Entries tagged with "language"
Monday 10 December 2007
Arabic, plus musical dos and don'ts
I may have spoken too soon, in that little outburst the other day. Wrapping up final projects for work has been taking up a huge amount of time. Having most of a weekend to mull things over helped, but I still have a lot of thinking to think. More about this soon.
In the meantime, some things I have learned over the past few weeks.
- The Arabic alphabet actually isn’t that hard. I’d always wanted to learn it, because I like alphabets and lettering - not to mention the fabulousness of Islamic calligraphy... but for some reason I’d expected it to be tough, probably because it’s joined up and reminded me of Gregg shorthand. During our trip I started to decode some place names and brand names.
- On the other hand, the Arabic language? Oh man. I just found out that numbers not only have gender, but for the numbers 3 through 10, they have polarity - if the noun they refer to is masculine, the number is feminine and vice versa. Perhaps I’ll work on mastering French first and move on when I’m feeling brave enough.
- Peel-top cartons of yoghurt do not travel well in a backpack.
- Do not watch the video for the Shins’ “Phantom Limb” moments before a meeting. Crying in front of a client can be awkward.
- “The Weight” by The Band is more complicated than I remembered, especially after half a pint.
Monday 23 October 2006
Last week was music crazy - two gigs, three rehearsals and one free-form improv jam in the space of six days. And as of this week, the improvising trio has a gig in December. Yay some more!
One of those gigs last week was a CD release party and send-off for our good friend David Hein. He’s just put out a rockin’ disc called North of Nowhere and he’s now on his way across the continent - a man, a guitar, and a yellow VW bug. I’ve just launched his new web site too, and set up a blog, which he’s been filling with lots of fun touring stories and photos. And just wait until I get the music player finished…
In the meantime, if he comes to your town, go see him!
Words of the week:
- gosh
- “phwoaar”
- faffing
- explodey
- fraught
- Christ on a bike
but please not
Thursday 6 July 2006
The fever’s broken at last, musically speaking. Not quite burnt out on the New Pornographers, but they’ve finally been ousted from their stranglehold on my day-to-day playlist. By whom? Well, by the time I finally finish writing this, I’m sure it’ll have changed, but…
First, Neko Case. (Er… does that count?) Her latest, Fox Confessor Brings The Flood, is lovely - I’m especially fond of the closer, “The Needle Has Landed”. (By an odd coincidence, my dad found a little button promoting the album in the parking lot of a restaurant where we’d happened to grab takeout. It’s now adorning the strap on my bass, along with a few of Spacing’s subway buttons.)
Second, dj BC’s Glassbreaks - an online-only album of mashups pitting Philip Glass against a diverse assortment of hip-hop and rap. It’s been taken down at the request of Glass’s publisher, but I think it’s still floating round the peer-to-peer networks. Faves: “Einstein On The Beast”, “For The Glasty” and “Stand Up Dance”, partly because of the choice of Glass bits, partly because of the texture of the voices. I think that’s what I like most about rap in all its myriad forms: low-key Q-Tip and growly Busta Rhymes, the speedy, way-glottal Dizzee Rascal. (Black East London accents sound marvelously exotic to my insulated, middle-class Canadian ears. Would I still find grime so interesting if that weren’t the case? I’m not sure. Man, I feel like such a tourist.)
Finally, Señor Coconut’s latest, Yellow Fever! Following up on his cha-cha tribute to Kraftwerk, Coco sets his sights on the next logical target, Japan’s Yellow Magic Orchestra, and it seems to me to work better. There’s more here musically to dig into, especially on their early electro-lounge (“Tong Poo”, “Simoon”)... but oddly I think it’s the spare, difficult stuff on their middle albums (“Pure Jam” and “Music Plans”) that comes off best. And of course there’s Martin Denny’s old exotica chestnut “Firecracker” which, after what seems like a dozen different remakes by YMO and their remixers, finally comes full circle. Neato.
(Speaking of Kraftwerk covers, “Europe Endless” is a bluegrass tune just waiting to get out and sing. Listen to it. Is that not a banjo arpeggio? And a fiddle line? And aren’t those vocoded vocals a natural for a big soaring tenor harmony?)
Friday 30 June 2006
The song-a-day revival continues! (It’s an occasional project / working method I started a couple years ago - here’s the little manifesto-to-myself that I wrote back then.)
Feels good to be back in the saddle. Here’s the latest piece, working title “Piltdown”. Curious little one minute boogie.
2006_0629_piltdown.mp3 (1.1 megs)
Working order: drum loop - guitar - bass - lyrics/vocals - new drums. The guitar playing is definitely very David Byrne.
I haven’t been letting myself get away with just sketching in “la la la” melodies instead of lyrics. And I notice my subject matter (if you can call it that) is shifting a little bit too… though some themes continue to run through almost all my songs.
Also, from earlier in the week, a little snippet of me messing with the Filter Queen, using it on everything in sight:
2006_0626_glimmers.mp3 (700 k)
Today’s bon mot — “Like a fish in the headlights.”
