May 25, 2009

Music Mondays: Sitars and Electronic Beats

Lest you think I am an Indie Rock Snob, I will lay down some tracks here that feature not only sitars, gee-tars, but a number of electronic devices that I can’t even imagine how to play. I don’t even know what to think of this first artist, The Winston Giles Orchestra… the cover art for both albums I’ve seen is totally retro-future/adorned with faries, flowers and rays from heaven. Clearly some form of hallucinogenic is implied somewhere in the Process. The song opens with some sort of urban field recording, which always appeals to me. Then it takes off on a magic carpet ride.

Thievery Corporation is well known-amongst the electronica/downtempo/i-don’t-know-what-you-call-this-genre crowd.  The two albums I have have both pulled me through long nights of coding and writing. With minimal vocals, or vocals in other languages, the music does the work of occupying that part of my brain that needs rhythm and melody while the rest of me gets something done.

Now, you get something done. Enjoy!

 

 The Winston Giles Orchestra - Chakra Superstar [4:58m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

 

 Thievery Corporation - Doors of Perception [3:16m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

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May 11, 2009

If It Can Be Broke

It’s been a while since I’ve written. I’ve been through a lot, what with re-acquainting myself with Chicago again, going through mad bouts of dancing and living life in the world, with people and reality. There are some new tunes that are getting me through my days.

I’d like to think this song called “The Pioneers” is true. So, I’ll believe it for now.

 

 The Pioneers by Tunng [4:30m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

More substance later….

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March 15, 2009

Sale! My Life is for Sale!

I’m sitting in my living room on 22nd Street. Soft music is playing. I’m sipping a cup of tea. A stranger in paint spattered pants and a grubby sweatshirt wanders down the gentle slope of the driveway, transported into my life. Here we are, surrounded by bits of my past. A dining table from the 40’s. A huge wooden desk that I re-finished. An Ikea shelf scattered with random books. Some coats and blouses hang by hangers off of the railing. Shoes, dishes and hats are stacked on boxes in the corner. He picks up a swirly painting.

“How much?” I think it over for a minute. I’d never given it a price before.

“Five dollars”

“How about three?”

“That’s my painting.” I think of the night that I stayed up painting it with some acrylics I’d bought on a whim. Aside from a few childish endeavors, I’d never painted anything before. I was up till dawn, drinking tea, listening to music, getting lost in the shades between red and yellow. The next morning, I slept through the temp job I was supposed to go to. I didn’t care. I’d painted something.

“Oh.” He says and puts it down reverently. “You have to price your work what you think it’s worth.” He has a thick Spanish accent. “I really like the colors. Very beautiful.”

“Think about it.” I say. “You a painter? Working around here?”
“Yes, around the corner. My bedroom has two murals and many colors. This is very nice.” I think about lowering my price. But I’m not sure. In truth, he’s probably the only person who will want it. But he probably doesn’t have the five to spring for it. Or it’s the difference between one and two tacos for dinner for him.

“I’ll be around all week-end.” Come back. “If it’s still here, it’s yours.”

All week-end long I sit in this reconstruction of my living room letting people sift through things that I picked up at garage sales. Young couples consider shelves and tables for their new apartments. Old ladies dig through boxes of clothes.

“How much?” they ask in their thick accents.

“One dollar.” I say, certain that’s cheap enough for a cotton summer dress. They drop it back in the box.

A young guy with long hair parks next to a box of magazines and fingers them for 45 minutes.

“Whaddya say buddy? You gonna make me an offer for those magazines?”

“I’d really like one about Botswana. I don’t see any here about Botswanna.”

“Well, find what you like and take it home.” I say, hoping he’ll move on. I’m waiting for the nice white couple fondling my desk to move on so I can throw him out. He’s getting on my nerves.

A hispanic lady walks up to a rolling butcher block and looks at the price tag.

“How much?”

“Seventy-five.” I say, knowing she can’t afford it.

“How about fifty?”

“I can do sixty.” I say, thinking of the three people who emailed me about it on craigslist who didn’t haggle.

“Fifty?”

“I can do sixty.” I say.

Some other people are milling around and I know she won’t take it.

“Fifty…” She whines in her soft mexican voice.

“Sixty.” I say.

“Fifty…” Softer, like a whimpering dog. I want to scold her for begging.

“It’s solid. In very good condition. I can do sixty.” Now I just don’t want to slide for her. Don’t want to let her whine win the game. She opts for a three drawer dresser instead, talks me down from $30 to $25, then hands me two twenties when she pays. Now I have to make change. I’ve always felt that when you haggle with someone at a sale that you should hand them exact change… as if you really only had $8 instead of $10.

