The Arts in NYC

Beatboxing is very common and popular nowadays. I know I have done an previous post about beatboxing, but that was with the mouth. But have you ever heard of body beatboxing or body percussion?

I had not heard of it before either until I was shown a video of an individual beatboxer. I thought it was a very innovative skill that totally put a spin on the beatboxing world. It is however, not as common as creating beats with the mouth, which I probably guess is because of the lack of variety of sounds the body can produce compared to the mouth. This type of technique of music-making is an example of how music can really utilize the entire body. This also reminds me of stepping.

In the video below, is the man who caused body beatboxing to be known. His name is James Ha and he also sings while he body beatboxes. In a way, I guess you can say that those who sings AND beatboxes with their mouths are more talented but this post was about introducing a new technique to people who have never heard of this type of beat production. Many of his previous videos have been removed by himself for some reason, so I only found one of them. It is a cover of Usher’s “Caught Up”:

In this other video below is one I found where a women utilizes this technique with another man beatboxing with his mouth. This woman also uses her feet in which she incorporates the technique of tap dancing. By the way, this video is just a rehearsal, that’s why it seems to be a bit sloppy.

The Grammy’s are around the corner and the nominations were publicized this past Wednesday night. Eminem took the lead for most nominations, receiving ten nominations total including album of the year, going up against Lady Antebellum’s “Need You Now,” “The Suburbs” by Arcade Fire,” Lady Gaga’s “The Fame Monster” and Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream.” These album’s range from rap/hip-hop to pop to alternative rock. But what these albums all have in common is their incredible success in the public eye. Prof. Smaldone introduced us to the band Arcade Fire earlier in the blog, citing an article that spoke about the band’s popularity, where it took first place on the charts, replacing Eminem’s “Recovery.” In the category for artist of the year Drake goes up against Justin Bieber, both relatively young in age and young in the music world.

The Grammy nomination reveal show used to be a dull press conference, but in the past three years has featured performances by nominees. This year Katy Perry performed her “California Gurls” as well as performances by Miranda Lambert, Train and Bruno Mars. The show was hosted by rap artist LL Cool J. The Grammy’s are attempting to create hype for the actual awards show which will take place Feb. 13th.

What’s interesting however, and the point I wanna bring up in this post, is who actually receives the nominations for Grammy’s. When considering nominees, it appears that popularity places a huge role in the decision. Most of the nominees are well-known household names. Where are the nominations for the underdogs who in many respects might be more deserving than the actual nominees? I think that the Grammy’s has a responsibility to make nominations that appeal to the masses, rather than based on real talent. Don’t get me wrong; Eminem, Katy Perry and the others do possess real talent, but I think that musicians who are unknown are highly underrepresented in the Grammy nomination process.

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So we’ve all been talking subway music and such. As I was walking to the L train, I heard something that sounded better than the usual homeless man playing a recorder. I discovered a band of about 7 people playing a wide variety of horn and wind instruments. Instead of being the usual ragtag street performers, this was a real band called Vevertise. When I say real band, I mean they have a CD, a record label, and a Myspace page. You can click here to check out said myspace page.

As to why they choose to play in subways, its part of their mission statement. According to their website they have the “desire to bring a feeling of musical celebration to the places commonly deemed unsutiable, to rekindle the spirit of street theater and spontaneous celebration.” Now I think that’s pretty gosh darn cool. This is also inline with their musical style. The music is inspired by the Gypsy music of the Balkans. The spirit of “spontaneous celebration” is inherent in Gypsy culture. It’s also great to have music of celebration played primarily in minor mode, which to the Western ear is primarily thought of as sad.

I personally love Balkan/Gypsy inspired music. Other bands that incorporate these sounds are Balkan Beat Box and Gogol Bordello.

I just noticed David’s post on a cappella groups and I figured I’d put my own two cents in… (ok, so I didn’t see his post and made this one before I read the blogs)

A lot of times in NYC and in other places I see a cappella groups perform amazing pieces. The band Naturally 7 performed at Madison Square Garden last weekend as the opening act for Michael Buble. I had never heard of them before but now they’re one of my favorites. They did covers of Beatles and other popular songs as well as originals. What was amazing was that I could swear there was a drum or a bass on stage but it was all their voices.

