Saturday 31 January 2009

The Ultimate Music Promotion Tool

A Creative Commons License Is The Ultimate Music Promotion Tool: Avant Music News cites a common thread heard 'round the world -- "I sold a few copies - but eventually came to a realization I would rather have my music reach more ears as the money I was making was worth far less than the joy of being able to share it with others. Soon after that, I released my latest album along with a few of my older works under a creative commons license.

My goal with art shifted to purely enjoying the process, and I didn’t even worry about promoting it, I just uploaded it. And believe it or not, that’s when the real magic started to happen."
"The galaxy's awaiting
the planet Earth's awakening."

Someday let me tell you how I became certifiably Canada's most listened to modern symphonic composer.

Friday 30 January 2009

Conduction #180

I'm with Butch 100% on this one:

Morris developed this system gradually in the 1970s and 1980s, after his work in jazz, free improvisation and contemporary music left him dissatisfied. He had tired of the theme-solo-theme patters of jazz; collaborative improvisation had moments of brilliance, but Morris's desire to isolate and elaborate interesting melodic or rhythmic fragments was generally frowned upon; and he felt the reverence towards composers and printed scores in contemporary music did not allow for the full use of each musician's unique voice and improvisations.

Keyboardist/bandleader Sun Ra and drummer Charles Moffett both conducted improvisations of jazz musicians in the 1970s, and Morris credits both as major influences.

(wikipedia)

Morris started with a vocabulary of just 4 signs, leading players to repeat, sustain, change speed or playout; today his Conduction technique uses a vocabulary of some 20 signals that let him play his ensembles like it was a single semi-autonomous instrument, a bank of player-presets he can coax and curl into the sounds he needs for the moment.

Well-makers lead the water (wherever they like); fletchers bend the arrow; carpenters bend a log of wood; wise people fashion themselves.

list.it .. before you forget it!

a place to stash your information the Latitudinal Information Scrap Trapper that Indexes Things - is a small, simple note-keeping tool for solving a big, complex task -- helping you manage the tons of little information bits you need to keep track of each day. list.it does this by focusing on speed and simplicity. We have gotten rid of everything except a way to get things in and out quickly, so that you can get things out of your head and somewhere you can access easily any time.
Karger said his group isn't bothered in the least that millions of people still use Post-it notes, but thinks they might be tempted to dial back on the yellow squares if computer programs were designed better. A good program, he said, would have none of the fields and forms common to the genre, and would instead allow someone to easily type or paste in anything they wanted. This design criteria has been elevated by his study group into something of a mantra: "No interfaces."

List.It runs under Linux, Mac and Windows using the Firefox 3.x browser; its free for the download and also gives you the opportunity to participate in the ethnography evaluation of the software by submitting your notes as use tracking data.

Thursday 29 January 2009

War is a Racket

Maj. General Smedley Butler, awarded the Medal of Honor twice. His classic statement against war came in the pamphlet, War is a Racket, published in 1935, the telling of the tale of who profits from war, who pays the cost, and how to end the racket.
War is a Racket , by Maj. General Smedley Butler

Sunday 25 January 2009

Ode To Joy

Yes, its true. Muppets are back, and they've moved into YouTube, and if this wasn't enough culture shock for you, how about some Free Range Strauss?


Girls With Guitars

Girls With Guitars -- the next great manga genre for the modern world ...
Some may ask, "Why do the girl guitar players need a website?" I'm happy to tell you why. I'm lucky to have a long and fairly illustrious career as a female guitar player. I've been a professional guitar player/concert performer/session player/recording artist for over 30 years (Yikes! How's that possible?). After all this time people still come up to me and ask, "Why don't more women play the guitar?" I'm still surprised by the question even though I've heard it hundreds of times and I've finally figured out a way to give people an answer. The answer is on the pages of Girls With Guitars.
Girls With Guitars - A place for female guitar players to meet, greet and share information.

Thursday 22 January 2009

The Ultimate Immigrant

Citizen Orange: Who is it? "... just another undocumented resident living in his adoptive country, giving back to his people and being an example of what it means to be 'American.'

He was sent by his parents to a foreign land so he could have a better life. He never knew he was an 'alien' until his adoptive parents told him in his teen years, but even then he always knew he was different. He embraced his heritage and adopted his homes ideals and values.

