source file: mills2.txt Date: Mon, 25 Nov 1996 16:12:48 -0800 Subject: Re: Invitation to Lurkers to Contribute From: Steven Rezsutek Johnny Reinhard writes: > This is an open invitation for all those lurkers out there to step > forward and introduce yourself. I hope - and expect - that there will be > tolerance and understanding by the regulars. OK, I'll bite (but excuse me for a moment while I take my foot out of my mouth first :-)... Where to begin? My instrument of choice is bass, currently the electric bass guitar, though I am slowly making progress on my true love, the Double Bass. In addition to the requisite [7+5] keyboard, and pair of bongos, I also have a couple of other instruments which I've collected over the years, those being a hammered dulcimer and a shakuhachi. I play none of these with any expertise, but then again I only made my "serious" attempt to really learn music slightly less than a year ago! Prior to that, I made several attempts, on all sorts of instruments, but after a bit of noodling, usually became discouraged. Finding my "voice" in the bass was the missing element that kept me going this time, I think. I won't attempt to catagorize which musics I "like", as I seem to be always finding new ones, but if I had the chops (I don't -- yet :) I would most like to be able to play bebop and other inprovised musics which from my perspective seem to be something of a "game" for the musicians to enjoy as much, if not more than, the audience. For the time being, I do my best at holding down the bottom in a basement jam group, where we play mostly blues based rock, the occational "straight" blues piece, and a bit improvised "groove" music. I've been familiar, at least in concept, with microtonal music since college (early 80s), where I was first exposed to music by people such as Harry Partch and Pandit Pran Nath. From that time, until discovering this list earlier this year, the extent of my references were _Genesis_, _On the Sensations of Tone_, and _Lutes, Viols, and Temperament_. Needless to say, this list has been a gold mine! BTW, I say "in concept" above, because it is only in the past six months or so, thanks to acquiring a tuneable synth, that I've actually been able to touch, hear, noodle, taste and experience it, beyond the few recordings I have, or the odd experiments I've subjected some of my instruments to at one time or another. There probably isn't much I can offer into the dialog here for the moment, given my beginner status, but I hope that by "beginning" with more than one tuning, I can somehow carry a bit of what I learn here, not only into "my" music, but to some other folks who don't really have the inclination to get into all the technical stuff, but just want to play. [I know if we had the instruments, we'd probably be attempting to cover at least one of Neil's 19TET pieces.] Hope this wasn't too long... I am glad to be in your company, Steve Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Tue, 26 Nov 1996 01:12 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA07711; Tue, 26 Nov 1996 01:13:37 +0100 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA07799 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id QAA14100; Mon, 25 Nov 1996 16:13:34 -0800 Date: Mon, 25 Nov 1996 16:13:34 -0800 Message-Id: Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu