When I was a teenager, my girlfriend had a piano, and just sitting and watching her play Rachmaninoff, Liszt & Beethoven made up some of the most mesmerizing experiences of my youth. By Kind Permission Of was to me, the pinnacle of human achievement, and I’d beg to her play the various pieces it samples. Her piano was in a room facing the road, by the front door, and if she was playing when I went around the corner to call on her, I’d stand outside the window and listen until she noticed me. Sometimes I’d be standing out on the street for 10 or 15 minutes listening before actually going inside and saying hello.

I’d mess around on her piano whenever I got the chance, making her wince at my timing as she gave me the easiest possible arrangement of a duet; or trying to imitate her father and pick out the melodies to Beatles songs with my right hand whilst my left played the closest approximation of the written chords that I knew. But, frankly, however much I enjoyed it, I was never much good. And so, at University, when spare time was limitless and I was exploring music in every which way with various bands I played with, from a really quite good jazz band down to some less well-advised ska and prog ensembles, I ended up buying myself an electric piano.

Not just any electric piano though, I did my research and talked to some fantastic pianists who played them, and ended up getting a second-hand Fatar SL-880 for far less than it was worth from a musician a couple of hours’ drive away in London, who had so much fancy equipment he was practically giving the thing away at a few hundred quid just to make space. Unlike more traditional keyboards, this has fully weighted hammer-action keys, which means it really feels and responds like an actual piano, and whilst I used to get a decent sound by running it through my computer, I now have a beautiful midi module which, whilst nothing like the real thing, provides a nice approximation of a range of quality pianos.

For the past three years, with varying levels of discipline, I’ve been teaching myself to play piano on that. Various friends, band-mates, girlfriends and so on have given me tips, but it’s mostly been a solitary affair with infrequent feedback, and so I’ve doubtless picked up some bad habits. Most of these – using the wrong fingering, pedalling too much – are noticed and subsequently resolved after I play in front of a more experienced pianist, but one I’ve noticed myself and, despite some effort, haven’t made many inroads on fixing as yet.

When I play, I nearly always play for my own pleasure. This doesn’t mean I don’t practise my scales, arpeggios and the endless horrifying pieces from Hanon’s The Virtuoso Pianist in 60 Exercises, but it has meant that I only learn any given piece just enough to make it sound wonderful to me. One of the most stressful experiences of my adult life was playing piano at a small exhibition in a church in London, and even in that I ended up making a couple of small slips during the recital.

I used to be a hero on Guitar Hero. My console was filled with 100% ratings on songs at the Expert level, and the rush of adrenaline as I got finally got through the solo and towards the end of a song without having made a mistake was exhilarating. Trying to play a piece on piano flawlessly approximates that, but knowing that there’s no real benchmark of 100% and that even if I hit every note at exactly the right time, I’m still far away from achieving the grace and feeling that I hear on professional recordings, takes away some of the joy from that. In the spirit of external motivation though, I’ve started recording my attempts, and sending them to a couple of friends, and I’m tentatively sharing one of these below.

I’d like to make a slue of excuses: that I’ve lost the sheet music for this piece; that I was tired; that the recording quality of an iPhone and some computer speakers is always going to be terrible — but having done that I also have to admit that this recording was probably the 10^th or 11^th attempt that evening, and probably the best of the lot.

Right now I can’t listen to this recording without all my focus on the mistakes. Hopefully not everyone will feel that way.

Xx

We need to change the way we’re thinking. We can’t just accept gun crime as a normal way of life. We can’t just walk on by when we see folks in the streets waving guns around…

When I say ‘Peace Up’ you say ‘Guns Down’
Peace Up!
GUNS DOWN
Peace Up!
GUNS DOWN
Peace Up!
GUNS DOWN

[man fuck this po-lice propaganda]

Welcome to Brownsville.

Back in early 2000, I was at the tender age of 14 years old, and living in the smaller bedroom back home, desperately waiting for my brother to head off to university later that year so that I could move on up to the big room which the windows that opened out onto the extension roof, where I could get up to all sorts of trouble with friends and girlfriends. Before he left, however, my brother was helping to develop my tastes in music, and my teenage feelings of rebellion, by introducing me to gangsta rap: Dr. Dre, N.W.A., Public Enemy and, fresh off the presses, M.O.P. with their new album Warriorz, featuring the chart hit Ante Up.

