tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-117142302024-03-21T23:42:24.742-04:00Form/ContentWhat are we doing, why are we doing it?Adam Baratzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05222629748155798158noreply@blogger.comBlogger122125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11714230.post-25685191333165027892010-02-11T21:47:00.001-05:002010-02-11T21:48:59.301-05:00Richard Goode & Jonathan Biss at Jordan Hall<a href="http://classical-scene.com/2010/02/08/thoughtful-connections-in-duo-piano-concert-by-goode-and-biss/">Thoughtful connections in Duo Piano Concert by Goode and Biss</a><div><i>The Boston Musical Intelligencer</i></div>Adam Baratzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05222629748155798158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11714230.post-73959233916710243582010-01-28T22:43:00.001-05:002010-01-28T22:44:44.344-05:00What Is A Melody Like?<div>Since this Fall, I've had a twice-a-day, one-hour commute on a train. So naturally, the question emerged: how can I direct this time to writing music? My usual comfort zone centers around using the keyboard to find interesting harmonies with minimal notation. Thus, my train-time centers around using my inner ear to find interesting melodies with standard notation.</div><div><br /></div><div>It's been very good training for having a better sense of line. By line, I mean horizontal continuity. The Prologue from <i>Into the Woods</i> has a tremendous sense of line, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. What path does, say, an 8-bar melody take from beginning to end? How big a harmonic space does it move through? Does it move swiftly or without assurance? Does it suggest its destination? Does it actually go there? Is it light or heavy? Does it seek variety or repetition? Does it even care? These are the sorts of choices that make a melody what it is (whether they're made by the composer or the melody is another question).</div><div><br /></div><div>The homogeneous appearance of notes on a page can distract from these distinctions. It helps to find a way to embrace their actual heterogeneity, to get intimate with your materials. Synesthetic language admittedly doesn't translate well between people (hence the lack of examples here), but it's proven a good tool for this job. This much I can say without any confusion: there are profound possibilities in melody.</div>Adam Baratzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05222629748155798158noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11714230.post-3993323828596105722010-01-03T21:06:00.001-05:002010-01-03T21:07:40.389-05:00Pierrot Lunaire at the Gardner Museum<a href="http://classical-scene.com/2010/01/03/moondrunkenness-needed-for-pierrot-lunaire-to-come-alive/">Moondrunkenness Needed for Pierrot Lunaire to Come Alive</a><div><i>The Boston Musical Intelligencer</i></div>Adam Baratzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05222629748155798158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11714230.post-34213062174877056302009-12-30T23:19:00.005-05:002009-12-30T23:40:01.078-05:00Pillow Talk, Redux?Surely you've seen <i>Pillow Talk</i>? Doris Day is Doris Day, Rock Hudson is a songwriter who woos women with a heavily recycled song*. Okay, maybe you haven't. It's a romantic-comedy: they meet, fall in love, etc. The movie is of its time, but so is how they meet. Ma Bell can't lay down phone lines fast enough to meet demand, so the two had to share, thus providing some forced interactions when they want to use the phone at the same time. The romance doesn't proceed in a straight line from there, but it's the start.<div><br /></div><div>The exercise is: give this movie the <i>You've Got Mail</i> treatment. How could it be modernized? What's an in-demand consumer product that could serve as a foil for <i>Romance</i>? Extra credit for updating the careers of the leads (interior decorator, Broadway composer).</div><div><br /><div>---</div><div><br /></div><div>* NB: "You're my inspiration, [girl of the moment] / A perfect combination, [girl of the moment]" is neither a good lyric or good English.</div></div>Adam Baratzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05222629748155798158noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11714230.post-20401876219432721802009-12-09T18:36:00.002-05:002009-12-09T18:37:34.854-05:00The Emerson Quartet at Jordan Hall<a href="http://classical-scene.com/2009/12/07/emerson-offers-decorous-ives-balanced-janacek-old-friend-shostakovich/">Emerson Offers Decorous Ives, Balanced Janácek, Old-Friend Shostakovich</a><div><i>The Boston Musical Intelligencer</i></div>Adam Baratzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05222629748155798158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11714230.post-72623499008464728342009-11-29T16:17:00.002-05:002009-11-29T16:22:23.627-05:00Tiny CrimesFrom Mike Nichols (in bold) <a href="http://www.filmlinc.com/fcm/ja06/elainemay.htm">interviewing</a> Elaine May:<div><div></div><blockquote><div><b>We’re behaving like hypnotized people, but we’re somnambulant. I hope we can wake each other up. But please, one at a time. There’s so many things, "Your call is important to us"—how do you know who’s calling? It’s the goddamn generalities that make for those tapes on phones and annoying e-mails from a group. The individual—there’s not enough money in the individual. And we have to—person to person—fight for it a little bit.</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Let me ask you something. To simply actually stop. I’m just taking this "Your call is important to us" thing as an example because, having visited a large corporation, some executive is getting a $100 million a year and saving money not giving some woman a job for $30,000 a year. And he says we don’t want to take the shareholders’ money. And you say, well, you pay it, deduct it. But there’s no way to enforce that. We all know that that’s true, we all know that that’s bad, and we all know that there’s something about the tiny things in life happening to you that devalues you, that lessens you, that makes you numb. You have to become more and more numb not to get offended. And pretty soon you get pretty sick. And it seems to me—because I’m really a much more negative person than you are, you’re the lightness, I’m the dark—</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Bragging.</b></div><div><br /></div><div>But it seems to me, at some point what you really want to say is I won’t deal with a company that doesn’t have a real operator. For one day, I’ll make them lose that much money. For one day, I won’t go to a bookstore where the guy says, "Huh, I don’t know." For one day I won’t say, it’s so hard. I won’t run home to a rerun of <i>Cheers</i>, I can’t bother with it. For one day, you’ll take the trouble to make trouble for someone else, because it’s the only thing that keeps you from getting sick, from sort of retreating. I think that’s what dumbing-down kind of is. It’s too much trouble. And there is such a thing as too much trouble.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>It’s hard to find the line because if you’re a snob like me, and somebody says, "What is this in regards to?" I’ll say it’s in regards to Broadway. If you want to know what this is in regard to, tell your boss I want to borrow a lot of money. Where do you start, where do you stop, when are you just a pain in the ass?</b></div><div><br /></div><div>That’s a very good way to start. You’ve got to start tiny, as Giuliani said, "Don’t go after the big guys, get the pushers off the street." I know he did a lot of bad things, but I remember when you couldn’t walk around New York after 5 o’clock, and now you can. So with all of that, you really do start with tiny crimes. I think they’re like crimes, they’re like little insults that you get all the time.</div></blockquote></div>Adam Baratzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05222629748155798158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11714230.post-69616338749045812532009-11-16T20:29:00.004-05:002009-11-16T20:37:00.962-05:00Working MusicI'm accustomed to tapping my desk in various ways while the computer's busy thinking, but <a href="http://renewablemusic.blogspot.com/2009/11/some-working-rhythms.html">thanks to Dan Wolf</a>, my efforts suddenly seem rather slight.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/0dw47fZLpSw&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/0dw47fZLpSw&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />(see original post for a few more)Adam Baratzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05222629748155798158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11714230.post-60344718267767144982009-11-11T21:20:00.005-05:002009-11-11T22:20:57.827-05:00How to Write a SongBefore I dive into this one, I'll let my good friend <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Horses-Mouth-Review-Books-Classics/dp/0940322196">Gulley Jimson</a> have at it:<div><blockquote>But one day when I was sitting in our London office on Bankside, I dropped a blot on an envelope; and having nothing to do just then, I pushed it about with my pen to try and make it look more like a face. And the next thing was I was drawing figures in red and black, on the same envelope. And from that moment I was done for.</blockquote></div><div>It's <i>just</i> that easy! Really. For quite a while, I had a very positive, but not too intimate relationship with songs. I listened to them, sang them, had some opinions, but write them?... no, I could never do that. That's something only other people do. How do you even do that?</div><div><br /></div><div>Then one day, I had my Gulley Jimson moment. It was a little less dramatic — I was sitting at a piano — but it felt similarly sudden. I was doing what one is supposed to do in a situation, a temptation appeared, I met it, and now my friends are extremely patient with me.</div><div><br /></div><div>This trip down memory lane was triggered by some recent housekeeping. Despite my background in composition as an exercise in dot-drawing, my song notations have been very informal.* I work in a spiral-bound, college-ruled notebook with disposable ballpoint pens. I like this arrangement for its frugality, simplicity, and unpretentiousness. The pages have space enough to work and pre-marked margins. They don't distract from the work at hand. I write lyrics with chord symbols. As ABBA (<a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=15859351">via SM</a>) said, if I can't remember my own melodies, who else will?</div><div><br /></div><div>One built-in of this notation scheme is that songs can become a little organic. I find this ultimately benefits the quality of the writing. However, it's been a little over two years since my Gulley Jimson moment and I decided it was time for a little more precise notation. My memory is sure right now... but I wanted to get things down while they're still sure. So, I fired up Sibelius and went at it. It was fun. I saw what improvements I've made at this or that. I found some moments where it seemed like I was really listening. I was proud of those.</div><div><br /></div><div>Back to the original question: how do you write a song? My photography teacher in high school offered us a cheeky definition of art: it's whatever artists make. To that, I offer a corollary: you make art by making art. I don't want to underplay the ineffabilities inherent to the process. The sourceless surprises are part of continuing pleasure of it, but there's no denying the dumb earthiness in it. You want to draw a face? Well pick up yer pigment and press it to paper. You want to talk technique and other niceties, that's really a separate conversation. Songwriting became possible for me when I recognized those were separate attitudes.</div><div><br /></div><div>---</div><div><br /></div><div>* What impressionable young experimentalist wouldn't find reading Cage's <i><a href="http://ubu.wfmu.org/text/Cage-John_Notations.pdf">Notations</a> </i>a radical experience? For all that was in that book, what does it say that my strongest memory of it, what seemed like the most radical notation, was its inclusion of "The Word," lyrics only, attributed to "The Beatles"? (That I was at risk of becoming a songwriter?)</div>Adam Baratzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05222629748155798158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11714230.post-44580657673890728882009-10-22T19:42:00.002-04:002009-10-22T19:45:58.131-04:00Music: What Happened?I just got caught up on Scott Miller's <a href="http://www.loudfamily.com/mwh/index.html">Music: What Happened?</a> series, which he wrapped up last month. All his pieces are extremely well-written, -observed, -heard, and -worth reading.Adam Baratzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05222629748155798158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11714230.post-44905330385490387622009-10-11T15:00:00.000-04:002009-10-11T15:00:16.456-04:00Why Rhyme?The wag in me wants to ask the question in a broader existential sense (such as how someone with bipolar disorder would ask "why get out of bed?"), but let's start small. More specifically, beyond the effect of "words that sound like other words," what tools do rhymes provide to a lyricist? A few for your consideration:<div><div></div><blockquote><div>The sex you're trading up for what you hope is <b>love</b></div><div>Is just another thing that he'll be careless <b>of</b><sub>1</sub></div></blockquote><div><b></b></div><div>In the most basic sense, rhymes connect words and give them some kind of larger shape. The rhyme here makes a long thought feel whole. The connection between love and of, however, is essentially utilitarian.</div><div></div><blockquote><div>Having her on my <b>brain's</b> like getting hit by a <b>train</b></div><div>She's gonna kill me. Oh Celeste, oh Celeste.<sub>2</sub></div></blockquote><div></div><div>Here there's a little more meat in the connection. It illuminates something less familiar about the words being rhymed.</div><div></div><blockquote><div>I'll pretend I'm <b>jealous</b> of all the <b>fellas</b></div><div>And if that don't do then I'll try something new<sub>3</sub></div><div></div></blockquote><div>Smokey Robinson makes those connections with the sort of language you'd use in casual conversation. That's why he's a great poet.</div><div><div></div><blockquote><div>On a ferris wheel looking out on Coney <b>Island</b></div><div>There are more stars than there are prostitutes in <b>Thailand</b><sub>4</sub></div></blockquote><div>You can't talk about rhymes in songwriting without mentioning funny lyrics. The rhyme sneaks up on you and snaps the joke into place.</div><div></div><blockquote><div>I'd <b>go to hell for yuh</b>, even <b>Philadelphia</b>!<sub>5</sub></div><div></div></blockquote><div>Sometimes the joke's in the rhyme itself.</div><div></div><blockquote><div>Although she's none the <b>wiser</b>, although we've barely <i>met</i></div><div>I can <b>recognize her</b> from the treatment that I <i>get</i><sub>6</sub></div><div></div></blockquote><div>Rhymes have a kind of gravitational pull that you can align with musical phrases.</div><div></div><blockquote><div>Look at the <b>day</b> dressed in copper <b>lamé</b> and it's trying your glass slippers <i>on</i></div><div>I sit in the <b>dark</b> and I listen to <b>Mark</b> asking where has that last firefly <i>gone</i><sub>7</sub></div><div></div></blockquote><div>In this way, harmonious combinations of words can become their own kind of music, something interesting to chew on with the melody.</div><div><br /></div><div>This is by no means a comprehensive list. Hopefully, it points to some of the magic in words that can get you to pick up the pen every day.</div><div><br /></div><div>---</div><div><sub>1</sub>Aimee Mann, "You Do"</div><div><sub>2</sub>Old 97's, "Timebomb"</div><div><sub>3</sub>Smokey Robinson, "I'll Try Something New"</div><div><sub>4</sub>Stephin Merritt, "Strange Powers"</div><div><sub>5</sub>Lorenz Hart, "Any Old Place with You"</div><div><sub>6</sub>Jon Brion & Aimee Mann, "I Believe She's Lying"</div><div><sub>7</sub>Franklin Bruno, "In A Sourceless Light"</div></div></div>Adam Baratzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05222629748155798158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11714230.post-64019414911462643452009-10-07T10:43:00.003-04:002009-10-08T22:01:51.410-04:00The 101st<pre>The 101st<br />Franklin Bruno<br />available on <a href="http://fayettenamrecords.com/releases.php#tt02">Local Currency: Solo 1992-1998</a><br /><br />Intro:<br />F# B / / | F# / B / | x4<br /><br />Verse:<br />g#<br />Why does the front of my new notebook say<br />F#<br />"College ruled" when I know it sucked?<br />g#<br />Flat-out fucked in the aqueduct as we<br />F#<br />Cross the garden to take a look around.<br /><br />Interlude:<br />a# / / / | / / / / | C# / / / | / / / / |<br />d#add9 / / / | / / / / | C# / / / | Badd9 / / / |<br /><br />Verse:<br />Frozen hands couldn't play guitar, so I<br />Inventoried my penny jar.<br />Spiral-bound couldn't make a sound, so I<br />rooted 'round in the mulch and found--<br /><br />Chorus:<br /> a# g# B<br />The hundredth song about you said the<br />a# g# B cdim<br />Same thing as the very first I<br />a#/C# a# d# a#<br />Came across before I opened up my drawer.<br /> a#/C# a#<br />So excuse me while I burst into the 101st.<br /><br />Intro<br /><br />Bridge:<br /> a# d#<br />There's an accordion file and it's wheezing away<br />D A C#<br />Sixteen, seventeen hours a day.<br /> F# a#<br />With your Debordian guile there's nothing left to survey.<br /><br />Verse:<br />The broken glass on the backyard path<br />You could cut your foot where the TV smashed.<br />Like copper coils from the polygraph<br />As you weed the wheat out and save the chaff.<br /><br />Chorus:<br />The hundredth song about you said the<br />Same thing as the very first I<br />Came across before I opened up my drawer.<br />Unrevised and unrehearsed, just like the 101st.<br /><br />Intro (end on a#)</pre><br /><div>***</div><br /><div>Is this even a song?</div><div><br /></div><div>I mean that more metaphysically than physically. The song's got some formal irregularities (the form suggests AABA-with-chorus more than it is one, the rhyme scheme in the verses verges on free-associative), but those seem largely irrelevant. Franklin Bruno's written enough by-the-book songs that it should be safe to assume intent here.</div><div><br /></div><div>The lyrics help us out a little more, specifically the chorus. We find out the speaker has written 100 love songs about the same person. He launches into the next section by proclaiming he's about to start into #101, i.e., the 101st of the title. So really, this isn't a song, this is a song coming into being. That seems to justify the verses' free associations.</div><div><br /></div><div>Isn't that weird?</div><div><br /></div><div>***</div><div><br /></div><div>I would like to develop a format for presenting tabs I've done with some commentary on what got me excited about the song, i.e., something that's mixes the practical and academic. I'll be playing with the proportions between the two, but please leave any comments for improvement below.</div>Adam Baratzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05222629748155798158noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11714230.post-35283445623071246202009-10-04T10:10:00.003-04:002009-10-04T10:43:31.779-04:00Re: The New MathI had a request for explication on <a href="http://formcontent.blogspot.com/2009/09/new-math.html">this post</a>, so here goes. Software's a more familiar concept:<div><div><ul><li>It usually can't be had for less than $15, usually a bit more.</li><li>You probably wouldn't qualify it as an impulse purchase.</li><li>It has a reputation that transcends whatever platform it's on. People happily use MS Office on the Mac and get cranky when the feature set doesn't line up with the PC version.</li><li>It is the product that the company wants to sell.</li><li>It's often a tool that can be used for work: office suite, photo editor, etc.</li><li>You may use it as part of collaborative work, but your regular use probably doesn't involve someone else sitting at the same terminal with you.</li></ul><div>Apps, on the other hand:</div><div><ul><li>Are often free, typically no more than $5.</li><li>They're cheap enough to buy on a whim.</li><li>The brand they help is usually that of the host platform. Apple will run an ad to show you some of the more interesting apps you can get for the iPhone, but the ad is ultimately for the iPhone.</li><li>A large company will often offer something for free so their brand has a presence on the device. It can be a gimme to get people to draw people to their core product.</li><li>It's often an object for play. People get excited about the app that tells them what's playing over the bar's PA, less so about the tip calculator.</li><li>It's often used as an object for social play and status, with people you're physically near: "check out this neat app that I got!"</li></ul><div>This last distinction is where things get interesting. Software has historically been an extension for office appliances. The ubiquity of powerful, portable devices, low cost of their add-on software, and intended use of that software has produced different from the original vision behind desktop computing. "Social" is an overused buzzword nowadays, but here's one place where a little more exploration is in order.</div></div></div></div>Adam Baratzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05222629748155798158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11714230.post-75358345253324988702009-09-23T22:43:00.002-04:002009-09-23T22:46:35.961-04:00Concord Chamber Players at Concord Academy<a href="http://classical-scene.com/2009/09/22/gandolfi-commission-fine-bartok-herald-concord-chamber-music-society-10th-anniversary/">Gandolfi Commission, Fine Bartok, Herald Concord Chamber Music Society 10th Anniversary<br /></a><div><i>The Boston Music Intelligencer</i></div>Adam Baratzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05222629748155798158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11714230.post-12902148272222322212009-09-21T00:37:00.002-04:002009-09-21T00:39:05.539-04:00Ethics & Aesthetics, or "I can't believe my brother watches reality TV!"<div>I've been watching this show called <a href="http://www.hulu.com/show/57">Kitchen Nightmares</a>. Each episode features a different restaurant that has hit the skids. Gordon Ramsey swoops in (via SUV, sports car, motorcycle, or Amtrak, depending on the location) to set them back on the righteous path.</div><div><br /></div><div>Viewers familiar with his other shows will recognize his foul-mouthed persona. He never misses an opportunity to scream and castigate. He's a ready-made Guy Who Makes a Scene, an archetype that our culture has a lurid fascination with these days.</div><div><br /></div><div>At least, that's how he comes off initially. He's never short on bile, but he lacks the selfishness that usually comes with GWMSs. He doesn't have the imperial aim of leaving little <i>Londons</i> in his wake. Instead, he lines up the restaurant's existing strengths with any untapped market niches he spots around town. One restaurant was advised to step away from fine dining, because what the neighborhood really needed was a place to get a decent burger. So what's his problem?</div><div><br /></div><div><object width="512" height="296"><param name="movie" value="http://www.hulu.com/embed/n8jM17dH2iDw7GBEX4lx7A"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><embed src="http://www.hulu.com/embed/n8jM17dH2iDw7GBEX4lx7A" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="512" height="296"></embed></object></div><div><br /></div><div>He's not angry that they can't cook fish his way. He's angry that they can't cook fish the <i>right </i>way. He has a set of aesthetics, a set of values that he feels to be universal and inviolable (so much for the death of the monoculture). Ramsey's more astonished that those chefs aren't offended by themselves than he's offended by them (his display of that happens to allow him to benefit from this cultural moment).</div><div><br /></div><div>Plenty of people on the show get in a huff over Ramsey's behavior, but he has every authority to act as he does. His personality is well-documented and he is asked by the restaurant owners help them out. They should know what they're in for. But what about day-to-day stuff with us plebes? Is it okay for me yell at a performing musician if he's out of tune? How about a hissy fit if a co-worker <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naming_conventions_(programming)">named a variable</a> poorly? Is there accounting for taste? In short, do aesthetics have moral force?</div><div><br /></div><div>This is where things get hazy fast. It can be tempting to confront people (there's that cultural moment again!), but your right to do so ultimately depends on which cultural communities the parties involved belong to. These communities affect quite a bit of life, from how much you owe in taxes to whether your roommate thinks you actually cleaned the bathroom. The chefs in that clip belonged to a community that didn't mind over-cooked fish. When Ramsey came into the picture, they implicitly asked to join his and were turned away at the gate. They end up choosing to leave the restaurant over changing their behaviors. Struggles between communities go on every day in big and little ways. And as it turns out, they make for good television.