Blog: Entries Tagged With 'music'

Igude-who?

I'd never heard of them, and the promotional image looked kind of corny. I mean, two guys dressed up in Mozart wigs standing dramatically in front of a pink-purple backdrop? Come on, now.

But Yelp was giving out a limited number of pairs of free tickets to see their show tonight at the Flint Center in Cupertino, so I figured what the hey, musical comedy can't be that bad.

Well I'm really glad we got the tickets and saw the show, because I was blown away! These guys have a great stage presence, are amazingly talented musicians (Joo on piano and Igudesman on violin), and are freaking hilarious!

Their aim is to make classical music more appealing to a broader and younger audience. The show was called "And Now... Mozart!" and contained absolutely no music by Mozart. There were lots of antics, much novelty, and a ton of fun. My favorite sketches were:

• Musical Police: Igudesman dressed as a musical police officer, and to verify that Joo wasn't drunk, made him play a few lines from a couple dozen songs in rapid succession.
• Musical Navigation: Igudesman played a song with the guidance of a musical navigation app on his phone
• Do You Believe In Gravity?: Igudesman rips the lid prop out of Joo's piano, only to reveal that it's actually a customized electric violin. Joo rips off one of the legs of the piano to reveal that it's a customized electric keyboard. They then rock out in a song where all their lyrics "rhyme with 'E'".
• Mozart Will Survive: Igudesman begins by singing a Russian rendition of Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" and then gets the audience to sing a three-part harmony in the tune of Pachelbel's "Canon in D," and the two of them close the night with a rap.

The show was a lot of fun, and I wish they did more tours in America; they're not as popular here and are more popular in Europe. It seems like they're rotating through three different shows on their tour around the world. Way to keep things fresh and keep the two of them on their toes!

From September through October, I took a 6-week guitar class with Rich Hawthorne at Santa Clara Adult Education. I rented a guitar for two months before I borrowed Priscilla's, partly because I wanted to surprise her with my new guitar skills when she visited in October, and asking to borrow hers before then would give everything away.

When I went to return the guitar at The Guitarist, Rich's studio, Rich asked me if I wanted to join one of his 8-week continuation classes. It would be held on a different day, Saturday, than the Wednesday continuation class he previously announced to our class. I decided that Saturday would fit better with my schedule and eagerly signed up.

Today was the first session of the new class. A few people were absent, but from what I can tell, all the other students are older and are from the De Anza Community Education class that Rich also teaches. The pace of instruction is still the same- Rich goes step by step, covering and building upon the very basics. We're currently learning how to read notes on a scale, how to find those notes on the guitar and how to play those notes in different positions. In the community course we played "The Groovin Blues" at the end of each session. In this continuation course, we're going to be strumming along to "Brown Eyed Girl." I like that song a lot better. I'm going to know it very well by the end of this course!

In honor of Indigenous People, or Columbus, or what have you, Priscilla had Monday off so she got plane tickets a few months ago to visit me from Saturday till Tuesday.

Saturday afternoon the weather was perfect, so we biked to Lake Shoreline and brought turkey sandwiches in my new rack-mounted bag (very convenient). While we were picnicking, a bunch of squirrels ambushed us for food, and one was really brave/friendly with Priscilla and took food out of her hand and ate it right next to her.



To compensate for doing healthy activities, we had buffet at Turmeric Saturday night, where the food was good except the second batch of achari chicken tikka, which had a really bad aftertaste and might've been tainted. We couldn't finish it, but fortunately we didn't get sick. The next day we had lunch at Bagel Street, Priscilla's first time there. She had a tuna salad which may have inspired her to eat more salad, since we had salad in every home-cooked meal afterwards.

That night Priscilla made me salad with avocado and some of the leftover sliced turkey, and curry chicken based on a recipe she learned earlier. We had a bit of curry leftover, which we used the next day to pour over Atlantic salmon that we cooked in the microwave, which turned out pretty tasty.

My company didn't give us Monday off but I took a vacation day, and we made the morning showing of Courageous, the fourth movie made by Sherwood Pictures, centering around godly fatherhood. I heard about the movie after researching the Casting Crowns song by the same name. The movie was really inspirational and was a reminder of how a godly man ought to live and be a model for his family. It made Priscilla cry. A lot.

After the movie, we went shopping at the adjacent mall for two whole hours and managed to finally use my Old Navy gift card to buy a t-shirt for me. I still have $16 on the card, which at this rate, will take several more years to spend. We ended the day singing 90's songs with Priscilla playing my rented guitar. I'd been secretly taking lessons for five weeks and surprised her on Saturday with a very newbie rendition of "Good Life" by One Republic where I changed the words in the chorus to "goose life." But I think she liked it. Since she's so good with guitar, I'm going to make her teach me guitar so much that she'll get sick of it!

