Actually, we do see Kirika smile — rarely — during Noir. This screen capture is from episode six, “Lost Kitten.”
When your guest artist is late …
… you make do with whoever is available.
Count five and Miss Michiko
Astro is counting down his top five endings. It looks like fun, so I’ll probably post my own list, though it will have to wait until next week. Astro’s fourth choice, incidentally, almost made my list. It will be interesting to see if there is something we both pick.
As Astro notes, it’s harder to find good endings than good openings. Openings are intended to sell the show; often the trailer for a show is the opening. Consequently, producers typically lavish great care and expense on the opening. In contrast, the ending usually just serves to list the necessary credits, and the production is consequently perfunctory. Sometimes the ending tune might be worth hearing, but the visuals are rarely interesting. Nevertheless, I managed to come up with five that are worth both hearing and seeing.
*****
Here’s something I forgot to post back in October. It’s from the ninth episode of Denno Coil.
[flv width=”704″ height=”400″]http://tancos.net/flv/wp-content/uploads/michiko stories.flv[/flv]
Testing, testing
Janacek, Sinfonietta, first movement: Allegretto
London Symphony Orchestra, Claudio Abbado, conductor
Can you see the mp3 player?
How about this one?
If you don’t see either player, click on the title of this post to open it in its own page, and see if that makes a difference.
The horror, the horror
Think before you click. Once you see this, you can’t unsee it. Or unhear it.
(Blame Robert for this one.)
Query
“Voices,” Yoko Kanno, Macross Plus OST
Can you see the mp3 player?
How about this one?
I post a lot of music on my other weblog, and recently I’ve been receiving reports that the music players are not appearing on the page. I wonder if that’s a problem here, too, since this also runs on WordPress.
Ear training
If you wanted to expose someone to classical music for the first time, and plant in them the same love and enjoyment you have for it – what music would you choose for their listening pleasure?
Let’s make it more difficult and limit it to…say five selections all told, whether they are complete symphonies, single canons, what have you. Pick from your favorite period, or go across the board.
What to recommend depends on your victim. If it’s your own small child, what you choose is less important than the example you set. Listen to a variety of good music and let osmosis do its work.
For older listeners, my instinct would be to favor shorter pieces over longer, suites over symphonies, accessibility over complexity, and to emphasize variety and liveliness. Robert covered the period from Vivaldi to Beethoven with his suggestions. You can regard the following as a supplement to his list.
Chopin: the ballades. Or the polonaises, or the preludes, or the etudes — Chopin’s output mostly fits neatly into CD-sized sets, and they’re all good introductions to 19th-century piano music.
Mendelssohn: the overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Sure, it’s over-familiar, but it’s still wonderful, and it might be new to your listener.
Dvorak: the Slavonic Dances. Lively, melodious and not too long. Here’s Op. 46, #7 in C minor.
Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, Jonel Perlea, conductor
Prokofiev: Toccata, Op. 11. Bartok and Prokofiev make Metallica seem like wimps. (If your listener emphatically does not care for heavy music, substitute Debussy’s La cathedrale engloutie.)
Gyorgy Sandor, piano
Stravinsky, Octet for Wind Instruments. This may be a stretch for beginning listeners, but I find this bit of neoclassicism more immediately likeable than the big ballets.
There is plenty of other music that comes to mind, of course, but these will do for now.
A final suggestion: be wary of budget releases and older recordings. I’m tempted to recommend Lipatti’s performances of the Chopin watzes, which are playing as I write this, but those were recorded nearly sixty years ago and sound like it. For neophytes, you want not only recordings of good performances but also recordings that sound good to untrained ears.
*****
One of my commenters notes that she sometimes can’t see the mp3 players. Has anyone else had trouble with them?
Thirteen bad ideas
Nobody needs any of these. The twelfth, in particular, is absolutely inexcusable.
(Via TexasBestGrok.)
Just wondering
Does the RCBfA have any interest in ballet?
