The Case for Why Ringo Starr Is One of Rock’s Greatest Drummers

in Music | February 4th, 2019

As far as I’m con­cerned, debate over whether or not Ringo Starr is a good drum­mer is over, done with, set­tled. How is it pos­si­ble that some of the great­est record­ed music of the 20th cen­tu­ry, with some of the most dis­tinc­tive rhythms, fills, and drum breaks in pop music, could have come from a mediocre musi­cian? The stan­dard response has been to allege that Starr’s best parts were played by some­one else. In a hand­ful of recordings—though I won’t argue over which ones—it seems he might have been replaced, for what­ev­er rea­son. But Ringo could do more than hold his own. He was some­thing rar­er and more valu­able than any stu­dio musi­cian. He remains one of the most dis­tinc­tive­ly musi­cal drum­mers on record.

What does that mean? It means he intu­it­ed exact­ly what a song need­ed, and what it didn’t. He used what Bud­dy Rich called his “ade­quate” abil­i­ties (a com­pli­ment, I’d say, com­ing from Bud­dy Rich) to serve the songs best, find­ing ways to enhance the struc­tures and arrange­ments with drum parts that are as unique­ly mem­o­rable as the melodies and har­monies.

His humil­i­ty and sense of humor come through in his taste­ful, yet dynam­ic play­ing. I say this as a seri­ous Ringo fan, but if you, or some­one you know, needs con­vinc­ing, don’t take my word for it. Take it from skilled drum­mers Sina and Bran­don Khoo.

What are Sina’s cre­den­tials for mak­ing a pro-Ringo case? Well, for one thing, her father played in Germany’s biggest Bea­t­les trib­ute band, the Sil­ver Bea­t­les. Also, she’s a very good musi­cian who has mem­o­rized Ringo’s reper­toire and can explain it well. Above, she demon­strates how his uncom­pli­cat­ed grooves com­ple­ment the songs, so much so they have become icon­ic in their own right. (To skirt copy­right issues, Sina plays along to con­vinc­ing cov­ers by her dad’s band.)

Ringo’s drum pat­tern for “In My Life,” for exam­ple, she says “is absolute­ly unique, nobody ever played this before. It’s tru­ly orig­i­nal and the song won’t work with any oth­er drum part.” If you were to write a new song around the drums alone, it would prob­a­bly come out sound­ing just like “In My Life.” As Har­ri­son remarks at the top, “he’s very good because he’ll lis­ten to the song once, and he knows exact­ly what to play.”

Vir­tu­oso drum­mer Bran­don Khoo makes the case for Ringo as a good drum­mer, above, after a brief defense of much-maligned White Stripes drum­mer Meg White. He, too, choos­es “In My Life” to show how “Ringo lays it down” with max­i­mum feel and effi­cien­cy, deft­ly but sub­tly chang­ing things up in near­ly every phrase of the song. Conversely—in an exag­ger­at­ed counterexample—Koo shows what a tech­ni­cal­ly-skilled, but unmu­si­cal, drum­mer might do, name­ly tram­ple over the del­i­cate gui­tars and vocals with an aggres­sive attack and dis­tract­ing, unnec­es­sary fills and cym­bal crash­es. “A good drum­mer is a drum­mer who knows how to play, num­ber one, for the music.”

If these clear demon­stra­tions fail to sway, maybe some celebri­ty endorse­ments will do. Just above, in a video made by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to cel­e­brate an exhib­it of Ringo’s famous drum kit, see Dave Grohl, Tay­lor Hawkins, Stew­art Copeland, Quest­love, Tre Cool, Max Wein­berg, Chad Smith, and more pay trib­ute. Grohl describes him as the “king of feel,” Smith talks about his “knack for com­ing up with real­ly inter­est­ing musi­cal parts that became rhyth­mic hooks.” In the span of just three min­utes, we get a sense of exact­ly why the most famous drum­mers in rock and roll admire Ringo.

Mil­lions of drum­mers have come and gone since The Bea­t­les’ day, most of them influ­enced by Ringo, as Wein­berg says. And not one of them has ever played like Ringo Starr. “You hear his drum­ming,” says Grohl, “and you know exact­ly who it is.” Hear how his style evolved right along with the band’s song­writ­ing in Kye Smith’s chrono­log­i­cal drum med­ley of Bea­t­les hits below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Musi­cian Plays Sig­na­ture Drum Parts of 71 Bea­t­les Songs in 5 Min­utes: A Whirl­wind Trib­ute to Ringo Starr

How Can You Tell a Good Drum­mer from a Bad Drum­mer?: Ringo Starr as Case Study

Iso­lat­ed Drum Tracks From Six of Rock’s Great­est: Bon­ham, Moon, Peart, Copeland, Grohl & Starr

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

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The “Slave Bible” Removed Key Biblical Passages In Order to Legitimize Slavery & Discourage a Slave Rebellion (1807)

in Books, History, Religion | February 4th, 2019

Pho­to via the Muse­um of the Bible

In an 1846 speech to the British and For­eign Anti-Slav­ery Soci­ety, Fred­er­ick Dou­glass summed up the twist­ed bond between slav­ery and reli­gion in the U.S. He began with a short sum­ma­ry of atroc­i­ties that were legal, even encour­aged, against enslaved peo­ple in Vir­ginia and Mary­land, includ­ing hang­ing, behead­ing, draw­ing and quar­ter­ing, rape, “and this is not the worst.” He then made his case:

No, a dark­er fea­ture is yet to be pre­sent­ed than the mere exis­tence of these facts. I have to inform you that the reli­gion of the South­ern states, at this time, is the great sup­port­er, the great sanc­tion­er of the bloody atroc­i­ties to which I have referred. While Amer­i­ca is print­ing tracts and Bibles; send­ing mis­sion­ar­ies abroad to con­vert the hea­then; expend­ing her mon­ey in var­i­ous ways for the pro­mo­tion of the gospel in for­eign lands, the slave not only lies for­got­ten, uncar­ed for, but is tram­pled under­foot by the very church­es of the land.

