I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: ÓLAFUR ARNALDS-Tiny Desk Concert #767 (July 19, 2018).

Arnalds plays four songs in this Tiny Desk.  For most of them he uses his prepared piano.  But it’s prepared in a very different way.

“Árbakkinn” opens with Arnalds on the piano.  After about a minute, three of the four strings (Unnur Jónsdóttir (cello), Katie Hyun (violin), Karl James Pestka (viola)), enter the song followed shortly by Viktor Arnason on lead violin playing a haunting melody over the top.

Up next is “Unfold,” which is a bit happier a bit poppier.  It starts with pizzicato strings and has percussion by Manu Delago.   Arnalds at the electronic keyboard but when he plays it, the two pianos behind him start playing.  I’ll let the blurb fill in:

Somewhere about midway through this Tiny Desk, as Icelandic composer Ólafur Arnalds performed on his electronic keyboard, two upright pianos were playing lilting melodies behind him, absent any performer at the keys. …  About ten minutes into the performance Ólafur looked behind him at the two pianos, looked to the NPR crowd and said, “well I guess you’re all wondering ‘what and why,’ to which there’s no easy answer.” He hit the keys on his electronic keyboard and the two pianos behind responded with cascading, raindrop-like notes. “What I can say,” he continued, “is that I’ve spent two years and all of my money on this — to make my pianos go bleep-bloop.” What Ólafur was referring to is software that he and his coder friend, Halldór Eldjárn developed. A computer, loaded with this musical software (which Ólafur calls the Stratus system), “listens” to Ólafur’s keyboard performance and responds by creating patterns that are musically in tune with the chord or notes Ólafur performed.

So why do this? Basically, it’s a way to break out of the box musicians often fall back on as performers — the familiar responses that years of playing can reinforce. With that is the hope that the computer will create a response that is unfamiliar and, in some cases through speed of performance and the sheer number of notes played, impossible for a human to have made. So, it breathes new life into the music for the listener and the performer.

Arnalds can play the pianos while they are being remotely controlled as well, as he plinked out piano melodies while the computer was playing those raindrop notes.  The end of the song has a very interesting electronic tympani sound as well.

As the second song fades, “Saman” begins with Arnalds back at the piano to play this beautiful and haunting solo piano melody.

“Doria” is a tribute to Halldór Eldjárn the creator of the programming “and his beautiful code.” It was the first song he wrote using this new technology.  Arnalds plays the beginning on the keyboard while the other pianos play along.  The strings accompany him and then about half way through, while the pianos are continuing to play, he jumps in the middle and plays the main melody on one of the pianos.  It’s really quite lovely.

It was a gently stunning and memorable Tiny Desk. More of these creations can be heard on Ólafur Arnalds’ brilliant, fourth solo album re: member.

[READ: January 31, 2018] “Colin Kelly’s Kids”

This story was written after Elkin had a heart attack (he lived for almost 30 years after the heart attack).

The tale is basically one of an old man playing pickup baseball.  It had been a superb spring. This had been his fifth week playing and the teams (rotating payers every week) seemed to get used to him.  He wasn’t very good–had a lot of power but couldn’t connect.

But they did allow him to play first. He always played first whatever the teams, so he felt coldly like he was being traded to a new team each week–professional.

Some of the other players were even kind to him, saying he was just in a slump–it felt like a youthful thing to be in a slump and not just be old and not good anymore.

He began doing chatter on the field–all in good fun.  He may have been the only one doing it.  Although, he was sometimes silent for whole innings fearing being irritating to others.

He thought about sports, wondered how he knew so many professional players’ names if he didn’t really watch it.  He usually fell asleep during games.  Must be the nightly news.  But he also knew the phrasings–two men on, there’s a force at any base,

Not really much of a story at all, and I’m not sure what the title has to do with anything.