Cities that are not Boston and may or may not be better.

Glass harmonic is cool shit, thanks ben franklin. But I think the Chapman Stick is the coolest.
 
GW - did you ever listen to the Ratatat I suggested? You could also try listening to some Little People.

If you look at the suggested videos under those links, you'll see a bunch more from the same artists. I'd check out Start Shootin' by Little People, and as I've said before, Seventeen Years and Tropicana by Ratatat. I think it's a pleasant break from "regular" electronica, although Ratatat definitely has a more familiar vibe. Tell me what you think.
 
GW2500 said:
Ok Kent, I guess you like that Venga Boys too, b/c Cassandra (who seemed more like a generic pop star) Basshunter, Ian Van Dahl (was she "tell me a fable" chick) , and Scooter were straight cheese. I listened to a couple songs of each. If you want to say they are equal to crap rock and pop bands then sure. And I think the main reason you don't trash Jazz is b/c you know they are just superior musicians. For real the are the Jedi Knights of music.
Click to expand...
Trust me, the superior musicians for me are the classicals, certainly not jazz so don't get full of yourself. And no I hate the Venga Boys. And please stop with the generic pop star. Everything is generic to a person who dislike the music. In fact, I can say all your jazz musicians are certainly generic because they are mostly sung by black person and they all sound the same. You see? It's not true but hey if I dislike a style of music, I guess it's okay to generalize them all. To me, Basshunter, Cascada, Ian Van Dahl, and Scooter are the Ray Charles of my music preferences. Are they better? No. Are they equal? Probably not but they are right up there in the music world.


GW2500 said:
As far as that DJ Mills goes, yea he's talented. But I'm sorry at least a third of all that knob twisting ain't doing shit. I watched and listened to it very closely. I encourage you to do the same. I mean I can turn knobs on my amp for 10 minutes to make it look busier, but unlike him I allways have to be playing. He can sit on one beat for 10 seconds, plan his next move and then turn a knob. A "traditional" musician is allways creating on the fly. He mainly uses one record as the main beat, uses another to inject different types of sounds and then eventually cross fades to a beat on another record. He does it well and he makes it look cool, but again I don't think its all that memorable (from a sonic stand point). And if he is one of the top dogs in Dj/Techno land well then any of these guys trumps him in a heart beat.
Click to expand...


Again, you are a 'novice' to the techno world. While I didn't hear all the changes in the song (youtube is the blame for the lower quality) I do actually hear the subtle changes which includes the volume changes with the sliders. The twisty knobs add the sound effects, some enable echoes, and some warp the sound effects themselves. So once again, before you start criticizing, listen more carefully. I can hear it. You just can't yet because you're not used to it.
 
Kennedy, cool stuff. But one could argue that its an instrumental jam/mood band w/ electronic elements. I just envision a band performing this stuff live w/ a drummer! I guess it is electronic, but it kind of seems on the same vibe as edgar winters band. And thats cool shit. This stuff dosn't have a hyper tempo, it actually breaths. So I guess I like some electronica, but manly b/c it involves people, and not computers and vinyl, playing music.
 
True - Ratatat used live guitar, and very occasionally, live drum. Little People, though, damn. I can't explain that stuff. It's so melancholy but so dramatic at the same time. Like your getting excited for something, and mourning at the same time. The whole album, straight through, is wonderful. Glad you liked it better than Cascada and Basshunter.

One more for you to check out: Rjd2
Rjd2
 
Last edited:
Kent my final points w/ you. Jazz musicians can play classical, sometimes classical musicians have a tough time being loose (not sloppy), but yes classical musicians chops are pretty much equal.

As far as sound effects go, your talking to a guitarist. I uses effects, amps. I know all about reverb, echo/delay, phase shifting, all that shit. So I can hear that subtle stuff. Yes 2/3 of his tinkering was to do something, either subtly or more noticable. But twisting a knob a fraction of a milimeter is really just for show. But sure he is talented, not nearly as much as alpha musicians in other genres but a talent non-the-less.
 
BarbaricManchurian said:
It's your opinion and I know I can't change it (and you can't change mine), just don't start randomly bitching about my grammar, I hope you're not Ned's alt or anything. I can improvise on clarinet, I have a wide musical background, and while making techno may not be the hardest, it is by far the most satisfying. But whatever, just my opinion
Click to expand...

