Hearing It By Ear

My string teacher was heavy set and when I first met him when he was young had long hair but still heavy set and he just gotten married. He lost his hair by then, and a girl I use to date in high school ended later in his college class which totally overwhelmed me.

To make things short, he told me about these very old senior citizens that could play cello and violin concertos without knowing a note of music written. What they did he told me was listen to the recordings over and over until the music sounded exactly like it was written. He was in total amazement that that could be possible, but it was he saw it with his own eyes and ears.

I personally don’t think the music was exactly perfect note for note, but I like his total excitement. Anyways, they learnt to play the instrument in the style of their favorite composers. It is like Kreisler who composed music in the style of older composers.

It reminds me of the Beatles who said it was their playing their music in Hamburg Germany constantly to perfect their style and play real good that they hardly had time to sleep. Anyone, who works very hard at what they love come off saying in words or sounds what they really meant too.

Classical Radio

This morning I heard a cello sonata as usual on the classical radio. I thought how they don't play tenor sax or bass clarinet sonatas, it is only logical because the music they play on the radio is from the 19 century or older. It is very rare you hear something from the 20th century. The wind instruments were very imperfect in the 19 century and older than that. There was no clarinet in Vivaldi's time. It was a new instrument in Mozart's time. The sax was very unpopular except for the great composers like Berlioz and Wagner that championed the instrument. Adolphe sax was a great friend of Berlioz. I was listening yesterday to the radio and they played Henry Cowell which was a contemporaneous with Charles Ives and died in the 60's. Paul Creston died in the 80's both have lots of saxophone, clarinet works, but one doesn't hear them on the radio for it is 20th century. These composers wrote music that is conventional too that could be played on the radio, but they don't. I heard one time on the radio john Cage In A Landscape, which sounded very peaceful, but they just don't ever play anything like that. I am at school now, and don't like listening with headphones, but I know of Last Fm ~ real nice. I just wanted to say the radio has something against 20th century! Someone told me that there are no American composers, that is wrong, the radio refuses to play them, there are hundreds, I can name 25! 20th century ones.

Kerouac's List of Essentials

Belief & Techniques For Modern Prose by Jack Kerouac
List of Essentials:
1. Scribbled secret notebooks, wild typewritten pages for yr own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house
4. Be in love with your own life
5. Something that you feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumb saint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
8. Write what you want bottomless from the bottom of mind
9. The unspeakable vision of the individual
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
12. In strange trance fixation dreaming of the object before you
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibitions
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in sea language & knowledge
19. Accept loss forever
20. Believe in the holy contours of life
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exist intact in the mind
22. Don’t think of words when you stop but see the picture better
23. Keep track of every date emblazoned in your morning
24. No fear of shame in dignity of yr experience, language and knowledge
25. Write for the world to see yr exact picture of it
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
27. In praise of Character in Bleak inhuman Loneliness
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under,crazier the better
29. You’re a genius all the time.
30. Writer ~ Director of Earthly movie Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven


copied this from a book

A Day in Summer

Ever since I was young enough to read I got into world religions and Zen and Vedanta in particular. My music has flowed from these wellspring as it was greatly admired by Aldous Huxley and Christopher Isherwood and the Alan Watts which I read everything he wrote at one time. I am here at school with a few copies of American Poetry Review which I haven't been able to read for a while, but will shortly. It is summer now very hot in Florida and always in the news is the oil spill. I hope that I can go to the beach before any oil spill, for that is my year round fun on the beach especially in summer. In summer one always eats the summery cold salads, and sandwiches. My eating has always been around Zen and Yoga ideas. One fine tunes to the ukulele sound and the songs that pour forth into splashes of fountain pen colors. We take these roads where ever they take us and to me on paper it been fountain pen recollections or presences.

