Cre­ative Com­mons image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Back in 2013, Bri­an Eno gave a talk at the Red Bull Acad­e­my, the lec­ture series that has host­ed fel­low musi­cians like Tony Vis­con­ti, Deb­bie Har­ry, and Nile Rogers. Asked when he knew a piece of music was fin­ished, Eno let drop that he cur­rent­ly had 200,809 works of unre­leased music. (The actu­al answer though? “When there’s a dead­line”).

Usu­al­ly we have to wait for posthu­mous releas­es to hear such music, like what is cur­rent­ly hap­pen­ing now to Prince’s “vault” of music. Eno is not wait­ing. He got the dead­line.

Sonos Radio HD, the music divi­sion of the speak­er and audio sys­tem com­pa­ny, announced last week that Eno has curat­ed a radio sta­tion that will play noth­ing but unre­leased cuts from his five decades of mak­ing music. There’s so much mate­r­i­al, the chance of a lis­ten­er hear­ing a repeat is slim. (Still, the sta­tion promis­es hun­dreds of tracks, not hun­dreds of thou­sands.)

Now, this is not an adver­tise­ment for Sonos, but a heads up that in order to pro­mote “The Light­house,” as Eno has called the radio sta­tion, Sonos has dropped two Eno-led radio shows where he shares just a frac­tion of the unre­leased mate­r­i­al, with a promise of two more episodes to come. One fea­tures an inter­view­er, and the oth­er is just Eno talk­ing about the tracks. (And you *can* get one month free at Sonos if you sign up.)

“(A radio sta­tion) is some­thing I’ve been think­ing about for years and years and years,” says Eno. “And it’s part­ly because I have far too much music in my life. I have so much stuff.”

The tracks have been purged of titles and have been instead giv­en the util­i­tar­i­an monikers of “Light­house Num­ber (X)”. Any­way, titles sug­gest too much thought. “Some are pret­ty crap titles,” he says. “The prob­lem with work­ing on com­put­ers is that you have to give things titles before you’ve actu­al­ly made them…Sometimes the pieces often quick­ly out­grow the titles.”

If you’re expect­ing noth­ing but ambi­ent wash­es and gen­er­a­tive music, you might be sur­prised at the vari­ety. In the first Eno-host­ed show, he plays a funky jam (“Light­house Num­ber 002”) co-com­posed by Peter Chil­vers and stuffed with r’n’b sam­ples; and an almost-com­plet­ed song fea­tur­ing the Eury­th­mics’ Dave Stew­art on gui­tar, called “All the Bloody Fight­ers,” aka “Light­house Num­ber 106”.

Why call it “The Light­house”? “I like the idea of a sort of bea­con call­ing you, telling you some­thing, warn­ing you per­haps, announc­ing some­thing.” He also cred­its a friend who told him his unre­leased music is like ships lost at sea. The light­house “is call­ing in some of those lost ships.”

As a bonus, lis­ten below to Eno’s recent inter­view with Rick Rubin, where they talk about the Sonos project and much more.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Expe­ri­ence a Video Paint­ing of Bri­an Eno’s Thurs­day After­noon That Has Soothed & Relaxed Mil­lions of Peo­ple

Hear Bri­an Eno’s Rarely-Heard Cov­er of the John­ny Cash Clas­sic, “Ring of Fire”

Dis­cov­er the Appre­hen­sion Engine: Bri­an Eno Called It “the Most Ter­ri­fy­ing Musi­cal Instru­ment of All Time”

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

“Piano edu­ca­tion is impor­tant for teach­ing polypho­ny, improv­ing sight-read­ing, con­sol­i­dat­ing the knowl­edge of har­mo­ny and gain­ing much more musi­cal abil­i­ties,” write Turk­ish researchers in the behav­ioral sci­ences jour­nal Pro­ce­dia. The stu­dent of the piano can advance solo or with anoth­er play­er in duets, play­ing what are called “four-hand pieces.” But learn­ing “to gain the atti­tudes of duet play­ing” pos­es a chal­lenge. Researchers Izzet Yuce­tok­er and Kok­sal Apay­din­li sug­gest a pos­si­ble inter­ven­tion — over­com­ing the dif­fi­cul­ties of play­ing four-hand pieces by learn­ing to play what are called “three-hand pieces.”

How, you might won­der, does one play the piano with three hands? It does not take an extra limb or a part­ner with one hand tied behind their back. Three-hand tech­nique is a dex­trous sleight-of-hand devel­oped in the 1830s, most promi­nent­ly by pianist Sigis­mond Thal­berg, a rival of Franz Liszt who could “appar­ent­ly not only counter Liszt’s leg­endary fire and thun­der with sub­tle­ty,” Bryce Mor­ri­son writes at Gramo­phone, “but who played as if with three hands. Three hands were heard, two were vis­i­ble!” Might this some­how be eas­i­er than play­ing duets?

