Showing posts with label Music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Music. Show all posts

What's Amusia Got to Do With It

  May 08, 2025    


Back in 2017, I found out that I have something called congenital amusia, an inherited condition that can make it impossible to carry a tune or learn to play a musical instrument. In other words, amusia is tone deafness, or to use a derogatory expression, tin ears.

Amusia is defined as: "a musical disorder that appears mainly as a defect in processing pitch but also encompasses musical memory and recognition" (Wikipedia). Some studies suggest that as many as 4% of people are born with an innate inability to recognize musical tones or to reproduce them. This is referred to as congenital amusia.

In 2018, advances in genetics led me to discover that my lifelong failure to sing or learn guitar —despite great effort—was due to congenital amusia, not some weird character defect (although you can still find music coaches who insist that amusiacs are just being lazy).

When time permits, I plan to blog about my own journey with amusia, but in the meantime I put up a separate website —4Amusia.com— to curate links to information about amusia. Those links should not be taken as endorsements of the content to which I link, and the look and feel of the site may change over time; however, I am also color blind (deutan), so please excuse any jarring color choices you may encounter there.

You might be surprised at how many things can be affected by amusia, like some forms of speech and comprehension. The leading researcher in all things amusic is Dr. Isabelle Peretz and if you're interested in this topic her website is the place to look. It features a link to an online hearing test that you can take to diagnose amusia.

For myself, the stigma of being a tone deaf child was unpleasant, and the decades spent failing to learn a musical instrument were frustrating. At times I experienced deep sadness at not being able to express my feelings in song in the presence of other humans. Nevertheless, learning that there is a physical basis for these limitations, rather than some character defect, was quite liberating!

Check out 4Amusia now.

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Bands to watch in 2014: NO doubt about NO

  January 02, 2014    

[Update 2025: About a dozen years ago I encountered a band out of Echo Park, Los Angeles, that went by the name of NO. They had a very cool sound and the way I met them was also cool: my boss at the time was related to the lead singer. That meant I got to see them up close on several ocassions, including a fantastic concert on the roof of hotel in Las Vegas. They later changed their name to Black English, and they are still around. You can find them via a Facebook page. This post is from 2014 and slightly amended.]

If you have not yet heard the music of NO, an indie band out of Echo Park, please give them a listen. This is a good track to start with: Leave the door wide open

Of course, I realize musical recommendations from old guy may not be compelling, but this is an old guy who loves good music, an old guy who once endured three days outdoors in cold English rain to catch artists like Santana, Led Zeppelin, Frank Zappa, Pink Floyd, Jefferson Airplane, and Fairport Convention, in a single weekend (Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music, 1970).

Check out one of NO's songs presented as video game footage: There's a glow

And here' a photo I snapped as NO were performing "There's a glow" on the rooftop of the Rio in Las Vegas last summer (DefCon 2013).


The significance of the setting, high above the Vegas strip, comes partly from the opening of the song that goes:
There's a glow up over the city the city.
There's a glow up over us all.
The other aspect of significance, apart from the amazing view and the electrified atmosphere of the up-close performance, is that the band is playing at a party thrown by my employer, ESET.

And I have to admit this was not my first time seeing the band live. They played an ESET party in 2012 as well. None of which would matter if the band was just okay. But in fact they are awesome when they play live, managing to create a huge sound without it becoming noise, and often generating powerful emotional tension by restraining that big sound until just the right moment.

Here's a good sample of NO playing live along with an interview.

In February of 2014 the band releases its first LP, with 7 new tracks on top of the 6 you can hear live on the website. Stay tuned to their site for fresh tour dates and try to catch them live. You won't be disappointed.

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Zombies, Swine Flu, and Kindling: What a Difference 6 Months Makes

  November 19, 2009    

Wow! I did not realize it was THAT long since I had posted here. I blame the day job, which is often the evening job and weekend job as well. Fortunately that job is going well and I am racking up kudos for my blog posts on marketing. I am also getting quite adept at the social media thing. (Here's a link to a personal post where I rounded up 19 things you should do if you want to promote your company, band, film, book, profile).

A lot of people are somewhat familiar with some of the social media basics, but it is how you employ them all in concert that makes social networking work, from Twitter to Facebook and LinkedIn, to your blog, your pics, your videos, your tr.ims, your stats and your Google Analytics (which reminds me, I need to add these last few to the list, maybe: Hey 19, Part 2, the Remix).

