Category: Musical Musings (Page 11 of 12)

Snippets of an Inner Childhood Soundscape

March 8, 2015 / laura bruno lilly

Lately I’ve been remembering quiet times as a kid, with a sharp ear for what actually occupied my time. I’m realizing that my prayers, thoughts and stories were all relayed via inner music. I sang declarations of love to my God, hummed certain discordant intervals when I was scared, and then snappy tunes when happy.

1959 olive green vw bug, just like our own family car (we kept it till ~1977. After that, it spent its last days transporting hazardous materials within a local landfill!)

During family trips in the car, I arranged the sounds and rhythms filling my head into satisfying story soundtracks. Sharing the back seat of a VW bug with my baby bro was not the most exciting of adventures. No, I take that back, we managed to stage plays between fights for space.
He was most talented at wrinkling up his face to accompany the different voices we made up for various characters. In fact, he’d do my favorite character, Blob, upon personal request. Yeah, I guess baby brothers came in handy that way.
I had a rich inner life.

My homemade cannoli

And an enriching kid-life. A life filled with colors, aunts, uncles, cannoli, swimming, exploring and dissecting the stinky frogs packed in purchased science kits.
Stars, bonfires and leaves.
Museums, ice skating, tobogganing, and walks with cousins. Day camp, girl scouts.
Ma’s art lessons she gave to all the cousins, the smell of linseed oil mingled with freshly ironed cotton shirts. Growing gardens – Ma’s flowers, Dad’s tomatoes, and always a peach tree.
Baby bunnies hidden in our front yard, forts built with scraps of plywood, and music.
Always music.
Ma’s opera and dorky Barn Dance albums, the old 78’s and wonderful new LP’s of musical theatre.
Dad’s jazz. Practicing alongside Coltrane, Charlie, cool blues. Crazy kid-dancing to his sax, clarinet, guitar, and cowbell.
Grandpa’s banjo and zampogna*. You Are My Sunshine sing-alongs.
Laying on my bed at night or looking up at the clouds on a warm spring day, in my quiet times, I didn’t read. I didn’t color. Well, yes, I did those. But mostly, I ‘did my music.’
Even then, ever with me, from the inside out.

My heart, O God, is steadfast; I will sing and make music with all my soul.
~ Psalm 108:1

*more on this instrument in another post…suffice it to say, my love of goats has a family history as well!

My NaNo Rebellion in 5 Bullet Points

November 4, 2014 / laura bruno lilly

So here it is, Day 4 of NaNoWriMo 2014. I thought I’d send on an update about this year’s writing focus and progress.
I already mentioned that I decided to use November’s NaNo time for a specific project I had in mind to work on and hopefully finish. If not finish, then at the very least bring it forward and closer to completion.
In NaNoWriMo terminology, anything written in the non-fic genre, editing of previous mss drafts, poetry, scripts, blog entries and a myriad of other categories, is considered being a Rebel. When one declares such a status, one’s project is called their NaNo Rebellion.

My NaNo Rebellion in 5 Bullet Points: Continue reading

It's that time of year: NaNoWriMo's just around the corner

October 24, 2014 / laura bruno lilly

At the stroke of midnight, October 31^st, 2014, I will embark upon my third NaNoWriMo. This year, I’ll be doing what I wanted to do my first NaNo: focusing on completing my non-fiction WIP (Swimming with Swans) for submission in this month long challenge.

In NaNoWriMo lingo this means, I am being a rebel. Continue reading

You Are My Only One (these 36 years) And I Still Believe In We

June 17, 2014 / laura bruno lilly

My hubby Terry’s twin (?)

Those baby blues. That attitude.
My future husband, my lover, my BE-ONE…and oh yes, he looks just like James Taylor.
What’s not to like?
Most of our family and friends know the story of how we met. Truncated version: Terry as best friend of my then fiancé convinces said fiancé to dump me and the rest is history. While it certainly was God’s plan for us to be married, it might not have been exactly His way of getting us together.
Over these past years we have celebrated June 17^th in various ways. Our first anniversary we did the ‘eat the frozen wedding cake top’ thing in our little square cinder block married student housing house. Living on love in the midst of typical newlywed poverty those first years proved to produce a firm foundation to our new union; along with three children!
Our tenth anniversary we threw a huge backyard party celebrating the fact that we had made it together that long. Sadly, many we knew who married the same year as we did, were no longer together. This was also the year in which we followed the dream and took a leap of faith in starting our own business. Continue reading

The Dance of the Didgeridoo

June 11, 2014 / laura bruno lilly

Traditional Eucalyptus Didgeridoo (Ilario Vannucchi)

From: Blue Shoe by Anne Lamott*

The voice of the didgeridoo was a call from far away, from centuries back. If you pressed your ear to the ground, Mattie thought, this was the tone the earth would make. The music resonated like an ancient god, or what desert winds must have sounded like to the first ears on earth. She closed her eyes again. She felt doomed, and lumpy, fat and old. She tried to recall the women from church, their triumphant wideness, centered and vigorous, and this helped. Ella clung to her like a baby Koala. Mattie nuzzled her, snorfled her neck. The didgeridoo sounded like an enormous animal panting at the end of its life. Mattie looked up and found Daniel standing before her, lifting her daughter into his arms. He held her in front of his chest, his long hands knitted together effortlessly to make a seat in which round, rosy Ella perched, somewhat worried but curious.
‘Want to dance?’ he asked her. ‘I’m probably the only person you know who can dance to the didgeridoo.’ Ella thought this over, tugging on her chin like an alchemist.
Mattie opened her fingers slowly to she could peek in at the little rubber shoe, as if examining a poker hand. Harry and Al were talking, and Daniel still held Ella in his arms, turning in slow circles. Mattie watched, listened, breathed in deep and slow: if the sound of the didgeridoo was a color, it would be rich and earthy, plant purple, like eggplant with light behind it.

