Is it that time of year already? The Eurovision Song Contest is just next week, and I’m not sure yet if I’ll be free to watch it. Nevertheless, here are the Eurovision Song Contest Drinking Game rules for 2009, slightly revised for world gas reserves and punctuation.
Phase I: The Performances
A. Every instance within a song:
I.A.1 The Dramatic Key Change. Whenever the singers dramatically shift up a key for the final chorus(es).
I.A.2 The Bucks Fizz. Whenever performer(s) sheds a piece of clothing – once only on every instance, whether executed by an individual or as a group. Finish your drink if the clothing loss is obviously unintentional.
B. Once per song only:
I.B.1 Is That English? Whenever someone notices that the singers have switched from their native language into English in an attempt to win more votes. Two drinks if they try to dodge the language issue by intentionally singing gibberish.
I.B.2 The Fine Cotton. Any appearance of mercenary talent flown in to represent a foreign country. Two drinks if they’re Irish.
I.B.3 Las Ketchup and the Waves. A country drags a legitimate, real-life, one-hit wonder out of obscurity in the hope that name recognition can buy them some points. This is additional to I.B.2 the Fine Cotton.
I.B.4 The Cultural Rainbow. Every time an entrant blatantly rips off last year’s winning performance. Finish your drink if last year’s winning country rips itself off.
I.B.5 The Wandering Minstrel. Unless it’s a solo guitar or piano, Eurovision insists on backing tapes. It’s in the rules, so don’t accuse some entrants of cheating; but take a drink if performers pretend to play a musical instrument (or simulacrum thereof) in a blatantly fake way, as part of the choreography. A second drink is permitted if a subsequent, different wave of faux-minstrely rises after the first has subsided.
I.B.6 The Greeks (formerly The TaTu). Finish your drink if the audience boos (on the telly, not in your living room.)
I.B.7 Don’t Mention The War. The German entrant sings something about everyone being happy. In the past few years it seems that I.B.7 has been supplanted by…
I.B.8 Don’t Mention The Wall. The Israeli entrant sings something about everyone being happy.
I.B.9 My Lovely Horse. Any obvious indication that a country is deliberately trying to lose, to avoid budgetary/logistical/political problems of hosting the event next year.
PHASE I ADVANCED PLAYERS ONLY:
I.B.10A The San Remo. Any occurence of visible armpits and/or pointing at nothing in particular. Two drinks for a hairy armpit.
I.B.11A The White Suit. You’ll know it when you see it; and you’ll know it again when you see it again, and again…
Phase II: The Voting
II.1 The Wardrobe Change. Each time the female host changes frocks. Two drinks if the male host changes suits.
II.2 The Gimme. When Greece gives twelve points to Cyprus, and when Germany gives twelve points to Turkey.
II.3 The Old Europe. When the UK gets null points from France.
II.4 The Sympathy Vote. When anything sung in French first gets a point, and/or the last country without any points finally gets off the mark. A special toast to any country left with zero points at the end.
II.5 The “Viktor, You Very Unattractive Fellow.” Two drinks if the hosts speak in rhyme and/or pretend to flirt with each other. Finish your drink if the flirting is serious.
PHASE II SOBER PLAYERS ONLY: The voting now moves along too quickly for most people to keep up with the following by this stage of the evening, but you can try.
II.6A The New Europe. When the Baltic or Balkan states all give each other twelve points, or a former Soviet republic gives Russia twelve points.
II.6A The New Europe. When the Baltic or Balkan states all give each other twelve points, or a former Soviet republic gives Russia twelve points.
II.7A The Hurry-Up. Every time the announcer from each voting country is politely asked by the hosts to shut the fuck up (i.e. “Can we have your votes please?”). Two drinks if the announcer tries to deliver a personal message to a relative watching at home.
II.8A The Sandra Sully. Each time an announcer reads the voting results wrong. Two drinks if they get so confused they have to start over.
II.9A The Sally Field. Each time they show contestants backstage during the voting looking genuinely surprised and pleased with themselves when they get the same politically-motivated votes they get every year.
II.10A The Master of Suspense. It looks like everyone’s figured it out now, so this hasn’t happened for a few years, but just in case: each time an announcer fails to understand that the pause for suspense only works if they announce the twelve points first, then the country that has won them – not the other way around.
The Wildcards
W1 A person must finish their drink if they ask:
W1.a why Israel is in it;
W1.b why Italy isn’t in it; or
W1.c where the hell is Moldova?
W1.a why Israel is in it;
W1.b why Italy isn’t in it; or
W1.c where the hell is Moldova?
W2 A toast to the first person who expresses dismay when they realise how long the voting is going to take.
W3 A toast to the person who gets so drunk you have to secretly call a cab and persuade them they ordered it when it arrives.
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Redundens 3g
Tuesday 28 April 2009
The series of works collectively titled Redundens was begun in 2001. All the pieces take Arnold Schoenberg’s Three Pieces for Piano, Op.11 as their starting point: only the top line in Schoenberg’s pieces is retained as an unaccompanied melody (or as a list of pitch classes if you’re more technically-minded.) Each set of pieces uses a different method of encoding this melody; by pitch, register, timbre, duration, dynamics, or other means.
Redundens 3g replaces each pitch class with a distinct dynamic proportional to a particular duration (the louder the longer) for a single, repeated sound played throughout – in this case, a set of four suspended cymbals.
Redundens 3g
- Streaming audio at The Listening Room.
- Download (8’08”, 16.19 MB, mp3)
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Redundens 7
Monday 27 April 2009
The series of works collectively titled Redundens was begun in 2001. All the pieces take Arnold Schoenberg’s Three Pieces for Piano, Op.11 as their starting point: only the top line in Schoenberg’s pieces is retained as an unaccompanied melody (or as a list of pitch classes if you’re more technically-minded.) Each set of pieces uses a different method of encoding this melody; by pitch, register, timbre, duration, dynamics, or other means.
Redundens 7 splits the melody of Redundens 4 for solo piano between two voices, alternating from one note to the next. The second voice is then shifted back one beat to produce a series of intervals. Unisons are played as a single note at half duration.
Redundens 7
- Streaming audio at The Listening Room.
- Download (4’46”, 7.32 MB, mp3)
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The artist may not know, but the art knows for them
Thursday 23 April 2009
A while back On An Overgrown Path reproduced this image:
The image was made by the German photographer Alexander Lauterwasser, by transferring sound waves produced by music into water, and photographing the results using reflected light. In this case, the music was a piece by Karlheinz Stockhausen (sadly, there’s no information on which piece was used to create this image).
Pliable’s post compares and contrasts this image to those created by other sounds: how similar it is to the mantra Om, and how different it is to, say, Pierre Boulez‘s music. He also notes the similarity of many of the images to mandalas.
The first similarity that struck me was the resemblence to many of Stockhausen’s musical diagrams, particularly in his later music, with their use of spirals and concentric orbits. The latter half of his life was devoted to marking the cyclical aspects of time: years, seasons, months, days, and finally, hours.
These preoccupations are probably most clearly heard in his late piece Cosmic Pulses and subsequent works, each of which were designated “hours” in a 24-piece cycle titled Klang. Stockhausen’s summary diagram of Cosmic Pulses is reproduced on its CD cover, below left.
On the right is the cover for another recording from the Klang cycle, Natürliche Dauern. Cyclical and spiral patterns are a recurring feature on his CD designs. As well as a piece called Mantra, he wrote another called Spiral. He also drew his CV in the form of a Fibonacci spiral, his list of compositions growing and expanding ever outwards.
I’d really like to know which of Stockhausen’s sounds produced that image.
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I Give Up
Saturday 11 April 2009
Beats me why Redundens 4 comes out all messed up in The Listening Room. It works fine on the player on my NetNewMusic page so if you want to hear it properly you can go there.
In the meantime, I’ve added Redundens 7 to The Listening Room, and it sounds perfectly fine. It’s very similar to Redundens 4, but then all the Redundens pieces strive to be as alike as possible.
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Redundens 4
Tuesday 31 March 2009
The series of works collectively titled Redundens was begun in 2001. All the pieces take Arnold Schoenberg’s Three Pieces for Piano, Op.11 as their starting point: only the top line in Schoenberg’s pieces is retained as an unaccompanied melody (or as a list of pitch classes if you’re more technically-minded.) Each set of pieces uses a different method of encoding this melody; by pitch, register, timbre, duration, dynamics, or other means.
