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23 Apr 2012

Playlist for Election Day

Posted by Barb. No Comments

Playlist for Election Day

Music has long been used as a mnemonic device.  Rhyming schemes are significant memory boosters.  Put those rhymes to a familiar melody and you tap into neural synapses that lead directly to those buried memories.  It’s why some of us still have to use the alphabet song to figure out that H comes before K.

Chances are pretty good that you won’t actually forget to vote today.  This is, after all, one of the tightest, most highly contested Alberta elections ever.  But even if you don’t need the mnemonic power of the playlist to remind you to head to the polls and mark your X, it never hurts to have a little music that suits the day.

These songs will get you shaking your booty, as you exercise your right to vote:

Electioneering – Radiohead

Government Center – the Modern Lovers

A Apolitical Blues – Little Feat

A Game in Town Like This – Corb Lund

Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want – the Smiths

Democracy – Leonard Cohen

A Cautionary Song – the Decemberists

Oh Alberta – Elliott Brood

How to Defeat a More Powerful Enemy – Apostle of Hustle

Listen to Your Heart – Cuff the Duke

All in a Day – Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros

We Rule the School – Belle and Sebastian

Do I Have Power – Timber Timbre

Everybody’s Got Something to Lose Except Me and My Monkey – Lorrie Matheson

 

Get out there and vote!

23 Mar 2012

we were there: east village experience centre grand opening

Posted by Kait. No Comments

Even though Barb already got a sneak peek last week at the East Village Experience Centre’s VIP Opening – we had a great time checking out the official grand opening today! Despite the cold weather, there was a ton of East Village enthusiasm.

14 Mar 2012

We knew her when…

Posted by Kait. No Comments

It was exciting to open up the office copy of The Globe & Mail this morning to see Stephanie Eddy’s adorable face peering up from the Globe Life section. In case, you don’t know who Stephanie Eddy is – she volunteered this past November to create an Edible King Eddy Hotel (no relation to herself) for our All I Want For Christmas is a New King Eddy campaign. She created the sweetest little snow-encrusted King Eddy that eventually was auctioned off at our Christmas Open House!

Anyways, we are so excited to hear that she has a brand-new baking column in the Globe! Congrats Stephanie!

13 Mar 2012

We are making music! New exhibitions are in the works for the National Music Centre

Posted by Naomi. No Comments

We are making music! New exhibitions are in the works for the National Music Centre

Ever wondered how an exhibition is created? In some ways, it’s similar to the way music notes become song. Here at NMC we are now hard at work developing exhibitions for the new building: in just a few short years drawings and sketches like these will come to life as the visitor experience in NMC’s new home at the King Eddy.

We began in the fall, by settling down to work with our exhibition design team, Haley Sharpe, who are based in Leicester UK. Haley Sharpe also have an office in Toronto, and their biggest Canadian project to date was the Canadian War Museum. We are thrilled to be working with them.

Our first step was to get a lot of smart people around the table to get them talking about music. We asked what music means to them – because we all know music gives meaning to different people in different ways. And we talked a lot about music in Canada.

Then we took a look at the collection, and thought about how we can best tell the story of music in Canada through objects. What do we have that speaks to those stories, and what will we need to get? What do we know, and what do we need to find out? We are developing quite a list of questions, and our research team is getting ready.

But before we can delve into the individual stories – and there are a LOT of great stories to tell about music in Canada – we had to figure out the BIG IDEAS. What do we want visitors to NMC to walk away with?

So our first milestone was establishing five ideas that we know we want people to get from a visit to NMC:

  • Canada has a rich musical history
  • Music in Canada is alive and growing
  • Music gives meaning in different ways to everyone, everywhere – in short, it matters
  • Music is an extremely powerful force for discovery, innovation, and renewal
  • I can make music

 

Perhaps that last one is the most important. Our next step is to map these big ideas across the big spaces at NMC, see how they fit together, and work out how to make them come to life. Then there’s lighting design, flooring choices, acoustics and sound design, software development, research and writing, adding new objects to the collections… all of which are sketched first, then modeled on computers, then created. Just a few things to keep us busy!

