Hear Samuel Beckett’s Avant-Garde Radio Plays: All That Fall, Embers, and More

in Radio, Theatre | May 13th, 2015

Think of radio plays, and you most like­ly think (or I most like­ly think) of the for­m’s Amer­i­can “gold­en age” in the first half of the 20th cen­tu­ry. That time and place in radio dra­ma con­jures up a cer­tain more or less defined set of sen­si­bil­i­ties: rock­et­ships hurtling toward unknown worlds, hard-bit­ten detec­tives stick­ing to their cas­es, sub­ur­ban cou­ples bick­er­ing about the behav­ior of their jalopy-dri­ving chil­dren. By the 1950s, the con­ven­tions of radio plays had ossi­fied too much even for old-time radio audi­ences. Who best to call to tear up the form and start it over again? Why, Samuel Beck­ett, of course.

“In 1955 the BBC, intrigued by the inter­na­tion­al atten­tion being giv­en to the Paris pro­duc­tion of Samuel Beckett’s Wait­ing for Godot (see a ver­sion here), invit­ed the author to write a radio play,” says the short his­to­ry pro­vid­ed in the pro­gram of the Beck­ett fes­ti­val of Radio Plays. Though hes­i­tant, Beck­ett nev­er­the­less wrote the fol­low­ing to a friend: “Nev­er thought about radio play tech­nique but in the dead of t’other night got a nice grue­some idea full of cart­wheels and drag­ging of feet and puff­ing and pant­i­ng which may or may not lead to some­thing.’ ” That “grue­some idea” led, accord­ing to the pro­gram, not just to Beck­et­t’s 1956 radio-play debut All That Fall, but four more to fol­low over the next twen­ty years.

At the top of the post, you can lis­ten to that first 70-minute son­ic tale of an old, obese Irish house­wife, the blind hus­band she meets at the train sta­tion as a birth­day sur­prise, and all the chil­dren, eccentrics, weath­er, and thor­ough­ly Beck­et­t­ian dia­logue that give tex­ture to the death-obsessed jour­neys from home and back to it. All That Fall received crit­i­cal acclaim, but the lat­er radio play just above, the next year’s 45-minute Embers, found a more mixed recep­tion — to the delight, one imag­ines, of most Beck­ett fans, who tend to pre­fer the divi­sive stuff to an agreed-upon canon any­way.

Built out of two mono­logues, a dia­logue, and the sounds of the sea, Embers’ “rather ragged” script (in the words of Beck­ett him­self, who lat­er took the blame for the“too dif­fi­cult” text) presents us with an inar­tic­u­late pro­tag­o­nist who leaves us with many more ques­tions than answers. But just as in the work acknowl­edged as Beck­et­t’s best, the ques­tions we come away with send us in more inter­est­ing direc­tions than do the answers pro­vid­ed in main­stream radio dra­ma — or in main­stream any­thing else, for that mat­ter. And amid all this writ­ing for tape rather than stage, what not­ed work did he come with in 1958 for the stage? Why, Krap­p’s Last Tape, of course.

Samuel Beck­et­t’s radio plays avail­able online:

• All That Fall (1957)
• Embers (1959)
• Words and Music (1962)
• Cas­can­do (1963)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Samuel Beck­ett Directs His Absur­dist Play Wait­ing for Godot (1985)

Mon­ster­piece The­ater Presents Wait­ing for Elmo, Calls BS on Samuel Beck­ett

Rare Audio: Samuel Beck­ett Reads Two Poems From His Nov­el Watt

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

An Animated John Coltrane Explains His True Reason for Being: “I Want to Be a Force for Real Good”

in Jazz, Music | May 12th, 2015

Last week, we post­ed an inter­view with the late, great Ray Brad­bury that was bril­liant­ly ani­mat­ed by the folks over at Blank on Blank. This week, they unveil a new piece fea­tur­ing John Coltrane. You can watch it above.

Coltrane is, of course, one of the true giants of 20th cen­tu­ry music. He first got atten­tion play­ing with the Miles Davis Quin­tet in the mid-1950s on albums like Relax­in’, Cookin’ and Steamin’ before he released his sem­i­nal solo album Blue Train. But his career quick­ly fal­tered. He was hooked on hero­in and Davis, a for­mer junkie him­self, fired him from the Quin­tet. When he cleaned him­self up, Coltrane found he was a changed man. “In the year of 1957,” he writes in the lin­er notes for his mas­ter­piece A Love Supreme, “I expe­ri­enced, by the grace of God, a spir­i­tu­al awak­en­ing, which was to lead me to a rich­er, fuller, more pro­duc­tive life.”

