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Howdy, Stephen!
Wanted to post a comment to your latest blog entry but ran up against the 1,024 character limit and didn't want to try breaking it up among multiple replies so I figured I'd just e-mail it to you.
I don't think it's in my soul, but I can learn.
Hmmm. Playing the pan pipe may not be in your soul either but you could learn that as well. Question is: why would you?
You say when you listen to music, you take it in the whole rather than examining individual parts. What's wrong with that? Nothing that I can see. That's how I listen too. And for me…
Mejias:
They're scared of changing you. Not that you will lose or gain, not that you will grow or that they'll inadvertently destroy some base level instinct that must be protected from the elements, they are scared they will be held responsible for opening your own box of pandoras.
In terms of writing reviews, and getting cash money, you need to grow your equipment vocabulary. Pick something you love about the music you love listening to, and listen to see if it is communicated to you differently through different circuits. I have always believed when JA, or AD, or BJR refer…
Your blog is pretty chaotic, alright, but poses a couple of interesting questions. I was going to reply to it, but 1,024 characters would NEVER do for an old windbag like me. So here I am.
Running through it is the old conflict between spontaneity and control, between unbridled creativity and studied artifice. Refusing to submit to "conventional methods," you said, "Am I naive or stubborn?" Both, I say. You voice the fear that "Learning conventional methods might erase all of my natural..." what? There is no "what," unless your natural state is incommunicable gibberish. Everything…
Douglas Hofstadter reconsiders some of his notions about music and artifical intelligence.
I've been kicking myself for years for not saving the copy of The New York Times in which Hans Fantel wrote about hearing Bruno Walter's 1938 performance of Mahler's Ninth Symphony.
Alex Ross got Fantel's permission to reprint it on his marvelous The Rest Is Noise blog.
Fantel used to write about hi-fi for the NYT and audiophiles frequently derided his choices of equipment to review, but when I was an audio salesman, I demonstrated systems and components for Mr. Fantel and he clearly recognized special gear when he heard it—he reigned in his inner geek to reach a wider audience. As…
If you were sending a shout out to an alien species, what would you say? Here's what Cosmic Call sent via a 70m telescope in the Ukraine. Let's hope our fellow sapient species are brighter than I am—I had to click through to the translation.