Sting claims he once confronted a ghost

Sting has claimed he once confronted a ghost which wandered into his room at the dead of night.

The singer, who famously sang Spirits In The Material World in the 1980s, said wife Trudie Styler also witnessed the figure, standing with a child in the corner of their bedroom.

Sting said he also experienced flying objects and mysterious voices in one of his homes in an interview to be played on Radio 2.

He said: ”I would never have said I believe in ghosts, until I saw one – and I’ve seen a ghost with my own eyes”

The musician, whose former band The Police recorded an album Ghost In The Machine, continued: ''I was in bed one night, a very old house I used to live in. And I woke up at three in the morning, bolt upright, looked into the corner of the room and thought I saw Trudie standing there with a child – our child – in her arms, staring at me.

”And I thought ‘well, that’s strange – why is she standing in a corner, staring at me?’. And I then reached next to me and there was Trudie, and I suddenly got this terrible chill. And she woke up and said ‘Gosh, who is that?’ and she saw this woman and a child in the corner of the room.”

Sting told presenter Claudia Winkleman, in an interview to be broadcast on Friday night at 10pm, that the figure simply disappeared.

He added: ”A lot of things happened in that house, a lot of flying objects and voices and strange, strange things happened.

”When you live in old houses you get this energy there. Intellectually, no I don’t believe in them (ghosts), but I’ve experienced them on an emotional level.”

via Sting claims he once confronted a ghost – Telegraph.

I’ve seen one when I was awake. I don’t believe in them, but yeah, I’ve seen one.  I assume my mind/eyes were playing tricks on me.

Sting urges Brazil to listen to tribal dam fears

Rock star Sting has used his latest visit to Brazil to urge the government there to listen to the concerns of indigenous peoples over a proposed new hydro-electric dam in the Amazon.

He was speaking at a press conference in Sao Paulo where he was reunited with indigenous leader Raoni Metyktire who joined him in a similar campaign 20 years ago which attracted worldwide attention.

Indigenous tribes in the Amazon say the Belo Monte project, which would be the third largest hydro-electric dam in the world, poses a threat to their way of life. …

It proved to be an attention-grabbing combination of a rock star standing alongside the striking figure of an indigenous leader whose lower lip is expanded several centimetres by a traditional plate, a trademark of his tribe.

With renewed international attention on the cause of protecting the Amazon, the original hydro-electric project was abandoned, but now the Brazilian government is proposing a new scheme which they say is more environmentally friendly.

Critics have insisted the Belo Monte dam would still flood large areas of rainforest, have a major impact on fish stocks and undermine the way of life of thousands of indigenous people.

Speaking to the BBC, Sting said while the decision was for Brazilians alone, the debate had an impact far beyond South America’s largest country.

“This is the heart of the Amazon and what happens here affects the whole world,” he said.

“This was my intuition but now the science is backing that up, I mean substantial science is saying this is true.

“We need to save this forest.

via BBC News – Sting urges Brazil to listen to tribal dam fears.

Updated: Free Xeno Song: Written and Recorded in 1 Day for NPR

This is my attempt at writing and recording a song in one day (Saturday Nov 14) start to finish for NPR: PLAY or DOWNLOAD: My Dog, Japan (mix 2).mp3. Here is the NPR request for songs written and recorded in one day using certain key words.

…. I think we’d all be willing to admit that technology has made making music a whole lot easier, cheaper and more accessible. We can be more agile, impulsive, nimble, reactionary and spontaneous than ever before. Right? Well, that’s the idea anyway.

So let’s try!

Here at NPR Music, we could have given you a mere 24 hours to do this, but we’ll be generous and allow you the entire weekend in which to record an original song.

Here are the rules:

Your song needs to include one of the following words:  dog, firecracker, lamp shade, Japan, NPR

Your song can be any genre or length.

Please include the name of the song and how you’d like to be credited. Send your songs to:

monitormix@npr.org

All songs are due by this Sunday, Nov. 15, at 8 p.m. ET. We’ll feature the songs next week as part of our continuing Decade In Music coverage.

Thanks, and have fun!

via Record A Song This Weekend! – Monitor Mix Blog : NPR.