Interested in following these sketches come to life? Follow the project at Twitter: @nmc_canada and @naomigrattan

13 Mar 2012

Sweethearts Jam

Posted by Kait. No Comments

Calgary. February 13th. 9:00am.

I am in a 2 ton truck loaded to the nines heading west for Merritt B.C. I haven’t passed 3 Tim Horton’s and the snow is flying and a firm southerly wants to edge my iron wagon into the gutter. I make it through Golden, enroute to Revelstoke and just as I am leaving the town limits I run out of windshield wiper fluid. Powerade is an expensive windshield cleaner and it tastes too good… so the next 1.5 hours is white knuckle, one eye hauling through a couple inches of clean window until I safely pull into the petrol station in Revelstoke. Top it up, snag a joe to go and ship it. I arrive at my destination, Merritt, after a rather long chat with a Peace officer at 11pm and find my lodging. 


Tuesday morning starts with a continental breakfast, fade to 9 hours of display case set-up, and the most delicious hamburger at the Coldwater Hotel. Local beef is the key!


If you don’t already know, the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame resides in the arid, friendly, musical town of Merritt. We at the NMC, steward and maintain the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame COLLECTION. We have a wonderful working relationship with our fellow countrymen in B.C.

Last time I was out there, CCMHF board members, Jack and Carol, caught wind that I enjoy playing bluegrass on my dobro so they made things happen! I am not really the kind of chap that buys into the hallmark holidays, but this Valentine’s day was a sweetheart. Though the timing wasn’t a hit with the jammers wives, we had ourselves a proper kitchen party and hammered out chestnuts for hours at the Hall of Fame. We laughed, told stories, sang and played. We were even joined by Mr. Gary Cooper, B.C. Country Hall of Fame inductee! Gary can make his guitar talk – honest.

I had a wonderful time with the warm folks of Merritt and I am looking forward to more jams as I wander down this winding road.

12 Mar 2012

watching the music grow

Posted by Barb. No Comments

The centerpiece of the East Village Sales and Experience Centre, which rolled out the red carpet on Saturday for a  VIP sneak peak event, is unquestionably the scale-model East Village that dominates the lobby.  It was pretty darn exciting to see a miniature National Music Centre so proudly showcased in its future home.  The iconic design elicited its fair share of ooohing and awwing from the gathered curious.

Who can blame them?

28 Feb 2012

The Kids Are Alright!

Posted by Barb. No Comments

If there was ever any doubt (although there certainly never was within the halls of Cantos/NMC) about the level of talent in Calgary’s young performing artists, it was all laid to rest with the Afrikadey! Creative Youth Showcase that took place in the performance space this weekend.   On a decidedly wintery Saturday, where the weather warnings should have been enough to keep most people bundled up in their homes, the free showcase for young artists far surpassed the expected audience numbers.   We sure don’t mind setting out extra chairs!  We love a full house.

An impressive line-up of blossoming talent entertained a near-capacity house with an afternoon of poetry, drama, music, dance, rap, visual and performing arts.  From impressive pre-teen rapper to polished diva, the performers represented  a wide range of ages and levels of previous stage exposure.  We loved every minute.  The judges were impressed, the audience was blown away, and everybody left with big smiles on their faces.

Way to go, creative youth!

24 Feb 2012

Quarter Note Video Tweet: Slide with Sam

Posted by Kait. No Comments

 

“Slide with Sam” is one of the many options available to teachers in the afternoon of the full day Good Vibrations program. We call it Choose Your Own NMC Adventure. There are so many ways to explore the science behind sound and in “Slide with Sam” students discover speaking length, timbre, pitch and volume while comparing and contrasting different types of guitars. Sam is our Production Assistant and also a musician and he shares with the students his stories about instrument building, repair and life on stage. Grade threes have an authentic experience with an expert in the community and get to try out a real guitar, just like Sam’s.

