tunequest

This year's end summary is going to be a little shorter than in the past, for two principle reasons: 1) 2008 was a lot busier for me than recent years, so my opportunities to explore and listen to new music were more limited, and B) I spent a lot of the free time I did have listening to audiobooks and podcasts rather than music. Indeed, 2008 ...

Read the rest of this post.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6627904867875032821 Ethan Winer plays all 37 separate parts on A Cello Rondo, including the percussion, on his cello. He also composed the song. The music is about 6 minutes long and the end of the video shows his digital music editing and some of his film setup. Not only is the production quite smooth, showcasing the power of modern technology to allow a single person to (relatively) ...

Read the rest of this post.

Ah, it's been a while since we actually talked about music here at tunequest, so let's pick up where we left off: Susumu Yokota. I recently posted about my discovery of his music via an Amazon recommendation for his 2001 exploration of ambient minimalism, Grinning Cat (perhaps a reference to Alice in Wonderland?). Having piqued my interest to the extreme, I started researching the man and ...

Read the rest of this post.

Paramount Pictures closed its legendary Stage M this past August. The stage opened in 1932 and since then, many famous and notable film scores have been recorded on it, including The Ten Commandments, Out of Africa, as well as a great portion of Star Trek's music. More recently, Danny Elfman's score for Nacho Libre was laid down there. try this Google search to see some more examples ...

Read the rest of this post.

I can assure you that you know every single piece of music featured at KickAssClassical.com, but you'd probably strain a muscle trying to figure out when and where you've heard them. Hopefully it won't come to that, because Mike Nelson no, not of mst3k fame has compiled 100 of the most popular pieces in the "serious music," aka classical music repertoire, pieces made famous by their ...

Read the rest of this post.

Specialized bike parts has released an intriguing holiday card for the 2006 season. It's an excerpt of the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker suite, a perennial Christmas time favorite. The catch is that the piece is played entirely on bicycle parts. From createdigitalmusic.com: Glockenspiel & Clarinet melody = spokes. Cello & Violin pizzicatos = plucked derailleur cables. Triangle = disc brake hit. Percussion = shifting, coasting, finger ...

Read the rest of this post.

Even in 8-bit audio, the theme to The Legend of Zelda is a rousing piece of music. But add a full orchestra to it, and you have something phenomenal. The Tokyo Symphony really imbues the song with both an expansive power and a lofty tenderness. Give it a listen:

Read the rest of this post.

I spent a good seven+plus hours burning through some iTunes today to make up for yesterday's somewhat disappointing performance a shortened day at the office will do that. With about 100 songs to choose from, I had a very hard time narrowing down the song of the day, so lucky you, here's three songs to choose from. Choose wisely. Orbital: Time Becomes [audio:061021OrbitalTimeBecomes.mp3] Constructed from a single line spoken ...

Read the rest of this post.

I'm usually opposed to orchestras attempting to play pop/rock music. Those things just never seems to turn out as well as one would expect. But this performace of Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit by Western Branch Freshmen Orchestra is quite nice. As both an orchestra fan and Nirvana fan, I give it great kudos. The orchestra is based at Western Branch High School (home of the Western ...

Read the rest of this post.