Johann Sebastian Bach was born 327 years ago today (or on March 31, depending on which calendar you use). To celebrate the occasion, Amazon.com is selling nine hours of his music for 99¢ for a few days. I recognized a few of the performers, such as Joseph Szigeti and Andras Schiff, but most I’m not familiar with. I expect that the Amazon offering is mainly good older recordings and recent recordings by lesser-known artists. It’s probably worth gambling a dollar on.
In the 1970s, Jack Thompson bought a tract of land in the Royal Gardens subdivision on the island of Hawaii and began building a cedar home there. He finished it in 1983. As he installed the second-story windows, he noticed a orange glow on the panes. The light came from the lava fountains that heralded the eruption of Kilauea, which continues to this day. Over the years, lava flows took out all his neighbors’ homes, one by one, until only Thompson’s was left. This month, a vigorous flow found his house, leaving little beyond a satellite dish embedded in six feet of basalt.
There are three pages to the score for Terry Riley‘s In C. Two of the pages are performance directions; the actual music all fits on a single page. It consists of 53 numbered phrases ranging in length from two sixteenth notes to 32 quarter notes. The performer plays each phrase in sequence, repeating it as many times as he wishes, before moving on to the next phrase. Riley suggests a group of about 35 musicians. Performances normally run between 45 and 90 minutes, according to Riley.
Although I’ve occasionally read about In C — it’s perhaps the first example of musical “minimalism” — and I’ve looked at the score, I’ve never actually heard it. A few days ago, I heard Riley’s A Rainbow in Curved Air for the first time in decades (not counting its use in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy radio program).1 It was more engaging than I remembered, and it occurred to be that I didn’t need to round up 35 musical friends to get an idea of what In C sounded like. I could just launch Logic and sequence as many voices as I wanted. Which I did.
This is a stripped-down, streamlined version. It’s a little over eleven minutes long, and there are only five voices — six, if you count the “pulse.” I didn’t plan it out beyond shifting loops nicely out of phase. It probably doesn’t truly represent what In C should be, but it might suggest how the music works. I likely will revise and expand this arrangement sometime soon. You can download the score here if you want to follow along or organize your own performances. There’s also a 50-minute orchestral “realization” of In C at the site — unfortunately, using what sounds like an undistinguished general midi soundset.
You can imagine Mikuru Asahina playing the repeated high C eighth notes if you wish. Or Zooey Deschanel.
Update: Uploaded a new version with additional voices and a few tweaks.
Visitors here, reading posts such as this, might assume I listen only to Japanese music. That’s not quite true. I listen also to Finnish music. For instance, Gjallarhorn:
I watched the first episode of Mouretsu Pirates twice in two days. The last series I did that for was Madoka a year ago. Pirates has a lot in its favor, including:
A meganekko with a hime haircut and a sailor suit.
A bunny, a ducky and a pink bobblehead pig.
An absence of in-your-face fanservice. ((No surprise, given that Sato’s Shingu featured an outstanding example of anti-fanservice.))
There are a few negatives, e.g., green lipstick, skinny ties and really bad haircuts.
The positives greatly outweigh the negatives, and Mouretsu Pirates looks like, at the very least, a fun show. With Sato at the helm, there’s a good chance that the series will be a satisfyingly complex story and not just an excuse to put pirate hats on pretty girls.
*****
A bit of music:
It’s not just for humans.
If French is the language of love, what is German the language of?
2011 is over. Good riddance. It was a thoroughly crummy year for me, ((2011 was a good yearfor volcanoes.)) and I am not going to compile any retrospective posts. If you want to know about the year in anime, see Ubu’s recaps here and here.
Pop music with a high-gloss finish: Tokyo Incidents, featuring Shiina Ringo.
I’ve also been listening to some “Tokyo virginity pop,” as Urbangarde labels their music. Imagine Hatsune Miku as a real singer in an avante garde-ish band. I don’t like any of their videos — the visuals range from pretentious and silly to pretentious and distasteful (I wonder what percentage of their operating budget goes toward fake blood) — so I’ll just refer you to their website. There are links to videos there; the music sounds better if don’t actually watch the videos but only listen.
Who’s missing? Here’s a name: Yes. Here are some other names: King Crimson, John Mayall, the Pogues, Deep Purple, Fairport Convention, ELP, Joe Satriani and Weird Al. I can add many more, and so can you. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame claims that “… musical excellence shall be the essential qualification of induction,” but are the Sex Pistols really better musicians than the band that recorded Fragile? In my lexicon, “critic” is a synonym for “idiot.” It’s nice that someone remembers the Small Faces, but induction into the R&RHoF is as meaningless an honor as the Nobel Peace Prize.
Some favorite spooky, creepy anime-related tunes and videos for the Halloween weekend.
