HoodedHawk

I went to a great concert by classical guitarist Ana Vidovic yesterday. The venue was Central Presbyterian church in Towson, MD. Arriving shortly before Ms. Vidovic was to start, I ended up in a rear pew; about as far from her as you could get. But the acoustics of the church are very good, and I could hear her guitar quite nicely.

I really enjoyed hearing Ms. Vidovic playing in person. I first heard her on the recommendation of a coworker; she is an extremely talented and accomplished guitarist!

Fortunately, I learned at a previous (acoustic) concert that my camera has a fairly loud shutter, so I waited until the very end of the concert to pop into the aisle for a picture of Ana – the one real benefit of the rear row was that this didn’t block anyone’s view. I also found the dedicated “quiet” mode of the camera (yes, this does dampen the mirror flip/ shutter release sound!). The above picture is a crop of a shot taken at ISO 3200 (!) with my lens zoomed to 200mm. Not too bad from ~100 feet away (back of the church).

The program:

1. Four Pieces by Astor Piazzolla
• Verano Porteno
• Milonga del Angel
• La Muerte del Angel
• Primavera Portena
2. From 12 Songs for Guitar, arranged by Toru Takemitsu
• Secret Love
• Over the Rainbow
• Yesterday
3. Recuerdos de la Alhambra by FranciscoTarrega
4. Asturias by Isaac Albeniz

INTERMISSION

5. Suite Castellana by Federico Moreno Torroba
• Fandanguillo
• Arada
• Danza
6. Sonata in D major, op. 77 by Mario Castelnuovo Tedesco
• Allegro con spririto
• Andantino, quasi canzone
• Tempo di Minuetto
• Vivo ed energico
7. La Catedral by Agustin Barrios Mangore
• Preludio saudade
• Andante religioso
• Allegro solemne

The only real drawback to the afternoon’s performance was the lady directly behind me who would root around in her purse for 10 minutes hunting her elusive Tic-Tacs. Upon finding them, she would forego merely dissolving them and proceed to crunch them individually. However, she was almost in time with the guitar, so it just added a little percussive accompaniment.

And a good time was had by all.

Kirsten and I went to see Vienna Teng at Ram’s Head On Stage, Annapolis, MD
March 4, 2011

As usual (we have seen her a number of times) she put on a very pleasing show. Vienna had her “bandmate”/ “collaborator”, Alex Wong accompany her with his percussion. Opening act was Matt Duke. Alex’s showmanship was quite good, and he kept the audience involved (ringing car keys in a “wave” around the stage for one tune – nice effect). If you get a chance to see her live, I do recommend it. However, it might be a little more difficult now as she started graduate school this past fall (dual MS/MBA degrees). Enjoy!

Vienna Teng

Vienna Teng

With Alex Wong:

Alex Wong

Also with: Matt Duke

Matt Duke

Jojo Garza of Los Lonely Boys

Tuesday night I went to see Los Lonely Boys at Ram’s Head in Annapolis, MD. They sounded great! I really enjoyed the concert – the three brothers definitely put on a good show. They only played about an hour and 20 minutes, with no opening band. The short concert may be due to the bass player/lead singer Jojo having some problems with his vocal cords (the band appears to have cancelled some dates last month due to medical issues). But I certainly didn’t notice anything wrong with his voice! I do hope all is well. Definitely a band worth seeing live.

Los Lonely Boys

Los Lonely Boys

Today’s XKCD strip fairly clearly explains why DRM (“Digital Rights Management” – i.e. Copy Protected)-hobbled media is bad. It’s also the reason I still get all my music on physical CD. Not only do I support the artist, but I can rip the music to mp3 (or any format I choose) and put the music on my home server. I can also take the music with me when technology changes (all I have to do is re-rip the music into whatever new format). Also, (barring the not-much-used superaudio and such formats) CDs have the highest quality music. Think “Master” recording. Most other formats (mp3, etc.) are “lossy”, meaning they are of lower quality than the original.

Let me make myself clear here. The comic above advocates Piracy. I don’t. The artists don’t get any support that way. I advocate buying CD’s or non-DRM digital files. But the comic is still funny. :)

Apple is aware of consumers’ distaste for DRM, which is why they make some of the music on iTunes available in “iTunes Plus” format – which is of higher quality and has no DRM. I think they charge $0.30 more per track for this. From what I can tell, all music on iTunes from EMI is available in the “Plus” format. Apple would gladly put all iTunes tracks in Plus format as well -but the only record company to give permission is EMI.