I probably missed a few of the less overt sexual references in the lyrics, and only had vague ideas about the drug & gang culture being glorified, but I knew all the words to pretty much every track on that album, and it featured pretty strongly in the soundtrack to my teenage daydreams. Particularly memorable was the ultimately catchy start of this verse:

Brownsville, home of the brave
Put in work in the street like a slave
Keep rugged dress code
Always in this stress mode
(That shit will send you to your grave) So?
You think I don’t know that? (BLOW!)
Nigga hold that! (BLOW!) Nigga hold that! (BLOW!) Nigga hold that!
From the street cousin, you know the drill
I’m 900 and 99 thou short of a mill

Chorus:
Ante Up! Yap that fool!
Ante Up! Kidnap that fool!
…

Back then, I had absolutely no idea where Brownsville was, and didn’t really think about it too hard. Last week, however, when I heard about a free Public Enemy and Salt ‘n’ Pepa concert being held in a New York City park, I came across the name once again. Public Enemy, of course, aren’t exactly suited to Central Park’s Summer Series, where the likes of Jason Mraz serenade picnickers, and their concert was in a less gentrified neighbourhood, between Crown Heights and Brownsville. I hadn’t had cause to visit the neighbourhood before, but I wasn’t going to led a less-than-perfect reputation and my colleagues’ protests based on the NYC Murder Map get in the way of my seeing Chuck D, Flava Flav et. al.

Since the end of the crack epidemic, and the zero-tolerance measures set in place by Mayor Giuliani, NYC is a hell of a lot safer than it used to be. This wasn’t popular with M.O.P., but it means I was pretty surprised to hear five separate speeches like the one that started this post, throughout the course of the night, by community activists encouraging the crowd to stop gun crime. The recent shootings mentioned were indeed true, and most of the crowd seemed behind the speakers, but there was a decent portion that seemed to think of these messages as NYPD-inspired propaganda designed to legitimise the stop-and-frisk trend they riled against.

Fuck fam,
With the army I got behind me,
I’ll fuck up a whole city just like Rudy Giuliani
~ Mark Ronson feat. Mos Def & M.O.P. – On The Run
(Commercial flop, amazing album)

Public Enemy were amazing. The hood was, whilst a bit run-down and rough looking, perfectly safe, even at night when I walked back from the show. I wasn’t the only white person there (I saw at least 20) and I wasn’t even the whitest person there – that award goes to the girl to my left who was so full of enthusiasm she had no room left for any sense of rhythm. My knowledge of old-school hip-hop, gained when I started looking into the infinitely better music that inspired and developed alongside the music of the gansgta rap my 14-year-old self loved so much, was more than enough to understand and enjoy the entire show, and I’m probably going back for more shows down here later on.

In the meantime, M.O.P. and N.W.A. are back onto my iPod and whilst they’re on, I’ve ceased smiling at tourists as I walk on by.

Xx

High on the my list of reasons for moving to New York, back when I was pretending to make a logical and well-reasoned choice between here and Singapore for my brief 6-month trip away from the UK, was that New York has a fantastic music scene and, being a musician (of sorts), that was somewhere I wanted to be. I haven’t actually seriously played music since moving here, although I’ve improved a lot on the piano and, more recently, the berimbau, but I have experienced a whole range of eclectic and brilliant music, nearly always unexpectedly or at the last minute.

In this vein, I got a message one morning asking if I’d like to join some friends to go and see Kishi Bashi. I only vaguely recognised the name, but a quick trip to the Internet reminded me that this was the solo project of Jupiter One, Of Montreal and Regina Spektor violinist, K Ishibashi. I’m never going to miss the opportunity to see a virtuoso and multi-instrumentalist on their first solo tour so along I went.

It was perfect. There was the obligatory brief theme from a Bach piece that no serious musician could do without. He alternated between violin, beatboxing, singing and the occasional collaboration with a banjo-playing friend. Together they took shoegaze to a new level by, at one point, actually both putting their instruments down and kneeling to play with the fantastic array of pedals lining the stage to produce an out-of-this-world soundscape.

