Tag: Music

Four balls?

Pete says that baseball is

A game without discernable rules or purpose; I deduced that teams compete to collect points, but those are awarded arbitrarily, so the formal objective does nothing to add any sense to the proceedings.

I just happened to digitize The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart last week. Here’s Newhart’s take on baseball from about 50 years ago:

[audio:http://tancos.net/audio/Nobody Will Ever Play Baseball.mp3]

While I’m uploading audio, here’s a selection from another curiosity I came across: string quartet arrangements of music from Rozen Maiden. Here’s a sample:

[audio:http://tancos.net/audio/Otome wa Tenshin Ranman.mp3]

*****

I have jury duty this week, so I’ll probably be spending the days at the courthouse and the evenings at the office. See you all next week.

Update: I was spared jury duty. (Actually, The plaintiff in the case I was in the pool for had suffered a broken ankle and knee injuries. It was no surprise that I wasn’t empaneled, given my own broken ankle and knee problems.)

Mao-chan, Miku, etc.

When the Fnools invaded Earth, they disguised themselves as two-foot-tall real estate salemen, figuring that no one would take them seriously until too late. ((See Philip K. Dick’s “The War with the Fnools.”)) The aliens in Mao-chan adopt a similar strategy: by assuming mercilessly kawaii forms, the invaders make the Japanese defense forces reluctant to engage them in combat, lest the human soldiers be seen as bullies. The Japanese fight cuteness with cuteness: the head of the land forces enlists his eight-year-old granddaughter, Mao, to battle the invaders, arming her with a baton, a full-size model of a tank, and a clover-shaped pin that transforms her into a not-terribly-competent but very cute mahou shoujo. Mao soon is joined by a couple of other eight-year-old girls: Misora, representing the air force, and Sylvie, representing the navy, both recruited by their doting grandfathers. Mao and Misora are ordinary grade-school girls, as kids in anime go, but Sylvie is distinctly Osaka-ish.

Continue reading “Mao-chan, Miku, etc.”

Steve, Steve, Steve, Stephen, Steve, …

The Maximum Leader says he doesn’t know who all the Steves are in the current poll. Let’s see if we can do something about that. Here are several of the Steves in action.

Stephen Bennett: “C.E.O. (Comanche Executive Officer)”

[audio:http://tancos.net/audio/CEO.mp3]

Steven King: “Medley: Puttin on the Ritz/42nd Street/It Don’t Mean a Thing” ((The bass you hear is actually the sound of the two lowest strings on King’s guitar run through a separate pickup and electronically transposed an octave down.))

[audio:http://tancos.net/audio/Medley_Ritz_42nd_Mean A Thing.mp3]

Steve Lukather: “Naima”

[audio:http://tancos.net/audio/Naima.mp3]

Steve Morse: “Cruise Missile” ((Jerry Peek, bass, and Rod Morgenstein, drums))

[audio:http://tancos.net/audio/Cruise Missile.mp3]

Steve Stevens:”Melt” ((Tony Levin, bass, and Terry Bozzio, drums))

[audio:http://tancos.net/audio/Melt.mp3]

Steve Vai: “The Attitude Song” ((Stuart Hamm, bass, and Chris Frazier, drums))

[audio:http://tancos.net/audio/The Attitude Song.mp3]

For Steves Hackett and Howe, dig out your old Genesis and Yes albums.

I regret that I don’t have any Steve Kaufman handy (what I have is on cassette, but my tape deck died several years ago). He is the only person to place first three times in the National Flatpick Competition at Winfield (Mark O’Connor only did it twice). If flatpicking is what you like, he’s your guy.

If you don’t know who Stevie Ray Vaughn is, you have some remedial listening to do.

Update: In celebration of April 15, here’s Stevie Ray:

[audio:http://tancos.net/audio/Taxman.mp3]

Today’s mental picture

Banshee on Ohayocon:

And to make matters worse, the other events were a cheerleading convention and a Christian youth group convention. I mean, not necessarily antagonistic if physically separated… but apparently the Witchblade cosplayers kept walking into the youth group talks, and that’s just not going to end well….

She’s also been posting singable translations of the songs from the Natsume Yujinchou series. If I understand what she’s doing correctly, these are paraphrases of English translations she’s found.

*****

I’ve been doing everything but watching anime lately. I’ll get back to it — I’ve got Tokyo Godfathers sitting next to the computer, and I want to watch the rest of at least the first season of Natsume Yujinchou — but right now there are other priorities. In the meantime, here’s a curiosity: a piano version of a tune you might recognize.

[audio:http://tancos.net/audio/Kinjirareta Asobi.mp3]

Pop quiz

After looking through this album cover quiz, I knew I had to put together my own. Here are portions of 51 covers from the age of vinyl. See how many you can identify. Most are progressive rock and British folk, but there are classics from other genres as well. Many were fairly well-known in their day; others may be challenges to identify. I’ll be astonished if anyone ((other than Steven)) gets them all. I’ll post the answers in a day or two.

Continue reading “Pop quiz”

Testing, testing

[mp3]http://tancos.net/audio/Sinfonietta first movement.mp3[/mp3]
Janacek, Sinfonietta, first movement: Allegretto
London Symphony Orchestra, Claudio Abbado, conductor

Can you see the mp3 player?

How about this one?

[audio:http://tancos.net/audio/Sinfonietta first movement.mp3]

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.

Query

[mp3]http://tancos.net/audio/08-voices.mp3[/mp3]
“Voices,” Yoko Kanno, Macross Plus OST

Can you see the mp3 player?

How about this one?

[audio:http://tancos.net/audio/08-voices.mp3]

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

Here’s the challenge:

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.

[mp3]http://tancos.net/audio/Slavonic Dance 7 Op 46.mp3[/mp3]
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.)

[mp3]http://tancos.net/audio/Prok_op11_Toccata.mp3[/mp3]
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?

Update: here are links to the music: Dvorak, Prokofiev.

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.

I’m the Urban Spaceman
[mp3]http://tancos.net/audio/Im the Urban Spaceman.mp3[/mp3]

Rhinocratic Oaths
[mp3]http://tancos.net/audio/Rhinocratic Oaths.mp3[/mp3]