Dou­glass did not intend his state­ment to be tak­en as an indict­ment of Chris­tian­i­ty, but rather the hypocrisy of Amer­i­can reli­gion, both that “of the South­ern states” and of “the North­ern reli­gion that sym­pa­thizes with it.” He speaks, he says, to reject “the slave­hold­ing, the woman-whip­ping, the mind-dark­en­ing, the soul-destroy­ing reli­gion” of the coun­try, while pro­fess­ing a reli­gion that “makes its fol­low­ers do unto oth­ers as they them­selves would be done by.”

Dou­glass harsh­ly con­demns slave soci­ety in the U.S., but, per­haps giv­en his audi­ence, he also polit­i­cal­ly elides the exten­sive role many church­es in the British Empire played in the slave trade and Atlantic slave economy—a con­tin­ued role, to Douglass’s dis­may, as he found dur­ing his UK trav­els in the 1840s. I’m not sure if he knew that forty years ear­li­er, British mis­sion­ar­ies trav­eled to slave plan­ta­tions in the Caribbean armed with heav­i­ly-edit­ed Bibles in which “any pas­sage that might incite rebel­lion was removed,” as Brig­it Katz writes at Smith­son­ian. But he would hard­ly have been sur­prised.

The use of reli­gion to ter­ror­ize and con­trol rather than lib­er­ate was some­thing Dou­glass under­stood well, hav­ing for decades keen­ly observed slave­own­ers find­ing what they need­ed in the text and ignor­ing or sup­press­ing the rest. In 1807, the Soci­ety for the Con­ver­sion of Negro Slaves went so far as to lit­er­al­ly excise the cen­tral nar­ra­tive of the Old Tes­ta­ment, cre­at­ing an entire­ly dif­fer­ent book for use by mis­sion­ar­ies to the West Indies. “Gone,” Katz points out, “were ref­er­ences to the exo­dus of enslaved Israelites from Egypt,” ref­er­ences that were inte­gral to the self-under­stand­ing of mil­lions of Dias­po­ra Africans.

Gone also were vers­es that might explic­it­ly con­tra­dict the few proof texts slave­hold­ers quot­ed to jus­ti­fy them­selves. Espe­cial­ly dan­ger­ous was Exo­dus 21:16: “And he that stealeth a man, and sel­l­eth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall sure­ly be put to death.” The typ­i­cal 66 books of a Protes­tant Bible had been reduced to parts of just 14. How is it pos­si­ble to pub­lish a Bible with­out what amounts to the myth­ic ori­gin sto­ry of ancient Israel? One answer is that this was a dif­fer­ent reli­gion, one whose aim, says Antho­ny Schmidt, cura­tor of the Muse­um of the Bible, was to make “bet­ter slaves.”

The “Slave Bible” did not cut out the sub­ject com­plete­ly. Joseph’s enslave­ment in Egypt remains, but this is like­ly as an exam­ple, says Schmidt, of some­one who “accepts his lot in life” and is reward­ed for it, a sto­ry U.S. church­es used in a sim­i­lar fash­ion. Pas­sages in the New Tes­ta­ment that seemed to empha­size equal­i­ty were cut, as was the entire book of Rev­e­la­tion. The infa­mous Eph­esians 6:5—“servants be obe­di­ent to them that are your mas­ters accord­ing to the flesh, in fear and trembling”—remained.

Whether or not the Bible real­ly did sanc­tion slav­ery is a ques­tion still up for debate—and maybe an unan­swer­able one giv­en dif­fer­ences in inter­pre­tive frame­works and the patch­work nature of the dis­parate, redact­ed texts stitched togeth­er as one. But the fact that British and Amer­i­can church­es delib­er­ate­ly used it as a weaponized tool of pro­pa­gan­da and indoc­tri­na­tion is beyond dis­pute. The so-called “Slave Bible” is both a fas­ci­nat­ing his­tor­i­cal arti­fact, a very lit­er­al sym­bol of a prac­tice that was inte­gral to the insti­tu­tion of slavery—the total con­trol of the nar­ra­tive.

Such prac­tices became more extreme after the Hait­ian Rev­o­lu­tion and the many bloody slave revolts in the U.S., as the planter class became increas­ing­ly des­per­ate to hold on to pow­er. One of only three extant “Slave Bibles,” the abridged version—called Parts of the Holy Bible, select­ed for the use of the Negro Slaves, in the British West-India Islands—is now on dis­play at the Muse­um of the Bible in Wash­ing­ton, DC, on loan from Fisk Uni­ver­si­ty. In the NPR inter­view above, Schmidt explains the book’s his­to­ry to All Things Con­sid­ered’s Michel Mar­tin, who her­self describes the text’s pur­pose in the most con­cise way: “To asso­ciate human bondage and human slav­ery with obe­di­ence to the high­er pow­er.”

via The Smith­son­ian

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Only Sur­viv­ing Text Writ­ten in Ara­bic by an Amer­i­can Slave Has Been Dig­i­tized & Put Online: Read the Auto­bi­og­ra­phy of Enslaved Islam­ic Schol­ar, Omar Ibn Said (1831)

1.5 Mil­lion Slav­ery Era Doc­u­ments Will Be Dig­i­tized, Help­ing African Amer­i­cans to Learn About Their Lost Ances­tors

The Atlantic Slave Trade Visu­al­ized in Two Min­utes: 10 Mil­lion Lives, 20,000 Voy­ages, Over 315 Years

Cor­nell Cre­ates a Data­base of Fugi­tive Slave Ads, Telling the Sto­ry of Those Who Resist­ed Slav­ery in 18th & 19th Cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca

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

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Explore an Interactive Version of The Wall of Birds, a 2,500 Square-Foot Mural That Documents the Evolution of Birds Over 375 Million Years

in Biology, Museums, Nature, Science | February 4th, 2019

Now, this avian Vat­i­can also has its own Michelan­ge­lo.

