Nickelodeon

boxedmind: some-rock: (via milesaboveyourcircumstance,...

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 10:50:49 -0500

boxedmind:

some-rock:

(via milesaboveyourcircumstance, fuckyeahmoleskines)

awesome

Uploaded by smalin on Feb 1, 2012 Gnossienne No. 1, by Erik...

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 11:13:16 -0500

Uploaded by smalin on Feb 1, 2012

Gnossienne No. 1, by Erik Satie, piano solo, performed by Stephen Malinowski, accompanied by an animated score.

Uploaded by smalin on Feb 1, 2012 Prelude to the Afternoon of a...

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 11:11:01 -0500

Uploaded by smalin on Feb 1, 2012

Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, by Claude Debussy, with an animated graphical score.
FAQ

Q: Where can I learn more about this piece?
A: Where else? Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prelude_to_the_Afternoon_of_a_Faun

Q: What do the different shapes mean?
A: The flute (which begins the piece) is shown in “walking ellipses.” The woodwinds are shown with rhombi, the brass are shown with hollow elliptical “auras,” the bowed strings are shown with rectangular bars (which flicker when the strings are doing tremolos), and the plucked and struck instruments (pizzicato strings, harp, and crotales) are shown with hollow rhombi that collapse.

Q: What do the colors indicate?
A: The colors are assigned by a system called “harmonic coloring” in which the twelve pitch classes, C, C-sharp, D, etc., arranged on the “circle of fifths,” are mapped to twelve hues, arranged on the “color wheel.” This allows you to see changes in harmony and tonality. You can read more about this here:
http://www.musanim.com/mam/pfifth.htm

fuckyeaholdiesmusic: Mr. Sandman | The ChordettesReleased in...

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 18:32:48 -0500

fuckyeaholdiesmusic:

Mr. Sandman | The Chordettes
Released in 1954

Led Zeppelin - “Going to California”

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 20:04:46 -0500

Led Zeppelin - “Going to California”

foucaultscat: The Smashing Pumpkins - ‘Bullet With Butterfly...

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 13:44:18 -0500

foucaultscat:

The Smashing Pumpkins - ‘Bullet With Butterfly Wings’

foucaultscat: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Ohio

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 13:39:20 -0500

foucaultscat:

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Ohio

foucaultscat: Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young (Find the Cost of...

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 13:38:00 -0500

foucaultscat:

Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young (Find the Cost of Freedom)

foucaultscat: Neil Young (Don’t Let It Bring You Down)

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 13:35:00 -0500

foucaultscat:

Neil Young (Don’t Let It Bring You Down)

theantidote: Hiromi Uehara (Listen here) (via mfs:)

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 13:31:12 -0500

theantidote:

Hiromi Uehara (Listen here)

(via mfs:)

howlsamesame: Ali Akbar Khan—“Misra Mand (Evening...

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 13:29:54 -0500

howlsamesame:

Ali Akbar Khan—“Misra Mand (Evening Raga)”

Morning and Evening Ragas (Connoisseur Society of NY 1955).

foucaultscat: Cat Stevens (Teaser and the Firecat, Bitterblue)

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 13:28:50 -0500

foucaultscat:

Cat Stevens (Teaser and the Firecat, Bitterblue)

juanitovalentin: Why It Scares Me//La Dispute

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:54:01 -0500

juanitovalentin:

Why It Scares Me//La Dispute

thedailywhat: Disney Moment of the Day: While performing...

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 13:50:55 -0500

thedailywhat:

Disney Moment of the Day: While performing “Mordecai” at the Doyle Lawson Bluegrass Festival in Denton, Josh Williams is joined on stage by a fine-feathered friend who is more than happy to sing along.

(Later requests to play “Free Bird” were promptly rejected.)

[reddit.]

itinerantcerebrum: Danfield - Enough For Me Acousic Live at the...

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 13:15:04 -0500

itinerantcerebrum:

Danfield - Enough For Me Acousic Live at the Hideaway

My brother’s new trio last night. Three of the best musicians in the Tampa Bay area and the best rhythm section in the world. Little intimate acoustic improv action in the crowd. One of the better nights of live music I have seen in a long time and I’m not just saying that because I’m related to the guys. There’s no denying quality when you can feel the music….its not just for listening you know.

You can find them here —> http://goo.gl/21JGR

bigfun: Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra - Che Che Cole

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 12:59:19 -0500

bigfun:

Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra - Che Che Cole

vrac-musique: Sting - The Hounds of Winter A much different...

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 12:07:12 -0500

vrac-musique:

Sting - The Hounds of Winter

A much different version than the one from Mercury Falling. A must hear!