One con­tem­po­rary review­er of Thalberg’s play­ing described it as “myr­i­ads of notes sound­ing from one extrem­i­ty of the instru­ment to the oth­er with­out dis­turb­ing the sub­ject, in which the three dis­tinct fea­tures of this com­bi­na­tion are clear­ly brought out by his exquis­ite touch.” The Pol­ish pianist and stu­dent of Liszt Moriz Rosen­thal claimed Thal­berg adopt­ed the tech­nique from the harp. “Such leg­erde­main quick­ly had nov­el­ty-con­scious Paris by the ears,” Mor­ri­son writes, “and an ele­gant white kid-glove rather than than a mere gaunt­let was thrown down before Liszt.”

Liszt would have none of it, derid­ing three-hand tech­nique as a trick unfit for his vir­tu­os­i­ty. Nonethe­less, “in 1837, Liszt, arguably the most charis­mat­ic vir­tu­oso of all time, was chal­lenged for suprema­cy by Sigis­mond Thal­berg…. Stung and infu­ri­at­ed by what he saw as Thalberg’s aris­to­crat­ic pre­ten­sions… Liszt replied with cor­r­us­cat­ing scorn.” He agreed to meet Thal­berg, not in a duet but a duel, at “the home of Count­ess Cristi­na Bel­gio­joso — lover of Lafayette, Heine and Liszt,” notes Georg Prodota at Inter­lude.

The Count­ess “gave a char­i­ty event for the refugees of the Ital­ian war of inde­pen­dence, and the con­tem­po­rary press com­pared the con­cert to the bat­tle between Rome and Carthage.” Count­ess Bel­gio­joso her­self (as did the press) pro­nounced the out­come a draw:

Nev­er was Liszt more con­trolled, more thought­ful, more ener­getic, more pas­sion­ate; nev­er has Thal­berg played with greater verve and ten­der­ness. Each of them pru­dent­ly stayed with­in his har­mon­ic domain, but each used every one of his resources. It was an admirable joust. The most pro­found silence fell over that noble are­na. And final­ly Liszt and Thal­berg were both pro­claimed vic­tors by this glit­ter­ing and intel­li­gent assem­bly. Thus two vic­tors and no van­quished …

His­to­ry was not so kind. Liszt is now cel­e­brat­ed as “the most charis­mat­ic vir­tu­oso of all time,” while Thal­berg is hard­ly remem­bered. And some of the most cel­e­brat­ed exam­ples of pieces played with three-hand tech­nique come not from Thal­berg but from Liszt, such as “Un Sospiro” (“A Sigh”), the last of his Three Con­cert Études, com­posed between 1845 and 1849, not only as per­for­mance pieces, but — as it so hap­pens — for the gen­er­al improve­ment of a pianist’s tech­nique. Hear pianist Paul Bar­ton play three ver­sions of “Un Sospiro” above and down­load the sheet music for the piece here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Piano Played with 16 Increas­ing Lev­els of Com­plex­i­ty: From Easy to Very Com­plex

12-Year-Old Piano Prodi­gy Takes Four Notes Ran­dom­ly Picked from a Hat and Instant­ly Uses Them to Impro­vise a Sonata

Acclaimed Japan­ese Jazz Pianist Yōsuke Yamashita Plays a Burn­ing Piano on the Beach

How the Clavi­chord & Harp­si­chord Became the Mod­ern Piano: The Evo­lu­tion of Key­board Instru­ments, Explained

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Over the years, we’ve fea­tured The Ukulele Orches­tra of Great Britain per­form­ing cov­ers of var­i­ous rock classics–from the Rolling Stones’ “Sat­is­fac­tion” and Bowie’s “Heroes,” to Nir­vana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” and Talk­ing Heads’ “Psy­cho Killer.” Record­ed in Lon­don back in 2005, this clip fea­tures the Orches­tra per­form­ing The Clash’s ‘Should I Stay Or Should I Go.’  The per­for­mance is an out­take from the DVD, Anar­chy in the Ukulele, which is avail­able in dig­i­tal for­mat. Enjoy.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Seri­ous­ly Awe­some Ukulele Cov­ers of “Sul­tans of Swing,” “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” “Thun­der­struck,” and “Smells Like Teen Spir­it”

Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Child” Shred­ded on the Ukulele

George Har­ri­son Explains Why Every­one Should Play the Ukulele

What was the Vel­vet Under­ground? A Kim Fow­ly-like art project that out­lived its impre­sar­i­o’s inter­est? A main vehi­cle for Lou Reed, rock’s ego­ma­ni­ac under­dog (who was no one’s ingénue)? Was it three bands? 1. The Vel­vet Under­ground and Nico; 2. The Vel­vet Under­ground with John Cale; and 3. The Vel­vet Under­ground with Doug Yule after Cale’s depar­ture. (Let’s pass by, for the moment, whether VU with­out Reed war­rants a men­tion…)

