I'm just curious to see how many who frequent this site have backgrounds in words as well as notes. In a recent discussion with some colleagues, we discovered that almost all the musicians in our circle are also poets/writers and are enthralled by Ireland's storytelling tradition as well. Has anyone had any experience with a throw-back to the old filidh/bardd calling? Is there anyone, contemporary, who melds both traditions together?
I have long maintained that music and language share parts of the brain. All the musicians I know are articulate (at least early in the proceedings) and well read, if not actual writers.
I adore the well spoken word. Being from the US melting pot of A, we have tall tales of every imaginable sort. When in Kilkenny, I happened upon a most welcoming session where there were stories, poems, singalong and solo songs, and yes TUNES! It was an evening of memories that I'll cherish untill my weary end.
>I have long maintained that music and language share parts of the brain. All the musicians I know are articulate (at least early in the proceedings) and well read, if not actual writers.
Fro my understanding, probably now out of date, how "meaningful" sound (ie spoken words and structured music) is processed is by the right superior temporal gyrus. This is then relayed to the hippocampus where memory facilitation is enacted and then onto the prefrontal cortex, for conscious processing.
I sold a couple of science fiction stories years ago, but pretty much gave up writing because of all the rejection. I would rather play music, where you get instant gratification-- free whiskey and applause beats waiting weeks for "We're sorry, but..." letters.
Still do a lot of writing in my day job, but not the creative kind...
I'm always impressed by how many musicians are engineers, programmers or otherwise analytically and mathematically inclined. I can imagine how an inherent feeling for numerical proportions could be useful in music. Of course, it could also easily be just a reflection of occupational trends. For the record, I'm a professional writer and a former Art Director in publishing and advertising.
I've earned a living for nearly 30 years as writer, and also teaching music. I've written poetry and songs, but my published stuff is mostly creative non-fiction, with a focus on the environment, natural resource policy and management, conflict resolution, and outdoor recreation.
The format of this forum--tapping words into a box on the screen--tends to attract and favor wordsmiths, and typists....
I'm very lucky to have an acquaintance with Jonathan Lynn who is an exceptional spoken word artist, not exactly seanchaoi but certainly of the provenance. He enthralls his audience with wit and sarcasm. I often play a few tunes with him and enjoy every second of his artistry.
I've long noticed the connection between music and people with a mathematical bent.
In my own experience, I connect it with drawing and painting. Learning a new tune is, to me, very like sketching out the basic shape of something, then homing in on sometimes knotty details and giving them their due place / extent / expanse within the overall picture.
When I paint as such (i.e., as opposed to drawing), it's in watercolour or gouache - the latter being water-based but pastier than pure watercolour and actually easier in that one can rectify mistakes more often: accordingly, I use it more. With both it pays to have a sense of pattern and rhythm and have an idea where the dominant colours and tones are going to go as soon as you start putting the paint on. Otherwise - in my experience, anyway - you just end up with a soup. Again, not to different from learning and playing tunes.
Mind, some of the words needed to describe some ITM-mers have not yet been invented. The million or so words currently known to be in the English language are patently inadequate to the task and buckle under the strain. A second-or-further-generation language is required.
I've just checked on my word processor, where for the last few years I've been keeping copies of all my postings on this website. It turns out I submitted just over 75,000 words last year - and I'm certainly not the most prolific of members.
In my previous life I wrote about 6 million words of patent specifications, which is by no means out of the ordinary for the profession.
I don't think one can make any assumptions about abilities, inclinations or career options and music.
Here's a brief off the top of my head list.
Postman - Séamus Creagh.
Miner - Packie Duignan.
Pavement layer - Danny Meehan.
Policeman - Tommy Peoples (and also the fathers of both Kevin Burke and Paddy Glackin).
Ship's radio operator - Jim McKillop.
Paediatrician - Séamus McGuire.
Physicist - Charlie Lennon.
Museum curator - Robbie Hannan.
Professional broadcaster - too many to mention.
Jewellery-maker - Dónal Lunny.
Aer Lingus employee - Matt Molloy.
As for those with a literary bent, well one of the most obvious would be Ciarán Carson.
Nicholas, perpetual motion machines aren't patentable per se (in my era, at least) but ancillary technology in the device might be if it's novel and not obvious. Which is basically why people in my profession could never afford to reject loony ideas off-hand without assessing the proposal.
