Ever been told that you should fully discharge your battery to prolong its life? Or that jailbreaking your phone is illegal? Or that you should wait for the newest Intel processor because it’s going to be “so much faster”? These are tech myths we hear all the time, and likely spread to our friends—but most are just a waste of your time (and in some cases, they can actually harm your gadgets). Here are some of the worst offenders.
What kept me around though, and why I’ve saved the article all these years is the fact that many of the “top ten” are still pervasive, and are still myths.
One that I embrace is debunking the MP3 myth. If you go to any of the audiophile sites, they’ll tell you that having lossless quality audio is the only way to go, that an MP3 at 128 bps or even 256 bps is just a waste of time, blah blah blah. My ex-boss, who I respect, is heavily in this realm and has stereo wire in his house that costs more than all my computers combined, along with the highest quality digital files he can get. What’s the reality? Unless I’m comparing 256 to something less than 64, I probably can’t tell the difference. Why? Because I’m not playing it on super high quality systems and speakers. In fact, most of the time, I’m playing it on the equivalent of a high-quality AM/FM radio. Which means all that superior quality up front is completely lost at the backend. And with that output generator, most people’s ears can’t tell the difference. There’s even some evidence that only 1% of people are even capable of discerning a difference, even with lossless, although there are far more than that who will tell you they can.
The rest of the article talks about hardware specs vs. upgrades, android task killers, jailbreaking an iPhone, malware and Macs, extended warranties, discharging laptop batteries, wifi protection, P2P networks, and tweaking system settings to get speed boosts.
So I had some fun awhile ago with my hard drives getting fried, and it looks like my Network Attached Storage went the same way. Not entirely sure, maybe it’s just a HomeGroup config problem with Andrea’s computer (the network doesn’t like me configuring homegroups, it only likes Andrea’s computer to do it). But I copied a bunch of stuff from Andrea’s computer over to the NAS before a computer tweak, and while the PC was in the shop, I tried to read the files on to my PC to process some photos. Nope, I could see them, but the NAS did not want to share.
Which means I can’t trust the NAS for the future.
Now, this presents a small but not insurmountable problem. I can simply get a new NAS. The question is if I want one or not. I have a 2TB and a 3TB regular HD that I use for backups. But I also like having a master that I can keep, just in case, on the NAS. It could be simply a third HD, but I prefer to think of it as a common resource. Plus I can copy any of my other PCs to it without tying up my computer, so kind of useful. But I’m not actually using the network functions on it.
Which means I’m at a small crossroads, with two needs:
a need for a third backup drive, preferably > 2TB; and,
a desire to stream music all over the house from a common source.
The third backup drive is REALLY simple, just over a $100, no muss, no fuss, done. The second element though is the one that creates a question, or at least some options to consider.
A. Keep the music on my main PC
While my main PC is usually on, I don’t know if I want it to be the source of streaming for any and every device. Mostly, I just don’t want it slowing things down if I’m working on something else. But, generally speaking, the person likely to be pulling things from the PC to elsewhere in the house is, well, me. I’m not able to be downstairs listening to music AND working on my machine upstairs, so maybe it’s not a real issue, but I don’t like the idea of having my PC being the main server.
B. Put the music on another PC
Jacob’s PC will not be stretched very far with his usage, and I could easily use it, but that’s a bit of a slippery slope to me, and in a few years if he’s gaming, that will change easily. Not a sustainable option.
C. Put everything in the cloud
I could, indeed, put the stuff in an internet-based cloud, but then everything I stream will be upload/download drains on my monthly usage. And really, it seems odd to stream stuff from the web when it is already on the network somewhere else.
D. Run my own server
Umm, how can I put this? No. 🙂
E. Copy the music to multiple locations
Most of the machines that I’m going to be streaming to have SD card slots, I could easily just make a bunch of copies and stream from the card. But if 3 backups is a pain to manage, 5 or 6 copies of the music library all over the house seems drastic overkill.
F. Repeat the network-attached storage
So I can go back to NAS options, but then I’m again facing a question mark:
Do I want a simple NAS that will allow me to stream about 250GB of data around the house?
Or do I want a more complex NAS that will hold all my current data, around 1 TB in total for active and some change for non-active?