I’ve dreaded this week for years. Wondered what I would do when I got back to California and had to pull everything out of storage that I haven’t lived with for three years. Lots of these things I don’t need anymore. Some things I still want. But I’m keenly aware how quickly the value of something is lost the minute you purchase it. It only has value if you really use it, if it has a prominent place in your life. As each thing walks away, a pair of cowboy boots, a dresser, an old CD player I am grateful to know that I’m no longer feel the urge to collect things. I’d like to have less and less. It’s still hard to part with some things though. I don’t want to let them go for cheap, considering how long I dragged them around, paid for storage… it’s a losing battle really. Having less is always better.

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March 2, 2009

Music Mondays: Boyfriend Rock(s)

A friend once referred to a genre of music as “Girlfriend Rock.” “You know what I mean… those bands who sing about girls all the time.” The Cars is a great example of Girlfriend Rock. The band that I’m featuring today, The Way It Is, fits that category. But (and here’s the disclaimer), since the frontman is my boyfriend (and has been for a while now) I think it’s apt to call it Boyfriend Rock. Also… he rocks.

I’ve been watching Michael record and mix music almost nonstop for the last six days. He puts everything he has into it. If he didn’t have to come snuggle me in bed, or sometimes make breakfast or go out to buy toilet paper, he’d stay down here in this dark basement apartment, hunched over the guitar all day long. Sometimes he struggles and gets frustrated. This process has been so amazing to witness. Whenever we’ve played music together, he seems to find melodies so easily. For me, creating melodies is really difficult. I always took his talent for granted, but to know that even he has to work at it gives me a little hope of my own.

 

 The Way It Is: Air From A Tiny Hole [2:28m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

 

 The Way It Is: We Saw A Fox In The Snow [1:04m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

 

 The Way It Is: Dunderpate [5:13m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

To tell you a little bit about these songs, because they mean a lot to me:

Air From A Tiny Hole
This is the first song that I heard when I visited Michael’s myspace page. It was my first experience of his music and listening to it gave me a rush of emotion and unforeseen affection. At the time, I was in a phase of enjoying slow electro-acoustic rock and this song clicked with me instantly. It wasn’t too long before I too got to experience the air leaking from a tiny hole… a charming detail of our early days together.

We Saw A Fox In The Snow
The original riff is one I wrote on my guitar years ago… probably when I was 18. Michael and I were housesitting in the suburbs last Christmas and there was a piano in the house. We took the opportunity to record a few one minute ditties together (hence, the lo-fi sound). During that stint in the ‘burbs, Michael and I took a walk on New Years Eve. Riverside, Illinois is amazing in the winter… all the beautiful mansions lit up with white lights were no match for the piles of snow that had been working over the land-scape all day. As we stumbled out into the snow for a midnight walk, mugs of cocoa in our hands and freshly baked chocolate chip cookies in our pockets, we headed away from the mansions and towards an open field fringed with trees. The white expanse was breathtaking and still, and then there was a movement off to our right… “Look” I whispered. A fox was racing through the snow, looking for cover. Then we heard shouts. Yards behind were three college-aged boys, running through the snow. We stopped to watch the pursuit. The fox slipped into the shadows and the boys stumbled after her.

Dunderpate
This song is from an album The Way It Is released a few years ago. Total girlfriend rock. Sad, slow… and then completely rocking. Perfect. I love the guitar tones when he finally opens up the pipes… and the layering of vocals. And then he brings it back down to the essential riff again. If I could play this kind of music myself, I would.

So… this post has two purposes:

1. To share some music that I genuinely love (made by a person that I genuinely love) with you, my dear reader.
2. To remind you to support and promote the people in your life who could use a little boost. One of my favorite bloggers, Leo Babauta of zenhabits.net wrote a great post called, “Why You Should Think About Encouraging Others to Be Brilliant” which I think you should go read once you are done enjoying these songs. In fact, zenhabits has had a more profound impact on me in the past year than any other website out there. I find that I’m constantly telling clients and friends about this site whenever they wince about their own productivity, organization, or fulfilling their dreams. If there’s one place where you can get constant, tangible and un-hippified inspiration… this is it.

In the meantime. Please share The Way It Is with a friend or two. When we return to Chicago this April, you might actually get a chance to see the band play somewhere around town. If you visit their website, there are new songs and videos posted on a fairly regular basis.

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February 26, 2009

The Learning Zone

Quite often while teaching a private lesson or working on choreography, I hear from a student, “that doesn’t feel natural.” I tend to register this as a protest that the technique feels wrong. Perhaps it’s more appropriate to register that the student is now in a learning zone, rather than in a comfort zone.

If your goal in taking classes or learning choreography is to improve, then you have to get used to a constant state of feeling unnatural. If your goal is to have fun (usually what we do on the social floor), then doing what feels natural works best because you get a constant flow of positive self feedback.

This doesn’t mean that feeling unnatural in class means you are always improving. Getting feedback from an experienced teacher and engaging in self inquiry are key to figuring out if your new moves are on the right track. But if you are moving through a sequence with ease while the rest of the class is struggling, either the class is below your ability, or you’re using old comfortable movement patterns rather than picking up new ones.

Picking up new body movement always takes time. The only patterns that don’t take time to develop are quick reactions… the ones that are hardwired to prevent us from falling or from being hit by a flying object. With everything else, we have to put our body in a new and unnatural position, find balance, observe our body position both by watching and from within and then repeat  that movement over and over again before it begins to feel natural.

Early in my teaching career I taught a class to a room full of other dance teachers. One teacher in particular caught my eye… she’s very graceful and sure of her body. She’s experienced in a wide range of dance styles; her versatility is one of her greatest strengths. But she seemed to be struggling with the movement, going through it very slowly and asking a lot of questions. She never got all the way through the sequence but by the end of class she seemed to have absorbed more of the beginning of the sequence than the other teacher/students who had moved quickly through each step, eager for the next one. I commented to a fellow teacher about my observation of her slow progress and they said, “I think she wants to fully understand how the movement works and so she goes about it more slowly.”

Looking back now, I see what an attentive student she was. The other teachers, feeling confident in their bodies, did the movement in their own way, rather than really observing the differences between what I taught and what they did. What made me uncomfortable was that I perceived her as feeling uncomfortable, but it wasn’t necessarily for my lack of teaching (though I probably could have been clearer with my demonstration). She was in a learning zone and pushing her body into a new space, which for her felt unnatural.

You can go to the dance studio, the driving range or pick up a guitar and do the same movements you do all the time. That isn’t the kind of practice that’s going to help you improve, since you’re just reinforcing the same neuromuscular patterns. Geoff Colvin talks about deliberate practice in Talent is Overrated and credits Noel Tichy, a former management chief at General Electric with a learning paradigm that identifies where to best focus our attention when practicing:

“Tichy…illustrates this point by drawing three concentric circles. He labels the inner circle “comfort zone,” the middle one “learning zone,” and the outer one “panic zone.” Only by choosing activities in the learning zone can one make progress. That’s the location of skills and abilities that are just out of reach. We can never make progress in the comfort zone because those are the activities that we can already do easily, while panic zone activities are so hard we don’t even know how to approach them. Identifying the learning zone, which is not simple, and then forcing oneself to stay continually in it as it changes, which is even harder— these are the first and most important characteristics of deliberate practice.”

About a year ago, I sat in a music lesson, something I hadn’t done since high school. Even though I’ve owned and played a guitar since I was fourteen, I haven’t improved much. After we had talked theory for a few lessons, my teacher asked me to pick up a guitar and simply find the A on each string. When I look at the guitar, I have no awareness of the relationship between the strings. I know that if I place my fingers in certain positions, pleasing sounds can emerge, but I don’t know why and it seems sort of random. I plucked the fifth fret on the E string. Easy. Then I plucked the A string. No problem. I got to the D string and faltered, plucking at a fret that I thought might sound close to the A. Wrong. I rushed towards a nearby fret, searching for the A, beginning to feel a bit awkward.

“Wait.” he said. Take your time. If you get rushed or impatient with yourself, you won’t learn as quickly as if you go slowly and take your time. Be patient with yourself and take time to reason it out.

I took a deep breath and analyzed the D string and then confidently chose the 7th fret.

“Good!” he encouraged. I took the same slow pace with the next string. “You’re approaching this now like an experienced student.”

Now when I struggle, I remind myself to slow down, take my time and relish the process of being uncomfortable, but still finding the answer.

Only after a pattern is repeated slowly and accurately can it be sped up and then modified. A good student gives herself time to treat each new skill like brand-new movement, working through it deliberately and with increased awareness. Once the action has been repeated many many times— only then does the feeling of naturalness and ease emerge.

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February 24, 2009

Blues on Tuesday: Blues With an Edge

There’s a certain intensity to Blues dancing that I’ve rarely experienced in Lindy, Salsa, or West Coast Swing. Having danced in this genre for about six years means that even though I love traditional Blues music, when I hear a really good blues inspired rock song, I wouldn’t think twice about dancing to it. But these are songs that, if you DJ them, can make event organizers scowl at you and beginner dancers look up at the DJ table in confusion. I applaud any DJ who can build a set up to a song of this calibur. It takes skill both on the part of the DJ and the dancers. But what other styles of dance would you use to interpret these tunes? To me they just don’t cry out for the swing or salsa patterns. Uber musicality and great connection are what what you need. Please enjoy, regardless of the context.

 

 Alabama 3: Woke Up This morning: Play Now | Play in Popup

 

 The Black Keys: thickfrfeakness: Play Now | Play in Popup

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