thinking: relating- celebrating :-)

Is Kaki King a guitar god or not? The really interesting thing about music and other art is that we as viewers get to spin off in a multitude of directions and the real answer is that all of those opinions are correct and valid. There is no right answer to the musical question – there are only opinions about who we like better at the time.

I wrote this post as a comment after watching the video below.

“Kaki King, the first female on Rolling Stone’s “guitar god” list, rocks out to a full live set at TED2008, including her breakout single, “Playing with Pink Noise.” Jaw-dropping virtuosity meets a guitar technique that truly stands out.”

I once watched Leo Kottke in concert and while he is technically brilliant for me it was kind of sterile and neither the music nor the songs connected with me. Kaki is clearly one to watch as she is youngish and by the sound of it has some new music since this performance.

I have seen other virtuoso players before and so maybe this is not so surprising as it is to those for whom this style is a new thing.

Technical excellence is a great starting point for a musical conversation. Last year I watched Rufus Wainwright in concert and

I wanted him to hit some wrong notes so I knew I wasn’t watching a hologram.

He did make some connections but sometimes he was just playing the piano (fantastically well.) I was there for the songs – & not the tricks. That video eye thing in the first half was a bit much and the Elizabethan dress was OTT but we never got a good look at it really.

Regarding Rufus – his concert was gobsmacking nonetheless and his new album Out of the Game is his best yet – but I digress.

When we listen to music the brain makes instant associations and connections with our prior experiences so we all come to new musical experiences with our own filters & comparisons. That is how we are wired. Daniel Kahneman and Daniel Levitin have great research into this type of thinking.

Kakis mentor Preston Reed would say he is influenced by John Fahy & others who are largely forgotten by the music business. It seems surprising that no one has mentioned Bruce Cockburn who has been playing for 50 years now and is famous not because of his guitar style which is impressive but because he has written songs that make meaningful connections with many. ( Below is Bruce with Ali Farka Toure)

I’m personally more of a blues fan and that is a great clip. BTW Ali Farka Toure made 76 on the list. Bruce didn’t make any of these lists but is a personal favourite of mine – I actually got to have dinner with him a long time ago so that was a bonus.

There are other RS lists and Bonnie Raitt ( “Hello I’m the 89th best guitarist in the world” sounds more like a line from a future episode of Flight of the Conchords.

Musicianship is not really a competition and those lists by magazines are just easy ways to write a story that the magazine can sell ads around. I did have a look at a list of the “100 greatest guitarists of all time” on Rolling Stone and was amused to see that Joni Mitchell came in at 72 and Joan Jett was at # 87 (the only women in the list) – all of which tells us more about Rolling Stone than it does about music.

Joe Sullivan thought so to. Robert Johnson at 71 is just plain wrong.

Obviously the guy making the list never saw Jennifer Precious Finch play in L7 and there are many other female guitarists who should be on these lists but they are mostly only good for Bill & Ted style pub quizzes.

In my book Joni Mitchell’s work with open tunings and with Jaco Pastorius in particular marked her as a standout on any list. I had the very great pleasure of hearing Jaco play live but according to her wikipedia entry Joni is now

“A blunt critic of the music industry, Mitchell quit touring and released her 17th, and reportedly last, album of original songs in 2007. Now based in British Columbia, she describes herself as a “painter derailed by circumstance.”[6]

Is Kaki anywhere on that scale? Not in my view but she is one to watch as the video above dates from 2008. Enjoy.

There are not many ( if any) lists of ”painters derailed by circumstance” but there are a lot of other lists. Here is a top 15 acoustic guitar  players list (video.) More context for Kaki whose tapping is really not that unusual when seen in this group – she is #11 on this list.

(On this acoustic guitar list: Petteri Sariola 15. Kotaro Oshio 14. Justin King 13. Erik Mongrain 12. Kaki King 11. Peppino D’Agostino 10. Antoine Dufour 9. Andy Mckee 8. Stephen Bennett 7. Steven King 6. Don Ross 5. Chet Atkins 4. Lenny Breau 3. Tommy Emmanuel 2. Michael Hedges 1.)

What if David Attenborough could sing? How about Stephen Hawking? Brian Cox? Well thanks to John Boswell at Symphony of Science they can and the results are surprising, delightful, educational and musically inventive.

When my daughter was younger we watched hours of Attenborough to the point that she talked about David as if he were a member of the family. We replaced TV time with documentary time instead and we still watch plenty of docus today from TED and other sources.

Of course it would be just wrong not to watch Big Band Theory but we have the DVD’s right next to our Flight of the Conchords DVDs because they are very much mockumentaries in our world.

As brain researchers uncover more about the brain and learning we discover from Donald Ford in an article called How the Brain Learns”

“What does this neuroscience research suggest about learning?

We need to ensure that learning engages all the senses and taps the emotional side of the brain, through methods like humor, storytelling, group activities and games. Emphasis on the rational and logical alone does not produce powerful memories.

A third recent discovery at the University of Michigan’s Biopsychology Program confirmed that the brain behaves selectively about how it processes experiences that enter through our five senses. The brain is programmed to pay special attention to any experience that is novel or unusual. It does this by making comparisons between the new information brought through the senses and existing information stored in our brain’s long-term memory. When the brain finds a match, it will quickly eliminate the new memory as redundant.

When new information contradicts what’s already stored in memory, however, our brains go into overdrive, working hard to explain the discrepancy. If the new information proves useful to us, it becomes a permanent memory that can be retrieved later. If this new information does not seem useful or if we do not trust its source, we are likely to forget it or even reject it altogether, preferring to stick with the information we already possess.