*really didn’t like the book, but this quote was worth the read.

May 4, 2014 / laura bruno lilly

Note: tonight’s update has been great fun for me to research. While tracking down more songs with cowbell (added to the list below), I veered off into the realm of cowbell as an instrument. As an added twist I am including two short videos on various ways percussionists play the cowbell.

Here’s the IN PROGRESS list so far. I listen to each entry to verify cowbell sounds. Often other percussive elements are mistaken for cowbell to the untrained ear! Continue reading

More Cowbell Cult

March 23, 2014 / laura bruno lilly

“I got a fever, and the only prescription is: More Cowbell!”*

Driving around town the other day, I noticed a rare out-of-state car with an even rarer bumper sticker espousing something other than local church affiliations. Simply stated it said: MORE COWBELL.
For the uninitiated, that bumper sticker and the title of this post mean nothing more than the sum of its words. For the rest of us in-the-know, it is a clever twofold twist on the April 8, 2000 SNL skit: ‘More Cowbell’ with Will Ferrell, featuring the music of The Blue Oyster Cult.
Not to appear standoffish, it should be noted that my own status changed from uninitiated to one-in-the-know a mere three years ago, when my hubby found a video clip on-line and set it up for me to see on my mini-computer one evening after a particularly hard day working retail. Continue reading

CD Commentary – Tom Carleno: Perfect Imperfection

March 19, 2014 / laura bruno lilly

Track list:
1-In Search Of
2-Meet Me in Maui
3-On The Border (Al Stewart)
4-Welcome to the Milky Way
5-Working Up An Appetite (Tim Finn)
6-Timberline Tree
7-Child’s Play
8-Rhapsody in Blood
9-Imagine (John Lennon)
10-Brief Encounter
11-What a Difference a Day Makes

Tom’s a guitar bud from the days when back-to-back students, gigs, concerts, workshops and rehearsals left little time for socializing. It’s been over five years since we each rented studio space in the same building with other working musicians and the ‘Chocolate Lady’ in downtown Louisville, CO. Swapping stories and notes between late or ‘no show’ students, we forged a professional and personal camaraderie during our respective day-to-day teaching gigs.
While Tom has been performing, writing, recording and evolving with his group Perpetual Motion for years, Perfect Imperfection is his first solo recording. Several years in the making, the name is taken from his wife and band partner Josie’s view of life: Nothing is perfect, that is what makes life so perfect. Evidently, this wifely philosophy was the kick in the pants Tom needed to actually record a solo album. Continue reading

Killer Tune Shoutout: "Give It To My People"

February 10, 2014 / laura bruno lilly

The dreaded drought season in the life of a working musician…while it can be excruciatingly hard to bear at the time, the good news is that it does not last forever. Also, during that period of seemingly non-productivity, the brain on music is constantly firing on some level or another. For myself, this period of non-performance, my ‘dry spell’ has been filled with more opportunities to compose, arrange, explore other instruments, actively research and listen to tons of music. Sifting through various genres, with piles of notes heaped high one on top of the other I have entered into a myriad of musical worlds; hence gaining insight into diverse approaches to the artistic need to create and express what is deep within…
That said, when fellow colleagues share audio clips, videos and good sources of musical material for listening and consideration, I eagerly attend to their suggestions. And, when a piece is presented to me by way of my son, I take even greater notice and engulf myself in its offerings.

Take a listen, folks.

A-MAC DZ – ‘Give It To My People’ from Rise Above c Alex Mackenzie-Low 2014

Alex Mackenzie-Low: vocals, acoustic guitar

How’s that for an in-progress EP rough mix? Let’s analyze it a bit…first off did you notice the voice? Who is this guy behind the Rod Stewart voice? When I got the mp3 from my son who plays on all the sax tracks, I started out listening only for his parts: the voicings, the integration of the instrumental tracks, compositional components; totally disregarding the normally banal lyrics of newer bands. Just my usual way of delving into the musicality of individual recordings.
But the guy behind the Rod Stewart voice was quite compelling. I couldn’t ignore the voice or the message. Continue reading

Longest Night of the Year: 2013 Reflections (part two)

December 29, 2013 / laura bruno lilly

“Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face.” -Victor Hugo

My homemade cannoli

What better way to ease into another set of 2013 Reflections than with luscious references to food?

My homemade sourdough bread

This past year, I resumed my life as a ‘good cooker.’ This family badge of honor, proudly reactivated now that I have a kitchen at my disposal, has provided nourishment to both body and soul.

~ 4/13 The unfolding of my ‘horse gentler’ skills learned during our time of horse rescue being placed within a new context of use. While making a final pilgrimage to visit Terry’s Mother in Dallas (just a week before she passed away) our ‘nephew’ Jeremy helped with a fundraiser for the ‘Horses for Heroes’ project in nearby Rocky Top Ranch. Himself a Wounded Warrior, he opened my eyes to this realm of horse therapy for returning veterans and their families.

Shortly thereafter, to my delight, I discovered a local established horse therapy group beginning to implement a Wounded Warriors component into their program offerings. I immediately contacted them and not only signed on as an active volunteer, but got in on the ground floor as part of the initial group starting the WW program. In addition, I work regularly with the other students. While my primary role is in enabling the horse(s) to be their very best while in use during therapy, I enjoy the blessings of working with the various students and their families, other volunteers sharing my passion, the therapists and owners of the stable…

Gracie on Freckles, First Annual BTR Horse Show (I’m wearing orange)

We all worked hard to put on the First Annual Bethlehem Therapy Horse Show this past November.

Matt’s victory salute after his horse show debut

Really, really cool.

~ The many loved ones who passed on this year. Continue reading