Or do I want to go whole hog and get a full NAS with multiple drive bays for expandability, that will hold all my backups, can even create multiple copies of the backups with mirrored setups?
I’m leaning towards the simplest NAS storage I can do to put the music on it and leave the backups to straight drive copies. Not sure that’s the best solution, but it should work. The middle option is a good compromise but pushes me into the $200-$250 range pretty fast, and not really enough storage for the long-term. If I go the more complex route, I can easily push $300-400 for now, but with a huge amount of expandability for the future. But that seems like overkill.
Sigh. I know I’m obsessing over wanting to get it right, I just wish the “best” solution was obvious or that I was confident I was seeing the right variables.
One of my goals for this year was to improve some of my digital setup. Some of that is for photography, some of it is for astronomy, a few other things here and there, but the three big “techno” areas for me this year are my laptop/writing setup, my TV subscriptions / antenna options, and my audio files. Namely, my music collection in digital form.
I’ve been delaying a deep dive into the world of MP3 management for some time, partly as I’ve been burned before. Several times, I thought that I had found a solution, everything seemed to be working, I was making some progress, and then BAM! The app stopped being supported. Or I had a crash and lost a bunch of work. Not the actual music files themselves, I’m pretty good at backing them up, but having a good file structure with a good management program and a player? Not so much.
I used to love programs like WinAmp. Simple interface, could handle the synch with my iPod well, heck it even would synch with a Sony Walkman (yes, they used the name for a small line of MP3 players at one point too, and because it is small, lightweight and functional, I still use it as my music player of choice when portability is the main factor). I almost never use my phone or tablet for music playback as it is just a license to suck battery life. I’ve struggled with ripping from time to time, finding a good setup, good parameters that didn’t produce overly large file sizes that I wouldn’t notice the benefit of cuz I have basic system for playback and no real discerning ability with my ears. I have an old boss that has more money tied up in high-end audio WIRING then I have in my entire stereo collection.
But I was determined to do it right. Now, just to be clear, I wasn’t looking for a perfect solution, nor even a solution to a “problem” per se, I was just wanting to update my approach, maybe find some baby steps that I could take. Wow, was I in for a surprise.
50,000 reasons to hate iTunes
While I was starting to figure out how I wanted to sort my library with as few “layers” as possible, I updated iTunes just to keep it up to date. It is after all a good store. I had pushed everything over there in my last go around about 18 months ago, and I had decided pretty much at the time to go all in on iTunes, right up until I noticed a couple of files seemed to “change” quality and size after I synched with iTunes. It seemed odd, so I started looking at it more closely. In addition, in one case, iTunes even changed the filenames of two files — assigning the song name for Track 7 to Track 8, and visa versa. Weirdness in naming and how did some of the files shrink? WTF?
I then starting looking around online and found out that iTunes has a unique little feature. By default, when you synch, if it finds the file in its library, it doesn’t “upload” and save your copy. No, it just uses its copy (to save bandwidth and file size). No biggie, right? Except it then goes a step further in the synch and REPLACES your copy with the file from its database since it knows it is safe and sanitized. Which isn’t a huge deal if the files were the same…except they weren’t. I had ripped at a higher quality than the iTunes version, so my files were originally larger, and now they were “downgraded” to a lower quality and smaller size. Would I notice? Probably not when actually listening, I don’t have an audiophile’s ear nor the equipment. You can turn the setting off with a little tweaking, if you know to even look for it, but the default is to replace all existing files with the iTunes version. I found a few horror stories online where someone had some specific backups of old recordings that got replaced by iTunes with no warning or notification, and after a couple of subsequent backups not knowing there was anything wrong with the originals, their backups were now just the iTunes version. Bye bye sweet memories, hello commercial pablum. While these problems stood out, there were lots of other quirks people had found and posted online, and it made nervous enough to want to manage my music files myself without an auto-synch taking over. I manage my ebooks the same way — myself with my own software, not Amazon’s or Kobo’s or Nook’s, etc.
