Just a quick post to keep my readers up-to-date and make sure nobody might think this blog could be dead.
So, after my marriage (which was fantastic) and a short honey-moon (that also was great), we’ve been alternating between a few different places (our parents’ houses and an apartment where we’re temporarily installed), so it hasn’t been easy to arrange any time for this blog or even my site. It feels a little like as if we were nomads ;)… It’s nice in one way, and difficult in the other. But it has been the best compromise for both of us at this beginning of our new life together.
Anyway, everything is going to change again very soon, this time “for real”, as we’re going back to work and we will rent a little apartment or something, just for us.
Then, hopefully I’ll have a little more “facility” (be it time or place) to continue posting to this blog with regularity, like I was doing before.
I’d even like to give you a little glimpse on what’s coming…
I am thinking of writing a “listening suggestion”-episode about chill-out music, but it’s going to be extended, I want to cover several artists.
Also I’d like to write the first post related to professional audio production: I just managed to get enough free time to update my workstation to a brand new operating system aimed at audio production.
So, make sure to stay tuned, and if you’re not yet subscribed to the RSS feed, or by Email or NetworkedBlogs, be sure to change that right now, so you get immediately informed when I post anything new 🙂
Got you curious with that title? (I borrowed it from one of the albums of the band The Editors). Then, read on 🙂
Two days ago, I had the last important exam at university (classical guitar) which I managed to do with very satisfying result and which means that I’ve almost completed my bachelor in music.
Almost, because I’ve yet to do a last test, next week, in a discipline that has only 3 credits (it’s one of those you can choose freely) and which I shouldn’t have chosen, because I didn’t manage to pass the first two tests and I do need the 3 credits to complete my bachelor, arghh :S… but if I’m not totally unlucky, I guess I’ll manage to do it, and there’s still the possibility to repeat the test in september (special rules for students who are finishing).
Anyway, these 3 years at Évora University were totally awesome, I’ve learned so much and made a big evolution in my guitar playing skills (which doesn’t surprise, having had the great Dejan Ivanovich as my teacher), but also gained a lot of knowledge and improvement of my musicianship in general.
Then there are all the fantastic people I met and friends I made, not to mention concerts, partys and events I participated in, or certain academic traditions in which I took part.
Or even the city, which is beautiful (classified by the UNESCO as World Heritage), just one quick photo for you, so not to forget what I wanted to say 😉 :
Évora (View of the Diana Temple) - Autor: Rita Faleiro
Thinking again about my musicianship, I guess I know today what I didn’t, 3 years ago:
this was just the beginning. When I started at university, I imagined it as the highest degree I’d make (and it might really be), but I never thought that there was so much I’d still have to learn and discover by myself, probably over the whole rest of my life.
I did know that one never stops learning and I also had full perception that my playing was far from perfect, but I had to go through these 3 years of intense learning to realize how “ignorant” I still am, although I already do know quite a lot and became like 10 times a better musician then when I started, 3 years ago. But still, I now am fully conscient of the fact that this is only the beginning…
There’s SO much to learn, to listen to, to discover, to read and to experience, and I’m not even talking of my instrument yet. Just musicianship in general. There’s so much history I don’t know yet, composers of whom I only know their name, works I never listened to, even instruments I’ve never seen or heard.
And then there’s my instrument. So many fantastic pieces to learn, to play, so many scores to discover, so many technical improvements I can still make, so many musical and interpretational aspects that I still don’t fully understand (one thing is to do what your teacher says, the other is to fully understand why and be able to get to that conclusion by yourself).
And then again, the’re so many other instruments. I do play (at least to a basic level) one more, the piano. But that’s not enough. Not only do I have plans to improve my piano playing, but I also have “fallen in love” with the sound of the saxophone and so I want to learn to play it, at least to a “medium” level, one day…
Oh, but I could go on and on. I want to improve my skills in composition (so I can produce my own songs more easily, quicker and better…), want to take my project to the next level (live concerts), and also integrate (or start, that depends) other projects (especially chamber music). But I guess that you, my reader, are getting already a little tired, so for now that’s all, and I finish this post with an announcement I’m very proud of:
In exactly one week from now, I’m GETTING MARRIED!!! 🙂 🙂 🙂
Just had a weird problem with Youtube videos on my PC:
couldn’t play most of the videos – on Youtube site nothing worked, and embedded videos only a few worked, I actually first noticed when opened this blog, instead of all the videos there were only black boxes. At first I got alarmed because I thought it could be the plugin or wordpress or the hosting. But then I noticed on other sites and even Youtube had the same issue.
So I googled for it, and found it to be a common problem, but was totally misleaded, as I discovered later. People were mainly talking about problems because of Flash update or other issues, so I updated the browser (Firefox), the Flash plugin, everything.
No change at all. I continued to dig and search, and then finally, on Youtube itself, I found the answer in the comments of a video that had the inspiring title “The video won’t play, what to do now?!”: clear the browsing history, sessions, cookies and cache.
