I'm only about over a week late.
http://picasaweb.google.com/sarahcryst/April20thPhotoProject/photo#5195252406778166594
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Wednesday, April 30, 2008: My interests according to Askville
Amazon has a service called Askville, which is kind of like Yahoo! Answers, possibly with extra bells and whistles. Anyway. I answer questions not exactly at random, but not exactly by choice; the best description is "stuff I already know or can find via clever Google search, out of the pile that nobody else wants to answer."
Now, other people answer questions too. For every answer you submit that's the best of the lot, you earn points in a category. The categories aren't systematic. The best description here: "whatever the asker felt like tagging the question with, whether or not he/she understands what tags are for." The better the answer, the more points. Now, there's a lot of vagueness here, so you'd expect that Askville points would do a pretty lousy job of determining my interests.
Turns out it does a pretty great job:
music (140 points)
computers (130 points)
books (126 points)
entertainment (113 points)
From here on out things fall apart:
trivia (82 points)
electronics (73 points)
food (71 points)
health (65 points)
shopping (64 points)
beauty (60 points)
And then the categories spiral off into irrelevancy and over-specificity. The top 4 are spot-on, though, and in roughly the correct order. I'm impressed.
~*~*~
Last night, during an innocent conversation on AIM, I unwittingly unleashed something truly evil onto the world. The proper thing to do in such a case? Why, tell everyone else how to unleash it too!
Tools You'll Need:
- An mp3 file, preferably of a song which is happy and uplifting. I like Disney songs for this.
- Audacity. It's free.
- Basic musical theory (optional; it's probably more surprising if you don't have it)
Steps:
- Open the mp3 file in Audacity, twice.
- In the second file, select the entire track, go to Change Pitch, and take it up 6 semitones. If you know basic musical theory, you already see where I'm going. If you don't, just experiment until the dialog box tells you you're at 6 semitones.
- Wait. (This takes a while, and takes longer the longer your track is.)
- Select the whole thing, and copy. CTRL-C, menu, however.
- Go to the first file (the one you didn't change) and select New Stereo Track.
- Go to the beginning of the new track that just appeared, and paste.
- Play.
- CRINGE.
Testimonial: "When it got to the bridge, I lost the will to live."
This, my friends, is the power of the tritone, the interval also known as the Devil in Music. Western society associates this thing with dissonance, and with evil. Personally? I think they have a point here.
Now, other people answer questions too. For every answer you submit that's the best of the lot, you earn points in a category. The categories aren't systematic. The best description here: "whatever the asker felt like tagging the question with, whether or not he/she understands what tags are for." The better the answer, the more points. Now, there's a lot of vagueness here, so you'd expect that Askville points would do a pretty lousy job of determining my interests.
Turns out it does a pretty great job:
music (140 points)
computers (130 points)
books (126 points)
entertainment (113 points)
From here on out things fall apart:
trivia (82 points)
electronics (73 points)
food (71 points)
health (65 points)
shopping (64 points)
beauty (60 points)
And then the categories spiral off into irrelevancy and over-specificity. The top 4 are spot-on, though, and in roughly the correct order. I'm impressed.
~*~*~
Last night, during an innocent conversation on AIM, I unwittingly unleashed something truly evil onto the world. The proper thing to do in such a case? Why, tell everyone else how to unleash it too!
Tools You'll Need:
- An mp3 file, preferably of a song which is happy and uplifting. I like Disney songs for this.
- Audacity. It's free.
- Basic musical theory (optional; it's probably more surprising if you don't have it)
Steps:
- Open the mp3 file in Audacity, twice.
- In the second file, select the entire track, go to Change Pitch, and take it up 6 semitones. If you know basic musical theory, you already see where I'm going. If you don't, just experiment until the dialog box tells you you're at 6 semitones.
- Wait. (This takes a while, and takes longer the longer your track is.)
- Select the whole thing, and copy. CTRL-C, menu, however.
- Go to the first file (the one you didn't change) and select New Stereo Track.
- Go to the beginning of the new track that just appeared, and paste.
- Play.
- CRINGE.
Testimonial: "When it got to the bridge, I lost the will to live."
This, my friends, is the power of the tritone, the interval also known as the Devil in Music. Western society associates this thing with dissonance, and with evil. Personally? I think they have a point here.
Read more...
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
April 16, 2008: And dream of...singing?