Here’s a video of them performing a remix of Come Together:

Here’s a video of another a cappella group of all men performing a very famous Lady Gaga song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUWfL32S5PA

Who doesn’t love a good love story? Our whole world adores it. Love makes us go aww and sometimes even bring tears to our eyes. I found this article a while ago, and wanted to blog about it. In short, it is about a guy who wrote a song for his girlfriend, who moved far away to go to Grad school, with his band and made a pretty creative video about it. He posted the video online and hopes that it will travel to her with the help of the online community, he didn’t tell her about the video, which in my opinion is the sweetest part of the whole thing.

Now to be completely honest, if I didn’t know the back story of the video I wouldn’t like it too much, but the emotional aspect that his story adds make it so much more special. Even when the music isn’t all that great, the fact that it came out of love is enough for some (including me) to make the song nice. Music is tied in many ways to our emotions, and if a song or the story behind a song could touch that, I think that makes it successful.

Check out the video yourself:

Video: Man creates viral video love letter for girlfriend

There’s a lot of different opinions about this video, some people say that it is an attempt for the band to be famous, others say it is an act out of love. I don’t know which one is right, but I would like to believe that he really did do this for his girlfriend. It won’t hurt to have just a little more love in the world.

I just found out about the American Composers Orchestra from an article in the New York Times. They just performed their second concert of the season at Zankel Hall on Friday, and received a great review in the New York Times.

The American Composers Orchestra is based in New York City, and it is the only orchestra in the world that focuses solely on the creation, performance, and preservation of music by American composers. The American Composers Orchestra, also known as ACO, usually perform 5 concerts a season, but, faced with tough economic times, the orchestra will only perform 3 concerts this season. Despite financial woes, the ACO managed to put on an excellent show.

The concert was titled “A Time and Place,” and the pieces that were performed were from specific periods and settings. The first piece played was “Central Park in the Dark,” which, according to the New York Times, “evokes sensations and sounds that might be experienced while sitting on a park bench on a summer night.” Then came Ryan Francis’s “High Line,” which was inspired by the High Line in Manhattan, which is a park that was built on abandoned elevated railways. You can watch a video introducing the piece below.

Although the first two pieces played centered on New York City, there were pieces played in the program that were reflective of other parts of America, such as “The Fire at 4 a.m.” inspired by the Great Plains, or Christopher Trapani’s “Westering,” which has a Western feel.

The American Composers seems like a great organization and I think going to one of their concerts would be an exciting and worthwhile experience.

New York Times Review

As technology gets more advanced with age, more computers are able to seem more human in more than one way.  The movie A.I. depicts this, and Vocaloids, as blogged about by Praveena, is another example.  In the recent New York Times article, Virginia Heffernan wrote about how scary it can be to interact with computers on the same levels as a human being.  As an example of this, Heffernan wrote that when the Russian Chess Champion Garry lost his his final match to the I.B.M. computer Deep Blue in 1997, he was completely disheartened.  As he had put it, he “lost his fighting spirit”.  After going so long without being beaten once, he loses his match to something that doesn’t even “have a heartbeat”.

The author uses this example to compare how she has often felt with Pandora.  For those who are unfamiliar with Pandora, it is an internet radio service (free) where you listen to different songs play according to your tastes.  The way Pandora figures out what you like is from comparing the different aspects of the songs that you said you either liked or disliked.  These can include instrumentation, lyrics, melody, harmony, rhythm, etc.  I think the way they figure out what parts of the songs that you like is by comparing which parts of liked songs are similar.  After that, Pandora will try to decide which songs you might like by choosing those with similar vocals, harmony, rhythm, etc.

Heffernan felt like Pandora, like the computer Deep Blue, turned human activities that are based on emotions into a “set of flow charts”.  This leads to what she calls “spiritual exhaustion”, since what we usually do with other emotional minds (like sharing music and playing a chess game) is now done with emotionally cold computers.  Like meeting the child robot of A.I., it is “creepy”.  The author also made a good point in saying that when we listened to music in the past, we depended on the fact that it is mostly subjective.  But Pandora makes the users seem “predictable”.  What you liked and didn’t like is now being followed by a computer.