Through­out the 60s, Coltrane sought to express his rapid­ly evolv­ing sense of spir­i­tu­al­i­ty through music that grew ever more com­plex and avant-garde. Late peri­od Coltrane is a far cry from the moody grace of Blue Train; it’s a cas­cade of fren­zied notes that can be as sub­lime as it is dis­cor­dant and chal­leng­ing.

The piece above is a record­ing by Paci­fi­ca Radio reporter Frank Kof­sky who talked with Coltrane in Novem­ber 1966, just eight months before he died at the age of 40 of liv­er can­cer.

At one point in the piece, Kof­sky asks him how much he prac­tices. Trane was famous for the man­ic inten­si­ty with which he played. He once report­ed­ly spent ten hours per­fect­ing the sound of a sin­gle note. 12-hour prac­tice ses­sions were the rou­tine. In the inter­view, how­ev­er, Coltrane is non­cha­lant. “I find that it’s only when some­thing is try­ing to come through you know that I real­ly prac­tice and then it’s just, I don’t know how many hours, it’s just all day. “

Lat­er in the video, when Coltrane dis­cuss­es switch­ing from a tenor sax to a sopra­no, you get a glimpse of how dri­ven he was by his muse.

The sound of that sopra­no was actu­al­ly so much clos­er to me in my ear. I didn’t want admit this damn thing because I said well the tenor’s my horn, this is my baby but the sopra­no, there’s still some­thing there, just the voice of it that I can’t… It’s just real­ly beau­ti­ful. I real­ly like it.

But the most poignant moment comes at the end of video when he describes what kind of per­son he wants to be.

I mean I want to be a force for real good. In oth­er words, I know that there are bad forces. I know that there are forces out here that bring suf­fer­ing to oth­ers and mis­ery to the world, but I want to be the oppo­site force. I want to be the force, which is tru­ly for good.

For Jazz fans every­where, there is no ques­tion that he was a force for good. And it was all embod­ied in his music.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Coltrane Per­forms A Love Supreme and Oth­er Clas­sics in Antibes (July 1965)

John Coltrane’s Hand­writ­ten Out­line for His Mas­ter­piece A Love Supreme

Watch John Coltrane Turn His Hand­writ­ten Poem Into a Sub­lime Musi­cal Pas­sage on A Love Supreme

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

Van Gogh’s 1888 Painting, “The Night Cafe,” Animated with Oculus Virtual Reality Software

in Animation, Art | May 11th, 2015

Vin­cent van Gogh’s 1888 paint­ing, “The Night Cafe,” now hangs at the Yale Uni­ver­si­ty Art Gallery, accom­pa­nied by this descrip­tion:

In a let­ter to his broth­er writ­ten from Arles in the south of France, van Gogh described the Café de l’Al­cazar, where he took his meals, as “blood red and dull yel­low with a green bil­liard table in the cen­ter, four lemon yel­low lamps with an orange and green glow. Every­where there is a clash and con­trast of the most dis­parate reds and greens.” The clash­ing col­ors were also meant to express the “ter­ri­ble pas­sions of human­i­ty” found in this all-night haunt, pop­u­lat­ed by vagrants and pros­ti­tutes. Van Gogh also felt that col­ors took on an intrigu­ing qual­i­ty at night, espe­cial­ly by gaslight: in this paint­ing, he want­ed to show how “the white cloth­ing of the café own­er, keep­ing watch in a cor­ner of this fur­nace, becomes lemon yel­low, pale and lumi­nous green.”