Redundens 4 arranges this melody for solo piano, with all variations in rhythm and articulation removed, always making the smallest possible leap from one note to the next.
Redundens 4 (8’26”, 12.99 MB, mp3)
Update: whoa! Something’s terribly wrong with the Listening Room version of this piece. It plays fine if you download it, but let me know if the Listening Room version comes out all distorted.
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What’s on top of the pile?
Sunday 29 March 2009
– Why are you listening to Latin music?
– Why not?
– You don’t listen to Latin music.
– I am now.
– You never listen to Latin music!
– Don’t you like it?
– It’s fine.
– So what’s the problem?
– You, you never listen to Latin music! Why do they keep shouting “cumbia”?
– I dunno, so I’m just assuming it’s Spanish for “blues explosion”.
– Why not?
– You don’t listen to Latin music.
– I am now.
– You never listen to Latin music!
– Don’t you like it?
– It’s fine.
– So what’s the problem?
– You, you never listen to Latin music! Why do they keep shouting “cumbia”?
– I dunno, so I’m just assuming it’s Spanish for “blues explosion”.
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The Listening Room is Open
Friday 20 March 2009
To save you the hassle of downloading music you know nothing about, I’ve stayed up all night figuring out how to get every single piece of my music on this website collected in one convenient location, playable as streaming audio. So far, there are over 50 mp3s to choose from.
You’ll need a Flash player in your browser for this to work. It probably needs a few bugs to be worked out and some extra functions added, but it seems to do the job for now. Drop me a line if it’s giving you grief.
Please Mister Please has also been given the jukebox treatment.
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Redundens 1k
Monday 16 March 2009
The series of works collectively titled Redundens was begun in 2001. All the pieces take Arnold Schoenberg’s Three Pieces for Piano, Op.11 as their starting point: only the top line in Schoenberg’s pieces is retained as an unaccompanied melody (or as a list of pitch classes if you’re more technically-minded.) Each set of pieces uses a different method of encoding this melody; by pitch, register, timbre, duration, dynamics, or other means.
Redundens 1k retains for each pitch class in the melody the same register and duration throughout the piece, as determined by the nature of their initial appearances in the original. This new melody is then arranged for solo flute by transposing each note up one or two octaves to fit into the instrument’s range. Dyads are replaced by the actual pitch-class occurring in the original sequence.
Redundens 1k (14’33”, 22.33 MB, mp3)
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Total Immersion: Iannis Xenakis
Friday 13 March 2009
There was a battle of loud, irridescent shirts on stage during the Saturday evening Xenakis concert at the Barbican – quite possibly to match the music. Pianist Rolf Hind played Mists again, this time in a shiny green shirt, instead of the shiny red shirt last time I saw him play. Not to be outdone, Christian Lindberg trotted on stage in a shiny red shirt of his own, but much tighter, covered with Chinese symbols, and unbuttoned to reveal a silver medallion as well. Game: Lindberg.
Lindberg’s trombone playing was equally flashy during Xenakis’ late concerto for the instrument, Troorkh. The long, swooping glissandi, sudden leaps in register, and repeated excursions into the highest range of the instrument make this a fiendishly difficult piece for the soloist; something well telegraphed by Lindberg as he jogged on the spot, nodded his head and hummed along with the orchestra to psych himself up between phrases. The orchestra sounded good but remained in the background through most of the piece, though this may have appeared so due as much to the soloist’s antics (and tight-fitting clothes) as the solo itself.
A much stronger work was the earlier orchestral work Antikthon, who roiling mass of conflicting textures was employed as a statement in itself, instead of providing support to a solo. It’s incredible to think the heaving, protean force of this music was conceived as a ballet.
The evening also included a rare performance the Anastenaria trilogy. The final section, Metastasis, is famous as Xenakis’ Opus One, all but completely obscuring the seldom-heard preceding sections. I thought the programme notes’ comparisonsof the first two pieces to Carl Orff and Bartok were a bit silly, until I heard the music. Metastasis is another thing entirely, compared even to Xenakis’ previous music, let alone any other.
