recipe update
18 Jan 10
I have added Jodi’s vegetarian Shepherd’s Pie to my recipe index.
Posted by pzed on January 18, 2010 at 10.02am
Will power
27 Feb 09
The SB Will is a ship in London that can be booked for private parties.
If cruising on the River Thames, the highlight of the trip is passing through Tower Bridge as it opens exclusively for your party – literally stopping the traffic.
Now there’s a selling point. “Look how terribly important we are, chaps, the Tower Bridge is opening exclusively for us! Pity the yobs who have to sit in traffic watching us cruise by. Ha ha.”
I heard about the SB Will from the Tower Bridge itself.
Posted by pzed on February 27, 2009 at 8.06am
this is not a post
16 Dec 08
I was thinking the only song that really captures the true meaninglessness of xmas has to be “Felice Navidada”.
Posted by pzed on December 16, 2008 at 9.32pm
on satire
22 Jul 08
“No one knows what’s funny anymore.”
Posted by pzed on July 22, 2008 at 3.38pm
on triangles
17 Jul 08
and refrigerators:
[Robert] Putnam [a Harvard political scientist] likes to imagine that there is a triangle, its points comprising where you sleep, where you work, and where you shop. In a canonical English village, or in a university town, the sides of that triangle are very short: a five-minute walk from one point to the next. In many American cities, you can spend an hour or two travelling each side. “You live in Pasadena, work in North Hollywood, shop in the Valley,” Putnam said. “Where is your community?” The smaller the triangle, the happier the human, as long as there is social interaction to be had. In that kind of life, you have a small refrigerator, because you can get to the store quickly and often. By this logic, the bigger the refrigerator, the lonelier the soul.
There and Back Again: The Soul of the Commuter. Nick Paumgarten, The New Yorker.
Posted by pzed on July 17, 2008 at 1.10pm
what they said
13 May 08
Tate said: “And, we should never stop questioning why there aren’t any solely electric-run cars on the road when they have been around for close to 200 years.”
And Mita said: “Why do I have to poach from the third world in order to get appropriate technology?”
Posted by pzed on May 13, 2008 at 4.30pm
Buchmann-Meyer effect
10 Apr 08
These two German physicists discovered during experiments with sound recordings in the 1920s that, if a beam of light is thrown onto a disc record, the grooves produce an effect suggesting the branches of a Christmas tree, with the root at the last groove. They further discovered that the length of the “branches” is in direct proportion to the amount of sound recorded in that particular groove or grouping of grooves, and that the brightness and clarity of definition of the “branches” is also in direct ratio to the brightness and clarity of the sound from the relative grooves. Thus, a recording depicting a sharply defined image of a Christmas tree will give an excellent performance, no matter how improbable this might seem from a cursory examination of its surface in normal or subnormal light. And, if part of the “Christmas tree” image is dull and the rest bright, the bright part will provide an excellent reproduction of the recorded sound. A record giving only a vague, blurred outline, barely recognizable as a Christmas tree, will thus give only a very poor sound reproduction, and some records have been found with the grooves so badly worn by constant playing with blunted needles or styli, probably with heavy pickups or soundboxes, that they are almost ground smooth and give no Christmas tree (Buchmann-Meyer effect) at all. (Rust 108)
According to Foreman, the effect is “best seen from a 45° angle across the diameter of the record with a small but bright source of light on the same side as the viewer” (29).
Posted by pzed on April 10, 2008 at 7.39pm
discography (long post)
28 Mar 08
Foreman, Lewis. Systematic Discography. Hamden, CT: Linnet Books, 1974.
Rust, Brian. Brian Rust’s Guide to Discography. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1980.
Both Foreman and Rust (especially Rust) seem more interested in early recording, mainly 78s. Rust makes it clear that this in part because his musical interests focus on that era, but consider this:
A truly comprehensive world discography will probably now never be compiled, but through a large number of ad-hoc subject discographies. . . access to the history of performance in the twentieth centuryas it took place is gradually being made possible. (Foreman 11)
Imagine trying to do a full discography of a contemporary artist whose work exists in umpteen digital formats. The very obsolescence of the LP makes it a tempting target for discography, only because it will stand in one place. And I imagine, in the 70s, discontinued formats from the early 20th century would have been tempting in the same way.
My notes from Foreman and Rust are below the fold.
