Category: Tune of the day

Don’t go stepping on people’s feet.

Liszt tried hard, but he couldn’t top Berlioz’s arrangement of the “Rákóczi March.” It’s impossible to play this too loudly.

Would you believe a Messiaen piece that is easy to follow and fun? Well, that may be a stretch, but while you could probably write a doctoral dissertation on the musical techniques in use, this one is distinctly playful.

There are strange things in the Japanese imagination. This is from the soundtrack to Mushishi, a 2005-6 series about things weirder than fungi.

There are strange things in Poland, stranger even than the Polish alphabet. These include Księżyc.

Nineteenth-century guitar virtuoso Mauro Giuliani arranged several suites of tunes from Rossini operas for guitar, such as this.

Continue reading “Tune of the day #300”

A suite of music from Girls und Panzer, an absurd and absurdly popular anime franchise.

Ernie Freeman plays the piano. The dancers are Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers in the 1941 film Hellzapoppin’. Rimsky-Korsakov grinds his teeth.

Intermediate Zappa, with soloist Jean-Luc Ponty.

Alkan may have been the one pianist who could intimidate Liszt, but not everything he wrote was a superspectacular hypervirtuosic showpiece. Here’s a relatively simple piece, “Héraclite et Démocrite,” in which two ancient philosophers butt heads.

It’s been a while since I last posted any Gentle Giant.

One of the more absurd projects that Carl Stalling worked on. You can watch Porky in Wackyland here.

Music your grandparents loved. I don’t know about the dancing, though.

Some Scottish harp music. Kinnaird occasionally turned up on the old Thistle and Shamrock radio program. She had the most melodious speaking voice I’ve ever heard. She made Fiona Ritchie sound plain.

I got thoroughly sick of “Spinning Wheel” a century ago, but some of Blood, Sweat and Tears’ other tunes are not bad. Singer David Clayton-Thomas died last month.

Update: I’m not the only one who remembered this song on this day.

Dave Greenslade, keyboardist with Colosseum and Greenslade, died last month.

IF was a British jazz rock band that never quite hit the big time, despite extensive touring. They formed in 1969 and disbanded in 1975, but I never knew that they had existed until I got online around the turn of the century.

From the soundtrack of the horrifyingly kawaii anime Binchou-tan, composed by Taku Iwasaki. The show has never been released in the West, but the foolhardy can find it online.

Bach with pure intervals, via the moveable frets on a microtonal guitar.

Let’s spend a few minutes with Elana and the boys.