23 Feb 2012

Thinking Outside the Box at Teachers Convention

Posted by Kate. No Comments

Pablo Picasso: always childlike

I think about Picasso a lot at work. Picasso once said: “All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”  It is like my personal mantra, a reminder, to stay childlike and curious all the time. Some might say I am lucky to work in the arts, where creative thinking is  encouraged.  Maybe. I certainly work with some amazingly creative people at NMC–but they aren’t all artists. Our accountant Marcie has amazing, out-of-the-box ideas. Some might say that because I got my BFA and became a painter,  it means I am immersed in my creative life and am better suited for work as an arts educator. Maybe. But my artistic practice informs my work in education at NMC, all the time, even when I am budgeting, grant writing or doing data entry, not just when programming or working with students.
So how can any educator help their students be creative, even when they don’t self-identify as being an artist themselves?  What is the benefit of teaching through the arts and asking kids to think creatively?  How do artistic practices and thinking dispositions help scaffold learning? How can we think outside of the box using the curriculum in our classrooms? These are some of the questions I set out to explore as I co-hosted a session at the Calgary City Teachers Convention with my long-time friend and colleague, Carly DeBoice (Open Minds Coordinator at Science School, TELUS Spark) We wanted to show teachers accessible methods for helping students engage with science, language arts and music through creative, out of the box thinking. So, of course, we asked the teachers to become students and  leave their comfort zone behind a little.

Blowing bubbles through found objects

We explored two activities, beginning with bubble making, a common early elementary science activity. First we removed any physical barriers to creativity and  moved all chairs out of the way and laid down tarps on the banquet tables the Hyatt gave us. Setting up the physical space to allow for unincumbered exploration is key. It took a bit of coaxing to convince teachers they could get messy, but once they got started bubble mix and laughter was everywhere. Carly challenged us to make bubbles through straws (easy), pipe cleaners  (bendy), CD’s (odd but suprisingly effective) and….. cheese graters! The table was full of a myriad of recyclables for our taking. How many different types of bubbles can you make? Which materials work best? What doesn’t work? Teachers explored and challenged themselves with minimal instruction and a lot of support from us; pushing themselves further and further with every new idea. What if?…

a box of foley; inspiration for sound

I led the second activity: an exploration of contemporary poetry through foley. I distributed a copy of  Joy Harjo‘s poem Climbing the Streets of Worchester, Mass. to each person. No title . No author. I told the teachers nothing except to ask them to read it to themselves silently. Twice. Then we took turns reading it aloud; listening to our individual voices and their varying tempos, intonation etc..  Now keep in mind that poetry is tough for the best of us. Extra tough for teachers who “don’t get it” and have to teach it to students that usually also “don’t get it ” and most often “don’t care”.  Most teaching of poetry in the classroom stops at reading aloud followed perhaps by a half-hearted discussion and then “let’s move on”.

But in our case we moved on to looking at the printed words on the page. I asked the teachers to describe what they saw. Huh? They were very brave.  Together we discussed spaces, punctuation, capitals, absence of capitals, fonts etc… By talking about what we could see, and avoiding interpretation of content, the poem grew less and less daunting.

Next I brought out a box of foley I had collected from home and around NMC (My co-workers are a very accommodating bunch.) Broken hole punches, accordion files, bubble wrap, pots, spoons, deck of cards –anything goes. Foley is, by definition, “the process of recording sound effects on-the-fly as the picture plays or the script is read. Foley sound effects are often created from everyday household objects.” I asked the teachers to work in groups and create a sound illustration for the poem. In less then ten minutes. Of course, like any artistic product, it doesn’t have meaning if not shared and we did that for each other. The audience listened with eyes closed. We can hear better with eyes closed, did you know that?

Close your eyes to hear better: try it!

The discussion that came out of the workshop was amazing. One teacher expressed that she had never realized that by giving her students choice, like we gave her, they would be more engaged and retain more. A  high school English teacher discovered  that meaning can be found in poetry, without having to be told what it is about first.  We explored ideas on how we could take the activity further, into other subjects and other art forms and with technology and we explored what some personal challenges were and how we over came them. Carly and I felt we left the teachers with a lasting impression knowing that they too could think as artists and scientists do: outside the box and creatively.

I believe that being creative is essential to being an effective educator.  Fostering your own creative disposition and giving your self permission (non-judging validation) to explore, be curious, generate ideas and create– means that any one can learn to think and act like an artist. So how will you remain an artist, creative and free-thinking, even as you grow up?

21 Feb 2012

Quarter Note Video Tweet: Roadtrip to Merritt

Posted by Kait. No Comments

For 140 seconds or less, join us for a fragment of our day.