– Audubon Mag­a­zine

And the Class of Aves has its very own avian Pan­tone chart, cre­at­ed by sci­ence illus­tra­tor Jane Kim in ser­vice of her 2,500 square-foot Wall of Birds mur­al at Cor­nell University’s Lab of Ornithol­o­gy.

The cus­tom chart’s fifty-one col­ors com­prise about 90 per­cent of the fin­ished work. A palette of thir­teen Gold­en Flu­id Acrylics sup­plied the jew­el-toned accents so thrilling to bird­watch­ers.

Along the way, Kim absorbed a tremen­dous amount of infor­ma­tion about the how and why of bird feath­er col­oration:

The iri­des­cence on the neck and back of the Superb Star­ling comes not from pig­ment,

but from struc­tur­al col­or. The starling’s out­er feath­ers are con­struct­ed in a way

that refracts light like myr­i­ad prisms, mak­ing the bird appear to shim­mer. The epony­mous

col­or­ing of the Lilac-breast­ed Roller results from a dif­fer­ent kind of struc­tur­al

col­or, cre­at­ed when woven microstruc­tures in the feath­ers, called barbs and bar­bules,

reflect only the short­er wave­lengths of light like blue and vio­let.

The pri­ma­ry col­ors that lend their name to the Red-and-yel­low Bar­bet are

derived from a class of pig­ments called carotenoids that the bird absorbs in its diet.

These are the same com­pounds that turn flamin­gos’ feath­ers pink. As a mem­ber of

the fam­i­ly Musophagi­dae, the Hartlaub’s Tura­co dis­plays pig­men­ta­tion unique in the

bird world. Birds have no green pig­men­ta­tion; in most cas­es, ver­dant plumage is a

com­bi­na­tion of yel­low carotenoids and blue struc­tur­al col­or. Tura­cos are an excep­tion,

dis­play­ing a green, cop­per-based pig­ment called tura­coverdin that they absorb

in their her­biv­o­rous diet. The flash of red on the Hartlaub’s under­wings comes from

turacin, anoth­er cop­per-based pig­ment unique to the fam­i­ly.

 

Kim also boned up on her sub­jects’ mat­ing rit­u­als, dietary habits, song styles, and male/female dif­fer­ences pri­or to inscrib­ing the 270 life-size, life­like birds onto the lab’s largest wall.

She exam­ined spec­i­mens from the cen­ter’s col­lec­tion and reviewed cen­turies’ worth of field obser­va­tions.

(The sev­en­teenth-cen­tu­ry Eng­lish nat­u­ral­ist John Ray dis­missed the horn­bill fam­i­ly as hav­ing a “foul look,” a colo­nial­ism that ruf­fled Kim’s own feath­ers some­what. In retal­i­a­tion, she dubbed the Great Horn­bill, “the Cyra­no of the Jun­gle” owing to his “tequi­la-sun­rise-hued facial phal­lus,” and select­ed him as the cov­er boy for her book about the mur­al.)

Research and pre­lim­i­nary sketch­ing con­sumed an entire year, after which it took 17 months to inscribe 270 life-size creatures—some long extinct—onto the lab’s main wall. The birds are set against a greyscale map of the world, and while many are depict­ed in flight, every one save the Wan­der­ing Alba­tross has a foot touch­ing its con­ti­nent of ori­gin.

Those who can’t vis­it the Wall of Birds (offi­cial title: From So Sim­ple a Begin­ning) in per­son, can log some dig­i­tal bird­watch­ing using a spec­tac­u­lar inter­ac­tive web-based ver­sion of the mur­al that pro­vides plen­ty of infor­ma­tion about each spec­i­men, some of it lit­er­ary. (The afore­men­tioned Alba­tross’ entry con­tains a pass­ing ref­er­ence to The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.)

Explore the Wall of Birds’ inter­ac­tive fea­tures here.

You can down­load a free chap­ter of The Wall of Birds: One Plan­et, 243 Fam­i­lies, 375 Mil­lion Years by sub­scrib­ing to Kim’s mail­ing list here.

Via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cor­nell Launch­es Archive of 150,000 Bird Calls and Ani­mal Sounds, with Record­ings Going Back to 1929

What Kind of Bird Is That?: A Free App From Cor­nell Will Give You the Answer

Mod­ernist Bird­hous­es Inspired by Bauhaus, Frank Lloyd Wright and Joseph Eich­ler

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  See her onstage in New York City Feb­ru­ary 11 for The­ater of the Apes book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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How Dorothea Lange Shot, Migrant Mother, Perhaps the Most Iconic Photo in American History

in Photography | February 4th, 2019

When we visu­al­ize the Great Depres­sion, we think first of one woman: Native Amer­i­can migrant work­er Flo­rence Owens Thomp­son. Few of us know her name, though near­ly all of us know her face. For that we have anoth­er woman to thank: the pho­tog­ra­ph­er Dorothea Lange who dur­ing the Depres­sion was work­ing for the Unit­ed States fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, specif­i­cal­ly the Farm Secu­ri­ty Admin­is­tra­tion, on “a project that would involve doc­u­ment­ing poor rur­al work­ers in a pro­pa­gan­da effort to elic­it polit­i­cal sup­port for gov­ern­ment aid.”

