Prediction:
Eric Prydz’ “Call On Me” will always be a Five-Star for me. I can’t remember the first time I heard this song, but it was a good while ago and I’ve loved it ever since. I predict it will survive both the onslaught of the remaining years of my Decade of Music Project as well as the eventual Five-Star Purge, where I trim my Five-Stars down to like 20 or 25 songs instead of 50.
I mean, listen to this baby.
(Also, the music video is basically porn, so that’s a plus too.)
Okay bye.
Concert Band Music: The Best of the Best
Hey peeps.
I got to thinking today (for some reason) about concert band back at the U of I. We played quite a variety of songs in there, and whenever we played a song I enjoyed, I of course downloaded said song for later enjoyment. So here’s something I surprisingly haven’t done on here before: let’s rank the top 10 concert band songs, ‘cause why not?
(Sorry, no he-brides)
#10: Blue and Green Music
We played this my “second time around” in concert band (that is, when I came back to UI and was working on my math degree). The song itself as a whole is okay, but the student conductor we had for this piece made us work until we had the part at 3:19 sounding so beautiful that it always made me excited for this song.
#9: Lincolnshire Posy: Horkstow Grange
This was a fun one to play and very moving.
#8: First Suite in E-Flat: March
HOOOOOOOOOOLST. Another fun song. We got to be loud. I love the last fourth or so of this song (1:53 to the end). Controlled chaos.
#7: Shenandoah
AAAAAAAAAAAAA Shenandoah is so freaking pretty. I love the clarinet part, too.
#6: Variations on a Korean Folk Song
I think this was one we did during my second round of school, not with you guys (referring to my band geek friends). I think this was divided into six movements. Some of them were really fun. Favorites were at 1:40-2:31 (aka “let’s be obnoxious on clarinet”) 4:13-end (I like how it goes from OH GOD LOUD to oh god soft but with drums in the background to the layering of the main theme around 6:00). Fun to play.
#5: First Suite in E-Flat: Chaconne
MORE HOOOOOOOOOOLST. I don’t know what it is about this movement, but I liked it the very first time I played it/heard it. I still have the clarinet sheet music for this and that scale at 1:27 is as crazy as I remember it. Also 3:59 lsjfalhfglaghfaldf
#4: Adrenaline Engines
Another “second round” song. This one was very fun to play. Lots of energy. This song is actually really fun to walk to (I love when it comes up on shuffle).
#3: Bayou Breakdown
We played this obscenely fast. This recording is the fastest one I could find and we did like 50% faster than this. CHAOS. 2:41 is like a mental breakdown and then 3:52 is so smooth and perfect and unifying. Really fun to play.
#2: O Magnum Mysterium
UGH THIS SONG. I love it so much. I remember Torrey bringing in the choral version of this for us to listen to before we played it (so we could emulate the feeling of singing when we played) and that choral version has such a significant meaning to me for a few reasons that I’ve explained on here before. But the band version is the whole reason I heard the choral version, so there ya go.
#1: Valdres March
The best song we ever played in concert band. No contest. I love Valdres March. Love love love.
CellOMG
Steven Sharp Nelson is too cool for school.
The Piano Guys: I love their music and I love their music videos.
Songz
HELLO YOU BUGGERS
It’s time for another music-related post! Are you ready?
So as you’re all probably painfully aware of (since I talk about it quite a bit), my “Five Star” songs are the songs that I find to be the very best of the best of all my music. Ever since I started rating my songs in iTunes, I’ve limited my number of five-star songs to 50. No more, no less.
But I think I’m going to change that.
I’m finding that if I shuffle through my five-star playlist, there are a fair number of songs that I am no longer super excited to hear. I’m excited to hear them, but not super excited.
A five-star should be something I’m always super excited to hear.
So because of that, I think I’m going to reduce my five-star limit. Thirty songs? Twenty songs? I think anything less than that would cut out some of the true five-star songs, but I guess we’ll see.
The main issue I’m having is if I should do this cutting now or wait until my Decade of Music project is done so that the probability of a given song getting to be on the five-star list is the same for all the years in the decade.
That’s probably what I’ll do. I’ll wait.
But it’ll happen.
And I’m sure I’ll blog about it when it does.
END!
Claudia vs. The Impossible Task: Ranking Her Favorite Coldplay Songs
Yo.
I have acquired a lot of music over the past seven-ish years due to my daily song goal thingy. Because of this, my taste in music has really expanded. However, I can say with great certainty that Coldplay is definitely one of my favorite groups. Chris Martin has the best voice, and I love their style, regardless of how much it’s changed over the years.