The evil Wal-Mart announced a month or so ago that it was taking down it’s DRM server. This meant that anyone foolish enough to have bought digital music from them would no longer be able to play that music if the computer they used ever crashed or was upgraded/replaced. This created such a backlash from the community that they recently changed their minds. But such a scenario will certainly replay itself in the future. So: Don’t buy digital music that has DRM.

Note that Wal-Mart’s solution initially offered to it’s users: Burn your music to CD and re-import it. Whoa. That would drastically reduce the quality. So why not get physical CD’s to begin with?

Just got back from the Motels’ concert at Ram’s Head, Annapolis, MD. Great show. Martha Davis is quite a character. I haven’t followed the Motels in recent years; Martha has obviously replaced a few of the original band members with some, er, younger players. Yep, they played “Only the Lonely” and “Suddenly Last Summer”, but also new songs such as “The Day That Won’t Go Away”, which Ms. Davis said was dedicated to Keifer and the show “24″. Fun!

After the concert Martha signed autographs for people, and seemed to have an interesting story for each person. She’s very nice and personable.

I went to see Suzanne Vega at Ram’s Head tonight (Tuesday). Great show; front row table at this intimate venue. I had never seen Ms. Vega live before and I can say she didn’t disappoint. She played songs from her first album (Suzanne Vega), through to her latest (Beauty and Crime). I really enjoyed myself (hey, they have “Genius Stout” on draft – made there).

I recorded the show on a Zoom H2 audio recorder. I just finished processing the first 17 songs of the set, and I have to say, the Zoom H2 in combination with Audacity on my MacBook really does result in good sound! Highly recommended. I’ve put three links below to mp3 snippets. They are saved as high quality VBR, so they are each about 1 MB. This is my first foray into “good” audio recording; I’ve avoided it in the past due to the cost of equipment. But the (relatively) inexpensive H2 has me hooked!

I had tried to record a Wilco concert recently at Tanglewood in MA, but that was a stadium concert, and I had set the gain too high (as well as playing with other settings), so most of the sound was clipped. This time I did more research, and left the gain on the low setting, and did not boost the “level” via menu options on the recorder. I also recorded at 48k/16bit, as my reading indicated that the “native” sampling rate of the ADC chip was 48k, not 44.1k. And 16bit was more than enough dynamic range. Also, it appears that all the “options” (and there are many) available on the recorder are done in the digital domain, *after* the source is recorded by the ADC chip. So post-processing on the computer will accomplish the same thing. Thus, I left things as “raw” as possible for the recording and I processed the files in Audacity, increasing the gain there to normalize, and split the large sound files into smaller individual song tracks. Note that iTunes read in the 48k sample tracks just fine, but when I tried to burn a cd via Toast, the sound was icky. I guess I’ll have to export as resampled 44.1k files to burn to cd. Anyway, the snippets are below:

Frank and Eva snippet
Pornographer\’s Dream Snippet
The Queen and the Soldier snippet

Kirsten and I had a great evening this past Saturday. We had dinner at Butterfield 9 in Washington D.C., before walking a block to see David Russell perform classical guitar at the Church of the Epiphany.

The dinner was great. The restaurant has a nice ambiance – quite elegant. Kirsten started her meal with the Longneck Squash Soup (goat cheese, roasted pancetta, and apple compote) – “Delicious”. She then had a 1/2 plate of the Carnaroli Risotto (glazed butternut squash, swiss chard, and black truffle) – “Delicious.

I had the “Chocolate Steak” (New England Elk, creamed parsnips, bitter chocolate, fleur de sel). The waiter said that elk tastes a bit like venison. That would be a good comparison, except that I have never had venison (that I remember). I figured I’d give it a try. Cooked medium-rare, the elk was melt-in-your-mouth delicious. It was coated with cocoa, making for a slightly crispy crust, while the bitter chocolate sauce under the steak was a neat complement; it definitely enhanced the flavors. My only issue was the size of the portions (small). Also, I was glad I ordered “Truffle potato puree” on the side, because what came with the steak was basically a garnish, and not a real side dish(es). The puree was delicious as well, though I would have preferred a more firm “mashed” potato side.