If you are on Twitter, you know that we love to tweet! If you aren’t already following us check us out here @nmc_canada.

 

16 Feb 2012

Help our Synth Band find a Name!

Posted by Brandon. No Comments

Hello out there blog readers! I have been lucky enough to be involved in many great bands and projects over the years – most of which existed before I joined them. There are exceptions though, like my very first band; “The All Smiles Jazz Quartet” of which I was a founding member, and this current un-named project which involves people whom I have played in other various bands with. We’ve gone under various names, most of which centered around the word “Circa” Our music is very retro sounding and somewhat Lo-Fi (hopefully in a good way) so we thought that would be a good fit. We’ve used just plain Circa, Circa ’71, Circa ’81…..various other arbitrary years…but we’re not calling ourselves that anymore. There’s already a prog-rock band called Circa (which apparently was founded by 4 former Yes members), not to mention a clothing brand of the same name. Circa’s out and our other choice “E.P.R.O.M” has also been taken. We need to have some kind of name, so we can book shows and what not. If you the reader can think of any name that invokes the thought of retro, 80s, electronics, synthesizers or anything generally cool, let us know! The only requirements are: no blatant cuss words (in case we do any all-ages shows) and it has to be not already taken. Give it a quick Google search if you’re not sure – that’s how I found out about the other Circa. Oh and please no silly genre-defining words like “funk” or “electro”…..it always makes me cringe when people use those in their band names!

It would probably help to know what we sound like to figure out what we should be called, so I’ve put our Soundcloud link below so you can hear or even download the tunes we have so far. We’ll put more stuff on here as we make it, and eventually when we get a name we’ll make a proper Soundcloud page for it. For now it’s just simply titled something.synth

To check it out see the link below
Latest tracks by something_synth

16 Feb 2012

Quarter Note Video Tweet: Tapes from Grandpa

Posted by Kait. No Comments


 

If you are on Twitter, you know that we love to tweet! If you aren’t already following us check us out here @nmc_canada. This is our first video tweet – part of our new series Quarter Note Video Tweet where we share snippets of daily life at the National Music Centre Project Headquarters. Everyday we have so much cool stuff going on in our space – everything from lunchtime musical performances to elements of our collection being shipped off to other exhibitions. Or using our first video tweet as an example, a team member sharing some music memorabilia stories.

For 140 seconds or less, join us for a fragment of our day.

 

13 Feb 2012

jam ‘em if you got ‘em

Posted by Kait. No Comments

Story by Barbara Bruederlin // Image by Sasha Lavoie

Not exactly a closely guarded secret, Cantos’ Blue Mondays All Ages Blues Jam, is becoming THE place to exorcise those blues.  You know the ones, those blues that have been building up all month, those blues that are just begging for you to channel  your inner BB King.

The last Monday of every month, the Blue Mondays House Band brings in a special guest and takes over the performance space on the main floor.   That in itself is enough reason to get all excited that  you survived the weekend and that it’s finally Monday.  The fact that you are invited to bring your instrument and jam along with other like-minded folks of all ages and levels of expertise is what really makes the evening magical.

I recently had a chance to sit in on my first ever Blue Monday, and came away wondering why I ever waited so long.  I was especially enthralled with some of the younger jammers who took to the stage, many of whom were already seasoned and grizzled blues veterans, despite being barely into their teens.  It was really heartening to see so many young performers honing their skills in a public forum, and to witness the warmth and the openness with which all the jammers, regardless of experience, were welcomed onto the stage.

Another definite draw, for those who don’t feel particularly inspired in the culinary category on Mondays, is that you don’t even need to figure out what to cook for supper before you come.  You can indulge your blue self at the event with a yummy catered meal for just a few dollars.  The night I attended, people were raving about the chicken cashew curry.

So bring your blues on the last Monday of every month and be prepared to jam.  Doors are at 6:30 and the show is at 7:00.

