Trivia that matter
More than you ever wanted to know about the Japanese music industry.
(Via Anime Instrumentality Blog.)
Speaking of mullets …
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In case there is anyone on the planet who still hasn’t seen the grandest of all Pythagorean devices:
Here’s a story and some videos about it.
(Via Steven Riddle.)
Update: here’s another noteworthy contraption currently under construction:
(Via the Borderline Sociopath.)
I doubt that anyone will be surprised by the first-place winner in the best anime soundtrack poll. Cowboy Bebop received more votes than the second- and third-place winners combined. I had expected that Noir would take second, but it was eventually overtaken by FLCL and Death Note. Here’s the top ten:
1. Cowboy Bebop (18.0%)
2. FLCL (8.0%)
3. Death Note (7.0%)
4. Noir (7.0%)
5. .hack//SIGN (6.0%)
5. Vision of Escaflowne (6.0%)
7. Lucky Star (5.0%)
8. Haibane Renmei (5.0%)
8. Macross Frontier (5.0%)
10. Mushishi (5.0%)
The other nominees were Ghost in the Shell SAC (4.0%); Princess Mononoke (4.0%); Azumanga Daioh (4.0%); Aria (3.0%); Code Geass/R2 (3.0%); Neon Genesis Evangelion (2.0%); Simoun (2.0%); ef: a tale of memories (2.0%); The Twelve Kingdoms (2.0%); Mai-HiME (1.0%); and, Last Exile (0.0%)
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So, who’s the worst character in anime? I changed the question to “most annoying” in the poll widget to make it clear that I’m looking for the most poorly conceived, pointlessly irritating or useless character, not the most evil. I added a couple more candidates whom I think should have been nominated, and I changed the representative of Sailor Moon to ChibiUsa, whom I had forgotten about.
Not anime, but of interest to science-fiction and music fans: Frëd Himebaugh of the Fredösphere has composed a fifteen-minute opera using Terry Bisson’s short story “They’re Made Out of Meat” as the libretto. You can purchase it here for 89¢. See also Frëd’s earlier posts here and here.
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In case there’s anyone who hasn’t yet seen it, here’s the best Touhou video I’ve seen in a while:
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Catholic News Service apparently didn’t think to google the name they chose for their multimedia service.
Frëd Himebaugh of the Fredösphere has composed a fifteen-minute opera using Terry Bisson’s short story “They’re Made Out of Meat” as the libretto. You can purchase it here. See also Frëd’s earlier posts here and here.
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Here’s one of the more impressive videos I’ve seen recently. The characters and tune are from the vast Touhou project, but you don’t need to know anything about that to appreciate the phantasmagorical transformations.
I spent most of the weekend at the Walnut Valley Festival. It’s primarily devoted to acoustic string music, particularly bluegrass, but there were some items of interest to students of Japanese popular culture.
• The second-place winner in the fingerpicking championship was Akihiro Tanaka, from Kyoto, Japan. I wasn’t able to get down to Winfield on Thursday, when the contest was held, but the fingerpick winners made an appearance on the main stage Friday evening. Here’s what Tanaka played then: ((The sound is less than wonderful. Stage one is a noisy place.))
• I spent several hours listening to the jam sessions at Carp Camp. ((I don’t bring my dulcimer to Winfield unless I’m camping. This year I day-tripped, so I just listened.)) Here’s the tune that the campers call “Finish (sic) Polka.” It sounds strangely familiar.
(This is not my recording, but Carp Camp’s own from last year. The campers played the tune at least twice this weekend, but neither time did I have my recorder handy.)
• One of this year’s Carp Camp catchphrases (if you write it as a single word, you get six consecutive consonants. Can you think of any other English words like that?) was “Don’t hurt the old people.” The third Monday in September (usually the day after Winfield), is celebrated in the Japan as Respect for the Aged Day.
Fiddlers at Carp Camp, budget- and economy-sized.
My vacation last week started disastrously (see below), but once I arrived at my friends’ home it improved markedly. One of the highlights was an impromptu jam session with the young fiddler Roger and a couple of his friends. I just happened to have my little portable recorder at hand.
Different instruments require different micing techniques. Fiddles, I’ve read, sound best with the microphone positioned two or three feet above the fiddle. With banjos, the further from the microphone, the better — in the next room, say, or across the street, or in the next county.
Old Mother Logo:
Cluck Old Hen:
Update: Here’s Roger in action at a contra dance:
Celebrating well-groomed, cuddly predators …
Schoenberg’s Opus 11, performed by cats.
… and the 88 counties of Ohio. ((“… this little application is not at all idiot-proofed, so my apologies if you are an idiot.”))
