James McMurtry is pretty eloquent:
Category Archives: musics
Daniel
Here’s Daniel Heïkalo playing the cittern I built:
What Mose Said
Mose Allison, via Christopher D. Sessums:
…and compare Peter Mulvey’s (Forty Dollar Haircut on a) 29 Cent Head, streaming via CDBaby
Been a while
…what with summer visitors, a weekend at an extreme yoga workshop, more summer visitors. But here’s one that summarizes a lot of what I learned about The South in 13 years of living on its fringes, courtesy of Michelle Shocked:
Another duel
via Echidne:
Lamellophones
I happened upon this bit of organological serendipitude via Make’s blog, featuring a Pitch Bending Thumb Piano:
As an instrument, I think it’s not totally successful, but certainly heuristic for those who think about musical experimentation. Lately I’ve been deeply immersed in a wide spectrum of African musics, and the clip sent me off on a search for some interesting variants of approach to “thumb piano” (so many other names… sanza, mbira, kalimba…). Here are some of the results:
Jazz improvisation on a 5 octave Array mbira
Garland – Suite for Bass Sanza
Don MacLane’s musical instruments
Ken Kolodner Plays the Dulcimer-Mbira in West Virginia (and more via his Web site)
Xinjiang jazz
The always-enlightening Benn Loxo du Taccu posts from Beijing with a link to an ASTONISHING 9-minute piece by the Uyghur jazz group Panjir:
Nazirkom
Other tracks are accessible via the band’s Web site.
Twin bass saxes
All too seldom does one see mastodons in duet (2:55 to 5:50). Here’s the Uptown Lowdown Jazz Band:
(via Keep Swinging)
Saturday morning saz fix
and
Dreams of Glory
I’ve been giving a lot of thought lately to shop stuff, as I scheme the renovation of the barn and plot the reconstitution of my woodworking environment. Bought an upgrade for the table saw fence a week ago, and a serious planer a couple of days ago, and so kicked off a flurry of thoughts about tools and sharpening and still more necessary additions to the array (real dust collection… better lighting… more attention to precision… and so on). My instrument-building fantasies are alive and well again. Two videos exemplify resources that weren’t available a few years ago, when I was last thinking about luthierie:
Oud construction:
Oud as object of beauty: