Posts tagged as music
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- Tuesday, February 24, 2009:
Composing Spotlight: Clown Facades I sat down last night to write a Museday, but was struggling with inspiration. Instead, I decided to relisten to one of the pieces I wrote in my brief stint as a fulll-time composer: a commission I received in the spring of my 4th year of perpetual college. On the few times I received commissions, I always tried to nail down as many rules as possible up front, because more constraints generally lead to more creativity in trying to break those constraints down. Comp... - Thursday, December 04, 2008:
Review Day: CDs Galore Set the Mood , David Jordan: I purchased this import album based on the strength of the UK hit single, "Sun Goes Down". David Jordan does have talent that goes beyond looking like an angsty Wallace Fennell, and the songs on the CD are catchy, if more at home on an episode of American Idol than anywhere else. The tunes are forgettable but fun, and the only noticeable shortcoming is when Jordan tries to sing below his vocal range and ends up sounding like a character ... - Tuesday, September 16, 2008:
Contest Day Name That Tune: Cacophony Edition It's been seven months since the last Name That Tune contest, mainly because it took about two months to mix these samples to perfection. There are 20 song fragments bunched together into just 4 clips. The person who correctly identifies the most songs out of 20 will win a gift certificate for $20 to Amazon.com. Read on for the rules! Each clip contains five songs mashed together, one from each of five genres. Yo... - Monday, August 18, 2008:
Coldplay Day On Friday, XM Radio finally ended its ridiculous musical experiment, "Thirty Days of Coldplay", during which Channel Crazy-European-Techno-Music was replaced by Channel Soft-Rock-Coldplay-All-Hours-Of-The-Day. Doing the math, there are 720 hours of airtime to be filled with Coldplay's entire discography which (according to Allmusic.com) amounts to about 60 songs. At four minutes per song (five in the ones that employ the typical soft-rock vamp which almost puts them in... - Wednesday, June 11, 2008:
Review Day: HAARP H.A.A.R.P. is the latest release from Muse -- a CD/DVD set from a live concert at Wembly Stadium in the UK. I'm usually not a fan of live CDs and I was disappointed with their previous live album, Hullbaloo Soundtrack, which was full of audience noise, rougher less crowd-pleasing B-sides, and an imbalanced mix of vocals under the guitars. This time, however, I was pleasantly surprised. The CD offers 70 minutes of hits from all four of their major albums ... - Thursday, March 06, 2008:
Review Day: Girls and Boys Girls and Boys is a CD by Ingrid Michaelson, whose music has appeared on XM Radio, Grey's Anatomy, and Old Navy commercials. It's a mix of styles from KT Tunstall to Jem to a non-annoying version of Vanessa Carlton, and was one of several mini-presents Rebecca left me when she went to Guatemala last month. I ended up liking the CD so much that I downloaded the whole thing online to support the artist through Amazon's sleek MP3 store. Music on the CD runs a gamu... - Wednesday, January 23, 2008:
Memory Day: Comedy Records While driving home from the super-secret pencil factory in Bailey's Crossroad yesterday, I stumbled upon an Interview with Ray Stevens on XM Radio channel 2 -- I was trying to get to UPOP on 29 and didn't hit the 9 fast enough. The interviewer himself was annoying, as most interviewers and talk show hosts are wont to be, but it was a fun trip down memory lane to hear some of Ray's greatest hits and his commentary on them. To shamelessly milk this bit of nostalgia, I've dec... - Thursday, December 06, 2007:
Review Day: Avenue Q What do you do with a B.A. in English, What is my life going to be? Four years of college and plenty of knowledge, Have earned me this useless degree. I can't pay the bills yet, 'Cause I have no skills yet, The world is a big scary place. After the "Avenue Q theme and opening sequence" play on two massive television screens that drop down from the ceiling, this is the first song of the evening, sung by the fresh-faced puppet, Princ... - Thursday, November 01, 2007:
Review Day: The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee We went to see this "play with music" at the National Theatre last Saturday following a nice meal at the inexpensive Chef Geoff's around the corner. The 100 minute show is a parody of your typical televised spelling bee, with zany characters such as the antisocial nerd from TJ, the crazy home-schooled boy named Leaf, the perfect Asian who knows six languages, and the Boy Scout who gets an unfortunate erection in front of the audience. There are no sweeping themes or French... - Thursday, August 30, 2007:
Musical Musings / Review Day Amazon Marketplace has been the catalyst to kick start my long dormant CD-buying habits. In the past I averaged maybe five CDs per year, but the ability to get brand new CDs (still shrink-wrapped) for $3 to $6 each drives my clicky yuppy fingers wild. At this price, CDs with a musical prowess roughly equivalent to an undergraduate student trumpet recital recorded from the Green Room are much easier to dismiss without regrets. Night on My Side by Gemma Hayes&nbs... - Thursday, August 02, 2007:
Review Day: Philosophy Tree I generally keep a stash of CDs in the car for those occasions when I'm not in the mood for anything on XM Radio (or when Ted Kelly is reciting the complete UPOP Station Slogan on-air for the fifth time in five minutes in case we've forgotten that we're listening to the Pop Heard Around the World, With Global Hits from Coast to Coast in America and on Worldspace Shut The Hell Up and Play the Damn Songs Amen). One way to determine the strength of an album is to put it in th... - Thursday, July 19, 2007:
Governor's School Week: Part IV of V Before my senior year, I was a decent (if uninspired) trumpet player, easily making last chair or first alternate in All-District Bands. Although I was no Jason Price, I had a strong sense of rhythm and sightreading, and a secret weapon, my "beautiful tone". It didn't matter if I was playing a marching band tune or the solo in a Jim Swearingen song -- the only compliment I would ever get was "Wow, you have a beautiful tone!". I was the Tone Master -- if printers ran on tone instead o... - Thursday, June 14, 2007:
Musical Musings Last weekend, we went to hear Rebecca Berlin at a local Starbucks which was not much larger than I am (and not nearly as good-looking, of course). She rotated sets with her sister, and played a few songs together as well. Overall, it was a strong performance, despite the fact that Starbucks never turned off their piped-in background music. I bought a copy of her demo CD, which you might enjoy if you're into coffeehousey singy music -- her voice isn't perfectly polished, but it'... - Thursday, March 29, 2007:
Musical Musings I picked up three new CDs this month. The first is Acoustic Extravaganza by KT Tunstall, and contains a batch of new acoustic works, as well as some new renditions of her old stuff. The best song on on the CD is Girl and the Ghost which seems to capture her style to a fine point. Also notable is her reworking of Universe and You as a quieter, more intimate piece. It's very rare that I like an acoustic recording of a song after hearing the "full" ve... - Thursday, February 22, 2007:
Audience Participation Day: Write My Lyrics Happy 222 Thursday! In the spirit of the harmlessly funny movie, Music and Lyrics , which I saw on Sunday, I've come up with a song without words which is just crying out for your lyrical prose. Now is your chance to put all those AP English classes to good use and bury me in your artistic gerunds and dangling participles of doom. Here are the rules for this contest: Write 2 verses, a chorus, and a bridge to the melodies below (There is a 3rd ve... - Wednesday, February 21, 2007:
Musical Musings It's been ten months since my last Musical Musings column which may be the blink of an eye on the geological scale, but is an eternity on the celebrity marriages scale (this scale is much more scientific and applicable in everyday life. Incidentally, ever since Rob confessed that "everyday" versus "every day" was his pet peeve, I have been careful to use the appropriate terminology). I'm currently listening to A Camp , a solo album by Nina Pers... - Thursday, February 01, 2007:
Musical Patriotism Day There was an article in the Post yesterday about Virginia's revived interest in picking a new state song that doesn't offensively talk about darkies . The last time they tried to pick one, the committee could not reach a consensus on any of the finalists' songs -- and now our poor state has been tuneless for almost seven years. We at the URI! Zone consider this to be a travesty of the second highest order, and hypothesize that it could not possibly take almost ... - Tuesday, November 28, 2006:
Stop the Brasses Raiders of the Lost Ark falls squarely into the camp of "late-70s movies that are now too annoying to watch". This subset of movies is often characterized by trying to be more epic than they really are, midday showings on TBS or AMC, handguns that sound like cannons, bad grainy Technicolor with earth tones, or random appearances of a young Robert Redford. A few years and sensibilities later, it would have squeaked into the "goofy 80s movie that's loveable because it's so ... - Wednesday, August 30, 2006:
Discography Day It's a peculiarity of my personality that I generally will pick the longer CD over the shorter, possibly better one. It's a throwback from the days when I had to make every CD purchase count, and the CD player only held one disc at a time. Subconsciously I must believe that there's a higher chance of finding good music if there's more to choose from. The same applies to musical groups -- if I find a group I really like, I'll collect as much of their discography as possible (see also,... - Thursday, August 03, 2006:
Review Day: Black Holes and Revelations A few weeks back, Muse released their fifth album, Black Holes and Revelations , which quickly became their second album to reach number one on the U.K. charts. I first discovered Muse in August 2004 when Butterflies and Hurricanes played on my XM Radio somewhere on the road between Philip Barbie's wedding and the Outer Banks, and I was immediately struck by how musical their music is, despite their hard rock stylings and occasional foray int... - Tuesday, May 02, 2006:
Goo Goo Gaa Gaa I should have known going into it that I'd never make it as a great composer, because I could never compete with the pure talent which is evident in this song: (2.12MB MP3). Whoever wrote this song deserves to be in Chapter One of every History of Western Music book on the face of the planet. Goo Goo Gaa Gaa is a representative track from an 80s audio cassette called Are We There Yet?: Songs for the Car published by Rand McNally. I no longer ... - Monday, May 01, 2006:
Organization Last Thursday night, I had nothing to do, because the Internet had gone out in my house, and if it's not on the Internet, it's not worth doing. I took the opportunity to organize my CD collection, a behemoth of a task that I'd been putting off since I graduated from college in '01. I'm the kind of guy that carries all of his CDs in those big black cases that are halfway between a Trapper Keeper and a scrapbook, but I also tend to forget some CDs in their jewel cases, or in the car, or mayb... - Tuesday, April 25, 2006:
