Jazz is fun.
I have discovered this mainly through the listening suggestions of another composer friend of mine, Robin Jessome, whose work with his jazz ensemble Blunt Object I highly encourage everyone to check out. It’s wild. It’s also inspired me to try my hand at some jazz too…if you’re interested in hearing my own entertaining pastiche on the genre, you’ll find a fresh track entitled “Restless” in the Demo Reel section of the Portfolio (or just below, if you’re lazy). I warn you in advance: it contains some unbelievably cheesy scat vocals which may cause involuntary head-shaking and or laughter:
I read a very interesting article the other day which I thought I should mention. Apparently, a team from Northwestern University have found some biological evidence to prove that musicians’ brains are more adept at picking up emotional content in sounds — musical or, in this case, speech. When you sit and think about it, I suppose it makes a lot of sense, since musicians tend to train themselves to identify precise variations in pitch and timbre and so on, but I hadn’t actually thought about the significance that training might have on applications outside of music. Anyway, I won’t paraphrase the whole article, but suffice it to say that I was intrigued and I think it’s well worth looking over for those who are musically inclined: http://www.physorg.com/news155309993.html.
I am happy to report that I have a number of awesome projects coming up, one of which actually involves the Blunt Object ensemble I mentioned above. All very exciting. I will also say that I hope to continue coaxing my website frogs to polish up the remaining missing elements of the site — the video section of the Portfolio page, the stylesheet for this Journal, etc.
It’s coming, not to worry. In the meantime, take a listen to my foray into the jazz world, subscribe to the RSS feed if you haven’t already, check out that article, and please send me chocolates. Anything but mint or fruit. Nuts are fine.
…What? It’s worth a shot.