I keep a dream journal of sorts. I say "of sorts" because the phrase 'dream journal' implies two things:
(yes, I realized I used double and single quotes in the same sentence. Who needs continuity? Anyway. Two things:)
- That it will be a physical entity. I used to use paper for such things until I realized that people could, and did, read them. My handwriting is pretty bad, but not bad enough to avert some uncomfortable moments. I now use WordPad. This is more secure since my laptop is password-protected. I suppose if I wanted even more security I could password-protect the individual documents, but so far I have not dreamt about my social security number, credit card information, or anything of that ilk. Besides, I change names if I feel like I wouldn't want them to be public. I find it a bit sad that I censor my personal dream journal, but I'm paranoid. At times I've gone back and changed names I forgot about or didn't think about changing.
- That it is updated frequently. At first this was the goal. Not as much anymore. In a little over one year, I have documented 32 dreams. Fractionally, that is rather sad if you consider the number of days per year. (It gets marginally worse if you consider leap year. My 'year' started last April, so I had to.)
32 dreams, however, is barely enough for a statistical sample, so I can start to suss out some patterns. Here are some of them.
First of all, I dream about singing more than most people, well, dream. 13 out of 32 dreams involved singing of some sort, whether I was the singer or not (and I usually was). I wonder if I'll start dreaming about reading and books if I become a music major.
I dream about driving quite a bit, although nowhere near as much as singing (I think the count was about 7/32). These dreams aren't as fun. Two of the dreams involved my careening out of control on the road and ending up prone in oncoming traffic. One dream involved driving off a cliff - with my grandmother in the car. Then there are the dreams loosely based on things that really happened. One dream (I just mistyped "car" there) involved the car breaking down - which has happened. What didn't happen was bits of paper flying out of the engine, which in my dream looked like a torn metal box. One dream involved my getting lost on the way to Winston-Salem. This was in December. Two months later I actually DID get lost on the way to Winston-Salem, although not in the same way as the dream. I must have subconsciously picked up on how much of a clusterfuck the town is when I visited there.
According to dream analysis, at least the versions people tell me, if you're the one driving in your dream, then you feel like you're in control of your life. If I trust them, I feel that I am actively botching my life. I don't think I like this interpretation. It makes me a lot more comfortable dismissing the stuff as pseudoscience.
It's interesting to hear about others' dream patterns. I don't know if she still does this, but whenever my sister dreams about a family member, that family member ends up dying in the dream. (Again, something where I really don't want to think of implications.) It's interesting in the "insanely jealous" way to hear about people who manage to lucid dreams, or have abstract, symbolic dreams. My dreams aren't very symbolic. They are quite boring. One of my entries starts out: "I attend a board meeting."
I'd be remiss in ending this train of thought without providing tidbits from said journal, so have at it:
- "I bike around a bit and then I decide to audition/apply for the Queen of Britain's biking team." In my subconscious, Britain is equivalent to England (which it isn't. I know it isn't. My subconscious doesn't.) Also, it has a biking team. Also, I can make said biking team, which I go on to do in the dream.
- My subconscious teaches me that the reason water in a fishtank tastes bad is that it is 2/3 water and 1/3 "self-regulating cooling fluid".
- "This time I got it, but when I pierced the fish's side my own foot bled and started to hurt." ...voodoo-doll stigmata?
- I had one actor's nightmare that I remembered, on August 6, 2007.
- "Rehearsals were Wednesdays at 4; I ponder how I'll reschedule my volunteer work and think maybe two or three afternoons for one hour would work." Why do I do tedious crap like rescheduling stuff in my dreams, too?
(yes, I realized I used double and single quotes in the same sentence. Who needs continuity? Anyway. Two things:)
- That it will be a physical entity. I used to use paper for such things until I realized that people could, and did, read them. My handwriting is pretty bad, but not bad enough to avert some uncomfortable moments. I now use WordPad. This is more secure since my laptop is password-protected. I suppose if I wanted even more security I could password-protect the individual documents, but so far I have not dreamt about my social security number, credit card information, or anything of that ilk. Besides, I change names if I feel like I wouldn't want them to be public. I find it a bit sad that I censor my personal dream journal, but I'm paranoid. At times I've gone back and changed names I forgot about or didn't think about changing.
- That it is updated frequently. At first this was the goal. Not as much anymore. In a little over one year, I have documented 32 dreams. Fractionally, that is rather sad if you consider the number of days per year. (It gets marginally worse if you consider leap year. My 'year' started last April, so I had to.)
