The heartbreak song y’all may have not wanted but definitely needed.
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Noah James
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Friday, November 6, 2020
Friday, September 18, 2020
New release - Be There Soon by recording artist Noah James
Dreams are just dreams without goals and discipline
Friday, July 5, 2019
Spotlight on Voiceover Artist Michele Lukovich
Michele Lukovich
It is my pleasure to spotlight the very talented Michele Lukovich, the narrator for The Briton and the Dane: Timeline. Her artistic interpretation created realistic characters, bringing the story
to life with her vibrant, diverse and engaging narration.
About Michele
Your Vision. My Voice.
Michele has been an entertainer and a storyteller since she
was a toddler. With a history of singing and acting, she found her niche in
voiceover. Her musical background has
given her a rich, melodic tone and an engaging delivery that keeps the listener
entertained and enlightened. She can make the boring and mundane fascinating
and memorable. Whether voicing your TV or radio spot, narrating your promo or
film, hosting your E-Learning or company training videos, or anything in
between, Michele makes each client her priority and makes certain they are not
only satisfied but delighted. And her
stage experience gives her the ability to take your direction and run with it.
Need a seasoned pro? Michele has been doing voiceover for
more years than she cares to count. In fact, she has been one of the voices of
Chicago’s public television station, WTTW for over a decade. And though she can
sound like a teenager, she has the experience to convincingly play the
compassionate mom, the girl next door, the high-level executive, the physician,
the patient, the sophisticate, the quirky best friend or the superhero. Or just
narrate with authority or tenderness. She can play it straight or she can be
the comic relief. Just tell her whom you want her to be. And she will find an
honest way to be just that. Michele believes the best thing about having
experience is that you can draw on it to convey almost any sentiment. The more
you have gone through in life, the more you can be believable in almost any
context. You can’t fake it. You want someone who has real LIFE experience.
Michele’s studio has a very quick turnaround. She uses
StudioOne software and Most often, she will get your files in 24 hours or less
(depending on the size of your project) and will give you several takes to
choose from. If you need real-time recording, you can utilize SourceConnect.
Need a face to go with the voice? Michele’s on-camera
experience makes her a versatile talent that can contribute to your project in
many ways. Need a singer as well? You are in luck…Michele is also an
accomplished singer. She has sung classical music, 40’s ballads, Broadway
standards and a little pop, and most things in between. She has sung with
symphonies, opera companies, regional theatres and even traveled the world singing
on cruise ships.
Read more about Michele at Michele Lukovich's webpage
Listen to Michele's narration of The Briton and the Dane: Timeline on Soundcloud
Tuesday, April 10, 2018
How was music invented? A medieval answer
Medievalists
Detail of a miniature of a man playing a portable organ, with a harp lying beside him. British Library MS Harley 334 f.25v
The Middle Ages saw a renewed interest in music, with new styles being formed, and the creation of musical notation that we still use today. In monasteries and universities music was being studied and many works survive from the period that examine the mechanics of singing and how to perfect various sounds.
These works often also dealt with the history of music, and one question they tried to answer is how music came to be, and who should be credited with inventing it. Looking for answers, the medieval writers turned to Biblical sources as well as Greek and Roman mythology and legends. They usually put forward several answers, including crediting a character from the Book of Genesis named Jubal, who was said to have played the flute, or Amphion, a son of Zeus, who was given the lyre.
One popular story from the Middle Ages credits the Greek philosopher Pythagoras as the inventor of music. The Introductorium musicae, written in first half of the 15th century by Johannes Keck, explains:
He, they say, by chance passing a forge, heard the blow of four hammers making the diapente (fifth), diatessaron (fourth), and octave in the proportions of their sounds. But suspicious whether by change this proposition of sounds depended on the strength of the arms of the smiths working thus, he himself instructed the smiths that they strike again with hammers exchanged. Then, notwithstanding the changing of the hammers, the former proportion of sounds remained for each of them. Whence he learned in clever fashion from the trial, that in the weight of the hammers consisted of the sounds.
A much different explanation is given in the 13th century manual Summa musice, where the author tries to use the etymology of words to track the origins of music:
Some say that ‘musica’ is equivalent to ‘moysica’ from ‘moys’, which means water, because when rain water (or any other kind) falls upon different kinds of substance – now upon roofs, now upon stones, now upon land, now upon water, now upon empty vessels, now upon the leaves of trees – it produces different sounds, and the Ancients are said to have devised music by bringing these sounds together.
Meanwhile, Florentius de Faxolis, an Italian musician and priest, offered this ancient legend to help explain how stringed instruments were invented:
It is reported by some that on a certain occasion the Nile flooded far more than usual, so that the lands about its banks were covered; after its retreat countless fish perished, left without water all over the fields. And it happened at that time that Mercury made his way through this sand and found a shell in which a fish had already rotted; Mercury is said to have taken the shell and found nothing but four tendons of the fish that had been in it; he is reported to have touched them one by one and thus become the first to discover this tetrachord.
Medieval woodcut showing Pythagoras with bells and other instruments in Pythagorean tuning.
