Errors-To: ecto-owner@ns1.rutgers.edu Reply-To: ecto@ns1.rutgers.edu Sender: ecto@ns1.rutgers.edu From: ecto@ns1.rutgers.edu To: ecto-request@ns1.rutgers.edu Bcc: ecto-digest-outbound@ns1.rutgers.edu Subject: ecto #800 ecto, Number 800 Tuesday, 12 October 1993 Today's Topics: *-----------------* Re: Ignore this rampage! :-) Re: Happy rhodes mailing list (ie getting on it) Re: Bettie Serveert, Shakes's Sis, Amoeba, irc Fuzzy and Cassell Clean your clocks Re: Clean your clocks Re: NonHappy musicality: nature vs. nurture And the winner is ... nature wins out What's wrong with Us? Re: The Spinach Inquisition Re: What's Wrong With _US_ The angelic Gabriel & Us A Series of Worlds Re: Re: musicality: nature vs. ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 12 Oct 93 5:26:17 EDT From: WretchAwry Subject: Re: Ignore this rampage! :-) Troy makes me happy: > Needless to say, I redirected my anger and left Tower with Toni Childs, New? What's it called? What's it like? I *love* Toni Childs! > End of rampage. Sorry about your DCD problems :-( Vickie ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 12 Oct 93 5:28:49 EDT From: WretchAwry Subject: Re: Happy rhodes mailing list (ie getting on it) > > Hello... I have heard of this wonderous thing known as the happy Rhodes > mailing list, which tells of the wanderings of Dead Can Dance. > > (mwelker@andy.bgsu.edu) Hi Michael, welcome to Ecto! 'Tis wonderous indeed! Vickie ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 12 Oct 93 10:42:13 MET From: Albert Philipsen Subject: Re: Bettie Serveert, Shakes's Sis, Amoeba, irc Alex gibbers: >Albert Philipsen : >> Well... actually, the whole universe is just a simulation running on my >> computer. > >Is it a parallel computer too? Sure. It's actually a massively parallel analogue supercomputer. Kind of hard to program, but very powerful. Albert ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 12 Oct 93 12:28:33 MEZ From: Dirk Kastens Subject: Fuzzy and Cassell Hi, Neil asked: >Dirk, now that we know a little about fuzzy set theory, what conclusions >did you draw about environmental impact assessment. (BTW, I thought >your description was very clear, although I knew a little about the >subject, so it was mostly reminders, but I don't know why the interval >(0,1) is written ^M0,1Y.) The interval must be written with square brackets. They've been encrypted when I ftp'ed the text from a PC to my mail server. My conclusions about EIA? Well, the estimation of future impacts on nature is imbued with fuzziness and vagueness. You can't say exactly that the soil will be taint with 16.4mg/kg of lead, for instance. You can only guess that the pollution will be "about 20mg/kg" or "not much higher than 10mg/kg" and so on. On the other hand, you can't quantize (quantify?) the beauty of a landscape or the variety of species. Here you can use the linguistic variables. Vickie wrote: >_Llano_ is my 3rd Cassell Webb CD. I also have _The Thief of Sadness_ >and _Songs Of A Stranger_. They're both uneven, but there are songs >that I really love. Because of the unevenness of those two, I hadn't >put listening to _Llano_ at top priority. I checked out the first >two songs and liked them both. "Voices To Rivers" was the second song >so I played it. Now I definitely will listen to the rest of it. I >really can't describe her (Dirk, can you?) but I'd recommend anything >by her if you found them in a sale/cutout/used bin. Mmmh, her voice reminds me of Joni Mitchell. Not so the music. I like Llano because it sounds a bit new waveish with the guitar and the rhythms (a bit like Danse Society). But then CW turned quieter and quieter from album to album. Conversations At Dawn is a real soporific. On Thief Of Sadness I like The Dancer's Song which I knew before from your FMC, Vickie. But I HATE these $50-CASIO- keyboard sounds in most of the other songs :-( Dirk ------------------------------------------------------------------------ || \\\\\ || ///// | dkastens@dosuni1.rz.Uni-Osnabrueck.DE || ))))) IRK || ((((( ASTENS | "Music's the way, the only way I know" || ///// || \\\\\ | Happy Rhodes ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ======================================================================== Date: 12 Oct 1993 08:11:27 -0400 From: pas@math.ams.org (Paula Shanks) Subject: Clean your clocks Completely unmusical content, but I couldn't let misinformation stand: Daylight Savings time STARTS 2 a.m. the FIRST SUNDAY in April, and ends the LAST SUNDAY in October. --Pshanks, springing forward and falling behind ======================================================================== From: Tim "Cook." x297 Date: Tue, 12 Oct 93 13:39:17 BST Subject: Re: Clean your clocks > Daylight Savings time STARTS 2 a.m. the FIRST SUNDAY in April, and ends > the LAST SUNDAY in October. Only in the USA! Each country has different days when daylight saving applies. In the UK it's the last Sunday in March and even that isn't fixed - it's agreed every year by an act of parliament (I kid you not!). ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1993 08:47:09 -0700 From: Art Liestman Subject: Re: NonHappy >> Who did the song about 1 and a half years ago called >> "The Sweater Song"? -- 'bout the girl who gets the sweater >> from a highschool boy, wears it to school, etc.. > That was by Canadian singer/performance artist Meryn Cadell, off her >album "Angel Food for Thought." She's got a new recording out now; >can't remember the title... The new Meryn Cadell album is called "Bombazine" and it is highly jivey. art ======================================================================== Date: 12 Oct 93 11:47:07 EDT From: Mike Mendelson Subject: musicality: nature vs. nurture I had a rather interesting conversation with a rather interesting friend of mine the other night. Basically, she claimed that the ability to sing was influenced primarily by environment. I.e. her thesis was that anyone is capable of singing, if they are stimulated in the appropriate ways. Now I distinguished a few different elements in this claim. First off, there is the ability to sing on pitch, to carry a tune. This basically translates into a hearing skill. If you are singing a song and you sing a wrong note, can *hear* that it is wrong. Sometimes we say someone has a good ear for music. In my mind, this is mostly what we mean. Another part of it, of course, is the ability to translate a melody you hear, into a melody you can sing, based purely on hearing it (i.e. without reading music or anything like that). The other element in singing is vocal quality, i.e. what does your voice sound like. This is what I understand to be meant when we say someone has a good voice. Not only can they carry a tune, but there is something about the quality of their vocal production that is pleasing. Those distinctions having been made, I will add one more categorization. That is, someone may be *technically* skilled at playing an *instrument* (other than voice), but still not be very "musical." By musical here, I refer again to the hearing skill, though there are also elements of rhythm, and other subtleties about playing an instrument. I would still lump most of those in with hearing, though I'm sure there are plenty of good deaf musicians. Still, even deaf people can hear in some sense (at least rhythm / vibration -wise). Singing seems to be in a different class from playing most other instruments, because the mechanicality of playing is completely human and internal, rather than external. Even someone who can't "carry a tune" could bang out a perfect Beethoven's 5th. I would agree in part with my friend's claim. Being raised in a music- rich environment certainly helps develop hearing skills, as does taking music lessons or learning to play an instrument. But I think there is definitely alot to be said for innate musical (hearing) ability. Similarly, all the voice lessons in the world will not change the fundamental character of your voice, which is genetically determined. What I am most interested in, though, is the extent to which genetics influences musical ability. If identical triplets born into a tremendously musical family, say, where both parents sing well and often, are separated at birth, one remaining in the music-rich environment, one enterring a silent monastery, and one living in a home where both parents are "tone deaf", how will this influence the musical ability of the kids? Similarly what would happen if children of parents with nary a musical inclination were spread out in these 3 different environments? Finally, is there anyone out there who knows whether any such studies have ever been carried out? I know lots of these types of things are done with language and lang.