But with changing times, humans are meant to change with it.  The author had boycotted music because of this, but found that she was not hurting anyone but herself, so she gave Pandora another try.  The truth is, Pandora really can tell what kind of music she liked, even if she was unwilling to admit it.  After the defeat, Kasparov was able to get over the loss and played I.B.M. again in 2003.  So basically, they both managed to return from defeat at the “hands of digital culture”.  Being a Pandora user myself, I rarely ever put in any preferences for songs that I liked and didn’t like, because I was afraid of the computer telling me what my preferences are.  But after reading this article, I think I might actually start doing so, especially if it is accurate in reading my likes and dislikes.  I do think it is a little scary how accurate computers can be, but I’m not too afraid of them replacing humans, since I think they will ever be able to generate human emotions and mistakes accurately.

After reading ToniAnn’s post about the one-man a cappella medley of Michael Jackson tunes, I was reminded of something that I learned about in my music class during junior year. It also happens to be relevant to our Arts in NYC class because it is the product of a quintessential New York figure. In 1990, a show aired on television called “Do It A Cappella” that was filmed by Spike Lee. In the video, which you can watch in its entirety on YouTube, Spike Lee and Debbie Allen go around the city and find groups of a cappella singers in places that you might not have ordinarily expected, such as bathrooms and basements. It includes a wide range of a cappella music, featuring several famous groups, such as The Persuasions and Rockappella. Before I watched “Do It A Cappella,” I never really had any knowledge about or interest in a cappella music. However, the show is extremely entertaining and is a great introduction into the genre. If you have a night over the next few weeks when you have nothing to do, I highly recommend going on You Tube and watching the whole thing. If you’re currently not a fan of the genre, you might become a convert. I’ve included several a cappella clips below, two of which are from Spike Lee’s show.

Watch these 2 clips from Spike Lee’s “Do It A Cappella”:

Watch the a Jewish a cappella group called “The Maccabeats,” from Yeshiva University in Manhattan, sing a Hanukah version of the popular song “Dynamite”:

With the holiday season approaching I figure I’d write about my favorite musician who happens to have a holiday season cd- saxophone player Kenny G.  Kenny G plays soprano, alto, and tenor saxophone as well as the flute.  I love listening him because his music is just so relaxing and flawless to me.  In particular, one piece prompted me to write this post: his Auld Lang Syne Millenium Mix.

Alongside with the soothing sound of the saxophone playing the tune of Auld Lang Syne, a song celebrating the start of the new year, we get to hear some recordings of some of the most memorable historic events in the 1900s.  Some people we hear are Franklin Roosevelt, Martin Luther King Jr, Bill Clinton  and some events mentioned are the landing of man on the moon, the attack of pearl harbor, the Columbine shooting, the assassination of President Kennedy, the Berlin Wall being knocked down, and the outbreak of AIDS.  I think that this mix is such a great collaboration.  The soothingness of the music alongside with the voiceovers of these events  as well as the juxtaposition of celebrating the new and remembering the old makes the music more emotional and meaningful.  I hope you all listen to it.

A capella is a musical term referring to singing without any instrumental accompaniment.  Last year, my chorus teacher showed me an amazing video that really highlights the meaning of an a capella performance.  The video is of a young man named Sam Tsui singing a compilation of popular Michael Jackson songs.  Tsui has an incredible voice, but what is even more awe-inspiring is the arrangement and production by the talented Kurt Schneider.  The medley is completely a capella, and Sam Tsui’s voice is what makes up all of the harmonies heard in the background.  The only part of the video that is not done by Tsui is the beat boxing, which is done by Schneider himself.

I find it extremely amazing that an entire medley of songs can be produced using only vocals, and sound as if there are instruments being used!  If you think about it, Tsui had to learn each of the many parts heard in the video, and record them all separately before Schneider could put them all together to produce the final product.  Every time I hear this video, I am amazed, and I’m sure you will be too!  The following video is worth watching, and as you watch, try and pick out all the different voice parts that Tsui has recorded.  You will not be disappointed!