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Playing the Building by David Byrne

 
 
RicodJour
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      01-25-2011, 12:52 AM
Just ran across this and wanted to share it.

From Wikipedia's article on David Byrne:
In 2008, Byrne and his production team programmed the Battery Maritime
Building, a 99-year-old ferry terminal in Manhattan, to play music.
Essentially Byrne took the old New York City building, hooked the
entire structure - pipes, heaters, pillars and all, electronically to
an old pipe organ, and made a playable musical instrument of it, for a
piece called "Playing the Building".

How cool is THAT?!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gea9SYUdJeY

R
 
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Artemus
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      01-25-2011, 01:46 AM

"RicodJour" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:bd6dd2ce-f0eb-4159-9f30-(E-Mail Removed)...
> Just ran across this and wanted to share it.
>
> From Wikipedia's article on David Byrne:
> In 2008, Byrne and his production team programmed the Battery Maritime
> Building, a 99-year-old ferry terminal in Manhattan, to play music.
> Essentially Byrne took the old New York City building, hooked the
> entire structure - pipes, heaters, pillars and all, electronically to
> an old pipe organ, and made a playable musical instrument of it, for a
> piece called "Playing the Building".
>
> How cool is THAT?!
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gea9SYUdJeY
>
> R


It's a cool idea alright but I'd like to have heard him play something.
Something recognizable - like Life During Wartime.
Art


 
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marc rosen
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      01-25-2011, 03:36 AM
Is this Phase Two of More Songs about Buildings and Food?

Marc (who had a pleasant meeting with David Byrne back in 1979 or 80)
 
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RicodJour
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      01-25-2011, 04:02 AM
On Jan 24, 10:36*pm, marc rosen <duckb...@qis.net> wrote:
>
> Is this Phase Two of More Songs about Buildings and Food?
>
> Marc (who had a pleasant meeting with David Byrne back in 1979 or 80)


Elaborate please.

R
 
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marc rosen
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      01-25-2011, 12:08 PM
On Jan 24, 11:02*pm, RicodJour <ricodj...@worldemail.com> wrote:
> On Jan 24, 10:36*pm, marc rosen <duckb...@qis.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> > Is this Phase Two of More Songs about Buildings and Food?

>
> > Marc (who had a pleasant meeting with David Byrne back in 1979 or 80)

>
> Elaborate please.
>
> R


Hey Rico,
The secong album by the Talking Heads is titled "More Songs about
Buildings and Food". I also thought I'd make my own Frank Zappa
reference with the quip "Is this phase two.......?" (For those Lumpy
Gravy/Money perusers)

If you want me to elaborate about meeting Byrne, I was working
(volunteering) at a college radio station and one of the other DJs was
a close friend of his so he was invited to hang out for an evening.
Nice time, can't recall too much of what was said.
Marc



 
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RicodJour
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      01-25-2011, 05:21 PM
On Jan 25, 7:08*am, marc rosen <duckb...@qis.net> wrote:
>
> Hey Rico,
> The second album by the Talking Heads is titled "More Songs about
> Buildings and Food". *I also thought I'd make my own Frank Zappa
> reference with the quip "Is this phase two.......?" *(For those Lumpy
> Gravy/Money perusers)


David Byrne said that as a youth he was probably borderline
Asperger's, and I think that ability to obsess about things, and the
ability to create from that obsession, is what makes an artist and
artist.

> If you want me to elaborate about meeting Byrne, I was working
> (volunteering) at a college radio station and one of the other DJs was
> a close friend of his so he was invited to hang out for an evening.
> Nice time, can't recall too much of what was said.


No problem - some of the best nights I ever had were a bit foggy
afterward...and after some I was also pretty damned sore.

R
 
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Warm Worm
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      01-26-2011, 06:03 PM
On Jan 24, 7:52*pm, RicodJour <ricodj...@worldemail.com> wrote:
> Just ran across this and wanted to share it.
>
> From Wikipedia's article on David Byrne:
> In 2008, Byrne and his production team programmed the Battery Maritime
> Building, a 99-year-old ferry terminal in Manhattan, to play music.
> Essentially Byrne took the old New York City building, hooked the
> entire structure - pipes, heaters, pillars and all, electronically to
> an old pipe organ, and made a playable musical instrument of it, for a
> piece called "Playing the Building".
>
> How cool is THAT?!
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gea9SYUdJeY


It's pretty cool the way he has it set up, although he could always
get the band to do a live performance with the audience in the middle
of the room.

I may have mentioned on here quite a long time ago something about the
idea of a band that moves around the room and the audience, maybe on
foot or even on some kind of film "dolly-track", so that the music
fluctuates and shifts in experience over time...

I bang on bus-stop windows and parts thereof sometimes when I get
bored waiting for the bus. Large glass windows can have a nice bass
sound when you bump them in the middle with the side of your fist, and
the metal components can sound nice (metallic snare when coupled with
the window's bass) when flicked with a finger-nail.

Someone mentioned Frank Zappa, and there's a bit of him on tv "playing
a bike", which I've also done when I once happened upon Montreal's:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzJYYdLPLuU
The vid says 2007 and the time I was there was around the early 90's,
so they're still keeping up the tradition.

Zappa:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izDvYokFU7U
 
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Father Haskell
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      01-26-2011, 09:19 PM
On Jan 24, 7:52*pm, RicodJour <ricodj...@worldemail.com> wrote:
> Just ran across this and wanted to share it.
>
> From Wikipedia's article on David Byrne:
> In 2008, Byrne and his production team programmed the Battery Maritime
> Building, a 99-year-old ferry terminal in Manhattan, to play music.
> Essentially Byrne took the old New York City building, hooked the
> entire structure - pipes, heaters, pillars and all, electronically to
> an old pipe organ, and made a playable musical instrument of it, for a
> piece called "Playing the Building".
>
> How cool is THAT?!
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gea9SYUdJeY
>
> R


In the old Delta blues tradition of the "diddley bow," a one
stringed lap slide guitar, several musicians have made
instruments by stretching baling wire across houses.
 
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RicodJour
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      01-26-2011, 10:23 PM
On Jan 26, 4:19*pm, Father Haskell <fatherhask...@yahoo.com> wrote:

>
> In the old Delta blues tradition of the "diddley bow," a one
> stringed lap slide guitar, several musicians have made
> instruments by stretching baling wire across houses.


Interesting. Were the wires attached to the walls and the walls acted
as the drum skin?

R
 
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creative1985@gmail.com
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      01-27-2011, 09:39 PM
Warm Worm> wrote:
> I bang on bus-stop windows and parts thereof sometimes when I get
> bored waiting for the bus. Large glass windows can have a nice bass
> sound when you bump them in the middle with the side of your fist, and
> the metal components can sound nice (metallic snare when coupled with
> the window's bass) when flicked with a finger-nail.


While walking today I thought of a large pipe, about 3' dia x 12'
long, with identical 12" full range drivers mounted along the side of
that pipe, evenly spaced apart, the far end of the pipe would be
capped off so the sound would come out one end only. Then send a
single identical signal to each of the drivers at the same time. Would
the driver at the far end of the pipe have a lower sound then the
driver mounted closest to the open end of the pipe? If so, would that
then be a full range speaker?

What if, at the far end of the pipe, rather than a cap, a U was
installed, then another length of pipe, kinda like a folded horn.
Would this add volume?

Spring must be coming, I'm itching to make stuff.
 
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