32 dreams, however, is barely enough for a statistical sample, so I can start to suss out some patterns. Here are some of them.
First of all, I dream about singing more than most people, well, dream. 13 out of 32 dreams involved singing of some sort, whether I was the singer or not (and I usually was). I wonder if I'll start dreaming about reading and books if I become a music major.
I dream about driving quite a bit, although nowhere near as much as singing (I think the count was about 7/32). These dreams aren't as fun. Two of the dreams involved my careening out of control on the road and ending up prone in oncoming traffic. One dream involved driving off a cliff - with my grandmother in the car. Then there are the dreams loosely based on things that really happened. One dream (I just mistyped "car" there) involved the car breaking down - which has happened. What didn't happen was bits of paper flying out of the engine, which in my dream looked like a torn metal box. One dream involved my getting lost on the way to Winston-Salem. This was in December. Two months later I actually DID get lost on the way to Winston-Salem, although not in the same way as the dream. I must have subconsciously picked up on how much of a clusterfuck the town is when I visited there.
According to dream analysis, at least the versions people tell me, if you're the one driving in your dream, then you feel like you're in control of your life. If I trust them, I feel that I am actively botching my life. I don't think I like this interpretation. It makes me a lot more comfortable dismissing the stuff as pseudoscience.
It's interesting to hear about others' dream patterns. I don't know if she still does this, but whenever my sister dreams about a family member, that family member ends up dying in the dream. (Again, something where I really don't want to think of implications.) It's interesting in the "insanely jealous" way to hear about people who manage to lucid dreams, or have abstract, symbolic dreams. My dreams aren't very symbolic. They are quite boring. One of my entries starts out: "I attend a board meeting."
I'd be remiss in ending this train of thought without providing tidbits from said journal, so have at it:
- "I bike around a bit and then I decide to audition/apply for the Queen of Britain's biking team." In my subconscious, Britain is equivalent to England (which it isn't. I know it isn't. My subconscious doesn't.) Also, it has a biking team. Also, I can make said biking team, which I go on to do in the dream.
- My subconscious teaches me that the reason water in a fishtank tastes bad is that it is 2/3 water and 1/3 "self-regulating cooling fluid".
- "This time I got it, but when I pierced the fish's side my own foot bled and started to hurt." ...voodoo-doll stigmata?
- I had one actor's nightmare that I remembered, on August 6, 2007.
- "Rehearsals were Wednesdays at 4; I ponder how I'll reschedule my volunteer work and think maybe two or three afternoons for one hour would work." Why do I do tedious crap like rescheduling stuff in my dreams, too?
Read more...
Friday, April 4, 2008
April 4, 2008: Can she manage two blog posts in two days?
Why yes, yes she can.
Since I last posted, ScribbleWiki's site interface has exponentially improved. I was a bit too gushing in that last entry. I neglected to mention the fact that ScribbleWiki, the site itself, has - well, had - a horrid interface. (Not the MediaWiki part. The site itself.) Before, there wasn't really a login feature. Ostensibly there was one, but I could never get it to work. Perhaps there was an amazing site beyond the dialog box, like Narnia in the wardrobe, but I couldn't ever get to it, so it was as good as not existing.
Now, there is a quite lovely site with a FAQ and distinct login area. Just one problem, though: I forgot the details I used. This is a problem. I have far too many different email addresses I use for various sites, and too many convoluted passwords. This is called password security, but it should be called pain-in-the-assword security. I'll trust their site design is good all the way through.
~*~*~
Tomorrow I am attending a conference with the English department here. My role is to sit in the audience and ask questions about papers (or, as my mother informs me, to be a plant.) I had mulled over the idea of submitting one but people don't really know how extensive my Christina Rossetti obsession is. Let me explain.
My tastes in music and literature are similar, but not quite the same. I don't like modern classical music and I suspect I never will. It isn't for lack of trying; I've attended several concerts with the UNC new-music programs. Each time, I leave bewildered and basically unchanged by the experience, unless you count a higher degree of confusion. It's all right when you're listening to it, but I couldn't imagine myself wanting to repeat the experience. At the last concert I attended, I left after intermission and went outside to walk to Franklin Street. The night was clear, it was cool, and I listened to Tanya Donelly's gorgeous Beautysleep. I felt more transcendence in the short walk than I had in the entire first half of the concert.
