Everybody Needs A Hobby

NoCoPilot wrote:

The other day I sat bolt upright in bed and realized I needed to make a CD-R of Eric Schoenberg.  Immediately!

Eric is an acoustic finger-picker from Cambridge Mass who released only three albums. None of these albums has ever seen a CD reissue.

After a day of fairly intense searching I found a website with the 2nd album posted for listening (but they wanted FIFTEEN bucks to download it).  It took only a few seconds to set up my computer to record while I listened for free.  Spent the day cleaning up ticks and pops, and burned a copy.  Found hi-res scans of the cover, so I made a high quality reduction of it.  Incidentally, Eric has a guitar shop (and custom manufacturing facility) in California, so I sent him an e-mail inquiring about the availability of his ancient old records in digital format. To date, no response.

Found and burned his first LP, and found about four tracks from the 3rd one.  When the vinyl arrives I'll fill that one out.

After letting it slide in priority for about a year I finally digitized Eric's third LP last week.  It was almost brand new -- still in the shrink-wrap, but opened -- but there were a lot of ticks & pops.  Took me a whole week.  Made another contact attempt with Eric, and this time got an enthusiastic response.  He's going to use my cleaned-up files, which sound darned good if I say so myself,  to FINALLY offer these albums for sale on his website. 

Yay pandemic.

NoCoPilot wrote:

Of course the LOFEs are available for download now. 

But not everything.  Much of the Louisville Orchestra First Edition series has apparently gone missing.
https://louisvillerenaissanceproject.com/2018/11/27/first-editions/

Why have none of my favorite LPs been re-released on CD?

I heard some Beethoven on the radio this morning on my drive to the pool, and really enjoyed it. For the past few months I've been immersed in modern classical music, and it felt good to revisit some old chestnuts. When I got home I put on the 5th -- Ta-Da-Da-Da! -- then wanted to hear the German Dances. I thought I had it, but couldn't find it on the shelf. Started looking for them, and making a cover with the intent of making a CD-R, when suddenly it hit me: I had them already, as the last half of the second disc of a two-disc set of Beethoven Overtures(?) I had bought specifically for their inclusion of Neville Marriner & The Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields.

Since I had the cover made already -- a replica of the favorite old LP I used to have -- I extracted the German Dances and burned a new CD with just them. No more looking for them!

But that reminded me of another old Marriner LP is used to have & love called "Academy Encores" --

Yup, never issued on CD(!)

Again it was simple to find the tracks and cover and remake the album. Such a nice well-balanced set of music, so lively and bright. Makes a really good album.

Okay, this one is a little weird even for me.

In 1952 John Cage composed his most famous piece, 4'33", which is nothing but four-and-a-half minutes of rests. The piano player -- or any instrument, or combination of instruments -- are supposed to sit on stage, counting out the time, and at the end of the piece, stand up and take a bow.

It was a weird Dada-esque piece meant to reverse the roles of the performer and audience. The sounds of the uncomfortable audience -- shuffling, coughing, giggling -- become the focus of the performance while the performer(s) on stage listen. It was revolutionary 69 years ago, and it's still revolutionary.

There are, of course, a lot of jokes about it. "How long did you rehearse?" "Do you still get paid?" "Does Cage get royalties on the spaces between the tracks?" Many versions are posted on YouTube by pianists and orchestras and wind quartets and percussion ensembles. There's even a couple by death metal bands.

But most of them miss the point. The piece has to be performed live, and the audience has to unwittingly participate. A lot of people think it's funny to simply post 4:33 of silence, or a studio recording with no audience. They're about as interesting to listen to as you'd expect.

I decided to put together a CD of legitimate versions, with audiences coughing, babies crying, piano benches squeaking, trucks driving by outside the hall. One version I found is a "pandemic version" where the Whitman Wind Ensemble had to miss their Carnegie Hall debut in April 2020 due to COVID, so the director had all the ensemble members record their own versions of 4'33" then mixed them together into a pandemic soundscape of everybody's home life. Dogs bark. Birds tweet. Noises are heard in the background.

The CD includes applause before & after most tracks, and the silences in between are populated with a lot of subtle sounds, each very different from the others.

It's a weird idea for a CD, and a weird CD. I hope my heirs get a chuckle when cleaning out my worldly goods.

It started small, then kinda got out of hand.

I wanted to make a CD of Ravel's piano music, those magical shimmering tone poems he's known for. The first CD I found and downloaded was half piano, and half orchestral, and the orchestral half was marvelous. I couldn't discard those tracks. The next couple downloads I found were string quartets, and they were marvelous too. Then I found the complete "Daphnis et Chloë" of which I'd only heard excerpts before, in a super-dynamic Telarc recording that blew my doors off.

I ended up with a CD of piano music, a CD of string music, a 2-CD set of orchestral music, and "Daphnis." All marvelous stuff. Why didn't I have any Ravel until now?

On the way home from the Apple store I heard Bach's orchestral suites on the radio, played by Christopher Hogwood & The Academy of Ancient Music.  Mmmm, I thought, I've got to look that up when I get home.

Looked online, and yep, the 2-disc set is available for download from my favorite download site.  But wait a second.  The cover looks familiar?

God-damn it, I already had it.  I hate it when that happens.

Last week I heard a solo cello piece on the radio, semi-classical but original. Looked it up when I got home, and the artist Gretchen Yanover, is a local gal. She's available for playing parties and anniversaries. I considered, briefly, hiring her for Mrs. NoCo's birthday this weekend, but then I thought, no, COVID makes that unwise. She performs with both standard cello and an electronic cello which she runs through an amp, and a looping pedal, so she can play layered things.

There's another gal Zöe Keating, in I think New Zealand or someplace does the same damn thing. Odd coincidence.

So I put together a CD-R of her stuff. Her solo stuff can get a little samey sounding so I mixed it up with other records where she guested.

One of the tracks she released as a COVID digital single is a Chopin piano piece I've always liked.

Which reminded me, that piece was featured on the "Five Easy Pieces" soundtrack album. I used to have it, but never replaced the LP. Looking online, it's never been released on CD. Started looking online for the files, finally found it at Apple Music.

This is an interesting soundtrack. It's a combination of country (Tammy Wynette) and classical (Mozart and Chopin) and lots of dialogue from the movie. The dialogue is mixed in with the music as it actually occurs in the movie. Not many soundtracks do that. Listening to it is almost like watching the movie.

Only other soundtrack I can think of like that is the "Apocalyse Now" soundtrack.

One of the USB sticks I sent my sister was Gregorian Chant.  I had a chant compilation I made for myself several years ago of my favorite Gregorian Chant performers, the Choir of the Monks of the Abbey of St. Pierre De Solesmes, Dom Joseph Gajard, O.S.B, director.  No other chant ensemble sounds so soothing, so musical, so (dare I say it?) otherworldly.  The CD-R was compiled from several ancient (1952-55) LPs I had collected.

The USB also included tracks from a CD I found a few years ago, by the same ensemble, dubbed from the original 1955 tapes.  Slightly different program: the CD is Christmas & Easter Masses, my CD-R was Vespers and Compline and Good Friday and Holy Thursday services.  No overlap but a lot of continuity.

I also included a 4-CD set I'd found recently (I may have mentioned elsewhere) by Konrad Ruhland and Capella Antigua München, a wonderful ensemble in lovely modern digital recordings.  They're ALMOST as good as the CotMotAoSPdS.

Third, I included Der Chor des Missions-Priesterseminars der Spiritaner Knechtsteden bei Köln, a German ensemble of which I know nothing except that it's good chant.  NOTE: There's an awful lot of bad chant out there.

Finally, I included the three CDs I had of Anonymous 4, a New York chant ensemble made up of, surprisingly, four women.  It gives the chant an entirely different flavor, although you can hear how the same rules apply.

Altogether, on shuffle play, the USB gave about 12 hours of varied but uniformly excellent acapella meditative singing.

I mention this today because I stopped by Half Price Books on my way home from lunch, and found another Anonymous 4 CD I'd never seen before (they're kinda rare).  In googling the group, they were active 1986-2015 and released some 26 records, including (in their later years) some contemporary works.  I had no idea.

I don't think I need to track 'em down though. They don't sound NEARLY as otherworldly when singing in English.

