Ah, Mighty blog!

Ah, beautiful blog you, it is time for my monthly

Well, or actually, I think my finale.

When I started this blog, I believed in being honest, even if it meant being irresponsible. I've learned that's a sort of violence.

Or rather, I still think that one should be outrageously and irresponsibly honest, but one should be compassionate in doing so, and not violent, as I have often been. I've made fun of people's beliefs, trinkets, religions and their dreams of meaning. Shame on me.

I was not skillful.

Use effects function. What "use" have I practiced here?

So here let the Dude lie in peace. I'll let this blog stand as a tribute to things I thought, and how my society taught me to say them.

I often said them badly. I've disrespected my readers with hasty writing and careless speling.

So, Please be compassionate with me should you read something here that immaturity moved me to write. Especially if you happen to be reviewing me for employment at your fine fast food establishment, or the Nobel Peace Prize or some such thing.

I am in the process of creating a few other web pages (perhaps one will be a blog....) that I'll post the addresses to soon.

Over and out,


Luckymortal

Genius cubed: Gould Bernstein Bach

As they say, not all musicians believe in god, but they all believe in Bach.

Heh. I love this song and video

Heh. I love this song and video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDlEXQaMBpk&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Emyspace%2Ecom%2Fthebirdandthebee

Long overdue definition of "ambition."

From Wiktionary:

Noun
1. An eager, and sometimes an inordinate, desire for preferment, honor, superiority, power, or the attainment of something. (material copied from Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913))

This is the kind of ambition I'm talking about. Not something exclussive to the clowns on the Apprentice. "an eager desire for... something."

I think that if we're honest we all cary around an image of who we want to be. That includes a desire for... "something." Right? The problem is why do you want it? Sometimes the answer is easy. I want to eat because I'm hungry. But sometimes the answer is more difficult. That's becuase the value is symbolic to us not utilitarian. And that's what I mean by "meaning" in life. Not some grandious concept, but simple symbolic "meaning" we assign to the things we want. The mundane thing I think all of us deal with when we look for a new car or a job or a house.

And that's the relation between Ambition and Religion. Both are a matter of believing in something that can't be proven. A leap of faith. It's about believing in something because we WANT to, not becuase it's true. Both are symptoms of the same human need: for meaning.

A day in the life of little Timmy

"Eat up up Timmy, your poo is getting cold."
"Ok, mom."
"And Timmy! don't you put your fork down on that table! You mind your manners and thrust that fork back into your bloddy eye socket where it belongs!"
"Awe, do I have to?"
"Timmy, you don't give your Mother guff!" Said Dad. "Timmy, you know that bloody oozing eyeballs are a proud tradition with the men in this family."

The flesh burning hot coals were particularly flesh-burningly-hot that morning on the way to the "Plato School of Coal Mining and Personal Dismemberment." The smell of his burning callases wisked TImmy away to a magical place in his memory. He thought of the day when his grandfather came up from the mine amid a pirade of flesh searing, moans and dancing ponies. Timmy admired his grandfather's devotion to duty. As was expected, after a life of toiling for the Lizard Man boss, Gramps severed all of his limbs but his left leg and hobbled out of the mine to present them to the Boss. Someday Timmy hoped to make the family proud: somehow he'd find a way to even chop off his left leg: now that would really be something.

A few years ago, the family wasn't so sure about Timmy's father. He went through a rough period where he got into some trouble, and we weren't sure he was going to pull through. He went off and became a musician, and gave up good honest dismemberment work altogether. When he came back to the fold the whole family was so proud. Timmy imagined how the same might happen to him. What if he didn't get into the Academy? He imagined how he might turn down a wrong path, the feeling was so VIVID. Eventually, perhaps he'd come back to the mine, and take a wife. Maybe he'd even become a councilor for troubled youth who were headed down the wrong path. He'd be able to really understand those kids. Maybe he'd even become a famous councilor, and lead a whole generation of kids back to the mine...."

Ambition:

"Because the creator of the universe of the universe just dumped us out here in the middle of fricken nowhere, and nobody has any idea what we're supposed to be doing."

So, if you're out there God, now would be a good time for boomy god voice, or burning bush, or something. You gotta teach someone how to pilot this rusty ol' hunk of rock....






So in our little corner of the Blogosphere, folks have been talking about ambition. And it's such an interesting subject to me, that recently I've written about 60-70,000 words on the subjet. And to me, what ambition, REAL ambition is about, is trying to find some way to give life meaning.

