people. someone named jeremy started a website and people that were ellis act and i don't have the resources to do it myself but there is no communication between everybody being evicted. thank you. >> that's a good point. so if i could read these into the record and i guess we will adjourn. i will entertain a motion to adjourn. this is to whom it may concern "i am unable to make morning meetings. as a lgbt senior i have many housing concerns that are basically no different from other seniors housing concerns. while i am fortunate to have a section eight housing voucher if you pay attention to the news lately you know dealing with the san francisco housing authority comes with its own problems. while i am currently housed there are thousandos the list and many lgbt seniors and less and less landlords in san

francisco rent to section eight tenants. they are interested in going after the corporate dollar and the new legislation passed regarding this prohibits less than 30 day rentals as 30 days is not considered short term in san francisco. ridiculous if you ask me. hasn't stopped the conversion in my building and i am sure others. they have basically taken the units off the market for san franciscans and one worries that the landlord will not comply with hud and with no one rent to section eight where will i go? they got rid of the rats here and over flowing bathtubs and et cetera and i am in a building that has rentals for over $2,000 in the tenderloin. how can a senior utilities afford to live

here in this is not workts the price tag that the authority agreed to v it's over the payment standard. hud has raised the standard in reason 10 years but rent is going up. >> historical they're charging so much rent here. i have lived here 11 years and inundated with construction and much without permits and a electrician that rewired the building with no license and broken elevators and because i have a section eight voucher i can't take them to the rent board but to the housing authority and with this housing authority it's easier to live with it and may may or may not deal with t i did appeal that

the housing appeal let the landlord raise the rent above the payment standard because they didn't take the condition of my building into consideration but hud says they don't have to do that when calculating rent reasonableness for your unit and they can use other unit's rent frs that calculation as far as up to a mile away. in san francisco my tenderloin apartment can be more than a mile from knob hill. i fought the authority to even get a hearing for this case. they said i had no right but then gave me a hearing and the person representing the housing authority said it was ridiculous we were there because hud rules say i don't get a hearing for this. the argue was august 31, 2012 and the officer made her decision and that the housing authority does have to take the

condition of the building in consideration with this. i do have a roof over my head for now but a low income tenant with no resources is also fearful of losing their home. fortunately i won't be ellis act out because of the size of the building and one always feels the push and they want the apartment soy they can make more money. these days there are so many trying for the apartment and the landlord could give a number of reasons and one reant know if they were discriminating. i would be happy to move into a mixed increase building one for lgbt seniors and one take my section eight voucher and i could really feel at home. terry frey. the

second is from david allen. "for years in 2005 when i moved from new york i lived in a large room with light. i am a painter. it's for me to function. basically a sro. i don't feel feel poorer constrained. i am 76. my social security check covers my rent. i have no other income so i rely on life savings to provide health net and other care and extra money for making life decent. however that money is running out. i have prostate cancer since 2005 and had a stroke and seizure in the last year. i am fine but have to resort to medi-cal and can no longer another insurance. i can manage but the space i am in is

not available to subsidies. with recent real estate developments in town prices and rentals being inflated but not simply available with a year's long waiting list and condo stale living becoming the fashion. the asmo fear of radical change is the building could be sold et cetera creates a state of on going anxiety and open housing for suitable change has me feel seriously on the edge. currently i am exhibiting paintings at visual aids gallery, a nonprofit for those with life threatening illness to encourage them to work. again the prospect of sales are remote because of the cost of promoting myself. frankly

tight focused 1%ers. >> can i make a motion? coming out of the hearing today mr. chair and task force members we have enough information -- the motion i will be file signature motion to forward all of the information that we received today from the hearing over to the full task force for additional discussion if need be, but for additional items. something that we take right away and over to the board of supervisors and to the mayor's office on the concerns that we heard from the community today and some of the presenters as well. >> do i hear a second to that motion? >> second. >> all in favor? >> aye. >> okay. we will forward the information onto the task force members. with this i will entertain a motion to adjourn? >> so moved. >> second. >> all in favor? thank you for coming to this hearing. your

[applause] >> good evening.

welcome to the meeting of the commonwealth club and forum, connect your intellect. you can find us online. you can follow the best of our conversations on twitter. i am the author of the "this is your brain on music. " i am a professor of psychology and behavioral neuroscience. i am delighted to introduce you to my friend, one of my famous -- favorite guitarists and musicians. he discovered the guitar at a young age. he has played at notable vilnius such as the -- notable venues such as montrose and carnegie hall. >> i would like to start by

saying that in the last 15 or 20 years of my research, one thing i found most surprising as a musician myself in exploring music and the brain is how -- discovering where it is that music is. i always imagined as a player that the music was in my fingers. now i know is in the brain. it is a neuro-representation of the figures. music is in every part of the brain that we have mapped. there is no part of the brain that does not have something to do with music. i found that very surprising. i wondered if you find that surprising as a player and what your own intuitions were coming into it. >> i think my intuition is that music is something that gets received in some sense or another, like radio, like

something you pick up. it is a vibration. when i have written my own music for the guitar, a lot of times it is the result of having experienced something and having to absorb it like you might absorb a vibration or light our experience something rhythmic like walking down the street. >> a lot of composers say they feel like they are not really creating the music. they're channeling it. roseanne cash talks about holding up her catcher's mitt and catching one as it goes by. someone else talks about how the music is everywhere for anyone to take, that you just have to tune into it. >> driving down here today, there was a rough patch of road because there was construction. you are feeling the road.

it makes you aware that no matter where you are or what you are doing, you could be some ki, and you hear something may be rise out of that rhythm. for me, personally, a lot of times the idea for writing a piece of music or making arrangement comes from some sort of rhythm. a lot of people would say, do you get the melody first or the rhythm? i always say i get the rhythm first and the melody comes out of it. >> could you play us an example of may be something where the rhythm came first? and maybe just play the rhythm. >> i will try. this is a piece called "cumulus rising." this is from a piece that i did in 1998, on the theme of water.

this is sort of the theme of water rising through a team less clout. it does not have to be, but that is the sensation that gave me the idea. -- cumulus cloud. >> if you could play the rhythm first. >> i will tap it. [tapping] pretty simple. then i will play a little bit of it. ♪

>> i will leave it there. [applause] >> one of the things that people often ask is what is happening in our brains when we hear a piece of music. it is extraordinarily complicated. a sound enters the years and there is a cascade of their rick

complicated processes that turn the changes in air pressure to an electrical signal which gets transmitted from the year to the brain. once it hits the brain, it gets even more complicated. it turns out there are distinct regions of the brain that process different aspects of the sound. one part of the brain, you can think of it as a special purpose circuit, attending to and processing their read them. then there is a separate part processing the pitch, a separate part combining the pitches and duration into melodies, a part separate from that attending to how loud or soft it is, and it all comes together later and get this seamless impression of this beautiful melody and harmony, yet, it is processed piecemeal. one of the sources of information of this is we have

patients who are damaged in one focal portion of the brain and they lose one of those elements while retaining the others. they may lose rhythm or they will have to pitch and harmony. >> is it processed in real time? simultaneously? >> yes, but quickly. when i say later, later in brain time means maybe 1/30 of a second later. any second, it can be disrupted , and you to organic brain injury or trauma, it can be disrupted. it is remarkable. the player, at some level, perhaps unconsciously, are having to think about the elements unconsciously. >> i teach a lot of workshops and a lot of people come to play our master classes, they come with their own performance,

arrangement. they are looking for feedback. one of the things that i always say, because, as a musician, we try to get everything at once. all of the elements. we tried to simultaneously get the rhythm, melody, the subtleties, dynamics, accent, all those things that make music interesting. but a lot of times, it is good practice to tear them apart. solo guitar playing, for example, polyphonic music, you have a melody and a baseline, maybe an accompaniment, 3rd voice or harmonic accompaniment. i always suggest people to tear them apart, work on the melody, just work on the base, rhythm, accompaniment. that provides an important

process to understanding how these elements have to happen simultaneously. >> when you are writing, as a fan of yours, for decades now -- i think your first record came out in the 1970's. >> 1978. >> that is right. as a fan, one of the things that struck me is you did not sound like anyone else i had heard, and you still do not. when i listen to any other guitarist,, composer, you can hear their influence, who they took this idea or technique from. your music just sounds fresh and novel. i wonder if you might be willing to disclose to us some of your influences and how they gave rise to your compositional playing style, and maybe

demonstrate them. >> i like to joke, i did not learn how to play anything else really well, so i had to come up with my own. it is true, i found this out later when i was teaching. can you show me that solo to that song? do you know how it goes? i am useless at that. i am not very good at cataloging other people's music. i certainly had my influence is growing up. i started playing the guitar when i was 12th. i was a big fan of the pope, blue, british isles scene, mississippi john hurt me, sonny terry brown mcgee, i played some blues harmonica. >> did you learn that open tuning style, slide style? >> i have not picked up a slide

in a long time, so i do not want to embarrass myself, but yes. it was a lot of folk music, blues and early on. i fell in love with the sound of the steel string guitar. there are a lot of idiomatic thing that it does well. i studied classic guitar a bit, but the steel string, for example, we do something called a hammer on and pull off, which is -- >> you get three note for the price of one. >> you plug the string but you get four notes. i always think of that town at the the prototypical steel string guitar sound. british isles, a caltech music.

