We were talking about kids moving. Do you have any of those candy . Handy . Yeah. I will play a little bit of an old appalachian folk song. What i tried to do is and the melody is there, song is there, but i tried to bring the rhythm into a more contemporary context. This has more of an r b, hiphop feeling to it. [applause] there is an obvious way that lyrics tell a story. Certainly, instrumental music does, that is what ballet is about. In a way, they have it easy because there are dangers to tell the story. Would you say that is what youre trying to do with your music, trying to tell a story . I think so. I do not always consciously have an image. Often i do. Sometimes it is a catalyst for starting, i will fiddle around with an idea and the image starts to rise in my mind as i work with it. For example, i played a little bit of a piece from my collection, the water garden, started in 1998, had sketched out a few ideas. It was wintertime, january. We had just moved up to mendocino cou
Handy . Yeah. I will play a little bit of an old appalachian folk song. What i tried to do is and the melody is there, song is there, but i tried to bring the rhythm into a more contemporary context. This has more of an r b, hiphop feeling to it. [applause] there is an obvious way that lyrics tell a story. Certainly, instrumental music does, that is what ballet is about. In a way, they have it easy because there are dangers to tell the story. Would you say that is what youre trying to do with your music, trying to tell a story . I think so. I do not always consciously have an image. Often i do. Sometimes it is a catalyst for starting, i will fiddle around with an idea and the image starts to rise in my mind as i work with it. For example, i played a little bit of a piece from my collection, the water garden, started in 1998, had sketched out a few ideas. It was wintertime, january. We had just moved up to mendocino county, and it was raining for two, three weeks, every day, constantly.
For example, i played a little bit of a piece from my collection, the water garden, started in 1998, had sketched out a few ideas. It was wintertime, january. We had just moved up to mendocino county, and it was raining for two, three weeks, every day, constantly. It took me about two or three weeks to realize i was sort of an absorbing the sensation of water into everything i was doing. Oh, i get it. It should be a collection on the theme of water. Then i turn it around and it became a more conscious effort to make the rest of the music i was writing sound like it have some element of water, whether it was fast, slow, stillwater. The title of that collection is a slow peace. I always like to think that it feels like the surface of water. More importantly than that, if the composer, improviser, is connected with an image or story, no matter what that story is, the and the listener who hears it is going to feel that. A man that did the same thing. I may be thinking water and somebody el
Composer brings. I will try. [laughter] this is a piece from the water garden. I will try to play it. We did not work this out ahead of time. Ok, now im going to try to play with more articulation and movement. [applause] i hope you could tell the difference. I wonder to the extent it is like acting . No actor, like william shatner, is speaking in a monotone. The idea is to breathe life and experience into the line. That is where the art of it is. I think so. I teach a lot of workshops, master classes. One thing i am always encouraging students, guitar players to do is to keep the music movement, so that it does not become static. If you have a note you are sustaining for a long time, you want to have something happening. Likewise, when you have notes in juxtaposition to one another, there is a dynamic interplay in between the notes, just as there are between musicians. As a solo player, it is important to accent certain notes and contrast the dynamics with others. It is like the conce
Music activates the cerebellum, which is responsible for your ability to move, your limbs, parts of your body, to maintain a steady gait. It is almost automatic, when music comes in at a student certain polls, neurons are going to fire in synchronization with that polls. Even kids move to music. One of your more recent records, you took some childrens folk tunes and you rearranged them. We were talking about kids moving. Do you have any of those candy . Handy . Yeah. I will play a little bit of an old appalachian folk song. What i tried to do is and the melody is there, song is there, but i tried to bring the rhythm into a more contemporary context. This has more of an r b, hiphop feeling to it. [applause] there is an obvious way that lyrics tell a story. Certainly, instrumental music does, that is what ballet is about. In a way, they have it easy because there are dangers to tell the story. Would you say that is what youre trying to do with your music, trying to tell a story . I think