So my commitment to iTunes was done, and it slowed my music-organizing work in 2015. I tried Music Bee, but it wasn’t really jiving for me, and I eventually completed stalled. Until this past week, when I got back into it. I checked the iTunes install, and now it was REALLY weird. While I had some 3500 files stored in the iTunes media folders, only 35 were showing up in the actual iTunes app. I had them all in there before. I had done massive work to upload, sort, tweak the meta data, etc. Gone. So my hope of exporting and importing was gone. No biggie, it hadn’t been finished anyway, and I wasn’t sure what I was using now anyway.
Except then I noticed another problem. Those 3500 files. It seemed like a lot, well structured, but there were a few odd things missing. Like Jacob’s kids songs. I had four or five CDs ripped, and they weren’t there. Then I noticed some collections missing from the 1940s and 1950s. WTF? Where are the rest of my music files?
I had told iTunes back in the day that it could have permission to manage my music folders. Which meant it imported everything from another directory that was a bit chaotic. I never noticed at the time, too busy working within iTunes to notice that when it imported it into the directory, it DIDN’T actually complete the job. I knew it hadn’t uploaded everything, and in fact I hadn’t wanted it to until better organized, but I thought it had at least COPIED everything and that it was now all IN the directory. Nope. Not even close. I have another 40K files that just aren’t there. No, not another 40K songs, there’s a lot of chaff in that mix, with lots of duplicates, but probably another 10K active songs. I knew they weren’t in iTunes, like I said, but they should have been in the iTunes media folder. Nada.
Small panic. Maybe they’re elsewhere in the drive? Nope, I cleaned those up LONG ago. Cuz iTunes had them, no worries. Except it didn’t. So I checked my backups…of course, 18 months ago, my backups would have had those secondary directories. But now? I’ve completely rolled over 2 or 3 times since then. So my backup is JUST what iTunes has. Yikes. 50,000 down to 3500? That’s a big reason to hate iTunes a little, even if it isn’t entirely iTunes fault (I should have verified that it copied what I told it to copy!).
Digital packrat
I dug out two old backup drives, ones I’m loathe to just ditch even if they are not part of my regular backup routine now. I loaded them up and started working my way through them. One was relatively empty, easy to wipe and set aside for a future secondary or tertiary backup of some key files (it’s a 500GB drive but requires power, so not simple USB mobile device). The second is a 2TB workhorse. Killed tons of crap that I don’t need anymore, long since improved or reorganized, but then I found my old music files.
They’re relatively a disaster in terms of organization, no question about it. But the extra files are there. Some overlap with what I already have, but surprisingly not as much as I might have thought. What did I find? 3000 folders, 40K of files and 160GB of music related materials. Ah, so that’s why my Music backups didn’t take up as much time or size as I would have expected. I should have twigged to it earlier, but I trusted the wrong app.
Which means I have to copy all of those over, sort them, and figure out what I’m going to do with my new apps.
New apps
I mentioned that I had Music Bee for awhile but it just wasn’t “singing” to me. Then, with a cellphone plan that I have, I got Spotify for free for two years. Instant music, no need to organized, synch, or do anything else. It was just there. Or at least it is there for two years in total, another six months or so. I’m not totally comfortable with subscription based music consumption, partly as I don’t use it anywhere near enough to make it worth it, and at the end, you don’t own anything. It is just “temporary”. Why rent when I can buy?
Except of course I need to rip a lot of stuff, and I want it in a good format so I only do it once. Plus I want to be able to upload it somewhere where I can access it via the web. Oh, and I want to be able to synch to my Walkman, play it on an old tablet connected to my stereo, and just for fun, synch the music to an old iPhone or two. Easy peasy, right? Let’s break it down in order.
For the streaming, it is relatively easy. While there are a number of apps and sites, the three biggest are Spotify, Google Play Music (GPM) and iTunes. I already ditched iTunes, and I already have Spotify but it isn’t doing everything I want nor does it have great options for my own music so much as just using their existing library. Which means those two are not high on my list.
Since I use Google for everything anyway, I started looking pretty heavily at GPM. I can upload up to 50K of my own songs. And then I can stream them. And it’s free. If I want to upgrade to the full streaming system, it is $10 and I can have up to 10 devices. Colour me sold. Why didn’t I do this LONG ago?