Because, frankly, if this is just a pleasure cruise, I want my money back.

But the problem is most people can't see how life can mean anything without buying into a whole lot of nonsense that noone can possibly prove. I guess you've just gotta pick something or other to beliee in and stick with it.

For example, GOD can give your life meaning. Its easy, you just join his club, and then you try to get more people to join the club under you, and if you get enough people to sign in this life, you get a Brand New Mercedes M-class when you die. So life HERE has meaning becuase you can get level up points for the next world. Cool!

The problem is, firstly, no one actually knows what the parking is like in heaven, or how good the public transportaion is, or how the Mercedes handles on milk and honey. And secondly, if some dope tells you that killing 1000 Arabs gets a lifetime of free oil changes, you can't prove him wrong.

And there are all different kinds of road maps that people use to find meaning, not just religion and as far as I can tell, they're just all the blind leading the blind. Here are some examples:

There's the famous, "keeping up with the Joneses:" OR: I don't know what the fuck I want, but if I'm doing better than that guy down there, I must be doing ok. The problem is the guy down there is looking at the guy down the street from him, he he doesn't know what the fuck to do either.

And there's the similar: "My dick is bigger than average" roadmap. People feel ok so long as they know that %50 or so of the people are a little more fucked than they are: "Got a car, a dog, a house and a family. Hey, I'm living the american dream."

The "whose your daddy." Where people feel ok, so long as they beat there parents. Whatever that means.

But if "winning" the game doesn't make you feel like your life was meaningful, you can try to find meaning through conflict and pain. Win or lose, conflict makes life FEEL meaningful. So everyone's going around poking themselves in the eye-- if they learn to see again, "they've overcome the odds" and if they don't, then they have a damn good excuse for being miserable-- at least they've got a place that way.

My favorite is the "prodigal son" roadmap. People do their best to make their lives all shitty. IF they pull through, they become a kind of hero. If not their lives are filled with meaningful conflict for years to come! It's win/win, hooray!


then there are the ambition. It's just the same? What's the most ambitious thing you can think of? Becoming the first NObel prize/ Oscar winning/ best selling author/ President of the United States of America? Prove to me that that means anything.

What will the perfect Job, house, car get you? Happiness?

Then I have a short-cut for you. Quite a while back psychologists started studying the brain chemistry of happiness. They did a bunch of tests on a bunch of people and were able to establish the peramiters of human happiness. Then they did a test on this buddhist monk.

Holy shit! This guy must have brain damage! He's off the scale in every way-- they thought they'd found the happiest most content man in the world, and that it must have been a biological gift. But then they did some other Buddhist monks, and they found they all had the same kind of happy content brain damage!

And they don't own shit, have family or drive sweet cars.

And yet, I'm writing this novel... this meaningless novel... Why?

So what do you want, and what does it mean?




And as a final thought Touche to Scott on Complacency. In my book I call this the "belief paradox." Believing in the sort of things that can give life meaning always leads to people doing shitty things to other people. But not believing in that sort of thing makes people the weak willed tools of the people who do believe those things.

What are we to do?

Stand back children, there's enough heaven to go around!

It is the secret power of Ambition that it makes us all both charlatans and fools.

And I am a charlatan and a fool.

Meme

Taken from: http://patrickmurfin.livejournal.com/

I never do these, but you know why I like this one:

Here are the rules:

1. Grab the nearest book. (Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.)
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5. Tag 5 people.

Here are my results:

In groups of four, list all the problems you see in this neighborhood. Next to each problem list a solution. Share your problems and your solutions.

Jesus, do you hate me?

Awe, This video reminds me why I LOVE Morrissey. Somehow I missed this one when it came out. Only Morrissey can be so touching and so funny at the same time. I think that it's because the songs are sincere, but Morrissey's sincere way of dealing with things is this sardonic humor. Anyways, This video is both hilariously funny and very moving.

I have forgiven you Jesus:

"No, you're the cow fart" "No, YOU'RE..."

Fuckin' A, does that cow have a jet pack? That's fuckin hella! Where's my jet pack cow? I'll ride that bitch to the laundromat fuckin' space cowboy style, yeah. Yeehaow! And those cow garter belts are HOT!

So, you can look here to see one patent for a cow fart collector, that will save the world, because apparently cow farts = arnie geddon. http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/05/patent_issued_f.php

So we have that whole HUMAN CAUSED GLOBAL WARMING THING that broad scientific consensus confirms. Especially important is that "human caused" bit.