Yet for all the good he does, there are those who still curse him and wish he would go back to his home, a place he's never known and doesn't exist anymore. Sound familiar?"

Wednesday 21 January 2009

The Mind Bites


Mind bites presents 83 beautifully illustrated reasons why I fled from Psychology.

characteristic pseudoscience cynicism so thick, you could cut it with a knife -- I'm sure to be the object of someone's RDD for that remark.
"This and that from the research into the mind and brain.

"If you have an interesting study, please flickr message me the finding and reference and I'll make it into a mindbite when I have a mo."

Our Stories Live On

Fun indeed: I get two tweets in a row from the NFB.ca, the first says mysteriously
thenfb: Will be fun to see how different news outlets react to the site.

followed a few minutes later with
thenfb: Wow. Okay NFB.ca is pretty much headline news across the country

so ... what's all the fuss and buzz about?

Only about 700 pretty amazing films, online, for free, that's all.

Learning Makes Itself Invisible

Learning SHOULD Be Fun: Tom Stafford writes "In lots of teaching situations we focus on the right and wrong answers to things, which is a venerable paradigm for learning, but not the only one. There is a less structured, curiosity-driven, paradigm which focusses not on what is absolutely right or wrong, but instead on what is surprising. A problem with rights and wrongs is that, for some people, the pressure of being correct gets in the way of experiencing what actually is.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4n_i4b4Wy-M&hl=en&fs=1]
You can try this for yourself, either in any teaching you do, or any learning. Often we will get blocked at a particular stage in our learning. A normal response is to try harder, and to focus more on what we're doing right, and what we're doing wrong. Sometimes this helps, but sometimes it just digs us further into our rut. The way out of the rut is to re-focus on experiencing again."
See also Tom's essay on the always-additive nature of learning at School of Everything: "Once you have learnt something you see the world differently. Not only can you appreciate or do something that you couldn't appreciate or do before, but the way you saw the world before is now lost to you. This works for the small things as well as the big picture. If you learn the meaning of a new word, you won't be able to ignore it like you did previously. If you learn how to make a cup of out of clay you won't ever be able to see cups like you used to before."

Tuesday 20 January 2009

The Stepping Stone

Casa Valdez Studios: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Opening Address to the 1964 Berlin Jazz Festival - "Much of the power of our Freedom Movement in the United States has come from this music. It has strengthened us with its sweet rhythms when courage began to fail. It has calmed us with its rich harmonies when spirits were down.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TR5b0Eryr1U&hl=en&fs=1]
And now, Jazz is exported to the world. For in the particular struggle of the Negro in America there is something akin to the universal struggle of modern man. Everybody has the Blues. Everybody longs for meaning. Everybody needs to love and be loved. Everybody needs to clap hands and be happy. Everybody longs for faith.

In music, especially this broad category called Jazz, there is a stepping stone towards all of these."

Monday 19 January 2009

Top Of The Mountain

April 3, 1968

"I am not interested in power for power's sake, but I'm interested in power that is moral, that is right and that is good."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
You can download the full recording at The "B" Side as the 45rpm single Melrose MLK-1

Friday 16 January 2009

The Best-Selling MP3 Album of 2008 ... was free


NIN’s CC-Licensed Ghosts I-IV was Amazon's Best-Selling MP3 Album for 2008: "NIN fans could have gone to any file sharing network to download the entire CC-BY-NC-SA album legally. Many did, and thousands will continue to do so. So why would fans bother buying files that were identical to the ones on the file sharing networks?"
Because Amazon is so easy to use? I don't buy that argument if only because the payment transaction itself is several screens long. The only answer left says the NiN fans were assured far more of the (reasonable price) $5 they spent would go straight to their idols, coupled with their just wanting to be a part of the hyped temporal happening of it all.
Curiously, or maybe not curious at all, there is a lot of freely trade-friendly file-shared artists in the Amazon lists.

What is This Thing Called Free Jazz?

Bop era pianist, Lennie Tristano alumnus and free-jazz educator Connie Crothers offers a basic introduction to 'Free Jazz' by taking a familiar melody (What Is This Thing Called Love) through three progressively more 'outside' variations. "On the fourth," she says, "I will just play."

The Best-Selling MP3 Album of 2008 ... was free


NIN???s CC-Licensed Ghosts I-IV was Amazon's Best-Selling MP3 Album for 2008: "NIN fans could have gone to any file sharing network to download the entire CC-BY-NC-SA album legally. Many did, and thousands will continue to do so. So why would fans bother buying files that were identical to the ones on the file sharing networks?"
Because Amazon is so easy to use? I don't buy that argument if only because the payment transaction itself is several screens long. The only answer left says the NiN fans were assured far more of the (reasonable price) $5 they spent would go straight to their idols, coupled with their just wanting to be a part of the hyped temporal happening of it all.
Curiously, or maybe not curious at all, there is a lot of freely trade-friendly file-shared artists in the Amazon lists.

Thursday 15 January 2009

Norwegian Eco-Kids

EarthFirst.com:The Norwegian organization Milj??agentene (Eco Agents) is educating kids about the environment and how to behave in an environmentally friendly manner.

Our aim is to stimulate children???s interest and love for nature, and to make them realize that the way we live our lives has influence on the environment. Eco-agents always focuses on possibilities, and our goal is to make the voices of the children heard.

Wednesday 14 January 2009

William Gray’s Pay Telephone


William Gray’s Pay Telephone: "One day in Gray’s workroom a coin slipped out of a helper’s hand and fell on a bell. Gray was startled. Then he saw his solution. The coin itself must give the signal. The bell must be placed in its path!"
There's two things about William Gray's story worthy of note to those who would change the world:
  1. From his personal experience, he had some idea of the practical problem he needed to solve, but he hadn't a clue how to solve it, and even after showing his first quite absurd solution to the Bell officials, neither he nor they had any idea how to proceed. Not until he stumbled upon the solution by sheer chance. Nonetheless, if he hadn't been looking for that coin-bell sound, he would never have noticed it.
  2. Seems Gray Telephone had a sugar-daddy in Amos Whitney, and it's worth a note too that while the initiator, discoverer and developer Gray got the company named after him and got a world where his original crisis-problem was now permanently solved, it is the bankrolling Amos who got the top-salary job.

Tuesday 13 January 2009

What will change everything?

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The World Question Center 2009: "We are moving towards the redefinition of life, to the edge of creating life itself. While science may or may not be the only news, it is the news that stays news."
WHAT WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING?
"What game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?"
Alan Alda to Anton Zeilinger, Edge.org presents 151 answers (107,000 words)

To The Cosmic Birther of All Radiance and Vibration ...

Direct translation of an ancient Aramaic prayer:
"O cosmic Birther of all radiance and vibration!
Soften the ground of our being and
carve out a space within us where
Your Presence can abide.
Fill us with your creativity so that we
may be empowered to bear the fruit
of your mission.
Let each of our actions bear fruit in
accordance with our desire.
Endow us with the wisdom to produce
and share what each being needs to grow and flourish.
Untie the tangled threads of destiny that
bind us, as we release others from the
entanglement of past mistakes.
Do not let us be seduced by that which would
divert us from our true purpose, but illuminate
the opportunities of the present moment.
For you are the round and the fruitful vision,
the birth-power and fulfillment,
as all is gathered and made whole once again."

Strangely modern but oddly familiar? Maybe you know it by the later Aramaic to Greek to Latin to Old English to English translation called The Lord's Prayer?

How to resolve the Credit Crisis

Web of Debt: Ellen Brown writes "The credit crunch could be avoided by ???going local??? not just in the United States but around the world. Countries that have been seduced or coerced into funneling their productive assets into serving foreign markets and foreign investors could become self-sustaining, using their own credit and their own resources to feed and serve their own people."
Interesting idea: a parallel banking system based on community commons -- South Bruce Peninsula puts up 8% of some arbitrary figure, and then loans it out (at fair rates) as community scrip for local infrastructure, homeowners and improvements, community development projects, and voila! jobs galore, eco-economically self-contained! Of course, it gets better (more practical for everyday use) if it is Provincial or even, dare I say, a National scrip -- hmmm ... isn't that where the Bank of Canada came from?

