Vintage

Imeem.com is a great idea, but for music outside popular genres, Imeem is also a record of our collective musical ignorance. If you're not familiar with Imeem, it's a website that allows users to upload music and tag the music, thus putting the songs into various categories, or genres, if you like.

I subjected myself to listening to all the top 100 "most played" songs in the Blues category and in my opinion none of those songs belong to the blues genre. And there are only a few of the songs tagged "Blues" that I would even describe as "bluesy."

It's pretty much the same story for the Jazz category, although jazz fairs a little better thanks to Michael Buble who appears as number 2 in the list. And while he may be a jazz artist, it's no surprise that the tracks of his that do place well are not his jazz tracks. Number 2 on the list is "Home" which is a folk ballad. And placing number 5 is his version of "Sway," though that is at least getting close to jazz.

But otherwise, the "most played" songs in the jazz category of Imeem are not jazz at all. Under the most played "blues" songs on Imeem, I found rap, pop, hard rock, pop-rock, heavy metal, R&B, but no blues.

A pair of Johns Hopkins and government scientists have discovered that when jazz musicians improvise, their brains turn off areas linked to self-censoring and inhibition, and turn on those that let self-expression flow.

"When jazz musicians are engaged in the highly creative and spontaneous activity known as improvisation, a large region of the brain involved in monitoring one's performance is shut down, while a small region involved in organizing self-initiated thoughts and behaviours is highly activated." (Vancouver Sun 01-03-2008)

"When jazz musicians improvise, they often play with eyes closed in a distinctive, personal style that transcends traditional rules of melody and rhythm," says Charles J. Limb, M.D. at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and a trained jazz saxophonist himself. "It's a remarkable frame of mind, during which, all of a sudden, the musician is generating music that has never been heard, thought, practiced or played before. What comes out is completely spontaneous."

With the technology that is available today, you don't need to know how to sing to be a famous singer. Today's recording technology can turn your out-of-tune chirping into perfectly pitched purring. And the technology to do this is cheap--so cheap in fact that it's free.

Most non-musicians are not aware of the technological tweaking that is done to turn those pop tunes you hear on the radio into the most-downloaded files on the planet.

It started with a little software program called Antares Autotune. This magic code reads the notes you sing into it and "corrects" the pitch of the notes. If you're a little flat, it will boost your pitch. And if your pitch trembles, it can flatten your voice.

Thanks to Steven Duncan of "The Drive is Alive blog" for creating this video of Leonard and the Lab Rats at the End Cafe last night. The video features us playing "Black Magic Woman" with the remarkable Natalie von Rotsburg singing.