I didn't mean to randomly bitch about your grammar. I honestly couldn't tell if you were just expressing your opinion, or telling the rest of us what musical taste to have.

Trust me, the superior musicians for me are the classicals, certainly not jazz so don't get full of yourself.
Click to expand...

Hugely debatable. There are countless jazz musicians who are classically trained, but their brilliance just escalates in the world of improvisation. There are people like Keith Jarrett who put out classical albums...just you know, cuz they can. Listen to the first 3.5 minutes of this Brad Mehldau performance...totally improvised, and completely shot through with obvious classical influences:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4IFtgATxK0


This is an interesting discussion wrapped in a stupid argument.
Click to expand...

Are you going to be the first guy to draw an architectural parallel?
 
BarbaricManchurian said:
...I play clarinet pretty well and while classical music may be interesting to listen intently to and envision a scene, it's not going to get you excited about anything
Click to expand...

While I know it's your opinion, you're stating it as if it's a borderline fact, to which I'd say that's fucking stupid. Dvorak excites me. Shostakovich excites me. Ravel excites me AND brings me to tears.

armpitsOFmight said:
^^Yeah, but all that crap you like is boring.

....but they're still good musicians...

...too bad they still make boring music...
Click to expand...

Again, I know it's your opinion, but to hear someone say Stevie Wonder or Dennis Chambers make boring music hurts. Sometimes I don't care for the super chops-y fusion stuff Chambers or Victor Wooten play, but I'd never call it boring.

KentXie said:
Trust me, the superior musicians for me are the classicals, certainly not jazz so don't get full of yourself.
Click to expand...

blade_bltz said:
There are countless jazz musicians who are classically trained, but their brilliance just escalates in the world of improvisation.
Click to expand...

I agree with blade_blitz... improv is something the typical classical musician never encounters, and I think their overall musicianship suffers for it.

I started out in the classical world as a timpanist (those big kettle drums) where I was trained to practice and read music and follow a conductor's baton so that once I made it into an orchestra I'd be able to interpret the notes on the page in a way that pleased myself and the conductor. But the bottom line is you still have to play those notes on the page.

I found that limiting, so now I play the drum set full-time. I can play just about everything (jazz, rock, dance), but time has shown me that the ability to fully improvise goes way beyond anything I had to learn in my classical training. I have all the confidence in the world I could read my way through a Sibelius suite today and do it with flair, and yet I think my improv skills are crap.

Another thing which the typical classical musician lacks is a sense of the groove, the pulse, the pocket... call it what you want, but it takes many years and a sharp ear to develop a solid, good-feeling internal groove like these cats in the vid below, and is something I HIGHLY value.

2:30 is where things get really tasty:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Je_iqbgGXFw

PS, for those who haven't heard, this is the music I'm currently neck-deep in (I'm on drums):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZ4juxvgcdo
 
Last edited:
kz1000ps said:
While I know it's your opinion, you're stating it as if it's a borderline fact, to which I'd say that's fucking stupid. Dvorak excites me. Shostakovich excites me. Ravel excites me AND brings me to tears.
Click to expand...

keep up with the personal insults. frankly, I find most classical music boring, I just play it because it's most of the music available for a clarinetist. Two of the very rare exceptions to this is music by Debussy and Gershwin, Shostakovich just sounds weird, and Dvorak, again, boring. Stravinsky is weird, but in a good way, mostly it is impressionist music or classical music that creates a scene for me that appeals to me. (EVERYTHING IN THIS POST IS MY OPINION ONLY, IF YOU DIDN'T GET THAT ALREADY)
 
kz1000ps said:
Dvorak excites me. Shostakovich excites me. Ravel excites me AND brings me to tears.
Click to expand...

Word.

kz1000ps said:
I started out in the classical world as a timpanist...
Click to expand...

No shit? You want the vibe of improvisation, you should take a crack at this. Bach meets Mingus.

kz1000ps said:
I have all the confidence in the world I could read my way through a Sibelius suite today and do it with flair, and yet I think my improv skills are crap.
Click to expand...

Karelia, Lemmink?inen, or some of the incidental music? Tim Genis is a blast to hear and watch -- a worthy heir to Vic Firth. He rocked Sibelius 4 & 5 (under Levine) a couple of seasons ago. Bitchin'!

