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Another return from another weekend away, I’m a busy boy. And a tired boy. Here’s another cop-out Youtubey post dedicated to anyone who has ever tried to (and failed to) play a melody on their phones beeping keypad:
Tags: phone, youtubeWe were chatting about the joy of transcriptions the other day; how they let you hear aspects of a piece which you previously missed through familiarity or sonic occlusion. Well here’s a transcription which doesn’t quite provide those advantages, but which is curious nonetheless. It’s a version of 4′33” for orchestra:
Things to watch out for: the conductor mopping his brow between movements, the audience holding off on coughing until the intervals, the blond chick on the edge of her seat.
One of my most surprising musical learning moments was when I realized that 4′33″ wasn’t a load of bullshit. It forces people to clarify and consider what their definition of music is, without strictly being a composition itself. It is sort of meta-music. I think it is quite fascinating how much of a conversation (internal or external) you can produce by simply questioning if the piece is music, and if not, why not?
But then I feel all pretentious and artsy-fartsy and have to go play Mario Kart.
Tags: 4'33", john cage, youtubeSorry dudes. I’ve been doing out of towning things this weekend, which places one at reasonably reasonable distances from “keyboards” and “internets” and other vital blogging artifacts. We did not manage to play the building, this time around, but did succeed in getting delicious gelato (via L’Arte Del Gelato), Thai (via Won Dee Siam II, which we went to accidentally), Italian (via Luzzo’s) and lots of chocolate brioches and croissants (via Silver Moon Bakery). We also did clothes shopping and had a picnic in central park. I drove back at 6:00am this morning and still managed to make it into work before my flatmate.
How have you been since I’ve been gone, dear reader?
One in-absentia type tidbit is the minor buzz over a certain youtubified comedy routine “Rachmaninov Had Big Hands“. It’s fairly amusing but only gets a puny text link here instead of glorious embedding because it appears that they in fact ripped off the following routine:
So, you know, you’re not allowed to find their remake funny anymore. That’s in the rules of teh internets.
Right, off to bed for me. I’m glad I don’t have to commute from NYC every day. I-80 is boring.
Tags: classical music, original, rachmaninov has big hands, youtubeThere’s been less than lots of updates here this week, due in significant part to g’s shortly pending department to NYC. This weekend is the move away from the apartment here, and next weekend is the move into Manhattan. Unsurprisingly this means that things are a little lively at the moment. Additionally I’ve been in a bit of classical downturn at the moment, these things go in phases.
Instead, the music colonizing my player has been Mr Scruff, an old favorite:
He was one of the guys I listened primarily to before switching over to almost exclusively classical music. It’s nice to have a bit of a resurgence. The boundaries between musical styles are completely artificial anyway, and there is something constraining and unpleasant about claiming I feel like listening to classical music or non-classical music. It’s all highly-stylized waves of compressed air, in the end.
I’ll leave you with another summery piece of Mr. Scruff, with an actual video this time:
Mmm. Pie.
Tags: mr scruff, music, non-classical, youtubePreviously I had read about, but never actually seen Gyorgy Ligeti’s Poème Symphonique for 100 metronomes. Thanks to the modern marvel of YouTube, this is the case no more:
If the Wikipedia article on the piece is accurate they aren’t doing it quite according to directions, as they seem to use an automatic wire contraption jobby to start off all the little buggers almost simultaneously, instead of via 10 “performers.” I can’t decide if I prefer the idea of seeing ten people attempting to initiate them all, or the Rube Goldbergness of this design.
The music sounds like… well, exactly what you would expect 100 metronomes slightly out of sync in phase and frequency to sound like. If that floats your boat, you can download a 20 minute long version off of Amazon for $3. You’ll probably get basically the same sonic experience from sitting in a room full of people typing. I think it’s supposed to be more about how it makes you think about music than the music itself. Sort of meta-music.
Tags: ligeti, poeme symphonique for 100 metronomes, youtube