I spent most of my career as an employee in hi-tech industries where the inventions originated within the firm and would usually be peer-reviewed before reaching my department, so it's fair to say we didn't get any loony stuff from within the firm. However, loony ideas occasionally arrived from outside, and would have to be considered carefully in case there was something that might be relevant to the firm's interests. Fortunately, nothing ever was. You could always recognise potential loony stuff at a glance - typically a couple of dozen sheets typewritten on both sides on an ancient machine in 10-point, single-spaced and literally from edge to edge and top to bottom, which made for difficult reading and a guaranteed wasted morning or afternoon before you concluded that an aircraft based on those concepts would have great difficulty in getting off the runway and anyway would be completely uneconomical.
If you worked in private practice you could usually get rid of the persistent lunatic fringe, or inventors of the obviously unpatentable stuff, by mentioning fees - with a typical example; this would invariably result in a swift departure by the client.
As I said, I never had any really lunatic stuff come my way, but a colleague who had worked in private practice once had someone wearing a monk's habit come in off the street with a large sheaf of drawings of an intricate mechanism that he wanted to patent. After an hour or so of discussing the drawings with the client and getting nowhere very fast, my colleague finally managed to get an answer to the question "what does it do?". "It's a time machine." "You mean it's a clock?". "No. It's a time machine. That's how I got here." A thoughtful silence and my colleague looks at the name on the drawings. "And you say your name, sir, is Roger Bacon?" My colleague said he couldn't get him out of the office fast enough.
Thanks for these illuminating comments, lazyhound!
I'm still wondering:
Whether the guy *really* believed he was Roger Bacon,
Whether he was taking the p*ss,
Whether your colleague could tell which it was,
How he got the guy out...in such cases, this can prove formidably difficult, if not actually scary.
I imagine you're pretty glad you got out when you did!
In answer to your last question, my colleague is a large man; "Roger Bacon" was, I believe, not
I don't know the answers to the first two questions, but I expect my colleague, with his private practice experience probably sussed out the correct one. There was another possibility that worried him a little afterwards - that the client was the genuine article We agreed over a pint or two not to worry because the philosophical problems involved were intractable and the "invention" probably wouldn't have been patentable in any case, mainly because of "prior public use" - i.e. being used to travel from the 13th century to the 20th century. We thought that a High Court hearing on the question would be extremely entertaining.
Btw Nicholas, I was sorry to leave my last employer, but the bean-counters came round and every department had to lose people, so I took early retirement with an appropriate package and spent the next couple of years doing consultancy work for a private practice before finally drawing the line under my career in patents.
In my day job (when I am not "pretending" to be a musician), I am one of the clerical support staff in the intensive care unit at a hospital.
I have always been more comfortable working math than I have been at writing (you probably can't tell that from my posts on this web site). This is one of the reasons I took the required writing and composition courses during the first and second semesters of college so I could get them done, over with, and out of the way. I inherited my mathematical abilities from my father who has a master's degree in meteorology (he is a retired weather researcher). Yes, I did very well in all of the math courses I took in college.
"What moron thought doing a PHD was a good idea?" Have you tried looking in a mirror?
When I am not playing music, my favorite reading material is usually science fiction.
You'll have to do it in Mandarin. Then all the knowledge / insights / fieldwork you can't pack into 100,000 words in English will be safely fitted in...
Word and Note
Word and Note
I'm just curious to see how many who frequent this site have backgrounds in words as well as notes. In a recent discussion with some colleagues, we discovered that almost all the musicians in our circle are also poets/writers and are enthralled by Ireland's storytelling tradition as well. Has anyone had any experience with a throw-back to the old filidh/bardd calling? Is there anyone, contemporary, who melds both traditions together?
# Posted on January 16th 2010 by Fiddlechick7
Re: Word and Note
I write poetry and songs but I'm more on the lines of Charles Bukowski than any bardic tradition...
# Posted on January 17th 2010 by shanty
Re: Word and Note
My talents extend only to describing my fellow-sessioners, not to enchanting them.
# Posted on January 17th 2010 by nicholas
Re: Word and Note
I have long maintained that music and language share parts of the brain. All the musicians I know are articulate (at least early in the proceedings) and well read, if not actual writers.
# Posted on January 17th 2010 by gam
Re: Word and Note
I adore the well spoken word. Being from the US melting pot of A, we have tall tales of every imaginable sort. When in Kilkenny, I happened upon a most welcoming session where there were stories, poems, singalong and solo songs, and yes TUNES! It was an evening of memories that I'll cherish untill my weary end.
# Posted on January 17th 2010 by Gone to work
Re: Word and Note
>I have long maintained that music and language share parts of the brain. All the musicians I know are articulate (at least early in the proceedings) and well read, if not actual writers.
Fro my understanding, probably now out of date, how "meaningful" sound (ie spoken words and structured music) is processed is by the right superior temporal gyrus. This is then relayed to the hippocampus where memory facilitation is enacted and then onto the prefrontal cortex, for conscious processing.
