Sweet Little Ukulele Ditties
Becalming Soodles & Nerve Doubt Jammers … BANDCAMP … SPOTIFY …
50+ minutes of solo ukulele music on cassette, cd, & digital ~ a collection of short sound meditations & tunes ~ contemplative, slowly-evolving repetitions alternate with peppy hokum ~ old timey avant-garde meets lo-fi flip flop
Dave Knott ~ sound artist, improvisor, and music therapist.
While in his clinical work with others he uses music to calm, comfort, motivate, orient, pattern movement, and facilitate expression, this music is self-directed, formed from a quieting practice using strings and repetitive finger patterns.
“Everyone needs some music that soothes and allows for decompression of the mind and soul. This is that music. Dave’s delicate, intricate, engaging and just plain beautiful solo ukulele is the balm you need for tumultuous times. Apply it liberally.”
– Jeffery Taylor, Wall of Sound
“Knott’s knack for tender melodiousness and mesmerizing repetition makes this 22-track album a pleasurable breeze to bask in…he’s twined poignancy with hypnosis in a way that only those operating on a higher vibration can achieve.”
– Dave Segal, the Stranger
playful solo acoustic ukulele music and experimental and unconventional old-time pieces challenge the listener’s expectations and push the boundaries of what is considered “standard”… music that helps the listener focus their mind and maintain clarity or overcome doubts and anxieties
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and also, Sweet Little Guitar Ditties?
Before the Sweet Little Ukulele Ditties, there were the Sweet Little Guitar Ditties. Developed during a time when the Messenger Girls Trio was playing together weekly (Sir Richard Bishop, Jeffery Taylor & Rob Millis), and I was practicing music therapy at the Bailey-Boushay House.
- r e v i e w s
“The 12 ‘ditties’ … bring me back to those fleeting moments where thought stands still and all that is left is ethereal melody.”
“The record sounds amazing … all the detail of Knott’s assured and precise performances … will reverberate your ribcage such that you too can enjoy the healing vibrations…”
_____The Sound Projector
“Hypnotic, peaceful… deliberate, meditative… It’s yoga for the ears and soul.”
______Victory Review
_______________________________Listen >o-o<
Sweet Little Guitar Ditties (SLGD) recorded live at Folklife 2010 – 28m live set at Seattle Center (look under “Chill Out Show”) Click Here
SLGD “A2” with cloud plays on YouTube Click Here
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CD Now Available, shrinkrapt, barcoda’d, artist direct:
$12 postage paid in US; please inquire for international shipping rates
PayPal preferred * please email for instructions: dk (at) dksc (dot) org
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Also available in Seattle at Wall of Sound
Sweet Little Guitar Ditties are nylon string fingerstyle guitar pieces that move and delight with their playful themes and gentle timbral variations. Better known for his wildly divergent musical activities, performing in electrified dada bands, leading community listening events, building junkyard instruments and more, threaded throughout Knott’s work is a profound and enduring interest in resonance. This interest is exemplified here through delicately rendered strokes that coax the subtlest changes in tone. The Ditties settle and rest, then shift to reveal unheard sonorities; suspended audio mobiles of invented lullaby.
To engage your sweet little imagination, please visit:
http://dreamstrung.blogspot.com/
And post alternative titles, any imagery you perceive in the music or simply read the evolving quantum narrative of how this music plays in the imagination of listeners.
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Brief Biography
He started playing with sound in his grandfather’s junkyard in the early 1970’s, began guitar in 1981, served in the US Army 1988-1991, became a luthier in 1994, performed guitar music, built instruments, co-creatively engaged audiences and completed a degree in Music Therapy in 2000.
Since 2002, Knott has practiced as a music therapist at Seattle Children’s Hospital and until 2010 at the Bailey-Boushay House. The Sweet Little Guitar Ditties were developed over seven years within a music therapy practice with critically ill and injured adults and children.
These guitar miniatures are musical offerings intended to engage and calm individuals who face medical interventions and related anxiety and pain. Knott’s collaborators in the Messenger Girls Trio helped him to refine the Ditties in weekly improvised music sessions from 2001-2007.
For more information about David Knott’s music therapy practice, go to: http://www.seattlechildrens.org/about/stories/sound-of-music-therapy/
Music therapy is an allied health profession with a national independent certifying body. Knott obtained his board certification in 2001 and completed his advanced training in Neurologic Music Therapy in 2006.
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Dave Knott has recorded with Sir Richard Bishop (Sun City Girls), Rob Millis & Jeffery Taylor (Climax Golden Twins), Animist Orchestra and Yes, Well (Jeph Jerman), Omake (Matt Shoemaker) & Johnson, Greasy, Erik Major, Mike Shannon, Steve Barsotti, Eric Lanzillotta and many others. He has had the great fortune of studying with Pauline Oliveros and Stuart Dempster. Knott has created numerous installations for participants to realize kinesthetic expressions in sound and promote deeper listening and has organized large, semi-improvised community sound-making experiences. With instrument building, performances, workshops and recorded works, he seeks to stimulate the listener to a point of resonance and discovery of their own musical being.
Discography: http://www.discogs.com/artist/Dave+Knott
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A short collection of music videos
With Sir Richard Bishop at Volunteer Park:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CBWRpIYo5I&feature=channel_page
With Jeph Jerman’s Animist orchestra:
http://www.jackstraw.org/studio/sonarchy/archives.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDxxsiQkvyw
http://www.kaon.org/jeph_jerman/sound_extracts/3.htm
Manually-automated constructions of Jeph Jerman’s Animist instruments:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQ5XCy4X6I4
With Matt Shoemaker as “Omake & Johnson” at
feed://kexp.org/podcast_sonarchy.xml
Group structure with low voltage string and circuit instrument,
the Metaphone (as the “David Knott Large Ensemble” at): feed://kexp.org/podcast_sonarchy.xml
Using Nick Penny’s Poptars with Steve Scher and Katy Sewall before the KUOW Weekday program on Music Therapy, February 24, 2011
Prepared Stringboard instruments:
http://www.pogus.com/NOT1.html
http://www.the-improvisor.com/web%20ARTICLES/Stringboards.html
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/29085778@N07/
Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/s0niac
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For more about music therapy, please visit:
American Music Therapy Association: http://www.musictherapy.org
Certification Board for Music Therapists: http://www.cbmt.org
Academy of Neurologic Music Therapy and Center for Biomedical Research in Music: http://www.colostate.edu/dept/cbrm/
Music Therapy Voices, World Forum for Music Therapy: http://www.voices.no/
David Knott, MT-BC, NMT is a board-certified music therapist (2001), fellow in the Academy of Neurologic Music Therapy (2006), instrument maker, composer and improvisor living and working in Seattle. He specializes in using improvisation to facilitate therapeutic change with critically ill children and adults.
