James Taylor Gives Free Acoustic Guitar Lessons Online

in Music | August 23rd, 2011

James Tay­lor has start­ed to offer free gui­tar lessons online. He is, after all, your Handy Man.

Now let’s get this out of the way: The jury is still out on whether these video lessons will offer seri­ous guid­ance or not. The first video offers a some­what detailed primer on … car­ing for your fin­ger­nails. And it comes cou­pled with a short les­son, “Lit­tle Wheel” in e minor, that is decid­ed­ly short on ped­a­gogy. More lessons will be com­ing soon though. Sign up for JT’s email list, and they’ll ping you when new videos are post­ed online.

What to do in the mean­time? Well, you can always turn to YouTube, which fea­tures a sur­pris­ing num­ber of free video tuto­ri­als. If you sift around, you can learn how to buy an acoustic gui­tar, tune it by ear, play stum pat­terns, fin­ger pick, play var­i­ous chord pro­gres­sions and so on. For more lessons, you can start rum­mag­ing around three help­ful YouTube chan­nels: Rock­on­Good­Peo­ple; Watch & Learn Music Lessons;  and Mar­tyZ­songs. They pro­vide lots of free tuto­ri­als (while also try­ing to pro­mote paid prod­ucts on the side).

via metafil­ter

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OK Go Covers The Muppet Show Theme Song (Stream New Album Online)

in Music | August 23rd, 2011

Today marks the offi­cial release of The Green Album, a new com­pi­la­tion fea­tur­ing con­tem­po­rary rock and indie artists cov­er­ing clas­sic Mup­pets songs. OK Go, Weez­er, Andrew Bird, and My Morn­ing Jack­et, they all con­tribute to the album. And, thanks to the good peo­ple at NPR, you can stream the com­plete album online for the remain­der of the week.

Mean­while, if you want to indulge in some more Mup­pet nos­tal­gia, don’t miss the Mup­pet ren­di­tion of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, or Jim Henson’s 15 Minute Primer on Pup­pet Mak­ing from 1969.

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Jerry Leiber, Writer of Enduring Rock Classics, on What’s My Line? (1958)

in Music, Television | August 23rd, 2011

Jer­ry Leiber died yes­ter­day at the age of 78. Leiber was­n’t a house­hold name dur­ing most of his career. But his com­po­si­tions are known world­wide. Along with his part­ner Mike Stoller, Leiber wrote “Hound Dog,” “Jail­house Rock,” and â€śTreat Me Nice,” among oth­ers songs made famous by Elvis Pres­ley dur­ing the 1950s. They also com­posed “Stand by Me,” a tune sung by Ben E. King in 1960, then cov­ered count­less times. (We par­tic­u­lar­ly like this ver­sion.)

The clip above takes you back to 1958, when Leiber and Stoller appeared on the long-run­ning tele­vi­sion show What’s My Line?. If you’ve watched some of these vin­tage episodes, you’ll know that the pan­el usu­al­ly wore blind­folds lest the iden­ti­ty of the guest be imme­di­ate­ly revealed. But there was no risk of that in the case of Leiber & Stoller. And, by the way, it’s worth men­tion­ing that Vin­cent Price made a spe­cial guest appear­ance on the pan­el that night.

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The Guardian’s Guide to Opera (and Free Opera Until Sept. 12)

in Music | August 22nd, 2011

“Opera is thrilling, vibrant, ver­sa­tile – and thriv­ing. In fact, there has nev­er been a bet­ter time to fall in love with the art form” — Simon Cal­low.