(Via Frëd, Lynn and Charles G. Hill.)
Here’s the story.
This tune is part of a long tradition in music. An earlier example is No Strings Attached’s “Broken Key Boogie,” which commemorates modifications to Randy Marchany’s keyboard made by another airline (TWA, if I remember correctly).
Do you tweet? Are your thoughts expressible in no more than 140 characters? Perhaps you should reconsider. Here are a variety of philosophical arguments against using Twitter. For instance:
Natural Law Argument
(1) It is wrong to do what is not natural.
(2) There is nothing remotely natural about broadcasting the minutiae of your life to all and sundry whenever it takes your fancy.
(3) Therefore, Twittering is wrong.
(Via First Things.)
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A useful term:
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A piece on the Montreaux jazz festival included this note about an unlikely pairing:
Here’s that cartoon, a classic combination of music and violence. The pianist you hear is likely Shura Cherkassky.
Charles Ives is often celebrated for having anticipated many of the innovations of twentieth-century music. Less often noted is that he also anticipated, if that’s the right word, P.D.Q. Bach. Some years back, an acquaintance for whom I played a recording of Three Places in New England was scandalized by the second movement — real music isn’t supposed to be funny, he said. (Tell that to Mozart.) Here it is, the ideal music for the Fourth of July:
It’s become trendy in recent years to complain that the music of P.D.Q. Bach overshadows that of the composer Peter Schickele. I’ll grant that the humor is hit-and-miss, with misses predominating on the later recordings. Sometimes, though, the jokes work. Here’s the fourth movement of the “Unbegun Symphony.” ((Strictly speaking, this isn’t P.D.Q. Bach, since Schickele claimed it as his own, so to speak.))
If you’ve got a couple of hours to kill while waiting for it to get dark enough for fireworks tonight, why don’t you invite 35 of your closest friends over with their instruments and run through some American music of a different sort. Here’s the score to Terry Riley’s In C.
It’s time for the final round of the current poll: which anime has the best soundtrack? There was a five-way tie for seventh place in the second round, so there are twenty-one to choose from. You can only vote for one this time.
The rematch:
(Via John C. Wright.)
A bit of Copland:
Hoedown from Rodeo from Eleanor Stewart on Vimeo.
(Via dm00.)
And a little dance:
(Via Mark Sullivan.)
The last one reminds me of this classic.
One of the books I tested my new glasses with is Alex Ross’ The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, recommended by Steven. Here’s a trivia quiz based on it.
Identify the speaker:
1. “I have actually outlived myself.”
2. “Defend me, Spaniards, from the Germans, who do not understand and have never understood music.”
3. “All the doctors who wanted to forbid me to smoke and to drink are dead.”
4. “Beauty of sound is beside the point.”
5. “Thank God! Finally a Reich Chancellor who is interested in art!”
6. “There is, thank God, a large segment of our population that never heard of J.S. Bach.”
7. “Beethoven was wrong!”
8. True or false: Debussy served as the thirty-third grand master of the Prieuré de Sion.
9. Who told a tenor saxophone player to play a descending major seventh with “sex appeal”?
10. Who was known to wear “a peach-colored shirt, a green tie with white polka-dots, a knit belt of the most vivid purple with a large and ostentatious gold buckle, and an unbelievably loud gray suit with lots of black and brown stripes”?
11. Who, according to Pierre Boulez, “… had displayed ‘the most ostentatious and obsolete romanticism'”?
12. Who, according to Pierre Boulez, was “… a ‘performing monkey” whose methods betrayed ‘fascist tendencies'”?
13. Who was apparently born near Cologne in 1928, but actually was of extraterrestrial origin and had lived many past lives?
14. What is 8’37” better-known as?
15. Who was “the best drug connection in New York”?
The problem with the poll widget had to do with the update to the plugin, not WordPress 2.8. I was able to get the poll working again by dumping the new version of the plugin and reinstalling the previous one.
This is the second, and last, preliminary round. The top ten from this poll will advance to the final round. You can vote for up to three candidates.
It looks like upgrading to WordPress 2.8 broke the poll widget. Nevertheless, I think there were enough votes to pick the first round winners:
Cowboy Bebop (42%)
FLCL (23%)
Haibane Renmei (23%)
.hack//SIGN (17%)
Aria (15%)
Last Exile (13%)
ef: a tale of memories (11%)
Death Note (11%)
Azumanga Daioh (11%)
Code Geass/R2 (11%)
These ten will advance to the final round of the best anime OST poll. I’ll post the second round once I figure out how to get the poll working again.