BarbaricManchurian said:
...frankly, I find most classical music boring, I just play it because it's most of the music available for a clarinetist.
Click to expand...

Give this a shot:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbMOgEg5DhY
 
^ Nielsen, Sibelius, Mahler, Richard Strauss ... have you given a serious listen to Ein Heldenleben?
 
Color me surprised to find out what was probably already known to most: the Empire State Building is the tallest building in New York City.

2nd-place is the Bank of America building at Bryant Park, and third is the Chrylser building.

tallest_nyc.jpg
 
Beton Brut said:
No shit? You want the vibe of improvisation, you should take a crack at this. Bach meets Mingus.
Click to expand...

Wish I could hear it! I did some "jazz timpani" a number of years back with Stefon Harris (who was nurtured by the same teacher and system I was) which consisted of me acting as a bassist, hitting the tonics of each chord. And considering there's only four drums to play 12+ semitones on, I'd say it was one of the most challenging things I ever did.

Full disclosure: I have perfect pitch, which all but predisposes me (as a percussionist) to playing them ol' kettle drums!

Karelia, Lemmink?inen, or some of the incidental music? Tim Genis is a blast to hear and watch -- a worthy heir to Vic Firth. He rocked Sibelius 4 & 5 (under Levine) a couple of seasons ago. Bitchin'!
Click to expand...

Karelia I'm not familiar with, but Lemminkainen is beautiful and I think I'd do just fine. The big thing with percussion parts in an orchestral setting isn't so much having the ability to play the notes on the page. Rather, it's having the ability to count a billion bars of rest. If you're familiar with the piece and how it flows, it's no problem. But if you're sightreading and you come across 93 bars of rest (with two dozen meter changes and fermadas along the way) it can get pretty hairy.

And Tim Genis... had I attended Tanglewood's summer music camps I would've gotten to learn from him firsthand a whole bunch, but I always ended up working my summers instead. D'oh!
 
old uncel liking geoRG szeLL and CLEVLAND sYmpotty Orchardster recordins
 
Beton Brut said:
If you're asking me, ablarc, I prefer Herbert von Karajan's mid-Sixties recordings:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HyJmNO_IoI
Click to expand...

"Herbert von Karajan (5 April 1908 ? 16 July 1989) was an Austrian orchestra and opera conductor. His obituary in The New York Times described him as "probably the world's best-known conductor and one of the most powerful figures in classical music". Karajan conducted the Berlin Philharmonic orchestra for 35 years. He is the top-selling classical music recording artist of all time, having sold an estimated 200 million records during his career." ?wiki

He was probably the best of all conductors (certainly the best-looking). However ?

"Karajan joined the Nazi Party in Salzburg on 8 April 1933; his membership number was 1,607,525. In June the Nazi Party was outlawed by the Austrian government. However, Karajan's membership was valid until 1939. In this year the former Austrian members were verified by the general office of the Nazi Party. Karajan's membership was declared invalid but his accession to the party was retroactively determined to have been on 1 May 1933 in Ulm, with membership number 3,430,914.

Karajan's membership of the Nazi Party and increasingly prominent career in Germany from 1933 to 1945 cast him in an uncomplimentary light after the war. While Karajan's defenders have argued that he joined the Nazis only to advance his music career, critics ? have pointed out that other prominent conductors, such as Otto Klemperer, Erich Kleiber and Arturo Toscanini, fled from fascist Europe at the time.

However, British music critic Richard Osborne points out that among the many significant conductors who continued to work in Germany throughout the war years?a list that includes Wilhelm Furtw?ngler, Ernest Ansermet, Carl Schuricht, Karl B?hm, Hans Knappertsbusch, Clemens Krauss and Karl Elmendorff?Karajan was one of the youngest and thus one of the least advanced in his career." --wiki
 
When Boston stops building things worth noting, there's always music, and history, and politics.

I grapple with the facts about von Karajan's (and Richard Strauss's) involvement with the Nazis. Who could know what was in the hearts of these men? Herbert von Karajan was not ethnically German (his ancestors emigrated from Macedonia in the 18th Century), and his second wife, who he married in 1942, was part Jewish. In any event, my admiration for him begins and ends with his music-making.

Though not exactly the same scenario, would anyone be justified to hang Stalin's atrocities on Dalton Trumbo?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top