Posted on 01/10/2019 8:53:10 AM PST by mairdie
Wandering thru a hospital lobby some months ago I was drawn to the most marvelous music. Following the sounds, I discovered Joe Blanchard, one of the good people who walk this earth. He composes and plays with no knowledge of musical notation, hoping that he'll remember what he's just created. He's remembered enough to have 3 albums out. This piece, currently called "Intrigue", will probably end up on his next album. I love his music, and I love his good heart. And FINALLY, yesterday, it occurred to me to pull out my phone and capture some of the peaceful experience. I really hope that you'll enjoy it, too, and will let Joe know.
PING
self ping
I’ll listen later. Thanks.
You’re most welcome. Hope you have a good day.
You’re a doll!
It also has had the uparrows drop from 8 to 7. I always wonder if that means that someone got enthusiastic and hit the uparrow again, because they can’t see if they hit one in the past. Since the uparrow is an on/off switch, hitting it when it was previously hit turns it off, and you’d have to be watching the number change to see that you turned it off rather than turning it on. But that’s just fantasizing with no data.
Think I did it with my touchy touch screen. Put it back to 8, will play again and take it to 9 which is what I was trying to do.
Thanks.
I wish I could compose that way.
You can’t take it to 9.
You’ve got one chance on a video to vote up or down. Touch it the first time, it’s up. Touch it the second time, it’s no longer up. Touch it a third time, it’s up.
That’s an on/off switch.
Don’t you really wonder what he “sees” when he closes his eyes and lets his fingers move over the keys?
As a non-musician, I am simply awed by what you and he and all the others who can put finger to instrument and create music do. You are all my heroes.
Yeah, I found that out. :o
Yes, I wonder what he “sees” - and I know I never will - but to be clear:
I am the opposite of him. He, I suspect, is what Myers-Briggs would class as an SP, probably ISFP (artist/composer; just a guess).
I am an INTJ (scientist/mastermind; no, not criminal). For me, music is a mathematical language. Although I can and do devise melodies and harmonies spontaneously (especially in my sleep, which makes waking up frustrating, because they fade before I can get them down), I usually work from a self-imposed and demarcated system, usually a variation of modes or multiples of modes.
In other words, he works without theory; I work by means of theory.
That does not mean that I only use what I was taught. I actually do all sorts of things that I was not taught, but I work from a theoretical basis.
As a poet, you probably are acquainted with the idea, a la C. S. Lewis, that the great poets can break the rules because they know the rules by heart. It is like that: I did well with theory, so I know more or less what I am doing, even when I am doing it “wrong”.
Being that, I am a very poor instrumentalist, again unlike him. I plod along on the piano just to compose. The only instrument with which I am truly adept is voice, and being a very low bass, I can get into pretty much any ensemble I want without necessarily being the very best chorister - short of the small stand-alone elite groups. (True low basses are quite rare.)
SPs like him - assuming he is one - tend to live in the eternal moment, and make good performers. I am not a performer by temperament. I enjoy performing choral music as I am doing it because I love the music, not because I love performing live. (I had paralyzing stage fright for many months when I started this. Now I can go out in a packed arena, even without being fully prepared, and it’s just business as usual.)
What an absolutely wonderful description of your process. I absolutely love listening to you explain a world I’ll never step a toe inside, but look at longingly thru cloudy windows.
Well, poetry is like music, and you understand poetry.
In fact, the Southern poet I mentioned before, Sidney Lanier, philosophized that the rules of poetry and music were fundamentally the same.
Love it! Where are his albums?
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