This is why I'm not a music major, although you'd never know it from my posts here. I do like older classical music, to varying degrees. (Baroque was never my favorite. Of course, this means it has to be what they have me singing. I think part of it is culture shock after five years of singing musical theater.)
Literature is different. I quite like modern literature, and modern poetry especially. (I don't have as much to go on for novels, since I don't read as many as I could. Ten years ago that would be unimaginable coming from me; I was the girl who read almost every book in the school library. It was a private school, but still.)
I do still appreciate children's literature, in a combination of nostalgia and desire for childlikeness, and I also like older literature a great deal. My favorite "older" author (which is as silly of a classification as the lump-sum "classical music", but bear with me) is, of course, Christina Rossetti.
I've been drawn to her poetry and her life for about five years. Her poetry is simply beautiful, but her life is more interesting even, I think. She is what I might have been had I lived at the time. (She even looks a bit like me.) I've read several biographies - last year the Battiscombe biography, and a few weeks ago, the Kathleen Jones one from 1991. I really want to read the Lona Mosk Packer biography even if every other biographer maligns it for her assertion that Christina had a secret affair with William Bell Scott. Lack of evidence aside, it makes a truly good story. That's why I'm not a history major, or a biographer.) I am as engrossed in them as in any novel. Sometimes I even lapse into mannerisms normally reserved for movies - "No! Don't leave Charles Cayley! You love him!" I'm certainly invested in the reading.
On my list of things I want to do while I live is somehow read her letters. I know they're available, at least to biographers. It'd satisfy both my thirst for information and my wish to really know Christina. The wish isn't unique to her - I have other historical figures I do the same for, notably Claire Clairmont - but she's foremost among them. I'm not sure what she would think about that. Certainly she wasn't self-effacing. I know this is silly, but I feel the need to reassure her that it's out of respect - for her life, her poetry - my God, for her poetry - and for her person.
Since I last posted, ScribbleWiki's site interface has exponentially improved. I was a bit too gushing in that last entry. I neglected to mention the fact that ScribbleWiki, the site itself, has - well, had - a horrid interface. (Not the MediaWiki part. The site itself.) Before, there wasn't really a login feature. Ostensibly there was one, but I could never get it to work. Perhaps there was an amazing site beyond the dialog box, like Narnia in the wardrobe, but I couldn't ever get to it, so it was as good as not existing.
Now, there is a quite lovely site with a FAQ and distinct login area. Just one problem, though: I forgot the details I used. This is a problem. I have far too many different email addresses I use for various sites, and too many convoluted passwords. This is called password security, but it should be called pain-in-the-assword security. I'll trust their site design is good all the way through.
~*~*~
Tomorrow I am attending a conference with the English department here. My role is to sit in the audience and ask questions about papers (or, as my mother informs me, to be a plant.) I had mulled over the idea of submitting one but people don't really know how extensive my Christina Rossetti obsession is. Let me explain.
My tastes in music and literature are similar, but not quite the same. I don't like modern classical music and I suspect I never will. It isn't for lack of trying; I've attended several concerts with the UNC new-music programs. Each time, I leave bewildered and basically unchanged by the experience, unless you count a higher degree of confusion. It's all right when you're listening to it, but I couldn't imagine myself wanting to repeat the experience. At the last concert I attended, I left after intermission and went outside to walk to Franklin Street. The night was clear, it was cool, and I listened to Tanya Donelly's gorgeous Beautysleep. I felt more transcendence in the short walk than I had in the entire first half of the concert.
This is why I'm not a music major, although you'd never know it from my posts here. I do like older classical music, to varying degrees. (Baroque was never my favorite. Of course, this means it has to be what they have me singing. I think part of it is culture shock after five years of singing musical theater.)
Literature is different. I quite like modern literature, and modern poetry especially. (I don't have as much to go on for novels, since I don't read as many as I could. Ten years ago that would be unimaginable coming from me; I was the girl who read almost every book in the school library. It was a private school, but still.)
I do still appreciate children's literature, in a combination of nostalgia and desire for childlikeness, and I also like older literature a great deal. My favorite "older" author (which is as silly of a classification as the lump-sum "classical music", but bear with me) is, of course, Christina Rossetti.