But everywhere I look, people are denying it. And somehow a lot of them are using this FOX "news" cow thing as some sort of proof. For an example, look at a recent story at Slashdot where dozens of folks cited this FOX story about cows. Here's one example:

"Who can even make heads or tails of all this global warming stuff? We get reports like this, within a day of getting reports like cows cause more greenhouse gases than cars, planes, and all other forms of transportation put together [foxnews.com]"

Yeah there was a bit like that in a UN report, but then right wing news orgs take it all out of context and use it like: "gee folks, what are these environmentalists thinking, cows are worse for the environment than we are! Stupid scientists!" And the worse is FOX "news" who ran the story with citations to OTHER RIGHT WING NEWS GROUPS creating a profound echo chamber of dumb.

What the UN report really said was that the WHOLE of industrialized bovine agriculture, when you figure in LAND USE ISUES (for example clear cutting of rain forest in South America and Africa and other land conversion issues) and industrial processing and feeding and shipping and such accounts for 9% of global CO2 emissions. Which is slightly bigger than some average car DRIVING emissions numbers....

Cow farts my ass.

AND, seriously though, US style industrial agriculture is a MAJOR bad problem for a dozen reasons, to play it up as "gee folks cow farts hardy har," really gets my goat.

Lame "I haven't been posting" post

Here it is the lame "I haven't been posting" post-- so lame that it even repeats the title in order to fill up space with words to make it look like I actually wrote something here.

Alas, I'm sure that I won't actually write anything worth reading here.

But then again, I haven't done that in a long time.

Oddly, I have TONS of stuff to write about these days.

BUT, I'm using different outlets for that expression. I'm trying to get an easy english reader published. And I'm writing a novel. And singing some, though I've been sick for about a month and that puts a damper on the whole singing thing. I'm really bringing a lot of creativity to my teaching right now, and that's satisfying too.

When I started this blog I declared it an experiment. I wanted to learn about blogging. What do I want to write about? I wanted to eventually have a well focussed blog about... well, something. But what do I want to write about?

So, here's what I've learned:

Happy is boring. I'm pretty dern happy. Yawn.
Sordid sex blogs that deal with the cruelties of the modern dating scene are REALLY interesting.
My love life is happy and stable. Yawn.

I enjoy writing about singing and music in general. However, the things I'm interested in are too controversial to have a large audience and too academic for a blog. BUT I might find some ways to make some of these things interesting....

I enjoy discussion. However, a personal blog is not a good place to have discussion. It's not neutral territory....

I enjoy writing about ESL. Again, small audience, and I'm writing a textbook, so I have another outlet for that.

I have a whole big ball of related ideas about evolution, creativity and the meaning of life, but a blog is not a very good outlet for that.

SO in the near future, I'm going to be rethinking this whole blogging business. And probably it will cease to exist. BUT, in it's place I will probably start some new things.

Such is life.

Morning in America

In my classes, all of my students for the first time feel free to share their feelings about politics. They're all saying the same thing-- it feels like morning in America, but for real this time. I've heard stories the last few days about reoccurring nightmares of terrorist attacks and nuclear war.... That even the bluest of blue skies has a certain overcast to it. And why should the sky seem blue? We're reminded constantly that we're in an "unending war" or at best a "long war"-- one that it seems we have no chance to win. How can we win a war when we haven't even defined what winning would look like? And everyday we hear "terror, terror, terror" and I realize now that each time I hear that word something perceptibly tightens inside me. And people just want it to end. "The people" see that "the people" all over the world just want peace. A few nut jobs at the top and at the right of the international spectrum want war, but THEY are the crazy ones, not the rest of us! And after this election it's a little easier to see that. And the dark in the sky got a little lighter. And America feels a little bit of hope for the first time in 12 years.

Constitution? We don't need no stinkin constitution

Thank you "crooks and Liars" for posting this!
Keith Olbermann is one of the only real journalists left. CLICK THE PICTURE to see his take on Habeus Corpus.

Or cut and paste this:
http://movies.crooksandliars.com/Olbermann-HabeusCorpus.mov

Jesus camp anyone?

I think I'll stick to chocolate jesus.

School Shootings

Well, I hate to blog on such a topic, but events will happen....

So I have several mixed and jumbled thoughts about this-- I'll try to organize them as best as I can.