So I figured I would try to do something that is very difficult for me: ranking my top 5 Coldplay songs.
Let’s Do the Dew™.
#5: Viva La Vida
I heard this song in an HP commercial in 2008 and had to have it. This is the song that got me into Coldplay. How can you not love this song? It’s got the driving, persistent beat, the strings, and Chris Martin’s voice. And like a great deal of Coldplay’s songs, it’s a mix of melancholy and pure energy.
#4: Us Against the World
One of my favorite things about Chris Martin is when he sings notes that are a little bit too low for his vocal range. His voice does this wobbly bit that’s just…I don’t know. Really raw. This song has him hitting a few low notes, causing the wobbly (2:10, for example). And the instrumental portion at 3:04. The chords. Holy poops. I live for good, heartbreaking chords.
#3: Fix You
This song hurts. I cry every time I listen to it (which makes singing it in Rock Band really hard, haha). Like a lot of the songs I really love, there’s one moment in it that just demolishes me emotionally, and that’s the way Chris’ voice breaks a bit on the “guide” of the first “lights will guide you home” (1:15)
#2: O (Fly On)
Okay, this is going to sound really dumb, but this is my “Leibniz song.” This song makes me think of Leibniz.* This makes me think of all the ways he saw beauty, interconnections, and good in the world. This makes me imagine that he still exists in the sense that the particles that comprised him are scattered out there, experiencing, acting, being. Also, the line “so fly on, right through / maybe one day I’ll fly next to you” has such a comforting yet yearning sentiment to it that it just makes this song that much better. We’re all a lot more connected then we think.
#1: Paradise
This song was released unto the world during one of the most confusing, emotional, and difficult parts of my life (2011). I had quit grad school at UBC and had moved across the continent to London, Ontario to try to find happiness. But I was alone, confused, and miserable. I went back to Moscow for a while to live in my dad’s basement. I was still alone, still confused, and still miserable. I was looking for a job. For stability. For purpose. I didn’t find any of it. But every night on my way home from my walk, I would go and sit on a swing in Rotary Park and listen to this song on repeat, looking up at the stars, hoping that the universe knew what it was doing and that this instability was only a temporary thing. I would cry. I would fight the feelings of insignificance. Every time I hear this song I think of that period in my life and how utterly unimportant I felt during it. It is a very emotionally charged song for me, even more so than the other songs listed. Which is why it’s my number one.
Now I’m crying. THANKS, COLDPLAY.
*I fantasize about meeting him a lot. A lot. Lemme tell ya.
Bari Me
Not all heroes wear capes.
The bari sax player’s name is Leo Pellegrino. He’s apparently known for being a snappy-dressing, funky-dancing sax dude.
I can get behind that.
Millennial Whoop
So the title of this video is a bit misleading, but it’s interesting nonetheless.
SORRY THAT’S ALL I’VE GOT TODAY I’M BORING
What Makes a 5-Star a 5-Star?
So because I MURDERED MY LEG APPARENTLY, I’m taking a few days off from walking.
Which blows. I hate it.
BUT it’s given me a chance to try to organize my music in a bit more of a coherent manner in preparation for the big end of my “Decade of Music” project in a few years. Doing so got me thinking about my 5-star songs and what, exactly, makes a song qualified to be a 5-star.
For y’all that aren’t aware, I use iTunes for my music. iTunes gives you the option of rating your songs as 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 stars. In my ranking system, the “5-star club” is very exclusive; I’ve made it a rule that I can only have 50 songs rated 5 stars at a time. And considering I’ve got like 4,000 songs total, that’s not very many.
But how do I choose what gets 5 stars versus 4 stars? For example, what makes WALK THE MOON’s Avalanche only get 4 stars but the same group’s Tightrope get an enthusiastic 5 stars?
It’s hard to define the distinction, but there is one. 5-star songs are an experience. They make me instantly feel excited when I hear them. Quite often, if I’m out walking in the winter and a 5-star song comes on over my headphones, I will say something like “I love this song!” out loud. 4-star songs don’t give that reaction. 4-star songs are those that I can listen to on repeat, but do so “mindlessly”—that is, without really paying attention to the songs themselves and just liking them for the background noise. With 5-stars, I will deliberately re-start them if I don’t feel like I’m listening to them closely enough.