Amazon is releasing a free Christmas/holiday song for download every day up until Christmas. I'm not sure how they'll profit directly from this. They're probably banking on attracting more customers this holiday season, and what little they likely pay for distributing these songs is well worth it. Or they might actually be taking in money from promoting the albums these songs are from, who knows.

Anyway, it's cool to see them doing something nice without requiring something in return.

Edit: Amazon now also has a free 5-song classical Christmas sampler. iTunes is offering a free 20-song sampler of Christmas songs performed by contemporary artists, and then some.

I can't believe the free unlimited-use Real Rhapsody trial is still being offered. I'm now on my third one.

The speakers on the laptop I used to have were downright horrid. So bad in fact, that there wasn't ever an instance when I preferred to listen to music through the speakers rather than through my $6 pair of headphones. That was the ONLY way of listening to music I was exposed to.

So for the most part, music sounded the same regardless of what bitrate it was encoded at. I couldn't detect the difference between CD quality MP3's and radio quality MP3's. Thus I vehemently decided that any songs over 128kbps took up more space than they deserved. When I stumbled upon a re-encoding program one day, I was all too happy to trim those excess megabytes from my collection.

Ignorance is bliss. But it usually comes back and bites you in the rear. Now that I have a real speaker system, some of these songs don't sound so great when blasted around the room. They sound grainy, and details are missing.

Fortunately I wasn't ENTIRELY a fool, thanks to Gmail. Before deleting something, if I thought there was even a 1% chance of me wanting to recover it in the future, I archived it in Gmail. I guess I didn't fully rule out the possibility that I might get a killer speaker system one day. Or more likely, just better headphones...

The day is saved. And Gmail says: You are currently using 2636 MB (97%) of your 2727 MB.

Honda is sponsoring a two-week free trial of Real Rhapsody, unlimited use. Unlike the regular two-week Rhapsody trial, this one requires no credit card. All you have to do is watch a short Honda commercial, then register with some email address. The email address doesn't even need to be valid.

And enjoy. I sure am.

Last week I made up my mind to get myself a pair of good computer speakers. The paper ones built into my LCD monitor didn't quite cut it.

Kenny, who is a speaker enthusiast, among other things, recommended that I go with the unparalleled champion of 2.1 speakers: the Klipsch Promedia 2.1. The retail price is $150, but I found the Klipsch direct outlet on eBay selling refurbished ones for $100 including shipping. I ordered one and it arrived yesterday.

Now I'm turning into one of those people that I used to hate for disturbing everybody else with their music. Blasting bass down the hall sure is fun.

From the moment I heard her voice, I knew there was something special about her. She is graceful, upbeat, and passionate. She has the ability to move the heart and warm the soul. I am in love.

Her name is Rachael Lampa and she is an artist of the Contemporary Christian genre. Her voice and lyrics are very developed, especially for her age. She made her first album when she was just 14. I'm going through her CD's on Rhapsody right now, but her first song that I heard, "No Greater Love," really blew me away. Guess I'll be making a few more purchases on eBay. ;)

Wow, these streaming radio stations really need to play a larger variety of songs. My whole day of computer work has been complemented by music from mainly two adult contemporary streaming radio stations. And I've heard some songs played over 5 times today.

They also play WAY too much rap. Besides rap not even being music (and I know many people would disagree with me on that), some of these songs are riddled with naughty words that get blanked out in censorship. In some parts you can literally hear blanking out every couple seconds, which makes the song sound stupid(er). Why even bother to play it if you need to censor so much out? -.-

After ripping MP3's off a worship CD, I discovered that I had all the songs already. Most of the songs on the CD were the exact same version as the ones I already had. The rest differed just slightly (e.g. studio/live version, different singer). Man, I have a lot of worship songs.

I emailed Rhapsody support to cancel my subscription, but they got the email two days later since I sent it on Saturday (oops), and by then my subscription had automatically begun a new month-long billing period. They were incredibly nice and refunded my money while allowing me to keep the subscription till the end of this period. So now I have gotten 3 months of unlimited streaming music for a dollar. Unbelievable.

Priscilla is teaching me to play guitar. Today's lesson was mainly about posture, how to hold the guitar, how to push down on the frets, how to strum, yadayada. Right now I'm focusing on playing chords in a way that doesn't sound metallic or cacophonous, which is a challenge for me because it involves pressing down on each string with precise pressure from the tip of your finger. And it's hard to do that when your fingers are already hurting. =)

So my Real Rhapsody trial subscription was about to run out, but I had this problem where songs wouldn't burn, and thus I was to forfeit the $5 burn credit they gave me. I called customer support to cancel, and the first thing I noticed about the lady who picked up was that she had an Indian accent. She couldn't speak English very well, but after I explained my problem she extended my trial by a month(!!) so that I could have time to get the technical problem fixed. She forwarded me to tech support, and another Indian-accented woman picked up, her English 10 times as bad. By now I was convinced that the whole Rhapsody customer support center is located halfway around the globe in India. Maybe in a whole building complex rented by tech companies. Stupid job outsourcing.

So this woman would ask me some questions, and after I replied I would hear silence (except for the occasional beeping of office machines in the background) for a couple minutes. She would tell me to try something, and when I told her it didn't work, I'd hear nothing. Two minutes later she would come back and ask, "did it work?" Or in the middle of telling me something, she would trail off...

Finally she tried directing me to a webpage where I could upgrade my software, but she had to spell out each letter by the NATO Phonetic Alphabet. hotel ... tango ... tango ... papa - that spelled http. The whole link was about 40 characters long, and when I had transcribed it, it brought up an invalid page. I read it back to her twice (using my sad version of the phonetic alphabet) and she said it was all correct. Finally I asked if she could send me an email with the link... no reply. Two minutes later, "Sir, I'll email the link to you."

It turns out my version of the link had a few letters wrong and was missing a few letters... but at least the download went quickly and the problem was fixed. So thanks to 45 minutes on the phone with tech support <cough>, I have a free month of unlimited streaming music and $5 burning power. I've listened to over 1500 tracks in the past month, which amounts to over 100 CD's, so that's really not a bad deal.

In conclusion: Rhapsody = good. Outsourcing = bad.

A couple days ago I helped Richard get one step closer to obtaining his free iPod by completing an offer for him. Surprisingly, the $1 Real Rhapsody trial was available again. So now I have a month of unlimited streaming music (and 5 free burns) to enjoy, and with my summer to be spent in front of my computer programming, I'll be sure to need it. Even with free iPods aside, this Rhapsody offer is amazing. Rhapsody is a great service with a huge selection of music. You can't find too much better for a buck.

A touching music video: World on Fire by Sarah McLachlan.

The band Aqua has some pretty funny songs. Aqua? You know, the people who made that song "Barbie Girl." A song so stupid that it's almost entertaining. I've been playing it a lot lately. I know, I've officially turned weird.

I just realized why a lot of MIDI files suck. They have no dynamic. Too many authors keep the volume level for the instruments constant through the entire song. There's no enunciation, but only monotonic droning. Sometimes this works, but more often than not it doesn't. If you want an example of flat MIDI music... think of Pokemon on Gameboy. At least MIDI files are lightweight though.. that's about the only good thing about them. ;)

A floor neighbor told me about iTunes, an MP3 organizer and music purchase service by Apple. The nice thing about iTunes is that you can share music across a LAN for others to hear. And in my hall, there are at least a few people sharing at any given time... meaning a decent selection of music to listen to.

But the best thing is that there's another program called myTunes Redux, written by an independent person, that emulates iTunes. It actually lets you download that music from others across the LAN. I'm in music heaven!

Two cool things I'd like to let everybody know about: free Ipod and Real Rhapsody! Let's start first with the free iPod.

There's this site, freeIpods.com that gives away free iPods. All you have to do is sign up for one of the offers they advertise, and refer 5 people to do the same. Lots of the offers are free trials, so you can sign up for them and cancel before the trial runs out, thus paying nothing. It's a totally great deal (mostly because it's all free), and it's legit- my friend Anna knows people who've gotten their iPod. To start, use my referral link (which helps me get my free iPod): http://www.freeiPods.com/default.aspx?referer=7928032.

Real Rhapsody is the offer I signed up for. It costs a dollar for the first month, but I think that will be refunded if I cancel before my free trial period is over; either way, it's just a dollar. Real Rhapsody gives you instant access to many thousands of songs, at the tip of your fingers. The songs stream, so you don't have to wait for them to download before listening. You can listen to as many songs as you want, for one low monthly price. It's totally awesome, especially for music lovers (e.g. me). Heck, I may even buy a regular subscription, I love this.

I'm really getting tired of the song "The Reason" by Hoobastank. It's a cool song, but STAR 98.7 (the station I listen to 90% of the time) plays it ALL the time. Everytime I listen to STAR I am bound to hear that song. It's like their obsession. And I just plugged into STAR via Internet broadcast, and guess what song they're playing? Gaaaah!!

Actually that Avalon CD isn't too bad. Maybe it's because I was listening to it with the laptop's speakers the first time around and headphones now (my speakers are pitiful =p ). Or maybe I subconciously feel sorry for bashing the CD so much. Who knows.

Avalon released a new CD today, entitled The Creed. I had pre-ordered it online, and it arrived in the mail yesterday afternoon. That's funny, because the merchant website told me the CD would ship yesterday and take up to 7 days to arrive... maybe they couldn't wait to get rid of it. ;)

I have to say overall, the CD only underscores how good Avalon used to be. The quality of the music is mediocre; I got tired of some songs before they were even half-over. Avalon hasn't produced music of its former caliber in three years, and its last two CD's were remixes and re-releases. It seems they have run out of steam. Several times since the band's creation, a member has left and a new one had to be found to fill in. :(