That’s how Evan Puschak, bet­ter known as the Nerd­writer, puts it in a video essay on Lange’s famous 1936 pho­to of Thomp­son, Migrant Moth­er. (For best results, view the video below on a phone or tablet rather than on a stan­dard com­put­er screen.) Reach­ing the migrant work­ers’ camp in Nipo­mo, Cal­i­for­nia where Thomp­son and her chil­dren were stay­ing toward the end of anoth­er long day of pho­tog­ra­phy, Lange at first passed it by.

Only about twen­ty miles lat­er did she decide to turn the car around and see what mate­r­i­al the 2,500 to 3,500 “pea pick­ers” there might offer. She stayed only ten min­utes, but in that time cap­tured what Puschak calls the pho­to­graph that “came to define the Depres­sion in the Amer­i­can con­scious­ness” — it even heads the Great Depres­sion’s Wikipedia page — and “became the arche­typ­al image of strug­gling fam­i­lies in any era.”

Over time, Migrant Moth­er has also become “one of the most icon­ic pic­tures in the his­to­ry of pho­tog­ra­phy.” But Lange did­n’t get it right away: it was actu­al­ly the sixth por­trait she took of Thomp­son, each one more pow­er­ful (and more able to “evoke sym­pa­thy from vot­ers that would trans­late into polit­i­cal sup­port”) than the last. Puschak takes us through each of these, mark­ing the changes in com­po­si­tion that led to the pho­to­graph we can all call to mind imme­di­ate­ly. “A less­er pho­tog­ra­ph­er would have milked the chil­dren’s faces for their sym­pa­thet­ic poten­tial,” for instance, but hav­ing them turn away “com­mu­ni­cates that mes­sage of fam­i­ly” with­out “tak­ing away from the cen­tral face, or the eyes, which seem at last to let down their guard as they search the dis­tance and wor­ry.”

These and oth­er active­ly made choic­es (includ­ing the removal of Thomp­son’s dis­tract­ing left thumb in the dark­room) mean that “there is very lit­tle spon­ta­neous in this icon­ic image of so-called doc­u­men­tary pho­tog­ra­phy,” but “whether that dimin­ish­es its pow­er is up to you. For me, being able to actu­al­ly see the steps of Lange’s craft enhances her work.” What­ev­er Lange’s process, the prod­uct defined an era, and upon pub­li­ca­tion con­vinced the gov­ern­ment to send 20,000 pounds of food to Nipo­mo — though by that point Thomp­son her­self, who ulti­mate­ly suc­ceed­ed in pro­vid­ing for her fam­i­ly and lived to the age of 80, had moved on.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

478 Dorothea Lange Pho­tographs Poignant­ly Doc­u­ment the Intern­ment of the Japan­ese Dur­ing WWII

Yale Launch­es an Archive of 170,000 Pho­tographs Doc­u­ment­ing the Great Depres­sion

Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Clem Albers & Fran­cis Stewart’s Cen­sored Pho­tographs of a WWII Japan­ese Intern­ment Camp

Found: Lost Great Depres­sion Pho­tos Cap­tur­ing Hard Times on Farms, and in Town

The Cap­ti­vat­ing Sto­ry Behind the Mak­ing of Ansel Adams’ Most Famous Pho­to­graph, Moon­rise, Her­nan­dez, New Mex­i­co

“A Great Day in Harlem,” Art Kane’s Icon­ic Pho­to of 57 Jazz Leg­ends, Cel­e­brates Its 60th Anniver­sary

Edward Hopper’s Icon­ic Paint­ing Nighthawks Explained in a 7‑Minute Video Intro­duc­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Monty Python’s Best Philosophy Sketches: “The Philosophers’ Football Match,” “Philosopher’s Drinking Song” & More

in Comedy, Philosophy | February 1st, 2019

From dead par­rots to The Mean­ing of Life, Mon­ty Python cov­ered a lot of ter­ri­to­ry. Edu­cat­ed at Oxford and Cam­bridge, the Pythons made a habit of weav­ing arcane intel­lec­tu­al ref­er­ences into the sil­li­est of sketch­es. A clas­sic exam­ple is “Mrs. Premise and Mrs. Con­clu­sion Vis­it Jean-Paul Sartre,” (above) from episode 27 of Mon­ty Python’s Fly­ing Cir­cus.

The sketch fea­tures writ­ing part­ners John Cleese as Mrs. Premise and Gra­ham Chap­man as Mrs. Con­clu­sion, gab­bing away in a laun­derette about how best to put down a budgie. Mrs. Premise sug­gests flush­ing it down the loo. “Ooh! No!” protests Mrs. Con­clu­sion. “You should­n’t do that. No that’s dan­ger­ous. Yes, they breed in the sew­ers, and even­tu­al­ly you get evil-smelling flocks of huge soiled bud­gies fly­ing out of peo­ple’s lava­to­ries infring­ing their per­son­al free­dom.”

From there the con­ver­sa­tion veers straight into Jean-Paul Sartre’s The Roads to Free­dom. It’s a clas­sic sketch–vintage Python–and you can read a tran­script here while watch­ing it above.

Anoth­er clas­sic is the “Philoso­pher’s Drink­ing Song,” shown above in a scene from Mon­ty Python Live at the Hol­ly­wood Bowl. The song was writ­ten and sung by Eric Idle. In the sketch, mem­bers of the phi­los­o­phy depart­ment at the “Uni­ver­si­ty of Wool­loomooloo” lead the audi­ence in singing, “Immanuel Kant was a real pis­sant who was very rarely sta­ble; Hei­deg­ger, Hei­deg­ger was a boozy beg­gar who could think you under the table…”

And one of our favorites: “The Philoso­phers’ Foot­ball Match” (above), a filmed sequence from Mon­ty Python Live at the Hol­ly­wood Bowl, pit­ting the Ancient Greeks against the Ger­mans, with Con­fu­cius as ref­er­ee. The sketch was orig­i­nal­ly broad­cast in 1972 in a two-part West Ger­man tele­vi­sion spe­cial, Mon­ty Python’s Fliegen­der Zirkus.