What has this got to do with art? Everything. There may be some artists who seek obscurity (like the Buddhist monks in Shangri-La that were on PBS last night). But most art is intended to be experienced. And that seldom happens without a push from somewhere. Consider Jeremy Dean, the Brooklyn-based artist who created the indie doc Dare Not Walk Alone (that I had the honor of producing). He has been cooking up some cool conceptual art for several years now, but it was connecting with a gallery that gave his private art a push in the public direction. Jeremy will be showing at big art events in December and March and already has some cool art video online.

Speaking of that aspect of pushing art forward which is often referred to as "publication" and/or "distribution," we are seeing the "and/or" converge taking place right now in technology like Amazon's Kindle. You can now read Kindle books on your iPhone and PC as well as on the actual Kindle device.

Which brings me to the book I wanted to review here: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. This is a novel by the first "new" author I have read entirely on the iPhone. The book came out in print a few years ago and sold well. It is currently around #300 on Amazon. But the book is in several top 10 lists on Kindle, which is how I came to see it while using Kindle on my iPhone. I was intrigued enough by the reviews to download the free preview and on reading that I figured I would like the book, so I paid for the full Kindle version.

There were three things that I enjoyed about World War Z. First and foremost I admired the extent to which author, Max Brooks, had thought through all the implications of zombieism (sp?). Then he extrapolated a new reality from a defined set of data: zombies eat flesh, zombies can only be killed by destroying the brain, zombies can survive under water, zombieism spreads through biting and the dead re-animate after infection, and so on. The book explores the logical and logistical end game. By doing so it reveals worrying weaknesses in current technology, science, cultures, and religions. (Hint, this is a global catastrophe of 2012 proportions.)

Second, the narrative structure created by the interview excerpt device was refreshing and very effective. You learn very little about zombies or the war through direct description. You get most of it by inference. And you get a lot of rich characters too, which keeps things fresh. Brooks is skilfull at giving each a unique voice and strong presence, using little more than their recorded words. He also manages some great humor of the dark, battlefield kind.

Third, I found this to be a fascinating book to read against the backdrop of the global H1N1 Swine Flu pandemic. Indeed, I think that may be part of the reason for the book's success, the series of epidemics the world has been seeing, coming from far distant places right into our everyday lives and forcing us to think hard about a lot of things we would rather keep to the back of our minds.

I am not a big fan of horror stories, particularly ones that dabble in the supernatural. The genius of World War Z is that Brooks makes fighting zombies seem very real and anything but a figment of the imagination. Consider this: In talking about the book over dinner one night I found myself saying "If this zombie thing ever happened for real, it would be really bad." Talk about willing suspension of disbelief.

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Hey 19: Things to do when promoting a cause or company, product or person, band or brand

  June 30, 2009    

hey19This is a quick attempt to put into one place various bits of advice that I've been giving out to various people over the past few months with respect to raising the profile of a person, place, or thing.

The idea is that you have something you want to publicize. It could be a band, a brand, a product, a company, or an indie film; or it could be you.

Before you go out and hire a PR agency or pay for a press release, you might want to try these things. They are free, except for your time and an Internet connection. In the old days they would have been called guerilla marketing. Now it's called Web 2.0 marketing or New Rules marketing. The strategy is to create interest--in whatever you are promoting--by being interesting. You want to draw people to the object of attention rather than subject them to a message. I will try to post something later on how to be interesting. The following are 19 things to get started with. I've broken them down into 3 phases:

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Love Forever Changes: The concert DVD you really need to hear

  October 11, 2008    

I rarely recommend products sight unseen. And I know that when times are tough, folks cut back on their impulse buys. But you won't regret buying this DVD.
My copy turned up earlier this week and although I was too busy working to watch it, I had a chance to download the soundtrack to my in-car audio system before I embarked on a 5 hour drive from Philly to upstate New York. Wow! What a blast.

Note: this is not a product referral post, this link to the DVD at Amazon does not earn me a penny. I just to share the love.

If you already own Forever Changes, the 1967 album by Love, then you will love this DVD. If Forever Changes has not yet entered your life, this DVD is great way to open those doors of perception. It features the entire album, played live, in original sequence, by the creative genius behind the album: Arthur Lee (a musician whose role in the history of rock remains widely under-appreciated).

The concert was recorded in 2003 in England, where Forever Changes was a fixture on record changers throughout 1968. Speaking for myself and a lot of my friends, we listened to Forever Changes way more than Sergeant Pepper.

That Arthur Lee's life took so many tragic turns made it seem unlikely that this concert would be anything more than a dim echo of faded glory days.

