Trivia that matter
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.
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.
In front of the coffee house yesterday as I returned from another expedition to the botanical garden.
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.
A friend pointed me toward some Celtic Touhou, performed by Floating Cloud.
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?
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.
I’m feeling a bit draggy this morning. Maybe some Roy Clark will help.
Gosh. All this time I’ve been a tool of Satan, albeit an unwitting and not very good one.
(Via Small Dead Animals.)
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.
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.
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.)
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).
The Mi.Mu glove looks like it might be fun to play with. It’s a pity I don’t have $4,000 to spare for “double glover” status at this time.
(Via Dustbury.)
You can play John Williams on a fancy-schmancy theatre organ, but to really do his music justice, you’ve got to have a tuba. And a ukelele.
Here’s “Grace O’Malley” as she stands, this time with a proper virtual piano. I’m sick of her. I may return to this catastrophe later and do some severe pruning and rewriting, but right now I just want to work on something — anything — else.
I found a couple of free prepared piano sample libraries and thought I’d see what my current project would sound like as played by John Cage. This used to be an Irish tune.
A new box of noisemakers just arrived. You will probably see even less of me than usual for the next few weeks.
Have a happy Ragnarök.
Update: It does take a while to install twelve DVD’s worth of applications and sample libraries, but not quite 90 hours.
What do you call a hexagon with ten sides?
… (yesterday, actually) Winsor McCay’s Gertie the Dinosaur debuted. (The live-action first half of Gertie is here.)
*****
Today’s headline: Russia Issues Terror Alert For ‘Moose And Squirrel’
*****
So, what is the state of animation a hundred years later? Let’s take a quick look at the winter 2014 anime season.
The only show I can recommend is the hellish comedy Hozuki no Reitetsu. Much of the humor depends on knowledge of Japanese legends and folklore as well as contemporary Japanese culture. If you’re not familiar with the story of Momotaro, for instance, you’ll miss many of the jokes in the first episode. Even so, enough of the humor survives translation, ((Sometimes excessively free translation; e.g., in the fourth episode, the rabbit’s victims are tanuki, not badgers, but “We don’t need no stinkin’ tanuki” doesn’t have the same impact.)) and this account of the life of a competent, dour oni in an underworld populated largely by flakes and silly people nicely illustrates the close relationship between humor and horror. It also features the second-most bizarre ending animation of the season, starting with the second episode.
If you’re interested in the art of animation, Space Dandy might be worth watching. (There are episode-by-episode discussions here.) The title character is an unsympathetic jerk, however, and the stories aren’t particularly interesting. It’s probably best enjoyed without subtitles and without sound.
The third episode of World Conquest: Zvezda Plot reminded me of Cold Turkey and Yasutaka Tsutsui’s “The Last Smoker,” and I wondered if it might be another Excel Saga. However, the fourth episode was merely weird, and the fifth dumb, and I’m losing patience.
Witch Craft Works has the winter’s most bizarre ending animation. It’s also the second series to feature an iron maiden (but not Iron Maiden). Five episodes in, it looks like the dweebish protagonist is caught in the middle of a war between the witches of order and the witches of chaos, and that every female he knows is more than she appears to be. It also seems that he himself has a past he doesn’t know about. I hesitate to give Witch Craft Works a recommendation. Every episode adds complications and new characters, and I will be surprised if the crew can bring the show to a satisfactory resolution in just twelve episodes. However, thus far it’s held my attention, and, despite the female lead’s over-ample bust, fan service has been negligible.
Nothing else I’ve sampled is worth mentioning.
