Getting your music on iTunes

For all of my friends who want to make it to the big time, Tunecore has come to the rescue. With recording technology available to almost anyone with a computer, now you can distribute your files through most online retailers. including iTunes and Rhapsody. Best of all, Tunecore doesn't take a percentage of the sales. All the money comes to you. There are setup and posting fees, but from the company's own figures, it costs less that $20 bucks to upload 5 tracks to several online stores. Hopefully my classical colleagues will take advantage of this service, since most of their repertoire is in the public domain. But you say you don't have studio-grade mics and preamps at home to do this kind of stuff? I think the public would like to hear rougher quality "basement tapes" of most artists, classical or otherwise, for the appearance of intimacy might trump what these recordings lack in audio fidelity. And if the public takes to you, they might seek out your public performances for a higher quality listening experience. A strange thing to say post-Beatles and Glenn Gould, but true nonetheless.

György Ligeti - documentary 1993 - part 4 of 4

Thanks to French TV for making the best documentary on a composer I've ever seen. This hour long portrait of Ligeti includes information about his childhood, life in post-Stalin Hungary and covers most of his life as a composer in Western Europe. I've included the last part here not only for it's cameos of Aimard and The King's Singers, but as an added bonus, the only film footage I've ever seen of Nancarrow with his player piano. Ligeti's french is not very complex, so anyone with some high school exposure to the language should be able to follow along. Finane, are you listening? Special thanks to Tibor Torontali for bringing this to my attention, as well as making some thoughtful comments on my earlier Ligeti post.

Mitsuko Uchida on Schoenberg's Piano Concerto

Another great find by the Arnold Schoenberg Center! In their continuing quest to bring all things Schoenberg to the online community (including all of his works thorough streaming MP3), they've uploaded quite a bit of video to YouTube, including this great clip of Mitsuko Uchida talking about Schoenberg's Piano Concerto.

What continually amazes me about Schoenberg is that despite his many personal failings (friends and allies were frequently the target of his caustic wit if he felt that their devotion was suspect), I can think of no other figure in music history other that Richard Wagner to garner such fanatic support amongst his enthusiasts. Uchida is simply bursting with her love and passion for the work, and hopefully some of that enthusiasm with garner the work some more (sorely) needed fans.

As an added bonus you can hear Uchida perform part of the work in concert below.

Record Making With Duke Ellington (1937)

Frank Zappa - Rollo

TV's just not cutting it for me anymore. I've been turning whatever time I use to spend watching the tube towards watching YouTube. I'm sooo much happier with YouTube that I may never go back. What's missing from today's TV? The presence of anything not controlled by focus groups and testing in order to make sure you're not offended. The American Oxford Dictionary defines the word offend as:

verb 1 [ trans. ] (often be offended) cause to feel upset, annoyed, or resentful : viewers said they had been offended by bad language. • be displeasing to : he didn't smoke and the smell of ash offended him | [as adj. ] ( offending) they must redesign the offending section of road. 2 [ intrans. ] commit an illegal act : a small hard core of young criminals who offend again and again. • break a commonly accepted rule or principle : those activities which offend against public order and decency. DERIVATIVES offendedly adverb offender noun ORIGIN late Middle English : from Old French offendre, from Latin offendere ‘strike against.’

I can see not wanting to hurt anyone's feeling as a good thing, but isn't the risk of being offended inherent in human communication. We all appreciate people respecting our personal boundaries, and seeking out others who will potentially hurt us seems contradictory to our prime directive, but isn't part of our interest in others predicated on the fact that they may have views that challenge us, that they may hold core beliefs that negate ours, isn't this what interests us in other people?

Case in point, Frank Zappa. Here's an old SNL clip of Frank where his love of avant-garde classical music and free jazz are presented in a rock idiom. John Belushi makes and appearance as a samurai, allowing the band an opportunity to mimic all of his guttural antics in a music context.

It's not that I hate TV, it's just that nothing of interest, nothing that might be new, different, or challenging, ever gets through, and I'm including PBS in this assertion. But there was a time when TV was in the hands of creative people, and that once in a while, something without hit potential could be seen by millions. A shame it's all gone now. Enjoy!

Jackson Pollock 51

The real reason I moved to New York. The audio is so poorly recorded. Perhaps I'll try to find a version were i can "fix" the sound of Feldman's music

iPhone

Associated Press has announced that Linksys has released an iPhone, phones that take advantage of VoIP technology, including one with built-in Skype capabilities. With Skype ceasing free web-to-phone calls at the end of 2006, the $30 per year (that's right, per year) that the company is asking users to pony up for continued use still seems like a good deal. And if your one of those people who receives free wi-fi (public works or unprotected wireless routers), the iPhone might be your best choice for keeping those phone bills as low as possible. If they could combine a device like this with some of my ideals for the Zune 2.0, it would revolutionize the way we stay in touch.