On the Road-Seattle-Experience Music Project

Thursday, August 20, 2009

EMP-Experience Music Project

This interactive museum of American popular music is set in a building shaped like a broken guitar—as it was set up to honor Jimi Hendrix, a Seattle born celebrity. It is large and made up of many nooks and crannies to hear, mix, and record your own music.

There seem to be endless screens where one can hear anecdotes, solos, histories, and stories.

There is a large room devoted to Jimi. His life, his music, and stories on video from people who worked with him are found in this room. In one corner his video concerts are going continuously. In another spot you get to hear the engineer show all of the different band sections, how he mixes them and then you can try mixing them yourself.

In a large venue is a big screen that hourly plays pieces from Woodstock in honor of Woodstock’s 40th anniversary.

Upstairs is a big recording studio divided into recording rooms and pods to try out and play different instruments. You can even get basic lessons in these pods. Me, totally inexperienced got to find the C notes and play scales. The piano keys have teeny red dots that light up to show one what to play. There were guitars and drums to try out.
In the center of this room is a large circular flat table that digitally has many instruments and you can play them all by tapping on the right picture.

There is also a recording studio where a visitor can tell the museum his/her own special music story.

SCIENCE FICTION MUSEUM AND HALL OF FAME
Adjacent to the music museum, this sky and space décor gives the visitor the right ambience. Interestingly to us, the genre was originally called Scientifiction. This is a good name as the word can be broken into scientific fiction but I imagine it was too hard to pronounce so the term “science fiction” took hold.

As soon as the scientific method of observation was developed in Western culture, some fiction writers began to incorporate the scientific method into their stories(e.g.Verne) The science fiction asked the question “what if” and captivated the human spirit. Pulp fiction magazines less scientific but featuring those Big Brass Boobed ladies on the covers. In the forties, the sf was all around hard science but in the 59s and 60s some of it dealt with soft sciences like psychology and ecology.

The museum has movies, costumes and realia from Flash Gordon, Planet of the Apes, then Star Trek. There are actual and copies of E.T characters. George Lucas came along and made monumental leaps with his special effects and Star War stories.

NORDSTROMS
This magnificent department store opened in Seattle in 1901 as a narrow long store whose walls were stacked to the ceiling with shoes and salesmen stood by ladders ready to leap for a pair of shoes for a customer. The flagship store is in downtown Seattle. Outside they have a walk of Seattle Heroes such as Dale Chihuley, Bill Gates, Paul Allen athletes, and many civic minded philanthropists who paid for city stadiums, museums, etc. These are all down with artistic signatures and shoe imprints. For example, the young woman who led the team to the Soccer championship nationally had imprints of her soccer shoes and one society lady had imprints of a pair of high heels.