Life continues insane here, and I spend much of my time banging my head against the wall. If you’d like to bang your head along with me, here’s some suitable music.
Category: Music
There’s an excess of real life …
… so things will continue quiet here for a while. In the meantime, here’s Masumi Itou with a piano version of the closing theme to Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita: ((You can listen to the tune in context here, and follow the key changes here.))
1944-2014
R.I.P., Johnny Winter.
Crimson on wheels, with peaches
With bells on, too.
Update: The Professor thinks that this may be the coolest thing ever:
Perhaps, but it lacks Segways.
A few notes
None of this summer’s anime looks likely to break on through my indifference. Yet another Nobunaga story? Momotaro, with fan service? An undead idol? Meh. I have better ways to waste my time. There are a couple I might take a look at anyway — Sailor Moon, to see if it’s any improvement on the original, and Hanayamata, to see the dance — but none of the descriptions has piqued my curiosity in the way that the previews of Shin Sekai Yori and Joshiraku did.
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Who is this unfriendly gentleman? I guarantee you that you’ve heard of him. The answer is here.
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Tricia Spencer and Howard Rains will play a concert that you can listen to live online Thursday evening. I’ve heard Tricia several times at Winfield, and I can certify that she is one hell of a good old-time fiddler.
One more apple
I condensed “Bad Apple” down to two strains in 32 measures, suitable for playing in jam sessions or for dances, which I’m posting in case anyone else might find it useful. It’s in E minor now, a much friendlier key for diatonic instruments than the E-flat minor of the score I worked from. It’s not obligatory to play it as written: fiddle with the rhythm and add a few triplets, and you have a perfectly fine hornpipe. I expect you could tease a strathspey out of it with a bit of ingenuity. For inspiration, see Floating Cloud. (Click to embiggenify, right-click to save to your disc.)
Update: “Bad Apple” as a strathspey and reel can be found here.
Feeling a little Puckish
I found a complete performance of Balanchine‘s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. If you remember the play, you can follow the story pretty well, though Balanchine made many changes in adapting it. Even if you haven’t read Shakespeare, you can enjoy the spectacle, and there’s always the music.
Frederick Ashton also choreographed the play in The Dream. In his version, the transformed Bottom dances on pointe for added grotesquerie.
Digital nostalgia for the analog past
If you have a MIDI keyboard you can plug into your computer and a VST or AU host, here’s a very nice freebie you can play with. It’s based on the Oberheim OB series of synthesizers. It works fine in Logic on my aging Mac laptop. I haven’t had time yet to do more than try some presets, but it sounds very ’80’s to my ear.
Down on the corner
In front of the coffee house yesterday as I returned from another expedition to the botanical garden.
Heirloom apple
How long before “Bad Apple” surpasses “‘Sukiyaki‘” and “Sakura Sakura” as the best-known Japanese melody? And how does Touhou fandom compare with Broniedom? ((There are inevitably Touhou-MLP:FIM crossovers.))
Update: “Bad Apple” on a music box.
And now for something completely different:
Roger, the fiddler above, is the one who mentioned Flying Cloud to me.
Reimu goes to Ireland
A friend pointed me toward some Celtic Touhou, performed by Floating Cloud.
Lissajous rock
What you see is what you hear:
(The site doesn’t state whether the software is Windows or Mac, so it’s probably Windows-only.)
You wouldn’t happen to have a spare $8,468 (plus shipping) on hand, would you?
Too much knowledge
Lately when I’m in the mood for loud, fast and not overly intellectual music, I listen to Onmyouza, a well-dressed “yokai” metal band. Here’s “組曲「鬼子母神」〜鬼拵ノ唄,” transliterated by Google as “Kumikyoku ‘kishimojin’ — oni Koshirae no uta.”
One of the advantages of listening to music in languages you don’t know is that you can pretend that the words are literate and worth hearing. I foolishly became curious about Onmyouza’s lyrics and looked for translations. I found a video with subtitles of one of their other pieces, and I kinda wish I hadn’t. If you understand what the song above is about, please don’t tell me.
Second rose of the year …
Positively 12th Street
I’m feeling a bit draggy this morning. Maybe some Roy Clark will help.
Public service announcement
Gosh. All this time I’ve been a tool of Satan, albeit an unwitting and not very good one.
(Via Small Dead Animals.)
Twenty-five keys
When I first saw this video, I immediately wanted the little green keyboard that Masaki Kurihara plays. It looked like I could carry it in a backpack on my bicycle or at the campgrounds at Winfield, and I would not need to find an electrical outlet or a USB port. After some searching, I determined that it was a Suzuki Andes 25F, a sort of panpipe with a keyboard. Unfortunately, the ones available for sale then were too expensive to consider. I recently checked again and found much better prices. The best was at a Japanese shop affiliated with Rakuten Global Market, which is where I ordered it. Placing the order was a bit complicated but not too tedious, and it arrived fairly quickly once it was shipped.
It has a two-octave range, from F to F. I frequently play in D, A and E, and a few more notes at the low end would have been extremely helpful. Still, there are plenty of tunes that fit well on it. The keys are smaller than regular piano keys. People with small fingers have an advantage; those with larger hands, like me, will find that it takes practice to avoid playing two notes simultaneously with one finger. The lower octave has a pleasant sound, but the upper octave gets shrill, and I avoid playing the highest notes. Unlike most flute-sounding instruments, you can play chords on it. Thirds sound good; fifths, triads and octaves can be unpleasant. Also, the more notes you play at once, the more breath it requires. Glissandos are easy.
The biggest problem is that there is no good way to hold it. There’s no handle on the instrument itself, no strap to slip your hand into. There is an indentation on the angled side that I think is intended for a hand hold, but it feels awkward and your arm soon gets tired. There’s a neck strap, but it isn’t secure. I’ll have to think about this and see what I can devise.
More silly sounds
Here’s an obnoxious setting of an old fiddle tune, “June Apple.” It’s mainly an excuse to make funny noises with Razor. Beware: this is very bass-heavy.
Update: Uploaded a ever-so-slightly less cacophonous version. All the voices except the percussion now are Razor.
Did we land, or were we shot down?
Miscellaneous links and nonsense:
David Bentley Hart, from the May 2014 First Things:
Journalism is the art of translating abysmal ignorance into execrable prose.
A look at brilliant, psychotic Joe Meek, who changed the sound of music.
Stereo pictures from WWI. A couple of notes: stereograms made for hand-held viewers use the parallel method of viewing, not the crossed-eye. I.e., the right eye focuses on the right image, the left eye on the left. It is possible to free-fuse the images, though it is easier done than explained. Let your eyes relax and drift apart until the images of a well-defined region in the pictures, such a the bright sky through the roof in the above image pair, start to overlap. Focus on that region until the images snap together, and you should then be able to see the entire scene in perspective. (You’ll need to sit back at least two feet from the monitor if you want to see the full-size images at the link in stereo.)
Kilt optional
Today is Tartan Day. Here are a few Scottish tunes: The Barren Rocks o’ Aden / Munro’s Rant (Angus Cumming, 1782) / Stirling Castle / Miss Kitty Gordon of Earlston’s Reel (Robert Riddell, 1787).