</div>Adam Baratzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05222629748155798158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11714230.post-60158842124844248542009-09-18T20:49:00.001-04:002009-09-19T22:16:05.559-04:00The New MathApps != Software<div><br /></div><div>(that took too long to realize)</div>Adam Baratzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05222629748155798158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11714230.post-8975480737810870482009-09-18T20:46:00.004-04:002009-09-19T22:15:45.683-04:00Year in ReviewsI may've been off the blogging circuit for a little while, but I haven't stopped writing about music <a href="http://classical-scene.com/">online</a>:<div><ul><li><a href="http://classical-scene.com/2009/09/14/fenwick-smiths-thirty-third-annual-jordan-hall-recital-offered-wide-range-of-material/">Fenwick Smith’s Thirty-third Annual Jordan Hall Recital Offered Wide Range of Material</a>, 14 Sep 2009</li><li><a href="http://classical-scene.com/2009/08/03/frisson-of-the-new-at-mass-moca/"><i>Frisson</i> of the New at Mass MoCA</a>, 03 Aug 2009 <b>(if you read just one, read this one)</b></li><li><a href="http://classical-scene.com/2009/07/08/musical-insurrection-to-institution-bang-on-a-can/">Musical Insurrection to Institution: Bang on a Can</a>, 08 Jul 2009</li><li><a href="http://classical-scene.com/2009/06/14/bemfs-chamber-orchestra-delightful-one-to-a-part-affair/">BEMF’s Chamber Orchestra: Delightful One-To-A-Part Affair</a>, 14 Jun 2009</li><li><a href="http://classical-scene.com/2009/06/02/turandot-cipher-of-an-opera/">Turandot: Cipher of an Opera</a>, 02 Jun 2009</li><li><a href="http://classical-scene.com/2009/05/10/1040/">Juventas Presents Two Chamber Operas</a>, 10 May 2009</li><li><a href="http://classical-scene.com/2009/04/27/oddball-program-communal-group/">Oddball Program, Communal Group</a>, 27 Apr 2009</li><li><a href="http://classical-scene.com/2009/04/06/nese-offers-program-heralding-upcoming-ballets-russes-2009/">NESE Offers Program Heralding Upcoming Ballets Russes 2009</a>, 06 Apr 2009</li><li><a href="http://classical-scene.com/2009/03/02/collage-offers-bold-gestures-hints-of-opera-and-a-knockout/">Collage Offers Bold Gestures, Hints of Opera, and a Knockout</a>, 02 Mar 2009</li><li><a href="http://classical-scene.com/2008/11/13/stimulating-presentation-of-underplayed-repertoire/">Stimulating Presentation of Underplayed Repertoire</a>, 13 Nov 2008</li></ul></div>Adam Baratzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05222629748155798158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11714230.post-30340024185585908372009-09-18T20:22:00.003-04:002009-09-19T22:14:28.037-04:00Resurrection<div>So, it's time to give this blogging thing another go. It's been a while, but I've got some new ideas on what to do with this space. There'll be fewer multi-page musico-analytical sprawl-jobs, more breadth and variety.</div><div><br /></div><div>FWIW, sometime in the past two years, blogs stopped being the <i>it</i> format online. Blogs are everywhere. Every content-spewing website has their formal writings and each writer has at <i>least</i> one blog for letting their hair down. Can you really be cool as a blogger in this kind of environment? The edgy stuff has shifted to Twitter and other so-called social sites, but I'll leave those media to the prospectors for now. Staidness, predictability, and boredom have their distinct delights.</div><div><br /></div><div>As they say, more to come.</div>Adam Baratzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05222629748155798158noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11714230.post-87594718213143315472007-12-16T13:54:00.000-05:002007-12-16T14:26:13.930-05:00The JinglerFor those who have always wondered "What If?" a certain composer penned a Christmas tune, the internet finally gives us the opportunity to find out:<br /><br /><a href="http://thejingler.com/jingle/92e8ab523e98ee256269fd961103aef5">"Merry Christmas" from Corey Dargel</a><br /><a href="http://thejingler.com/jingle/e29f86161fde3d587262430f946545e4">"Feliz Navidad" from Peter Garland</a><br /><a href="http://thejingler.com/jingle/deccf8bac6adf1847a1c631e482d7b91">"Kedves Karácsony" from György Ligeti</a><a href="http://thejingler.com/jingle/6148d40eb504f9dc446cceab718544e3"></a><br /><a href="http://thejingler.com/jingle/5081cb0ca47f27d4da96f3b4f49e4c20">"Frohe Weihnachten" from Anton Webern</a><br />BONUS TRACK: <a href="http://thejingler.com/jingle/454cc6dd26ea08fe1d1b05e8ee96abd1">"Merry Christmas" from Tay Zonday</a><br /><br />Make your own instant classics with <a href="http://thejingler.com/">The Jingler</a>.Adam Baratzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05222629748155798158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11714230.post-87136716500433891772007-09-27T19:49:00.000-04:002007-09-27T19:51:54.609-04:00Theremin