Archive for the 'music' Category
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First post of the new year (both Western and Chinese) and it’s now March. Life has gotten itself on an interestingly skewed track again and as soon as the confidence to put some persona of myself in the public returns, I’ll be back here more. I miss this semi-sanctuary and everyone one around it, but disrespect and ignorance HURTS, and recovery is hard. Self-reflection has become almost as routine as a shower. Finding the courage to enjoy performing music – without fear, without inhibition – again is the first great obstacle. Family is beautiful.
So though there there’s been considerable slackage here, the reading list is still being maintained; not that there has been much time to read lately. The old habit of reading alongside a meal has been passed up to either not having the proper time to put towards this, to newspapers, or to having meals with kind, mostly new acquaintances – which is typically a good excursion too. In the meantime, every so often, something is written on the [Twitter] about the musical events around. And instead of reading literature, a few hours a week are spent reading a score alongside its recording. This activity is nothing entirely new (see previous posts on music) but lately it’s been happening on a kind of weekly basis.
I probably won’t include scores in the reading list though given that the manner of study is quite different from reading a book. I may start keeping list of performances, however, because I keep forgetting to sign into the myspace to update it.
This week’s composition of fascination is Michael Nyman’s String Quartet No. 2, particularly movements 3 and 4. I found the other three quartets somewhat underwhelming, but full of good intentions to complement the good writing. However, String Quartet No. 2 appeals to me in the same fashion as Bloch’s String Quintets and Gorecki’s String Quartet No. 3 – the intense but balanced exploration of culture, rhythmical architectures, and a certain kind of desperation and triumph pervading throughout.
Last week was Maurice Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major. That piece pretty much explains itself (especially if Martha Argerich is at the helm.) The second movement of the concerto is heartbreaking and unexpected while the overall intricacy and detail of the entire concerto is stunning. What was almost as surprising, however, was the ratio of string to wind players that were familiar with the composition. Apparently, many standard wind excerpts are taken from the concerto (The bassoon solo in the third movement is particularly impressive. During our next rehearsal together, my bassoon teaching assistant friend casually performed the excerpt for me on the spot – by memory.) but to many of my string colleagues, the piece is unfamiliar. I wonder which other pieces can be placed in this category.
March 07 2010 | music and musings and waffle | No Comments »
Getting a 90 minute professional massage at a 5-star spa and hotel as the first professional massage of my life was not entirely like my first experience of going to a strip club almost exactly a year ago.
It’s interesting, involves a lot of nudity, feeling quite out of place – though intrigued – and I’ll probably never do it again.
Paper: 1/3: Article for the Music Educators Journal
Progress: optimistic only out of context with the other papers
Theme?: the lyrics kill me at some point or other; hi, December.winter
Tracks: (all files uploaded onto zshare.net. Music is rightful property of the artists. I don’t own any of these…Please buy their music and support them.)
+ [Last Night] – Justin Timberlake
+ [I'll Never Smile Again] – Priscilla Ahn (Frank Sinatra cover)
+ [Winter Song] – Sara Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson
December 13 2009 | music and musings and travels | 1 Comment »
Upcoming show:
January 1-4, 2010.
Hilton Marks Center
Alexandria, VA
[Select Start] is returning to [MAGFest]!! I’ll also be sitting in a few songs with [The Oneups.] Look at the guest list ([Sid Meier] anyone?) and the band list ([Armcannon]! [The Megas]!)! Everyone should go!
More information to come soon. I’m very very excited.
November 21 2009 | games and music and performances and travels | No Comments »
“It is all a long way from the beeps and bloops of the first video games.”
I’m surprised it took, of all publications, the [New York Times] this long to write some variation of this sentence – namely using “long way” in combination with “bleeps and bloops.” Fairly nice article otherwise, though.
In other news, it’s time to find a new sentence, or just onomatopoeic sounds, to describe how evolved video game music and the culture such around has become, methinks.
October 28 2009 | games and music and musings | 1 Comment »
Upcoming show:
Friday, July 31, 2009 – 10pm
Smoke and Barrel Tavern
Fayetteville, AR
performing with The Oneups.
more information [here]
Back to practice…
July 28 2009 | games and music and performances and travels | No Comments »
[image to be added]
I just wrote up a beautiful post with links and everything to my upcoming schedule performing with my quartet (formally known as the Clarke String Quartet, but we’re not even sure sometimes) as part of the [Pine Mountain Music Festival], but somehow, between here and the “publish” button, it disappeared entirely.
Thus, just know these few things: greetings from St. Louis! We embark on our long drive from here to Michigan tomorrow. St. Louis is my first stop in a series of travels this summer for me, incidentally, all around Mid-America. (I’m not complaining.) The timing just worked out beautifully as such.
I’ll try to keep this blog updated and get that schedule here again, though you can also go to the website’s [calendar] and just look for “Resident Chamber Musicians” anywhere on it.
June 23 2009 | music and travels | 2 Comments »
The tiny trouble with constant fascination with fairly obscure works is that, well, they’re fairly obscure. Finally, after many loops, I finally have a copy of Joaquin Rodrigo’s Sonata Pimpante in my hands (to share…thank you, fantastic library ordering system.)
