Some of the media I read/saw/listened to/downloaded/purchased in 2011. Sadly, not in any kind of order. If you've consumed any of these, I'd love to know what you thought. If you want to know more of my opinions about any of these, just ask.

( Paper Books and eBooks )
( Audio Books )
( DVDs/Movies/TV )
( Music )

Crossposts: http://firecat.livejournal.com/745357.html

Thanks to

clever_doberman, the OH and I had an opportunity to go to the Monterey Jazz Festival this past weekend.

The Jazz Festival is at the Monterey Fairgrounds. You pay one price to get onto the grounds, where there are usually about half a dozen musical events happening at any one time, as well as dozens of vendor and food booths scattered around. You pay separately to see acts in the Arena. Here's a good article to read to get a sense for it if you haven't been:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/ablogsupreme/2011/09/14/140472327/the-first-time-attendees-guide-to-the-monterey-jazz-festival
( Read more... )

Crossposts: http://firecat.livejournal.com/736652.html

My Dad has participated in this intermediate-level piano ensemble class for over a year and he loves it. The ensemble has been active for a number of years. They need to recruit a few new members for the next session (12/9 through 3/10) so he asked me to pass the word.

If you know anyone who might be interested, or any mailing list or web forum that might welcome information about the class, please pass it on.

If you want my Dad's e-mail address to make further inquiries, let me know.

Play Piano? Read Music?

Have some fun! Join a unique East Bay Area Piano Ensemble!

The San Lorenzo Adult School Piano Ensemble warmly invites intermediate and advanced pianists to join us.

The class meets Thursdays, 10:00 am to 12:00 pm, at
San Lorenzo Adult School
http://adult-slzusd-ca.schoolloop.com/
820 Bockman Rd., San Lorenzo CA 94580 (there is an A.C. Transit stop across the street)
Room 16 near rear parking lot.

The room has about 20 upright pianos. We play mainly classical orchestral music transcribed for 2 pianos, 8 hands, but each member of this very compatible group sits at his/her own piano.

If you would like to play in an ensemble, or if your main instrument is not piano but you want some piano experience, come join us! You do Not have to be an expert sight reader to enjoy this group but we guarantee to advance your reading skill.

Call Don Jones at 650-685-8208 for queries or info.

Sign up by WEDNESDAY 12/1/10 through the Adult School Office 510-317-4200 or at our session on Thursday, Nov. 18th. Tuition is $100.00 for 12 weekly sessions from 12/9/10 through 3/10/11.

Crossposts: http://firecat.livejournal.com/693037.html

There's another source of delight in my life, now that I have discovered Aretha Franklin's version of "Jumpin' Jack Flash" (From Painted Black, a compilation of Rolling Stones cover tracks).

Not only that, but I discovered it while listening to the Coverville podcast devoted to mondegreens (misheard lyrics). (Don't miss the comments on the web page for the podcast.)

A version of "Jumpin' Jack Flash" made it onto the show because someone misheard a line in the second verse as line as "I was raised by a toothless spinning ham".

Also, I would rather listen to a song called "Love Dogs in Space" than one called "Love Comes in Spurts" any time.

Crossposts: http://firecat.livejournal.com/684444.html

A classical singer (and voice teacher) analyzes classic male metal singers:

http://www.invisibleoranges.com/2010/07/ask-a-real-musician-5-classic-male-metal-singers/

via

onyxlynx

Crossposts: http://firecat.livejournal.com/682291.html

Joplins Ghost by Tananarive Due

Published by Griot Audio, which specializes in contemporary African-American fiction. Well narrated by Lizan Mitchell. Joplins Ghost is part well-researched historical novel (following Scott Joplin's life) and part modern novel (following the character of Phoenix Smalls, an up and coming R&B star).

I really admired the research. I liked the way the plots were woven together. The writing was smooth. Some of the characters and their interactions are satisfyingly complex.

Most musical styles owe a lot to music that came before, and the best musicians honor their influences and musical ancestry. That's one of the primary themes of this book and I really enjoyed those parts of the book. Another theme is the difficulty of living a musician's / performer's life, and Due does a great job comparing/contrasting Joplin's struggles with those of Phoenix.

And oh yeah, it's a ghost story. I didn't really warm up to the ghost story part of the novel; I kept arguing with what was happening. That might be due to my relative inexperience with the ghost story genre.

View all my (goodreads.com) reviews

A couple of my friends do radio shows that are streamed live on the Internet, but they happen at times I usually can't listen, and they aren't archived for copyright reasons.

Is there any Mac software that works like a VCR for streaming audio, that would let me set a timer to record the shows so I could listen later?

(I suppose that would be against the copyright rules too.)

11/01/07: 733 out of 50,000
11/02/07: 912 out of 50,000
11/03/07: 2103 out of 50,000

Widget from gngr here.