i learned all the paul simon songs. as i got older -- >> he is a hell of a guitarist. people do not realize. he is not flashy, but if you try to learn his tunes, they are really hard. >> he is a brilliant guitar player. i eventually got interested in jazz, world music, everything. maybe that is one of the reasons. i enjoyed so many kinds of music, i did not have a preference. i did not want to be anything in particular. i just wanted to play guitar and get that sound that i was hearing in my head. >> is there a particular song of yours that you can trace back to and influence, sound that you were trying to get that you heard somebody else use and you wanted to use it? >> i will play you a few bars from a piece that i wrote in the

1970's, very much influenced by the british isles style. this one is called "inverness." ♪ >> i am cutting it short, but, to me, that is the quintessential british isles style. >> although, in your hand, it is more harmonically complex. >> it could be. >> one of the things i was trying to do -- i became a big fan of keith jarrett when i was young.

i thought, wow, if i can do something like that with a guitar -- and i remember, i was a student at uc-berkeley, considering going to graduate school in economic geography and working as an intern coming here at the san francisco planning department. i was also a record in my first album. i wrote this piece called " turning, turning back." it began the recording but it also began a new direction for me. they say every musician that starts recording for writing, arranging music, they have to find their own voice. i think i may be found my own voice in that one. >> are you going to play some of it? ♪

>> just playing an excerpt from the middle, -- time part. -- double-time part. the main theme -- ♪ [applause] >> that is the main theme. >> often, when i listen to

guitar players, because i'm a guitarist myself, i'm trying to figure out what they are doing and how they do it. i cannot do that when i listen to you. the music for " washes over me. for me, it is so immediately engaging and hypnotize him. to be fair, the other part of it is, in 1000 years, i could never do that. there is a technical component to would you do, and i am reminded, one of your albums was reviewed by "coo guitar plar magazine." i am prepared praising he said something to the effect of, listening to alex thrusts fellow pickers to the brink of decision. do i give up everything else in my life and practice like a madman or throw my guitar down the chasm? >> that became a staple in my

press packed with back then. today, to be honest, there are a lot of talented young players out there. the whole scene has developed so much, the technique has really moved forward a lot. >> and each generation can learn from the previous. leo cocky learn from fahey. each new generation has these new musicians to slow down and learn a note by note. on the technical side, when you write, maybe do not want to give away your secrets, but are you writing in real time, at that tempo, or do you write slowly and learn to play faster? >> i used to do everything intuitively, did not write music, i would not think about what i was doing. i would fiddle around -- i use a

lot of alternate tooting. i would emerge a few hours later and say, this is what i have got. it was a cathartic experience for me. over the years, i have become a little more analytical. today, my approach is a balance, and intuitive process where you allow yourself to empty your mind a little bit and let stuff come in so that you can experience what is going on around you in a way and translate that into musical experience. >> it is interesting you talk about emptying your mind. there was a brain imaging study published where my colleague, charles lim, a narrow scientist, put some composers in an mri machine. if any of you have had an mri to see if there was a broken bone or cancer detection, we have a

special version called functional mri, wary can track the flow of blood in your brain. we put people in the scanner and we had people mentally practice their tennis serve, catch a late meth problems, or think or listen about music. you can see which regions of the brain are active by following the blood. what charles found is by people improvising or composing, you would expect for something that is that complicated, would require so mineral resources, you would expect a primary finding in his would be lots of activation in particular areas of the brain. paradoxically what he found was deactivation in the prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain that is the editor, tell you that is not good enough, inhibiting you from blurting things out. the great improvisers had turned

that part of their brain off. from your intuitions as a composer, science is a step behind art, but we were able to find that. just from a player's standpoint, as you develop your skills over time, maybe studied in school, self-pop, but you build up certain skills. when it comes time to improvise or sit down and start to work out something musical, sometimes you have to forget all that stuff. push it out of your mind. it is a handy tool to be able to bring back and say, what am i doing here? i am and 3/4 time, 12 measures of this, and then it is going to go to a bridge or a second measure or something. >> to clarify one point you were

talking about, using alternate to earnings -- for those who got not know, there is a standard way of turning the guitar. there are people like alex and david crosby, and joni mitchell, who tune differently to spur creativity or just to play around. there is a great sense of play in that. most of your pieces are in non- standard to make. among those, there are even some standard ones and you do not use those. >> you bring up an interesting point. a lot of times, musicians use these alternate to earnings as a way to escape what we know. sometimes we get trapped. i know that is a c sharp minor court, that is a b flat. where would i go fromhe