Robot Plays Gnarls Barkley<object height="350" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/19RJEnNUg1I"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/19RJEnNUg1I" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" height="350" width="425"></embed></object>Adam Baratzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05222629748155798158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11714230.post-21969129809172268912007-09-25T18:14:00.000-04:002007-09-25T18:16:02.003-04:00Left-handed pianoAs usual, you can find <a href="http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/min/413152288.html">anything</a> on craigslist.Adam Baratzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05222629748155798158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11714230.post-40294220064257344122007-09-20T23:18:00.000-04:002007-09-20T23:29:43.924-04:00Composers and the People Who Love ThemThis quote is for anyone who thought that composers/musicians/artists had the market cornered on considerate spouses/significant others. It's from <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Founders-Work-Stories-Startups-Early/dp/1590597141/"><span style="font-style: italic;">Founders at Work</span></a>, a book of interviews with founders of technology startups:<br /><span style="font-style: italic;"></span><blockquote><span style="font-style: italic;">Surely your wife was nervous about you sleeping only 4 hours every 2 days?<br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></span>She was. She got me one of those fold-out futons that would fold under my desk. She didn't like me sleeping on the floor.</blockquote>The whole book is pretty fascinating. Sometimes you forget that there are people behind the fancy consumer technology that we encounter on a daily basis. There's no archetypal story that informs the lives of each interviewee. Some of them had a vision and made a calculated plan to achieve it. Others thought it would be cool to have their own company and worried about the details as they went. Nevertheless, they share similar passions and drives to create. Really, not that different from composers in many respects.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"></span></span>Adam Baratzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05222629748155798158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11714230.post-86556429321897328232007-09-16T22:56:00.000-04:002007-09-16T23:20:59.448-04:00Reading Comprehension<span style="font-style: italic;"></span>One of my roommates is currently preparing to take the LSAT. He shared with me this question from one of his prep books:<br /><blockquote>In recent years the early music movement, which advocates performing a work as it was performed at the time of its composition, has taken on the character of a crusade, particularly as it has moved beyond the sphere of medieval and baroque music and into music from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries by composers such as Mozart and Beethoven. Granted, knowledge about the experience of playing old music on now-obsolete instruments has been of inestimable value to scholars. Nevertheless, the early music approach to performance raises profound and troubling questions. [...]<br /></blockquote>The passage continues to discuss such hard-hitting issues as instrument design, tempo choices, and applause etiquette (!). Who would've expected to see these questions posed outside our own [blogo]sphere. Here are a couple samples:<br /><blockquote>The author suggests that the final movements of symphonies by Mozart and Beethoven might be played more slowly by today's orchestras if which one of the following were to occur?<br /><ol><li>orchestras were to use instruments no more advanced in design than those used by orchestras at the time Mozart and Beethoven composed their symphonies</li><li>audiences were to return to the custom of applauding at the end of each movement of a symphony</li><li>audiences were to reserve their most entusiastic applause for the most brilliantly played finales</li><li>conductors were to return to the practice of playing the chords on an orchestral piano to keep the orchestra together</li><li>conductors were to conduct the symphonies in the manner in which Beethoven and Mozart had conducted them</li></ol>The author suggests that the modern audience's tendency to withhold applause until the end of a symphony's performance is primarily related to which one of the following?