Cat On The Dial

Björk's "Crystalline" Featured on NPR's "All Songs Considered"; She Talks "Biophilia" with BBC Radio 4's "Front Row"

Electronic conference proceedings of Establishing Identity: LGBT Studies and Music Education available

Autobiographical Musical: "The Bedroom Show" by Poeina Suddarth

http://rockcampstudio.tumblr.com/

This is the Rock Camp Studio for Girls in Portland, Oregon. Their blog includes online resources and information about women in the audio recording industry. This year-round program is a part of the Portland Rock Camp for Girls, a 501(c)3 non-profit that builds girls self-esteem through music creation and performance. The organization has summer and year-round volunteer opportunities, so check it out!

For more information, check out the Portland Rock Camp for Girls website: http://www.girlsrockcamp.org/about/history

Tons of fun and, for all you educators out there, potential to integrate into a general music lesson.

Ham Radio station in Yuma, Az. 

This is the sound of the US Amateur Radio Bands on January 8th, 2011 at 10:30-10:37pm AZ time, on 40 Meters (7 MHz). 

Licensed operators use Amateur Radio, otherwise known as “Ham Radio”, as a means of communication with others throughout the world. Ham radio is a hobby for many, as well as a civil service. In emergency situations, when traditional forms of communication are not fully functional, operators can assist emergency personnel and civilians to relay information. Often they work in conjunction with organizations such as the Red Cross. 

How does this work? Hams send out radio signals in the form of morse code (or voice) into the atmosphere. Operators transmit radio signals via antenna to the ionisphere, a part of our earth’s atmosphere. The signals are projected by ricocheting off the ionisphere. Imagine a rock skipping over the surface of a pond. A radio signal is like the rock and the ionisphere is like the pond—the signal is projected by “skipping” off of the earth’s atmosphere in order to communicate with others. Since the ionisphere changes as the day progresses, specific bands are used as they appear throughout the course of a day. 

To illustrate, 40 Meters (7 MHz) is strongest during the evening hours, so I recorded this audio file on 40 Meters at 10:30 pm. Enjoy!

I made this on a Mac with Garage Band and a Korg MIDI controller. 

Breakdown:

The piano is playing the word “Stan” in morse code

The string part is in 7/8

The breathing sound quotes Steve Reich’s “Music for Pieces of Wood”. 

The horns (french horns) just sounded good. 

A few thoughts on composition:

A common issue for me and for many others is the question of how to expand a short musical idea into typical song form. Most popular music consists of verses, a chorus, perhaps a bridge, and a final chorus that is usually altered in some way to make it extra dramatic:

verse1—chorus—verse2—choris—verse3—chorus—bridge—chorus.

or

verse1—chorus—verse2—chorus—verse3—chorus.

*These are just two typical pop song forms. The number of verses may vary, etc. 

As you can tell, the “song” I posted is actually just one musical idea that ends with a simple chord progression. I was doing homework and had a musical idea, but not enough time to actually create a “real” song. It’s okay, though, to just record whatever ideas you have, no matter how short or simple they are.

Try to think use your software (garageband, audacity, ableton, etc) as a notepad for your ideas and iTunes as a means to store those ideas. Why? Usually songs start with a “hook”—a short musical idea. No matter how simple, that idea can become a whole song. Or a symphony—Beethoven’s Fifth is a great example of a super simple “hook” (dit-dit-dit-daaaaaah!).

So, when inspiration strikes, write it down! You can use your ideas in future projects, or just give the idea time to incubate. Often taking a break and just doing something else will allow for more ideas to surface later. 

This is a live improvisation from Spring 2010. Stan laid down a drum track on the hand drums, two contrasting beats of same duration. I laid down a pizz bass part, then an arco bass part. When recording the pizz, I tried to stick to the rhythms I heard Stan playing. For the arco track I had a melodic idea and tried to stick to that one idea, concentrating most on playing with good “time” and “feel”, using lots of repetition and simple variations rather than try and get showy. Stan and John added additional tracks of percussion as a final touch. Stan mixed it using Protools. No puch-ins, no do-overs and no whining.

Stan Bosch-Percussion 

John- Percussion

Cat Reid-Bass

Instrumentation:upright bass, shaker, hand drums, cowbell, vibraslap and…tea kettle

For the Weezer Indaba remix contest, this is my remix of “Love is the Answer”. I decided to do a mashup of “Love is the Answer”, “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and “Jolly Good King Winceslas”. This was done on a Mac with Garage Band and a KORG MIDI controller.