When you’re done laugh­ing, you can dive deep into phi­los­o­phy here with our col­lec­tion of 75 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es online.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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!

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in Novem­ber 2011.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mon­ty Python’s “Argu­ment Clin­ic” Sketch Reen­act­ed by Two Vin­tage Voice Syn­the­siz­ers (One Is Stephen Hawking’s Voice)

John Cleese’s Phi­los­o­phy of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Cre­at­ing Oases for Child­like Play

John Cleese on How “Stu­pid Peo­ple Have No Idea How Stu­pid They Are” (a.k.a. the Dun­ning-Kruger Effect)

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

in History, Music | February 1st, 2019

Though dif­fer­ent mod­ern pianos may not sound exact­ly the same as one anoth­er, they all sound more or less like pianos to our ears. But the piano did­n’t appear ful­ly formed in the world of music as the instru­ment we know today: it has a vari­ety of pre­de­ces­sors, not all of which sound very sim­i­lar to the mod­ern piano at all, and a few dis­tinc­tive-sound­ing exam­ples of which you can hear demon­strat­ed in these videos from Baro­que­Band. In the first, musi­cian and edu­ca­tor David Schrad­er plays the first two: a repli­ca of a Ger­man clavi­chord, “the old­est stringed key­board instru­ment we know of,” dat­ing from around 1600, and a harp­si­chord, built accord­ing to plans dat­ing back to 1617.

The clavi­chord strikes its strings like a mod­ern piano, but the harp­si­chord plucks them, using a series of “tiny lit­tle gui­tar picks” called plec­trums. Schrad­er explains this while offer­ing a look inside the work­ings of these instru­ments, just as he does with their descen­dants in the sec­ond video: a repli­ca of an ear­ly Vien­nese piano built by Alton Wal­ter, who in the 1780s built an instru­ment for a cer­tain Wolf­gang Amadeus Mozart, and a mod­ern Stein­way grand piano made in Ham­burg.

The eight bars of one of Mozart’s piano sonata we hear on the Stein­way sound good, espe­cial­ly per­formed by Schrader’s skilled hands, but the Vien­nese piano offers addi­tion­al con­trols that enable the play­er to achieve a kind of “tone col­or” that mod­ern pianos don’t.

Hence the inter­est some musi­cians and groups (such as the Orches­tra of the Age of the Enlight­en­ment, recent­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture) have in play­ing clas­si­cal music with the same instru­ments from the eras in which the pieces were com­posed. “Each of these his­tor­i­cal instru­ments served the music of its own time best,” as Schrad­er puts it. “After all, you would­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly restore an old oil paint­ing with acrylic paint. Even if you choose not to play the his­tor­i­cal instru­ments, if you study them and how they work, it will mod­i­fy your approach to make for a clear­er, nicer per­for­mance on the mod­ern instru­ment.” But of course, “those of us who choose to eat every­thing on the plate will play all the instru­ments” — and will enjoy a per­form­ing expe­ri­ence clos­er to that which the com­pos­er intend­ed as a result.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Does the World’s Old­est Sur­viv­ing Piano Sound Like? Watch Pianist Give a Per­for­mance on a 1720 Cristo­fori Piano

New­ly Dis­cov­ered Piece by Mozart Per­formed on His Own Fortepi­ano

Hear Music Played on the Vio­la Organ­ista, a Piano That Sounds Like a Vio­lin, Which Leonar­do da Vin­ci Invent­ed, But Nev­er Heard

Vis­it an Online Col­lec­tion of 61,761 Musi­cal Instru­ments from Across the World

Hear the Sounds of the Actu­al Instru­ments for Which Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, and Han­del Orig­i­nal­ly Com­posed Their Music

How an 18th-Cen­tu­ry Monk Invent­ed the First Elec­tron­ic Instru­ment

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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A History of the Entire World in Less Than 20 Minutes

in Animation, History, Technology | February 1st, 2019

Thanks for watch­ing his­to­ry. I hope I men­tioned every­thing. — Bill Wurtz

Here at Open Cul­ture, we hap­pi­ly acknowl­edge that learn­ing is not a one-size-fits-all propo­si­tion.

The inter­net may be doing a num­ber on our atten­tion spans, but as the world has grown small­er, the edu­ca­tion­al buf­fet has grown rich­er, more var­ied, and vast­ly more afford­able.

Take for exam­ple the His­to­ry of the World.

Geog­ra­phy fans can approach the sub­ject via Ollie Bye’s year-by-year ani­mat­ed map.

John Green’s play­ful Crash Course series offers a won­der­ful respite for any kid grind­ing their way through AP World His­to­ry.

Those of a more tra­di­tion­al mind­set, who pre­fer a state­lier pace can lose them­selves in 46 lec­tures by Richard Bul­li­et, pro­fes­sor of his­to­ry at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty.

And then there’s world his­to­ry accord­ing Bill Wurtz, above, a cre­ator of short, anachro­nis­tic-look­ing videos, whose YouTube fame was kin­dled by Vine, a now defunct app for shar­ing short-form videos.

Chaf­ing at Vine’s 7‑second time con­straints, Wurtz under­took a more ambi­tious project, a con­densed His­to­ry of Japan that would employ the same tech­niques he brought to bear in his short­er works: graph­ic text, clip art, and Microsoft Paint draw­ings. He zeroed in on the sub­ject because he knew pre­cious lit­tle about Japan, and looked for­ward to doing some vir­gin research.

Wurtz fol­lowed up the 9‑minute His­to­ry of Japan, above, with His­to­ry of the Entire World, I guess.