-acquisition, and also in other areas of psychology, sociology, etc. Have any been done with musicality? Alternately, does anyone have any personal experiences that would weigh heavily in one direction or another? -mjm ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 12 Oct 93 10:00:17 PDT From: Neal R. Copperman Subject: And the winner is ... uh-oh, elipsis in the title rather than ending a paragraph! So, the winner of the Heidi Berry poster, who's guess was a miraculous 3 years, 11 months and 1 day from my birthday (June 17, 1965 if you're taking notes) was Philip Sainty. Actually Philip, unless the birthday contest was just too intimidating for most people, you would have won any contest, being the only person to respond. Send me your address and I'll send you a poster. Plus, the Wherehouse at the mall started selling used CD's, making me suddenly find mall shopping more palatable. I picked up, among other things, the latest Story disc. The cool dude at the counter said that was a pretty good disc. I told him they were coming to town soon, I'd heard good things about them, but hadn't actually heard anything. He said they were pretty decent "chick rock", which struck me as kind of silly. Of course, that typified almost everything I bought: Roseanne Cash "The Wheel", Mary Chapin Carpenter "Straight? from the Heart", Kirsty MacColl "Electric Landlady", and the mekons "new york". Naturally I haven't listened to any of them. Neal ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 12 Oct 93 10:14:46 PDT From: Neal R. Copperman Subject: nature wins out MJM disputes: >> I had a rather interesting conversation with a rather interesting >> friend of mine the other night. Basically, she claimed that the ability >> to sing was influenced primarily by environment. I.e. her thesis >> was that anyone is capable of singing, if they are stimulated in >> the appropriate ways. I would have to disagree with your friend too. In my family, my parents played music all the time. Mostly folk music, with a heavy dose of Irish and music from all over the world. (I don't know where my parents got so into Irish music, since my ancestors come from Russia and Poland.) Anyway, lots of music pretty regularly. My mom likes to sing, but can't carry a tune worth a damn. I imagine the same is true of my dad, although I can't really recall hearing him sing. They both encouraged my sister and I to take music lessons at a very early age. My sister Lori is two years younger than me. We started taking piano lessons at about the same time, and in no time she flew right by me. I eventually quit taking piano, since it was too embaressing to have my baby sister playing rings around me. I then started taking clarinet in school. I was one of the best players in my high school, which really didn't mean to much. Mostly, it meant I could learn to move my fingers like I was supposed to, so I was better able to play all the notes. I was never able to tune myself, rather a big handicap for a first clarinet. I just could never hear whether I was a little sharp or a little flat or what. I enjoyed playing, but I didn't feel like I was bringing any depth or feeling to the music, and my inability to really "hear" made it kind of frustrating. Meanwhile, my sister continued with piano and graduated with a degree in music. She can sit down at the piano and play songs she heres off of the radio. She is a fantastic accompaniest, having covered my mistakes (and tuned for me) a number of times through high school. She recognized she didn't have what it took to be a concert pianist, but she certainly has the ear and the technical skill, two qualities that don't exist anywhere else in my family. She also has a good singing voice, and has been known to flesh out musical scores in underwritten productions. I would say we both had the same environment, encouragement and upbringing. Our world had a lot of music in it, but our parents were not musical, and we turned out very different. She and her husband have a room full of musical instruments, and I have a room full of CDs. So sign me up for the stereo orchestra, Neal ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1993 13:41:43 -0400 (EDT) From: michael welker Subject: What's wrong with Us? On Tue, 12 Oct 1993, WretchAwry wrote: > > Every time I listen to Us I have to follow it with a *good* PG > > album, just to remind myself... sigh. > > :-( I don't get why people don't like this album :-( > Maybe I've just been out here in Ohio too long, but dammit, I like Us! It's not an album that is chuck full of hit singles, but taken as a whole I find it quite a powerful piece (that's right all 10 tracks!). It's quite a departure from So or anything else he's done (with the possible exception of Passion), perhaps a more mature sound?? ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 12 Oct 93 10:50:53 PDT From: erik@falcon.kla.com (Erik Johnson) Subject: Re: The Spinach Inquisition WretchAwry writes: |> The oneandonly Erik Johnson wrote: ^^^^^^^^^^ this has gotta be a first for me. ;-) |> |> > WretchAwry writes: |> > |> > |> > Quest: To seek the Holy -- waitaminit. No, that was the other guy's |> > |> > quest. Lessee... To seek the Perfect Pizza. Yeah - that's |> > |> > the ticket! |> > |> |> > |> Oh, well then, you'll just have to come to Chicago. You'll surely find it |> > |> here. (Right SteveF?) |> > |> |> > Oh, absolutely. I'm an expatriot Chicagoan, grew up in Evanston & went to |> > the U of I in Champaign. I would die for a chance at a Giordano's out here - |> > well, maybe not die, since that would defeat the purpose of having the pizza |> > in the first place. ;-) |> |> Great! A Chicagoian goes west young man. Giordano's? How about Carmen's? |> SteveF & Christo had Giordano's, but next time I'll take them to Carmen's |> because the crust is *much* better! Well, last time I was in Chicago (has it really been 8 years? aigh!) Giordano's was still the ultimate. However, times may have changed, and next time I'm out there I'll have to do Carmen's. |> > Got the anti-Christ in the kitchen yelling at me again... TA |> |> The anti-Christ eats Dominos pizza... *This* explains *everything*.... Erik who also likes to end things with dots sometimes.... ___________________________________________________________________________ Erik N. Johnson Don't believe any return address KLA Instruments Corp. rumors. The one and only True San Jose, CA Address is e_johnso@kla.com. Got the anti-Christ in the kitchen yelling at me again... TA ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 12 Oct 93 11:01:29 PDT From: "John M. Relph" Subject: Re: What's Wrong With _US_ Firstly, Vickie did not write: > > Every time I listen to Us I have to follow it with a *good* PG > > album, just to remind myself... sigh. She had quoted it from a now forgotten ectophile's original message. She writes: > :-( I don't get why people don't like this album :-( That said, I find _Us_ to be rather repetetetive and dull. Perhaps it is a more mature sound, but it's also more of the same. I don't find it that much of a departure from either _So_ or _Passion_. It takes elements of those two albums (and a little of _PGIV_) and makes a fairly coherent whole. But I must say I get tired of Peter singing about his personal problems. "That's nice, Peter", I say to myself, "I hope you worked it out." But it doesn't give me great feelings of excitement, enjoyment, pleasure, affinity, and neither do I identify greatly with it. I like bits and pieces of it, but I never find myself wanting to hear it. In fact, the more I listen to it, the less I want to listen to it. I think it's just me. Mr Gabriel did his best, made a good album, one which many people enjoy greatly. But it's just not for me. The same thing was true with Kate Bush's _The Sensual World_. One thing I particularly don't like about these two albums is their hideous over-production. Too much going on. Too many ideas crammed into one sonic space. "DILUTE! DILUTE!" One person's opinion. -- John ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 12 Oct 93 11:27:54 PDT From: erik@falcon.kla.com (Erik Johnson) Subject: The angelic Gabriel & Us WretchAwry writes: |> Eli (whose parents were probably 3 Dog night fans, eh?) writes: |> |> > Every time I listen to Us I have to follow it with a *good* PG |> > album, just to remind myself... sigh. |> |> :-( I don't get why people don't like this album :-( I might actually be able to shed some light on this one, because I find that Us is me