It might be fair to say medieval authors understood that all these competing legends and stories meant that they would never really know the origins of music. Perhaps many of them shared the view expressed in the Summa musice:
With regard to all of this, let us fittingly say, with Aristotle, that the beginnings of all arts, and implements at the time of their invention, were crude and meagre, each successive innovator adding something new. In this manner the trickle of an ultimate source, enlarged by a confluence of waters, can be turned into a river carrying ships, and it could have been, as Moses says, that Jubal was the first, from whose name we derive both ‘iubllus’ and ‘iubalare’, and that the others mentioned, coming afterwards, added something new and so on up to the present time.
Sunday, June 11, 2017
Band Posters of the Renaissance: How Medieval Music Fans Showed off Their Taste
Ancient Origins
Tim Shephard / The Conversation
Did you once put a poster of your favorite music artist on your bedroom wall? Are there a few faded gig T-shirts in your bottom drawer? Have you ever bought an LP or CD because of the cover art?
Many music fans enjoy surrounding themselves with images that reflect their musical tastes and experiences – and the meanings and memories they carry. The music enthusiasts of Renaissance Italy were no different.
Serafino sings with lute while under attack by Cupid, title page, 1510 poetry anthology. Fondation Barbier-Mueller pour l'étude de la Poésie Italienne de la Renaissance. (CC BY SA 4.0)
Musical images appeared everywhere in Renaissance Italy, from portraits and altarpieces to dinner plates and saddle steels, from wall paintings and furniture decoration to art prints and book illustration.
Looking at these images can teach us a great deal about what people understood music to be – and what they thought music-making might achieve in their lives.
If you loved music in the age of Leonardo, Raphael and Michelangelo, the chances are you spent your leisure time playing the lute. And in imitating the most famous singer-songwriter (and inamorato) of the day, Serafino dell’Aquila, young men and women hoped that learning to accompany themselves singing love poems would improve their chances with the opposite sex.
Portrait of an aesthete
When sitting for the portrait painter, many chose the lute as the prop that would capture their character and present them in the best light.
‘Portrait of a Lute Player’ (c. 1600) by Annibale Carracci. (Public Domain)
Hanging your musical portrait in your best room, you’d probably hope that your friends thought you looked a bit like the ancient mythological musician Orpheus. According to the myths, Orpheus was a lover so loyal that he sang his way into hell itself to rescue his wife.
Art prints showing Orpheus sitting under a tree with a lute were all the rage in the Renaissance – you would probably have one sitting about somewhere in your study. In these images, Orpheus is singing a song so powerful that even the animals and birds are moved to tears.
Divine inspiration
Contemporary books on music and poetry explain that this scene of Orpheus moving brute animals to tears represented persuasive eloquence, prized as a leadership quality and a sign of a good education.
‘Orpheus Charming the Animals’ (1613) by Jacob Hoefnagel. (Public Domain)
If you had the money, you’d probably have the walls of your study decorated with pictures of the ancient music-making god Apollo and his Muses.
Inhabitant of the mythological mountain Parnassus, where crystal fountains bubbled forth poetic inspiration, the figure of Apollo allowed you to associate your musical pastime with the immense contemporary fashion for the culture of the ancient world.
You’ll have had him represented with a modern stringed instrument (like yours), probably singing. On your study wall he leads his choir of nine music-making Muses, as they confer their divine inspiration upon your own amateur efforts.
Catholic tastes
Even a disreputable music-lover would attend church for Mass or Vespers at least once a week, so Catholic plainsong was part of the background hum of everyday life. It was widely thought that plainsong imitated the music-making of the angels in heaven. By singing prayers, therefore, you could yourself attain some measure of the divine.
An old panel painting showing the Virgin and Child with music-making angels hangs in your parlor. It would be the focus of prayer and pious contemplation for the whole household, visualizing the divine encounter you would hope to achieve by singing simple sacred songs.
Bernardino Bergognone, Virgin and Child with Two Angels, 1490-95, oil on panel. (The National Gallery, London 2017)
On the other side of the parlor, your young daughter is practicing at a small keyboard instrument, a virginals, very popular in homes of all sizes. The virginals has a lid in the shape of a wonky rectangle which is often painted on the underside, so that you can see the picture when you open the instrument up to play.
Yours shows Apollo again, but this time he’s in a musical contest with a lusty goat-legged satyr. Sitting in judgement is the foolish King Midas (of “Midas touch” fame). The loser risks having his ears turned into those of a donkey, or even being flayed alive. Your daughter concentrates very hard on her scales.
Images such as these were chosen by Renaissance music fans to form a backdrop to their everyday music-making. Like the band posters on a modern bedroom wall, they bear rich witness to musical tastes and experiences, and the meanings people found in them. Delving more deeply into the stories these images tell, music historians are learning to look as well as listen to Renaissance music.
Top Image: Gerard van Honthorst's 1623 painting ‘The Concert.’ Source: Public Domain
The article ‘Band posters of the Renaissance: how medieval music fans showed off their taste’ by Tim Shephard was originally published on The Conversation and has republished under a Creative Commons license
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