COLOUR COMPOSITION DERIVED FROM THREE BARS OF MUSIC IN THE KEY OF GREEN (aka COLOUR SCALE ON A MUSICAL THEME FROM BEETHOVEN), Roy De Maistre, 1935. Private Collection.

I suppose most people do not think about why they enjoy the music they enjoy, or give much thought to why exactly they dislike certain songs, but simply know they like or dislike them, but I have always been interested in such things, along with why some songs, chords, notes, evoke certain emotions, what is my brain doing when I listen to music, or when I sing or play the violin, why some folks have absolute pitch, and other folks do not, how some folks are obviously awfully tone deaf and why they bother trying out for American Idol (is it just me?), how some musicians can play by ear without the use of sheet music, or how some musicians can tune an instrument without a tuner, give or take a semitone. Why does it hurt my ears, and grate on my nerves when someone sings or plays an instrument out of tune (admittedly an intolerance on my part- okay, that may not be covered in the book mentioned below!)? What makes a virtuoso? What qualifies as music? Why does music and pitch seem to be related to certain colours? Why some songs such as Happy Birthday don't have a definitive starting pitch, starting anywhere? How do we distinguish timbre- what instrument is being played? As a musician, and someone who has always been obsessed with music and sound since birth, these things are fascinating to me. And what the hell is that God awful high pitch (ouch!) on the last 30 seconds, give or take, of the Beatles, A Day in the Life on Sgt. Pepper's, before the laughter, and why can't some people hear that? What was the weird, three high pitch electronic tones at the beginning of some cassette tapes? The book I'm currently reading, THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON MUSIC: THE SCIENCE OF A HUMAN OBSESSION, by Daniel J. Levitin, is about the connection between music and the brain, from the perspective of a musician, producer/ sound engineer, and neuroscientist. Profoundly fascinating, listening to or playing music coordinates more areas of the brain than most things. One doesn't have to have a formal music education, be a musician or professional singer to be a music connoisseur, nor does one have to be to appreciate and enjoy this book. I haven't read that far into the book yet, but what I have read so far is fascinating, including the many times I have looked up subjects in the index, for the immediate satisfaction of my curiosity, and the numerous music examples Levitin sites! Levitin has a website about the book with numerous sound clips, videos, reviews, a look inside the book, and interactive features.

"Music seems to have an almost willful, evasive quality, defying simple explanation, so that the more we find out, the more there is to know, leaving its power and mystery intact, however much we may dig and delve. Daniel's book is an eloquent and poetic exploration of this paradox. There may be no simple answer or end in sight, but the ride is nonetheless a thrilling one, especially in the company of a writer who is both an accomplished musician, a hard nosed scientist, and someone who can still look upon the universe with a sense of wonder." -Sting

The painting above, concerns another "obsession" of mine- the relation between colour and music. According to Kandinsky, the violin makes a purple sound- lovely!

(from Wikipedia)

Enjoyed watching Kate Bush videos on YouTube today, and saw this, Aerial, from her latest album. She is amazing and so are the Cirque du Soleil performers- a perfect combination.
Wow wow wow wow wow (alluding to one of her older songs)!

"And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye" (said the fox to the Little Prince) -Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince.

I'm just a novice really when it comes to digital graphics, and really consider myself more of a traditional artist using traditional mediums. Part of the problem in the past for me with vector programs in particular is the steep learning curve and confusing tools, particularly those damn bezier curve tools! Inkscape however seems to be much more "artist friendly" and a less than impossible learning curve, and with SVG every line, fill, object, etc., is editable, and unlike raster images it doesn't pixelate or lose image quality whether you enlarge or reduce the size- whether a 128 x 128 pixel icon or poster or billboard size. Inkscape comes with "potrace" which vectorizes a bitmap image (which I used on my rotoscoped pics) so even raster images can be improved. I screen captured these images to give an idea of the scalableness of SVG...unfortunately I could not save and post in SVG (they are in PNG) -I don't think Gaia or Blogger yet allows for that (I could be wrong) although it is becoming the preferred format of web graphics and I think Wordpress already accepts SVG in its posts. Inkscape is open source (if you know code you could compile your own), free (not $600 like Adobe Illustrator!!!), and updated often. It is a GTK (Gimp Tool Kit) based program, so to run it, you first have to install the latest GTK package (runtimes and libraries) for your OS. It runs on Linux, Windows (I'm running it on Vista), and Mac OS X.

The picture is of the stunningly beautiful, Louise Brooks "Lulu", silent film star in the 1920's, the quintessential flapper girl, with her distinctive bob.