Yesterday morning, I photographed the Toronto Symphony Orchestra during their rehearsal for a Chinese New Year celebration concert. I wasn’t sure where I was going to post these as they do not really fit Ride the Tempo’s content so I decided to post a few of my favourites here. The full set is available on Flickr.
You can check out some rehearsal clips in my vlog.
As you know, I run music blog Ride the Tempo, which promotes independent Canadian music. I decided today to launch at Tumblr called Tracks Only, to have a platform for quickly sharing some of the great non-Canadian music that I find. It’ll be tracks only, letting the music speak for itself.
The latest instalment of my vlogs features Maylee Todd’s performance during Summerworks festival.
As I mentioned in my previous post, I want to start document some of my adventures in video format. I’m going to do this Vlog style, so it isn’t going to be anything fancy and time consuming. Straight cuts of brief moments in hope to share some of the more interesting tidbits of life with you.
The video was filmed with a GoPro. I didn’t realize it was so small and versatile. I totally want to buy one now.
Whenever I’m at shows, I am usually photographing or reviewing them. For once it was nice to relax, watch the show and have a couple of drinks!
We got a bit spoiled with backstage access, which included the catering tent with this snazzy ready-to-order pasta bar thing.
So, uh, funny story.. I went backstage to find somewhere to charge my phone. Before I knew it, I was on stage dancing with Girl Talk!
Also, I met Phoenix. They were very very French and super nice guys!
This adventure made me realize that I have a damn cool life for an underemployed person and that I should document some of these in video format. It’s an idea that is still on brainstorming mode but hope to have more videos for you guys soon!
The same day as Woofstock, IAMS SOGOOD hosted a concert for dogs. 45 piece Toronto Concert Orchestra played dog themed songs like “Who Let The Dogs Out” and “How Much is That Doggie in the Window”. They also performed a selection of popular classics including themes from Phantom of the Opera and Westside Story.
Surprisingly, most of the dogs were well behaved and nobody was howling at live music. I expected Teddy to be a fuss because he usually howls at the piano.
There was free goodies and a photobooth adding to a lovely afternoon by the beach.
People are able to distinguish between songs through earworms. However, there’s also a whole world of sounds and soundscapes we are exposed to on a daily basis. In Murray Schafer’s A Sound Education, he explores these every day sounds through 100 exploratory exercises.
I had the pleasure of meeting Schafer in my third year of University. Our class delved into a few of these personally with Schafer. The most memorable was this particular exercise involving keys. A group of five people put their keys into a pile. Schafer then jingled all of the keys behind their backs and asked the participants to identify their own. Everybody had the right keys.
The sound of our keys is not something we really think about but we hold them every day, listen to them jingle in our bags and pockets as we look for them and open our doors. Personally, my keys are pretty boring. I don’t own a car or a bike so I only have one key on my chain with a Dine Alone beer opener and a Johnny Cupcakes oven mitt. Instead of nice jingling, I hear simple clanking.
What do your keys sound like? I dare you to try this exercise with a few of your friends and I’m sure they will guess the right keys!
Side note: This book seems to be hard to find, so if any of my Toronto friends want to borrow this I have a hard copy!
After reading Oliver Sacks’ Musicophilia, my boyfriend lent me The Music of Light- The Extraordinary Story of Hikari and Kenzaburo Oe written by Lindsley Cameron. It chronicles the life of Hikari Oe, a boy who was born with a growth on his brain the size of almost another brain. His father Kenzaburo Oe after much thought and reflection decided to operate on the growth and Hikari survived. However, he suffered a form of autism, vision loss and constant seizures. Despite not being able to absorb knowledge and learn everyday tasks like most people, Hikari became one of Japan’s most renowned composers.
The book dealt thoroughly analyzed the connections between Kenzaburo Oe’s writing who was deeply inspired by Hikari and used it to tell the story of their lives. While very interesting, some of the book was rather repeated with sometimes entire section being stated again somewhere else in the book. In addition to telling the story of their lives, it also analyzes musical savants (even quoting some of Sacks’ work) and how Hikari is different from the norm because of his ability to compose music. Overall the book rejoiced on the positive qualities of Hikari’s condition.
I looked up some of Hikari Oe’s music after reading this book and found it simply beautiful. It is not over complicated and often inspired by music of classical composers like Mozart. It has a lovely calming effect.
I’m not talking about jingles. 1-800-267-2001. If you’re Canadian, I just got that stuck in your head right? Anyways, this post is about poorly written songs in commercials that don’t rhyme, and aren’t memorable in any way except for their suckiness. The most recent being this one which reiterates in different forms all over the Food Network.
Now did that entice you to buy chocolate in any way? Side note: I can’t believe people in the Youtube comments actually inquire the name/artist of the song as if it is legitimate.
However, the most guilty culprit of horrible commercials lies not in adult products, but the ones directed to little girls. For example, watch ANY Barbie commercial:
Who gets hired to sing these things? Do they make a lot of money? If so, where do I sign? This does rhyme, but the song itself isn’t really doing anything except singing what they are doing. Imagine if I was going through my day singing what I am doing in rhyme.
“I AM WAKING UP NOW. GOING TO DRINK SOME MILK OUT OF A COW.”
To be fair Barbie used to have good commercials. For instance this first commercial ever seems to have a better song. Or maybe everything sounds better when it’s sung in 1959 swing style.
This doesn’t seem to be the case for toys targeted to boys. They get more epic sounding songs with very enthusiastic voice-overs.
That looks fuckin’ awesome. Girls have to deal with more of these:
FYI, I always thought boys had cooler toys. I think my disdain for barbies, dolls and ponies comes from the fact that my ears were pretty musically trained at a young age. My future children are going watch their television streaming so they will never have to suffer through these.
What horrible song commercial have you seen lately? Perhaps it is too terrible to remember.
Tiana Feng 