What are you listening to?

Best Selling RPGs - Available Now @ DriveThruRPG.com
I'm watching/listening to Billie Eilish slay on the main stage at the Glastonbury Festival. When I listened to her early stuff, I was like "No mere teenage pop ingenue should be growling/whispering/roaring like this" and I am strangely proud of how she's grown up into the greatest artist of her generation.
 
New Porcupine Tree album landed today. Always takes some time to digest, like all their stuff, but so far very happy with it. Got tickets to see them in September as well :-)

 
One of my D&D group-mates introduced me to this last week and it's been stuck in my head ever since.

The Cult of Dionysus, by Th Orion Experience
 
Here's an interesting video of pre cut-and-tuck Wendy Carlos demoing her Moog for the Beeb in 1970. Wendy Carlos was a pioneer of electronic music in the 1960s, best known for the albums Switched on Bach and The Well Tempered Synthesizer. What's interesting about these albums is that the tracks were all complex, layered Baroque pieces and the early Moogs were monophonic - one note at a time, no chords. The records were very time consuming to put together.

At the time, a Moog was a very expensive piece of hardware with a typical configuration costing about $12,000 1960s dollars - enough to buy a couple of nice houses. Moog viewed Switched On Bach as a technology demonstrator, sweeping what a faff it was under the carpet. They supplied a synthesizer and stumped up for something like 1,000 hours of studio time for Switched On Bach, which Carlos put together one track at a time. They also did this with Gershon Kingsley, author of the original Popcorn track, although the Hot Buttered cover is much better known.

Fun fact: Switched On Bach often called 'The best selling classical record of all time', despite not containing any classical music.




While Switched On Bach is mired in rights holder issues, The Well Tempered Synthesizer is up on the wayback machine.

 
Last edited:
And, in related news, here's Gershon Kingsley's Popcorn, also done using kit provided by Moog. They bankrolled an album called Music to Moog by, also as a technology demonstrator. Note that there's more complex layering on the tracks than the better known Hot Butter version.




And here's the better known Hot Butter Version, which was done on considerably more low budget hardware than a Moog and a recording studio, so the arrangement is quite a bit simpler.




And finally, here's Oxygene IV, which is (useless factoid alert) based on a hacked around version of Popcorn. Note also the relatively simple arrangement, as Oxygene was done in Jarre's kitchen on an 8-track.




Note also some of the alternate character forms used in the Avant-Garde Gothic typeface used on the record cover. Avant-Garde Gothic had a fair few of these, although not all of them seem to have made it into the Postscript versions used today.
 
Last edited:
So, the other day Moonlight Shadow auto played on YT after something or other, and since then I've had Mike Oldfield all over my Youtube recommendations. I listened to Tubular Bells on a flight a few years ago, so I decided to listen to a few of his other works when they started popping up. He did quite a few big concerto pieces, which are kind of unusual for the era but clearly made a contribution to Prog Rock's reputation for long, rambling tracks.
Not to mention the Alan Parsons Project or Pink Floyd, no siree.

Just listened to Crises and Ommadawn. Can't say I'd rave about it, but it's not bad. I guess the way the radio system worked makes it hard to monetise this sort of content, although it didn't seem to have stopped him. Maybe with the advent of mixing apps like Logic Pro and Youtube as a medium we might see folks doing more of this sort of thing.
 
Been listening to a ton of poetry declarations, or at least as many as I could find. I would start a poetry reciting podcast if I could, alternating between English, Portuguese and Spanish pieces just for the hell of it.

Maybe I’ll record something and use you people as guinea pigs, so you can get a good laugh at my accent as I maim Coleridge or Tennyson.
 
Butcher, I dare you.

On rare occasions, I get the hankering for beat poetry.





Never been one for beat poetry myself. But I like the spirit in which it is written and recited. (And for the girl in the first video I’d be willing to make all sorts of exceptions.)

I’ll try and figure out how to record myself and post here (see my other post over at the Real Life thread, about being a tech-inept dad).
 
Never been one for beat poetry myself. But I like the spirit in which it is written and recited. (And for the girl in the first video I’d be willing to make all sorts of exceptions.)

I’ll try and figure out how to record myself and post here (see my other post over at the Real Life thread, about being a tech-inept dad).

Get a decent microphone if you're going to do that. Mrs Nobby-W Nobby-W runs a business with a significant social media presence in Indonesia, and looked into doing a podcast at one point, so we did a bit of homework on the matter.

One term you will hear is 'XLR' microphones, which is an analogue standard where the plug design has rubber dampeners that stop vibration being conducted into the mike. These will also need a digitiser box (typically between £50-£200) to plug into the computer. XLR mikes are not strictly necessary but will avoid some types of environmental degradations to sound quality. The Shure SM7B is well regarded and popular in Youtube circles, although at about £300 or so it's not cheap.

Otherwise, a bit of google-fu should turn up suitable mikes. A reasonably decent USB mike should start about £100 or so. I got one called a Blue Snowball for teleconferencing, which the manufacturer also pitches for podcasting. That's probably about the bottom end.