One Time At Band Camp because blogs always have to have at least one post titled as such, to show that the writer is hip and with it Last year, I mentioned that my arrangement of Brick House would be featured on the next Marching Virginians CD . When I went down to Blacksburg last weekend, I scored a free copy of the CD, irrevocably eating into the profits of the marching band and forcing them to march through cow dung for the rest of their days. You can now hear th... - Thursday, April 06, 2006:
Musical Musings I'm liking The Cardigans, especially the syrupy nature of the lead singer's vocals, as heard on Erase/Rewind (469KB MP3). I also like the vocal acrobatics and the sheer musical audacity of The Darkness, as heard on One Way Ticket to Hell (511KB MP3). They do camp in a good way. Three worst songs I've heard on the radio this week: Gwen Stefani - Crash (346KB MP3) She's obviously forgotten what a melody is an... - Monday, March 20, 2006:
While listening to a CD of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir at my parents' house last night, I was struck by the plethora of nonsecular music that has accumulated over the last thousand years. We have millions of songs and hymns about Jesus and dreidles, angels flying high, and chariots swinging low. It seems like there's a piece composed or invented for virtually every important religious scene or feeling and every religion has a few ditties that you can sing on the street which everyone... - Tuesday, January 17, 2006:
Capsule Review Day: Les Miserables Today I will hit the high points of Sunday's show in as few words as possible, since my Florida readers hate when I talk about musicals. In some places, I've linked to MP3s of what I think are the "best performers in that role",taken from my Les Mis Week in 2002 . Jean Valjean: Randal Keith : The only returning cast member. Excellent, possibly even better than before. Effortlessly hit the highs, the lows, the louds, and the softs. &n... - Thursday, January 12, 2006:
Musical Musings Keane grows on me more everytime I listen to their music. A friend from work introduced me to them last summer and I thought they were kind of annoying at first, but they're not so bad after repeated listenings. I would like the song, Bedshaped , more if they didn't use that horrible Game-Boy-sounding choir sample in the middle of the song (207KB MP3) -- it's more unfortunate than the tubular bells in Natalie Imbruglia's Counting Down the Days . That choi... - Thursday, December 15, 2005:
Musical Musings The temperature was near 10 degrees with gusty winds, since this morning was an appetizer for the wintry mix we're supposed to get later today. So it was with great reluctance that I woke up at 7:30 AM instead of 5:30 AM and cranked the heat up to a toasty 73 degrees. Now you are at work, and I'm not. LOL! Actually, I had already planned on taking today off, because by the end of yesterday I was already one hour over my quota for the pay period, and I don't believe in over... - Thursday, October 20, 2005:
Musical Motives I like Muse's Sing For Absolution (807KB MP3) more every time I hear it. It's easy to intend for a song to have an ear-catching haunting sound, but pulling it off is pretty difficult. Another song that I think pulls this off successfully is Train's Ordinary . The end of this excerpt from Skindred's The Fear strongly reminds me of a similar sound from an 80s rock song, but I can't place it. Any ideas? (147KB MP3) &... - Thursday, September 29, 2005:
Musical Motives I haven't had a musical post in a couple weeks, so this is an attempt to fill the musical void in your life. When given the choice between going to a live concert and buying the CD, I would much rather buy the CD. I want the perfection and the clarity of the recording, and I think listening to that outweighs any added energy the performance gets from being live. Live energy may be good in an improvised jazz solo, but for pop music all you get are uneven performances played... - Thursday, August 25, 2005:
Musical Motives I give my last music presentation at work today, on the history and sounds of Jazz. Doing three presentations in a row was a lot of fun, but I'm glad it's all over so I can go back to doing nothing with my afternoons. I have the bad habit of signing up for too much stuff when I'm in a slow, bored period, and then wishing I were bored again when I'm insanely busy. While recording samples for my presentation, I rediscovered just how much I enjoy a jazz chart that cook... - Tuesday, August 09, 2005:
giantStepText = "Though you've played at love and lost\nAnd sorrow's turned your heart to frost\nI will melt your heart again.\nRemember the feeling as a child\nWhen you woke up and morning smiled\nIt's time you felt like you did then.\nThere's just no percentage in remembering the past\nIt's time you learned to live again at last.\n\nCome with me, leave yesterday behind\nAnd take a giant step outside your mind.\n\nYou stare at me in disbelief\nYou say for you there's no relief\nBut I sw... - Thursday, August 04, 2005:
I'm giving Jem's Finally Woken CD a solid three-stars. For the sake of interaction, I will let you, the reader, decide what the maximum number of stars should be. As I mentioned in an old post, Jem's music is like a mix between Dido, Butterfly Boucher, and Tali. All her tracks have catchy beats and interesting vamps, and she has one of those high wafty voices that is only annoying 25% of the time. The major problem with the CD is that all the songs have... - Wednesday, July 13, 2005:
Visitors seem to crawl out of the woodwork whenever I talk about music, so today's post will consist of random whimsies about the music in my mind and on my playlist. A faux 70s pad sound can turn a mediocre song into a catchy one, like Black and White Town (325KB MP3) by the Doves. You can forgive a lot in a song when it sounds a little retro . I'm a sucker for that Chase credit card commercial featuring Five for Figh... - Thursday, July 07, 2005:
Since everybody loves a good list, here is my list of ten well-built songs (I hesitate to call it a Top Ten list, since there are inevitably other songs that I've forgotten). A well-built song need not be the greatest song in the world, have the deepest message, or even be one of your favourites -- it's just a song that's solid from start to finish. It isn't too long or short, it doesn't get old, it's well-crafted, and it says what it needs to say, maximizing the potential of whateve... - Wednesday, June 29, 2005:
With their new album, X & Y , Coldplay has chosen to stick with what works rather than be adventuresome, and for the most part, it succeeds. The CD has twelve tracks and a hidden one dedicated to their hero, Johnny Cash. To me, Coldplay has always been about the sound first, and then the lyrics second. They excel at creating a mood using just a wash of sound (a technique that most people who dislike their music find boring and repetitive) and use Chris Martin's vocals ... - Wednesday, June 22, 2005:
Music scholars say that repetition is the key to Western music. Nowadays, repetition is the bane of popular music. Pop and rock songs get longer and longer, mainly because the artists or producers decided to repeat a chorus one too many times. The Stereophonic's Dakota is good, for the first three minutes. Edie Brickell doesn't need to be nattering on about what she is for five minutes, and Finger Eleven should have cut its One Thing song down to the core fifteen se... - Monday, March 21, 2005:
I've been listening to Origin of Symmetry , an import album by Muse, and as usual, I think it's really good. The first half is more promising than the last half, and there are no "hit" songs on it, but it's a real album (something you don't find often these days). One of the things I like about Muse is that their music is accessible and hard-hitting while still remaining artistic and musical. Also, their songs are more heavy-handed than angry and they get some ... - Thursday, January 13, 2005:
A few months ago, I listened to First of the Gang to Die by Morrissey and thought it was catchy with a very unique lead voice, even though it was kind of a stupid song. Based on that, I picked up two Morrissey CDs out of a bargain bin, You are the Quarry and The Best of Morrissey . After listening to these, I can say that Morrissey is the king of pretentious, unmemorable music. He wastes his great voice on pointless anti-establishment songs w... - Thursday, December 30, 2004:
Today's CD review will be of Muse's second album, Showbiz . The feel of this album is very different from their fourth album ( Absolution , previously mentioned), but the style is unmistakably Muse. This album is a bit more edgy than Absolution and makes more use of noise as a musical element. The tunes are catchy though not always memorable, and the falsetto is actually very powerful, especially at the end of the song Showbiz . Their non-e... - Wednesday, December 29, 2004:
Two of my recent CDs are Paul Weller's Wild Wood and the Scissor Sisters' self-titled CD. The Weller CD, I picked up because I liked the retro 70s feel of his single The Bottle (see the entry from Sep. 20, 2004). It has a very mellow laid-back groove to it, and is great background for relaxing and/or "chilling". I liked Paul Weller when he was fronting The Jam, but his solo stuff is great, even if it has a totally different feel . ... - Monday, October 25, 2004:
I'd forgotten all about posting CD thoughts until I got a reminder email this morning. I like all three CDs I bought on the 12th. Smile is good but the only word I can use to describe it is "meandering". It's very artful and cohesive, but spends far too much time playing with tempos and styles to be as catchy as Pet Sounds . After listening to it several times, not much about it sticks in my head, and it's not one that I'd listen to regularly or burn tracks off of.&n... - Monday, September 20, 2004:
Today will be another "What I'm Listening To" update. As before, most of these songs are available for purchase online, and you can also hear more samples from the groups on Amazon.com. The downloadable fragments here are greatly reduced in sound quality. (MP3 295KB) Bottle by Paul Weller, a song from this year which nicely captures that 70s funk/soul feel (MP3 486KB) Butterflies and Hurricanes ... - Wednesday, September 08, 2004:
For today's update, I've decided to post fragments of music which have caught my attention in the past month of listening to XM Radio. Most of these songs are available for purchase online, and you can also hear more samples from the groups on Amazon.com. The downloadable fragments here are greatly reduced in sound quality. (MP3 406KB) Snapshot by Kinky (MP3 144KB) The catchy, but ultimately useless C... - Tuesday, December 09, 2003:
For those jaded souls who aren't already shocked and awed about my recent listening choices, here's another. I've recently been listening to the music of the French pop star, Alizée. Despite its sometimes annoying tendency to double as dance music, europop is fun to listen to because it's patently harmless, upbeat, and easy on the ears. Alizée arrived on the scene three years ago and easily has a better voice than any Britney Spears clone the US recording indust... - Tuesday, April 22, 2003:
There was a great vocal jazz concert this evening in Opperman, featuring the twenty-voice "After Five" vocal group and Leon Anderson's small jazz combo (not together). Leon even sat in on a few tunes to show off his rockin' drum acrobatics. Soloists who aren't plagued with thirty-second note envy Solos with a tune and a direction A good bari sax player Trumpeters who can sound like they're playing flugelhorn &nbs... - Tuesday, February 25, 2003:
For today's news update, I will tell an interesting story about some music I wrote over five years ago. Is it a tale of incredible coincidence or do I have some extraordinarily subliminal sense of pitch recall? You be the judge! In the fall of 1997, I wrote a four movement work for solo trumpet and wind ensemble called The Hero . I had just finished the first movement and thought it would be clever and artistic to write the fourth movement next, creating book ends to... - Wednesday, February 19, 2003:
One thing I'm going to miss about leaving music as a career is the relative cost of books and research materials. As a software engineer, you have to constantly keep up with new technologies, and the books required to self-teach those skills can run anywhere from $30 to $60. For my current project, I have eight books on different langauges, programs, and technologies on my shelf. All of them will be speaking to others at some point in the life of the project and none of them are rep... - Sunday, February 02, 2003:
The problem with "amorphous solid" music is that the lack of a pulse or even a sense of forward drive eliminates the incentive to stay focused on the piece. It becomes easy to slip in and out of conscious attention to the music, and one starting point becomes as good as the next. The phenomenon can almost be compared to movie scores, except that those scores are supposed to function in that way as an ulterior support to something else going on. Of course rhythmic interest isn't... - Saturday, February 01, 2003:
The New Music Festival is merrily rolling along. I've gone to three concerts so far and they've all had their good points, although the student works' concert was incredibly long. The Penderecki Quartet performed four string quartets last night and sounded excellent, despite a violinist with inebriated Muppet performance syndrome. I also think I've discovered a reliable formula to creating contemporary music, which requires equal parts of the following musical fragments: ... - Saturday, January 04, 2003:
I'm back in Tallahassee, the land where people turn on red from middle lanes and where they advertise sales that ended the day before. The break was good for me -- I read some books and watched some movies, but most of my time was spent finishing up my thesis. I finally completed the music back on December 28, so this month will be occupied with editing and correcting the visual score. If you have an eye for detail and want to make a few bucks, give me a holler and you can help proo... - Tuesday, December 10, 2002:
A burst of activity hit the SCI listserv this past week, resulting from this semiliterate troll: Competitions really suck when you pay for postage and entry fee and everything and than they dont award you NOTHING or even give you the feedback you at the very least deserve on your piece. You guys know what Im saying? The people that judge these things probably only have degrees and dont know anything. This triggered a slew of intelligent responses, a... - Sunday, December 08, 2002:
I wrote about a minute and a half of keepable material this weekend, so I should finish my sixth movement tomorrow or Tuesday. On the downside, I've been working on this section so closely that the blasted motive is stuck in my head. Ostensibly I'd like to get a good chunk of the seventh movement done before I leave since it will only be about half a minute long. I'll post another MP3 of the work in progress on Wednesday. My long term goals are to finish the eighth movem... - Thursday, December 05, 2002:
I finally got around to a much needed haircut this morning. Thesis composition is going slower than expected, though now it's a matter of knowing what needs to be expressed and not knowing how best to put it to paper, rather than having a dearth of ideas. My major obstacles are placement, timing, and order right now -- I know what materials I'll be using for the last four movements. The problem with composition is that, unlike other fields, you can't step awa... - Saturday, November 02, 2002:
So next year at this time, I'll be a software engineer in northern Virginia. That doesn't mean I'll stop composing by any stretch of the imagination. I just decided that this is what I need to be doing for the forseeable future, based on a combination of factors. Here are the questions I posed back in August: Do I have enough inspiration to compose for the span of an entire career without rehashing old material? Probably so, depending on how prolific I w... - Saturday, October 12, 2002:
Part V of V Chorus and Orchestra : The Broadway recording is done with a reduced orchestral set, using synthesizers as if it were a standard pit. The full orchestrations of the other two recordings give the music a lusher, more believable quality that's also more enjoyable. The Complete recording is the cleanest of the three, which lets you hear every note of the score as it was meant to be heard, but the impact of the live performance on the Tenth Annive... - Friday, October 11, 2002:
Part IV of V None of today's characters are major enough to hurt the musical through bad casting, but a good choice always adds a little extra oomph to the recording. Gavroche : All three actors of Gavroche are about equal in their roles. The Complete recording's Gavroche (Ross McCall) has the most believable accent, but makes his death scene ridiculously protracted, gasping for air after every syllable. Young Cosette : ... - Thursday, October 10, 2002:
Part III of V Marius : David Bryant (B) would make a good Marius in Les Misérables: The Muppet Edition . Otherwise, there's nothing particularly memorable about his performance. Michael Ball (C, T) does a great job in turning the role into a believable character, where it was falt and boring on paper. His performance on the Complete recording is slightly better and less wavery than the later Tenth Anniversary recording. On the latte... - Wednesday, October 09, 2002:
Part II of V Inspector Javert : In my opinion, Javert is more crucial to the success of this musical than Valjean. You can't have a game of cat and mouse without a compelling cat; try imagining The Fugitive with Keanu Reeves in Tommy Lee Jones' role. With this in mind, there is no doubt that the best Javert actor is Philip Quast (C, T), whose voice and demeanor illustrate the character's obsession with the letter of the law over the int... - Tuesday, October 08, 2002:
To break the monotony, I'm going to spend a few days doing a review/comparison of three major recordings of the musical, Les Miserables by Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg. I'll be looking at the Broadway Cast recording (B), the Complete Symphonic recording (C), and the Tenth Anniversary recording (T) only, since I haven't gotten around to buying the London Cast recording yet. If the mere thought of musicals makes your pores explode, you can come back on Sunday,... - Friday, September 27, 2002:
There's an absolutely brilliant use of music in a scene from The Sopranos, Season 3 Episode 1. Close to the very beginning is a two minute montage showing various FBI agents tailing each member of the Soprano family. The first clip of the montage rolls into high gear with Mancini's theme music from Peter Gunn , but the second clip suddenly segues into the Police's Every Breath You Take . As different scenes play through, the two songs fade back and forther betw... - Thursday, September 26, 2002:
I recently picked up the latest Dave Matthews CD, Busted Stuff , which is a revamped collection of the discarded songs that preceded Everyday . The music is perfectly agreeable, and there's plenty of catchy vamps, but in my opinion, it still doesn't quite measure up to the earlier recordings. It was definitely better than Everyday , which I thought was just a catchy collection of faux pop charts that didn't have much thought go into them. The CD also... - Tuesday, September 24, 2002:
With so much time to devote to composing this semester, I find that I'm generating the same amount of music as I did in the past. Instead, I tend to throw out or refine ideas much more than I used to. My 'crap' folder is already burgeoning with discarded ideas, and that's something that normally doesn't happen until late in the semester. It's still to early to tell which approach results in a better final product though. "Mine is a much better silent pie... - Tuesday, August 13, 2002:
For me, the hardest part of composing is the transitions. I find it incredibly difficult to write a transition that actually belongs where it is, rather than one that eventually sounds okay after more listenings. I have to write transitions as I go, rather than writing the meaty parts and putting the tendons in later. Without variation, the first draft is always too square and blocked, while later drafts run the risk of being too short (Having a short attention span tends to foster jumping... - Monday, April 15, 2002:
Last night's concert went well if a little too long. With fifteen works on the program, it weighed in at about two and a half hours. There were some nice points to the music though and everything went pretty well. It was also nice to see several freshmen getting their works performed, and most of the ones I heard definitely had something to work with for the coming years. Badinage went pretty well, although there were a few spots that I could have done better. Generally, I... - Friday, April 05, 2002:
Steve Reich: WORKS 1965 - 1995, Part V of V Disc nine of the set contains excerpts from his theatre piece, The Cave which was for a mix of performers, prerecorded voices, and video clips. I really didn't care for the audio portions that I heard -- perhaps the boring sameness of some of the samples is helped by the visuals in the actual production. Disc ten contained Proverb , Nagoya Marimbas , and City Life , ... - Thursday, April 04, 2002:
Steve Reich: WORKS 1965 - 1995, Part IV of V The next two discs of the Reich set include New York Counterpoint , Sextet , The Four Sections , Different Trains , Electric Counterpoint , and Three Movements . As a large orchestral work, I found Three Movements interesting, just to see how Reich handles such large forces. I found New York Counterpoint to be pleasant enough, with t... - Wednesday, April 03, 2002:
Steve Reich: WORKS 1965 - 1995, Part III of V The fourth and fifth discs of the Reich set contain Music for Eighteen Musicians , Eight Lines , and Tehillim . These works didn't really inspire positive or negative reactions in me. There was nothing innovative or wowing, but at the same time, I didn't dislike them at all. The only minor note I made was that the ensemble's makeup on Music for Eighteen Musicians g... - Tuesday, April 02, 2002:
Steve Reich: WORKS 1965 - 1995, Part II of V Disc two of the set is the hour-long work, Drumming (1971), which seems to be an extended elaboration on a single rhythmic cell in four continuous movements. This was another piece that I found interesting, but not particularly enjoyable. One of the problems I have with works like this is just the sheer magnitude of length involved in going from beginning to end. This grand extension is really necessary for th... - Monday, April 01, 2002:
