Classical Convert

More Classical MP3ness - What ACD Actually Meant

Ah-ha! Now I understand more fully what ACD at Sounds and Fury intended in his recent post about bloggers and iPod playlists. What he really didn’t like was the emphasis of the MP3 player as a means to listen to classical music, because he feels it is way down at the low end of the fidelity-of-experience spectrum. The primary point is that any recording of a piece - whether it’s as high-range as studio DAT tapes played back on a $100,000 stereo, or as low as a VHS recording of a concert - is an inherently different and imperfect experience than is being there while the music is actually performed, live and in your face.

The way I initially read it (and I read it about five times - it wasn’t nearly as much of a knee-jerk reaction as the one he is suspicious of, honest!) was: since iPods are basically pretty crappy at reproducing music, people shouldn’t post iPod playlists, as this might encourage people to use them to listen to classical music. I then defended this by arguing it was not necessarily such an awful experience as he thought it was. Besides, anything which encourages people to listen to classical is (almost certainly probably) a good thing.

I still don’t think that putting up a specifically iPod playlist is really a big deal; but maybe that’s because my eyes kind of blank out the iPod in the sentence. I spend so much time listening to music in-ear that it seems completely natural to bias a weekly selection of pieces toward that particular listening method, instead of just calling it a neutral “playlist.”  If I didn’t spend so much time with my earbuds plugged in I guess all the ipodification could well get irritating. I suspect that most iPod playlist-putter-uppers who specify the “iPod” bit are thinking in a similar way - they aren’t putting that particular noun in there deliberately, it just comes out like that.

Maybe the most important thing is simply for people to be aware of the limitations of the method which they are using to listen to their music. As JonJ pointed out in a comment, basically what it comes down to is that one needs to be satisfied with the quality of the stuff you’re pumping into your ears, but it’s also important to be aware of that quality. I suspect quite a few (for example, someone who gets almost everything off of iTunes instead of ripping from CDs) people haven’t had the benefit of experiencing just how bad a piece sounds on a low quality system when compared to a high quality one, and how poor both are when compared to the real thing.

MP3s, Classical Music, Quality

ACD at Sounds and Fury is pissed about compression, and bloggers putting up iPod playlists. I think he’s being way too much of an audiophile.

While over-compressed music sounds pretty horrid - especially classical with all it’s acoustic variations and nuances - my MP3s at 192Kbps sound rather good on my non-iPod, iPod (if you see what I mean). When there’s a crazily big tutti going on it can occasionally get a bit hairy, but in general I can actually hear way more subtleties compared to listening to the original CD on the stereo. Of course, this is using a replacement to the piece-of-crap earphones included with the player.

And if you really can’t stand MP3s, you can always encode in FLAC, which is lossless.

What I genuinely do not understand the animosity toward bloggers who put up their current playlists. I seriously don’t think it’s being done in a effort to look cool, but actually because they like to share their listening preferences. If I didn’t have my portable audio capabilities (what a very futuristic robot I am) I’d be listening to two or three hours less classical music a day, and that would make me sad.

So: a C, an E-flat, and a G go into a bar…

I am so, so sorry:

A C, an E-flat, and a G go into a bar. The bartender says, “Sorry, but we don’t serve minors.” So, the E-flat leaves, and the C and the G have an open fifth between them. After a few drinks, the fifth is diminished; the G is out flat.

An F comes in and tries to augment the situation, but is not sharp enough.

A D comes into the bar and heads straight for the bathroom saying, “Excuse me. I’ll just be a second.”

An A comes into the bar, but the bartender is not convinced that this relative of C is not a minor.

Then the bartender notices a B-flat hiding at the end of the bar and exclaims, “Get out now! You’re the seventh minor I’ve found in this bar tonight.”

The E-flat, not easily deflated, comes back to the bar the next night in a 3-piece suit with nicely shined shoes. The bartender (who used to have a nice corporate job until his company downsized) says, “You’re looking sharp tonight, come on in! This could be a major development.” This proves to be the case, as the E-flat takes off the suit, and everything else, and stands there au natural.

Eventually, the C sobers up, and realizes in horror that he’s under a rest. The C is brought to trial, is found guilty of contributing to the diminution of a minor, and is sentenced to 10 years of DS without Coda at an upscale correctional facility. On appeal, however, the C is found innocent of any wrongdoing, even accidental, and that all accusations to the contrary are bassless.

The bartender decides, however, that since he’s only had tenor so patrons, and everything has become alto much treble, he needs a rest — and closes the bar.

In my defense I didn’t come up with this, I found it here - and the rest are all just as bad I’m afraid. Does anyone know any actually good, funny music jokes?

A Couple of New Classical Blogs

I’m rapidly (and finally, after stagnating in the pools of bookmarking for way too long) switching over to using RSS to catch up on all the latest and greatest classical music news, gossip and discussion. What a mouthful of grammar that sentence was. Already a couple of new musical blogs have sprung up on my ever so complex and thoroughly modernized radar, and altruistic as ever, I’m just dying to share ‘em. We’ve got:

• Mathemusicality - In which James Cook analyzes music from a mathematical point of view. He already has several very interesting theoryish articles, such as the recent How to make a Chopin Prelude. As a physicist with a classical music fetish I can’t help but love a blog in which both Stoke’s theorem and Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht are mentioned in the same post.
• Classical Ear - Very chunky, information packed posts on general musical topics such as: What Newcomers Should Know Before Going to the Opera, or an impressively (and happily) un-concise Biography of Mahler.

If anyone is interested I use Google Reader for all of my RSS feed needs. For anyone who hasn’t used RSS, it basically sticks all of the new posts from your favorite blogs into one page, so you can browse through them all without having to manually go to each individual website. I already can’t remember how I managed without it!

Somewhat Distracted

Instead of this here text which you are just about to feel disappointed for bothering to read, there should have been some kind of profoundly deep and miraculously insightful piece of writing. It would have contained a myriad of insights into how people experience classical music, each more stupendous and thrilling than the last (yes, *thrilling*, you would have literally been unable to hold onto your mouse because of the sheer levels of excitement!)

However, circumstances lead me to sit around on my arse all evening instead. Those circumstances being: yesterday I finally caved (and actually found one in stock) and bought a Wii. It’s the first games console I’ve bought in about 7 years, so it’s pretty exciting.

Sorry. Don’t feel abandoned, I haven’t forgotten you, honest…

Now - shall I go to sleep so I can wake up for my meeting at 9am tomorrow, or play Zelda some more?