At Half-Price Books today in their discount bin they had a DVD of "Promised Land" for a dollar. I've always loved the soundtrack by James Newton Howard, but not sure I've ever seen the movie so I brought it home.

But wait a minute. The soundtrack is dated 1987 and the DVD is dated 2012?

Turns out there are two different movies by that name. The 1987 one stars Kiefer Sutherland and Meg Ryan , and the 2012 one stars Matt Damon and Frances McDormand. Doesn't anyone in Hollywood know how to use The Google?

I do. I looked up James Newton Howard to see if he should be filed under N or H. Found out he started out in a band called Mama Lion, which I happened to have. The band's first album is famous because the inside cover shows the lead singer Lynn Carey suckling a lion cub. The keyboardist there is credited as "Jim Howard." Never made that connection before. Huh.

Yesterday I listened to a bunch of music by The Crusaders, because Wilton Felder was a hell of a bassist.

This morning I woke up with the name Abraham Laboriel on my lips.  He's another famous bassist, having appeared on over 4,000 records.  I've got at least a dozen CDs on which he appears, but nothing in the way of a solo album by him.  So I went looking.

Found two, 1995 and 1996, both about half instrumental and half vocal.  So by picked and choosing, I was able to make one compilation of all-instrumental music.  Not only is the bass playing stellar, but the band behind him is too, including percussionist Alex Acuña.  Acuña of course is most famous for his time in Weather Report, but he and Laboriel also founded a group in the early 1990s called Koinonia.  I used to have their LPs.

Koinonia -- and Laboriel and Acuña -- are explicitly Christian, with Jesus this and Jesus that lyrics so you have to pick & choose their instrumental tracks. From their four albums I was able to glean 74 minutes of instrumental music, which doesn't care about their religion.

Aside: I just watched part of a TV show "Texas Metal" (I think it's called?) where they rebuilt a 1974 Bronco with a 700hp motor and a bunch of trick gadgets.  Turns out the truck was for Ted Nugent.  His reaction on seeing it was very entertaining, he's an engaging guy, very animated.  As long as you avoid all politics with him, I like Ted Nugent.

Same with Koinonia.  As long as you avoid the Jesus sickness, they were an amazing band.

One of the earliest and best labels for all-digital compact discs is DMP (Digital Music Products) out of Minneapolis, started by Tom Jung in 1982.  He was an early adopter (his studio was used to test the prototype in 1978) of 3M's PCM-based digital recorder (3M also being a Minneapolis company.)

DMP released several dozen albums (wait, are they still in business?) of which I have many.  Used to have several of their LPs back when that was their bailiwick.

Most of their productions are jazz, a lot of them pretty soft new-agey jazz, including some guitarists and pianists.  They're nice music, but not particularly stereo-busters.

This afternoon I went looking for my Bob Mintzer CDs.  Bob's a MN big band guy, one of Tom's first and most-frequent productions.  Very high energy, big sound, wide frequency range music.  

Alas, I didn't have any!  Used to have some LPs, and have a few Mintzer tracks on my DMP samplers, but gosh, apparently I forgot to get the CDs!

Rectified that.  Found a dozen albums online for download, with all the graphics.  Made myself his first 4 albums (which I used to have & remembered fondly) then skipped around in his newer stuff which was all new to me, and made two 80-minute comps of the best tracks.

Recording quality is stunning.  Not only do the bass & drums stand out as huge and dynamic, but the big brass band with numerous trumpets and trombones, saxes of all sizes and piano/organ are captured in full digital glory.  Lots of bite, lots of dynamic range, lots of wow factor.

How could I have forgotten Bob Mintzer?

There was a 1980s fusion new age jazz band called "Windows" which included percussionist Tim Timmermans and bassist Skip Wise. Their first album was self-titled, and their second was called "Is It Safe?"

Googling either one of those titles returns nothing but bad news for Microsoft.

On The Edge of Feedback

I could find no copies of "Windows" for download anywhere, and the search was needlessly complicated.  There were a couple copies of the CD for $64 but it's not that good.

Skipper Wise's website has the albums up for streaming.  I set up my computer to record as I stream -- something I've done before when no other options are open.  The resulting files however were full of digital noise, skritching sounds, most unignorable.

I dug through my box of cables and found the ground loop lifter I own.  Runs everything through a coil so no hums, in theory, can get through.

Still found the files sounded awful.  

And another thing, the recording volume had to be very low or something happened and all the waveforms went into red....

Wait a minute.  I know that symptom.  It's feedback!

The digital recording was delayed a half second from the input, so you didn't get an audible screech feedback, but you get some digital artifacts skritch skritch that amounts to the same thing.

Changed my recording software to stop monitoring the output -- something I should have remembered I need to do -- and ran it again.  MUCH better!

"Changed my recording software..."


Which ones do you use?

(I know, different needs, different programs)

Just curious.  I edit a LOT of audio and video.

Audacity.  It's freeware, and pretty powerful.  Friends of mine swear by ProTools but I don't have $600 to spare.

I'm a diehard Magix fan...since 1998.

It's less than a third of Tools.
But of course, you COULD spend more.

I'm not a fan of 'wizards', but theirs are seriously excellent.
You can download it fully functioning for a month for free.
Try it for batch stuff, you know?

Magix seems to be in some way associated with Sound Forge for audio editing. I have a copy of Sound Forge already, but I only use it for opening FLAC files. It's nowhere near as powerful or intuitive as Audacity, though it will do the job.

I have a video editing project on my plate. I've put it off about 3 years now.

My uncle took a ton of home movies in the 1960s-1970s, 16mm. His daughters, my cousins, would like DVD copies. I bought a converted 16mm projector from some guy that he had modified for dubbing films to videotape when he did this for a local camera shop. I got as far as threading a film into the projector. It jumped and hopped and I just haven't been motivated to attempt to synchronize the sprockets with the shutter.

I should work on that some day.

Reading Eric Idle's "Sortabiography" he mentions that the first screening of "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" bombed horribly, partially because of the authentic medieval soundtrack by Neil Innes.  It was scrapped in favor of library music, which is what you hear now.

I love Neil Innes.  We was the brains behind The Rutles and The Bonzo Dog Band and The World and Innes Book of Records, as well as many songs in the Pythons. The few of his songs in MPatHG that survived are some of my favorite parts of the film.

So, the film soundtrack must have been FINISHED for them to show a test print with his soundtrack.  Can I find any vestiges of it online?

No I cannot.  

Played a bit of Bonzo Dog yesterday while I was reading, which led to me playing a CD I have of '20s and '30s novelty songs that were later covered by the Bonzos.

Made me think I want more jazz from that era.  That was before swing or bop.  What'd they call it?  Le Hot Jazz maybe. Baritone saxophones, banjos, washtubs, chunkachunka guitar, clarinets,  trombones... actually come to think of it this is Tuba Skinny and Island City Jazz Band territory.  

Anyway, I found a 3-hour playlist on YouTube and another 2-hour playlist.  Burned an MP3 disc with five hours of music to read Eric Idle to.

Bliss.

NoCoPilot wrote:

I have a video editing project on my plate.  I've put it off about 3 years now
.

After writing this I realized "hell I'm never going to dub those movies" so I looked online for services that might do it for me.  They exist.

But the cost would be in the neighborhood of $500, which is way beyond what I'll pay.

With that kind of money I ought to just buy a machine for digitizing 16mm film, and then sell it afterward.

But hey, such a thing does not appear to exist.  There are 16mm and 35mm slide digitizers, and 8mm film digitizers -- both of which I've had in the past for previous projects.  But apparently... for some reason... nobody's made a similar deal for 16mm film. I wonder why not.

The Battle of Britten

Heard "Courtly Dances" by Benjamin Britten on the radio the other day; it sounded vaguely familiar and therefore desirable. The only Britten in my collection is his "Ceremony of Carols" for children's chorus, which is a delightful piece.

Couldn't be sure where I'd heard "Courtly Dances" before, and searching for it online I didn't see any album covers that looked familiar. It has not often been recorded; I could find only two recordings.

One, by William Boughton and the English Symphony Orchestra, had an assortment of other Britten tracks I wasn't familiar with. There were no versions of this CD anywhere online for download, so I went looking for the CD. Amazon had it for $7.99, but our local CD emporium had it for $5.99 so I gave the business to the local shop.

Alas, when it showed up today, it was a DIFFERENT collection of Britten, by William Boughton and the English Symphony Orchestra. It had two of the four suites from the one I was looking for, but alas and alack, not "The Courtly Dances."

So I started looking for "Courtly Dances" online again, starting with Apple Music. They had a version by guitarist Julian Bream, a 1963 album that has never been issued on CD. Why they had it, I'm not quite sure. But on listening to it I realized this was one of my dad's albums, one I loved as a kid, and the reason the "Courtly Dances" sounded so familiar.

Bought it, burned it, love it. For 1963 it's a dynamite recording.

But I still wanted the orchestral version I was shorted. Apple Music also had the Boughton recording, although at $9.49 one had to buy the whole album (half of which I already had) to get the tracks I didn't. Oh well, I decided, it's only money.

But then I was left with a CD of only 25 minutes. What else could I find to fill it out? Found another album on Apple Music, with two suites I didn't have (and two I did) for another seven bucks. Oh well, in for a penny in for a pound.

So I was able to assemble a one-hour CD of very nice Britten works I'd never heard before, excellent new digital recordings, for just under $17. That's what it would have cost to buy the physical media, with songs I already had.

Seems like a reasonable compromise, and I'm loving all the new music.

Sofia Gubaidulina

Sofia's name is thrown about everywhere in 20th Century classical circles, and I could've sworn I had a couple pieces by her.  Well, maybe I do somewhere, on CDs under other primary names.  But when I looked under "Gub" in my music rack there was a huge sucking black hole between Vince Guaraldi and Carlos Guedes.

Discogs shows 138 releases by her, on a bewildering array of record labels, with a bewildering array of instruments: large orchestras, small chamber ensembles, piano solo, accordion, violin, cello, voice, chorus, yadda yadda.

My usual source for cheap music had zero recordings by her(!)

Apple Music had a couple dozen, for ten dollars a disc.  Since this was terra incognita for me, I started sampling pieces and didn't fall in love with anything.  A lot of long fairly tedious-sounding pieces.

Then I ran across an album (I guess it's an album?) called "Best Sofia Gubaidulina" which was fifty tracks, five hours and 50 minutes of material, all for $5.99.

Couldn't pass THAT up.

It's a career-spanning retrospective of her best work, which ranges from extremely modern to more traditional, on a bewildering array of instruments by a bewildering array of performers.  Just what I was looking for!

I burned an MP3 disc (it just fit on one disc) and have spent yesterday and today immersed in this composer.  Divided into small chunks, and changing style and instruments every track, the extreme modernism is bearable, even enjoyable.  I must say, I can see why she's on everyone's lips because if you can think of a contemporary classical trend, she's explored it.  

There is much here that will yield to further study.

Devil Doll

About two years ago, I heard a song on my Pandora station of female blues singers that I've been trying to find again ever since.

Lyrics:
No one makes me feel the way you do
No one lays me down the way you do
I've got a bit more curl in my hair when you get through
And the way you keep your eyes on mine until we're through

Now come on baby and show me how it's done
Say my name and tell me I'm the one
Since your lovin' I ain't been the same
Makes me wanna wear a ring and forget my name

I can't keep my mind away from you
No matter what I do I think of you
And when I look at your picture I start to sweat
And when you touch me, babe I get so wet.

The lyrics are unusually sexy and graphic, which I like.  Add some super slide guitar work and a rocking rhythm, and you've got a hit in my household.

I was glad the song came up in rotation again this afternoon, and I was able to identify the singer -- Colleen Duffy -- and the band -- Devil Doll -- and download the album -- The Return of Eve.

The song that follows "The Way You Do" is called "The Lord's Prayer":
Dear God please don't fuck me on this one
Cause my heart is gettin' colder and nights are gettin' older
And I've always known that he's the one
So God please don't fuck me on this one.

Interesting songwriter.  By the way, not to be confused with the much better-known experimental Slovenian rock band by the same name, which I already have a couple albums.

Lucia Hwong

I pulled a CD out of my rack, more or less at random, to play while I read. "Sacred Cities" by Garry Hughes, on the Audion label started by Larry Fast, was a singular release. Somehow he got hold of a Synclavier III synthesizer, the most expensive and arguably most advanced synthesizer of the time (mid-1980s). His profile says he worked as a producer and studio musician, which still doesn't explain the $30,000 synthesizer. As a result his album is full of subtle and complex sounds, though the composing is pretty simple and unchallenging.

I looked up Garry online which was complicated because there's another famous Garry Hughes (musician) and several famous Gary Hughes (soccer and rugby and politicians) which Google kept settling on. I found that MY Garry had a second album "Ancient Evenings" which I sorta remembered but never replaced with a CD. Started looking online for the tracks (kept running into the OTHER Garry) and only found four of the eight tracks. Grabbing my CD of "Sacred Cities" I discovered it was a CD-R I had made, and it included five tracks from "Ancient Evenings," including one I just downloaded and the four I hadn't been able to find. Funny how that worked out!

As I was filing my new CD-R away, I noticed two CDs by Lucia Hwong just next to him. I wondered if Lucia had released anything else. These two CDs were on Peter Baumann's Private Music label that he sent me when I was reviewing, and she kinda disappeared after them. She's a Chinese-American musician who melded pipa (a Chinese lute played with a pick) with synthesizers; a very interesting combination.

Looking online I discovered that she'd done many soundtracks for plays and dance performances and a few movies, but only three music albums after the two I had (again, mid-1980s).

Looking again at these three, I realized I'd had them and sold them.

Started listening online and remembered why. The three CDs contained about five songs total, with endless remixes, repetition under different titles, and some long suites that were designed for guided mediation with asinine narration like "Close your eyes. Relax your body. Imagine a vast sea...". Impossible to listen to!

I downloaded about twelve songs (free, off YouTube) before I noticed, as I was assembling a CD-R, all the duplication. I pared down to just the best version of each song, put them in a logical order, and burned one 25-minute CD. Not very impressive from three CDs!

Alas, she hasn't done anything new in 22 years. I guess these CDs were her last gasp.

Bird Song

I'm reading "Mozart's Starling" by Lyanda Lynn Haupt, a local woman who rescued a baby starling and raised it to become an attentive pet.  She discovered that Mozart also kept a starling, a species that, like a myna or a parrot, can mimic human speech or almost any other noise in their environment: door squeaks, phone ringing, coffee grinder, doorbell, etc.  In Mozart's case he was attracted to the bird (so the story goes) when he found it in a birdseller's shop and it was singing some of Mozart's own music.

The book reminded me of all the music, like Mozart's, which either imitates birdsong or is sympathetic to it, or in some cases actually utilizes recordings of birds in the score:

• Respighi - The Pines of Rome
  
• Delius - On Hearing The First Cuckoo of Spring
  
• Vaughan Williams - The Lark Ascending
  
• Vivaldi - The Four Seasons
  
• Grofé - Grand Canyon Suite
  
• Sibelius - Swan of Tuonela
  
• Rautavaara - Cantus Arcticus
  

There are, apparently, very few (if any?) compositions that use actual birdsong as the musical motif.  There is the Symphony of the Birds (1957) where Jim Fassett slowed down bird recordings to the point where the individual notes became prominent, but that doesn't really count.  Incidentally, I used to have the extraordinarily rare (but it turns out not at all valuable) LPs from which Fassett pulled his samples.

In poking around online for possible examples, I ran across several YouTube videos of between 1-hour and 11-hours of uninterrupted birdsong recorded in the wilderness.  I decided to download a bunch of these and put them on a USB stick so I can go outdoors anytime.

On YouTube there are several videos by/about a clarinetist named David Rothenberg (he's actually mentioned in the book too).  He gotten fairly famous I guess for playing his clarinet to birds.  Playing his clarinet to whales.  Playing his clarinet to cicadas.  But here's the thing: he plays exactly the same way to all of them.  He doesn't even attempt to mimic their sounds, or make sounds they would respond to.  There's no communication there. It's just a schtick.

At least when Paul Horn played flute to whales, or Paul Winter played sax to wolves, they made the bare minimum attempt to produce sounds the animals could respond to, and to respond in turn to the animals responses.

Not Rothenberg. Phooey.