Staying In

Man. i must have been pooped yesterday. I slept in this morning till eleven. So i decided to take the day off as it is also a dark cloudy day. It is a torrential downpour,at the moment,  with thunder and lightning , and hence, not a day out doing mystery shopping.

Might pop over to Faversham if this rain clears.

Five By Five

If you ever wondered what Faith meant by "five by five" here is the answer -

The term "Five by Five" comes from old radio slang. When communicating over radio, the operator would report the strength and clarity of the signal on a scale of 1 to 5 each. Therefore, if a radio operator described the signal as "five by five" it meant it was both loud and clear.



We just love our Slayers!

John Field,Composer

Another composer that should be better known is John Field, and he was an Irish pianist, composer, and teacher. He was born in Dublin into a musical family, and received his early education there, in particular with the immigrant Tommaso Giordani. The Fields soon moved to London, where Field studied under Muzio Clementi. Under his tutelage, Field quickly became a famous and sought-after concert pianist; together, master and pupil visited Paris, Vienna, and St. Petersburg. Ambiguity surrounds Field's decision to remain in the Russian capital, but it is likely that Field acted as a sales representative for the Clementi Pianos.

John Field - Nocturne No.1

Addendum :Just reminded by cmcmck that Field is credited with the invention of the Nocturne form.

John Field - Piano Concerto No. 1

I Allegro
II Air Ecossais "Within a mile of Edinburgh town": Adagio non troppo
III Finale: Allegro vivace

Paolo Restani, piano

Enjoy.

Harry Partch

Introduced to me by The Wire magazine many years ago is the music of Harry Partch who developed a microtonal language well away from the twelve tome even tempered musical language of Bach. Partch composed with scales dividing the octave into 43 unequal tones derived from the natural harmonic series; these scales allowed for more tones of smaller intervals than in standard Western tuning, which uses twelve equal intervals to the octave.



Here is his rare non-vocal piece called And On The Seventh Day Petals Fell In Petaluma

He also invented his own musical instruments such as the Chromelodeon and the Kithara.

Just a thought, I wonder if King Crimson listened to Partch.

More Partch Music

More Harry Partch music and this time from his hobo years hearing all the voices of the hobos on his travels.

His later works were large-scale, integrated theater productions in which he expected each of the performers to sing, dance, speak, and play instruments. Ancient Greek theatre and Japanese Noh and kabuki heavily influenced his music theatre.

Harry Partch - Barstow

Harry Partch - U.S. highball part One

Yes, his music is strange but it has a beauty that is very different to most Western music.

More Charmed

A couple more episodes from Charmed watched on TV this morning as we near toward the ultimate battle of the season, and here we see Phoebe being approached by Cupid. Meanwhile, Billy is slowly being enticed to the dark side by her once lost sister Christy.

Frank Zappa, A Late Show Special

A great documentary from BBC's The Late Show on Frank Zappa , an iconic musical genius in my humble opinion, along with Captain Beefheart.

Here s one of of his instrumental pieces called Apostrophe.

It is a jam featuring Cream bassist Jack Bruce and drummer Jim Gordon. Jack Bruce is credited on the album cover with bass guitar and co-writing the title song. However, in his interview for Polish rock magazine "Tylko Rock" he jokingly insisted to journalist Weiss Wiesław that he had not played any bass guitar parts on Apostrophe ('), only the cello parts. Bruce learned cello as a child and plays it on some of his other recordings. However, his cello comments regarding Apostrophe (') can't be taken seriously because there is in fact no cello on the title song or on the album. His bass playing on Apostrophe (') does in fact sound at times very much like the bass lines that he played with Cream.

On Now - Reclaiming The Nerdiverse

Radio 4 right now has a discussion about woman , science fiction , fantasy and fanfic .. totally fascinating !

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4