75 Results for : redo
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Cyber Jubilee
The composers who followed Beethoven writing symphonies did so at the risk of a failed serious comparison. Some managed to survive. But, Schumann has suffered greatly by comparison. Beethoven set the stage. Brahms forged ahead and gave four sparkling masterworks. Schubert was not to be outdone in his 8th (unfinished) and 9th symphonies. But what about Schumann? His symphonies (the 2nd movement of the 2nd symphony comes to mind) are weak shadows of the giant. I think he may have known this because he revised his revisions. But now let us set the record straight and give Schumann his due. Beethoven fathomed the depths of our psyche to the very bottom. He found suffering there. His reaction was to triumph over it with his music. We call Beethoven's music 'heroic' for this reason. I would add that his music is even therapeutic. His heroic temperament accounts in part for his universal appeal. On the other hand, Schubert did not have the courage to oppose the tribulation. So he did something just as good. He transformed it into something beautiful and therefore bearable. Brahms' reaction to it is somewhere between Schubert and Beethoven. Brahms can be heroic and poignant in the same passage. What about Schumann? Schumann seemed to want to create something uplifting and gay (that is to say uplifting in a not too serious way). In this he failed. If he could of ignored Beethoven (fat chance) and just been himself, he would of been better off. Well then, what is the result? Schumann plumed the depth of our suffering like the rest. He made something beautiful like the others. In this he compares favorably with Schubert and Brahms. And that is the answer. Take Schumann on his own and his music is worthily crafted and splendid. He wanted it to be delightful but the burden of suffering still shows through. Taken in this way, Schumann's symphonies are solid masterpieces. Always brooding and sometimes gay and often delightful and always wonderfully crafted. In concert, audiences usually spontaneously applaud the virtuoso performance of the violins for their speed and precision in this scherzo. Tip: listen for the dissonances. He occasionally has notes semitones apart sounding together. *** Debussy and the Tri-Tone Western music has some recognizable principles: The major scale of 8 notes and the associated chords called the tonic, the fourth and the dominant. The scale is the do-ray-me ... sequence or otherwise the notes c-d-e-f-g-a-b-c on the piano keyboard. The three chords are c-e-g and c-f-a and b-d-g. Only the white keys are used. These sounds are familiar to our ears because Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven used them extensively and inspired their followers to do the same. An excellent example would be Haydn's Clock Symphony, the 2nd movement. The C major chord c-e-g is, however, unbalanced. Unbalanced because the e is a major third above the c while the g is only a minor third above the e. Likewise, the corresponding c minor chord c-(e-flat)-g is top-heavy with the g being a major third above the e-flat while the e-flat is only a minor third above the c. One way to achieve balance is to make both intervals a minor third. That is, c-(e-flat)-(g-flat), and this is the tri-tone that attracted Debussy. He used this tri-tone sound whenever possible in his (only) string quartet. That is why this music sounds new to us. It sounds modern. It sounds convincing. *** Schubert wrote two trios for piano, violin and cello. Both are masterpieces. However, there also survives a single trio movement presented here. With this trio movement there is a problem of balance. The modern concert piano is much more massive in it's strength and loudness than the piano of Schubert's day. The challenge today is to prevent the piano from drowning the strings in it's sea of sound. It does no good to play the strings louder because then they lose Schubert's intended sweetness. No, the piano must be softer, but without losing it's strength. A good balance may be a distant dream in the concert hall but not so in cyberchambermusic's studio. Four separate channels are used one each for the violin, the cello, the piano right hand and the piano left hand. The four channels can then be combined in such a way that each can be heard for it's own part. The four voices are spread across the stereo spectrum starting with the violin on the far left, then the cello mid left, then on the mid right the piano right-hand (high notes) and on the far right the piano left-hand (low notes). However, there is also the problem of musical balance. What should be the natural role of each of the four voices? In the violin sonata, the role of the piano and violin duet had been firmly established. Beethoven and Mozart had been at it already. But adding the cello to make a trio means Schubert has something new to say. While he created something beautiful in this movement, it does not have the balance he sought. Each of the four parts seem to be in a secondary accompanying role. Nowhere does the violin (or cello) lead and the others follow. It is the piano that demands our attention throughout even though not in the usual leading way. The movement is a scene with four bit players and no leading man. Cyberchambermusic can in it's studio successfully attack the problem of volume balance but be assured we are helpless to improve Schubert's musical balance. *** Victor Borge walked onto the stage, sat, adjusted the piano bench, smiled at the audience and played his piece. When he was done, he rose, turned and accepted the audience's applause and said, "For my next piece, I would like to play all the notes I missed in this first one." Mr. Borge is a very funny man and also a good pianist. However, his amusing joke raises an interesting question that I would like to pursue. Another good story comes from an interview with a well-known concert violinist. He said that sometimes in concert he forgot Mozart's concerto score and had to fill in with some notes he just made up. He hoped Mozart would forgive him. Even studio performances do not always satisfy. When Toscanini was unhappy with a section of a recorded performance, the piece was fixed by his allowing the recording engineers to splice in the same section with a tape from another (years) earlier performance. So fine was Toscanini's art that such a fix could succeed. The advantage of a studio recording is that if any notes are accidentally skipped or altered while playing, it is a simple matter to discard the recording and redo it - as many times as it takes to get it right (assuming the players schedules allow them time). The disadvantage of the studio is that the soloist loses the interaction with the audience which may well have inspired him to a superior performance. Another concert pianist said that because of his interaction with his audience during the concert, no two of his concert performances of a piece were ever the same. Indeed, he