Then, it was a quest to find out what “pimpante” meant. Since Rodrigo is Valencian, I figured it would be Spanish, but all the online translations returned the original word, and my Spanish-speaking friends just made jokes so thank heavenly bodies for Google. “Pimpante” is Italian.
Lively.
The lively sonata.
—-
for the mood: distressed
tracks: (all files uploaded onto zshare.net. Music is rightful property of the artists. I don’t own any of these…Please buy their music and support them)
+ [Melody] – Nobuchika Eri
- I don’t know what she’s saying but the song is heartbreakingly pretty fluff.
+ [Me Muero] – Utada Hikaru
- Critics like her latest English album a lot more then the previous one and this track is particularly well done, but I still stand by my opinion that her first major English release was brilliant in its own right.
+ [Falling Away with You] – Muse
+ [River] – Tatsuya Ishii
- This is exactly the song you want someone to sing when it feels like nothing else in the world can go wrong.
June 17 2009 | music and waffle | No Comments »
The gmail music player produces better music file sound than my winamp.
Today, here is the music of a quintet from [Eminence Symphony Orchestra] (previously mentioned [here]) and Final Fantasy miscellany. Still thinking of finding the direct path to joining them. Still thinking of how I can turn into [Hiroaki Yura].
If you weren’t aware that these melodies were from video games, an anime, and a soundtrack to a novel, would you have thought that they were composed for such? Be honest…
Tracks: (all files uploaded onto zshare.net. Music is rightful property of the artists. I don’t own any of these…Please buy their music and support them.)
+ [Dash] (Romeo x Juliet) – Hitoshi Sakimoto
- performed by members of the Eminence Symphony Orchestra
- Short, but very fun to play. I don’t remember it from the series at all, but this version is charming and has an odd ending.
+ [The Fall of Darkness] (Kirite) – Yasunori Mitsuda
- performed by members of the Eminence Symphony Orchestra
- Kirite is an irresistible album. I recently arranged this piece for Select Start and was sincerely afraid that we would read through it once and then forget about it. After all, from a market standpoint, the piece is risky, being from an unfamiliar not-video game. However, the opposite happened and after two readings, they actually really wanted to put some solid work into it. So we’ll see how far this goes!
+ [Estrelas] – Nobuo Uematsu featuring Risa Ohki
- from the Final Fantasy: Love Will Grow vocal album, sung to the melody of “Gilbert’s Harp” from Final Fantasy IV
+ [Cosmos] (Dissidia : Final Fantasy) – Your Favorite Enemies
- Yet another strangely resolved piece. Interesting lyrics.
June 05 2009 | Uncategorized and games and music | No Comments »
While going over past posts in order to organize the [new page], the fact came to my attention that as much as I write about music and performances on this site.blog.webspace, I’ve never actually posted up any recordings involving myself.
Don’t get used to it. There are more through [myspace] anyway.
Here are some personal tracks, edited a little by yours truly, unless otherwise noted:
+ [Title] – from Megaman III
- A large majority of my recorded sound is through [that band] I play with. I really like this recording, arranged by David Yasensky, guitar.
+ [Green Hill Zone. Marble Zone] – from Sonic the Hedgehog
- Because that first one is a bit short. Also arranged by David and featuring solo work by Kanako “Kiki” Sueyoshi, violin, on the second melody. You can get our CD for free on our [website].
+ [Boy Aims for Wild Fields] – from Secret of Mana
- I talk a lot about [The OneUps] here and should write a post of their music someday soon. But for now, this is a collaboration from a [MAGfest VI] rehearsal back in 2008, featuring OneUps bassist/keyboardist/producer/monkey trainer [Mustin] on bass and musician extraordinaire [Kunal Majmudar] on drums. The beginning is a little shaky as we try to find a decent tread.
+ [The Vagabond] – composed by Tyzen Hsiao; rearranged by Maho Azuma and me; performed by Maho Azuma (flute), Christine Lee (piano), and me (violin)
- Back a summer or two ago, Select Start was asked to perform in one of the university cultural assemblies. Sadly, the majority of the members were out of town so we re-arranged this tune for anyone still in town. Tyzen Hsiao is one of the more prolific Taiwanese composers, and the piece just worked out nicely overall. This was recorded during a later Select Start rehearsal, which accounts for the background noise that I apologize profusely for… The three of us are looking for another opportunity to re-record it in a silent setting.
+ [Eternal Harvest] (from Final Fantasy IX) – Christine Lee, piano
- So this one isn’t me at all but I have to pass on this recording whenever I have an excuse to because it’s so pretty. Christine is a rather significant inspiration in my life. For starters, she played my junior recital better than I did and then decided to go and be a doctor after all. This is from the very first Select Start CD ever.
May 31 2009 | games and music | No Comments »
Last exam of the semester. What a crazy semester this has been. A very indie list.
Exam: Analytical Techniques
Progress: dismal
Tracks: (all files uploaded onto savefile. com. Music is rightful property of the artists. I don’t own any of these…Please buy their music and support them.)
+ [Fire] (radio edition) – Kasabian
+ [My Mirror Speaks] – Death Cab for Cutie
+ [Live To Tell The Tale] – Passion Pit
May 12 2009 | music | No Comments »
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