So that left me merely with finding a good music manager for my desktop. Most of the big ones would work fine, and most of the real differences between a lot of them are graphical user interface choices. I prefer a simple list layout, something relatively like Windows Explorer even. But the real kicker for me is to where I want to be able to transfer the music. I almost never listen on my PC itself, partly as it is in a shared office with my wife. Instead, I want to be able to transfer it to six separate devices:
My Sony Walkman — as I mentioned, it’s an MP3 player that Sony slapped the Walkman rubrique on for branding, but it is small without being like an Apple nano. Good size, works well, good battery life. I load it up with my music and then it sits on there until I get bored with it and want something else. Not very quick to be changed, I mean. But I want the app to recognize it;
My old iTouch — I have an old iTouch, and I want to be able to just dump a ton of stuff on to it and plug it into my bedside clock radio/stereo. I could stream off of Google Play through my network, but really I just want it to be a physical storage device with direct loading; and,
Andrea’s old iPhone — she has an old iPhone 4 or 5 that had a cracked screen, so I got it repaired with the intention of giving it to Jacob as a simple camera and portable app toy. The synching with iTunes for apps isn’t very functional though, with the software getting a little long in the tooth, so I’m looking at repurposing to be another portable music player. I’m also going to try using it as an underwater camera in one of those sealable pouches, and well, if it dies, no great loss;
The other three are a bit different though as they are three fully functional Android devices, which means I can either stream or synch with them direct.
My phone — I have a 32GB SD card in it, so I could just copy it over. Or I can run the Google Play Music app. It would be great though if I could synch wirelessly with my phone, the way I do to upload my photos when I want to transfer them to the PC;
My big tablet — My newer tablet is wireless, and like my phone, I can either synch the music and carry it with me on the SD card or I can just stream GPM. But either way, it would be great to synch wirelessly with the PC; and,
My old small tablet — I have an older slower Samsung tablet that is basically collecting dust in my office. It isn’t fast, it isn’t fancy, but it still runs everything on Google. So my plan is to copy everything over, either wirelessly or not, and / or install GPM on it, and hook it up to the computer in our family room. Instant stereo feed.
Now, with those six devices in mind, I fully expected I would not be able to do it with one app. I thought, “Okay, one app to synch with the first batch” and hopefully I could find another that would handle the second. Or I could just use GPM to stream it. Except as I was reading online of the top 10 music managers from 2016, I came across Media Monkey again.
Media Monkey
I had seen this app before, back in the day, and I ended up with Music Bee and iTunes. But as I went through a good review over on Tom’s Guide of music managers, I was dropping some of them fast. Won’t synch with iDevices? Gone. Trouble with other MP3 players? Pass.
Wait a second. It says Media Monkey will synch with regular MP3 players AND iDevices? Hold the phones — it will also synch with Android WIRELESSLY? Holy cow, that sounds like the perfect app.
Sure, it’s a bit of a pig for display, a little small here and there, without much opportunity to fix it. The skins are terrible (had to revert to Windows). But it does have a file tree-like view option. Text for the rest. Recognizes my Sony device. Synched wirelessly with my phone.
And if I rename a heading in the music view, it renames the actual folder in the hard drive. Outstanding.
This will bear some careful examination, but I think I’ve found my tool.
My wife and I have purchased season tickets in the past to the NAC Pops series, and it can get a tad expensive once you add in 6 shows, babysitter, sometimes dinner, sometimes parking, etc. Plus, honestly, it’s a heavy commitment at times. You don’t “pop” out for quick listen, it’s a full evening, requires planning etc. Fun, but not like going to a movie on the spur of the moment.
This year we opted for a smaller subscription, just four shows, and we aren’t in the same seats for every show. Which may turn out to be fun since we’ll get to try all different kinds of seating across the newly renovated NAC.
Saturday night was our first outing, and it was an 80s night. Basically the orchestra plus two singers working their way through the hits. It sometimes seems odd, since if you love the orchestra, you miss out on some of the performance because the singers are over-riding it. To compensate, the orchestra does some of the numbers as pure instrumental.