9 Feb 2012

The Creation of a New Synth – Part 3

Posted by Brandon. No Comments


I have no idea how many parts this is going to wind up being….anyways, last night I finished populating the PCB for my Synthrotek 16 step sequencer kit. This won’t go in the case with the rest of the modular, but it will be installed into a small wooden case (from a dead tube tester) so it can be used both with the modular and the Minimoog in live situations. I chose this kit because it is more or less complete – sans power supply and case. Now I just need to find a suitable 9v wall-wart adapter and some really skinny knobs and It’ll be done. I’ll probably replace the 1/8th inch jacks with 1/4″ ones. This sequencer can be clocked by an external pulse like the kind generated by a drum machine – which is exactly how I intend to use mine. Another reason I picked this kit is because it outputs regular voltage triggers AND S-triggers (shorting trigger) to use with synthesizers like the Minimoog – without the need for a special adapting cable.

7 Feb 2012

Matt Masters + Melodies & Memories!

Posted by Kate. No Comments

Matt Masters spent two weeks at King George elementary delivering our new Grade 4-6 program,  Melodies and Memories.  He performed a concert for their entire school, sharing songs and stories of Alberta and its history. He then worked with nine different classes, helping them to write songs for their schools upcoming 100th anniversary celebration. Each song was written around the theme “Under the Prairie Sky” and celebrates the heroes, geography and traditions in our province. In January, Melodies and Memories was presented to 596 students!

2 Feb 2012

The Creation of a New Synth – Part 2

Posted by Brandon. No Comments


Yay! My pair of Synthesizers .com oscillators came in the mail yesterday! First, I must say, synthesizers.com has to be one of the coolest companies EVER. There’s lots of options these days for new synthesizer modules and kits so what makes synthesizers.com so special? Well, mostly it’s because Roger Arrick, the man behind synthesizers.com builds robots and other industrial-type electronics for his main business. In fact, my invoice said Arrick Robotics on it! You have to admit, even Bob Moog never made robots (that we know of anyways). I think that’s pretty darn cool. Now that I’ve got a couple of oscillators and a functioning but not very pretty (yet) keyboard controller, I figure my next step is a power supply and a cabinet. Once again, synthesizers.com comes through with these plans on building a functional (and not half bad looking) modular cabinet out of $40 worth of materials from Home Depot. Seems to be well within my limited wood working abilities and budget. As for the power supply, I’ve heard many people say the higher quality supplies are worth it in terms of stability and noise rejection. I’ll eventually get a nice pre-fabricated one but for now my bench test supply will do the job. Slowly but surely the beast is taking shape!

1 Feb 2012

Triple Threat: Teenage Pianists Light up the Keyboard

Posted by Kate. No Comments

 

NMC and Calgary Pro Musica Society were proud to present Showtime! with Triple Threat: Teenage Pianists Light Up the Keyboard: two interactive performances in Cantos’ Performance Space. Part of our new Showtime! Children’s Concert Series, Triple Threat featured the winners of the Calgary Pro Musica Society’s Young Artist Development program. These three, 17-year old piano virtuosos wrote and starred in a concert which taught young audiences the history of the keyboard and introduced them to some classical greats like Bach, Beethoven and the like. They were the ultimate dueling pianos, playing off each other on Cantos’ incredible collection.

31 Jan 2012

Olenka Krakus (Olenka and the Autumn Lovers): How’d You Get That Awesome Gig?

Posted by Barb. No Comments

Olenka Krakus (Olenka and the Autumn Lovers):  How’d You Get That Awesome Gig?

Occupation: Musician (& part time academic!)

Location: London ON

First Job: babysitter (haha… those were the days)

Best Job: musician (& record store clerk at a great local record store in London: The Village Idiot)

Greatest Professional Challenge:  Managing the business end of the band.

So, how did you get this awesome gig anyways?  This isn’t the sort of job you apply for, other than, I suppose applying yourself. It’s the sort of job that you commit to, like any passion or small business venture; in my case, I was drawn to playing music and couldn’t stop myself from playing in bands all my life. In the case of my most recent band, I committed myself to trying to get my music out to the greatest audience that I could, which meant dedicating myself to hours of the tedious administrative tasks involved in managing and promoting a band.

What do you like best about your job?  Playing live for genuinely enthusiastic and emotionally involved audiences.

Any special skills required?  MANY. Aside from the skills associated with my instrument (classical guitar) and all the skills involved in composing, arranging, recording, and producing music, you need an entire skill-set associated with promoting, booking, & managing the band.

