Imogen Heap: "Just For Now"

A fantastic YouTube clip to start your Monday. Imogen Heap sings a round with herself, mixing it in real-time.

Cycles of culture

In his recent SALT talk, Steven Johnson plugged the book Graphs, Maps, Trees by Franco Moretti. I just finished it, and it's hands-down one of the best analyses of literary history I've ever read.

Moretti practices what he calls "distant reading," looking at the full literary output of a society over time. His models—the graphs, maps, and trees of the title—bring some hidden cycles of human culture into sharp relief. He also offers some tentative, but compelling hypotheses regarding how and why new artistic forms arise, evolve, and decay.

P.S. Anyone interested in an engaging debate about cycles of artistic form should also check out the discussion of music—and specifically, David Levitin's book "This Is Your Brain on Music"—taking place in the North American Future Salon Yahoo! group. Look for the subject header "Accelerating Change."

Plunge in CD Sales Shakes Up Big Labels

From today's NYT:

"Aram Sinnreich, a media industry consultant at Radar Research in Los Angeles, said the CD format, introduced in the United States 24 years ago, is in its death throes. 'Everyone in the industry thinks of this Christmas as the last big holiday season for CD sales,' Mr. Sinnreich said, 'and then everything goes kaput.'”

Exterminate! Exterminate! Exterminate!

Clive Thompson at collision detection finds this amazing interview with Peter Howell, the arranger of the 1980s Doctor Who theme. Howell explains how all of the sound effects were generated, with Dalek and TARDIS effects thrown in to boot.

The science of a human obsession

I just finished reading Daniel Levitin's book This is Your Brain on Music, an exploration of the neuroscience of music-making and music-listening. The book is filled with interesting case studies, and compelling explanations of what makes certain musical experiences tickling, addictive, or irritating:

"Music theorists have identified a principle called gap fill; in a sequence of tones, if a melody makes a large leap, either up or down, the next note should change direction... In 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow,' the melody begins with one of the largest leaps we've ever experienced in a lifetime of music listening: an octave. This is a strong scehmatic violation, and so the composer rewards and soothes us by bringing the melody back toward home again, but not by too much—he does come down, but only by one scale degree—because he wants to continue to build tension..."

"[In Beethoven's Ninth Symphony ('Ode to Joy')], the main melodic theme is simply the notes of the scale... But Beethoven makes it interesting by violating our expectations. He starts on a strange note and ends on a strange note. He starts on the third degree of the scale (as he did on the 'Pathetique' Sonata), rather than the root, and then goes up in a stepwise fashion, then turns around and comes down again. When he gets to the root—the most stable tone—rather than staying there he comes up again, up to the note we started on, then back down so that we think and we expect he will hit the root again, but he doesn't; he stays right there on re, the second scale degree. The piece needs to resolve to the root, but Beethoven keeps us hanging there, where we least expect to be. He then runs the entire motif again, and only on the second time through does he meet our expectations. But now, that expectation is more interesting because of the ambiguity: We wonder if, like Lucy waiting for Charlie Brown, he will pull the football of resolution away from us at the last minute."

Steve Jobs: Thoughts on music

A short essay from Steve Jobs on the future of DRM.

Amoeba's Big Green Box

Local music mega super community store Amoeba Records has introduced a Big Green Box at its Hollywood store where customers can turn in e-waste for recycling seven days a week. With other innovations like selling CFL lightbulbs along with CDs and DVDs, Amoeba is "turning out to be a huge independent music store with a big green heart" (via Worldchanging).

Lay your doubts and fears aside

While searching the web recently for choruses and music groups in San Francisco (I'm an amateur singer), I stumbled across this Handel recording by Justin Montigne. A study break for anyone who appreciates classical music and virtuoso singing.

This is your brain on Coldplay

Daniel Levitin explores the neuroscience of music (NY Times).

The Evening Call

My brother hit a home run by buying me the latest Greg Brown CD for Christmas. I have a thing for soulful baritones, and The Evening Call is one of the best from Brown's thirty year career.

The album has many virtues, but what I like most are Greg's beautiful, broken voice, and flashes of wisdom and joy found deep in the muck of life.

Let me get what I want this time

There's a hilarious and touching exhibit at the SFMOMA called "the world won't listen." Phil Collins (not that one) went to Istanbul in 2005 to film young people bearing their souls doing karaoke versions of Smiths songs. And all we got was this wonderful 1-hour video.

Anxiety of influence

HistoryShots publishes the famous Genealogy of Pop/Rock Music by Reebee Garofalo.

Ted talks and sings

New videos have been posted this morning to TEDtalks, including Jeff Han, at NYU's Media Research Lab.

Also new, on iTunes: Teddy Thompson singing "Tonight Will Be Fine" (Leonard Cohen).

Things to be happy about: Paul Curreri

Paul is a country blues singer and guitarist who lives in Charlotteville, Virginia. He is also a force of nature—with enough talent, unexpected wisdom, and emotional generosity to warm a thousand hearts.

Paul's first album that got me hooked was "Songs for Devon Sproule"—dedicated to his fellow folk singer and now wife.