music

Won’t Do What?

Third Time Wife, Wedding Planning

Over on the Wedding Bee forums there was a discussion that came up about the well-known Meat Loaf song: I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That). Exactly what, the poster wondered, wasn’t he going to do?!

Well, I happen to be a pretty big fan of the Loaf’s work, especially his collaboration with Jim Steinman on the Bat Out of Hell Trilogy which is where we get this sweeping production of a 12 minute (album edit) song.

So I thought it would be fun to figure out exactly what is it the singer isn’t going to do. (Oh, like you haven’t had those days where you spend a few hours idly contemplating the meaning of song lyrics. We can’t all be striving for the Nobel prize with every waking thought, can we?)

Just from a careful listen to the lyrics we find out he specifically will not

      1. forget the way you feel right now
      2. forgive himself if they don’t go all the way tonight
      3. do it better than he did it with you
      4. stop dreaming of you every night of his life
      5. treat you like a fling and move on
      6. screw around on you
Not a bad list of don’ts for any dude, come to think of it.

Those sorts of things also remind me of another song, one more on the tell end of the show don’t tell theory of wordplay.

Yes, I just Rick-rolled you. But not at all sneakily, so I don’t think it really counts. Remember, there was a time when we thought this song was good without it being a meme!

Pretty Book and Flower Icon

 

What song did you just never “get”?

Episode 4: On the Road

Podcast
The long-awaited 4th episode is here!
Featuring:
Roadtripper–The FUMP, Carrie Dahlby w/Possible Oscar
Test Drive–Black Kettle
New Road–AM/Meiko
Carried Away–Roadtrip
Drive–Barb Carbon
Life is an Open Road–Al Stravinsky
Rocky Road to Dublin–Blaggards
Traveling Song–Ryan Meyers
Road to Nowhere–Creature Republic
Road Less Traveled–Matt Caplan
Road Song–Bill deRome
Drive–Common Ground
Nice Trip–81db
The Road–Chester Bay
Field Trip–Spanking Charlene
The Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow–The Tsunami Experiment
Full show notes (with links) are available at randomactscomics[dot]com[slash]radio

The long-awaited 4th episode is here!

With everything that’s been going on (the comics, the cookbook, the blogs and all) it took entirely too long to get this podcast out. But, hey, better late than never, right?

Meant to go with the Riding in Cars with Mom comics last October (2009), these songs all have to do with travel in some way. Great for when you’re heading out on the open road, just returned and need something to stave off the back-home-blahs or planning your next epic adventure!

The songs featured in this episode are:

Roadtripper–The FUMP, Carrie Dahlby w/Possible Oscar
Test Drive–Black Kettle
New Road–AM/Meiko
Carried Away–Roadtrip
Drive–Barb Carbon
Life is an Open Road–Al Stravinsky
Rocky Road to Dublin–Blaggards
Traveling Song–Ryan Meyers
Road to Nowhere–Creature Republic
Road Less Traveled–Matt Caplan
Road Song–Bill deRome
Drive–Common Ground
Nice Trip–81db
The Road–Chester Bay
Field Trip–Spanking Charlene
The Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow–The Tsunami Experiment

As always, these songs were made available through the artist’s participation with Music Alley (formerly the Podsafe Music Network) at mevio.com

I mentioned several of my other sites throughout the podcast, please check out these links to find what else of my work might fit your needs:

Cocktail Hour
an autobiographical webcomic (currently on hiatus, but plenty of get-to-know-me archives!)
Where the Geeks Are
 a webcomic, 4 geek girls looking for love in (what they hope) are all the right places (also on hiatus, take the opportunity to catch up)
Scraps of Life presents the 64 Arts
 begun as a catch-all life blog in 2003, February 2010 saw it’s renewal as a place to explore the 64 Arts from the Kama Sutra (the Acquisition of Knowledge chapter)
What to Feed Your Raiding Party
 a comic book cookbook that challenges gamers to cook their way out of the fast food dungeon; weekly progress blog and tips
Nibbles ‘n Bites
 a food blog written by a former chef focusing on good food, great entertaining and all things tasty!
Sips & Shots
cocktail blog with a new recipe every Friday; also home of the Character Cocktail

Pruney Fingers Performance

64 Arts

Ta-Daa!