Or, simplifying: press CTRL+SHIFT+DEL (no, that’s NOT the one that reboots your computer ehehe :P) and at the top where it says “History from today” change to “All my history” and then press “Clear”,
That step of selecting the whole history is ESSENCIAL, as I had tried before, but only selected history of today and nothing had changed.
After doing above step, the very same video started to work immediately after pressing F5 to reload the page. Didn’t even need to restart the browser.
So you ask: Why? What happened? Well, I’m sorry, that’s the only part I can’t answer. I plain just don’t know, and couldn’t find any answer either. A bug in FireFox? I doubt that, because I read about people having the same issue on Chrome and Safari…
Anyway, hope this post might help someone out one day 🙂
Ah, and if by chance YOU know the answer to that question, please share 🙂
Don’t know if I mentioned it yet, I’m finishing university, and tomorrow is one of the last exams. It’s a test in ensemble music, I’m part of a guitar quartet, and one of the pieces we’re playing is the Waltz of the Flowers from Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker.
The arrangement for 4 guitars is made by The Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, one of the best guitar quartets in the world, and I’d like to show you their brilliant recording. We can only dream of getting close to that…
And to complete this post, here’s the original for orchestra. I don’t post one of the videos with ballet, because I looked hard but couldn’t find any decent recording regarding the audio (be it quality of interpretation). But you can easily look that up yourself, it’s beautiful to see, obviously. I post two recordings, I like both, but interpretation is quite different. You can comment which you like best 🙂
Today’s chapter of this series is about a very eclectic and quite unique musician, his name is Rabih Abou Khalil.
Born in Lebanon, but having moved to Germany in 1978 because of the civil war, he early started his music studies, becoming a virtuoso on his main instrument, the oud (string instrument having common origins with the lute – read more here).
An oud (Author of photo: Viken Najarian)
Probably the best term to describe the style of Khalil’s music could be “World Jazz”, as he combines traditional arabic music with jazz, rock and classical music.
Having released several albums with different projects and colaborations, his original compositions feature a wide spectrum of styles, instrumentations and genres.
Along his career he ranged from an album with mostly arabic music, over two projects more oriented to jazz (one with Sonny Fortune and the other with Charlie Mariano and Kenny Wheeler), a lineup of string quartet, oud, tuba and frame drums producing the album called Arabian Waltz, an exotic project called Morton’s Foot (combining european and easter traditions, including tibetan throat singing) to his most recent project, consisting of a trio (oud, piano and drums), with the original name Journey to the Centre of an Egg.
One of the ideas I have for this blog is to start periodic post series about a few interesting topics. Like one post a week or a month, about the same topic but always bringing you new (or classic but little known) musical discoveries.
This series that I gave the name “The Alternative Music Lounge” is about presenting you bands and projects that I like a lot or respect much because of the quality of their music although they haven’t made it into the so called “main stream” and therefore probably will remain unknown for many people.
Whatever might be the reasons for this (sometimes their creations are just too good, too unique, lacking any “commercial characteristics”, othertimes it’s just another case of being disregarded by the music industry, we all know what’s usual to happen…), I think the’re more people out there who might like their music but just didn’t have a chance to discover it yet, so I hope these publications of mine might be helpful.
By the way, if you’re a musician and think I might like your music and would like to propose your creations for being featured in a post of this series, you’re welcome to comment this post or any other future post of this series, stating your project’s name, a link to where I can listen to some tracks and a way to contact you.
I promise to try and listen to everyone’s tracks and respond, even if I happen to not accept the proposal.
This time, I’d like to present you a collective (maybe that’s the right name? “band” is somewhat wrong here) of great musicians from Romania who call themselves Taraf de Haïdouks.
They are mainly a result of gipsy traditions but have joined together into this project and already released quite a few albums.
Having also given quite a lot of live concerts they started to become known a little all over europe and the other day it was my turn to discover them, when they played a song of them on Antena3 radio station.
It was a track which is part of their newest album, where they decided to combine their original compositions with “covers” of famous works of classical composers of the 20th century, especially when they had been inspired by romanian folk music (like Bartok, Khachaturian, Falla, Albeniz).
In this case it’s the famous piece Asturias – Leyenda by Isaac Albeniz, which is best known on guitar, I’ve played it myself.
One of the ideas I have for this blog is to start periodic post series about a few interesting topics. Like one post a week or a month, about the same topic but always bringing you new (or classic but little known) musical discoveries.
This series that I gave the name “The Alternative Music Lounge” is about presenting you bands and projects that I like a lot or respect much because of the quality of their music although they haven’t made it into the so called “main stream” and therefore probably will remain unknown for many people.
Whatever might be the reasons for this (sometimes their creations are just too good, too unique, lacking any “commercial characteristics”, othertimes it’s just another case of being disregarded by the music industry, we all know what’s usual to happen…), I think the’re more people out there who might like their music but just didn’t have a chance to discover it yet, so I hope these publications of mine might be helpful.
By the way, if you’re a musician and think I might like your music and would like to propose your creations for being featured in a post of this series, you’re welcome to comment this post or any other future post of this series, stating your project’s name, a link to where I can listen to some tracks and a way to contact you.
I promise to try and listen to everyone’s tracks and respond, even if I happen to not accept the proposal.