The non­cha­lance of the title is reflect­ed in Wurtz’s offhand­ed nar­ra­tion. Any word or phrase over two syl­la­bles runs a risk of being trans­formed into an infomer­cial-wor­thy musi­cal jin­gle: space dust, the moon, Egypt…

You may bri­dle at first, but stick it out. Its charms sneak up on you.

Time is not par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­a­tive in Wurtz’s com­pressed uni­verse. Whether it’s 10 min­utes pass­ing before some major devel­op­ment or 500 mil­lion years, their pas­sage is accord­ed equal heft.

Humans show up around the four minute mark, grab­bing stuff, bang­ing rocks, fig­ur­ing out agri­cul­ture…

(Mesopotamia’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tion as a “sweet dank val­ley” between the Tigris and Euphrates is a par­tic­u­lar high­light.)

This is the rare his­to­ry video where sci­ence plays a major role. It takes time out for weath­er updates—the floor is no longer lava, the entire world is now an ocean… it’s sober­ing to remem­ber that ozone is what made it safe for mul­ti-celled life forms to ven­ture forth on land.

Empires rise and fall, uncon­quer­able rulers are unseat­ed and for­got­ten.

(That’s the Tamil Kings. Nobody con­quers the Tamil Kings. Who are the Tamil Kings? Mer­chants prob­a­bly and they’ve got spices…)

Of course the prob­lem with a great overview such as this is the back end’s shelf life can prove rather short. It’s been a lit­tle over a year and a half since Wurtz post­ed the video, and thus far, his part­ing shots still feel pret­ty rel­e­vant: armed drones, 3d print­ing, plas­tic-choked oceans, and a seem­ing­ly unbridge­able gap between the desire to save the world and an actu­al plan for doing so.

Fried by 11 months of inten­sive research and labor on His­to­ry of the Entire World, I guess, Wurtz is cur­rent­ly tak­ing a leave of absence from his­to­ry. These days, he’s pour­ing his ener­gies into orig­i­nal music videos like “At the Air­port Ter­mi­nal.” He also devotes a bit of every day to  answer­ing fans’ ques­tions, rou­tine­ly turn­ing in upwards of a dozen suc­cinct hum­ble, all-low­er­case replies:

1.18.19  7:00 pm   what inspired you to make “the entire world, i guess”? was it a project you already had in mind from before or did you start it when you saw you could do more than just japan

it’s always a nice idea to try to explain the whole world in one video. it’s sure­ly some­thing i’ve always want­ed to do, but was­n’t confident/experienced/stupid enough to believe i could do it until after i had done japan which worked so well

1.18.19  12:53 am   are you ever going to make any­thing else as in depth as his­to­ry of japan or the world?

that would take so much time that by the time it was done you prob­a­bly would­n’t care any­more, but some­one else will so i still might do it

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, he’s the sub­ject of a live­ly sub-red­dit. One fan, red­dit user n44m, was inspired to plot the time­line of His­to­ry of the Entire World, I Guess, below.

To learn more about some of the civ­i­liza­tions, events and per­sons fea­tured in His­to­ry of the Entire World, I Guess, check out anoth­er fan’s anno­tat­ed tran­scrip­tion here.

And rather than nit­pick about cer­tain crit­i­cal bits of his­to­ry that were left on the cut­ting room floor, try writ­ing a script for your own his­to­ry based ani­ma­tion:

The more you learn, the more you find out how much you’re gonna have to leave out. It’s like 99%. That was painful. — Bill Wurtz

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Entire His­to­ry of Japan in 9 Quirky Min­utes

A Crash Course in World His­to­ry

The His­to­ry of the World in 46 Lec­tures From Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  See her onstage in New York City in Feb­ru­ary as host of  The­ater of the Apes book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Evolution of the Alphabet: A Colorful Flowchart, Covering 3,800 Years, Takes You From Ancient Egypt to Today

in History | January 31st, 2019

No mat­ter our native lan­guage, we all have to learn a writ­ing sys­tem. And whichev­er lan­guage we learn, its writ­ing sys­tem had to come from some­where. Take Eng­lish, the lan­guage you’re read­ing right now and one writ­ten in Latin script, which it shares with a range of oth­er tongues: the Euro­pean likes of French, Span­ish, and Ger­man, of course, but now also Ice­landic, Swahili, Taga­log, and a great many more besides. The video above by Matt Bak­er of Use­fulCharts explains just where this increas­ing­ly wide­spread writ­ing sys­tem came from, trac­ing its ori­gins all the way back to the Pro­to-Sinaitic script of Egypt in 1750 BCE.

As revealed in the video, or by the poster avail­able for pur­chase from Use­fulCharts, the let­ters used to write Eng­lish today evolved from there “through Phoeni­cian, ear­ly Greek and ear­ly Latin, to their present forms. You can see how some let­ters were dropped and oth­ers end­ed up evolv­ing into more than one let­ter.”

The col­or-cod­ing and direc­tion dot­ted lines help to make clear­ly leg­i­ble what was, in real­i­ty, an evo­lu­tion that hap­pened organ­i­cal­ly over about two mil­len­nia. Enough changed over that time, as Jason Kot­tke writes, that “it’s tough to see how the pic­to­graph­ic forms of the orig­i­nal script evolved into our let­ters; aside from the T and maybe M & O, there’s lit­tle resem­blance.”