least favorite PG album also. Not that I *dislike* it, but I like the others better. To me, it's partially a case of PG moving in a different direction than I prefer. The world-music-influenced songs are good, but .... I think that for Us he focussed more on getting out a lot of emotional baggage, and while the lyrics are as good or better than before, the musical arrangements have less of the unique originality that he used to have and fall more into a more standard worldbeat format. It's still PG, and still good, but it's not like the "melting face" period, where there was *no one* doing anything like it at all. Let me add a *big* IMO to all this. I'm not trying to start a flamewar. ;-) |> Hey, I'm easy though. Welcome to Ecto (anyway) :-) |> |> Really, honestly, welcome to Ecto! |> Seconded! Welcome! Well come indeed! |> > Hmm, imagine a collaboration |> > between Jane Siberry and PG circa "melting face". I'd like to |> > see what she could do with a cover of "Intruder". |> |> Sounds like a great idea! |> The mind absolutely boggles! It would either be an absolute triumph, or a complete disaster, and I can't decide which. :-) |> > You may note a prominent omission from the above list. No, I'm not |> > an ectophobe, but I haven't found a record store with Happy. So if |> > I special-order, what should I get? ("Everything" is not an |> > acceptable answer!) |> |> But...but... |> |> Um, flip a coin :-) Draw straws :-) Write the names down on separate |> pieces of paper, put them into a hat, reach in...:-) Use a Ouija board :-) |> Write thhe names on a dart board, throw a dart blindfolded :-) Ask someone |> passing by :-) Call a wrong number and, after convincing them you're not |> a psychopath, ask them to choose :-) Get a deck of cards.... |> |> Everything! :-) (ooops, sorry) |> |> (Start at the beginning and go forrward, start at the end and go backward, |> get RhodeSongs, get Doug's sampler) |> |> Never mind, I'm the *last* person who should be answering this question, |> because I love them all dearly. Well, you could try what I did... Start in the middle and work out! :-) Actually, I think Ecto or Rearmament would be a good place to start. Didn't I read some time back that Happy herself recommended Ecto? Or was I just dreaming again? :-) Erik who actually has time to post today... nice change. ___________________________________________________________________________ Erik N. Johnson Don't believe any return address KLA Instruments Corp. rumors. The one and only True San Jose, CA Address is e_johnso@kla.com. Got the anti-Christ in the kitchen yelling at me again... TA ======================================================================== Date: 12 Oct 93 15:01:45 EDT From: Mike Mendelson Subject: A Series of Worlds Bob bobbed: | Wouldn't it be ectosynchronictic if Philadelphia and Chicago |were in the World Series? That would be the two major cities where |Happy has her largest followings and greatest airplay! Exsqueeze me? I beg yapowder? Unless you count Vickie's show which is heard by at least 12 people every week (no fault of Vickie's) and WCBR (on which I've yet to hear Happy), there has been negligible airplay in Chicago. I thought cities like Detroit and Mpls were playing way more Happy than that... am I wrong? J A Y S A L L T H E W A Y ! ! ! -mjm ======================================================================== Date: 12 Oct 93 15:11:36 EDT From: Mike Mendelson Subject: Re: Re: musicality: nature vs. Sender: HOLLY@UMBC2.UMBC.EDU Received: from umbc2.umbc.edu by ihc.compuserve.com (5.67/5.930129sam) id AA12834; Tue, 12 Oct 93 13:19:32 -0400 Received: from UMBC2.UMBC.EDU by UMBC2.UMBC.EDU (PMDF V4.2-14 #1) id <01H40X4ZX6N4001LQ8@UMBC2.UMBC.EDU>; Tue, 12 Oct 1993 13:19:27 EDT Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1993 13:19:27 -0400 (EDT) From: HOLLY@UMBC2.UMBC.EDU Subject: Re: musicality: nature vs. nurture To: MJM@zylab.mhs.compuserve.com Message-Id: <01H40X4ZXGAQ001LQ8@UMBC2.UMBC.EDU> X-Vms-To: IN%"MJM@zylab.mhs.compuserve.com" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT My mother used to say to me, "If you have any musical ability whatsoever, you have your mother to thank for it. Your father can't carry a tune in a bucket." My mother's right; my father couldn't carry a tune if it had handles. I remember