went further and confessed that he even lacked the control needed to produce two identical performances. While it is indeed a thrilling experience to sit in the hall (and socialize) and marvel along with the others in the audience at the soloist's expertise, to be fair it must be said that the best place for the recording of many live concert performances is in the trash can. The reason for raising this point is because modern computer software gives us more control over a performance than ever before. The number of ways for the man at the computer to fix his performance is nearly unlimited. Let me continue with an example. I have in mind Chopin's piano Fantasy in f minor. Here is a place where the computer-controlled performance can excel. First of all the recorded "sound" of a piano is the same whether it is generated by the sequencer at the computer keyboard or by a soloist at the piano keyboard. That is to say, if one note is hit by the pianist and recorded, it sounds the same when played back even though the computer initiates the pla- Shop: odax
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S.W.A.T.: Season Two
L.A. native Sgt. Daniel "Hondo" Harrelson (Shemar Moore) is put in charge of a highly trained Special Weapons and Tactics team following the police-involved shooting of an unarmed African-American teen in the hopes he can help improve relations between the cops and the community. Hondo finds he must walk a fine line that separates his loyalties to his job and to his old neighborhood. Debuting on CBS in 2017, this thrilling redo of the hit '70s series co-stars Stephanie Sigman, Alex Russell, Lina Esco, Kenny Johnson.- Shop: odax
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Jerusalem
Singer/songwriter Ellen Soukup's latest CD called "Jerusalem," which came out in November of 2009, is her first album since "The Truth is There" was released in 2003. "I would have done this probably sooner, but my husband and I decided to use the money to redo our kitchen," she laughed. There were advantages to the delay. Ellen said she wrote most of the songs between 2003 and 2005. So, by the time she sat down in the studio to record them, everything came easily. "During the hour-long drive to the recording studio, I prayed the rosary, and when I got there, I could just sing like crazy," she recalled. "I was able to record piano and vocals for eight songs in one day." Her producer, J. Scott Gaeta, was astounded. Typically, a singer might only be able to record one or two songs in a day. Ellen is eager to give the credit to the Holy Spirit, and not only for her successful recording session. As she analyzed her songwriting process, she admitted to relying heavily on the Holy Spirit as she develops a song. "Sometimes I come up with words first, or a statement...other times I start with the melody," she said. "I totally let the Holy Spirit take over...I don't feel I'm equipped and good enough at doing it on my own." For example, one of the songs on her new album, "Fortune," began with a statement Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz of the Diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska, made during conference she had attended as the music leader. "He said, 'Someone died and left you a fortune. We have been redeemed by our Lord Jesus Christ,'" Ellen remembered. She immediately dug a scrap of paper out of her purse and jotted it down. The words stayed in her mind - and her purse - for weeks. A couple months later, she asked the bishop's permission to turn it into a song, and he agreed. More statements were scribbled onto the paper, which graduated to a position on Ellen's piano. Musical notations were penciled in above lyrics. As the months went by, the song took shape and made it onto the album. Ellen said that this new album is, "the most true to myself and my faith than my other recordings." She explained that while she was working on her previous albums, she wanted to be appealing to a wider Christian audience. "I used to worry, 'Maybe people of other religions wouldn't like that song...' But a lot of people of different faiths said their favorites on my other CDs were what I considered my most Catholic songs, so I decided to do what feels best." Consisting mostly of original compositions with a couple of new arrangements of traditional spiritual songs, the album is titled "Jerusalem," after Ellen's favorite of the 11 selections. "'Jerusalem' is about looking all around at the beautiful things God has made and realizing that heaven is so, so, so much better," Ellen smiled. Other songs address different kinds of issues. "Someday" is an impassioned plea to a family member who had left the Church. "Settling Down" is about making a Holy Hour. Ellen's song "Peace" uses the words of the Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi. Knowing there are several different versions of that prayer, she researched carefully for the most authentic version. The only extra work she did on the lyrics was some minor changes to make the words fit the melody. Other songs include her arrangements of "His Eye is On the Sparrow," which Ellen sang when she was a college student and member of the Scarlet and Cream Singers (a show choir at the University of Nebraska- Lincoln), and "Give Me Jesus." Students at St. John the Apostle elementary school in Lincoln, where she teaches music two days a week, were excited about one song in particular, because they are Ellen's back-up singers. "It's based on Archbishop [Fulton] Sheen's Prayer for Life," she explained. "I wrote that one for the kids at St. John's to sing on First Fridays, so I recorded it with the kids singing with me." Ellen's teenaged daughter, Carolyn, and her husband, John, also sang back-up for a number of the songs. Full instrumentation was provided by her producer, and several other people contributed to the project. "Jerusalem" is a dynamic collection of songs that range from prayerful reflection to gospel-inspired melodies. Listeners will experience the heart and soul of this evolving singer/songwriter. "I just hope that when people hear the album, they'll feel uplifted and prayerful," said Ellen. "I want them to hear and feel the Holy Spirit through these songs, because He's worked through me."- Shop: odax
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MacGyver: Season 4
A Swiss Army knife, his wits, and maybe a paper clip or two is all the equipment covert government operative Angus "Mac" MacGyver (Lucas Till) needs to stop the bad guys, in this action-packed redo of the popular 1985-92 series. Premiering on CBS in 2016, the show also stars George Eads as Mac's partner and ex-Delta Force soldier Jack Dalton, Tristin Mays as hacker and tech specialist Riley Davis, and Justin Hires as Wilt Bozer, a childhood friend of Mac's and would-be film director.13 episodes on 3 discs. 9 hrs. Widescreen, Soundtrack: English Dolby Digital 5.1.- Shop: odax
- Price: 41.54 EUR excl. shipping
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