "high lonesome" would be easier to capture in verse (but that's not the part I enjoy very much).

Sounds like a good party though. The only person my age that I know who plays one of these things (friend of my brother) lives in Seattle. Hmmm.

K

august said...

You have addicted me to Pandora. This has created another unfortunate self-discovery -- apparently my favorite place to listen to music is in an elevator. I am easy listening.

Oh well. Beats Slate.

Keifus said...

Yeah thanks, so now I've got an easy-listening station going (based on Grateful Dead's Black Muddy River).

It's pretty cool, even if it looks like it'll eventually cost me money. I'd about given up on music discovery.

(and I hear ya)

K

twiffer said...

it's not so good with the classical music. alas.

hipparchia said...

pandora: cool idea, but i need something that will feed me the entirety of everything putumayo.

atqzyjds: athabascan katydids

rundeep said...

A Blue Grass Poem

Plink plink plink
plinkety-plink, plinkety-plink
plinkety-plink, plink plink
plinkey-plinkety-plinkety
plink plink plink

Uh-huh

plink, plinkety-plink,
plink, plinkety-plink
plinkety plinkety plinkety
plink plink plink

Holler!

plink plinky plink plink
plink plink.

august said...

rundeep= Mozart

august= Salieri

Just watch your back, 'Deep.

Keifus said...

Yee-ha! I want to be the guy what plays the jug and such.