Neither Kirsten or I cared much for the “creme brulee” desert, as it was not a “classic” version; we would not have recognized it as creme brulee if not stated on the menu. It had a sort of “cookie” crust rather than caramelized sugar. The raspberry sorbet on the side with it was good.

Butterfield 9 is only a block from the church where the concert was held, so we used valet parking at the restaurant and picked up the car after the concert.

The concert was very enjoyable; just Mr. Russell on a slightly raised platform at the front of the church with no amplification. I could hear the guitar just fine, but I had difficulty hearing his intros clearly (also partly due to his Scottish brogue :) ). The pews were hard to sit on for 2 hours (we were glad for intermission). The music however was great. We had been listening to his Bach and Baroque cd’s – but he didn’t play any of those pieces. I greatly enjoyed most of his pieces with the exception being the one that was actually written for him by a contemporary. Oh well.

Brandon and I went to see Carbon Leaf last Thursday (Dec 13, 2007) at the 9:30 Club in DC. Carbon Leaf is a local (Virginia) band, and has about 6 albums out. Only the last two CD’s have had national exposure. I only recently heard of them while browsing on iTunes. I grabbed Indian Summer and loved it.

This was Brandon’s first concert and the band didn’t disappoint. He wasn’t very into the warmup band and spent that time watching a movie on my pda. However, once Carbon Leaf came on and started playing his expression changed and he had a good time. The band allows recording, so I videotaped the concert (at left is a still). Very enjoyable! I definitely recommend seeing them live.

Kirsten and I went to see 33 Variations Sunday night at the Arena Stage in Washington, DC. The play, written and directed by Moisés Kaufman, is about a present-day musicologist (Katherine, played by Mary Beth Peil) who (despite her daughter’s objections) travels to Bonn for research on Beethoven’s 33 Variations on a waltz by Anton Diabelli. The daughter, Clara (played by Laura Odeh) begins an initially awkward relationship with her mother’s (male) nurse Mike (played by Greg Keller) and they both eventually follow her mother to Bonn.

The staging of the play is great – for example while a librarian in Bonn is showing Katherine a manuscript of some of the variations, the stage behind the actors shows a projection of the manuscript, with the portion of the text highlighted. Musical accompaniment on stage is by Diane Walsh on piano – she times the music perfectly with the performers. The music is great (hey, it’s Beethoven!), and I picked up a CD by Diane Walsh while there.

The play is at times poignant, as mother and daughter come to terms with the mother’s wasting disease – and at times hysterically funny, as when Clara and Mike go out on a first date.

I really enjoyed this play (as did Kirsten) and highly recommend it. It runs through September 30, 2007.

Apple has inked an agreement with EMI that will let them sell high quality versions of songs without copy protection. EMI will be releasing their catalog DRM (Digital Rights Management)-free. Yep, that means that finally you can download a song in iTunes, and use it on as many computers or devices as you want, or convert to other formats with no restrictions.

The DRM restrictions have been the main reasons that I have only purchased about 5 songs on iTunes – such songs only work on 3 computers and your iPod. My music at home is stored on a Linux box and served up to my stereo via Tivo. I buy CD’s and convert the music to mp3′s myself. The other reason I have purchased few songs via iTunes was the low quality of purchased iTunes (or other online) songs vs. those I can create myself from CD’s.

With this new development, I can now purchase individual songs, in high quality (256-bit AAC vs. the lower quality 128-bit AAC offered to date), with no DRM. Yes, I’ll have to convert them again to mp3 to listen via Tivo, but that’s a more viable option now with a higher-quality original. Now I can get high-quality *individual* songs – to date I’ve had to purchase an entire CD even if I wanted a high-quality version of only a single track.

Each song will cost $0.30 more in the DRM-free/high quality version ($1.29 vs. $0.99). What is also a real cool deal is that you can upgrade your currently purchased music to the high quality version for the $0.30 difference – so you can maintain your investment in iTunes.

Apple will also continue to offer the lower-quality, DRM (protected) versions of songs for $0.99, so those that don’t care about anything but price won’t be charged more. This also means that Apple’s competitors won’t have a price advantage.

This is due to happen in May, 2007.