Minimalist Music Favorites

[Gardnr]

This is a favorite of mine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zN-v...-vQ14CBAM&t=40

There Is a Place

[Williamsmith]

As a child our living room often filled up with friends....”mill hunkies” as we were known, who picked a guitar, clawed at a banjo or dragged a rotten bow across a fiddle. This is what I think of in terms of minimalist music.....or simple songs. It’s a different take on what has mostly been presented but it’s my take....just a guitar and somebody telling a story. One I remember was “Jimmy Brown The NewsBoy”. Simple stories that made you think in a social context even as a kid.

https://youtu.be/4Krey-_0-TA?list=RD...gviDAXJeAvxs2w

Then, I would have to be given space for an accapella , voice only song. “Jacobs Ladder” has to be on that list.

https://youtu.be/i14sMDbcpRg

Pardon the interruption.

[dado potato]

This morning I listened to Steven Halpern's recording, "Healing Music #2" on his album Music for Healing. That must be about his 70th album. We are talking about a prodigious output of a musical entrepreneur here.

Halpern as musicologist observed that western music (popular, classical, and jazz for instance) involve the listener in consciously or unconsciously anticipating where the music will go next. The listener tends to listen forward to the future, when perhaps a resolving chord will be played. Thus it is stimulating, but not especially relaxing to listen. In his "anti-frantic alternative" music, Halpern avoids the tense dynamics. "You can only relax in the present moment", he says on his website.

His instrument now is the electric piano keyboard. (He started out as a jazz trumpet player on the NYC scene.) He has attributed his inspiration to the redwood forests of California.