# Posted on January 17th 2010 by Rudall the time
Re: Word and Note
I write a lot of words, but they tend to be things like "function", "class", "static", "boolean", and "constant"
# Posted on January 17th 2010 by Reverend
Re: Word and Note
I sold a couple of science fiction stories years ago, but pretty much gave up writing because of all the rejection. I would rather play music, where you get instant gratification-- free whiskey and applause beats waiting weeks for "We're sorry, but..." letters.
Still do a lot of writing in my day job, but not the creative kind...
# Posted on January 17th 2010 by AlBrown
Re: Word and Note
I'm always impressed by how many musicians are engineers, programmers or otherwise analytically and mathematically inclined. I can imagine how an inherent feeling for numerical proportions could be useful in music. Of course, it could also easily be just a reflection of occupational trends. For the record, I'm a professional writer and a former Art Director in publishing and advertising.
# Posted on January 17th 2010 by fidkid
Re: Word and Note
I've earned a living for nearly 30 years as writer, and also teaching music. I've written poetry and songs, but my published stuff is mostly creative non-fiction, with a focus on the environment, natural resource policy and management, conflict resolution, and outdoor recreation.
The format of this forum--tapping words into a box on the screen--tends to attract and favor wordsmiths, and typists....
# Posted on January 17th 2010 by Will Harmon
Re: Word and Note
I'm very lucky to have an acquaintance with Jonathan Lynn who is an exceptional spoken word artist, not exactly seanchaoi but certainly of the provenance. He enthralls his audience with wit and sarcasm. I often play a few tunes with him and enjoy every second of his artistry.
# Posted on January 17th 2010 by Patkiwi
Re: Word and Note
I've long noticed the connection between music and people with a mathematical bent.
In my own experience, I connect it with drawing and painting. Learning a new tune is, to me, very like sketching out the basic shape of something, then homing in on sometimes knotty details and giving them their due place / extent / expanse within the overall picture.
When I paint as such (i.e., as opposed to drawing), it's in watercolour or gouache - the latter being water-based but pastier than pure watercolour and actually easier in that one can rectify mistakes more often: accordingly, I use it more. With both it pays to have a sense of pattern and rhythm and have an idea where the dominant colours and tones are going to go as soon as you start putting the paint on. Otherwise - in my experience, anyway - you just end up with a soup. Again, not to different from learning and playing tunes.
# Posted on January 17th 2010 by nicholas
Re: Word and Note
This site is a work of literature in itself. The writing is ceaselessly entertaining and often profound. When's the book coming out? I'd buy it.
# Posted on January 17th 2010 by RichardB
Re: Word and Note
In theory I am going to be writing 100,000 words about mad people.
# Posted on January 17th 2010 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Word and Note
You're in the right place to do it, that's for sure.
# Posted on January 17th 2010 by nicholas
Re: Word and Note
Mind, some of the words needed to describe some ITM-mers have not yet been invented. The million or so words currently known to be in the English language are patently inadequate to the task and buckle under the strain. A second-or-further-generation language is required.
# Posted on January 17th 2010 by nicholas
Re: Word and Note
I've noticed.
# Posted on January 17th 2010 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Word and Note
I've just checked on my word processor, where for the last few years I've been keeping copies of all my postings on this website. It turns out I submitted just over 75,000 words last year - and I'm certainly not the most prolific of members.
In my previous life I wrote about 6 million words of patent specifications, which is by no means out of the ordinary for the profession.
# Posted on January 17th 2010 by Trevor Jennings
Re: Word and Note
Perpetual motion machines, that sort of thing?
What's the looniest patent idea to call upon your services?
# Posted on January 17th 2010 by nicholas
Re: Word and Note
I don't think one can make any assumptions about abilities, inclinations or career options and music.
Here's a brief off the top of my head list.
Postman - Séamus Creagh.
Miner - Packie Duignan.
Pavement layer - Danny Meehan.
Policeman - Tommy Peoples (and also the fathers of both Kevin Burke and Paddy Glackin).
Ship's radio operator - Jim McKillop.
Paediatrician - Séamus McGuire.
Physicist - Charlie Lennon.
Museum curator - Robbie Hannan.
Professional broadcaster - too many to mention.
Jewellery-maker - Dónal Lunny.
Aer Lingus employee - Matt Molloy.
As for those with a literary bent, well one of the most obvious would be Ciarán Carson.
# Posted on January 17th 2010 by MacCruiskeen
Re: Word and Note
I'm wondering which ITM or trad personalities one would pick to form a government, and who would be the obvious one for which post...