Favourite experience on the job:  Connecting with the audience: it’s amazing when you see an audience member genuinely moved, or when an audience member can’t help but talk to you about some personal reaction that they’ve had to your music.

Advice for people who want your awesome gig:  Do it yourself. Don’t wait for someone to do the work for you; figure out the music business by going out and networking, playing shows, booking tours, recording, promoting your music on Canadian college stations and CBC, etc.

Favourite CDN Music Venue:  Aeolian Hall – London ON

Favourite Record of the Moment:  Bry Webb – Provider

30 Jan 2012

January Pipe!Pipe!Hooray! Success!

Posted by Kait. No Comments

Pipe!Pipe!Hooray! had another successful January run: eight performances over ten days! This grade three science and music program features Mount Royal Professor of Organ Studies, Neil Cockburn, on the amazing Ahrend organ, housed at the Rozsa Centre on the UofC campus.  Bob Pearson shares stories and anecdotes with grade three students as they learn the majesty and mystery of the organ through Neil’s playing. Thanks to this ongoing generous donation of space from the University of Calgary, Calgary students are able to have a behind-the –scenes look at the blower room and the inner workings of the instrument, an opportunity few music lovers get.  This special January-only program is in its fifth year of operation and this year reached 227 grade three students and their teachers.

30 Jan 2012

The Creation of a New Synth – Part 1

Posted by Brandon. No Comments

Well January is almost over now, so I’m going to make good on a resolution I made to do at least 1 blog posting a month. December was quite the busy month with gigs, many happenings around Cantos and the odd repair / DIY project. First, I managed to get my Yamaha CS-10 working the way I want. (Finally!) I was afraid I might have fried something while poking around, but it turns out I actually just had a connector in upside-down. D’oh! JL helped me modify it originally a couple of years ago with 2 sub-octave pots that give you 1 and 2 octave divisions of the square wave from the CS-10′s VCO. I had seen a few other very similar modifications people have done to their CS-10s online and wanted to do likewise because…lets face it….having just one VCO on a synth can be a little thin sounding. Other mods were done over the last couple of years such as adding a Synhouse MIDIJack and transplanting an old Waldorf Q pitch bender into the space where that useless slide pot was. Also added a button and toggle switch to switch pitch vibrato on/off. There were a couple of cosmetic tweaks as well – most notably the beautiful end-panels that Jesse made for me out of this exotic, bright colored African wood called “Padauk”. Also, I replaced the black Yamaha knobs with mini versions of the classic Moog knobs. I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out.

Then there’s the Drumulator. This was given to me by my piano teacher Gilles Parenteau in College. Click on his name if you want to be wowed by some virtual symphony madness! He gave me a container of EPROMs for it too, but I ended up purchasing 808/909 combination ROMS from Strellis in the UK. (Which, it appears, aren’t available anymore). They had tiny little switches mounted right on the chip to switch the sounds back and forth, which meant you had to reach inside all the time and leave the bottom unscrewed. I eventually ordered these funky round switches from Mouser and now it’s vastly easier to switch back and forth from 808 to 909 mode.

So now that those projects are out of the way, I can concentrate more on my most ambitious project to date: building a modular synthesizer. Not from scratch of course, I’m not as intense as some DIYers out there, but from a combination of kits, pre-fabricated modules and maybe the odd scratch-built circuit. It’s a daunting task trying to figure out where to start something like this. I mean, what is the absolutely most essential module in a synthesizer? I’d say it’s an Oscillator – wouldn’t be much of a synth without one! I took an unusual approach to this and actually built a keyboard controller first. It was a Roland EP-10 that I gutted and installed a Music From Outer Space single buss keyboard controller circuit board into. Now that I have a pretty decent keyboard to play this synthesizer from, this week I ordered a pair of VCOs from synthesizers.com. Not a bad start, but there’s still the other bread and butter modules I’ll need to get like VCAs, envelopes, and filters…..not to mention all the fun stuff like Sample & Hold, noise generators, sequencers…..the list goes on. It’s kind of hard to prioritize when there are so many cool toys available these days for the modular synthesist. I can see this becoming a very versatile and useful tool in my home studio setup for sure, it’s just going to take a while to build.