Okay, Done.   I’m looking forward to hearing the other songs!

Hear him once, you’ll be a fan.
I’ve got a dog I call Japan
He howls in tune with Beethoven.
The dog’s going to be a star

My cat named Italy is so cool.
Plays piano from the stool.
Paws of gold no feline fool, he’s been on NPR

La la la

My bird named Russia? I can’t say.
The window cracked, he flew away
The rat, however, plays the drums and I
Let him out when company comes

I am the manager, the financial backer
I light the proverbial firecracker
Underneath the band to get them going somewhere
If you don’t believe my story’s true
Some countries want to have a word with you
Japan knows he’s going somewhere

He said, “Don’t be afraid, put a smile not a lamp shade on.”
Dream what you will, you deserve it
You deserve what you’d love to be.

I‘ve got a dog I named Japan
He’s the genius in the band
I don’t know how he does it, man
He writes these songs that make me want to cry

And he tells me, “If someone’s messing
with your dignity, you can talk to me.
You deserve to be, what you want to be.
So be.

My Dog, Japan. My Dog, Japan…”

Collaborative Music Project, in B flat

In Bb 2.0 is a collaborative music and spoken word project conceived by Darren Solomon from Science for Girls, and developed with contributions from users.

The videos can be played simultaneously — the soundtracks will work together, and the mix can be adjusted with the individual volume sliders.

View here: http://www.inbflat.net/

Music Improves Brain Function

For most people music is an enjoyable, although momentary, form of entertainment. But for those who seriously practiced a musical instrument when they were young, perhaps when they played in a school orchestra or even a rock band, the musical experience can be something more. Recent research shows that a strong correlation exists between musical training for children and certain other mental abilities.

The research was discussed at a session at a recent gathering of acoustics experts in Austin, Texas.

Laurel Trainor, director of the Institute for Music and the Mind at McMaster University in West Hamilton, Ontario, and colleagues compared preschool children who had taken music lessons with those who did not. Those with some training showed larger brain responses on a number of sound recognition tests given to the children. Her research indicated that musical training appears to modify the brain’s auditory cortex.

Can larger claims be made for the influence on the brain of musical training? Does training change thinking or cognition in general?

Trainor again says yes. Even a year or two of music training leads to enhanced levels of memory and attention when measured by the same type of tests that monitor electrical and magnetic impulses in the brain.

“We therefore hypothesize that musical training (but not necessarily passive listening to music) affects attention and memory, which provides a mechanism whereby musical training might lead to better learning across a number of domains,” Trainor said.

Trainor suggested that the reason for this is that the motor and listening skills needed to play an instrument in concert with other people appears to heavily involve attention, memory and the ability to inhibit actions. Merely listening passively to music to Mozart — or any other composer — does not produce the same changes in attention and memory.

via Music Improves Brain Function | LiveScience.

Free Xeno Song: Salvador Dali (Mix 3)

Update: 11/11/2009 …

Step right up and hear the latest version of Xeno song Salvador Dali, complete with surreal backwards talking and some very fast guitar.

This latest MP3 upload on Box.net on the left side of the blog is titled, “I Went Fishing with Salvador Dali, He Used a Dotted Line“.

The high quality makes it 9 MB. Pretty large so you may need a fast connection to stream it.

Download mix #3 if you like it. Box.net seems screwed up tonight. While I’m waiting for Tech Support, here is an Alternate Download link. Amy said last night that I should do an entire album of the different versions of the same song. Here is an earlier version (mix #0) I found with much better drums than mine mixed in Uncle Albert Studios, Sacramento CA several years ago.

I’d read that Salvador Dali went crazy to hide from the loss of his wife. This version will disappear to be replaced by Mix #4  at an undisclosed time and date.

The year 1982 was the worse… It was the year his wife Gala died and without her his life didn’t make sense anymore. He didn’t feel like living any longer. Even when he got the title of ‘Marquis of Pubol’ nothing changed. In his final years Dali lived alone and lived a quite, retreated life in the Pubol castle. Salvador Dali died in 1989 in the hospital of Fiqueras. – theartfile

Xenophilia (the band) on CD Baby

Now available: Xenophilia (the band) on CD Baby.

