Disabled Musicians Make Sound Beyond Limits

By Kintan Andanari The Straits Times (Singapore)    When Siti Sakinah Zainal sits at the piano, fingers poised on its keys, she begins not by looking at the conductor’s purple baton, but by listening intently.    She focuses on the sound of his slow, measured breath, amplified through his microphone. On cue, she starts Georges …

Karaoke Machine Inventor Dies At Age 100

by Kevin Burton    Shigeichi Negishi, the inventor of the world’s first commercially-available karaoke machine, has died in Japan at age 100, according to National Public Radio.    Never knew the man, but boy has he filled up my Saturday nights.    You take a character from Billy Joel’s Piano Man who is“sure that I …

Wife To The Rescue of Alexa And Me

by Kevin Burton    My songwriting is punctuated by bursts of creativity, drive and joy but it swims in a vast ocean of self-doubt.    If confidence were gun powder, I couldn’t blow up an apple.  My confidence is like that sorry little piece of fat they call pork, in a huge can of beans, …

Is Burton Cummings Rock’s Best Vocalist?

by Kevin Burton    He croons, he growls, he soars, he swoops, he screams, he quivers. Burton Cummings has a voice made for rock and roll.    He grabs a song and will, not, let it go.     So glad he took up music rather than whatever else he could have pursued as a high …