Blogging assignment #1

For this assignment i chose to do Greg Patillo, the world renound beatboxing flautist. Greg is a professional flautist hailing from Brooklyn New York and is recognized as "the best in the world at what he does."

He went to school at the cleveland institute of music earning both his bacelors and masters degree there. He was taught his superior technique by one of the very best, Joshua Smith, the lead flautist in the cleveland Orchestra. after perfecting his playing technique through extensive schooling he moved to san fransisco, for a period, and was one of the founding members of the collaborative arts insurgency, a place where they have open mic once a week for upand coming artists or groups to perform in front of an audiance and start a fan base for themselves as well as get performing experiance. They opened in May of 2006 and have been successful and growing ever since. Currently Greg lives as a freelancing soloist as well as beng the lead flautist in groups such as PROJECT and the lalo quintet. Quite often Patillo is also a featured performer at The Box in NYC.

Since graduating school, Patillo has had a steadily growing fanbase both on and off of the nternet. His performance videos on youtube all have over 20 million hits and his myspace page has had a steadily growing number of friend requests from fans all eager to hear him perform. He has also been recognized for his amazing talents eing asked to appear in shows such as iCarly, on nickelodian and Lilly Alen and friends on BBC three in the UK. Last year he was one of 21 winners to recieve the the metropolitan transit authority's "Music Under New York" program which in essecnce gives him a permit to play in the subway and continue to extend his fan base all over NYC.

The piece i chose to look at by Greg Patillo is actually his rendition of the super mario brothers theme aka the ground theme. This theme is legendary and has been used in video games since the very beginning of super mario brothers over 2 decades ago all over the world. Prsonally i love super mario brothers and it is one of my favourite themes to a video game which i why i chose it. Greg Patillo takes the theme and places his own twist on it. First off, the piece is simple enough with a fairly simplistic melody but patillo adds in melodic scoops and riffs to make the melody more coomplex and intriguing. On top of this he adds in the beatboxing which blows my mind. He plays the piece in a manner where there is a consistent balance of the beatboxing and melody so that both are able to be heard equally and creates a texture to the piece that isnt heard in the original; more "rough", so to speak. That being said the essence of the game still comes across even with the beatboxing. I really like his use of accents throughout the piece to ephasize certain notes, as well as his use of dynamics throughout the different sections. Someties his tone suffered slightly and sounded slightly airy, however im sure that this is due to the beatboxing which would take a ridiculous amount of air on top of the aount already needed. I would really like to know how he trained his lungs to be able to hold such an amount of air, and be able to phrase so nicely with the beatboxing. His videos are thoroughly entertaining and as a flute player, his skill blows my mind.

Heres the link, enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crfrKqFp0Zg