The Harpsichord

On the plastic bulletin on the wall of school
Inquiries were being done to sell her harpsichord?
She had stated to me, that she hated them, her last one
Given as a gift to the university, a handcrafted one costing her a bundle.
Looking toward the back room was her baby grand
With huge microphones coming to the metal wires, she would play
For her friends at a birthday luncheon.
The student there came out from the back
When she heard “mandolin” and said her father loved playing it
The harpsichord seller was a old stocky lady needing a violinist and
A very large pink birthday cake to place in her open dinning table.
The husband looked in a very anti festive mood and left slamming the door!
She had gone to the university making inquiries for a violinist
But there had been no talk of compensations, though knowing
More notes than the instrument can ever play?
She was very upset the pen she signed to sell her harpsichord
Wrote only in green and wished for a black which had quickly arrived!
I had told her that I was always been into Glen Gould
As she quickly rushed us to the door with a mighty clang.
The harpsichord stood there in the empty room,
As no glimmer of light enter from the enclose,
It stood silent for some person to play in lost reveries
In an open room full of light, thru inspiration of days.

From Stationary to Jewels

Well, when I am around here I don't do too much of my own writings, but I sure love reading around, very seldom do I like a blog, certainly not the long ones. I use brown or violet because that is my pen colors of Noodlers I use most.

I live thirty minutes from the beach but went this weekend to visit a friend who is retired who has been playing piano since she was fourteen. She looks graceful with her white hair and is so energetic. She use to be my high school music teacher. I never lost contact with her and had the phone always in my phonebook. She use to play cello and violin but has given it up and wants to sell her cello. Only has the piano over looking the window to the front garden. It is near Bal Harbor. I went there after I went to Mass at Father Alberto Curtie very near there. Then I went to Bal Harbor Shopping Center. I didn't see Jimmy Osternberg( Iggy Pop) lives around here. I didn't get to shop there, like I use to, for the Gap and Banana Republic aren't there, they want more expensive stores. For some time time have had goldfish in the pools that they didn't have before, which is a plus. The fountain pen, Stationary Store has been gone for almost a decade, things have changed since I use to come here during high school, there is mostly jewelry stores and guards, not many before. From stationary to jewels, rather have paper and pen. If one would have one or the other, couldn't select both, which would it be?(paper includes these computers)can't cheat and say, I will type it, I will type it too? no, it definitely be paper and pen for me( includes type) reminds me of King Midas.

An Act of Kindness

As I was leaving the University there was a girl who stopped her yellow Volkswagen Beetle and she was talking on the cellphone:a turtle was crossing the road and she wanted to remove it. Aimlessly, the others unconscious drivers passing it by underneath without smashing it. She was at removing it so I didn't go out too. I remember a day of great rain, flooding when a turtle came up to my room, brought it to the natural reserve, which I would go often at that time.

Laura Riding

The Poet's Corner


Here where the end of bone is no end of song
And the earth is bedecked with immortality
In what was poetry
And now is pride beside
And nationality,
Here is a battle with no bravery
But if the coward's tongue has gone
Swording his own lusty lung.
Listen if there is victory
Written into a library
Waving the books in banners
Soldierly at last, for the lines
Go marching on, delivered of the soul.

And happily may they rest beyond
Suspicion now, the incomprehensibles
Traitorous in such talking
As chattered over their countries' boundaries.
The graves are gardened and the whispering
Stops at the hedges, there is singing
Of it in the ranks, there is a hush
Where the ground has limits
And the rest is loveliness.

And loveliness?
Death has an understanding of it
Loyal to many flags
And is a silent ally of any country
Beset in its mortal heart
With immortal poetry.

Laura Riding, one of my favorites poetess

So, where do we go from here?

There is very little support of the arts and especially music. There is one teacher in this school that couldn't find a full time teaching job, so she worked part time. There was no insurance for part times and she got cancer and quickly died, and her house was taken by the creditors. One has to have medical insurance and support of the arts, society relies on the arts like spirituality to be healthy like previous society. People think that society runs on only technology, but it is only a hollow block if there is nothing in it. If most songs that are on the top list are trashy, unlike the ones created by an industry that was more geared in a work of art than making great amount of money like they are interested now. So, where do we go from here?

A Work of One's Own

People are in a quick rush to get somewhere! There are no values placed on works of ones any more. Everyone is chit chatting trying to look like a celebrity, and though there is nothing wrong to that, when the admiring of one do that one natural ones to follow. The email, with its short message, there is little time to expand one thoughts. Everyone is in a quick rush to get somewhere but are they really getting anywhere at all? The same goes to instruments one has to take ones time learning new things. Like I heard in these blogs say rightly, " there are more bad teachers, than there are instruments," that is very true. Teachers don't let students expand their own way of knowledge by themselves, but are taught what is conventional. I heard of very little of Mozart playing other works of other composers, mainly like many great composers he had to perfect his own. Yet, there is total need to learn as much from the treasured past whenever possible.