Sunday 11 January 2009

Darcy James Argue on Recording Logistics

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Fractured Atlas Blog : Featured Member: "Right now, fiscal sponsorship is more common in the classical music world than in jazz or pop circles, but with the traditional recording industry in decline, I think you???re going to see a lot more musicians of all stripes turn to Fractured Atlas and similar organizations as a way to help raise money for their recording projects."
I dare say Darcy is right and his comment struck me as a perfectly viable model for the future of recording in a world where it is almost a given that an indy record will be lucky to break even. But as a community barn-raising event, it does make good sense, as a means to properly document what would otherwise be left to less-than-ideal field recordings using questionably placed lapel-clip microphones, it would be worth it to the 'appreciators' just to have the master sitting somewhere for posterity, and from that perspective then does it perhaps make common-good sense that the collectively financed master should be in the Creative Commons?

ArcoSanti

mini documentary on the long-running experimental community directed and inspired by the Italian futurist/architect Paolo Soleri; the model for ArcoSanti appears to be one of a work-retreat kibbutz rather than as a long-term permanent residence, but again, it is a probing into a plausible positive future where we humans can live within the ecology.

This follows on the earlier posts about the Zeitgeist's Venus Project by Jacque Fresco, but what troubles me about both visions is why they are two, why they are disparate, working on the same problem, but only within their own highly personal model. The documentary here does hint that Paolo may not be precisely democratic in his plan, despite claims to the contrary, and it seems much the same with Jacque, and that, I think speaks heaps for the Science and Engineering visioneers. I understand the human story is largely one of a Genetic Program, but just as we always wanted Batman to work with Superman, I'd want Fresco to work with Soleri, both to work with the Buckminster Fuller legacy, all to look into Ortegrity and just generally treat the subject of an alter-destiny with an open scientific mind. Is anyone doing that? Other than Latitude Zero that is.

Or are they all pursuing fixed-idea personal utopian visions of charismatic Castanedas?

??

Friday 9 January 2009

Yoda: The Difficult Co-Star


Portion of full interview with Mark Hamill, from "Legends of Film & Fantasy" a new documentary to be released in the fall. As an inspiration to all of us who may hesitate thinking we're not quite ready for the big time, Mark discusses the difficulties working alone with a highly experimental and temperamental puppet, and learning how, no matter what his co-star might do, just go ahead anyway, because something might still be useful.

And what a 'something' it was!

"It will never happen"


Nassim Taleb is only interested in one topic: chance. Particularly extreme and rare events, the "Black Swans", the point where improbable chance falls at the intersection of philosophy/epistemology, philosophy/ethics, mathematics, social science/finance, and cognitive science.
Accept no pundit market-trend forecasts of gloom until you hear out Nassim Taleb and his argument of how our daily lives are dominated by ripples from game-changing disruptions no one expected, those glitchevents that Buckminster Fuller called "Unforeseen Leaps in capabilities", what Sun Ra called "the Greater Unknown".

Music Blog Zeitgeist of 2008

Music Blog Zeitgeist of 2008 / The Hype Machine: "Forget the magazine editors & big label marketing budgets. This is the best music from 2008 chosen by the most passionate music fans alive: music bloggers."
Hmmm ... what's this? a strong correlation between ranking and free trade-friendly MP3's available? Co-incidence? Or the fulfillment of a prophesy!

The StyleHunters

Peter Hum writes "December's No. 2 movie in Russia -- a musical that's worth our consideration because it's all about youthful Soviet jazz fans who took on the Communists"

"If you want a better world, make a better music." (Marshall Allen)

"I will never happen"

Nassim Taleb is only interested in one topic: chance. Particularly extreme and rare events, the "Black Swans", the point where improbable chance falls at the intersection of philosophy/epistemology, philosophy/ethics, mathematics, social science/finance, and cognitive science.

Accept no pundit market-trend forecasts of gloom until you hear out Nassim Taleb and his argument of how our daily lives are dominated by ripples from game-changing disruptions no one expected, those glitchevents that Buckminster Fuller called "Unforeseen Leaps in capabilities", what Sun Ra called "the Greater Unknown".

Thursday 8 January 2009

Jacques Fresco

"Science is the ability to predict the next 'most probable'" -- a visit with Venus Project architect/designer Jacque Fresco, on applying the scientific method to urban architecture, and on how our environment nurtures our behaviours, on how access to information renders our 'primative' beliefs obsolete and on his vision of a world where "the probability of war drops to zero"

well ... any man who is a friend of his local racoons is a friend of mine. by the looks of it, this was filmed at the Venus Project ... which is now for sale for a very reasonable price - I've been trying to pry an answer obout as to why the prototype is being sold (talking about 'access to information') but so far the only reasonable answer (proffered by detractors) is that he shouldn't have chosen a state with a governor named Jeb, and might have had better luck attracting participants had he built it in Arizona.