Steve Reich: WORKS 1965 - 1995, Part I of V I listened to the entire 10-disc set of CDs over the span of a couple days last week, and felt they were interesting enough to do a disc by disc review of various works. I've had no previous exposure to any of his music, and the thoughts below are my instinctual feelings based on one or two listenings -- definitely not serious criticisms or analyses by any stretch of the imagination. Disc One includes four earl... - Saturday, March 30, 2002:
These past couple days have been Reich days. I checked out the 10-disc retrospective of Steve Reich's music from the library and I'm almost done listening to disc 10 right now. I'll try to post my thoughts on the set and particular songs tomorrow. In my quest for more familiarity with modern composers, I also wanted to check out the 10-disc boxed set of John Adams, but the library seems to have lost it (like the fifty other odd CDs that "just don't seem to be on our shelf anymore"). I'm no... - Thursday, March 28, 2002:
After a couple months of starting and stopping, I finally finished The Muse that Sings over Spring Break. The book itself isn't so long; I just wanted to read it slowly to absorb everything. The book is a collection of interviews rewritten in prose form, from a wide assortment of living composers on their creative process and thoughts about composition. From its forty dollar price tag, you can tell that it's a niche market affair, and non-composers probably will not appr... - Tuesday, March 05, 2002:
One thing I really miss in modern popular music is the "satisfying ending". The rise of radio as a lucrative transmission medium brought about the extinction of most song endings. Radio stations try to limit or remove all dead air from their broadcasts, so most employ the practice of fading in a new song as the old one fades out. Fewer modern arrangers use endings at all now, since they'll most likely never be heard on the radio. Songs that stop but don't end tend to fall into ... - Wednesday, February 27, 2002:
Today is Paige's twenty-third birthday. Happy Birthday! The head of the VT music department, John Husser, sent an e-mail out to all music majors today. Here's some excerpts: This is to report to you on the status of the departments current situation. As you know, budget cuts are here and real. The College of Arts and Sciences was given their target reduction for the next two years, and the college then gave the department's their reductions. We were ass... - Tuesday, February 26, 2002:
Leave it to my dad to cut everyone off at the pass by sending an e-mail out pre-thanking us for our birthday well-wishing. It's definitely the efficient way to go. Happy Birthday! In the 2003 budget at Virginia Tech, it's been decided to cut the Arts budget by 10-14% across the board. Among the changes initiated by the VT Music Department in response to this was the firing of two new professors, the jazz professor who replaced Chip McNeill this year and the choral direct... - Saturday, February 16, 2002:
There are no major advances in game music technology on the immediate horizon. Since sound effects stole the spotlight, the major hardware improvements have been to achieve clearer sounds at higher sampling rates, and to standardize three dimensional sound positioning. In an interview with Blizzard composer, Andrea G. Pessino (see link below), he expressed his desire to make game music more interactive, and went on to describe, almost exactly, the imuse system abandoned by Luca... - Friday, February 15, 2002:
The Nintendo 64 console was released in 1996, although I didn't buy one for myself until 2001. Although it boasted exceptionally improved graphics and sound, it really didn't have much to offer over the SNES in the music department. Soundtracks written for the N64 were very reminiscent of the old MIDI tunes on the PC, with decent but unspectacular sound patches. Because this was the last console system I bought, I don't know where music stands on the other major consoles, like the D... - Thursday, February 14, 2002:
As PC sound quality improved, game composers increasingly sought recognition of the legitimacy of their art. Throughout the early 90s, various attempts were made at making game music more mainstream and accepted. In some cases, composers attempted to create more serious music. LucasArts' Loom, which was released in 1990, sported a MIDI soundtrack with nothing but arrangements of Tchaikovsky works, culminating in a final section played to the tune of Swan Lake. Michael Land's music f... - Wednesday, February 13, 2002:
After years of pretending that newer and better consoles didn't exist, Nintendo finally released the 16-bit Super Nintendo in 1991. With its launch title, Super Mario World, it was clear that music synthesis had evolved greatly since the NES. Gamers were treated music as complex as that found on the PC, but with sound quality better than any of the mass-market soundcards. Full orchestral scores were now possible, with no loss of tracks when the action became intense. Act... - Tuesday, February 12, 2002:
1989 brought a remake of Pinball Wizard in the form of the awful Fred Savage vehicle, The Wizard. The movie was essentially a ninety-minute commercial for Nintendo's biggest selling NES game, Super Mario Bros. 3. SMB3 was also one of the first NES cartridges to boast a larger internal memory chip. Since upgrades could not necessarily be performed on the system itself, Nintendo made its games better over the years by packing more processing power into its cartridges. Musically, this ... - Monday, February 11, 2002:
Following the video game crash in 1984, the Nintendo Entertainment System trickled into the US in 1985, and was the first major system to feature continuous soundtracks throughout its games. It's widely recognized as the console which elevated game music from simple beeps and whistles to an art form composed of beeps and whistles . The anthem from Nintendo's launch game, Super Mario Brothers, continued to appear in variations throughout the Mario serie... - Sunday, February 10, 2002:
