From the customer reviews on iTunes’ copy of Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic playing Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings:

Maybe he should tune first next time… The reason I bought this CD though was for the Adagio, which is just not very lovely at all. The tempo is very slow, which would be very nice, except for the fact that the entire piece is just sooo out of tune. It just sort of spoils it.

At first I was inclined to give the good Mr. Bernstein the benefit of the doubt but upon consulting Mr. Samson’s iTunes Ping profile, I discovered that not only is he a classical music fan, he’s also a composer, conductor, and singer!

I would like to formally and publicly apologize to Mr. Samson for having doubted his credentials. Clearly Leonard Bernstein should have consulted Mr. Samson on properly tuning the New York Philharmonic before recording “Adagio for Strings.”

PANIC BOMBER / MIRACLE CAT present:

Exquisite Corpse Game to Song Creation. (3 player version)

PHASE ONE (ensemble):  all players discuss and set up guidelines for style, limitations and expectancies.  Players choose roles.  

PHASE TWO (the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing):

Player one:  Write Lyrics  —- Player Two:  Rhythmic Structures and/or phrases —– Player Three does A: Chord progressions  or  B: Melody creation  (player 3 does not do both A and B)

PHASE THREE (that scene near the end of terminator 2 where the exploded shards of the T1000 slowly melt and come back together) :

IF PLAYER 3 CHOSE A (chords) IN PHASE 2

Player One:  asemble chords with rhythmic structures

Player Two:  Write Melodies to go with Chord progressions 

Player Three: Allign Lyrics rhythmically with Rhythmic Structures

IF PLAYER 3 CHOSE B (melody) in phase 2:

Player One:  Write chords to go with melodies

Player Two: Assemble Melodies With Rhythmic Structures

Player Three: Assemble Lyrics with Melodies 

PHASE 4 (I’ve never seen so much damn money!!!$!!)

All Players:  Assemble all parts and arrange the FORM of the piece or pieces

Player one:  Notation and Orchestration

Player two:  Recording and Performance

Player Three:  Artwork, websites etc.

Some people on this blog (who will go unnamed) have been complaining about lossy audio compression being used on film score trailers and themes. Duly noted.

But I learned of a much greater menace of film score integrity tonight.  This year’s “Best Picture” (and it is a damn fine film) went one step further than using crummy, low bit-rate codecs on their score.  They actually outsourced the thing!  I understand we’re in a recession, but giving these jobs to composers and performers in central Asia is downright UN-AMERICAN.

Hey!  So, question for the general populace about Watchmen.  Pay close attention to the song that plays over the closing credits, right after the movie ends… Is that an mp3?!?!?!  Most obvious with the cymbals, as it goes with mp3 compression.  But really… for a hundred-bazillion dollar mega-budget movie, could they really have used a (badly) lossy-compressed file for *any* of the music in the movie, let alone the song that plays over the closing credits?!?

Somebody back me up here!

Unrelatedly, probably the most actively terrible score of any movie i’ve seen in the last decade.  And the licenced music (aside from the stuff that was referenced in the book, which is fair) was similarly awful…  Yorks!

The most important thing about a cracker, when paired with cheese, is the structural integrity relative to the throughput of its dairy-based compatriot. Wheat Thins, for the uninitiated, are a popular baked snack cracker found in North America and distributed by Nabisco, a subsidiary of Kraft Foods Global Inc.

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Horsie Art!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ugh.  Drank champagne and box wine layered with beer last night.  Head pounding this morning.

Fantastic Invader – Saturday Morning Wank (mp3)

Generative Artwork made possible by ARSS.

You’ve all seen the new batman, I’m sure?  With its lovely score by James Newton Howard and Hans Zimmer (and one guy who did “additional music,” one “scoring coordinator,” one “score production coordinator,” two “technical scoring engineers,” and a whopping eight [!] orchestrators)?

Anyway.  So you know how there’s all those times where a handful of violins sit on a single note for a while?  You know, for tension and what not? (for the uninitiated, a bad example **HERE**.)  Well, the entire movie whenever this happened I couldn’t help but think of the very beginning of an album I recorded in 2006 – the track-in-question of which you can find **HERE**.

Funny, the similarities!  And before you go thinking I’m making ridiculous accusations, I’m actually just pointing out massively blatant copyright infringement.  I’ll expect my check in the mail.