A few final lessons from the last few days attempts at something akin to music:

  • It’s really tough to tune these little suckers but it helps to have all the same shape and size of glass for each octave or progression of notes.
  • Fingers will get pruney with prolonged practice.
  • The sounds produced by an amateur aren’t so much music as a cross between a 1st year violin recital and whale’s calls.

I had a little fun with the audio file… Feel free to laugh–we did!

This performance was brought to you (unofficially) by Lay’s Honey Barbecue Chips and Doves Promises (the last one of which read “It’s okay to NOT do everything”… it’s like it KNEW I’d be the one to get it).

Now to finish my glass of ChocoVine.

(and if the player doesn’t want to work, click here for waterglasses)

Pick a Note, Any Note

64 Arts

Thanks for your patience while I caught up on everything last week! Guess those 12-hour travel days really did a number on the thought processes.

At any rate, it’s back to our water glasses and nearing the end of this (somewhat drawn-out) excursion.

The thing about the water glasses is that you can only tune each glass one way. So for each tune you want to play you have to have enough glasses to hit each note (accidentals are extra!) and each octave, too. Since I’ve got only 8 or 10 glasses that will work for this process, whatever I try to play has to work within that framework.

Add to that, I’m not all that fast with the note changes so it can’t be something too fast, either. I kinda like my stemware intact and able to hold lots and lots of wine, you know?

So I started flipping through some of my basic harp and baritone books for a simple tune or two to work on and I think I’ve found some possibilities. Now to get out the tuner and obsess about pitch!

the 11th Art: Water Glasses

64 Arts

Musical instrument made of bowls filled with water

I’m sure I’m not the only one who thinks of this scene from Miss Congeniality at the words “water glasses”

Hoo Boy! What have I gotten myself into with this one?

Water what?

Also known as the Glass Harp, and related to the Water Harp and the Glass Harmonica, playing the water glasses seems to have been a fad in the 1700s with scatterings of performers since then. Benjamin Franklin invented the Armonica (a series of bowls on a steel rod that spins through a trough of water) that works on a similar principle but we’ll stick to the wine glasses version.

Basic Supplies

  • Wine glasses of various capacities and styles. The easiest way to change a pitch is to add or remove water and it’s similar to the body of a guitar in that the larger the glass the lower the pitch seems to be.
  • Water. Though it would probably work with other liquids of the same type (wine? maybe milk? maybe not, maybe too dense?) water is the easiest.
  • Fingers. No way around this one although I’m betting someone out there has tried to play them with their toes…
  • Chromatic Tuner. This is, I suppose, optional but if you’re goal is to play an actual tune, you’ll want to know your notes are correct. I happen to have one to tune my lap harp that was about $15.

First Attempts

It seemed simple enough: you see folks doing it idly at dinner in the movies, right? Something tells me the foley guys and gals have it down, the rest of us? Not so much.

Early attempts this evening yielding little more than a sound akin to feedback. Not exactly the haunting sound I’d been hoping for.

Then I figured out that sitting the glass on my tile countertop might not be the best surface and whaddya know? When the tile wasn’t adding to the vibrations there was the faintest sound! It took a little bit of effort but I finally got a nice, solid sound from a half-full champagne flute!

For my final trick of the evening I pulled out one of the pinot noir glasses I’d tried on earlier and it suddenly worked, too… go figure!

I haven’t the foggiest if it’s just a matter of warming them up or what, but it’s suddently working and I couldn’t be happier. I still have to work on some squeakiness issues I’m having but I’ll looking forward to getting a set of glasses tuned tomorrow night!

Have you ever tried this? I’m open to any tips you’ve got!