Bak­er’s design for this poster, notes Colos­sal’s Kate Sierzuputows­ki, “was cre­at­ed in asso­ci­a­tion with his Writ­ing Sys­tems of the World chart which takes a look at 51 dif­fer­ent writ­ing sys­tems from around the world.” All of the research for both those posters informs his video on the his­to­ry of the alpha­bet, which looks at writ­ing sys­tems as they’ve devel­oped across a vari­ety of civ­i­liza­tions. You’ll notice that all of them respond in dif­fer­ent ways to the needs of the times and places in which they arose, and some pos­sess advan­tages that oth­ers don’t. (In Korea, where I live, one often hears the prais­es sung of the Kore­an alpha­bet, “the most sci­en­tif­ic writ­ing sys­tem in the world.”) But what the strengths of the descen­dant of mod­ern Latin 2000 years on will be — and whether it will con­tain any­thing resem­bling emo­ji — not even the most astute lin­guist knows.

via Colos­sal/Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Now I Know My LSD ABCs: A Trip­py Ani­ma­tion of the Alpha­bet

Dic­tio­nary of the Old­est Writ­ten Language–It Took 90 Years to Com­plete, and It’s Now Free Online

How to Write in Cuneiform, the Old­est Writ­ing Sys­tem in the World: A Short, Charm­ing Intro­duc­tion

You Could Soon Be Able to Text with 2,000 Ancient Egypt­ian Hiero­glyphs

The His­to­ry of the Eng­lish Lan­guage in Ten Ani­mat­ed Min­utes

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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CBGB’s Heyday: Watch The Ramones, The Dead Boys, Bad Brains, Talking Heads & Blondie Perform Live (1974–1982)

in History, Music | January 31st, 2019

There are, I guess, still many things peo­ple can do these days to tap into the lega­cy of CBGB, but I wouldn’t rec­om­mend going near most of them. The mer­chan­dis­ing empire (do, how­ev­er, new par­ents, get your tot a CBGB bib and one­sie); the “thud­ding­ly banal” 2013 film ver­sion, which… the less said about the bet­ter; yes, and CBGB, the restau­rant, in the Newark Air­port Ter­mi­nal C—proceed at your own risk.

We must sad­ly also men­tion this past summer’s “Potemkin vil­lage from hell,” a pop-up “TRGT” shop for the grand open­ing of the East Village’s new Tar­get at 14th St. and Avenue A. This abomination—which sold CBGB-styled “TRGT” shirts and prof­fered Tar­get-brand­ed Band-Aids (get it? Bands) sent “Van­ish­ing New York” blog­ger Jere­mi­ah Moss into “a state of con­fu­sion and dys­pho­ria… to see the arti­facts of my own life, my cul­tur­al and spir­i­tu­al awak­en­ing, my home, dis­played above the cash reg­is­ters in a Tar­get store.”

One can­not get too upset. The venue had been in a decline for a long time. The best of grass­roots Amer­i­can cul­ture all ends up in a Tar­get or Star­bucks even­tu­al­ly, gets green lit for a biopic and turned into an inter­ac­tive gallery. At least the CBGB build­ing was added to the Nation­al Reg­is­ter of His­toric Places in 2013. Maybe a boost for the sales of John Var­vatos who moved a store into the for­mer club in 2007, the very same year CBGB’s founder Hilly Kristal died of lung can­cer.

Ever-taste­ful New York Post announced the takeover with the head­line Hobo Goes Haute. “All of Man­hat­tan has lost its soul to mon­ey lords,” said Dead Boys gui­tarist Chee­tah Chrome. Twelve years lat­er, the lament seems under­stat­ed. But time moves on and so should we, the CBGB of the past was a moment in his­to­ry nev­er to be seen again, as fer­vid and fer­tile as late 19th cen­tu­ry Sym­bol­ism or the Beats—movements that just hap­pened to have very much influ­enced New York punk.

Like the life and work of Arthur Rim­baud or William S. Bur­roughs, the only way to com­mune with the leg­end of CBGB is through its pri­ma­ry sources. There is no short­age. Record­ings, pho­tographs, inter­views, and much excel­lent live footage of the bands that made the T‑shirt famous in the years of punk rock’s glo­ry: The Dead Boys and The Ramones in 1977, Bad Brains, invent­ing hard­core, in 1982, a very awk­ward Talk­ing Heads and con­fi­dent Blondie play­ing the Vel­vet Under­ground all the way back in 75….

Turn­ing cul­tur­al moments into mon­u­ments and mer­chan­dise is shal­low, of course, but it’s more than that—it’s impov­er­ish­ing. It makes us think we under­stand some­thing with­out ever hav­ing seen it. It’s not enough to know that it hap­pened, we should know how it hap­pened. How was the edgy elec­tri­fied dis­co stom­per “Psy­cho Killer” once a rick­ety, “tense and ner­vous” acoustic strum­mer? How did The Dead Boys’ Stiv Bators from Cleve­land more or less invent the moves front men and women in punk almost uni­ver­sal­ly adopt­ed? How did Wash­ing­ton DC’s Bad Brains break every unspo­ken rule of punk—with com­plex break­downs, tem­po shifts, and shred­ding solos—yet still con­quer every punk stage? How did the Ramones play entire live sets short­er than some of the sin­gle songs cer­tain oth­er bands played onstage at the time? How was it to wit­ness Blondie as a killer live cov­ers act? How was it to see The Ramones play “Judy is a Punk” in 1974?

For­get the grave­yard of CBGB kitsch out there. If you’re inter­est­ed in punk rock as a cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non, you owe it to your­self to see as much of this his­toric footage as pos­si­ble, and to lis­ten to as many live record­ings of far-too-often unsung CBGB bands like Tele­vi­sion. And if you were there, con­do­lences. Maybe you owe it to the rest of us to tell how it real­ly was.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pat­ti Smith Plays Songs by The Ramones, Rolling Stones, Lou Reed & More on CBGB’s Clos­ing Night (2006)

AC/DC Plays a Short Gig at CBGB in 1977: Hear Met­al Being Played on Punk’s Hal­lowed Grounds

1976 Film Blank Gen­er­a­tion Doc­u­ments CBGB Scene with Pat­ti Smith, The Ramones, Talk­ing Heads, Blondie & More

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

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The Real Locations of Ukiyo‑e, Historic Japanese Woodblock Prints, Plotted on a Google Map

in Art, History | January 31st, 2019

The undis­put­ed last great mas­ter of ukiyo‑e was Uta­gawa Hiroshige. He is best known for the many series he cre­at­ed of bucol­ic land­scapes, which offered col­lec­tors a chance to see parts of Japan they might nev­er reach. The Japan of his ear­ly 19th cen­tu­ry work holds a spe­cial place in Japan­ese hearts–a final look at an iso­lat­ed and beau­ti­ful coun­try just before the open­ing up of the ports to the West and, with it, indus­tri­al­iza­tion.