Firstly, as to the Pennsylvania executions, why the Amish? A while back, I got to spend a bit of time with some folks in an Amish community-- they welcomed me into their homes and shared their music with me... Truly, these are the most innocent and decent folks I can think of. They lack the bad Karma that we all create with our violent culture-- and still they must suffer this tragedy.... And so this attack has saddened me more than any other in my memory.

Given that, I offer this up as a second course: I often say that I'm a conservative forced by circumstance to play the role of a liberal, and yet I suppose I'm now a true liberal. And as the definition of a liberal is: "a person so fair-minded that they refuse to take their own side in an argument," I've taken this opportunity to question my beliefs. Namely, my belief that capital punishment is wrong and that it is as horrible an act of murder as any act it is intended to punish-- no in fact it's worse, because it is carried out with the cool self righteousness and calculated self justification of a popular tool of political gain.

I've never understood the popularity of capital punishment. Not until now.

There are no valid "reasons" for CP that have stood up to the test of evidence. Far from a deterrent, it is pretty consistently statistically linked to a rise in murder and in crime in general.

During the Newt Gingrich revolution the major point was that it cost the tax payer less than incarceration-- proven even back then to be a fallacy--
(and since no one believes me when I say this here ya go:
A Duke University study found... "The death penalty costs North Carolina $2.16 million per execution over the costs of a non-death penalty murder case with a sentence of imprisonment for life." ( The costs of processing murder cases in North Carolina / Philip J. Cook, Donna B. Slawson ; with the assistance of Lori A. Gries. [Durham, NC] : Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy, Duke University, 1993.)

"The death penalty costs California $90 million annually beyond the ordinary costs of the justice system - $78 million of that total is incurred at the trial level." (Sacramento Bee, March 18, 1988).

"A 1991 study of the Texas criminal justice system estimated the cost of appealing capital murder at $2,316,655. In contrast, the cost of housing a prisoner in a Texas maximum security prison single cell for 40 years is estimated at $750,000." (Punishment and the Death Penalty, edited by Robert M. Baird and Stuart E. Rosenbaum 1995 p.109 )

"Florida spent an estimated $57 million on the death penalty from 1973 to 1988 to achieve 18 executions - that is an average of $3.2 million per execution."
(Miami Herald, July 10, 1988).

"Florida calculated that each execution there costs some $3.18 million. If incarceration is estimated to cost $17000/year, a comparable statistic for life in prison of 40 years would be $680,000."
(The Geography of Execution... The Capital Punishment Quagmire in America, Keith Harries and Derral Cheatwood 1997 p.6)

Swiftly lifted from: http://www.mindspring.com/~phporter/econ.html

Anyway, to sum, there is no "reason" reason for capital punishment-- only a FEELING-- and that feeling logically is summed up like this: there are some things for which murder is a just response.

It has always been easy for me to point out the irony of this statement-- that ALL MURDERERS ALWAYS FEEL JUSTIFIED IN THEIR ACTIONS. There are very few broken pieces on this planet that sit around twirling their mustaches wondering what they can do in the name of evil that day. All people who do bad things think they are doing them for just reasons.

Anyway, the argument for CP then is always that it isn't about LOGIC, its about the FEELING that it would be cruel to take the possibility of a revenge murder away from victims. And of course, that I couldn't understand because I've never been a victim.

Well, for the first time, I find myself FEELING that if this guy hadn't killed himself, then he deserves to be brutally killed.

(But then another even more reptilian part answers: "no, death is too good for this guy-- too easy." In fact, I really resent that he killed himself. Such a cowardly way out....)

But for the first time I understand-- I intuit how easy it is to just say: a fuck the bastard-- hang em. It's so easy and it feels so good....

Finally, where's the big government response? I feel more personally attacked by this then by 911-- so where's my "war on violence as an appropriate response?" Because that's what I feel attacked by-- our cultural instinct to respond to any provocation with force. I'll bet we'll find out that whatever this guy was thinking-- he wasn't some monster. He was a decent family guy who was good to his wife and kids but he was infected with this idea that's very ordinary in our culture-- that violence is a justifiable response-- a JUST response even....

We go to movies and we're supposed to cheer when the bad guys get killed-- the more brutally the better. And people tell me all the time that Bush was right to bomb people and take revenge for 911, nevermind that the people who did it all died, and nevermind that justice was never even an issue: quoth Rumsfeld " we don't have enough evidence to convict, but we have enough evidence to bomb." So how are we supposed to argue when some fucked up guy thinks he's got to go kill some little girls for some messed up thing in his head? Hell, grab your gun buddy, it's the American way!