The can­vas, though dry and most­ly flat, does a per­fect­ly good job of cap­tur­ing the life force that ran through that 19th cen­tu­ry French café. That’s an under­state­ment, of course. But I sup­pose there’s no harm in ani­mat­ing the already ani­mat­ed scene with some new-fan­gled tech­nol­o­gy. Above, you can see Mac Cauley’s “immer­sive vir­tu­al real­i­ty” trib­ute to Van Gogh, which he cre­at­ed for Ocu­lus’ Mobile VR Jam 2015. On a page ded­i­cat­ed to the project, Cauley writes:

My main goal with this project was to see what kinds of styl­ized 3D ren­der­ing could be expe­ri­enced through VR. I have always been drawn to the paint­ings of Van Gogh and I imag­ined it would be amaz­ing to be inside one of these col­or­ful worlds. While the GearVR offered cer­tain chal­lenges with its tech­ni­cal lim­i­ta­tions com­pared with a PC, it forced me to pri­or­i­tize and real­ly define what makes a Van Gogh paint­ing unique.

While cre­at­ing the envi­ron­ments of these paint­ings in 3D space I’ve had to expand on areas that can’t be seen; rooms behind doors, objects hid­den from view, peo­ple turned away from the view­er. It’s been an inter­est­ing process in using ref­er­ence mate­r­i­al from Van Gogh and oth­er expres­sion­ist painters but also imag­in­ing what might have been there, just off the edges of the can­vas.

The win­ners of the Ocu­lus Mobile VR Jam will be announced in June. More cre­ative takes on famous paint­ings can be found below.

via Coudal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A 3D Tour of Picasso’s Guer­ni­ca

Edvard Munch’s Famous Paint­ingThe Scream Ani­mat­ed to the Sound of Pink Floyd’s Pri­mal Music

Dripped: An Ani­mat­ed Trib­ute to Jack­son Pollock’s Sig­na­ture Paint­ing Tech­nique

Late Rem­brandts Come to Life: Watch Ani­ma­tions of Paint­ings Now on Dis­play at the Rijksmu­se­um

Van Gogh’s ‘Star­ry Night’ Re-Cre­at­ed by Astronomer with 100 Hub­ble Space Tele­scope Images

Watch Miles Davis Improvise Music for Elevator to the Gallows, Louis Malle’s New Wave Thriller (1958)

in Film, Jazz, Music | May 11th, 2015

The modal exper­i­men­ta­tion in Miles Davis’ clas­sic albums Mile­stones and, espe­cial­ly, 1959’s Kind of Blue seemed to come out of nowhere. Along with sim­i­lar­ly ground­break­ing releas­es at the end of the fifties, these records irrev­o­ca­bly changed the sound of jazz. But hard­core jazz fans, and cinephiles, would have seen the devel­op­ment com­ing, hav­ing heard Davis’ sound­track to Louis Malle’s 1958 crime thriller Ele­va­tor to the Gal­lows (Ascenseur pour l’Echafaud—trail­er below). As the sto­ry goes, Davis hap­pened to be in Paris in 1957 dur­ing the film’s post­pro­duc­tion to per­form at the Club Saint-Ger­main. Malle’s assistant—perhaps inspired by the moody jazz sound­tracks of films like Roger Vadim’s Does One Ever Know and Alexan­der Mackendrick’s Sweet Smell of Suc­cess—sug­gest­ed Davis to the direc­tor. After a pri­vate screen­ing of the film, the trum­peter and com­pos­er agreed to take the gig. It was Davis’ first sound­track and Malle’s first fea­ture film.

At the top of the post, we have the great priv­i­lege of seeing—and hearing—Miles and his four side­men record the sound­track, live. The two-day ses­sion took place at Le Post Parisien Stu­dio in Paris on Decem­ber 4th and 5th. Accord­ing to Discogs, “Davis only gave the musi­cians a few rudi­men­ta­ry har­mon­ic sequences he had assem­bled in his hotel room, and once the plot was explained, the band impro­vised with­out any pre­com­posed theme, while edit­ed loops of the musi­cal­ly rel­e­vant film sequences were pro­ject­ed in the back­ground.”

The filmed ses­sion is cap­ti­vat­ing; Davis and band stare intent­ly at the screen and, on the spot, cre­ate the film’s mood. (In the sec­ond half of the clip, the film­mak­ers ban­ter in French about the pro­duc­tion while Davis plays in the back­ground.) See­ing this footage, writes Dan­ger­ous Minds, is akin to “watch­ing Picas­so paint.” Fur­ther­more, “it could be argued that Malle’s cin­e­mat­ic style and the unique pac­ing and char­ac­ter of this par­tic­u­lar film—which Miles obvi­ous­ly had to con­form to in order to score it properly—had a notice­able influ­ence on his music.”

