Richard's Musical Adventure!

 Early in 2023 I received an email from my friend Richard Leigh describing a project he had set for himself for the new year:

Hi Peter,

Looking forward to coming up on Saturday. At the start of the year I started a little 2023 side-hobby which I think might be of interest. Maybe you can save your response till Saturday and let me know in person… anyway just another thing to be on the list of things to discuss!

Back in January, I became acutely aware that my musical exploration over recent years has been extremely diminished, and it was time to ‘go exploring again’. After all…

music is a chance to CONNECT with people

… as you know, Michaela has taught herself Russian and introduced me to this fascinating world of eastern European tunes from historic to modern

music encodes MEMORIES

and links to past experiences that seem to be unlocked by listening like nothing else

music encapsulates CULTURE like no other

and given my lack of physical travel for a very long time, expanding my musical interests will allow me to go exploring the world and its people, places and ideas

As someone who no longer bothers to keep up with popular trends in music, my musical exploration has been reduced to  Musicbed and Artlist (‘production music’ libraries for video — these are among the best, but even so)… so sad, especially when the incredible world of music is so readily accessible these days!

 

There’s a new twist to all this over recent weeks as I’ve learned about the new ‘AI generated’ music - set to dominate popular music and culture in the years ahead – so even more reason to enjoy and celebrate the HUMAN-GENERATED music before we become a dying breed!!

 

So each week I'll add 7 tracks to a new Spotify playlist called ‘My musical journey through 2023’… and by the end of the year I’ll have 365 new tracks. Every track has a story, and already, as I collect music bower-bird like from everywhere, I’m loving how it’s not only reminding me of things that I’ve been doing but also reminding me of the people I know.

Okay, now we're about a year on from when that email arrived and Richard has compiled a record of his musical adventure on Spotify.

His project included sharing with family members and friends on a two way back and forth basis. He has given me permission to share his list with all our friends on this blog, noting that the privacy of people who contributed so far only includes first names:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/u3o6em12iou7i5d3lprxo/Musical-journey-2023-FINAL.pdf?rlkey=f1u0jqfrenlr75vcria0t925m&dl=0

INSTRUCTIONS for best viewing:

* Best viewed on a computer, rather than phone or tablet, so you can easily zoom in to read & click

 

* No need to log in to this dropbox page

 

* Wait approximately 10-30sec for it to fully load in your browser, then use the ‘zoom in + or -' buttons top right to read details that interest you and navigate with mouse and scroll bar/wheels as you would any webpage

 

* All IMAGES (of track names) are hyperlinks and will take you to each track denoted

 

* You can also download the page as a pdf, and the hyperlinks will still work

Richard would be very pleased to receive feedback about this project.

pt

The Astonishing Drumming Bird, introduced to me by Graeme Bertrand.

 The Astonishing Drumming Bird

                        Introduced to me by my friend Graeme Bertrand.

Well, I thought I knew almost everything about birds, but recently I've found at that there are just so many gaps in my knowledge.

The other day Graeme brought me a piece of paper with facts about a bird which drums to attract its mate to the nest he has built for her...  to see if she might be interested enough to stay with him to raise a family!

You may already have seen clips about this wonderful species of cockatoo, the "Palm Cockatoo", but for me this was news. I'm always keen to know more about birds which use special "routines" to attract their mates, especially Bower Birds, but I did not know about this species.

Not only does the bird "learn" to drum from his elders, but he must also learn to craft his own "drumstick". This learning is not a speedy process, it takes time... just like those young crows who learn from their seniors how to extract grubs from logs using a specially selected stick which the aggravated grub will hook onto.

Anyhow, the next clip tells you quite a lot more about the mating habits of this endangered species of cockatoo. It seems that the extremely fussy females take a lot of convincing to settle down with any particular male... and that means they produce quite a small number of offspring over a long period of time.

Hoping this will be news to some of you, and if not news, it surely will not be wasted on you a second time round!

pt