I've been drawn to her poetry and her life for about five years. Her poetry is simply beautiful, but her life is more interesting even, I think. She is what I might have been had I lived at the time. (She even looks a bit like me.) I've read several biographies - last year the Battiscombe biography, and a few weeks ago, the Kathleen Jones one from 1991. I really want to read the Lona Mosk Packer biography even if every other biographer maligns it for her assertion that Christina had a secret affair with William Bell Scott. Lack of evidence aside, it makes a truly good story. That's why I'm not a history major, or a biographer.) I am as engrossed in them as in any novel. Sometimes I even lapse into mannerisms normally reserved for movies - "No! Don't leave Charles Cayley! You love him!" I'm certainly invested in the reading.
On my list of things I want to do while I live is somehow read her letters. I know they're available, at least to biographers. It'd satisfy both my thirst for information and my wish to really know Christina. The wish isn't unique to her - I have other historical figures I do the same for, notably Claire Clairmont - but she's foremost among them. I'm not sure what she would think about that. Certainly she wasn't self-effacing. I know this is silly, but I feel the need to reassure her that it's out of respect - for her life, her poetry - my God, for her poetry - and for her person.
Read more...
Thursday, April 3, 2008
April 3, 2008: Music, technology, and covers
I am not a techie. I spend a disproportionate time on the computer, and probably know more about them than a good deal of people, but I'm definitely no techie. This was illustrated a few months ago, after a day-long attempt to remove my decade-old hard drive to salvage my decade-old files and programs that I was nostalgically attached to. I had my laptop out, too (yes, I know, I could've produced an electrical shock and botched the whole thing), and was in perpetual-panic capital letter mode with a friend who did happen to be a techie:
"UM, I UNSCREWED THIS CUBE THING [the power source]. IS THAT BAD?"
"CRAP, I JUST TOUCHED THE DRIVE! NOW IT'S GOING TO BE WIPED DUE TO ELECTRIC SHOCK!"
"WHY WON'T THESE CABLES BUDGE?"
To my credit, I managed not to botch the whole thing. I retrieved what I needed, although I still don't know why the drive woudn't work on my PC but worked on my mother's. (In retrospect, dragging her computer into it was incredibly risky, considering my lack of skill, but nothing got hurt.) So now I can play my incredibly buggy '90s solitaire compilation which crashes whenever you minimize it, and once had MIDIs that played quickly but are now stuck on sub-adagio. I still play it. It gives me joy. If I don't minimize it.
When it comes to online matters, I am marginally more skilled, and to boot, have an obsession with organizing things that aren't my home. I also really like music. In short, I am just the person to set up a music wiki for myself. (This sounds like the beginning of a bad SEO article, I know. Trust me, it isn't. Guess what else? Personal life coaching can greatly improve your career! Wait, no.)
There are plenty of personal wiki services out there, but not all of them are created equal. I had a few criteria:
- Free. I prefer to spend my money on music, rather than venues to discuss it.
- MediaWiki software. This is personal preference, and probably mostly ingrained habit, but I am quite used to it and find it incredibly ugly to have pages SquishedTogether like that. I will never want to type, say, SarahBrightman.
- No pop up ads. Normal ads I can put up with, but popups just all around suck.
After some testing, I settled on ScribbleWiki. It is amazing. I highly recommend it. I wasn't paid to write that; I honestly believe it. It's fast, it's free, and you get unlimited pages (although I'm sure that they'd take action if you go crazy.)
Now that I have a wiki, there are many things I can do. I made pages for all the artists I listen to, and albums, and I've started songs. MediaWiki has a great categorization feature (although the creators seem to dislike it and are thinking about replacing it. Say it ain't so!), and I can create all the categories my little heart desires.
Since this is my personal wiki, I can do things Wikipedia doesn't allow, such as how I discovered artists, when I bought albums, my associations with songs, etc. I also just hosted my Artists To Check Out list there, rearranged somewhat to put priorities in (it is getting really unwieldy). The wiki format works nicely for that since I do a lot of adding and subtracting. The most recent addition is Camille, a French singer whom I discovered while Google News searching Kate Bush.
~*~*~
I discover way too many artists by Google News searching "Kate Bush". Music journalists' fetish for comparing every new female artist to Kate, combined with her relative reclusiveness, means that the only reason I Google News search her is to discover new artists. Today, however, there was surprisingly an article actually about Kate - well, to be specific, covers of Running Up That Hill.
There are lots of covers of Running Up That Hill. So many that I thought I'd do a covers round-up.