Posted by pzed on March 28, 2008 at 2.19pm
Bibliographic Relationships in Music Catalogs
14 Mar 08
Vellucci, Sherry L. Bibliographic Relationships in Music Catalogs. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 1997.
whole-part relationships
- hierarchichal and fairly obvious; quite common in musical compositions which are often in segments that can be performed independently of the whole
- can be a relationship involving a specific physical entity, such as a song in an anthology
- more importantly, a physical part can be related to a work as an abstract whole; this concept of the work is used to create the primary element in a uniform title
- in principal both part and whole can be abstract, although you wouldn’t normally find this in a library catalogue
- a whole-part relationship can be either inclusive or extractive
- an inclusive relationship exists when the part is contained entirely within the whole
- an extractive relationship exists when the part is removed from the whole to exist as a separate entity
- a part can be extracted vertically from the work, such as when a segment is excerpted to be a complete, performable unit; Vellucci gives the example of a chorus from an opera
- or a part can be extracted horizontally, such as when the music for one instrument is extracted from the complete score; in bibliographic terms this would normally occur in the publication of a score “with parts”, but one could imagine a performance of a single instrumental part from a larger work (although this might be more accurately described as a derivative relationship)
derivative relationships
- a derivative relationship “exists between any new conception of a work and its original source”
- a derivative relationship is normally considered to involve some kind of modification; however, a recording of a musical performance should be considered derivative even where the performers carefully follow the score
- new editions are considered derivative, but subsequent printings of an edition, facsimiles, etc. are not; I’m not sure if this means a CD release of an original LP is derivative, although probably yes if it’s “digitally remastered”
- an amplification is a derivation that adds to an original
- includes arrangements, involving a change in either the medium of performance (e.g. with different instrumentation) or the musical intellectual content (e.g. a simplified version for the beginning musician)
- also includes adaptations (where the intellectual content of a work is so altered as to be considered a new work), translations (not of interest to music per se, but relevant where choral works might involve translation), and notational transcription (e.g. from a medieval to a modern notation)
accompanying relationships
- the relationship between a primary musical item or work and complimentary material that accompanies it
- may be physically separate from one another, or may share the same container
- restricted to the function of augmentation, not a continuation
- for sound recordings, examples would include booklets and other inserts, and might even be extended to include liner notes; such items might also exhibit a descriptive relationship to the primary material
sequential relationships
- embody a chronological and sequential relationship
- include series, serials, and sequels
- exclusive of derivative relationships
equivalence relationships
- exist between exact copies of the same manifestation of a work
- reproduction is a mechanical rather than intellectual process
- the reproduction is normally intended to serve as a substitute for the original
- related to derivative relationships, except that in an equivalence relationship absolutely no alteration is made to the intellectual content
- examples include exact copies, microform copies, manuscript reproductions, issues/reissues/impressions, photocopies; Vellucci studied only scores and gives no specific examples for sound recordings
descriptive relationships
- exist between a work and a criticism, evaluation, or description of the work
- includes annotated editions, commentaries, analyses; may or may not include the musical work being described
Posted by pzed on March 14, 2008 at 11.48am
monophonic
7 Feb 08
From Bryant, 1985:
Critics and music enthusiasts, for whom the performance is often more important than the recording, may feel that the electronically processed stereo effect is less satisfactory by far than the original, but it seems that many collectors will no longer consider buying any disc that is admitted to be monophonic. Indeed, many public libraries have found that their single channel discs are shunned by the majority of borrowers, however great the merits of a performance, however good the recording and however satisfactory the general condition of the record. The time may well come, however, when there will be some slight swing in the pendulum of fashion, in the way that there is now a small but quite lively market for 78rpm discs, with as many youthful collectors as elderly ones.
Despite this, a library is currently unlikely to buy any of these old shellac discs except in special circumstances. Gifts of coursegroove recordings may be offered to a library. For some years the general response was to reject them; indeed, where a collection of discs had been started before the LP era, there was a widespread tendency to withdraw and scrap all the coarsegroove recordings during the 1950s. Belatedly, it is being recognized that almost any old record in playable condition is likely to have some historic and artistic value (or, one imagines, it would never have been issued in the first place [!]), so that the possible importance of an archival collection is slowly being recognized; this matter will be raised again later in the chapter. (273-374)
Posted by pzed on February 7, 2008 at 10.26am