Since learning inherently requires acquisition of new information, our brains’ propensity to focus on the novel and forget the redundant makes it a natural learning ally.

In fact, our brains are hard wired to learn, from the moment we are born. Our native curiosity is driven by our brain’s inherent search for the unusual in our environment. “

Ok lets skip to the video now – so here you are…

“[David Attenborough]
All life is related
And it enables us to construct with confidence
The complex tree that represents the history of life

Our planet, the Earth, is as far as we know
Unique in the universe; it contains life
Here plants and animals proliferate in such numbers
That we still have not even named all the different species

Darwin’s great insight revolutionized the way in which we see the world
We now understand why there are so many different species”

And so it goes.

We also like Physics so here is one called “The Poetry of Reality (An Anthem for Science)” Just so you can say you’ve seen Stephen Hawking sing. By the way almost no one read that book of his but it was the Harry Potter of it’s day and they did make a movie of it called “A Brief History of Time”.

Want to see Brian Cox & Morgan Freeman sing about “atoms and subatomic particles, the jiggly things that make up everything we see”. Try “Symphony of Science – the Quantum World!”

What do you think NZ teachers, musicians, educators and other creatives – should we be mashing up the curriculum into musical brain sized memes ?

Do check out the other Symphony of Science clips as well.

“The goal of the project is to bring scientific knowledge and philosophy to the public, in a novel way, through the medium of music. Science and music are two passions of mine that I aim to combine, in a way that is intended to bring a meaningful message to listeners, while simultaneously providing an enjoyable musical experience.”

Onward to the Edge! + Yoda – Feel the Force (Yoda Remixed)

Enjoy learning and “love the questions themsleves.”

Ever since Brian Sweeney and Remo Giuffre told me about TED back in the early 90′s or maybe before that (TED started in 1984) I have been a huge fan.

Brians 7×7 events in NZ were inspired by TED and they still resonate even though today we have TEDxSydney, TEDx Auckland, TEDxEQC Christchurch, TEDx Christchurch and other local TEDx events. (Disclaimer: I help out on the Auckland event)

My Architect is one of my favourite movies and that movie featured Richard Saul Wurman the TED founder - film makers documentary link here – Nathaniel Kahn.

For me the story of TED is very much like the story of My Architect.

It combines personal insights, amazing stories, incredible people and giant ideas – all things with the power to transform our lives and just like in “My Architect” we are taken on a journey through an amazing life as reflected by the buildings that Louis Kahn built and the people he knew.

People keep asking me to update my about page but really I work across a wide range of disciplines and projects and while I wear many hats my background job is always the same.

“In short I live to change everything for the better by thinking differently about ideas that matter for people I like. If your project excites me than I will move heaven & earth to get results you can’t pay for but they are the ones you really, really want. “ Go over to TED.com to see my full profile

Recently I completed organising the 4th WordCampNZ. Ostensibly it is focussed on WordPress and what a very fine bunch of WordPress users get up to but in my world if you have to explain a software interface it is not as good as it thinks it is.

WordPress back end usability is in my opinion the best out there but personally I’m far more interested in what the users (many subject matter specialists) are able to achieve as outcomes for their various causes and projects.

Besides architecture (& quite a few other subjects) I am very much still a musician at heart. I have a personal theory of music where   the universe is explored via music. Song-lines for navigation are very real for me. I love the way that music can take us to a different place and open us to new ideas and incredible serendipitous moments.

I love Daniel Levitins book “This is Your Brain on Music” and have written about that several times here. I also love Daniel Kahneman’s more recent book Thinking, fast and slow but I know that most of you won’t read the Kahneman book despite it deserving to be compulsory reading for all adults, all educators and anyone who is remotely curious at all.

I have watched hundreds of TED videos sometimes more than once. They are fun AND good for you. Civilisation as we know it is screwed – business as usual is over. Yet despite all of that of that I completely believe that we can still reinvent, remake, restore and rebuild and that starts with ideas and a willingness to change.

So where to start?

So what about if the first TED video you watched was the “remix version from 2012-Time for TED” see below.It has some great music and a few quotes. Wonder – insight, ideas. BTW – TEDx Sydney is on Saturday 28th of May. TEDx Auckland 2102 is coming in August  (watch this space.)

John Boswell, of the “Symphony of Science,” came to TED2012 and made this remix of the speakers onstage (and on TED.com). Symphony of Science is my new favourite website if you are a musician or an educator skip right on over there. I look after Science Media Centre and Sciblogs with about 60 bloggers but unfortunately none of them break into song or publish remixes.

Boswell has made a series of other clips that you might like. Here are some Q &A s with Boswell on how it was done.

“What software and tools did you use?

I am using Reason 6 to put together the music, then Adobe Premiere to edit the video. The song is done independently first, then the video editing once the song is finished.”

For the geeks out there – you know who you are – and of course I want to do this for some local events. Wouldn’t that be amazing. The future of music has long been video related but with crowd sourced (very selective) lyrics and great energy why wouldn’t you want one of these clips on high rotate at breakfast time.

Here is another one called ode to the brain – enjoy..

You may also enjoy the TED Blog Video channel over here

On a more sobering note – if you live in Auckland, New Zealand there is a documentary film called Finding Mercy that has a  Fundraiser Screening next Monday 14th May 7pm at the Bridgeway Theatre , Northcote Pt.

A heart-wrenching search for a childhood friend becomes a dramatic guided tour through Zimbabwe’s Mugabe era.

I worked on the website for this project a few weeks ago and I hope to be at the screening to hear from film makers Robyn Paterson and Leanne Pooley.