The Chromatics: The main draw of this one is the arrangement: minimalistic, almost stark. The closest point of reference I have is The Knife. Unfortunately, the singer botches it. It sounds as if she took tranquilizers, stumbled into a recording studio, and listened as some guy told her to sing Running Up That Hill, which she did, half-woozy, without any connection or idea what she was doing. There are some songs that this approach is great on. Running Up That Hill isn't one of them.
They also screwed up the bridge. They removed the harmony vocals, for one, which I actually prefer to the melody. I can dismiss that as alto grumbling, though (even though I'm not an alto.) Furthermore, there is no dynamic shift at all. This is leading into the climax of the song. There has to be some sort of change. Finally, and most damning, they go straight into the chorus again, leaving out the actual climax and release of the song - missing the entire point, basically. You can't understand the song and do that. There is intrinsic lust and emotion in the original that this change sterilizes. I have to dismiss this cover, therefore, as pretty, but soul-less.
Placebo: Again, great arrangement, straight out of Mezzanine-era Massive Attack (Dissolved Girl is the angle I'm thinking of), with a little Schiller (I've Seen It All). It's about ten times darker and heavier than the original, and less 80's. This all sounds great, except for the lead singer. At first, I heard a live version, which I absolutely hated, mainly due to the voice.
This is where I remembered that I initially dismissed Kate Bush due to her voice, and the least I could do was to listen to the actual studio version. So I did. I liked that version much better. The bridge, in particular, is fairly amazing - they also omit the end of it, but they don't go straight into the chorus, and somehow it works this time. The song did make me wonder, however, what the song would sound like with 3D singing. I think I might really want to hear that.
Without Temptation: This version is also about ten times darker and heavier than the original, but in a different way. Where Placebo evoked Massive Attack, this evokes goth-rock/metal. Strangely, the metal isn't what I mind about this version (although it isn't my favorite arrangement of the lot). Once again, it's the singer.
I said my problem with the Chromatics version was that the vocalist seemed like she wasn't even trying. You can say many things about the singer here, but "not trying" is not one of them. Instead, it sounds like a desperate, overwrought, melisma-laden Celine-esque rampage across the song. It's as if the singer was on American Idol, landed in the bottom three the past week, and decided to pull out all the stops in an attempt to prove she can sing, destroying musicality in the process. The song's buildup is destroyed; if you come out swinging right from the beginning, you have nowhere to go and you grate.
As for the bridge, it's toned down (no wonder; you can't take it up any more notches,) but they turn the end into an instrumental break, but not in a good way. It comes off as arena rock, and Running Up That Hill is not arena rock. I basically hate all of it. This cover, however, will be right up many alleys. Sigh.
So there you have it. If there are other covers I don't know about them. Placebo wins the covers battle by a mile, but I still prefer the original. What have I learned from this?
- Running Up That Hill is such a good song, musically, that it stands up to many things you might do to it.
- Kate Bush is an amazing vocalist and nobody else really comes close. Except maybe the 3D version that I wish existed.
"UM, I UNSCREWED THIS CUBE THING [the power source]. IS THAT BAD?"
"CRAP, I JUST TOUCHED THE DRIVE! NOW IT'S GOING TO BE WIPED DUE TO ELECTRIC SHOCK!"
"WHY WON'T THESE CABLES BUDGE?"
To my credit, I managed not to botch the whole thing. I retrieved what I needed, although I still don't know why the drive woudn't work on my PC but worked on my mother's. (In retrospect, dragging her computer into it was incredibly risky, considering my lack of skill, but nothing got hurt.) So now I can play my incredibly buggy '90s solitaire compilation which crashes whenever you minimize it, and once had MIDIs that played quickly but are now stuck on sub-adagio. I still play it. It gives me joy. If I don't minimize it.
When it comes to online matters, I am marginally more skilled, and to boot, have an obsession with organizing things that aren't my home. I also really like music. In short, I am just the person to set up a music wiki for myself. (This sounds like the beginning of a bad SEO article, I know. Trust me, it isn't. Guess what else? Personal life coaching can greatly improve your career! Wait, no.)
There are plenty of personal wiki services out there, but not all of them are created equal. I had a few criteria:
- Free. I prefer to spend my money on music, rather than venues to discuss it.
- MediaWiki software. This is personal preference, and probably mostly ingrained habit, but I am quite used to it and find it incredibly ugly to have pages SquishedTogether like that. I will never want to type, say, SarahBrightman.