This week­end, The Guardian pub­lished a handy mul­ti­me­dia guide called “How to Enjoy Opera,” and it coin­cid­ed with the stream­ing of a live per­for­mance of Ben­jamin Brit­ten’s The Turn of the Screw. If you missed it (we men­tioned it on our Twit­ter stream), you can still watch the per­for­mance online (and for free) until Sep­tem­ber 12th. In the mean­time, we would hearti­ly rec­om­mend spend­ing time with The Guardian’s accom­pa­ny­ing primers. They start you off with a list of The Top 50 Operas from 1607 to 1978, and then give you a tuto­r­i­al on how to sur­vive your first opera; a look at opera in the mod­ern age; and Simon Cal­low’s take on why “opera has nev­er been more alive.” All worth a look…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Klaus Nomi: The Bril­liant Per­for­mance of a Dying Man

Bill Bai­ley’s Remark­able Guide to the Orches­tra

All the Great Operas in 10 Min­utes

Learn Ital­ian for Free. Part of Learn 40 Lan­guages for Free

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The MIT “Checker Shadow Illusion” Brought to Life

in MIT, Science, Video - Science | August 19th, 2011

The video you’re watch­ing is a real-life demon­stra­tion of an opti­cal illu­sion devel­oped in 1995 by Edward Adel­son, a pro­fes­sor in MIT’s Depart­ment of Brain and Cog­ni­tive Sci­ences. The Check­er Shad­ow Illu­sion, as Adel­son calls it, shows that our “visu­al sys­tem is not very good at being a phys­i­cal light meter.” But more impor­tant­ly, the opti­cal illu­sion offers impor­tant insight into how our visu­al sys­tem tries to break down “image infor­ma­tion into mean­ing­ful com­po­nents, and there­by per­ceive the nature of the objects in view.” Adel­son’s full expla­na­tion of the illu­sion and what it reveals appears below the jump (or here). H/T 3 Quarks Dai­ly

(more…)

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Extreme Photography: Shooting Big Climbs at Yosemite

in Art | August 19th, 2011

When you think pho­tog­ra­phy and Yosemite Nation­al Park, you think of Ansel Adams shoot­ing â€śMoon and Half Dome” or “El Cap­i­tan.”

But today we’re think­ing about some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent — about the ver­ti­go-induc­ing pho­tog­ra­phy of Renan Ozturk. Work­ing on behalf of Nation­al Geo­graph­ic, Ozturk heads to Yosemite to shoot a fea­ture sto­ry on the climb­ing cul­ture that thrives in this val­ley sur­round­ed by 3000-foot rock walls. The park fea­tures extreme A5 climbs that con­stant­ly push climbers to new lim­its, and nat­u­ral­ly it takes a spe­cial pho­tog­ra­ph­er to record the action. How Renan does it? We’ll let him tell the rest of the sto­ry … H/T Curios­i­ty Counts

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Marlene Dietrich’s Temperamental Screen Test for The Blue Angel (1929)

in Film | August 19th, 2011

In 1929, Josef von Stern­berg began assem­bling the cast for the first major Ger­man sound film — Der blaue Engel, oth­er­wise known as The Blue Angel. A clas­sic of Weimar cin­e­ma, the 1930 film fea­tured Mar­lene Diet­rich play­ing Lola-Lola, a seduc­tive singer in the local cabaret. Lola-Lola was, it has been said, a “lib­er­at­ed woman of the world who chose her men, earned her own liv­ing and viewed sex as a chal­lenge.” The per­sona cap­ti­vat­ed audi­ences, and it made Diet­rich an inter­na­tion­al star.

Above, you can watch Diet­rich’s screen test for the film. Inhab­it­ing the role, she gives the poor piano play­er an ear­ful (essen­tial­ly say­ing, “How the hell can I sing through this garbage with you play­ing like that?”). Then she works her way through “Why Cry at Part­ing?” and climbs on that piano, cig­a­rette no longer in hand, and puts on a show…

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The Beatles: Why Music Matters in Two Animated Minutes

in Animation, Life, Music | August 18th, 2011

Lee Gin­gold makes the point rather artis­ti­cal­ly by way of The Bea­t­les.

Music can shape our youth­ful minds (which reminds me of this great ani­mat­ed short, I Met the Wal­rus).

Music pro­vides the emo­tion­al sound­track for the good times and bad times in our lives.

It fires the imag­i­na­tion.

It brings us togeth­er. Just watch 13,500 peo­ple sing “Hey Jude” in Trafal­gar Square.

The bot­tom line? Music mat­ters…

via Kim Sher­rell & @Alyssa_Milano

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