<br /><ol><li>the replacement of the orchestral piano as a method of keeping the orchestra together</li><li>a gradual increase since the time of Mozart and Beethoven in audiences' expectations regarding teh ability of orchestral musicians</li><li>a change since the early nineteenth century in audiences' concepts of musical excitement and intensity</li><li>a more sophisticated appreciation of the structural integrity of the symphony as a piece of music</li><li>the tendency of orchestral musicians to employ their most brilliant effects in the early movements of symphonies composed by Mozart and Beethoven</li></ol></blockquote>For the record, my roommate's got his money on answers 2 and 3, respectively.Adam Baratzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05222629748155798158noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11714230.post-68397263070334334092007-09-07T18:42:00.000-04:002007-09-07T19:31:30.785-04:00Devil's AdvocateJust when I thought music was dead, I get wind that we've got ourselves a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/magazine/02rubin.t.html">savior</a>. Thank goodness.<br /><br />In related news, <a href="http://spectrum.ieee.org/aug07/5429">a</a> <a href="http://www.rchrd.com/blog/2007/09/test.html">few</a> <a href="http://renewablemusic.blogspot.com/2007/09/more-on-compression.html">people</a> recently got bit by the "compression is bad" bug. Now, I'm hardly going to argue with the general complaint. However, I think it's worth pointing out that compression is a tool just like any other. Good cooks use only enough salt so that you don't taste it, you know? The IEEE piece focused on such "overseasoning" issues, but there are recordings that use extreme compression quite artfully. Take a look at the waveform of Fiona Apple's "Limp":<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSvgOaEcruhgw_EY8plzzxFQGO32TRPN77jA3cmmhDaQfi1OZq8eTv4g1_a1a3Go5siRa95JdS48o7Je4tCnrEwjlhyphenhyphenaKxQyHYkkvvRszOjdtL7zWgZhYswmQGFVN0gKF8wl4avg/s1600-h/limp.gif"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSvgOaEcruhgw_EY8plzzxFQGO32TRPN77jA3cmmhDaQfi1OZq8eTv4g1_a1a3Go5siRa95JdS48o7Je4tCnrEwjlhyphenhyphenaKxQyHYkkvvRszOjdtL7zWgZhYswmQGFVN0gKF8wl4avg/s320/limp.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5107599200349644114" border="0" /></a><br />Parts of the track are quite compressed and quite loud. They are preceded, though, by quieter sections with a more pronounced dynamic range. The contrast makes the aggressive refrains ("call me crazy / hold me down / make me cry / get off now / baby") more aggressive. The more delicate verses pick up more tension and uncertainty than a more consistent dynamic range might've suggested. Those max amp spikes you see in the last refrain are when the drums come in to accent "<span style="font-weight: bold;">ba</span>by," pushing the song over the emotional edge it had been otherwise holding back from.<br /><br />An entire album of music like this would be very fatiguing. The song which follows on the album ("Love Ridden") has an entirely different attitude:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihxvdSHt4RfWBTvkAFMsPB1y9lv81TMxIEK3BTG0D_f-JmczWhCtvlmaoa487vIdFFFFKSaFmbx0S2koAGr5wrLre7B4HDAvf2gzsVX4UmtuFn0gFu0TW5ve3DapxR5QaGWG6fPQ/s1600-h/loveridden.gif"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihxvdSHt4RfWBTvkAFMsPB1y9lv81TMxIEK3BTG0D_f-JmczWhCtvlmaoa487vIdFFFFKSaFmbx0S2koAGr5wrLre7B4HDAvf2gzsVX4UmtuFn0gFu0TW5ve3DapxR5QaGWG6fPQ/s320/loveridden.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5107607657140249954" border="0" /></a><br />The softer instrumentation (no percussion, only piano and strings) and dynamic range give your ears a chance to rest without forcing a break in the action.Adam Baratzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05222629748155798158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11714230.post-69594943524101980382007-07-22T17:06:00.001-04:002007-07-22T17:17:10.585-04:00CategoriesI wish record stores would have no categories and just jam everyone in alphabetically. Curveballs of the day: Nico Muhly and Daniel Bernard Romaine ("feat. Philip Glass") popping up in pop. I had to walk from pop/rock to hip-hop/rap for Kanye West, but that confusion is at least understandable. One of my friends, a former record store employee, once recounted a zinger of a job interview question: where do you put John Cage? I know most people would come looking for him in classical (the most ambiguous placard of the lot), but I'd file him under folk just to see who was paying attention.Adam Baratzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05222629748155798158noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11714230.post-63095319705594045432007-07-09T20:58:00.000-04:002007-07-09T21:04:55.156-04:00Allez Musique!I usually try to hold off from link-and-run type posts, but this is too good to pass up: ANALOG arts ensemble has announced <a href="http://www.analogartsensemble.net/2007/07/analog-presents-iron-composer-omaha.html">Iron Composer Omaha</a>, a composition competition (no entry fee, kids) modeled after a certain kitschy cooking show. I'm glad to see that they're combining bad theater with new music, but I hope they follow through on the Iron Chef format with commentary (who is the <a href="http://www.altonbrown.com/">Alton Brown</a> of new music?), play-by-play, and interviews. As any viewer of Iron Chef knows, the fun isn't just in the challenge of the secret ingredient, but in the whole process of watching the chefs work.Adam Baratzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05222629748155798158noreply@blogger.com0