hear a voice

Billy Collins: Everyday moments, caught in time

pbuckna — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 17:16:44 +0000

Billy Collins shares a project in which several of his poems were turned into delightful animated films in a collaboration with Sundance Channel.

Flub and Utter – Jordan Scott

pbuckna — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 00:53:40 +0000

Here’s is an intriguing interactive video built around a reading by Jordan Scott called Flub and Utter – A Poetic Memoir of the Mouth. Jordan manipulates language to mimic a lifetime of stuttering. His work has been nominated for the Dorothy Livesay poetry award and his areas of poetic inquiry are speech disfluencies, interrogation, found archives and decompositions. (Thanks to Wayde Compton for finding this.)

Jordan Scott - Flub and Utter

Garrison Keillor in conversation with Billy Collins

pbuckna — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 17:42:34 +0000

Watch Billy Collins on PBS. See more from WKGB.

Sing along with Bobby McFerrin

pbuckna — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 18:23:08 +0000

Think you aren’t musical? This might just change your mind

Dr. Daniel Levitin

pbuckna — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 17:46:19 +0000

Dr. Daniel Levitan is a Canadian neuroscientist, musician and author whose research and writing has deepened our understanding of how music affects us physiologically. As a musician and record-producer he’s been awarded 17 gold and platinum albums and he spent time with many famous musicians in his quest to find out the neurological underpinnings of our fascination and need for music.

This is Your Brain on Music was my first introduction to Daniel’s work and I subsequently read The World in Six Songs. Both books changed how I think about music and sound.

An intriguing sound experiment by Bobby McFerrin at the 2009
World Science Festival and a discussion that includes Daniel

Ken Nordine

pbuckna — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 06:34:51 +0000

Son of Word Jazz album cover

Ken Nordine’s Word Jazz was released in 1957 during the Beat era. Combining jazz and spoken word, Ken introduced an entirely new genre to a hip generation that has continued to today. Over the decades he broadcast his self-produced pieces on radio, long before the idea of podcasting ever entered the vocabulary.

Devout Catalyst album cover

In 1991 Ken released a ground-breaking collaboration Devout Catalystf eaturing the Grateful Dead and Tom Waits, a whimsical dark farce that no commercial radio would touch, but one that stands today as fresh, innovative and eclectic as Nordine himself.

Jim Green – sound artist

pbuckna — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 00:49:31 +0000

Jim Green, not the storyteller, is a sound artist who creates intriguing and unexpected sound installations in urban areas.

Playing for Change

pbuckna — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 21:38:40 +0000

Listen to some of the most exciting world-side song collaborations on the net. Hear many voices here.

Higher Ground | Playing For Change from Playing For Change on Vimeo.

Watch more Playing for Change episodes

From the Playing For Change website:

Playing for Change is a multimedia movement created to inspire, connect, and bring peace to the world through music. The idea for this project arose from a common belief that music has the power to break down boundaries and overcome distances between people. No matter whether people come from different geographic, political, economic, spiritual or ideological backgrounds, music has the universal power to transcend and unite us as one human race. And with this truth firmly fixed in our minds, we set out to share it with the world.

Listen to Mark explain the journey:

Playing For Change Explained from Playing For Change on Vimeo.

How to listen

pbuckna — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 19:11:42 +0000

Watch and listen to Evelyn Glennie (32:12)

In this soaring demonstration, deaf Scottish percussionist Evelyn Glennie, who lost nearly all of her hearing by age 12 illustrates how listening to music involves much more than simply letting sound waves hit your eardrums. Rather than isolating her, it has given her a unique connection to her music.

Her perspective challenges Calvino’s statement that the ear is central to hearing and understanding. Like Beethoven, Glennie approaches music and sound from a much different place.

Five ways to listen better

pbuckna — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 18:47:30 +0000

In our louder and louder world, says sound expert Julian Treasure, “We are losing our listening.” In this short, fascinating talk, Treasure shares five ways to re-tune your ears for conscious listening — to other people and the world around you. Contains the following quote:

Sonority is time and meaning
Jean-Luc Nancy

Five listening exercises:

Silence – 3 minutes a day
The Mixer – identify as many different channels of sounds as possible
Savouring – enjoy and pay attention to common and mundane sounds
Listening positions – move to what’s appropriate to what you are listening to
active | passive
reductive | expansive
critical | empathetic
RASA – Receive, Appreciate, Summarize, Ask