The boldness of Igor Stravinsky

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 16:41:08 -0500

Born: June 17, 1882 - Oranienbaum, near St. Petersburg, Russia
Died: April 6, 1971 - New York, NY, USA

Igor (Feodorovich) Stravinsky was a great Russian-born French, later American composer, one of the supreme masters of 20^thcentury music, whose works exercised the most profound influence on the evolution of music through the emancipation of rhythm, melody, and harmony.

tjslater:

The boldness of Igor Stravinsky

All the excitement [of Igor Stravinsky’s early career] was nothing against the impact of Le Sacre du printemps [The Rite of Spring], which had its premiere on May 29, 1913 [when he was thirty]. Stravinsky had conceived the idea for it while working on Firebird. ‘I dreamed of a scene of pagan ritual in which a chosen sacrificial virgin danced herself to death.’ Work on Le Sacre was dropped for Petrushka, but Stravinsky soon resumed work on the new ballet. (He has said that The Coronation of Spring would be closer to his original meaning than the usual translation, The Rite of Spring.) Vaslav Nijinsky was the choreographer, and the premiere resulted in the most famous scandale in the history of music. Hardly anybody in the audience was prepared for a score of such dissonance and ferocity, such complexity and such rhythmic oddity.

Nobody connected with the production had the faintest idea that the music would provoke a visceral reaction. As soon as the bassoon ended its phrase in the high register, at the very opening of the ballet, laughter broke out. Soon there were whistles and catcalls. Nobody could hear the music. Diaghilev had the electricians switch the house lights off and on, in an effort to restore order. Nijinsky, in the wings, yelled the rhythms to the dancers. The Comtesse de Pourtales stood in her box, brandishing her fan, and shouted: ‘This is the first time in sixty years that anybody has dared make fun of me.’ People hurled insults at each other. The Apaches, [a musical school of thought] headed by Ravel, shrieked their praise. Stravinsky himself, in his Expositions and Developments, has described the famous evening at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees:

Mild protests against the music could be heard from the very beginning of the performance. Then, when the curtain opened … the storm broke. Cries of ‘Ta gueule’ (shut up!) came from behind me. I heard Florent Schmitt shout ‘Taisez-vouz garces du seizieme’ (be quiet, bitches of the sixteenth!); the ‘garces’ of the sixteenth arondissement were, of course, the most elegant ladies in Paris. The uproar continued, however, and a few minutes later I left the hall in a rage; I was sitting on the right near the orchestra, and I remember slamming the door. I have never again been that angry. The music was familiar to me; I loved it, and I could not understand why people who had not yet heard it wanted to protest in advance. I arrived in a fury backstage, where I saw Diaghilev flicking the house lights in a last effort to quiet the hall. For the rest of the performance I stood in the wings behind Nijinsky holding the tails of his frac while he stood on a chair shouting numbers to the dancers like a coxswain.

[Yet] everything about Stravinsky pointed to an intellectual tidiness, and that included his work habits. Those were tidy to the point of compulsion. In 1916, the Swiss writer C. F. Ramuz, who was working with Stravinsky on L’Histoire du soldat, looked at Stravinsky’s work table and marveled:

Stravinsky’s scores are magnificent. He is above all (in all matters and in every sense of the word) a calligrapher… . His writing desk resembled a surgeon’s instrument case. Bottles of different colored inks in their ordered hierarchy each had a separate part to play in the ordering of his art. Near at hand were india-rubbers of various kinds and shapes, and all sorts of glittering steel implements: rulers, erasers, pen-knives, and a roulette instrument for drawing staves, invented by Stravinsky himself. One was reminded of the definition of St. Thomas: beauty is the splendor of order. All the large pages of the score were filled with writing in different colored inks - blue, green, red, two kinds of black (ordinary and Chinese), each having its purpose, its meaning, its special use: one for the notes, another the text, a third the translation; one for titles, another for the musical directions. Meanwhile the bar lines were ruled, and the mistakes carefully erased.

Harold C. Schonberg, The Lives of the Great Composers

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Igor Stravinsky, he was one of the two most influential composers of the early-mid 20th century. The Rite of Spring was quite the big deal. He was a master orchestrator and would often compose in a block form. In order to keep track of the different “orchestral colors”, he would actually write the different notes literally in different colors on the page in order to keep track.

He had a long-standing musical rivalry with the late romantic/early expressionist composer Arnold Schoenberg, the other of the two most influential composers. Whereas Arnold Schoenberg assumed the logical conclusion to the ambiguous tonality of the late romantics was “emancipation of the dissonance” and a creation of a new tonal language, the 12-tone system, Stravinsky expanded extant tonal harmony (e.g. polytonality). After the death of Schoenberg, Stravinsky gave Schoenberg’s composition style a chance in his later works.

In contrast to Stravinsky, here’s a series of pieces called Pierrot Lunaire by Schoenberg.

For you fellow classy classical music aficionados, you can listen to and follow along with excerpts from the Rite of Spring score here. See also the Firebird. My favorite part of the Firebird is around the 2 minute mark (in the video) where the entire upper string section engages in a brief mass harmonic glissando that never made an appearance again anywhere in his music.

Photo

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:57:15 -0500

the-night-picture-collector: John Coltrane

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 16:28:02 -0500

the-night-picture-collector:

John Coltrane