Apart from Mount Fuji, the loca­tions that Hiroshige drew have long gone, but “Com­put­er sci­ence under­grad, mar­tial artist, ukiyo‑e lover” and British res­i­dent George–he goes by the Twit­ter han­dle @Cascadesssss–has plot­ted the loca­tion of Hiroshige’s prints on an inter­ac­tive Google map that has gone quick­ly viral.

The red cir­cles rep­re­sent the series “One Hun­dred Famous Views of Edo,” the blue cir­cles “The Fifty-Three Sta­tions of the Tokai­do” (one of five main routes in Edo Japan), and the green “Famous Views of the Six­ty-odd Provinces,” the most expan­sive series show­ing scenes all the way from the The Two-sword Rocks of Bo Bay to the north province of Dewa and Mount Gas­san. Each loca­tion opens to a sep­a­rate web page with loca­tion infor­ma­tion, includ­ing lat­i­tude-lon­gi­tude num­bers. (Pull up a chair map-lovers, you might be here a long time.)

“The Fifty-Three Sta­tions of the Tokai­do” was Hiroshige’s most pop­u­lar series and unlike the oth­er two depict­ed hor­i­zon­tal land­scapes. The artist sketched these in 1832 as he rode in a pro­ces­sion from Edo (now Tokyo) to Kyoto and set to work on the prints once he returned home. The 55 prints (two extra draw­ings of the start­ing and end­ing points of the jour­ney) sold like crazy, as they cost about the same as a bowl of soup for the com­mon per­son.

“Famous Views of the Six­ty-odd Provinces” is dif­fer­ent in that Hiroshige did not make trips to see all these beloved locations–instead he put his own spin on exist­ing draw­ings found in guide books and oth­er sources. The total series of 70 prints took four years to com­plete, from 1853 to 1856.

By the time the “Provinces” series was wind­ing down, Hiroshige start­ed work on his final series “One Hun­dred Famous Views of Edo,” which he worked on until his death. Again, though liv­ing in Edo, Hiroshige drew from the works of oth­ers from decades before. This is also the artist at his most adventurous–some land­scapes are obscured by posts and bridge rail­ings or even a carp stream­er. One fea­tures what is rumored to be Hiroshige’s favorite geisha. These prints would go on to influ­ence West­ern artists, espe­cial­ly Vin­cent van Gogh.

Hiroshige pro­duced more series over his life–he died aged 61–and here’s hop­ing Cas­cadesssss plots more on his map soon.

via Spoon and Tam­a­go

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Enter a Dig­i­tal Archive of 213,000+ Beau­ti­ful Japan­ese Wood­block Prints

Down­load 2,500 Beau­ti­ful Wood­block Prints and Draw­ings by Japan­ese Mas­ters (1600–1915)

The Evo­lu­tion of The Great Wave off Kanaza­wa: See Four Ver­sions That Hoku­sai Paint­ed Over Near­ly 40 Years

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Watch The Beatles Perform Their Famous Rooftop Concert: It Happened 50 Years Ago Today (January 30, 1969)

in Music | January 30th, 2019

On Jan­u­ary 3oth 1969, The Bea­t­les took to the rooftop of the head­quar­ters of Apple Records, locat­ed at 3 Sav­ile Row, in cen­tral Lon­don. And there they played an impromp­tu last gig (a coda to their final offi­cial con­cert at Can­dle­stick Park on August 29, 1966), much to the delight of Lon­don­ers on near­by rooftops … and to the cha­grin of the police.

At the time, The Bea­t­les were record­ing their album, Let It Be, and the rooftop show let them run through var­i­ous tracks from those ses­sions. Songs played dur­ing the set include “Get Back,” where the Bea­t­les were accom­pa­nied by Bil­ly Pre­ston on the key­boards, and “Don’t Let Me Down” (above), “I’ve Got A Feel­ing,” “One After 909,” and “Dan­ny Boy.” And final­ly “Dig A Pony” and anoth­er ver­sion of “Get Back.”

Famous­ly, The Bea­t­les’ live lega­cy ends with the police shut­ting down the show (it was a noise vio­la­tion, you know?) and John Lennon utter­ing the immor­tal words, “I’d like to say thank you on behalf of the group and our­selves, and I hope we passed the audi­tion.” That’s going out in style…

Foot­note: It’s not clear which band played the first rooftop con­cert, but one thing is for cer­tain. Jef­fer­son Air­plane played their own rooftop gig on Decem­ber 7, 1968, and Jean-Luc Godard filmed it. Once again, the police pay a friend­ly vis­it. Watch it here.

Learn more about the Bea­t­les’ his­toric per­for­mance by pick­ing up a copy of the recent­ly-released book, The Roof: The Bea­t­les’ Final Con­cert, or down­load it from Audi­ble through this free tri­al offer.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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:

Audio: The Bea­t­les Play Their Final Con­cert at Can­dle­stick Park, 1966

A Vir­tu­al Tour of Every Place Ref­er­enced in The Bea­t­les’ Lyrics: In 12 Min­utes, Trav­el 25,000 Miles Across Eng­land, France, Rus­sia, India & the US

Musi­cian Plays Sig­na­ture Drum Parts of 71 Bea­t­les Songs in 5 Min­utes: A Whirl­wind Trib­ute to Ringo Starr

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