Classical Convert

Break Out the MSDS Sheets

Early this ante-m., the covers (duvet actually, imported all the way from Debenhams in England which took up most of the space in my luggage but was highly, exceptionally, worth it) came off to the incessant looping of Toxic. The Britney song. This wasn’t an outside, uninvited intrusion due to radio-alarm randomness, but instead an internal performance which I blame on too many ukulele videos before bed:

I remember having a ukulele as a kid, and also remember my musical skills mostly encompassing breaking the strings. It turns out that there is a huge (not so) seedy underworld community of ukulele devotees with mad ukulele skills. For example, I managed to miss the rise to popularity of this performance (which occurred thousands of years ago in internet time):

Hell, there are even multiple ukulele “orchestras” in existence. Here’s the GB one covering Kate Bush — which actually makes me just want to turn it off and listen to the original, but the “Heathcliff!” is kind of funny:

It almost makes me want to pay for and try playing the ukulele.

Almost.

Tags: music, ukulele, youtube

Comment Spam

Good god. Every few weeks a spammer will latch onto this blog and start piping hot buttered spam into comments on random posts, despite the supposed protection of CAPTCHA (which, incidentally, is an acronym for Completely Automated Public Turing-test to tell Computers and Humans Apart). This results in me receiving in the neighborhood of on hundred emails over the course of a mere couple of hours. THIS results in me getting annoyed and setting Wordpress (THANK GOD for this feature) to automatically block comments which contain parts of the recurring spammy URLS.

So, if you are not a spam-king and are rejected trying to make a valid comment, you might be mentioning something which is taboo. This might be obvious (e.g., viagra, day-trading, etc…) or not so obvious (e.g. groups.yahoo.com) so drop me a line via the contact form if it’s problematic.

On the other hand, if you are a spam-king, go die in a fire.

Tags: spam

Well, it’s not really a concerto…

How could I forget one of my favorite (and earliest discovered) examples of animating a piece of classical music? Despite its cuts and edits, it’s still pure genius:

Tags: classical music, tom and jerry

Higher Quality Youtube Hack

Dearest, loveliest readers, did you know that if you’re watching a youtube video, you can add &fmt=18 onto the end of the URL, and you will get a higher quality version? This apparently works if the original uploader uploaded it in a fairly large resolution. In a highly scientific study of about five videos it seems that sometimes you also get higher quality sound. This is fantastic for better watching the enormous — but frequently crippled by quality — selection of classical music videos online.

Tags: hack, youtube

Baader-Meinhofing

The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon: one of the greatest Minnesotan exports. It’s a not so terse (but oh-so poshly arrogant) phrase which labels the effect of, having recently observed or learned something new, then noticing it everywhere. The classic example is, after buying a new car suddenly seeing swarming flocks of cars of a similar make. Another example is seeing the term “Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon” crop up all over the place after reading about it. Everybody (yeah, everybody in the entire world) reckons that it’s due to the recency effect.

Well, this seems to happen frequently with blogging. No sooner does one craftily (and sexily) tap out a stunning new post, than one observes stuff related to that topic dripping and draped all over the internet. Or even TV if you’re into that kind of thing.

You want an example? Well I’ll give you an example! The other day I touched on a thought about music and motion, and how intricately linked they are, from the point of view of choosing a soundtrack. Today, up pops an article which describes research recently done into this connection. Specifically researchers at the University of Texas have shown that a sound played simultaneously with a faint flash of light makes the visual section of the brain respond exactly as if it had seen a far brighter light. It seems this could be an evolutionary adaptation which allows animals to respond quickly to threats which are often both in motion and, say, growling.

While this is a fair-ways away from directly applying to music, it’s interesting to note that there is a physical connection — rather than merely a figurative one — between sound and vision. Of course, this isn’t really news to those with synesthesia. The really cool thing about this experiment is that the senses are connected in a deliberate, symbiotic fashion, and not just able to have their wires accidentally (or deliberately, lysergic dymethylamide fans) crossed

Tags: baader-meinhof, music, vision