That is the fucked up shit we need a war on. We're makin' real bad Karma baby, real bad.

Chocolate Jesus

Quote of the Day:

Heard on my local NPR station this morning: "We will now suspend our regular schedule of "intelligent talk" to bring you the President's speech."

THIS JUST IN

Millions of 20-somethings spat out their morning coffee this week as composed anchor men and women announced in stony seriousness that Saddam Housein had declared in court: "I will crush your heads." The imprisoned ex-all-powerful-dictator, in apparent effor to prove he's "still got it" extended his forefinger and thumb in a menacing gesture known all too well to fans of Saturday Night Live.

According to witnesses Saddam, held up his hand, squinted and repeated in a sqeeky voice: "I will crush your head, and yours, and you too! Ha ha ha! 'Aaaaa noo not my head!' Yes you tooo!"

Saddam expert Nassredin Hodja, a witness, said of the defendant's tactics: "it was really weird."

In Washington, a triumphant Donald Rumsfeld announced "we've found them, we've found the weapons of mass destruction!!!!!" Officials used a projector to show these rare satelite photos proving once and for all that Saddam did have weapons of mass destruction.

Others believe Saddam's tactic to have been a successful attempt to attack the homeland. 2o-something Jerald Snatch recounted his memories of the fateful event: "Yeah, I was just doing the crossword puzzle, and my girlfriend listens to NPR or some shit, and then I couldn't believe what they were saying: 'I will crush your head!' Next thing I knew there was coffee coming out my nose. And that was my last clean shirt."

There are still no numbers reflecting the economic damage done by this week's staggering drycleaning bills.

Oh, my dear little bloggy blog...

I so rarely feed you these days....

Pity.

Pity.

And so much to write too! But just so busy!

So first off, here's news in my world:

Just finished another run of Reagan's Children stuff. I think it went really well and I got a really bad picture of me in Time Out, which is cool. Tonight I'm singing in Milwaukee in another new work Karl Jenkins' Armed Man. I'm very excited about that! And on top of that, I start teaching again this week and I'm really excited about that!! And I just got a new beer (Fat Tire) and a biodynamic port ("Bouteille Call" the coolest name for a wine ever!) to try, and I'm excited about that!!!

So basically that's got me thinking...

Life is good. It's good on all fronts.

And now, this is the tiniest thing, but it's still there:

BUT

It's just this thininess of always wanting more, wanting this dream of something that can't exist...
or can it....
and if I make those perfect circumstances exist, will I want...

just a little


More.

In other news, today's listening:

Audra Mcdonald's Seven Deadly Sins. Very interesting pieces composed for the singer. If you want some tunes, look here. When you click on the link, it will be on the 1st hour installment. I could do without the bits of Audra explaining the pieces, but she IS charming. I'm still not convinced that she belongs on the Met stage.... The word is that she will be featured in a leading role at what used to be the benchmark opera house of the world. It is an interesting attempt to bring opera to a wider audience but I'm afraid a misguided one but I'll try to keep an open mind-- We'll see....

Wow. 4 opera clips.

So, I considered myself an actor long before I started singing, and it was as an actor that I came to be a singer. I was already getting paid to do straight theater when I went to my first opera. At that point, I hated musical theater, and I expected opera to be even worse. I hated that it was all mugging, and the movements lacked any purpose and there wasn't really any acting at all....

My first opera was a choir (which I was not in) field trip, and I only went because I had crushes on half of the girls in the choir.

I was blown away.

Not because of the music, which I didn't really get, but because of the acting-- real acting!

Later, when reading "writings in restaurants" I discovered that the guy who many consider the most important modern acting teacher agrees with me. As I read more, I learned that David Mammet writes over and over again that he finds the acting in opera today consistently better than acting on film or on broadway. This is because what most opera singers do is direct and simple and there is a reverence for the script and for the text. The good ones don't mug or try to show off their acting they just f@ckin' do the thing!

SATAN! I'll start with the most accessible one: Yep, this is Sam Ramey playing satan. Opera was often the Marilyn Manson of it's day. In this piece Satan mocks god, and even gives him an obscene gesture! How do you think this went over in ultra catholic Italy?




OTELLO. Next most accessible-- Placido Domingo is just plain exciting. English subtitles.