Miles would say as much, claims his biog­ra­ph­er Ian Carr, telling Malle “a year or two lat­er” that “the expe­ri­ence of mak­ing the music for the film had enriched him.” Crit­ic Jean-Louis Gini­bre wrote in Jazz mag­a­zine at the time that Davis “raised him­self to greater heights” dur­ing the ses­sions, “and became aware of the trag­ic char­ac­ter of his music which, until then, had been only dim­ly expressed.” For his part, Malle remarked, “Miles’s commentary—which is of extreme simplicity—gives a real­ly extra­or­di­nary dimen­sion to the visu­al image.” Fans of the film will sure­ly agree. Fans of Miles Davis may want to rush out and get their hands of a copy of the score. (You can find a dimin­ished copy on Youtube here). It was nev­er released in the U.S., but ten songs appeared state­side on an album called Jazz Track. While the sound­track may not work as well with­out the images (All­mu­sic describes some num­bers as “rather ster­ile”), it nonethe­less pro­vides us with a kind of miss­ing link between Davis’ fifties hard bop and the cool jazz he pio­neered the fol­low­ing decade in his most-laud­ed, best-sell­ing album, Kind of Blue.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds/Discogs/

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Miles Davis Sto­ry, the Defin­i­tive Film Biog­ra­phy of a Jazz Leg­end

Miles Davis Plays Music from Kind of Blue Live in 1959, Intro­duc­ing a Com­plete­ly New Style of Jazz

Watch Ani­mat­ed Sheet Music for Miles Davis’ “So What,” Char­lie Parker’s “Con­fir­ma­tion” & Coltrane’s “Giant Steps”

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

Dementia Patients Find Some Eternal Youth in the Sounds of AC/DC

in Life, Music | May 11th, 2015

Last April, Mal­colm Young left AC/DC, the band he co-found­ed with his broth­er Angus in 1973. Only 61 years old, the gui­tarist found him­self unable to remem­ber his famous licks and riffs. The cause, doc­tors dis­cov­ered, was demen­tia. Young now lives in a nurs­ing home where he receives full-time care.

Above, you can watch a video cre­at­ed by the Brazil­ian radio sta­tion 89FM, where, touch­ing­ly, elder­ly Brazil­ians, also suf­fer­ing from demen­tia, lis­ten to the sounds of AC/DC and sum­mon to mind their younger, care­free days, when rock pro­vid­ed their sound­track to their youth. Long live rock…

To under­stand why music seems to trig­ger mem­o­ries in unusu­al ways, and how music ther­a­py can be used to improve the lives of those with demen­tia, see the research cov­ered at Live Sci­ence.

via Ulti­mate Clas­sic Rock

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and  share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

New Web Site, “The Opera Platform,” Lets You Watch La Traviata and Other First-Class Operas Free Online

in Music, Opera | May 11th, 2015

Click the image above to watch Verdi’s La Travi­a­ta.

Opera has always had its appre­ci­a­tors, and fer­vent ones at that, but in recent decades the form has had to extend its appeal beyond its inner cir­cle of die-hard fans. Some of these efforts, such as the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Oper­a’s high-def­i­n­i­tion broad­casts to movie the­aters around the world, have proven sur­pris­ing­ly suc­cess­ful, encour­ag­ing the low­er­ing of oper­a’s bar­ri­er to entry. Now, thanks to a site called The Opera Plat­form, you don’t have to go to a the­ater of any kind; you can watch full-length per­for­mances any­where with an inter­net con­nec­tion.

In order to pro­mote itself as “the online des­ti­na­tion for the pro­mo­tion and enjoy­ment of opera” designed to “appeal equal­ly to those who already love opera and to those who may be tempt­ed to try it for the first time,” The Opera Plat­form offers one “show­case opera” per month, view­able free, in full, with sub­ti­tles avail­able in six dif­fer­ent lan­guages. It also pro­vides a host of sup­ple­men­tary mate­ri­als, includ­ing doc­u­men­tary and his­tor­i­cal mate­ri­als that put the mon­th’s fea­tured opera in con­text.