Each iter­a­tion pio­neered essen­tial under­ground sounds — dirgy Euro-folk rock, strung-out New York garage rock, junkie bal­lads, psy­che­del­ic drone, exper­i­men­tal noise — near­ly all of them chan­neled through Reed’s under­rat­ed gui­tar play­ing, which was, per­haps the most impor­tant mem­ber of the band all along. Who­ev­er taped the Vel­vets (in their sec­ond incar­na­tion) on March 15, 1969, on the last night of a three-show engage­ment at The Boston Tea Par­ty in Boston, MA, seemed to think so. “The entire set was record­ed by a fan direct­ly from Lou Reed’s gui­tar ampli­fi­er,” MetaFil­ter points out.

The mic jammed in the back of Reed’s amp, a Head Her­itage review­er writes, pro­duced “a mighty elec­tron­ic roar that reveals the depth and lay­ers of Reed’s play­ing. Over and under­tones, feed­back, string buzz, the scratch of fin­gers on frets and the crack­le and hum of tube amps com­bine to cre­ate a mono­lith­ic blast of met­al machine music.” Known as the “leg­endary gui­tar amp tape” and long sought by col­lec­tors and fans, the boot­leg, which you can hear above, “serves as a tes­ta­ment to the bril­liance and inno­va­tion of Reed’s gui­tar-play­ing — both qual­i­ties that are often under­rat­ed, if not over­looked entire­ly, by crit­ics of his work,” as Richie Unter­berg­er writes.

It should be evi­dent thus far that these record­ings are hard­ly a com­pre­hen­sive doc­u­ment of the Vel­vet Under­ground in ear­ly 1969. Except for Mo Tuck­er’s glo­ri­ous, but muf­fled thump­ing and some of Ster­ling Mor­rison’s excel­lent gui­tar inter­play, the rest of the band is hard­ly audi­ble. Songs like “Can­dy Says” and “Jesus” — on which Reed does not cre­ate sub­lime swirls of noise and feed­back — chug along monot­o­nous­ly with­out their melodies. “It is frus­trat­ing,” Unter­berg­er admits, “to hear such a one-dimen­sion­al audio-snap­shot of what is clear­ly a good — if not great — night for the band” (who were far more than one of their parts). On the oth­er hand, nowhere else can we hear the nuance, feroc­i­ty, and out­right insan­i­ty of Reed’s play­ing so amply demon­strat­ed on the major­i­ty of this doc­u­ment.

The tape cir­cu­lat­ed for years as a Japan­ese boot­leg, an inter­est­ing fact, notes a Rate Your Music com­menter, “con­sid­er­ing this bears more sim­i­lar­i­ty to record­ings from the likes of [leg­endary Japan­ese psych rock band] Les Ral­lizes Dénudés than most of the Vel­vet Under­ground’s oth­er mate­r­i­al.” The record­ings may have well paved the way for the explo­sion of Japan­ese psy­che­del­ic rock to come. They also demon­strate the influ­ence of Ornette Cole­man in Reed’s play­ing, and the lib­er­at­ing phi­los­o­phy Cole­man would come to call Har­molod­ics.

“Alla that boo-ha about whether Reed real­ly was influ­enced by free jazz,” writes one review­er quot­ed on MetaFil­ter, “can be put to rest here as he pulls the kind of wail­ing hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry shapes from the gui­tar that it would take the god­dam Blue Humans to decode a cou­ple of decades lat­er.” It may well over­state the case to claim that “Lou Reed sin­gle-hand­ed­ly invent­ed under­ground music,” but we can hear in these record­ings the seeds of every­thing from Tele­vi­sion to Son­ic Youth to Pave­ment to Roy­al Trux and so much more. See the full track­list below, a “clas­sic setlist,” notes MetaFil­ter, “from around the time of their 3rd LP.”

I Can’t Stand It
Can­dy Says
I’m Wait­ing For The Man
Fer­ry­boat Bill
I’m Set Free
What Goes On
White Light White Heat
Begin­ning To See The Light
Jesus
Hero­in / Sis­ter Ray
Move Right In
Run Run Run
Fog­gy Notion

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Andy Warhol Explains Why He Decid­ed to Give Up Paint­ing & Man­age the Vel­vet Under­ground Instead (1966)

Hear Ornette Cole­man Col­lab­o­rate with Lou Reed, Which Lou Called “One of My Great­est Moments”

The Vel­vet Under­ground Cap­tured in Col­or Con­cert Footage by Andy Warhol (1967)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness