January 5, 2013 · 1:37 pm

The Ultimate Wiki Resource for Classical Music – IMSLP

Frontispiece to Petrucci's Odhecaton

Frontispiece to Petrucci’s Odhecaton (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

OK, I admit it I have a passion for musical scores notes. It comes second only to my Piano keyboard obsession. That’s why I was very happy to browse through IMSLP, the International Music Score Library Project. The IMSLP is a Wiki project  and was launched on February 2006. IMSLP consists mainly of scans of out of copyright musical scores. There are also some MP3 tracks to listen to and always an Amazon link to the relevant piece.

IMSLP is also known as the Petrucci Music Library. Ottaviano Petrucci was an Italian publisher who lived between the 15th and 16th centuries. Petrucci was one of the first music sheet publishers.

The wealth of material is amazing. You can find the complete Bach public domain works as well as all of the public domain works of Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Corelli, Debussy, Fauré, Handel,Palestrina, Ravel, Schubert, Schumann, Sibelius and many others. Some like Mozart and Liszt, have most of their works downloaded. According to the site as of Aug 2011, IMSLP has 63,243 works, 225,387 scores, 21,976 recordings, 7,769 composers, and 194 performers. I don’t play any instrument myself but this wealth of scores is really inspiring. It “tickles” me to start those piano lessons I’m postponing for so long…

Copyrights are a very central issue when running a project like IMSLP. In fact the site was shut down for almost a year (Oct 2007 to June 2008) because of copyright claims. Since its reopening IMSLP complies with the very strict copyright rules of Canada, US and the EU. The site makes sure that its users will not accidentally infringe any law. No wonder that Edward W. Guo, the creator and leader of IMSLP/Petrucci Music Library is a graduate of the New England Conservatory (B.M. in composition, 2008) and Harvard Law School (J.D., 2012)…

The project also allows contemporary composers to publish their works under the Creative Commons license. By this it helps them gain recognition and acceptance.

The main target audience of IMSLP is obviously musicians. Let me know how it affected you as musicians, armatures or listeners.

Advertisement

3 Comments

Filed under Classical Music, Music Technology

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

December 29, 2012 · 11:05 pm

The Secrets of the Cajon and what makes it so popular

Cajon flamenco Camaron

Cajon flamenco Camaron (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I first came to learn about Cajon when a friend of mine told me that he is going to build one. I hardly knew what  Cajon meant at the time and why would any musician like to become a carpenter. Gradually I’ve started to understand the magic.

A Cajon (box in Spanish) is a unique percussion instrument. In its simplest form it’s a wooden box on which the percussionist sits and play it with his hands. It originated from Peru where it is called simply – Cajon. Paco De Lucia the famous Spanish guitarist fell in love with the cajon in one of his visits to Peru and immediately decided to adopt it to the well known Flamenco style of dance and music. That was the breaking point of the Cajon Flamenco and this is what made Cajon’s popular in many music styles. The Cajon’s ability to produce both high and low percussion sounds make it ideal for drummers or small groups who want a full drum sound without having to set the full drums gear.

Today the Cajon is used in traditional Latin as well as Rock, Pop and other modern music styles. The Cajon Flamenco has snare string that distinct him from the “dry” sound of the traditional Peruvian Cajon. There are dozens of Cajon manufactures around the world and it’s popularity reached Japan and China.

The Cajon simple structure made it ideal for Do It Yourself projects and for customizations. There are secretes behind Cajon buildings but there are many examples and demonstrations over the Web showing how to do it right.

I did not yet hear my friend’s Cajon nor did I start building my own, what I did is to build my own website dedicated to Cajons and to Cajon’s players. It’s on http://www.eCajonFlamenco.com, check it out and let me know what you think!

Related articles

1 Comment

Filed under Musical Instruments

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

December 24, 2012 · 10:33 pm

Music is more powerful if you make it yourself and now everybody can!

The original Guitar Hero logo features more po...

Credit: Wikipedia

A fascinating talk at TED presented by Tod Machover and Dan Ellsey. Tod is a composer and a researcher at the MIT Media lab. His mission is to perform innovative experiments on how modern technology can help us better express ourselves with music. The famous Guitar Hero came out of this lab.

Expression with music, Tod claims, is much more profound than words and can make us do amazing things beyond “just” creating music. With music the researchers were able to help physically and mentally ill people to better receive treatment. More than that, they believe that they should help everyone create music with custom shaped instruments. This is true for Yo Yo Ma and Prince as well as people strand to their wheel chairs like Dan Ellsy. Dan is giving an amazing and heroic performance with a beautiful piece of music that he wrote.

This is a truly inspirational talk about people who are transforming the world with music, and I’m not exaggerating.

Related articles

Leave a comment

Filed under Musical Instruments, TED

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

December 21, 2012 · 11:10 am

A nice tribute to Dave Brubeck from Persiflage

Persiflage

Perhaps my favourite non-classical album is Time Out by the Dave Brubeck quartet. The most well known piece from that album is “Take Five”, and not undeservedly so. Its distinctive time signature is instantly recognizable, and the saxaphone hook sounds good even on a 80386 running chessmaster 2000. To honour Brubeck (who died recently), here are five different recordings of Take Five.

First, here’s the original 1959 recording which appears on the album:

Second, here’s a recording from 1961:

Next, here’s another recording from ’61. As with the previous recording, the underling structure is very similar. However, note the funky chord on the piano at 0:44 (and a related chord at 0:35 in the second version) which isn’t in the original (where it would occur at 0:49). In the original, there’s a vanilla Eb minor chord (first inversion) paired together with an F in the base line (the piece is…

View original post 102 more words

Leave a comment

Filed under Jazz

Tagged as , ,

September 30, 2012 · 7:38 pm

Happy Birthday Naxos! Celebrating 25 years of excellent music at a budget price!

Naxos, the first budget CD label is celebrating 25 years. Anastasia Tsioulcas from NPR Classical has interviewed Klaus Heymann the founder of Naxos, click here to read ,listen and to learn more about how he did it.

Naxos have changes the classical music landscape even before the appearance of the digital formats. Some of my favorite CD’s are from Naxos so I don’t care giving them some free publicity in return to those great hours…

Related articles

Leave a comment

Filed under Classical Music

Tagged as , , , , ,

September 7, 2012 · 10:11 pm

Apocalypse in 9/8

The original Genesis line-up in 1967, with Ant...

The original Genesis line-up in 1967, with Anthony Phillips, Mike Rutherford, Tony Banks, Peter Gabriel and Chris Stewart. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Rhythm is one of the things that get me in music. The more a-symmetric the rhythm the more it draws me into it and the more I feel the need to decipher it.

“Apocalypse in 9/8 (Co-Starring the Delicious Talents of Gabble Ratchet)” is an extraordinary piece of music which is actually the 6th part in Genesis’ Supper’s Ready (Originally from Foxtrot). The Apocalypse is played in 9/8 meaning 9 beats in a bar. It is very complex and hard to follow for the untrained ear. As you can imagine it had a magnetic effect me. The rhythm plus the organ sound and the out of sync melodies heard in the background draw me completely into the music. It’s almost like a religious experience.

I never really searched on what was is behind the Apocalypse. Only  now when writing this post, I looked at Wikipedia under “Supper’s Ready”. It all became clear: “In an interview, Peter Gabriel summed up “Supper’s Ready” as “a personal journey which ends up walking through scenes from Revelation in the Bible….I’ll leave it at that”.

Drums are used in tribal ceremonies as a mean to get the audience excited, a similar effect exist in modern days popular music. If rock music was a religion then the “Apocalypse in 9/8” would definitely qualify for its Mass.

To get to Foxtrot on amazon please click here.

Related articles

Leave a comment

Filed under Progressive rock

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

August 23, 2012 · 12:32 am

Tubular Bells – Mike Oldfield

Cover of "Tubular Bells"

Cover of Tubular Bells

Now where did Mike Oldfield go?  If I had enough patience to watch the opening ceremony of the London Olympics I could have seen him there…

The hours I spend listening to Tubular Bells… Almost all of its first part is instrumental but at the end, Oldfield “invites” each instrument one by one to join the music. The last to join is of course the Tubular Bells. This brings the 1st part to a wonderful, yet still gentle climax. The 2nd part features a very musically gifted  caveman and the cheerful tune of the Sailor’s Hornpipe. You’ve got to listen to it to understand.

Tubular Bells was the first record to appear on Richard Branson’s Virgin Records in 1973. Its opening theme also appeared on the soundtrack of The Exorcist.

It was nice to see how the two parts are about 20 something minutes long. Just enough to fit one side of a vinyl record.

Mike Oldfield is still active, now that I know where he is I have some musical catching up to do…

Click here to get to Tubular Bells on Amazon

Related articles

Leave a comment

Filed under Progressive rock

Tagged as , , , , ,

July 21, 2012 · 11:59 pm

Camel – Rhayader

https://i0.wp.com/upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fa/Camel_In_Concert.jpgHeard Camel‘s Rhayader on my cable’s music channels. It was great hearing them again. I’m always impressed by how much Progressive Rock groups were able to get inspired by Classical Music without loosing their own touch and sound. Camel’s Rhayader is a good example to that.

The following YouTube video shows Camel live doing Rhayader and then Rhayader Goes To Town live in 1977.

Enjoy!

Click here to go to the The Snow Goose album on Amazon

Related articles

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Progressive rock

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

July 13, 2012 · 11:29 pm

Steve Reich – Psalms morning

Portion of column 19 of the Psalms Scroll (Teh...

Portion of the Psalms Scroll (Tehilim) from Qumran (credit: Wikipedia)

The music I hear in the morning has the most effect on me. Usually I find Baroque music the most enjoyable to listen to as the day starts. I guess this is because its festive and very structured. It’s very repetitive and has all kinds of exciting forms of combining musical themes together. Altogether Baroque music have meditative and focusing effects on me, exactly what I need in the morning…

A few years back, I flew from Tel Aviv to London. I was about to meet my new bosses in a new firm I just joined. Away from my family I needed a musical companionship that morning more than the usual. I tuned the radio in the hotel room to one of the classical music stations.  The music I heard was meditative and composed with all kind of interesting structures.  In addition I suddenly heard familiar words sung. About 3,500KM (2,200 miles) from home I heard a musical piece in Hebrew. It sounded too modern to be Baroque but it had many common feature. What I heard was Steve Reich‘s “Tehilim” (Psalms) and it certainly made me closer to home and at the same time ready for the new starts waiting for me on that morning.

Steve Reich (born 1936) composed “Tehilim” in 1981 and its his first piece to reflect his Jewish heritage. You can listen to it on YouTube below don’t let the background lights distract you from the music:

Related articles

Leave a comment

Filed under Classical Music

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

July 5, 2012 · 12:36 am

Last Brick in the Wall

Pink Floyd—The Wall

Pink Floyd—The Wall (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Saw a real good documentary on the history of the rock last night. 60’s to 80’s rock to be precise. History of music in general is all about the continuous chains of inspirations and influences, starting as early as the dawn of humankind. The program’s starting point was Syd Barret and his influence on Pink Floyd, David Bowie, all the way to Roxy Music.

Watching this excellent program you can understand who did what and to whom but as I’m sure you’ll agree, to really understand music you need to spend much more than one hour listening to it.

The constant tension between the search for the right form of expression and the way the audience perceive them, haunted musicians long before the 60’s. Roger Waters wanted to protest against the rioting crowd at the grandiose Pink Floyd performances. In order to prove the disconnection between the group and its crowd, he conceived the idea of building  The Wall, live on concert, to symbolize this gap (as well as other ideas).  Continue reading →

5 Comments

Filed under Progressive rock

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,