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Radio Paradise Rocks (and soothes and cheers)

  June 01, 2008    

When times are tough (and I think we can all agree they are tough right now*) you sometimes need a way to escape, something to take your mind off things, or onto better things. I'm finding Radio Paradise does just that, and it's free as long as you have a broadband connection. Of course, donations are accepted I have been moved to give, it's just such a deliciously eclectic stream of good listening.

Sometimes they throw in some themed sets for fun and these can be quite amusing. Also, I recently found a cool gadget you can place on your Google home page that shows what is currently playing on Radio Paradise, along with album art (just search among the gadgets at Google/ig. You have to believe that this station is boosting CD sales for a lot of artists that people would otherwise not hear.

* Just for the record, on the "tough times" assertion:
  • Largest collapse of real estate values in recorded history
  • Real incomes falling, costs rising, budgets squeezed, jobs lost
  • Potential mega-flation fueled by soaring energy prices
  • World food shortages (again)
  • Middle East in crisis (again)
  • Oppression in far too many countries
  • Impending environmental disaster
  • Health care system in disarray

  

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Steve Donnelly and the Soaring Seventies Guitar Solo

  September 12, 2007    

Last month's post about guitarist Steve Donnelly [Great Guitarists Never Die--My roomie from uni lives on] was perhaps a little too cryptic even for a blog post. So let me explain, Steve was my first year room mate at the University of Leeds. The day that I arrived at the flat, assigned to me by university housing, Steve was practicing on his Fender Telecaster, feet up on his Marshall amp, surrounded by every cup and mug in the place, all of which contained various amounts of coffee dregs (to his credit, Steve quickly rounded the mugs up and set about washing them).

The point is, he was a dedicated guitarist, even back then, and already very good. He had been playing the pub scene in London for several years and when he told me that Mick Fleetwood had asked him to be in the new line-up it was not hard to believe. But Steve found that being in a band has its downsides, like getting paid in relation to effort. So he does session work, paid for every hour of his time. Over the years he has developed a reputation as the go-to guy for great guitar work, appearing on albums by Bonnie Raitt, Elvis Costello, John Wesley Harding, Nick Lowe, and Sheryl Crow. He was also a member of Suzanne Vega's stage band on the Nine Objects Of Desire tour.

One of Steve's specialties is the soaring seventies guitar solo and so when the late Brian Gibson decided to make a movie that revolves around a mythical seventies super-group, he turned to Steve for the guitar work, and the job of teaching actors to look like they are playing great guitar. The result was Still Crazy, a very enjoyable movie, particularly if you are a fan of Billy Connolly, Jimmy Nail, or the quietly brilliant Bill Nighy. In some reviews I have seen various musicians from Foreigner and Squeeze credited with the music, but there's no doubt Steve created the film's musical centerpiece: Brian's Theme. Check it out on Amazon.

  

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Suicide is Painless? Ads need many changes...

  January 28, 2007    

I am by no means the first blogger to highlight the absurdity of commercial use of popular music out of context or toned town.

Probably the most glaring example is Royal Caribbean Cruise Line's use of Iggy Pop's "Lust For Life". The tune is there, big and bold, but the lyrics skip from "Here comes Johnny Yen again" to "With his lust for life" and thus bypass "With the liquor and drugs, And the flesh machine, He's gonna do another strip-tease...Well I am just a modern guy, Of course I've had it in the ear before, 'Cause of a lust for life." The whole thing is laid out nicely at Dick Mac's blog.

The incongruity has had a lot of people who respect Iggy's music outraged, amused, bewildered, and more (on the other hand it may have turned some folks on to Iggy, which would be a good thing). Still it was hard for some to accept the punk counter-culture subverted by commercial interests. But this is nothing new. The sixties were not over before the free love vibe was subverted by advertisers serving major corporations. Indeed, a lot of the cultural history of America over the last forty years has involved the commercialization ands mainstreaming of what began as anti-commercial, anti-establishment.

Remember how the biting 1970 anti-war movie M.A.S.H. became a TV sitcom and everyone was humming the word-less theme song blissfully unaware [in 99.9% of cases] that the title of the song, and it's refrain, is "Suicide is painless"?

p.s. The lyrcis to "Suicide is Painless" were written by Michael Altman, son of the late great Robert Altman who directed the movie. You can read them here.

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Remembering The Love Man: Otis Redding, 1941-1967

  December 10, 2006    

It was 39 years ago today that Otis Redding's plane crashed during a storm en route to a concert in Madison, Wisconsin. He was just 26 when he died, but Otis gave us an enormous body of work, songs that have become part of the soundtrack of our lives, from "Respect" to "Try a Little Tenderness." from "Shake" to "The Dock of the Bay." He gave us dreams to remember and he will always be remembered, with love and respect.

  

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