Old School PUNK ROCK! This clip is vintage punk rock to me from the costumes to the irony, raw emotion and open mockery of the audience. The clip is a play within a play-- the commedia dell'arte stock plot mocking the cuckold husband. The actors are husband and wife performing a show as husband and wife. In both cases, the husband has just discovered that the wife is having an affair. the actor no longer finds the show so funny, but the audience doesn't get that he's gone off script, "bravo!" The wife keeps trying to return to the show as if nothing happened.



OPERA REVOLUTION. For hundreds of years it has been opera that led the way. The two major revolutions in acting technique in the 20th century were led by opera singers. The first was Feodor Chalyapin, who was the father of what became known as the "Stanislavski Method" after the man who wrote down Chalyapin's teaching. The second was lead by Maria Callas. In the early 40s, Callas brought renewed realism and even vulgarity to the stage. Legends abound about the real-life touches she brought to scenes such as taking off her shoes after a party-- revolutionary at the time. Her controversial performances were to inspire a revolution in acting that would eventually reach Broadway in the late 40s and Hollywood in 1951 with Marlin Brando.

Though she was known for "dominating" an audience, here she brings simplicity and honesty to what was a "dead" repertory at the time:

THE REAGANS ARE COMING! THE REAGANS ARE COMING!

September 8th and 9th at 10:30 at night, and Sunday the 10th at 9:30PM. I'll be singing the role of Michael Reagan (! yep that one) in a cabaret featuring excerpts from a new opera called Reagan's Children. The picture above is from the premier of the show a few months back. I just got the recording from the premier and it sounds pretty good. Take a listen to the Michael Reagan aria: Meditation.

Webeyoo!

You know how when you're on vacation you work more than when you're "at work?" Right. Well I guess I'm not really on vacation at all, I just have a different work schedule.I just updated my singing web page. Because I find most actor/singer web pages to be really silly, I resisted certain design elements for a long time. But in the end, I decided that my page needed to look more "professional."

So I think this page looks more professional, but I've still managed to avoid some of the design elements (as well as some of the technology elements) that I hate most. The page is more definitely more "dramatic." Also, there are certain expectations of what a "classical singer" should be, and I've tried to "brand" the page a little more "classical" or "opera singer."

Take a look and tell me what you think. Did everything render well on your browser/OS? If the page looks like butt on your computer, I'd really like to know!

I have discovered the meaning of life and it is....

The quilt.

I have it on good hearsay that the creator of the universe really, really likes a good quilt. So much so that he created this little ball of quiltin' materials we call "Earth" just to add to his collection.

The Mysteries of Life Explained AT LAST:

When he created two of each animal, he had one of two things in mind-- 1. food for quilters. 2. Keep the quilter population down to prevent disease and famine.

Sharks were invented because the creator of the universe hates soggy quilts.

As for humans, he had one thing in mind-- makin' babies, and makin' quilts. In fact, my sources say that the reason for human frailty at the beginning and end of life is to provide an incentive for quilt making. Human suffering, to provoke comfort quilts.

All the rest of us here are just an elaborate support structure for the chosen ones.

Was Ronald Reagan right when he claimed that god created aids? If so, why would god do something like that...? hmm....

Old song do again

More of the same-- with more to come-- this bit moved to the front page from comments....

I recently read an article in some Music Journal about this (I'll try to remember which one.) It was a poorly designed "experiment" but their findings we're interesting none the less. Some Mid-west University Choral group made 2 recordings-- one where the singers sang with a good singer's formant response and the other with the singers formant taken out in the "choral technique" taught at their school. Then they did a survey and asked which people liked better. "Overall" (their methodology was deeply flawed) 55% or so of participants preferred the "choral" example. However when they broke down their findings:

Listeners with no musical training slightly preferred the "operatic" example.

Listeners with Instrumental training strongly preferred the "operatic" example. The more musical training they had, the more they favored the "operatic example."

Only Listeners that were trained in the "choral tradition" of that school (the vast majority of survey participants-- hence the flaw) strongly preferred the "choral" example. And the more choral experience they had the more they favored this example.

This would seem to suggest that the "choral" sound is a learned preference... and quite an "acquired taste."

Old song new again

On my new project: (this post is about getting some things straight in me cluttered head.)

So, I've rounded up a sextet of singers to get together and sing through some music, and I have to say, I couldn't be more excited. To start with, the singers are some of the best singers I've worked with, and they all have absolutely bee you tee ful solo voices.

