What are you listening to?

• karo: the joys 
  July 17, 2010, 10:45:59 PM
• karo: I've been busy doing this Summer School for Access to Uni thing.  For the past week or two I have had at least one big essay per week(by big I mean 1500 words, so not massive but still a fair bit for a weekly essay) got one due Monday this week and another due Friday
  July 17, 2010, 10:45:46 PM
• E.Maree: That must have taken some organisation, wow. :O Mega congratulations!
  July 15, 2010, 09:24:08 PM
• Triss: We're hoping to make it an annual event since the first was pretty successful.
  July 02, 2010, 05:56:40 PM
• Triss: A group of us from the LARP society I'm part of decided to put on a role-playing convention, catering to roleplayers of all types from tabletop to LARP, so we got in a whole load of traders and people promoting their groups and stuff. There's quite a big, active RP community in the north-east, so we thought we'd tap into that. So 'Nerd East' was born!
  July 02, 2010, 05:56:13 PM
• E.Maree: Running a convention? Oooh, tell me more! :O
  June 27, 2010, 11:34:45 AM
• Triss: 'lo guys - I'm good, still busy, alternating between a degree and convention running. I didn't predict anything of this sort this time last year...
  June 25, 2010, 11:17:06 PM
• E.Maree: I think everyone's lives have taken a turn for the busier lately, I know mine has. xD How are you?
  June 22, 2010, 09:55:21 PM
• MysticSafewayBag: I have not been on here for a long time but I am very busy. It is my bastard degree; it takes up almost all of my time.
  June 16, 2010, 11:00:12 PM
• MysticSafewayBag: Hello.
  June 16, 2010, 10:59:49 PM
• E.Maree: Tightened up the anti-spam measures on the forum.
  May 31, 2010, 01:47:46 PM
• karo: we need to spark up activity again... hardly anyone comes on anymore...
  April 30, 2010, 01:40:19 PM
• E.Maree: Hi XGIANNIX, how are you?
  April 26, 2010, 09:27:37 PM
• XGIANNIX: E.Maree
  April 20, 2010, 01:34:32 PM
• XGIANNIX: euhmm hello
  April 20, 2010, 01:32:18 PM
• E.Maree: The new forum domain is now live, please change your bookmarks to emmamaree.com/forum.
  April 13, 2010, 11:42:03 AM
• E.Maree: I made a logo!
  April 06, 2010, 12:48:12 PM
• E.Maree: http://emmamaree.com/ is well along its way now. I'll have to move this place over soon. :O
  March 21, 2010, 10:38:08 PM
• E.Maree: Oh man, it's so cold around here, even with the snow gone. 
  January 22, 2010, 08:31:36 AM
• karo: thank you
  January 18, 2010, 05:43:17 PM

[Nick]

^ Er, yes. That explains the INSANELY busy car park then...Glad you enjoyed it.

[Triss]

It was quite funny, we were talking to our choir teacher Chris Josey about our weekend, and he said he was there at Eden Court, and we were all 'Yay, did you enjoy the concert?" and he said "Yes but not your one, the choir one!" To be expected I suppose.

EDIT: After listening to the Mass For Peace, I reckon it was Charge! that I heard. All that screamy stuff at the end is chilling. And then that bugle solo with the music gradually coming in behind it. Genius.

[Nick]

Ah, 'Charge!'...doubly good as it gives you an oppertunity to use the phrase "aleatoric wailing". Which is just one of the best musical phrases ever. It's literally 12 bars where it just says "Gliss randomly up and down, breathe individually when necesessary, convey horror!"
Rehearsals were great "Ok, sopranos gliss up first, altos gliss down. Tenors gliss up first, basses go down. And for goodness sakes everyone keep a straight face, THIS IS SERIOUS!"

Meanwhile, I was treated to a ten minute short on BBC4 called '21st Century Bach' last night. Well worth it.

[MysticSafewayBag]

Aleatoric wailing?

Can you find this on YouTube?

[Triss]

Can I just recommend the program Spotify now? It's a music program, a little like last.fm in the respect that you search for music, it has artist radios and such-like and has a large library of music (the only music I haven't been able to find is an obscure Finnish metal band I was looking for, and an equally obscure American Christian rock band).

At the moment listening to Rachmaninoff plays Rachmaninoff, Piano Concerto No. II and loving it. ^^

EDIT: Also Space Dementia on repeat, because I am learning to play it by ear. Because I am insane. I did cheat a little and take a look at the sheet music for one or two bits. But I feel pretty proud of myself.

[Nick]

Aleatoric wailing?

Can you find this on YouTube?

Um...I'm afraid not. I managed to find a ridiculously badly recorded version of Charge, but it cut out before the screaming, during one of those uberly dramatic pauses that Jenkins likes so much.