“The Opera Plat­form is a part­ner­ship between Opera Europa, which rep­re­sents opera com­pa­nies and fes­ti­vals; Arte, the Fran­co-Ger­man cul­tur­al broad­cast­ing chan­nel, and the par­tic­i­pat­ing opera com­pa­nies,” writes the New York Times’ Michael Coop­er. “It has a $4.5 mil­lion bud­get,” Reuters report­ed, “with about half com­ing from the Euro­pean Union’s cul­tur­al bud­get.” So the site cer­tain­ly has its resources in order, but what of its con­tent?

The Opera Plat­form has come strong out of that par­tic­u­lar gate with Verdi’s La Travi­a­ta, pro­duced at Madrid’s Teatro Real, which you can watch for free until August 11. This tale of “the short and hec­tic life and trag­ic death of a high-soci­ety cour­te­san in 19th cen­tu­ry Paris,” as the site’s notes put it, comes told through Verdi’s “music of pro­found human­i­ty” and the stag­ing of famed Scot­tish opera direc­tor David McVicar, “who, with his usu­al ele­gance, sets the dra­ma in a world of roman­tic ref­er­ences while retain­ing an up-to-date per­spec­tive.”

Opera-lovers of pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions could scarce­ly have imag­ined that tech­nol­o­gy would bring this degree of view­ing con­ve­nience to their art form of choice. And now that The Opera Plat­form has got up and run­ning, would-be opera-lovers have no excuse not to get into it, in the com­fort of their own homes or any­where else. And if you want to have some pop­corn while you watch, go for it — nobody’s going to shake their opera glass­es at you.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Fry Hosts “The Sci­ence of Opera,” a Dis­cus­sion of How Music Moves Us Phys­i­cal­ly to Tears

J.S. Bach’s Com­ic Opera, “The Cof­fee Can­ta­ta,” Sings the Prais­es of the Great Stim­u­lat­ing Drink (1735)

Lud­wig Wittgenstein’s Trac­ta­tus Gets Adapt­ed Into an Avant-Garde Com­ic Opera

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

A Vintage Wine Course (UC Davis, 1973)

in Online Courses | May 10th, 2015

Rum­mage through our col­lec­tion of 1700 Free Online Cours­es, and you’ll find many recent­ly-record­ed cours­es from great uni­ver­si­ties, cov­er­ing top­ics like “How Han­ni­bal Crossed the Alps,” “Exis­ten­tial­ism in Lit­er­a­ture & Film,” and “Intro­duc­tion to Com­put­er Cod­ing.” But you’ll also find on our list of Free Online Cours­es some vin­tage lec­tures record­ed dur­ing gen­er­a­tions past.

Take for exam­ple Wal­ter Kauf­man­n’s Clas­sic Lec­tures on Niet­zsche, Kierkegaard and Sartre (1960), which sit nice­ly along­side Michel Fou­cault’s UC Berke­ley Lec­tures on Truth, Dis­course & The Self (cir­ca 1980). Or per­haps even Leo Strauss’ numer­ous polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy cours­es record­ed at The Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go between 1959 and 1973. You can also dig into “Quan­tum Physics Made Rel­a­tive­ly Sim­ple,” a Mini Course from Nobel Prize-Win­ning Physi­cist Hans Bethe. Endear­ing­ly, Bethe pre­sent­ed the course at a retire­ment home in 1999 when he, him­self, was pret­ty long in the tooth.

Then, above, you can watch, UC Davis Pro­fes­sor May­nard Amer­ine present a course on Wine (YouTube — iTunes). It’s a vin­tage 1973.

Cal­i­for­nia is wine coun­try, and the place to study wine there is UC Davis. As for Pro­fes­sor Amer­ine, he was wide­ly con­sid­ered “the father of Amer­i­can wine,” an influ­en­tial sci­en­tist who taught gen­er­a­tions of wine­mak­ers and stu­dents how to eval­u­ate wine accord­ing to appear­ance, fla­vor and aro­ma. As he lec­tures on Cal­i­forn­ian, Ital­ian, and French wines, you can almost see the US com­ing into its own as a respectable wine-drink­ing, wine-pro­duc­ing nation.