Other:

Started 3 Garage Band pieces and finished four others
Finished a sleeve of the Heartbeat Sweater
Started the second sleeve of the Heartbeat Sweater while watching one of the dumber Original Star Trek episodes ("The Naked Time")
Knitted several rows of the Tidal Wave sock (and ripped half of them out again) while hanging with Serene in a cafe in San Francisco
Finished one Tidal Wave sock (it took two tries because I misread the instructions the first time and produced a too-short toe)
Finished the second sleeve of the Heartbeat Sweater and started the neckline
Started the second Tidal Wave sock
Started and ripped a lace shawl (my own design)
Finished the Heartbeat Sweater
Finished the Tidal Wave socks
Started a sekrit winter gift project

And now a post on one of the fun parts of aging...rediscovering stuff you used to like. (And still getting to discover new stuff!)

A while ago I came into possession of a bunch of iTunes song credits. Here's what I bought:( Read more... )

What music have you (re)acquired lately?

music "Love Hurts (Single)" - Nazareth - Hair of the Dog

Albert Kuvezin and Yat-Kha, Re-Covers

They are from Tuva, and I found out about them via

the_ogre via the movie Genghis Blues about the American blues musician/throat singer Paul Pena, and ultimately via Richard Feynman (one of the first Westerners to popularize Tuva).

On this album they are covering a wide variety of mostly Western rock music, from Led Zeppelin to Joy Division. My favorites are the Zeppelin song (see the "listening to" field), "In A Gadda Da Vida," just because—who does "In A Gadda Da Vida" these days? and "Black Magic Woman," which I like a lot more than Santana's version.

I can't remember where I found out about Tuvan throat-singing originally. I have had a CD of Tuvan throat-singing, Deep in the Heart of Tuva, for a long time. It has a Yat-Kha song on it. It also has a couple of Paul Pena songs on it.

I have other overtone-and throat-singing music—from David Hykes' Harmonic Choir and from the Gyuto Monks Tibetan Tantric Choir (a great CD, but not the best choice to take with you to the oral surgeon when having your wisdom teeth out).

music "When The Levee Breaks" - Albert Kuvezin and Yat-Kha - Re-Covers

My Avis rental car (a Ford Taurus) continued to give me trouble throughout the trip to Wiscon and Illinois (it wouldn't start reliably - I usually had to try several times using techniques such as waiting a few seconds to turn the key the final bit, putting on the parking brake, wiggling the shift lever, or dancing on the car hood naked and howling at the moon), but I guess I must have signed up for some special when I made the reservation because I now have codes for 20 songs on iTunes. I've never bought more than 2 or 3 songs on iTunes at a time so I feel like I'm rolling in riches and bits of dead goat.

There's a meme going around of one song from your music library whose title starts with a letter of your screen name.

My twist is that instead of posting the song titles I have posted a lyric from each song, and I've scrambled the order of the titles.

Your mission is to guess the title and artist for each. If you are the first to guess correctly, I edit the post to add the title and artist and your LJ name, and put the song in the correct order.

Darned if I can tell whether these will be easy or hard (I think at least one or two are easy).

( Let's go! )

( how white & nerdy? )

I'm not a huge jazz fan, so those of you more knowledgeable than I am have possibly already heard of this person. If not, and if you like piano jazz at all, I heartily recommend the album Cutting Loose by the Matt Savage Trio.

It so happens that Matt Savage is an autistic prodigy (about 13 when this CD was produced) and I found out about him while surfing around Wikipedia reading about autism. But that's not why I'm recommending the CD - it's just really good. To my ears, anyway.

http://www.savagerecords.com/

music "Stop And Go" - The Matt Savage Trio - Cutting Loose

Profile

firecat (attention machine in need of calibration)

May 2013

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30	31

Syndicate

Page Summary

firecat's 2011 in Books/TV/Movies/Music
Monterey Jazz Festival
Piano Ensemble class, San Lorenzo, CA
musical happiness
Singing technique
Booklog: Joplin's Ghost by Tananarive Due
Recording streaming audio on the Internet
Nanowrimo progress
Musical (re)acquisitions
This week's musical discovery
How I won 20 iTunes songs by sacrificing a goat
A combined music meme + guessing contest
because Weird Al is a genius
Jazz!

Active Entries

1: somewhat weekly reading meme
2: somewhat weekly reading meme
3: blaming the victim
4: In which firecat is angry about injustice
5: Paradigms of practicing medicine
6: (no subject)
7: mid-week reading meme
8: debtors' prison in the US

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Style Credit

Style:: branchandroot
Resources:: Secksy Purple

Page generated 19 May 2013 12:00 am

firecat

party in my head

Entries tagged with music

firecat's 2011 in Books/TV/Movies/Music

Monterey Jazz Festival

Piano Ensemble class, San Lorenzo, CA

Play Piano? Read Music?

musical happiness

Singing technique

Booklog: Joplin's Ghost by Tananarive Due

Recording streaming audio on the Internet

Nanowrimo progress

Musical (re)acquisitions

This week's musical discovery

How I won 20 iTunes songs by sacrificing a goat

A combined music meme + guessing contest

because Weird Al is a genius

Jazz!