Would you instead accept some classic Bobby Darin singing Kurt Weil's 'Mack the Knife' from the Threepenny Opera? Possibly the most catchy song about a murderer, except possibly the Beatles 'Maxwell's Silver Hammer' especially as it was originally written in German.
Ah, how can you resist Macky? Plus, it's Bobby Darin in 1959. Classic.
[youtube=425,350]1dDs_N3kGQk[/youtube]
All together now: "Ooh the shark, babe, has such teeth, dear, and he shows them, pearly white, just a jack-knife, has old MacHeath, babe, and he keeps it, out of sight. You know when that shark bites, with his teeth, babe, scarlet billows, start to spread, but fancy gloves though, wears old MacHeath babe, so there's never, ever a trace of red...On the sidewalk, ooh sunday mornin' uh-huh, lies a body, just oozing life, Eek! And someone sneakin' round the corner, could that someone, be Mack the Knife?"

I dare you not to dance. It's just so jazzy and jaunty that you don't care what you're singing about.

[Triss]

Look it up on Spotify! *plug plug plug*

I love Mack the Knife. Highland Youth Big Band played it once, might have been last year. Had it in my head for weeks afterwards - no complaining though!

[E.Maree]

I really need to try Spotify.

Listening to a fwe bands outside my usually genre - VAST, who are remarkably suited to my taste with their sharp lyrics and ambient electro-rock stylings. Their album 'Music for the People' is really good, I'm particularly fond of track 'My TV and You'.

~ I was born to stare at who stares back at me ~

Also, Conjure One - an electro band whose poppy track 'Center of the Sun' is awesome in the summer weather.

[MysticSafewayBag]

You should definitely download Spotify,

[Nick]

Having sat and watched The 100 Greatest Musicals on more4 (again - Sweeney should be higher, ditto Les Mis, Grease should be lower, ditto The Wizard of Oz) I found the ultimate "Please, stop being so very much 'in wuv', it's just annoying now" song in Easter Parade. You know the kind of people - it's almost like they're so insecure in their relationship that they have to be constantly reinforcing it and it's just like "No, stop it, please."
(Don't get me wrong, I like a bit of romance and celebrate people being happy as much as the next person, but you know what I mean. Be comfortable with each other, don't call each other weird things.)
Anyway, all hail Irving Berlin for this bit of joy, 'Snookie Ookums'. I foresee humming it to myself in awkward situations...even if I could only find it being sung (very well I must say) by two people called Matt and Cat.
[youtube=425,350]qmZhySE-i60[/youtube]
If you really want to, you can hear Judy Garland and Fred Astaire singing it, but only if you stoop to the level of clicking on the video third from the left on the related videos. It's a long way to stoop, even if like me were just innocently going "Huh, isn't Snookie Ookums from Easter Parade? *click*"

[Triss]

After a Coldplay binge yesterday following the release of their free live album, today was a slight change of tack as someone recommended to me a band called Turisas (Scandinavian folk metal sort of thing). Plugged it into last.fm and spent the morning listening to various different folk metal bands and feeling like a Viking for a couple of hours until I stumbled on a band called Alestorm.

Apparently they come from Perth and place themselves in the genre 'True Scottish Pirate Metal'. I might just be in love. Songs like Captain Morgan's Revenge remind me of a darker version of Pirates of the Caribbean and the like (note to self, must watch PotC again). They're pretty violent but strangely enjoyable to listen to.

[E.Maree]

Scottish Pirate Metal?

I'm listening to that.

[Triss]

I've recently been listening a lot to a band called Sonata Arctica, a Finnish prog metal band. It is the most ridiculous over-dramatic music I've heard in my life. I really like it.

[Nick]

Just discovered a song called 'Little Red Riding Hood' by Sam the Sham and the Pharohs
[youtube=425,350]_FA85RO89HA[/youtube]
I just love how mildly creepy it is...

But being me I kinda like the rocked up version by Bowling for Soup
[youtube=425,350]gw9UmjJJLK4[/youtube]

Made all the more joyous as in my search for it on youtube I stumbled on fanvids using it with a show I used to love called The 10th Kingdom - it was about a woman who had to go into this kind of other dimension type thing where there were 9 kingdoms (our relality being the titular 10th) which was basically fairytale land and overthrow the wicked queen (who if I recall correctly was her mother) who had turned the hamdsome prince into a dog and the dog into the prince and if they didn't sort it out the whole place would like...implode or something and I'm pretty sure take all of our world with it. She had to go up in shepherdess competitions and fight off trolls and her hair got Rapunzelled at one point and there was something important to do with mirrors...I don't remember really. Anyway the Big Bad Wolf (who seemed to be more of a werewolf type chap, in that he seemed human but had many wolfish characteristics and sometimes his eyes glowed yellow and I'm pretty sure he had a tail) falls head over heels in love with her but is a bit rubbish at chatting up people without blowing their houses down.
I really need to find that again, it was so good!