The two singers this time were Nicole Parker (MadTV) and Aaron Finley (Broadway, including Kinky Boots). I didn’t know either one before the show, but I know Finley’s “type”. Many of these shows pluck a singer from a series of Broadway shows, hire them for the run, and they sing the various songs. They mix and match men and women, throw them together, great, there’s a show. But unlike a Broadway show where the singer gets to “live the part” and therefore “inhabit” or “own” the song, many of the songs come across as high-end karaoke…they can sing, but they are not great at embodying the lyrics. Add in that they are all Broadway-trained for that earnest, belt it out to the back of the theatre, projection voice rather than say a band singer who often relies on the speaker system to do that. It is good, don’t get me wrong, but often seems like they are just “missing” the song, not quite nailing it.
Aaron’s opening number was Bryan Adams’ Summer of 69. If you know the song, you know that Adams infused it with a bit of edge. Not hard-core, but a bit of regret, a bit of blue-collar rock, some grit. Finlay sang it like it was glee club day and shucks he was just happy to sing. I’m exaggerating slightly, but it wasn’t awesome. Perhaps because I like the original.
However, when Nicole Parker started singing Elton John songs, it was world-class. She was flat out awesome. The two of them worked their way through Sad Songs, I Guess That’s Why They Call It the Blues, and I’m Still Standing, and the benefit of having professional singers in an NAC-level performance hall becomes literally crystal clear…every word is totally understandable. I swear they would have a chance at making Wooly Bully understandable.
Take Boys of Summer. It’s a decent song by Henley, easy to get lost in. Finlay made every word, every lyric crystal clear. It was like hearing the words for the first time. Parker did the same for Lauper’s True Colors, introduced with obligatory reference to being American and having to deal with Trump. Parker is also a comedienne (hence the MadTV experience) and she kept a lot of the light entertainment going during the night.
The orchestra’s three big pieces were a medley of movie soundtracks in the first half, kicked off the second half with David Foster’s Winter Games, and followed it up later with E.T.’s Adventures on Earth. While the last was clearly a John Williams score, it really didn’t fit with the rest of the evening.
I felt like filing an official protest when I saw there would be a double offering of Toto — Rosanna and Africa, but I have to admit it is the first time in years that I didn’t want to go running the other way. An opening part of Rosanna with the violins made it almost sound like the violins were saying the word “Rosanna” in the chorus. Michael Jackson’s Human Nature was also decent, but not overly well-received (many were talking quietly during the performance)…perhaps reflecting that it is one of the few songs on the Thriller album that didn’t chart well. Sting’s Every Breath You Take was decently performed, but as Finlay noted at the start, there is a creep factor to it too which always leaps out at me.
I was really looking forward to the last piece, as it was three from Lionel Richie…You Are (zzzz), Stuck on You (zzzz), and All Night Long. I thought ANL would be AWESOME. It is one of my favorite songs of the early 80s, and along with a couple of others in that era, it always puts me in a good mood and I love the rhythm and backbeat. It’s just infectious. Plus there’s a couple of horn sections that are really strong transitions. I’m no musician, clearly, but I like the song. I was really looking forward to the orchestra blasting it out, with the singers along for the ride. Particularly as I said, there are a couple of horn sections, plus some slightly more muted but still recognizable string sections.
It was good, it wasn’t great. I don’t know if the conductor was going for his own interpretation, but a couple of the transitions which should have given free rein to the trumpets came out almost muted in comparison. Singing was good, but I got the feeling I was watching two hosts of a low-rated NYE special trying to get the crowd going to ring in a soggy new year.
The encore was a question mark…I wondered if maybe Queen, lots of bands to choose from. Andrea noted that none of the artists were people who had died in the last year, so no tributes going on. Turned out it would be Prince — 1999.
Unlike All Night Long, the orchestra finally got to let loose a bit. A really good encore, but again, the hosts were doing their best to act like they were rocking out with an Ottawa crowd who are mostly sitting and likely to remain sitting no matter what they do. Not everyone, but it makes some of the festivals who complain about everyone sitting in their lawn chairs look downright peppy.
Overall a good night, and Nicole Parker was awesome. There were some good songs, but not as good overall as some of the shows we’ve seen.
We’ll see how the next show goes — Casablanca (the orchestra plays the music along to the movie). While the movie is undoubtedly a classic, there are some sections of it that were in dire need of an editor, and the middle act has some reaalllly slooowwww parts. Still, it will be nice to hear the live orchestra doing the accompaniment.