I often neglect to report back on the music I see in NYC nowadays, forgetting how special it is that I can see artists of this quality on a whim, and offering no more than a mention in casual conversation or a tweet. Sometimes what was once novel and thrilling becomes everyday, but that’s not to say it loses its appeal, or that my enjoyment is lessened in any way by this. Some people say that you can’t truly appreciate something until it’s gone: to that I disagree, it just takes some active thought to be grateful for what you actually have.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I need to go buy a loop pedal and get my fretless bass out of the corner where it’s rested untouched for a few months.

Xx

One doesn’t learn a mother tongue from textbooks, computer programs, language classes or endless iPhone quizzes on conjugation. Instead, one is immersed in the world of a language, growing up. Incidental conversations, music, the ceaseless chatter of the TV, all combine with direct interactions to produce a baby’s first words, and a child’s perception of a language.

Deb Roy of MIT wanted to explore this phenomenon further, and recorded 90,000 hours of video of his son’s early life, to data-mine and discover the points at which sounds into words, and how the development of those words came out.

The results were clear, the development of his son’s language came from immersion, not teaching. And so, this, in addition to the various learning apps I have, is my aim. For the last month or so, my entire computer has been switched to Portuguese. Seeing ‘Permanecer nesta página’ when trying to close a tab didn’t provide much trouble, but having the statistical computing environment I work in – already famed for its mysterious and bewildering error messages – also switched to Portuguese, I began to panic a little.

About half the music I listen to now is in Portuguese, generally either Capoeira songs or Brasilian DnB (drum & bossa, not far from its namesake but with more of a samba beat and far less offensive to the ears). I’m also quickly becoming a fan of some modern Brasilian singers such as Vanessa de Mata, and rediscovering old ones like Astrud Gilberto. I don’t really watch TV or its digital equivalents any more, but as my Portuguese improves, there are a few Brasilian films I intend on picking up to test myself.

To date, it’s going…moderately. My comprehension is improving at a fantastic rate, but my ability to form sentences, and my accent, are swiftly lagging behind. The occasional Skype conversation with a Brasilian friend helps here, but without actually being in the country I’m not sure this will be enough. Maybe I need to start planning a holiday. I’ll leave you with a quote from the last person I told about my learning strategy:

Immersion? Sounds a lot like drowning to me.

Well, I guess it’s sink or swim.

Xx

Walking the streets of midtown Manhattan yesterday, I was treated to the sight of a New York Rangers bus, decked out in blue and white, and packed with fans chanting “Let’s go Ran-gers [tap, tap, tap tap tap]“. The Rangers are in the semi-finals of the Playoffs (the final contest of the NHL) against the New Jersey Devils, and their fans, already famous for their insobriety, are making the most of it.

I’m not much of an Ice Hockey fan any more (I was a big Cardiff Devils fan as a kid), but the noise brought a smile to my face as I remembered games at Yankee Stadium with the infamous chant of “Let’s go Yan-kees [tap, tap, tap tap tap]“. And who could forget the victory parade when the Giants won the Super Bowl this year, the streets lined with loyal fans shouting themselves hoarse with “Let’s go Gi-ants [tap, tap, tap tap tap]“.

An over-eager analyst might conclude that New Yorkers, whilst by no means bereft of sporting enthusiasm, perhaps lacked creativity in their expression of that. However, this past weekend spent in close proximity to Fenway Park in Boston gave me ample opportunity to hear their historic battle cry, “Let’s go Red Sox [tap, tap, tap tap tap]”

Presuming one maintains a degree of respect for the English language, of the 90 teams in the NFL, NHL and MLB together, 69% have (arguably) bisyllabic names (NFL 23/30, NHL 17/30, MLB 22/30), I allowed the Detroit Li-ons, for example, but couldn’t bring myself to include the Chicago Be-ars. I set about finding game footage of a random sample of 15 of these teams to discover their chants, every single one I looked up use this chant. Variants exist, such as the call & response “Let’s go Li-ons…Let’s go De-troit”, and the cerebral “Let’s go Ra-vens, let’s go”, but the creativity doesn’t reach much beyond that.