Wednesday 28 June 2006
Dream: I was working on a long-running TV show - for some reason I ended up minding two black horses that kept wandering in and out of the house set. Later, in the same building, I came upon a folk triio from Quebec who were busking and preparing for a stage performance. Several of their pieces consisted in large part of animal noises, especially frogs, produced with their fiddles and the leader’s double bass. I chatted with the leader about her playing and why her bow had a truss structure instead of a traditional light wooden shaft. The truss was heavier but gave her more oomph when playing, and was unusually bouncy if she used it the right way, which produced impressive frog-trills. (Compare earlier dreams about bass playing.)
New word, coined by Sean: bungus. First used to describe a book on marketing. A cross between “bogus”, “bung” and “fungus” - I like its connotation of something false and loathsome.
Moving immanent… We’ve given our notice at our current house. Time to start the purge of Stuff so there’s less to move on the day. We did manage to gather about three boxes’ worth of books last night to give away, and I’ve got a stack of CDs that need selling.
I’m much, much less particular about my CDs these days - before our last move a couple of years back, I had them all alphabetized, but that fell by the wayside once I got everything I listen to onto the computer. I like having the “hard copies” of some rare or important stuff, but mostly it just gathers dust on the shelf. Heck, aside from concerts and buskers, I haven’t bought an actual CD in ages.
Speaking of music… Really, I haven’t listened to much new music lately. For the past month, I’ve been absolutely obsessed with the music of the New Pornographers and their songwriter-in-chief AC Newman. Some of their stuff I’m not so big on (I confess Dan Bejar’s stuff has never clicked with me) but probably two dozen of my Favorite Songs Ever are theirs.
But today, thanks to shuffle mode, I have a new favorite song, and - heh! whaddya know, it’s from BC as well: Nomeansno’s “Hello / Goodbye”. The little riff over just those chords, plus the lovely soaring round of “you will not follow me”... yes, yes, yes.
Ooh! And, via the ever-awesome Spacing Wire, here’s the video for the Spoons’ 1984 hit Romantic Traffic. Ah, the Can-con memories! The old red subway cars! The crimped and fluffy hair!
Tuesday 31 May 2005
Things I am currently obsessed with, or which just make me happy:
- The stompy, swinging beat that appears in songs like Iggy Pop’s “Lust For Life” and “My Generation” by the Who - it probably goes back further than that too, but I can’t quite remember at the moment. Anyway, it all started when I was casting about for a new arrangement for one of J’s songs, and I’m starting to think some sort of weird mashup medley is in order. We could throw in “This Charming Man” while we’re at it. Have to find someone to play the Johnny Marr guitar part though.
Update: Wow. Those songs have been going through my head non-stop for the past day and a half. In the middle of it, I walked into a grocery store where they happened to be playing “You Can’t Hurry Love”. (I knew there was a Motown connection in there somewhere…)
- Coffee. We’ve taken on a job for Merchants of Green Coffee, a local outfit that sells fairly traded, sustainably grown coffee beans and the equipment to roast and brew them. As part of the deal we got a little coffee roaster. From what I’m told, coffee beans keep for years if they’re green, but once roasted they only last a few days, and once ground, mere hours. Fresh-roasted stuff is quite lovely. I only started drinking coffee at all about a month ago, now that I’m working pretty much every day at the Spinglobe office. It makes me feel so professional and productive! Even if I’m not.
- The phrase “losing one’s shit” - which I’ve usually read in reference to a singer’s over-the-top performance. I’ve never actually had occasion to use it myself; it just makes me giggle.
Might have a couple of interesting musical collaborations to report on soon too. Yay!
Friday 18 October 2002
Tarq, Kittybit, Catsy, Mister Pussycat, Buddy, Kittybins, Binsie, Crazy, Moodle (from “Moodles”, Stereolab song title), Oo, Arf, Eee, Wao (onomatopoeic), Turkey, Buster, Tat (as in Puddy), Stinky, Pookins, Kittybreath, Sir, Woob, Baddie, Bebbycat.
I don’t know what this says about me. I think I pick up names and permute them almost obsessively. Sean does something similar - it runs in his family, as does the strange husky-falsetto “cat language” they all speak. But the only things I remember Sean calling our cat are “Tarqm Man” and “Crazy”.
Mum calls her Tarquin “Tarkers”. Grandma calls him “Neko-san”.
Ours has the personality of a spoilt but mostly well-behaved child. Or at least, he has been very well behaved until now, but is starting to get bored and dangerously curious. I have successfully taught him to tug/push open the bathroom door if it’s unlatched, rather than endure his endless mewling while I shower. Thankfully it’s the only interior door in the place.
Catnip mouse on elastic = spectacular acrobatics. Tarq displays a reckless disregard for his own safety while playing. I can’t believe he hasn’t brained himself yet.
He remains completely uncuddly (when Sean picks him up and fusses over him, he does a beautiful impersonation of one of Pepe le Pew’s love interests), but has taken to sleeping on our bed on occasion - perhaps for company, more likely for warmth. The place is freezing until about 1 pm.
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