Find Pro­fes­sor Amer­ine’s “Wine” course in our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Harvard’s Free Com­put­er Sci­ence Course Teach­es You to Code in 12 Weeks

Take First-Class Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es Any­where with Free Oxford Pod­casts

Down­load 55 Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es: From Dante and Mil­ton to Ker­ouac and Tolkien

Charles Mingus’ Sigmund Freud-Inspired Song Dedicated to Mothers Everywhere (1961)

in Jazz, Music | May 10th, 2015

“All the Things You Could Be by Now If Sig­mund Freud’s Wife Was Your Moth­er” appeared on Charles Min­gus Presents Charles Min­gus (1961). And it begins with this cryp­tic, hard-to-deci­pher ded­i­ca­tion to moth­ers every­where:

And now, ladies and gen­tle­man, you have been such a won­der­ful audi­ence. We have a spe­cial treat in store for you. This is a com­po­si­tion ded­i­cat­ed to all moth­ers. And it’s titled “All The Things You Could Be By Now If Sig­mund Freud’s Wife Was Your Moth­er.” Which means if Sig­mund Freud’s wife was your moth­er, all the things you could be by now. Which means noth­ing, you got it? Thank you.

Or was that a cryp­tic, hard-to-deci­pher non-ded­i­ca­tion to moth­ers every­where? With Min­gus, you nev­er can tell.

Round­ing out Min­gus’ quar­tet is Ted Cur­son on trum­pet, Eric Dol­phy on alto sax­o­phone and bass clar­inet, and Dan­nie Rich­mond on drums.

h/t Peter Kauf­man

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Charles Min­gus’ Instruc­tions For Toi­let Train­ing Your Cat, Read by The Wire’s Reg E. Cathey

Charles Min­gus Explains in His Gram­my-Win­ning Essay “What is a Jazz Com­pos­er?”

Charles Min­gus and His Evic­tion From His New York City Loft, Cap­tured in Mov­ing 1968 Film

Clas­sic Charles Min­gus Per­for­mance on Bel­gian Tele­vi­sion, 1964

Music for a String Quartet Made from Global Warming Data: Hear “Planetary Bands, Warming World”

in Environment, Music | May 9th, 2015

In 2013, we fea­tured Daniel Craw­ford, an under­grad at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta, play­ing “A Song of Our Warm­ing Plan­et” on his cel­lo. The song, pro­duced in col­lab­o­ra­tion with geog­ra­phy pro­fes­sor Scott St. George, was cre­at­ed using a method called “data soni­fi­ca­tion,” which con­verts glob­al tem­per­a­ture records into a series of musi­cal notes. (More on that here.)

Now, two years lat­er, we have a brand new video by Craw­ford and St. George. This one is a com­po­si­tion for a string quar­tet called “Plan­e­tary Bands, Warm­ing World,” and it’s based on tem­per­a­ture data gath­ered over time by NASA’s God­dard Insti­tute for Space Stud­ies. As Craw­ford explains in the video, “Each instru­ment rep­re­sents a spe­cif­ic part of the North­ern Hemi­sphere. The cel­lo match­es the tem­per­a­ture of the equa­to­r­i­al zone. The vio­la tracks the mid lat­i­tudes. The two vio­lins sep­a­rate­ly fol­low tem­per­a­tures in the high lat­i­tudes and in the arc­tic.” Each note’s pitch “is tuned to the aver­age annu­al tem­per­a­ture in each region, so low notes rep­re­sent cold years and high notes rep­re­sent warm years.” As you lis­ten, keep in mind one obser­va­tion made by Prof. St. George says. “Lis­ten­ing to the vio­lin climb almost the entire range of the instru­ment is incred­i­bly effec­tive at illus­trat­ing the mag­ni­tude of change — par­tic­u­lar­ly in the Arc­tic which has warmed more than any oth­er part of the plan­et.” The time peri­od cov­ered here moves from 1880 to present.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Song of Our Warm­ing Plan­et: Cel­list Turns 130 Years of Cli­mate Change Data into Music

Glob­al Warm­ing: A Free Course from UChica­go Explains Cli­mate Change

132 Years of Glob­al Warm­ing Visu­al­ized in 26 Dra­mat­i­cal­ly Ani­mat­ed Sec­onds

How Cli­mate Change Is Threat­en­ing Your Dai­ly Cup of Cof­fee

Learn to Play Guitar for Free: Intro Courses Take You From The Very Basics to Playing Songs In No Time

in Education, How to Learn for Free, Music | May 8th, 2015

Like many peo­ple of my gen­er­a­tion, I got my first elec­tric gui­tar as a teenage birth­day gift, took a few lessons and learned a few chords, and imme­di­ate­ly start­ed a band that bashed out angry punk rock at break­neck speeds. Some of my favorite bands made it seem acces­si­ble, and I didn’t have much patience for real musi­cal train­ing on the instru­ment any­way. Though I’d played brass and strings in school, the gui­tar had an entire­ly dif­fer­ent mojo. It stood alone, even in a group—primal, wild, and uncom­pli­cat­ed; as Radio­head once observed, any­one can play it.