The 5-stars do change; every once and a while a song will just naturally be dropped from the list because it no longer provides that visceral “OH HELL YES I LOVE THIS FREAKING SONG” reaction. Other times I’ll find a new song that is amazing and 5-star-worthy and will have to reconsider my current 5-star list in order to kick an older song down to 4 stars.
Anyway. There is a distinction, but it’s very feelings-based and weird. Which I guess is everyone’s reaction to music and the reasoning behind their favorite songs.
Oof.
Holy GODS, what a good song:
Like…woah.
I don’t really follow The Killers very closely and only have like five of their songs, but every song I’ve heard from them has this amazing undertone of…I dunno, sadness? Angsty sadness? Anxious angsty sadness? Nervous fear? There’s this emotion that’s hard to define that seems to be right at the edge of the tone of their songs. I love it. This song has it to the extreme, despite (or because of?) its high energy.
It’s great.
(edit: It’s a Five Star, too.)
Tunin’
So my new favorite thing now on YouTube is finding people who have transformed 90s and 00s songs into 80s songs.
Here are two fantastic ones:
That Lady Gaga one sounds so much better than the original (no offense, Gaga!).
TOO BEAUTIFUL
Everyone knows that O Magnum Mysterium is one of my favorite songs, right? Well, have a ridiculously good rendition of it:
Those boys (and adults) are phenomenal singers.
Watching/listening to this makes me want to go back to church. But then I remember that no church I have ever gone to looks/sounds like this. Plus, after the singing, you get church. So.
Woah
Good lord, OneRepublic. Super powerful lyric video and song.
Tubular Bells
Today’s post is another one of those “why have I never shared this with you people?” posts. Ready?
So when I was a kid/tween/teen, I went to Linda Canary’s art camp during the summer. Art camp was two weeks of artistic freedom and bliss—it involved everything from clay to oil pastels to soapstone carving to batiking to plaster mask making. It also involved a lot of shenanigans in tree houses and in Paradise Creek.
I’ve talked about all that before. But anyway.
Linda was really good with kids and gave the camp a fairly loose structure. However, the one thing that we were “required” to make every day was a mandala.
For 20 minutes or so, we would go in the art studio and make mandalas based on whatever mental image or journey Linda would guide us on. During this time of quiet (it really was the only quiet part of the day, haha), Linda would play music over the stereo. Lots of Enya, lots of Deep Forest, lots of instrumental music.
One song she played a few times for us was called Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield. It’s from 1973 and is nearly an hour long song filled with a ton of instruments and interesting musical transitions. Give it a listen. It’s quite awesome.
Yes, the intro part was used in the Exorcist. The rest is so much better.
Claudia’s Semi-Regular Music Dump
Yo.
So this year is still going strong as being an exceptionally good year for music, so you get some tracks ‘cause I’m a nice person who just happens to have absolutely nothing else to blog about today.
GO!
- It’s been a long while since I’ve picked up a Fireflies remix.
- Electronica Green Day? This one works.
- Have some Holst.
- HANS ZIMMER, WHY YOU GOTTA MAKE SUCH HEART-WRENCHING MUSIC???? Beyond 1:40, I cranked it so loud that I think I almost blew out my headphones. And, you know, my eardrums.
- And finally: I’ve already given this song its own blog post awhile back, but there are five-star songs, and then there are Five Star songs. This is the latter. I just love this song.
BLUUUUUUUUUUE
Hi.
I was screwing around on iTunes this evening before lecture and decided to browse my “recommended” songs. One of those songs? The instrumental of Love is Blue by Paul Mauriat.
Which is freaking awesome, because this was a song I’d gotten from one of my dad’s CDs a long time ago (as in, “before I even had an iPod and burned all my favorite songs to a CD” long time ago) but it had somehow gotten lost from my music collection.
NOW IT’S BACK!
Crank it, it’s beautiful.
Yay.
(Sorry, I’m really busy so you get garbage blogs.)
Good lord, Voctave
That first freaking chord is fantastic, and so is the rest of it.
Pentatonix is Pentatonix, but the way these guys’ voices meld together is just beautiful.
Ears for Fears
Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to introduce you to this year’s second Five Star:
So good. So good. It gets better each time I listen to it.
*heavy metal screeching*
Question: is it wrong to take the perfection that is Lone Digger and mash it up with some Eminem?
Answer: No. In fact, it’s wrong not to.