One of the free audio editors is probably fine.
 
Last edited:
Get a decent microphone if you're going to do that. Mrs Nobby-W Nobby-W runs a business with a significant social media presence in Indonesia, and looked into doing a podcast at one point, so we did a bit of homework on the matter.

One term you will hear is 'XLR' microphones, which is an analogue standard where the plug design has rubber dampeners that stop vibration being conducted into the mike. These will also need a digitiser box (typically between £50-£200) to plug into the computer. XLR mikes are not strictly necessary but will avoid some types of environmental degradations to sound quality. The Shure SM7B is well regarded and popular in Youtube circles, although at about £00 or so it's not cheap.

Otherwise, a bit of google-fu should turn up suitable mikes. A reasonably decent USB mike should start about £100 or so. I got one called a Blue Snowball for teleconferencing, which the manufacturer also pitches for podcasting. That's probably about the bottom end.

One of the free audio editors is probably fine.
Jesus Christ, that’s expensive.
 
Jesus Christ, that’s expensive.

There are considerably dearer ones - the SM7B is recommended as a midrange model and seems to be the mike of choice amongst the Youtube set. However, you can probably get a decent USB mike good enough for a poetry reading at something more like £100.

I've spent a lot of time in teleconferences and if I can say I'm intimately familiar with all manner of bad audio. I got the Blue Snowball mike so I had decent quality audio, plus the drivers for my old Jabra headset were getting flaky. I will say that it's probably at the bottom end of what one might want to get for serious work but your listeners will thank you for having a decent microphone.
 
Last edited:
Get a decent microphone if you're going to do that. Mrs Nobby-W Nobby-W runs a business with a significant social media presence in Indonesia, and looked into doing a podcast at one point, so we did a bit of homework on the matter.

One term you will hear is 'XLR' microphones, which is an analogue standard where the plug design has rubber dampeners that stop vibration being conducted into the mike. These will also need a digitiser box (typically between £50-£200) to plug into the computer. XLR mikes are not strictly necessary but will avoid some types of environmental degradations to sound quality. The Shure SM7B is well regarded and popular in Youtube circles, although at about £300 or so it's not cheap.

Otherwise, a bit of google-fu should turn up suitable mikes. A reasonably decent USB mike should start about £100 or so. I got one called a Blue Snowball for teleconferencing, which the manufacturer also pitches for podcasting. That's probably about the bottom end.

One of the free audio editors is probably fine.

The Shure58 is the reliable tank of stage mics. To me XLR is the only way to go, other mics can be good but tend to be overpriced and unreliable.
 
And from the Oh-is-that-what-it's-called desk, Dvorak's Humoresque no. 7.

According to the interwebs, it was originally written for the piano and part of a suite of 8 pieces written in 1894. However, better known is the 1906 Piano/Violin arrangement by Fritz Kriesler which is the one most people are likely to have heard as it made an appearance all over the place, including several film soundtracks.




And Humoresque no. 4 and 5.



 
Last edited:
Not Mozart, but Boccherini, who also wrote loads of string quartets and quintets (he was a cellist and did a lot of pieces for quintets with two cellos). Apparently the G in the number means that it's a catalogue number from a catalogue made by a chap called Gerard, much like the BWV numbers you see on Bach pieces, which are a reference from the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis, a catalogue of Bach's works.

 
And here's nice performance of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, one of Mozart's best known pieces, and one you've likely heard at least part of before. Still, there are very good reasons why it got done to death.

 
Last edited:
And another of Boccherini's, this time something you've probably heard and helpfully named 'String Quintet in E Major, op. 11-5. Note the two cellos - as noted before, Boccherini did a lot of compositions for quintets like this.

First movement




Second movement




This is the third movement, the bit you've probably heard.




And the Fourth movement

 
And, now harkening back to the days of my mis-spent youth, a childhood favourite. Tchaikovsky was a sort of Hayao Miyazaki of the classical music world, with fantasy themes turning up in his better known works, particularly the scores for Swan Lake and The Nutcracker Suite. Although I find classical ballet a bit meh, these are fabulous compositions and done to death with good reason.

A childhood fave of mine, Valse des Fleurs -




And one of his best known pieces, Dance of the Sugar Plum fairy, which you've also probably already heard -


I'm not just into watching athletic Russian women in tight-fitting costumes. Honest.
 

Foe Whom the Bell Tolls Piano Cover, by Gamazda
And now a story about Pachelbel, who (according to OP), clearly hated cellos.


And this is for you:

Pachelbel's Canon Improvisation on a Yamaha C7 Grand, by Kyle Landry
 
I've seen this before, and it never stops being funny.

They killed LoFi Girl over a bogus copyright claim. One of her streams is back, so I'm chilling to it.



I like listening to lo fi from time to time - it's quite good as background music when you're working.

The boggly eyes on the headphones are a nice touch.
 
Last edited:
Banner: The best cosmic horror & Cthulhu Mythos @ DriveThruRPG.com
Back
Top