Now, rygbi fans, of which I am proud to count myself one, generally have an arsenal of singing material with which to enliven any game. The battle to drown out ‘Swing Low Sweet Chariot’ with the dulcet tones of valleys men singing ‘Bread Of Heaven’ can be more intense than the action on the field at a Wales vs. England match; and that’s hardly an affair renowned for its amicability.

As an American who watches rugby occasionally, it sends chills down my spine listening to the crowd here. After 76:00 (1m30s into the clip) Cwm Rhondda / Bread of Heaven starts to roar.

Even football (soccer) fans, not generally regarded as the brightest of folks, seem to manage a wonderful degree of creativity in their support. Club and country standards apart, topical songs are the norm and can seemingly be composed and subsequently voiced by tens of thousands of fans during the course of a game. Canadian soccer fans recently got in on the action too, taunting David Beckham with his wife’s philosophical masterpiece ‘If You Wanna Be My Lover (Zig-A-Zig-Ah)’ when LA Galaxy played away to Montreal Impact last week. One of my favourite in-game compositions is below.

After Djimi Traoré scores an own goal, to the tune of Blame it on the Boogie:
Don’t blame it on the Biscan, don’t blame it on the Hamann, don’t blame it on the Finnan, blame it on Traoré. He just can’t, he just can’t, he just can’t control his feet

Just can’t beat that.

Xx

The New York Times called Evan Shinners a pianist that “plays with a bravura that might have pleased Lizst”. HuffPo called his debut album “One of the brattiest Bach recordings to come along since Glenn Gould himself”. Some guy who’d just missed his pool shot when Evan began shouting into his red megaphone whilst playing Bach’s Sixth English Suite last night called him “Asshole”.

“It has nothing to do with putting on a tuxedo and going to a concert hall and making sure you’re sitting in the right row and aren’t coughing, and your cellphone is turned off. No. Have a damn whiskey and listen to some damn good music. This is Bach man, it’s not a damn funeral, we don’t have to wear black”

~Evan Shinners

I listen to a lot of Bach. I’ve already mentioned the majestic performances at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and I’ve also been going along weekly to Bach at One at St. Paul’s Chapel by my office, where the Trinity Baroque Choir perform Bach’s cantatas in an intimate space. My iPod is never without Keith Jarrett’s recordings of The Well-Tempered Clavier and Jacques Loussier’s Play Bach albums from the late 50′s and early 60′s where he and his trio play jazz improvisations over Bach.

None of that, however, really compares to the 20-something Juilliard grad I saw last night at Fat Cat — one of my favourite dives in the city, with live jazz, drunk NYU kids and all the foosball/pool/ping-pong and other games one could want every night of the week.

He arrived, like every good musician, about an hour after he was scheduled. Unlike most classical musicians, he’d brought along his own piano stool, a red megaphone and a MacBook. He interspersed virtuoso performances of difficult Bach pieces with poetry, stories, ranting into a megaphone, and his own synthesised backing track for the Italian Concerto. The video below gives a taste of the show, but makes him look far more sober-minded than the performance I saw last night.

I first stumbled across him when I overheard someone talking about an exhibition where someone standing inside a grand piano was playing Beethoven’s 9^th Symphony upside-down and backwards whilst walking about MoMA. A quick glance at his YouTube recordings later, including the one below giving an insight into his synaesthesia (best super-power ever), and I knew I had to see this guy live.

It was amazing. Find his tour schedule and duck into a dive bar to see what I’m talking about. I’ll leave you with a quote from Evan Shinner’s website.

many of my concerts are given in venues not designed for classical music. i improvise and change notes, something most classical musicians are opposed to. i never think of what is considered correct, only of what is relevant. i practice bach playing along to rye rye or mia rapping. my ideal audience is a group of riotous people in the bronx or brooklyn begging for a memorable experience. and still, the music i prefer to play is bach. when you hear me play bach today in new york city, you should hear the taxis honking, the subways screeching, the brooklyn bridge looking elegant, the hudson river crashing, washington heights coming alive on a friday night, and washington square sounding ominously still. bach’s music is timeless — yet this does not mean we have to separate him from our current time.

And that’s why I love Bach.

Xx