back to when I was a child and my parents would drag us to church. My father would sing the hyms loudly with absolutley no fidelity to the hymn's key or the pitches of its notes. My mother and I had to stifle giggles at this. Every one of my brothers and sisters can sing beautifully and could probably have given the Von Trapps a run for their money, but my father lacks an ear for music. I'm not sure what role music played in my father's growing up, but I suspect he was subject to music and singing in church. One day last summer, my mother was playing a tape of hymns performed without vocals on hammer dulcimer. My father was listening to this tape while drinking coffee and reading the paper. He was singing along. "Isn't that nice?" I thought to myself as I heard my father's off-key singing. I love it when people are happy enough to sing, even when their musical abilities are less than perfect and they sound little better than the vocal equivalent to Lou Reed's "Metal Machine Music." "Isn't that nice? Daddy's singing!" I thought. Then I listened to the words he was singing. My father was not singing, "What a friend we have in Jesus/ Christ almighty, what a pal," (or whatever the words were supposed to be;) he was singing, "She'll be comin' 'round the mountain when she comes/ She'll be comin' 'round the mountain when she comes..." What do you make of that? He heard the music, but he couldn't quite tell what it was. > The other element in singing is vocal quality, i.e. what does your > voice sound like. This is what I understand to be meant when we > say someone has a good voice. Not only can they carry a tune, but there > is something about the quality of their vocal production that > is pleasing. In the words of The Music Man, "Singiiiiiing is just sustained talkiiiiing." If you can talk, you can sing. You can apply different styles to this sustained talking, but your voice may not sound so hot. Imagine Janis Joplin singing the title role in Bizet's "Carmen," or Pavoratti singing "Back in Black" by AC/DC. Part of what makes one's voice quality is pleasing is a matter of how well-suited their voice quality is to the style of music. I remember one instance in high-school honors choir, we were rehearsing Vivaldi's "Gloria." While I could hit all the notes and sound pretty good, I sort of had to struggle with it. When rehearsal was over, (for no reason whatsoever), I broke into a rendition of "Da Doo Run Run." As soon as I had belted out the first line, the alto section behind me started clapping their hands in rhythm and singing the backing vocals. A few of the sopranos whooped and cheered and clapped along. I sounded wonderful. I don't know if it was just the ease of the strain of singing really good music that made me sound good, or whether my voice is better suited for dippy pop music than for classical. Nobody whooped for my "gloria in egg-shell-cease deeeeeeeeeeeooooooo." > I would agree in part with my friend's claim. Being raised in a music- > rich environment certainly helps develop hearing skills, as does > taking music lessons or learning to play an instrument. But I think > there is definitely alot to be said for innate musical (hearing) > ability. Similarly, all the voice lessons in the world will not > change the fundamental character of your voice, which is genetically > determined. I agree wholeheartedly with you. I think you make terrific sense. > What I am most interested in, though, is the extent to which genetics > influences musical ability. [vastly interesting questions for which I have not a clue as to how to answer deleted] > Finally, is there anyone out there who knows whether any such studies > have ever been carried out? Damnittoheck! There's a mailing list/newsgroup that was mentioned in rec.music.gaffa a few months back that dealt with studies such as the ones in which you're interested, but I forgot what it was called or who you're supposed to contact about it. Holly (p.s. could you do me the favor of posting this to the list? I forgot to cc it. Thank you.) :) ======================================================================== The ecto archives are on hardees.rutgers.edu in ~ftp/pub/hr. There is an INDEX file explaining what is where. Feel free to send me things you'd like to have added. -- jessica (jessica@ns1.rutgers.edu)