This merry band of name droppers existed for over 10 years and released only one album, thus making it a rare collector’s item sought after by relatives of the band members.

Hear song samples of all 11 tracks.

It only took me eight years to get this CD on line. I still like to listen to it from time to time.

If CD Baby does their job, you should be able to download individual songs for 99 cents soon from iTunes.

I’m actually really curious to see if someone I’ve never met likes one of my songs enough to pay a dollar for it.  It could happen…

 

Close Encounters of the Third Kind Scene

I always liked this part. I wanted the music to get a lot faster so it sounded like there was much more data being transferred, however. Great score.

Xeno’s Absolute Pitch System: Lesson 2, Middle C in the context of other keys

Xeno’s Absolute Pitch System: Lesson 2, Middle C in the context of other keys.

Lesson  two provides your ear with something critical that it has likely never heard until now: how a  C note relates to all of the other keys in western music.

Listen:  Download or play Lesson 2 here.

Instructions:

Just listening to this lesson starts to set up note permanence in your brain, but the process will go even faster if you do this…

- In the first part with the scales, listen closely to the soft middle C note in the background. 

- Attempt to sing a C note right before the C note plays at the end of each small song in each key.

Listening actively this way will turn on the light and you will finally “get” that a “C” is always there, always a “C” no matter what else is going on.

Learn to hear Middle C in relation to music in other keys today.  Don’t forget Lesson 1!

Results:

Three random tests during the day hours after listening to this allowed me to recall middle C correctly. This ability was gone the next morning, however. I guess we need a lesson 3…

How do I fix my problem with name dropping?

A commenter pointed out that I have a real problem with name dropping.  What can be done about name dropping? The first step seems to be to admit that you have a problem.

Hi. I’m Xeno, and I’ve dropped a lot of names. It is lame. It’s all over my posts for years, even on my old site.  I’m fascinated by fame. It started when I found out as a boy that my uncle was part of a world famous rock group.  Then I got into the Beatles and saw that these famous guys were really loved. They were famous and they were loved … some kind of super love… more loved than I’d ever seen anyone loved. Girls would chase them and scream! In my growing brain, fame became love. Around this time my mother and father split up. My father was a musician who was trying to be famous. I guess my kid brain thought that my parents split up because my dad wasn’t getting famous. Partly true due to money issues. More reinforcement that fame = love, unfame = rejection.

Later when I told people about my famous rock star relative, it opened a few doors for me as a musician.  I think so anyway. Perhaps we got in based on real talent or charm, but I always suspected that once you have a “foot in the door” with knowing one famous person, other famous people will know you. From there, you can get addicted. Intermittent reinforcement makes a behavior last even longer.

One of my closest friends had the same problem and we would sort of feed off of each other.  We wanted to know famous people, to be in the “in” crowd. We knew the top musicians in the town. We got passed in free to sold-out shows when other people had to stand in line. We high-fived each other  for having “connections”.  We played shows in places the famous people played. We, ourselves, paid special attention to people who knew famous people. We saw the same thing with other people wanting to be around us. When you do get well known, it sucks that you can’t tell if people like you for yourself, or because of your fame score.  We had groupies. We had a few stalkers. But it was all a rush.

Looking in the proverbial mirror tonight, I am facing my idol worship. I see foundations of motivations for everything I have done, music, my career, this blog … so much is based on a what must be an incomplete equation: I don’t really believe that fame is love.  Fame is fame. Love is love.

I’ve had some awareness of my fame seeking psychosis for years.  I stopped playing music live because it felt too ego-driven… (We are often like pendulums. We notice a problem, then swing too far in the other direction.)  … but I remain ego driven… it seems deeply built in.

Example: By posting a few things interesting each day on a blog for years, I’ve built up “a following” of web readers. The fact that I’ve reached over 1.5 million page views gives me a sense of purpose.  Sure, I love helping people and entertaining people, but there is also some motivation for this blog that is prideful.

I’m visualizing dropping out of everything and walking on a beach as a happy unknown bum for the rest of my life. (Again the pendulum swings.)

What is the healthy balance?  Who of you has confronted the name dropping demon and won? Who has fixed a flawed fame fantasy?