Do you know the classic cliché that says, “I don’t know art but I know what I like”? That’s me attending an orchestra performance. I have never taken music (except things like ukelele or the recorder in school), I play no instruments, I can’t read sheet music. I’m not even well versed in Bach, Beethoven and Brahms, and if truth be told, my favorite classical piece is Beethoven’s 5th, which dooms me to the dustbin of the pop-version of classical music, not “real” classical according to the experts. For me, it has to be accessible, and so my wife and I have tickets to the Canadian National Arts Centre orchestra “Pops” series.
It’s not a cheap investment, generally running about $65 a ticket for six shows for two people (I’ll let you do the math). Add in a babysitter, and it makes for six date night outings that we plan for and generally use as our formal outings for the year i.e. we don’t plan too many other ones. We found that if we didn’t subscribe, we wouldn’t bother getting individual tickets and would just forget about it; so we go since we have the tickets, and we have the tickets so that we’ll go.
Even though I enjoy the Pops events, I generally prefer faster tempo pieces, more lively pieces over long slow string sections. Honestly, those can literally put me to sleep and I feel like they are almost lullabies-for-adults. Yes, I know, some of them were written that way intentionally, but I want to close my eyes and let my mind drift with the music. I tend not to do that with the Pops series, it just holds my attention better. I mention this as you need to know where the following review comes from, as it is not your typical review perhaps of an orchestral performance. I won’t debate in detail, for instance, the conductor’s choices in the third movement, or how the violinists seemed a tad too slow on a refrain portion.
Last night was the first outing of the year, entitled “Hollywood: The Epics”. Let me first get out of the way that, as always, the NAC orchestra performed brilliantly. If something was off in anyone’s performance, I would have little chance of noticing, and didn’t find anything offputting anywhere. It’s always crystal-clear sound, fantastic acoustics, although perhaps a bit biased by the fact that we sit near the orchestra and in the centre (sixth row last night).
The program was designed with eight items in the first half and nine in the second, but they did an opening impromptu playing of the French national anthem (while standing) in honour of the citizens of France dealing with the tragedies of the day before. It was a nice tribute, although a bit odd when the very next item was “Hurray for Hollywood” (Whiting). The opening number was a harbinger for me. They do something a couple of times a year with the orchestra, which is bring in a large choir to sing with them…in this case, two large choirs. About 75-80 people in total. If you like choral music, good on you, mate. If they were singing clear words of well-known songs, like Christmas hymns or songs, I’d be okay with it; for this item, about the only words I could make out were in the refrain of “Hurray for Hollywood”. Their voices are beautiful, but for me, it is a lot like spices in cooking…throw too many in, might as well be salt. So the choir adds nothing for me. I’d prefer one or two singers at the front, if at all. Nothing memorable in the opening.
As an aside, the NAC has ramped up their bilingualism in recent years, and while the conductor Jack Everly is not bilingual, they have a co-host/animatrice named Manon St-Jules who does a great job giving some info about the pieces in french, and then throwing it back to Jack. I have heard a few grumblings from other patrons about it, mostly from those who don’t understand what she’s saying, but I love her little bits (partly as I can follow most of it until she hits warp speed) and she brings passion and zest to her little spiels. Jack, by contrast, is all about background and trivia about the pieces, who worked with whom, what else they did, or in last night’s case, how certain scenes were filmed that the music was attached to during production.
Overall, I think the evening was a fair to middling set of pieces, and I’ll run through the list quickly for the “also-ran” items:
Main title from “Gone with the Wind” (Steiner) — interesting trivia about the King Kong set being repainted to look like Atlanta for the initial burning scene, but the song was sweeping but ho-hum;
Suite from “Titanic” (James Horner) — there was a nice slow build, but it was way too long, and not very exciting (hmm, kind of like the remake version of the movie!);
The Exodus song from “Exodus” (Gold) — meh, not sure how this fits into a “Pops” repertoire for anything other than the source, it was slow, boring and unremarkable;
“How the West Was Won” (Newman and Darby) — The trivia was interesting (Cinerama) and almost as long as the piece;
“It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad, world” (Gold) — This was very short, with lyrics I don’t remember from the movie (but it’s been a long time since I saw it), and completely worthless for posterity; and,
The Lord’s Prayer from “King of Kings” (Rozsa) — Classic, but unremarkable, even with (or because of?) the too large choir.