- No pop up ads. Normal ads I can put up with, but popups just all around suck.
After some testing, I settled on ScribbleWiki. It is amazing. I highly recommend it. I wasn't paid to write that; I honestly believe it. It's fast, it's free, and you get unlimited pages (although I'm sure that they'd take action if you go crazy.)
Now that I have a wiki, there are many things I can do. I made pages for all the artists I listen to, and albums, and I've started songs. MediaWiki has a great categorization feature (although the creators seem to dislike it and are thinking about replacing it. Say it ain't so!), and I can create all the categories my little heart desires.
Since this is my personal wiki, I can do things Wikipedia doesn't allow, such as how I discovered artists, when I bought albums, my associations with songs, etc. I also just hosted my Artists To Check Out list there, rearranged somewhat to put priorities in (it is getting really unwieldy). The wiki format works nicely for that since I do a lot of adding and subtracting. The most recent addition is Camille, a French singer whom I discovered while Google News searching Kate Bush.
~*~*~
I discover way too many artists by Google News searching "Kate Bush". Music journalists' fetish for comparing every new female artist to Kate, combined with her relative reclusiveness, means that the only reason I Google News search her is to discover new artists. Today, however, there was surprisingly an article actually about Kate - well, to be specific, covers of Running Up That Hill.
There are lots of covers of Running Up That Hill. So many that I thought I'd do a covers round-up.
The Chromatics: The main draw of this one is the arrangement: minimalistic, almost stark. The closest point of reference I have is The Knife. Unfortunately, the singer botches it. It sounds as if she took tranquilizers, stumbled into a recording studio, and listened as some guy told her to sing Running Up That Hill, which she did, half-woozy, without any connection or idea what she was doing. There are some songs that this approach is great on. Running Up That Hill isn't one of them.
They also screwed up the bridge. They removed the harmony vocals, for one, which I actually prefer to the melody. I can dismiss that as alto grumbling, though (even though I'm not an alto.) Furthermore, there is no dynamic shift at all. This is leading into the climax of the song. There has to be some sort of change. Finally, and most damning, they go straight into the chorus again, leaving out the actual climax and release of the song - missing the entire point, basically. You can't understand the song and do that. There is intrinsic lust and emotion in the original that this change sterilizes. I have to dismiss this cover, therefore, as pretty, but soul-less.
Placebo: Again, great arrangement, straight out of Mezzanine-era Massive Attack (Dissolved Girl is the angle I'm thinking of), with a little Schiller (I've Seen It All). It's about ten times darker and heavier than the original, and less 80's. This all sounds great, except for the lead singer. At first, I heard a live version, which I absolutely hated, mainly due to the voice.
This is where I remembered that I initially dismissed Kate Bush due to her voice, and the least I could do was to listen to the actual studio version. So I did. I liked that version much better. The bridge, in particular, is fairly amazing - they also omit the end of it, but they don't go straight into the chorus, and somehow it works this time. The song did make me wonder, however, what the song would sound like with 3D singing. I think I might really want to hear that.
Without Temptation: This version is also about ten times darker and heavier than the original, but in a different way. Where Placebo evoked Massive Attack, this evokes goth-rock/metal. Strangely, the metal isn't what I mind about this version (although it isn't my favorite arrangement of the lot). Once again, it's the singer.
I said my problem with the Chromatics version was that the vocalist seemed like she wasn't even trying. You can say many things about the singer here, but "not trying" is not one of them. Instead, it sounds like a desperate, overwrought, melisma-laden Celine-esque rampage across the song. It's as if the singer was on American Idol, landed in the bottom three the past week, and decided to pull out all the stops in an attempt to prove she can sing, destroying musicality in the process. The song's buildup is destroyed; if you come out swinging right from the beginning, you have nowhere to go and you grate.
As for the bridge, it's toned down (no wonder; you can't take it up any more notches,) but they turn the end into an instrumental break, but not in a good way. It comes off as arena rock, and Running Up That Hill is not arena rock. I basically hate all of it. This cover, however, will be right up many alleys. Sigh.
So there you have it. If there are other covers I don't know about them. Placebo wins the covers battle by a mile, but I still prefer the original. What have I learned from this?
- Running Up That Hill is such a good song, musically, that it stands up to many things you might do to it.
- Kate Bush is an amazing vocalist and nobody else really comes close. Except maybe the 3D version that I wish existed.
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