Technology of Recordings

Technology has created where one could listen to a concert of music from the 50's or earlier, before one had to go to a concert. Chamber music was done so that people could play together at their houses, whether they had learnt to read music like in classical or play folk music by ear. Before, actually there were more people playing instruments with the number of people living in that town or city. Now, people rely on recordings and lesser of videos. Therefore, less people in general have to generate their sound. The 80's saw the advent cds, then came computers, then they figured they could download. Before a citizen of a country would hear a few concerts in a life time, unless they were a traveling musician. Now, if one wants one can hear music continuously. Does it deafen the ears or the brains to be bombarded by information? A person on the radio might hear on the radio in one day with it on, what someone might have heard in a life time, even much less. A person living in the 60's or 70's treasured their recordings, but now there are so many downloads, of endless music or anything else for that matter. Still, there is less of oneself, less time certainly for oneself. For every great advancement there is drawback. Yet, information is precious, just not at the stack of oneself. In slowing things down we see things clearly for their real value. There records had value for their insightful covers and notes and inside art. The cds are great in their non scratch aspect. Certainly, the value of a concert is totally incredible, as well as the versatility of books that go any where and one can flip one open. The value of a fountain pen, when the rush of an idea comes to one in the midst of the ocean surf watching the pelicans dive from the pier, as the moon slowly gleams from beyond the approaching night.

Ukulele Tuner

I don't mind being the ukulele tuner. The friend who started playing ukulele was a trombone player, but renting the instrument at school couldn't afford one after school. He plays guitar too. You would think he started ukulele because of me, but he didn't that I know of, knows me as a viola player. I told him to use a guitar tuner and tune down the D two(flats)b's! making a C he would need for the rest of the notes are there A E G. I use a /violin/cello tuner for my ukuleles for the C is there. I asked why he doesn't buy a immediate student trombone and he says he has to pay to go out with his girlfriend, and the new used sports car he bought.
The other guy doesn't have a job now, but he plays Gibson Les Paul, but he was playing basson, and wants to play it, but out of school he can't pay for one. Those are expensive. He likes the oboe family and music of the Baroque. He comes from liking classic rock like Led Zeppelin, etc. I wonder I haven't seen too many Les Paul players that want to be bassonist, interesting. He is going to be a fireman, so that is sealed. There is too many fireman applications.
I like playing my mandolin and ukulele in the evening. It always seems to me that the soprano is more ukulele sounding than the tenor, and like playing that, acoustic guitar that is what I like late in the evening, maybe with somthing on the tele.

The Saxophone

The saxophone was developed in the mid 19th century by Adolphe Sax a Belgian. He worked making musical instruments like his father. In those times children followed the path of their fathers, like Black Smith, Bakers, etc. The first instrument he developed was the baritone sax and he showed it to Hector Berlioz, which was a dear friend of his, with similar personality. A few years later he came out with the rest of the saxophone family, alto, soprano, tenor, etc. The baritone sax wasn't the first one he developed but he perfected the bass clarinet. He had duals with other bass clarinet players with his improved method and won the duals. Like fighting duals that occurred in the 19 century. There was a small orchestra of his with his improved instruments and saxes and he won a large orchestra with more outdated instruments.
I was a bass clarinet player at fifteen years old, the sax wasn't easy to rent neither in California or Florida in High School. When I got a job in a music store near where I lived taking care the the classical department, I bought an alto. It was a great alto from Buescher of the 50's in mint condition from a close neighbour who never got to play it, for he left in the Navy. He was going to play in the band in the Navy but it didn't materialize. He wasn't too happy to give his precious instrument but I have been enjoying it ever since. The sax was played in the Paris Conservatory in his time and he was a teacher there, beside making them. Berlioz kept being his deep friend and wrote many articles in music periodicals of the period. In the instruments were used in Berlioz music, then in Wagner. The instrument stopped being played in the conservatory or orchestras, for a long period after that till the 1920's when black musicians started realizing the greatness of the instrument in Jazz. It was too there wasn't much a great composer like Wagner or Berlioz for a period till jazz came alone, Debussy, the Martinu( great composer for many instruments) in the early 20 century.