The second group includes those where it wasn’t particularly memorable, but where there were some interesting sub-elements:
Overture from “Hawaii” (Bernstein) — Introduced as representing four themes in the movie, it had a lively middle and concluded with a decent set of elements combined to represent a big storm, kind of cool development;
Prelude from “Ben Hur” remake (Rozsa) — I found the start quite strong, and seemed almost Asian interestingly enough, not sure why;
Overture from “Around the World in Eighty Days” (Young) — This had a great violin section at the start, sounded reminiscent of the start of a hot air balloon ride (continuing the movie metaphor) but it was slow, and didn’t really progress from there;
Main title from “Lawrence of Arabia” (Jarre) — The large drum work was good, and there was something going on in the middle with double bass or the trombone (as my wife identified) that was interesting, definitely not the flute or the piccolo, deeper and gave a different sound and feel to it, but it didn’t last long enough to be truly memorable; and,
Lara’s Theme from “Dr. Zhivago” (Jarre) — So quintessentially the sound used to represent Russia, it’s hard to imagine anything else.
The last group includes the stand-outs of the evening, and in increasing order of quality:
“El Cid” (Rozsa) — One of three pieces from Rozsa during the night (mostly Biblical style), and this one was in line with the other two except for one major element repeated throughout where the first violins play a small section that is then “answered” by the second violin section, almost like “dueling” or “arguing” violins… I don’t know how much of this is the original arrangement or a conductor’s choice, but it was really cool to see the conversation ripple across the stage as different elements answered the earlier pieces;
Danse des Enfants from “Napoleon” (Honegger) — this piece was short, but completely different from the rest of the night…where the others were dark, ambitious, ominous, serious, this one was light, playful, and a strong focus on the flute and piccolo, almost like a palate cleanser after a heavy meal, quite delightful;
Symphonic Suite from “The Magnificent Seven” (Bernstein) — This piece kicked off the second half of the night, and it is awesome — bold, definitive, a clear statement that resonates throughout the entire piece; and,
Symphonic Suite from “The Lord of the Rings” (Howard Shore) — This piece soared, bringing about easy images of flying, sweeping mountains, battles and more. I haven’t even seen all of the movies, and I loved it, so not sure if I’m doomed to pablum pieces or not, but it was truly “epic” music to match the theme of the night, and the only truly remarkable piece from the first half.
Any credibility I could ever attempt to claim on music is completely lost with my choice of best piece for the evening. I mentioned that Jack Everly is self-described as “steeped in trivia” and he did a fabulous little bit of trivia showing the music that accompanied the 20th Century Fox logo and the extended version of the logo music to also play while the Cinema scope logo appeared. The reason he played them was that it was about how they defined a lifetime of the studio, and the logos still often appear accompanied by the same music. It was the rampart that called people’s attention to the fact that this was a 20th Century production about to follow.
George Lucas wanted the same “hallmark”, and John Williams gave it to him, as exemplified by the last piece of the night, the main title from “Star Wars”. Maybe it’s the geek in me, maybe it’s the fact that Empire Strikes Back was one of the first movies I ever saw on my own with friends, and even one of the first five I ever saw in a theatre (rather than on TV or at the Drive-In). But John Williams piece is, and will always be, one of the iconic moments of Star Wars. So many scenes throughout the series use pieces of that opening as they transition from one scene to another, whether it be from space to Tatooine, Cloud City to Dagobah, or space battles to Endor. It combines the harsh overlord style of the Empire with the softer peaceful areas of some planets with the rebel uprising, with just a dash of old swashbuckling music thrown in to keep it lively and not quite so serious. I loved it, and it was awesome hearing a professional orchestra play the notes that a generation lived and breathed as they realized what a combination of effects and music could do, the places it could take you unlike any effort previously.
The same goal that all “Epic” music should aspire to, and few in the ensemble tonight delivered. Overall, the three way split between yawn, interesting bits, and really engaging left the evening being rather ho hum. But as ho hum nights go, there are worse ways than listening to a fantastic orchestra do its bit.
