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.
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.
I played piano today, and I enjoyed it. This was a statement I had not been able to say for a long time.
Over a year ago I had posted about rekindling my love for the instrument, but it never really happened. Life got in the way- or so I thought.
I blamed a lot of not playing on being busy, which I was with various internships. I also pushed the piano aside because Teddy (my precious little puppy) hated the sound and would howl whenever any instrument was played.
Though the above were contributing factors, none of them really explained why I was avoiding the piano. The truth was that in fourth year after a rather disastrous jury, I was tired and frustrated at the piano.
I am a big cognitive science junkie. In Levtin’s book This is Your Brain On Music he talks about how 10,000 hours of practice makes a great musician. I calculated that if I started piano when I was five and averaged about 2 hours a day since then (with the long hours in my advanced years evening out the early years and holidays) that it amounted to something like 12,410 hours. This was approximate number of hours I had spent at a piano from when I was 5 up to the day of my piano jury when I was 22 (I am currently 24).
It was disheartening having put in more than the required 10,000 hours and be far from “perfect”. This anxiety had caused me to be afraid of performing in front of other people. “What if I mess up?” was a constant worry during the hours spent in university practice rooms. The consequence of this unease was more intense practicing and the development of carpel tunnel (which I am happy to say I don’t have any more).
Today I sat at the piano without too much thought about it. I picked up a book of Chopin waltzes and simply started playing. I realized some of my strengths:
1. I am a great sight reader.
2. If I played a song once, my fingers will remember it forever no matter how long it’s been since I last played it.
Though imperfectly, it was nice to be playing again, especially the music of my favourite composer. Now that I am out of school (and finished RCM exams), I don’t have to be playing under the pretense of needing to be perfect or performing for somebody else. I can also explore pieces that excite me and not have to drill them to perfection. I want to continuously enjoy performing for myself. And for me, imperfect is okay.
For our anniversary, Nash bought me tickets to Cavalia’s Odysseo. I’ve never seen the original Cavalia so this was my first time at the horse-show. If you’re from Toronto, you’ve probably seen the ads with beautiful white horse everywhere: on the subway, the streets, even in online banner ads. Whatever they did definitely worked. It is the extended running of the show here and yesterday it was pretty much sold out.
The show took place inside the Cavalia tent situated near Cherry Beach. The stage was huge. It’s something like 27,000 square feet. It was elevated slightly so parts of the show would look like horses were coming at you from a distance. The visual aspect of the entire show was thought out ingeniously. The lights could change the ground from green grass to dry land, and could even create the illusion of a path. The background projected moving landscapes on screens that look like they could be 2 or 3 times the size of a regular movie theatre screen.
What I love most about the show is that the horses seemed happy. They were even allowed for moments of impromptu performance. The audience laughed in delight and how adorable it was. They applauded when it went the right way. It’s amazing how lovely they made a line of horses look. I also didn’t understand how some of the riders didn’t fall off when performing some of their tricks. There was plenty of rest between horse-tricks as well. African American dancers did plenty of neat tricks and interacted with the crowd. There was even some call and response singing to lyrics we didn’t know how to say! I later learnt that the group was part of the Kalabante which raises money to build schools in Guinea. Therefore part of your ticket is supporting a great cause.
Near the end of the show, the ground filled with water to create a lake where the horses splashed and danced majestically in the water. What I didn’t realize until halfway through the show was that the music was live! They had musicians in boxes at the top right and left of the stages, but it was only when they were purposely lit up that you could see them.
I loved Odysseo and it was definitely an anniversary to remember.
I won the Entertainment Marketing award when I graduated Metalworks Institute and it came with a $300 gift certificate to Music Books Plus. I’m slowly plowing through my books, but I recently finished The Future of Music- Manifesto for the Digital Music Revolution by David Kusek and Gerd Leonhard.
I read the entire book, but it didn’t take me long for me past the prologue to ask “When the hell was this written?” It was written in 2005.
While the book had some interesting points, such as music should be as easily accessible as water, there were predictions that were hilarious. Napster with a legal streaming service that works? Sorry, it was dead since it was sued. In 2005, Facebook was only a year old and the iPhone wasn’t even released for another 2 years. It’s strange to see how much has changed in 7 years, or even in my lifetime. I lived through vinyl, cassettes, CD players, MD players, mp3 players and now that has all shifted on to one device.
While the book does mention how our entertainment hubs will combine into one, it rarely mentioned Apple. It’s a well written book for someone who isn’t as knowledgeable about the music (or even entertainment) industry, but for someone like me who’s been through schooling, it was a little redundant and stating the obvious.
While technology has changed a bit, there are things that remain somewhat similar. Media companies are still trying to fight the consumer for downloading media, which as stated can only have negative impact. In addition, the book stresses the revolution of streaming music, which last year at every digital music summit, still seemed like a big deal. However, as some artist’s have stated, it takes thousands of listens to make a couple of bucks.
Even though there are a lot of things in this book that are laughable. I really liked the idea of future music being as ubiquitous as water. We pay for water without thinking about it. It’s routine. We even pay for premium water (in bottles, Evian etc..), with the guarantee that it is better than what comes out of taps. iTunes and streaming services are closer to a way of music being so easily accessible but not everyone is ready to pay for it like we do for our water yet, nor the most simple way. Whatever lies in the “future” of music, isn’t going to be a singular solution.
For your entertainment purposes here’s a list of other things that didn’t exist in 2005:
– Twitter
– iPad (or any other useful tablet for that matter)
– Youtube was a baby
– Hypem had only just started
– PS3
– rdio
– Justin Bieber
The Rest is Noise by Alex Ross is an interesting summary of 20th century (classical) music. I purchased this book in my first or second year of University but was too intimidated to read it. I’ll have to admit, it is written in very flourished language and sometimes I had to look up the definition of some words. If anything, this book has given me a greater vocabulary to become a better music writer. At almost 600 pages, it took me well over a month to read. I purposely read it slowly so that I could absorb and retain as much of it as possible.
The book begins with a mention of Richard Strauss’ Salome and ends with an epilogue that mentions how minimalist influences have spread to the likes of Bjork and Radiohead.
The vividly written narrative highlights the lives of 20th composers; from life to death and their take on each other’s music. They are just like us in the sense that they often don’t understand each other’s music.The book beautifully describes some of the most important works of each composer and the society’s reactions to them. It’s funny because you learn who was in with dictators like Hitler and learn what happened after their reign was over. It dances around everybody who’s helped shaped the 20th century from painters, writers to the events and wars that molded what we are today. In a book about music, I think I learned more about 20th century history than I have ever known.
And if the book wasn’t enough Alex Ross also runs http://www.therestisnoise.com/ which has more to do with 20th century music as well as listening samples.
Last night I went to see an orchestra play music my favourite series of video games Final Fantasy. The tickets were a birthday present from my boyfriend. It’s one thing to hear the music in game, but it’s a completely different experience to see it all live. The composer Nobuo Uematsu was even in attendance.
They have a different orchestra for every location they play in; probably because it’s not financially viable to fly 70 people everywhere. It was conducted by the famous Arnie Roth who conducts mostly video game concerts. How do I make that a real career? Video game footage synced perfectly with each piece they played and I’m pretty curious as to how they did it. It is an amazing spectacle. I should have taken a camera, but I am really glad I didn’t because I wasn’t distracted by anything while I was taking it all in.
They played all my favourite songs (even the Chocobo theme) and ended with an epic singalong to SE-PHI-ROTH. It was one of my favourite nights in a long time!
Side note: My back tattoo seems to match the Distance Worlds logo.. sort of.
Tiana Feng 