The Piano

There was a piano
wherever we went.
Remember?

There was melody
In those places we called home.

And some nights,
when dad preached at church,
mom would play at home.

The sounds,
The labored repetition of piano practice-
sometimes hammered, sometimes caressed notes, played by a mind full of
thoughts and worries,

Those notes still ring in my head
when I’m at the cusp of sleep
and in those ebonies – those minor keys we loved so much,
I can hear her whisper,
“I love you”

On other nights,
two sets of hands would play,
mom and my brother Keith
Mother and son,
carving music out of
an old piano

Other nights, when my younger brother Chris and I would be at home,
mother would play the piano by dad at church.

Fredi, our Peruvian helper, my second mother, would be here with us.

She played this old piano too.

The most fragile tone of all.
A gently overzealous tempo.

Chris and I would run by the piano,
we would tease Fredi and pounce on notes,
pushing her concentration,

For Fredi, this made playing the piano
a daunting mission to defy chaos

There would be other times when,
while everyone was gone,

I would sit on the piano bench.
The wood pieces greeting each other under my weight, creaking

Welcoming me.

I would sit and play one minor note.
That sound traveled to deep places.

There the note would rest, and comfort the yearning
for the familiar

I know you did the same,
finding small tokens throughout the day
that would root the transient in you

That melody was a part of my home

This piano
melancholic constant in our family,

Home has the unlikeliest keys…

These notes
are some of the fabric that make our past
Part of our roots

There was a piano
and its notes were constant,
in places that changed so often,
the notes remained the same.

The keys to my Home are ebony.

New Wave Ware

One strategy that major record companies have been employing lately to deter downloading is adding bonus computer content to new CD releases. I recently discovered that this technique is not unique to CD’s, but had in fact been practiced in the vinyl era as well. That’s right: there were a handful of records released in the late 70’s and early 80’s that contained computer programs as part of the audio.This is totally insane, and totally great.

Neo Medieval Music? Yes!

Are you ready for something completely different?  Welcome to the world of neo-medieval music!  It’s as interesting as it sounds, and, to my surprise, enjoyable!  You can find samples of this particular neo medieval band, ‘Corvus Corax’, here at last.fm.  There’s also a comprehensive and well written wikipedia page dedicated to this phenomena here.  Check it out!

Disco XT is the new Laptop DJ Coolness

iTunes is a fantastic jukebox application, but when it comes to tweaking how your tracks are played, the options are not as varied as one would like.
A work friend of mine is a dance instructor for a swing class, and the issue she runs into is, she wants a 30 second gap between swing tunes so that people can find/switch dance partners. In iTunes, you’re able to switch between fade and gap, and change the gap on a limited basis, but it’s obvious that the good developers weren’t taking swing classes into mind.
So, I set out to look far and wide for an Applescript that would automatically create a pause in play for 30 seconds between songs on any give playlist. The search was to no avail. The closest I came to a solution was creating a 30 track that was blank and placing it between each song. It was an unworkable solution.

Enter DiscoXT, a DJ application with a monumental amount of features. I was shocked to discover how easy it was to use the fade editor to create gaps that would automatically create the break between songs that my friend was looking for.

DiscoXT isn’t the cheapest app on the market (129 Dollars for a single user license), but it exists for both the PC and the Mac, and it’s a perfect solution for any dance instructors out there looking to extend the gap between songs in your class playlist.  There’s a free demo available with limited functions, so give it a try if you think this may work for you.
You can find more information on this app at: http://www.discoxt.com

Every conversation leads to….Soviet era synth!

It’s interesting to think about whether the constant discussion of Russians and their surging influence in Electronica is a matter of perspective or reality.  It seems to be the latest trend in musical journalism, to highlight an artist from the old Soviet Union, where so many unique synthesizers were manufactured in relative isolation from their western counterparts during the years of Gorbachev and Brezhnev eras.  Regardless, there’s no denying that there’s some gorgeous stuff flowing out of Russia these days.  Musicians and producers like Novel 23 lead that pack, but there are many right there with him.  To get a feel for some of it, visit last.fm and type in ‘Russian’ for ‘Tags’.  Or just click here for a Russkie Synth database.  If you do decide to become a member of last.fm, friend me.  I’m micahboswell.