Category: Music

Song Exploder

On By Paul HubbardIn Music, recommendationsLeave a comment

I was in an around music and music production for a long time, so I’ve long enjoyed the Song Exploder podcast where “musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made.” Not every episode has music that I like but hey, it’s a podcast, skip those.

I wanted to post about today’s episode, which took me all the way back to high school: Thompson Twins “Hold me now”. It’s fantastic.

My favorite is probably Chvrches “Clearest blue”. But peruse the episode list and see if anything looks interesting. If you’ve never heard a song explained, you will be surprised at the time, love and craft behind a pop song.

Music service playlist migration

On By Paul HubbardIn Music, recommendationsLeave a comment

It will not come as news to anyone streaming music via Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, Tidal, etc – the playlist is the proprietary bit. The music is identical but your curated playlists are a barrier to moving.

Today, I saw a Spotify playlist in this Cool Tools post:

 I’m in love with this “Halloween” playlist because it isn’t cheesy songs like the Monster Mash and Ghostbusters, instead, it’s an adults’ Halloweenish soundtrack featuring great moody music from bands like M83, the Cure, the National and more. This plays nonstop at my house from Labor Day through the end of October.

Here is the playlist link – it’s “Halloween is a Dead Man’s Party“

But I don’t use Spotify. Because of the subsidized hardware, we use Amazon to stream to a bunch of Echos connected to speakers.

The solution is a free web app called Tune My Music. It’s free, and Amazon lists it as an approved way to import playlists. It can go back and forth between a great number of services, but for me I just setup a new Spotify account (yay hide my email!), granted access to TMM, and then playlist access to Amazon music, and it copied it over. Only one track was missing; good enough.

So maybe a bookmark in case you want to move between services.

Wonderful performance of JS Bach

On By Paul HubbardIn MusicLeave a comment

I’m a fan of JS Bach in general and of his pipe organ work in particular. My mom was sometimes a church organist, so I’ve memories of reading while she practiced, though always with synths and not a full organ. I did get to hear the instrument at Cordiner Hall many times while working there, complete with hunchbacking down a five foot tall tunnel underneath the seats while it was played… anyway.

This is an excellent performance, a bit different than my favorite by Marie-Claire Alain, but its well recorded and definitely wonderful. Good headphones recommended, otherwise the pedal tones don’t come through as they should. That final chord resolution, singing through the hall, just goosebump inducing. Enjoy.

Unmarked

On By Paul HubbardIn Music, PoliticsLeave a comment

In addition to being one of my favorite Yaz tunes:

I discovered today that it’s also a sociology term

Sociologists have a very useful concept: the unmarked category.  An unmarked category is present when the category is considered so normal or ordinary in a particular context that it goes unnoticed.  The category is the default setting in regard to social expectations, and it in a sense remains invisible precisely because it’s so dominant.  Being black in Boulder is a marked category, which means (white) people won’t see a man picking up trash, they’ll see a black man picking up trash.  They see something, so they say something.

For example, if you had asked a lawyer in 1960 to name three characteristics that every current Supreme Court justice shared, it’s very likely the lawyer would not have mentioned either race or gender.  In other words, we notice characteristics we don’t expect to see much more than characteristics we assume will be present.  (The typical NBA fan will probably not notice the race of the players on the court if they’re all black, but would be almost 100% certain to notice if all, or even a large majority, of the players were white).

What “identity politics,” so-called, has done is to slowly and painfully and partially transform being a white man in America into a marked category.  And makes a lot of the people who have become white men rather than members of society’s invisible default category very uncomfortable.  And when people get very uncomfortable, they often get mad at whoever they blame for making them feel that way.  And then they vote for Donald Trump.

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2019/03/marking-unmarked-category

(LGM is a superb blog and you should read it daily)

BWV 1008 – Cello suite No. 2 in D minor – All of Bach

On By Paul HubbardIn Music, UncategorizedLeave a comment

One of my ongoing joys in life is a weekly-ish email from the ‘All of Bach’ project in the Netherlands. Not just a well-filmed and recorded performance, but conductor/performer notes and historical context.

I have a few performances of the cello suites, and prefer Rostropovich but this is well worth your time.

It’s odd, I’m used to modern rapid-rewards, short attention span videos so these require a bit of focus to watch.

via BWV 1008 – Cello suite No. 2 in D minor – All of Bach

Troll level: Expert

On By Paul HubbardIn Music, PoliticsLeave a comment

So there’s this Japanese band that we like, ‘World Order‘. It’s… complicated. I mean, their lead singer has the improbable name of Genki Sudo (cue xkcd link), they perform slow-motion-realtime synchronized dances with amazing choreography while wearing suits. Random screen cap:

Screenshot 2018-04-09 17.42.44.png

It’s … unique. Try ‘Machine Civilization‘ to start with.

Their latest bears the pitch-black title of “Let’s Start WW3” and features auto-tuned Trump (from his inaugural speech maybe?) and some godlike subtext involving the bronzed pig from the Seattle market.

Like I said, unique. Enjoy.