Future by Design

Trailer for a film by William Gazecki about Jacque Fresco, the self-taught futurist who describes himself most often as a "generalist" or multi-disciplinarian -- a student of many inter-related fields. He is a prolific inventor, having spent his entire life (he is now 90 years old) conceiving of and devising inventions on various scales which entail the use of innovative technology. As a futurist, Jacque is not only a conceptualist and a theoretician, but he is also an engineer and a designer.

Apropos to this, is this: "It is not difficult to imagine end-of-the-world scenarios. Indeed, the problem is to imagine a plausible future in which humanity ultimately arrives at a positive outcome." (http://tinyurl.com/78yktf) so for whatever other reservations there may be, you have to give Jacque points on that count, and yes, we have seen those locations before here on TFP.

Wednesday 7 January 2009

Better Than Free


ChangeThis :: Better Than Free: "When copies are super abundant, stuff which can't be copied becomes scarce and valuable. When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied.

Well, what can't be copied?'"

What indeed; download the pdf to read BeyondFree - worth a re-printing, even if it is old news, and older still if you compare it to this really old news - yikes! I'm only six years ahead of Seth, Kevin et al?? egad, I'm losing my edge!

Kilgore's GigaPan Gallery

Kilgore's Gallery Page 1: The Bath Sweet Shop, King Bladud's Pigs or dive into a Gigagigerpan - zoom from full panorama to reading the text on a newspaper in the crowd!
I don' know how yuz done it, but yuz done it.

Take the thumbnail tours at the bottom to get a feel for the game, then go get lost in a Candy Shop (see if you can find the Old Recipe Celtic Crumble, or the Sugar Mice!)

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I got lost in Bath. Found the Starbucks and the Roman Baths and even the Friends Meeting Hall, but took hours to find a way back to the office.

Tuesday 6 January 2009

New Year Ultra Resolutions

Urutora No Hi::
1. To not go to school on an empty stomach
2. To air out the futon on days when the weather is good
3. To watch out for cars when walking on the street
4. To not rely on strength of others
5. To play by running around barefoot when on dirt

For maximum effect, you are encouraged to scream out the pledges, especially while running late to office / school. :-)
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOGj32jnrQo&hl=en&fs=1]

Monsters

RoboJapan writes "A TV commercial for The Ladders who say 'We only work with the big talents' -- I just have to wonder just how good The Ladders really are? I mean, if they are catering to such a 'high-class' clientele, then you think that they would have been able to afford Godzilla or Gamera?"

while it's a nice shot in the Retirement Income for old Guilala, as RoboJapan notes: "hard the economic times are for everybody. Companies can't afford the "high-price" monsters anymore."

Thursday 1 January 2009

Haruo Nakajima Turns 80

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Armand's Rancho del Cielo: "Nakajima, who was the man in the Godzilla suit from 1954 to 1972, turned 80 years old today.

Nakajima played several other monsters during his movie career including Rodan, Varan, King Kong and many others. He also became the choreographer of monster fights. He was honored last year at G-FEST XV with the 'Mangled Skyscraper Award.'"

How many people have visited or longed to visit Japan just to walk in Nakajima-san's footsteps. Oops, a rather bad choice of words there ... To stand in his shadow? Er ... not much better ...

An incredibly cynical take on 10 strategic blogging tactics


Digital Strategy-: Mark Pollard calls out AdSpace Pioneers and "exposes the cunning strategies of mastermind social play-maker, Julian Cole. Yes, the blonde-quaffed man who 'innocently' blogs here every day. The thing is, after watching Mr Cole from afar, I quickly came to the belief that he had to be in possession of the Ultimate Blogging Strategy Playbook. The one the seniors kept hidden in American Pie, and passed on to younger generations when the time was right.

Only this playbook isn't about the sacred gyrations of the nether-regions and weird positions that would pull hamstrings the world over. No, the playbook in Cole's hands is about how to get you, his kind-hearted readers, to not just read his blog but to even respond to it ... and - even more sinister - subscribe to it, social-bookmark it.

He's just way too smooth."

Hilarious ... and true.
Only thing missing is the business plan.