Ghost Hound was a major disappointment, but the opening song, Mayumi Kojima’s “Poltergeist,” is terrific.
Here is Susumu Hirasawa’s “Parade” from Paprika, illustrated with scenes from the movie.
(Although Hirasawa may be best-known to anime fans for his soundtracks to Satoshi Kon’s work, he’s had a long and interesting career stretching back to the ’70’s. Of particular note is his influential synth-rock band P-Model. Look for the first album, In a Model Room (good luck finding it), and see where Hiroyuki Hayashi really got his ideas. (There’s also a K-On connection, which you can discover for yourself.))
Here’s the cheerful, upbeat ending song to the heartwarming series Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei (So Long, Mr. Despair).
The opening of Hakaba Kitaro (Graveyard Kitaro) was storyboarded by the spasmodically brilliant Kenji Nakamura in Shigeru Mizuki’s style.
Here’s something you might remember from years gone by.
Let’s end with a tender lullaby by Hirasawa from Paranoia Agent. ((If you want something a little livelier, try the opening.))
Life continues insane. Banging my head against the wall hasn’t done much good, so I’m seeing how well tearing my hair out works. Here is some frivolity to amuse you while I try to figure out how I ever got marooned on this ridiculous planet.
Professor Mondo has posted a couple of tunes from his band’s forthcoming EP. You can listen to them here. If you like ’60’s garage rock, you might find them quite listenable. I particularly recommend “Garden Girl” if you have a taste for cheesy Vox organ.
• You’ve heard of Plan Nine from Outer Space, Manos: The Hands of Fate and Robot Monster, of course, but how about King Kung Fu? It’s allegedly as bad as any of them, and it was made right here in Wichita. One of my acquaintances in the SCA had a role in the movie. He refuses to discuss it. ((Another SCA friend was in Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. You can identify her by the paper bag over her head.)) It will be shown on the big screen, quite possibly for the last time ever, a week from tomorrow. I probably should attend this historic event, but I’m pretty sure I have something else I need to do then.
Guitarist Akihiro Tanaka and flutist Toshio Kishimoto
When the international market for anime collapses, Japan can export fingerpickers. AkihiroTanaka took second place in the International Fingerstyle Championship at the Walnut Valley Festival two years ago, first place last year, and was a featured performer this year. Meanwhile, Tomoake Kawabata placed second in this year’s contest Thursday.
Roger Netherton, a young friend of mine, went to Winfield and entered the fiddle contest to show the judges what “old time” fiddling is all about. He now has a new violin and a huge trophy.
You can watch — and listen to — videos of Roger in action here.
This has been a brutal year (-17°F in February, 110°+ repeatedly this summer) and it shows in gardens. Yews and arbor vitae are badly damaged if not dead, hostas are shriveled and sugar maples have few intact leaves left for their fall display. However, the naked ladies, a.k.a. Lycoris sqamigera, spent the worst of the heat undeground and look just dandy right now.
Steven wonders if the background music in this scene from Dog Days is Mozart, perhaps from one of his opera overtures. I don’t recognize it, but my knowledge of Mozart and opera is not encyclopedic. Can you identify it?
[audio:http://shuffly.net/audio/Dog Days mystery tune.mp3]
One of the companies that worked on Dog Days is called “Studio Arkansas.” I wonder if they actually are from there.
Update: If the player above doesn’t work for you, try this.
Interviewer: “What do expect is in store for the future of jazz guitar?”
Yogi: “I’m thinkin’ there’ll be a group of guys who’ve never met talkin’ about it all the time..”
Interviewer: Can you explain jazz?
Yogi: I can’t, but I will. 90% of all jazz is half improvisation. The other half is the part people play while others are playing something they never played with anyone who played that part. So if you play the wrong part, it’s right. If you play the right part, it might be right if you play it wrong enough. But if you play it too right, it’s wrong.
Interviewer: I don’t understand.
Yogi: Anyone who understands jazz knows that you can’t understand it. It’s too complicated. That’s what’s so simple about it.
Interviewer: Do you understand it?
Yogi: No. That’s why I can explain it. If I understood it, I wouldn’t know anything about it.
Interviewer: Are there any great jazz players alive today?
Yogi: No. All the great jazz players alive today are dead. Except for the ones that are still alive. But so many of them are dead, that the ones that are still alive are dying to be like the ones that are dead. Some would kill for it.
Interviewer: What is syncopation?
Yogi: That’s when the note that you should hear now happens either before or after you hear it. In jazz, you don’t hear notes when they happen because that would be some other type of music. Other types of music can be jazz, but only if they’re the same as something different from those other kinds.
Interviewer: Now I really don’t understand.
Yogi: I haven’t taught you enough for you to not understand jazz that well.