To complement the Xenakis, the rest of the Barbican was given over to organised chaos for the day. Thousands of small children were running around doing various activities, making craft projects that spread debris throughout the building, and generally creating pandemonium. For some reason, a late-night knitting circle was set up immediately outside the concert hall. It was annoying to come straight out of the hall with Antikthon still ringing in your ears only to be instantly confronted by a Latin American folk band serenading the punters (and the knitters) at the bar.
It was also annoying that there was a late night gig by Haswell and Hecker using Xenakis’s UPIC system, but it hadn’t been advertised anywhere in the rest of the promotional materials, and it started at midnight, two hours after the last Xenakis gig. Anyway, I’d seen ’em so I went home to bed.
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A Lesson in the Bleeding Obvious
Sunday 8 March 2009
Don’t take your severely hungover girlfriend to an early afternoon concert of percussion music by Iannis Xenakis.
Filed under: Journalism, Music by Ben.H
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Redundens 6j
Thursday 5 March 2009
The series of works collectively titled Redundens was begun in 2001. All the pieces take Arnold Schoenberg’s Three Pieces for Piano, Op.11 as their starting point: only the top line in Schoenberg’s pieces is retained as an unaccompanied melody (or as a list of pitch classes if you’re more technically-minded.) Each set of pieces uses a different method of encoding this melody; by pitch, register, timbre, duration, dynamics, or other means.
Redundens 6j takes the sequence of notes as a melody without regard to rhythm, duration, or register. The melody is then split between two voices within a common octave, alternating from one note to the next. The second voice is shifted one beat back to produce intervals. Unisons are doubled two octaves lower, and played at half duration. For solo piano.
Redundens 6j (4’16”, 6.84 MB, mp3)
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It’s Not The End Of The World
Wednesday 4 March 2009
Kyle Gann has reluctantly closed down his PostClassic Radio internet station. It’s a pity: over the past few years it’s been a superb way to hear hundreds of pieces of great music by composers who don’t fit into the standard pigeonholes of “modern classical” or whatever you want to call that stuff.
I can’t blame him. It’s not as if he doesn’t have other things to do besides update and maintain that service; and there’s no way I’d spend hundreds of dollars each year on letting everyone hear other people’s music.
Besides, over PostClassic Radio’s five years of existence a number of other internet resources have arisen (and some have fallen again). Although it will be missed, there are more ways today than when it started, of exploring a wider range of music, by hook or by crook. Even when a corporate behemoth crushes a technological innovation that gives people what they want, an alternative soon emerges. Goodbye Muxtape, hello Seeqpod – or whatever becomes next week’s vehicle of choice for sharing music. The situation will remain in flux but still active, as long as we can access the means of distribution.
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What’s on top of the (virtual) pile?
Sunday 1 March 2009
New Directions in Music 1 (Robert Craft et al.)
This 50-year-old LP of Pierre Boulez’ Le Marteau sans maître and Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Zeitmasse* is just one example of many Vinyl Age recordings of the post-war avant garde I’ve been enjoying lately. This guy conveys some of the thrill in hearing performances made of music when it is still brand new and something of an unknown quantity (when this record was released, both of these pieces had been completed only the previous year**.)
That’s not all, though. These old recordings have a starkness to them, a thinness of sound which emphasise just how unfamiliar the music was to a contemporary audience. Modern recordings too often have a sweetness and softness to them that is appealing at first, but eventually sounds bland.
Lux and Ivy’s Favorites, volumes 1-11
Speaking of scratchy old records…. The Cramps have always been a band I intellectually admired but not subjectively liked. Lux Interior’s recent death has spurred WFMU into hosting on their website the complete set (so far) of Lux and Ivy’s Favorites: fan-compiled CDs of songs mentioned by Lux and Ivy in their various interviews. Liking random collections of old records as much as I do, this plethora of pop, soul, blues, and novelty records from the 50s and 60s has made my week – and given me a better-sounding copy of The Five Blobs’ “The Blob”.
* Or Zeitmasze. Stockhausen seems to have changed his mind later about how to spell it.
** And now they are old. And yet…
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A Conundrum
Saturday 28 February 2009
Which is slower, more tedious, more frustrating? Going through a piece of music in a computer program, modifying it note by note? Or writing a script to modify the whole thing automatically, inevitably having to subject the whole thing to trial and error, running it numerous times before you’ve fixed all the stupid syntax errors and made it do what you wanted it to do, then checking the modified work to make sure there are no mistakes?