# Posted on January 17th 2010 by nicholas
Re: Word and Note
Nicholas, perpetual motion machines aren't patentable per se (in my era, at least) but ancillary technology in the device might be if it's novel and not obvious. Which is basically why people in my profession could never afford to reject loony ideas off-hand without assessing the proposal.
I spent most of my career as an employee in hi-tech industries where the inventions originated within the firm and would usually be peer-reviewed before reaching my department, so it's fair to say we didn't get any loony stuff from within the firm. However, loony ideas occasionally arrived from outside, and would have to be considered carefully in case there was something that might be relevant to the firm's interests. Fortunately, nothing ever was. You could always recognise potential loony stuff at a glance - typically a couple of dozen sheets typewritten on both sides on an ancient machine in 10-point, single-spaced and literally from edge to edge and top to bottom, which made for difficult reading and a guaranteed wasted morning or afternoon before you concluded that an aircraft based on those concepts would have great difficulty in getting off the runway and anyway would be completely uneconomical.
If you worked in private practice you could usually get rid of the persistent lunatic fringe, or inventors of the obviously unpatentable stuff, by mentioning fees - with a typical example; this would invariably result in a swift departure by the client.
As I said, I never had any really lunatic stuff come my way, but a colleague who had worked in private practice once had someone wearing a monk's habit come in off the street with a large sheaf of drawings of an intricate mechanism that he wanted to patent. After an hour or so of discussing the drawings with the client and getting nowhere very fast, my colleague finally managed to get an answer to the question "what does it do?". "It's a time machine." "You mean it's a clock?". "No. It's a time machine. That's how I got here." A thoughtful silence and my colleague looks at the name on the drawings. "And you say your name, sir, is Roger Bacon?" My colleague said he couldn't get him out of the office fast enough.
# Posted on January 17th 2010 by Trevor Jennings
Re: Word and Note
Thanks for these illuminating comments, lazyhound!
I'm still wondering:
Whether the guy *really* believed he was Roger Bacon,
Whether he was taking the p*ss,
Whether your colleague could tell which it was,
How he got the guy out...in such cases, this can prove formidably difficult, if not actually scary.
I imagine you're pretty glad you got out when you did!
# Posted on January 17th 2010 by nicholas
Re: Word and Note
In answer to your last question, my colleague is a large man; "Roger Bacon" was, I believe, not
We agreed over a pint or two not to worry because the philosophical problems involved were intractable and the "invention" probably wouldn't have been patentable in any case, mainly because of "prior public use" - i.e. being used to travel from the 13th century to the 20th century. We thought that a High Court hearing on the question would be extremely entertaining.
I don't know the answers to the first two questions, but I expect my colleague, with his private practice experience probably sussed out the correct one. There was another possibility that worried him a little afterwards - that the client was the genuine article
# Posted on January 17th 2010 by Trevor Jennings
Re: Word and Note
Btw Nicholas, I was sorry to leave my last employer, but the bean-counters came round and every department had to lose people, so I took early retirement with an appropriate package and spent the next couple of years doing consultancy work for a private practice before finally drawing the line under my career in patents.
# Posted on January 17th 2010 by Trevor Jennings
Re: Word and Note
"In theory I am going to be writing 100,000 words about mad people. "
Silver Spear: now that's truly insane!
# Posted on January 18th 2010 by skin&bow
Re: Word and Note
I will be by the end of it. What moron thought doing a PhD was a good idea?
# Posted on January 18th 2010 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Word and Note
22
# Posted on January 18th 2010 by David50
Re: Word and Note
"In theory I am going to be writing 100,000 words .... "
What d'you think patent professionals are ?
# Posted on January 18th 2010 by Trevor Jennings
Re: Word and Note
In my day job (when I am not "pretending" to be a musician), I am one of the clerical support staff in the intensive care unit at a hospital.
I have always been more comfortable working math than I have been at writing (you probably can't tell that from my posts on this web site). This is one of the reasons I took the required writing and composition courses during the first and second semesters of college so I could get them done, over with, and out of the way. I inherited my mathematical abilities from my father who has a master's degree in meteorology (he is a retired weather researcher). Yes, I did very well in all of the math courses I took in college.
"What moron thought doing a PHD was a good idea?" Have you tried looking in a mirror?
When I am not playing music, my favorite reading material is usually science fiction.
# Posted on January 18th 2010 by fauxcelt
Re: Word and Note
*Only* 100,000 words?
You'll have to do it in Mandarin. Then all the knowledge / insights / fieldwork you can't pack into 100,000 words in English will be safely fitted in...
# Posted on January 18th 2010 by nicholas