Writings of Brian Lee Beshore

     The Book Of Music Basics      Chapter One; The Great Divide      Probably everyone is familiar with the theory of the right brain and the left-brain. The theory goes that the left side of the brain handles logical sorts of things such as mathematics, while the right side of the brain is more intuitive and connected to emotions.      A person will often be able to tell you what side of his brain is the dominant one. It is often offered as a bit of brag and also an excuse as to why they are always late or something.      Interestingly, if you take a look around the music scene, you can spot musicians and even musical genres that seem to be more right-brained or left-brained.      This seems to hold true despite the fact that the theory says music is processed in the right brain. I don’t doubt this but I think you will see my point about musicians and musical genres appearing to be either right-b...

   The One True God       Chapter 1; The Gods Throw a Party.       Another cloudless day; the face of Ra dominated the sky with his fierce yellow fire while the golden serpent of The Great Mother undulated between the trees. Seemingly, riding upon her back was a thin band of blue sky playing hide and seek among the dunes.       It was a great day to be alive. And this was a very special day out of all the great days to be alive that I had amassed in my seventeen years of life; I was standing on the steps of the Temple with my admissions paper in my hand. The wax seal was melting a little and running, so I rolled the paper up to keep the seal from the face of Ra in hopes that this would serve to preserve it better.      Behind me were the three great arched doors of the Temple.       To think that some people believed that candidates actually had to choose a door or answer three questions to be admi...

     Mother       Ian adjusted his field glasses and looked out at the arid wasteland that started just under his chin and stretched out to the horizon. Behind him the jungle stopped abruptly as if something had taken a great chunk out of the Home World, leaving the white sand dropping away and turning to ochre as it approached the horizon under the setting sunlight.       Behind him there were bird calls, in front of him only the occasional sizzle of sand running downwards.      It wasn’t natural, something had created it and Ian kept wondering what it was. He was pretty certain that there was a deep crater or canyon out there in the middle of this desert as you would see plumes of dust rising vertically once in a while, but it was impossible to say if this was a sign of Others or just air currents kicking up.      There was no going out there to see though, as the desert was still one of the many Forbidden...

The Man Who Fell Together     Chapter One; No Strings Attached    Ishmael awoke and looked around. He was in the dingy little attic loft above the Seine.  He could tell because the slanted ceiling was so close on one side of his bed that it nearly touched his face. He had a fear of rolling over in his sleep and getting stuck between the bed and the ceiling.     Once, he had awoken here and banged his head on the ceiling before he realized where he was. It had been a most unpleasant way to get oriented to this place again.    He carefully got out of bed and, leaning over, surveyed the little room. The sun was shining through the one window on the front wall and he could hear a tour boat going by outside. People were laughing and talking.  It was a pleasant sound.    On the wall, next to the window, was a dresser with a mirror and a couple of bookshelves that were full of various books and music; violin music, it would be....

V-World      Perry had just taken the hugest toke off the J when his mother knocked on his door.      “Perry! Are you decent? Can I come in?”      His computer chair squeaked under the strain of his corpulent frame as he leaned across the desk to snuff the joint hurriedly in an ashtray. He gave the ashtray a quick shove to send it sliding under an alcove of the desk.      “No, ma!” he shouted, releasing a copious amount of smoke into his own face. He fanned at the smoke with his hand while fighting the urge to cough so hard that his eyes teared up.      “I thought you were going out to look for work,” his mother called through the door.      “I'm looking online,” he shouted hoarsely, “it's more efficient.”      “Finding anything?”      “I'm just getting started!” he yelled. 'Jeeze, he thought, she's really on the rampage!'         It was probab...

  Having a Communication Breakdown If you’re ha ving a communication breakdown, any opinion is unpopular, and we’ve been in a communication breakdown for a very long time. What are some of the ways that one achieves a communication breakdown? Trust me, a communication breakdown is not something that occurs naturally; it is most definitely planned, worked on and achieved. One way, of course, is to put communication on autopilot and substitute identifying gestures and appearance for actual communication. Back in the day, it was a peace sign, a tie dyed shirt or a joint. “Are you cool? Are you hip?” ‘Nuff said! Given the correct outward trappings and social tricks, opinions and attitudes are assumed. One need not be burdened with the effort of actually communicating. In more contemporary times an extremely complex handshake will serve to bypass any need to communicate. And if you want to avoid any serious discussion about religion, just carry around a bible or wear a cross. These ar...

Composers Who Ignored Musical Trends When we think about the concept of musical trends we think of our present age since we have a vast media that keeps us up to date with the latest musical trend. Billboard and social media keep us up to date on what the latest trends are. It's interesting that musical trends apparently existed as far back as the sixteen hundreds. This is when the composer J. S. Bach lived and wrote music and in his day and age the musical public was mad for Italian opera. This is traced in an interesting article on Facebook called Musical Context in Bach's Era. Bach did not follow this trend but wrote his own style of music which was a complex sort of music involving counterpoint which is the play between melodies. He also made reforms in the musical tuning system which paved the way for later composers such as Beethoven and Mozart to create the highly expressive music that they did. We find at a later time Mozart running into a similar thing when he wanted...