And now for something a little bit different... To break away from the tedium of updates about my real-life escapades, and to reach a balance between my computer-related and music-related news items, I'm devoting this week's News page to the music of video games and computer games. I'll trace the evolution of game music from the Atari to today's common PC games, with more emphasis on highlights from my own gaming past. A Giant supermarket in Harrisburg, Penns... - Wednesday, February 06, 2002:
I've never understood the appeal of extended drum solos in jazz. Although drummers demand equal footing as a soloist in many groups, their lack of pitch really hinders their improvisatory work. I'd rather hear a concise 12-bar drum solo, rather than one of those drawn-out tumors of music that sometimes crop up, especially in combos. I think the worst case of overdone drum soloing is Buddy Rich's playing on Channel One Suite . The version made for commercial recording is b... - Thursday, January 31, 2002:
Every night when I'm in the practice room, I hear some anonymous freshman trumpeter down the hall, practicing the same tired three measures of the Hummel trumpet concerto at a plodding, methodical tempo. He or she never varies from the strict tempo and notes, but just keeps playing it over and over again without any sign of improvement. It seems like many performers in the practice rooms recognize the importance of reduced-tempo practicing, but never actually exploit the opportunity to get... - Sunday, January 27, 2002:
I've discovered an interesting trick to increase motivation for composing, though it only works if you tend to listen to your previous work a fair amount. Myself, I listen to what I'm currently working on when I wake up and before I go to bed, as well as other random times throughout the day, even if I don't plan on composing at the time. That way, my current work is always on my mind at some level, and I find that it makes problems a little easier to solve when I finally do sit dow... - Saturday, January 19, 2002:
I've added two more CDs to my list of reviews, both movie soundtracks this time. Nightmare Before Christmas is one of my favourite Danny Elfman scores and is a really cohesive, unified affair, although it does go a little overboard with its predictable rhyming couplet scheme. Danny Elfman actually sings the lead role of Jack Skellington on the soundtrack and in the movie, which is also worth your time. I also like the music from Conspiracy Theory , even though... - Saturday, December 29, 2001:
It's always interesting to listen to compositions after an extended hiatus. Parts that seemed to work before become painfully facaded and parts that were border-line acceptable organize themselves into keepers or discards. On the first listening, I have to sort through the lines that make me say, "Wow, I wrote that!", and the parts that make me say, "Wow, I wrote that??", and then hope that there are more from the former category. The string quartet's first movement seems to have we... - Sunday, November 11, 2001:
There was a joint senior trumpet recital this afternoon, but it was not particularly well-done. The Kennan was just plain sophomoric and the Ewazen, which is one of my favourite trumpet works, didn't fare much better. The performance lacked any kind of soul or drive -- there were no peaks or valleys, just a flat sameness throughout. It was like someone slapped the Ewazen around and told it to behave and be polite. I have to give the girl credit -- it takes balls to put a piece as demanding... - Monday, October 22, 2001:
I probably did just fine on the history of music theory test this morning. Again, it's not that it's a horrible class; it's just that too much time is spent on minutia, to the detriment of the big picture. My composition professor likened music theory history to a long, dark tunnel. You start at one end with a dim lantern that allows you to see a little bit of what's written on the walls. You can spend a long time staring at one part of the wall, but if you don't keep moving, you'll... - Sunday, October 07, 2001:
Having grown up in a strong band tradition, the music I compose tends to be strongly accessible -- definitely not esoteric by any stretch of the imagination. It's not that I hate dissonance and non-tonal music, it's just that I don't really feel like its the proper language for my voice. Writing music or telling a story in a language that's not your own is like walking around in someone else's underpants. I think there's far too many possibilities in tonality to be ignored, and probably wo... - Friday, October 05, 2001:
Call me old-fashioned, but sometimes modern music just gets to me. This afternoon, we had a guest forum with freelance composer and FSU graduate, Stephen Montague. The lecture he gave was articulate, opinionated, and full of good information, but while I respect how well crafted his music seemed, it really didn't do anything for me on any level. As I glanced around the room and saw various students smiling or nodding with comprehension, I had to wonder just how many were faking it. The lis... - Friday, September 07, 2001:
I wrote a rough draft of compositional pedagogy ideas as they relate to technology, and was surprised at the number of ideas I had festering just below the surface. I've always been interested in it, but I didn't realize that over time, solid ideas were formulating without my conscious knowledge. I'll probably post that draft in essay form once the kinks are worked out. I'm in the middle of the book on arrangers I got from the music library. Its a collection of articles and inf...