More importantly, I've wanted to do this for a long time, "I've got artistic vision up the butt" and for the first time, I get to be as experimental as I want to be.

Firstly, I've really come to believe that while sometimes someone needs to call shots to get work done, centralized decision making in art crushes full artistic subtlety and color. So the most wildly experimental thing that we're going to do is allow all of us to be ourselves and make all of our decisions artistic and otherwise democratic. My feeling is that by encouraging and accepting everyones input we can make ourselves a truly unique group. And so completely democratic approach will be our guiding principle.

A second idea that flows from the first was one of the principles that helped me pick the singers. In addition to being great operatic voices, all of the voices in the group have something in common. I've noticed all of these singers "tuning formants" to achieve vocal colors. The overtones in a voice help determine the color of the voice. One way to categorize singers is by saying that they have "consonant formants" or "dissonant formants." "A singer with "consonant formants" will "tune" the overtones in the voice to enhance the fundamental pitch: so if they are singing a C3, they might have strong overtones at C4, C5 E6 and G6. A "dissonant voice" on the other hand would sing a C3, but tune the overtones to C#4, C#5 E6 F6 and F#6. Obviously, a dissonant voice has a lot of very obvious clanky ring to the voice that makes it very distinctive, while a Consonant voice generally sounds prettier, warmer and more pure and the ring sounds "blended in" to the to one seemless vocal tone. However there is a third group. Many of the greatest singers on record (Hans Hotter, Domingo and Nilssen are good examples) instinctively "tune" their formants to achieve different colors and effects. This is something else that our sextet has in common: though they generally tune on the consonant side, I've heard them change tuning to achieve effect.

Applied to ensemble singing the implications are obvious. If I'm standing next to a singer, and we are singing exactly the same pitch, and have exactly the same vowel sound we're still going to sound like crap if my strongest overtones are on a C# and his is on a C. If you're a singer you know exactly the feeling I'm talking about-- you can actually feel the overtones in your voices fighting with each other.

So, too often, especially in the midwest, "Choral blend" has come to mean taking all the overtones and hence all the color out of the voices. What you get is "in-tune," yes, but to me, utterly bland, each voice losing it's beauty-- the musical equal to the borg.

Instrumentalists talk about the same thing. In some symphonies, each member of a horn section is required to play the same horn, and with the same style. While in others, members play with their own uniqueness-- their own choice of instrument and style, each member taking turns giving their unique color to a phrase, while the others "shadow" to enhance that player's sound and let his color shine through. So in a way, I want to try to use a traditionally instrumental technique to a vocal ensemble.

With the voices that I've assembled I think we will instinctively achieve this-- beautiful blend and intonation-- chords that "pop" and rich beautiful, three-dimensional and unique vocal sounds.

Thurston, That's not apple juice!

For those of you who have ever been to Lake Geneva Wisconsin, I'm sure you're familiar with the old tales of "Thurston," the zany sea monster the locals just love to hate. FOR RARE ACTION FOOTAGE OF HOT THURSTON ACTION, CLICK HERE

Not content with your run-o-the-mill sea-monsterin', Thurston has a penchant for light hearted gags that have kept lake Geneva chuckling for over a century now. Some locals can even remember back to the early 20th century when "T" dressed up as John F Kennedy and attended a swank LG party. When he came, he brought 13 hookers, but when it was time to go home, there were only 12 left! The next morning, party goers overheard Col. George Williams himself chuckle: "Thurston, that's not my bath towel, that's a dead hooker, now how am I supposed to get dry!" Thurston's knack for clever costuming and hookers has left others wondering if it was really the ex president who spoke those famous words, "ich bin ein Berliner," or if there could have been a certain sea monster behind the humorous blunder.

New visitors to lake Geneva may wonder about the many "lake boats" that never seem to move. (Such as those pictured here.) Residents say that these "lake boats" are actually large scale fishing tackle, designed in hopes of catching a glimpse of Thurston in some real authentic sea-monsterin'.

Finally, if you're lucky enough to get a first hand glimpse of Thurston, just take my word for it: if he offer's you a cup of apple juice, and it's warm, and tastes like sea water, do NOT drink it.

still more vintage footage of Thurston, is that a cup of apple juice?

Research

So I was doing some research, obviously, and found this...

FORM ELVIS!

Has Fowltron met his match?

Can the world handle this much chicken?

Coming to a computer near you....