Well, any­one can play it bad­ly. There wasn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly any­thing wrong with the way I learned—it was great fun. But as my musi­cal tastes broad­ened, so did my desire to play dif­fer­ent styles, and years of play­ing with lit­tle for­mal train­ing meant I had to un- and re-learn a lot of tech­nique, no easy feat with­out access to a good teacher. Pri­vate instruc­tion, how­ev­er, can be cost­ly and good teach­ers dif­fi­cult to come by. Pre-Youtube, that is. These days, any­one can learn to play gui­tar, from scratch, the right (fun) way, and the wrong (also fun) way, with great teach­ers, innu­mer­able online mini-tuto­ri­als, and some very thor­ough begin­ner lessons.

We’ve high­light­ed a few celebri­ty lessons here and there, and as far as they go, they’re great ways to pick up some tricks from your favorite musi­cians. But while peo­ple like Paul McCart­ney and Bri­an May don’t have a whole lot of time on their hands to make free gui­tar videos, a num­ber of high qual­i­ty teach­ers do, at least as pro­mo­tion­al tools for pay­ing gigs. At the top of the post, an instruc­tor named Ravi presents the first ten lessons of his 21-day begin­ner course, offered on True­fire, an online gui­tar course ser­vice fea­tur­ing for-pay lessons from such greats as Frank Vig­no­la, David Gris­som, and Dweezil Zap­pa.

This hour-long video func­tions in and of itself as a com­plete intro­duc­to­ry course that’ll def­i­nite­ly get you start­ed on the instru­ment. To fur­ther help you get the basics down, you can spend hours work­ing through the oth­er free videos here, a “quick start” series offered by Guitarlessons.com and taught by an instruc­tor named Nate Sav­age. These short videos take you from rudi­ments like “How to Strum on a Gui­tar” and “8 Gui­tar Chords You Must Know” to the slight­ly more sophis­ti­cat­ed but still begin­ner-wor­thy “Dom­i­nant 7th Blues Chords.” You’ll learn scales and pow­er chords, the bricks and mor­tar of lead and rhythm play­ing. You’ll even get a cor­rec­tive like “7 Mis­takes Gui­tar Play­ers Make,” if, like me, you learned a few things the wrong way, on pur­pose or oth­er­wise.

Of course mis­takes are a nec­es­sary part of learn­ing, and often the keys to inno­va­tion, so don’t be afraid to make ‘em. But with so much qual­i­ty, free gui­tar instruc­tion online, you can also learn tech­niques that will set you up for suc­cess in a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent styles. Above, you can watch Justin­Gui­tar’s much-praised videos, which will give you a mul­ti­part intro­duc­tion to play­ing blues gui­tar. The key, as with any skill, is prac­tice.

And per the sug­ges­tion of our edi­tor, we’re also giv­ing a men­tion to Gui­tar Jamz, which fea­tures tons of instruc­tion­al videos that will show you how to play clas­sic songs. In fact, you can find a playlist of 182 easy acoustic songs for begin­ners right above.

As anoth­er, very patient instructor—the host of series “Met­al Method”—explains, “learn­ing gui­tar doesn’t need to be com­pli­cat­ed. You don’t need to under­stand how an inter­nal com­bus­tion engine works to dri­ve a car, and you don’t need to under­stand com­plex music the­o­ry to become an incred­i­ble gui­tarist.” So get to work, gui­tarists out there, begin­ners and life­long stu­dents. And please share with us your favorite free online gui­tar resources in the com­ments.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sto­ry of the Gui­tar: The Com­plete Three-Part Doc­u­men­tary

Oxford Sci­en­tist Explains the Physics of Play­ing Elec­tric Gui­tar Solos

The Evo­lu­tion of the Rock Gui­tar Solo: 28 Solos, Span­ning 50 Years, Played in 6 Fun Min­utes

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