Music at the Oscars

Thanks to the movie Cold Mountain (which I should probably see sometime) shapenote singing has now made its first appearance at the Academy Awards. So now those of you who have been wondering about the singing I've been doing on occasional Sundays will have an idea of what it's like. Kind of. Actually, it didn't really strike me as very shapenotey. It had instruments in it, for one thing. And it was set up as a lead singer with the chorus as backup, rather than as four equal parts. Add to that the way they lined up the chorus in the background (the traditional square arrangement doesn't work too well on stage, I guess) and I probably wouldn't have recognized it as shapenote at all. Except for the fact that they all had a copy of The Sacred Harp, even though they weren't singing from it. Oh well.

On the song just before the shapenote song, something else appeared that I didn't expect to see: a hurdy-gurdy. The guy was hardly even playing it, though -- he was just droning. Hmph. What a waste.

The Voiceless Storyteller and the Secret of Happiness

Joel ben Izzy was at Borders today, telling stories and talking about his book The Beggar King and the Secret of Happiness. Miriam was always telling me I ought to meet him sometime, and now I see why. He's a fascinating guy. After designing a degree in storytelling at Stanford, he's been traveling the world, collecting and telling stories. He's also worked as a "story consultant," teaching storytelling skills to lawyers, CEOs, and the people making movies at Pixar. In 1997, though, he lost his voice to thyroid cancer. For a year and a half he was a storyteller who couldn't speak above a tiny whisper, and for all he knew, the loss was permanent. The Beggar King and the Secret of Happiness tells the story of how he got through this time and his eventual recovery, interspersed with stories from around the world. I haven't read it yet (I only just bought it today) but I'm going to recommend it anyway.

(So that makes two really cool events at Borders, just this week. Wow. I need to remember to check up on their schedule more often, and see what else they have going on there.)

No Viennesing for Me

So yeah, I opted out of the Viennese Ball this year. I'm sure it will be wonderful and fun and all that, but it's a big enough event that I need some really significant motivation to bother with it all. Especially the bits about finding a date and dressing up in a tux and all that. Sometimes that kind of thing is fun, but I'm not particularly missing it right now.

Right about now, Tina-Kari-Jeremy's choreography should be in full swing at the Opening ceremonies, and I'm sure it is going beautifully. Congratulations to everyone in Opening!

Mandolin Noises

My newest musical toy is a mandolin ToneGard. It's a light, wire frame that fits over the back of a mandolin, letting the back resonate to improve volume and tone. I haven't gotten to experiment with it much yet, but I took it to the Irish session tonight. I could hear myself a bit better than usual, I think, though no one particularly commented on me sounding different. Of course, once you get enough other people playing, it's still hard to hear a mandolin, even with a boost like this. I'm going to spend some more time testing it out, though, and comparing the sound with and without the ToneGard, so I can get a sense of what it's really doing. It seems to change the quality of the sound a little bit, too, so I'll see if it induces any changes in my picking.

Dave mentioned another neat thing for mandolinists with volume inferiority complexes. Apparently there's some guy who makes mandolins with an extra little sound hole on the side, facing the musician. The idea is that it aims a bit more of the sound at the person playing it, so they can hear themselves better in a group. I'd love to try one of those. Sounds like a great idea. Patrick offered to get out his drill, but I passed on that.

Bordering Austria

I went to see Vienna Teng perform at Borders tonight. I had never seen her live before, and it was a lot of fun. She was a Stanford student (just a few years ahead of me, I think) then a software engineer for Cisco for a little while, and now she's releasing her third CD. It was just her and a keyboard tonight. No backup musicians, but she didn't need them. She has a beautifully simple sound just on her own. I also really liked her personality and her presence. Between songs she spoke comfortably and easily, like a natural person without a stage persona to get in the way. Good way to be.