Posts tagged covers
That’s right, it is a piece based on the NOKIA RINGTONE, in turn based on a waltz by Tárrega. The touch tones at the end are an especially nice touch—what’s that number? I think it’s 135-6136, or maybe 468-9469. Anybody have perfect pitch?
Playing a ringtone on the piano, whatever. Playing DTMF tones on the piano? Awesome.
(via Unpop!)
Introducing is a talented, Oxford-based nine-piece band with a very specific goal. Every show they perform is essentially the same. With the exception of slight variations in their encores, the set never changes. Their mission? To perform DJ Shadow’s first LP, “Endtroducing”, in its entirety, from start to finish.
This kind of stuff fascinates me. DJ Shadow’s record, of course, is created from samples (which may, in turn, have been created from other samples). This band wants to dive through all of those layers of sampling to the original instruments and then combine them together into one physical space. But, one major issue is that the “original instruments” are not the point of DJ Shadow’s album; he doesn’t use samples just because he can’t play instruments and they’re a useful way to collect stuff together. The feeling of the various samples, from the recording, mastering, and all that jazz, is not just in the instruments.
Also, I wonder what that laptop is doing in there. Do MacBooks finally count as “real” instruments now?
(via More Intelligent Life)
Lori Singer (of Fame fame) plays “Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough” on the cello. Excellent.
(via Unpop!)
Cathy Berberian: “Ticket to Ride”
This is opera singer Cathy Berberian’s cover version of the Beatles’ “Ticket to Ride,” off of her album of Beatles covers, Revolution.
Cathy Berberian was a darling of the experimental music scene back in the day, married to Luciano Berio, writing her own experimental music, and performing works written for her by John Cage.
I don’t know what else to write. This either says something about the effects of taking a holiday blog break or something about the effects of listening to A WHOLE ALBUM OF OPERATIC BEATLES COVERS.
Welcome to 2010.
Olivier Messiaen talks about birdsong in this short clip (from some source I don’t know). Hearing his vocal imitation of the bird, a recording of the bird itself, and then his representation of it on the piano is really wonderful. It’s like a short media studies essay on the various types of sound reproduction.
To hear more examples (and see comparisons of spectrograms and sheet music), see here.
To read more about the work these birdsongs were used in, Oiseaux Exotiques, and to see a video of a performance conducted by Pierre Boulez, see here.
(video via immanent discursivity)
Experimental Music is a Virus
A former student of mine picked up on the theme of “covers as musical indeterminacy” we discussed in my class on Indeterminacy this summer. We talked a lot about what different versions of a song need to have in common for them to be considered the “same song,” and what parts of a song are nonessential to its core “identity.”
Vicky took this to heart and rounded up a variety of videos of “Such Great Heights” by the Postal Service, collecting a pretty impressive variety. I may just have to use them as an example next time I teach that class.
And, in a flight of fancy right up my alley, she suggests listening to the first three simultaneously.
Go check it out.