*****
I’ve got eight gigabytes of Nutcracker pictures to survey and edit. That’s roughly equivalent to 48 rolls of film. I might post about classical music for beginners later today or tomorrow, but otherwise don’t expect much activity here for a while.
Robocop and unicorn
Twenty-five starry nights
Cabbages and rhinoceroses
Robert notes that today is the birthday of Neil Innes, who, in addition to being the Seventh Python, was also part of the Bonzo Dog Band. Here are a couple of tunes Innes wrote or co-wrote for the band. The first was produced by “Apollo C. Vermouth,” better-known as Paul McCartney. The second features narration by the late, great Vivian Stanshall.
[mp3]http://tancos.net/audio/Im the Urban Spaceman.mp3[/mp3]
Rhinocratic Oaths
[mp3]http://tancos.net/audio/Rhinocratic Oaths.mp3[/mp3]
A little more nightmare music
There are new videos out from Aleksey Igudesman and Richard Hyung-ki Joo, aided and abetted by Gidon Kremer.
Whole lotta Liszt
In a discussion of anime involving classical music, the writer at Transientem included links to several animated versions of Liszt’s second Martian Hungarian rhapsody, including performances by Tom & Jerry
Quills or hammers?
Here are two recordings of the Prelude and Fugue in C minor from Book One of The Well-Tempered Clavier: on harpsichord, played by Malcolm Hamilton; and, on piano, played by Takahiro Sonoda. Which do you prefer?
[mp3]http://tancos.net/audio/MH-Prelude 2 in C Minor.mp3[/mp3]
[mp3]http://tancos.net/audio/MH-Fugue 2 in C Minor.mp3[/mp3]
Piano:
[mp3]http://tancos.net/audio/TS-Prelude 2 in C Minor.mp3[/mp3]
[mp3]http://tancos.net/audio/TS-Fugue 2 in C Minor.mp3[/mp3]
A few more dance pictures
Agricultural space tragedy
Via Shamus, the story behind Star Wars. See also Shamus’ updated treatment.
I was never a Star Wars fan — I bailed out after The Empire Strikes Back — but I was surprised to learn just how much worse than the final product the original script was. (Via Dirty Harry.)
Towering sponge
Here’s the most bizarre video I’ve seen recently. (Patience is required; it takes forever to load.)
There are more sponges and other three-dimensional fractals here, here and here.
Addendum: For sheer trippiness, nothing beats the Mandelbrot set. Here’s the classic fractal video, “Nothing but Zooms,” presented in four parts. Unfortunately, the image quality is low, even for YouTube.
Part one
Part two
Part three
Part four
Here are some more videos of varying degrees of gimmickiness featuring the ultimate paisley.
This one
That one
This other one
What’s the Mandelbrot set? Let Jonathan Coulton explain. (N.B.: naughty words.)
Enjoy everything
It looks like there never will be an anime of Yotsuba&! It may be just as well. Movie adaptations of favorite books are invariably inferior to the originals, no matter how skilled the adaptors, and that probably goes for anime versions of manga as well (I wonder if I would like Cardcaptor Sakura as much if I were familiar with the manga). To assuage your disappointment, there does exist a soundtrack for Yotsuba&!, here and here. (Technically, they’re “image albums” inspired by the manga.) The music is by Masaki Kurihara and the Kuricorder Pops Orchestra, the same crew reponsible for the Azumanga Daioh soundtrack. ((There is quite a bit more music for Azumanga Daioh out there that has never been released in the USA, including a second OST album that is nearly as good as the first.)) Here’s a suite from the first Yotsuba&! album, titled “??????????????” which the Google translator renders as “I stand little risk of saliva.”
*****
While I’m on the subject of music, here are a couple of a capella pieces that caught my ear. The first is from the Kaiba soundtrack. The second you should all recognize.
Update: Actually, Yotsuba&! has been animated, after a fashion:
Bulgar, sher and freylekh
You can find good music in the most unlikely places, e.g., Klezmer on an anime weblog.