HOW PERFECT DO THESE TWO SONGS GO TOGETHER I MEAN SERIOUSLY
1:29 OH MY GOD
(Sorry, I get really excited about good mashups)
MuzzMuzzMuzzic
So Nate and I were discussing music this evening (specifically, we were trying to remember well-known classical songs and realizing that we suck at remembering well-known classical songs), so I’m in a music mood now. Here are some of my favorite lyric-free (classical and otherwise) songs!
[Edit: I added a few songs to this list as late as June, so don’t have a flip-out if you see songs on here that technically shouldn’t be on here given the date of this blog. As if anyone case enough to notice.]
- Hoedown – Aaron Copland
- Valdres March – Johannes Hanssen
- First Suite in E Flat: Chaconne – Holst
- Jupiter – Holst
- Variations on a Korean Folk Song – John Barnes Chance
- Bayou Breakdown – Brant Karrick
- The Launch – James Horner
- Sunshine – John Murphy
- Shenzou – Steven Price
- The Magnificent Seven Theme – Elmer Bernstein
- Dare You To Move – Vitamin String Quartet
- Cast Away – End Credits – Alan Silvestri
- Planet Earth II Suite – Hans Zimmer (1000% feels; this freaking song, man)
Workout Songs
NNNNNNNNNNNH I LOVE RUNNING
I forget how much I like running until I actually, y’know, go running on a consistent basis.
In the spirit of me being in run mode, I present my “Workout” playlist.
- Amazon (Original Mix) – Gabe Flaherty
- Call On Me – Eric Prydz
- Gloria (Remix) – Umberto Tozzi
- Gone – JR JR
- Hello – Martin Solveig & Dragonette
- Hula Hoop (DJ Mike D Remix) – Omi
- Infectious – Tobu
- Jealous – Chromeo
- Pump It – The Black Eyed Peas
- Shake It Off – Taylor Swift
- Strobe (Radio Edit) – Deadmau5
- Sweet Lovin’ – Sigala
- Tarzan Boy – Bango
- This Is So Good – Ehrencrona
- Tightrope – WALK THE MOON
- Wind It Up – Gwen Stefani
I obviously don’t go through all these songs in one workout; I usually put it on shuffle and just go with whatever plays.
Mash Me Up
Holy crapples, how is it that I’ve just discovered these two amazing mashups?
I can’t decide which one I like more. They’re really both very good.
Edit: OH MY GOD
WHAT THE HELL IS THIS THIS IS SO GOOD
Oof
Do you like Beyonce? Can you tolerate Justin Bieber? If so, check out this excellent mashup of Single Ladies and Sorry. The Biebs just provides the instrumental while Beyonce provides the lyrics. It actually works very, very well.
HOLY HEAVENLY BODIES, BATMAN
Everybody stop what you’re doing and listen to this right now:
This is one of my favorite songs in the solar system (HA! Get it?) and this arrangement is phenomenal. The slow section from 3:17 to 5:25 is just…nnnnnnf. Beautiful. If that doesn’t hurt your soul (in a good way), I’m pretty sure you’re dead.
Edit: Apparently, Holst originally scored all the planets (except for Neptune) for piano duet. Interesting.
Claudia’s 366 Days of Music: Year 7 – A Review
Hello, foolios! So year 7 of this project is now complete. It was a pretty damn good year for music, so without further poopin’, let’s get down to the review.
Total songs: 366
Total time: 24 hours and 29 minutes
Total size: 2.54 GB
Mean song length: 4:02.25
The Five Stars
Listed in order of acquisition!
Lone Digger by Caravan Palace
Hula Hoop [Mark Ianni Bootleg] by Omi
Tightrope by WALK THE MOON
Hide and Seek (A Capella Cover) by Dan Wright
Gone by JR JR
Jealousy by Robert DeLong
Kids by OneRepublic
Tilted by Christine and the Queens
The five most beautiful/touching songs of the year:
Hide and Seek (A Capella Cover) by Dan Wright
Silhouette by Owl City (this is such a heart-wrenching song, holy hell)
Romeo & Juliet : Act IV, Scene LII, Death of Juliet performed by The London Symphony Orchestra
The Revenant Main Theme by Ryuichi Sakamoto
The Overall Top Five
Tightrope by WALK THE MOON
For the second year in a row, WALK THE MOON takes top spot here. The fast tempo of this song is great, and I love the fact that it switches from 4/4 time to 3/4 time for the chorus. Not a lot of “popular” songs have a time change like that, let alone such a prominent one.
Gone by JR JR
This song has the best energy. I love the drums and the whistling. It makes me want to dance.
Tilted by Christine and the Queens
I might be a little biased with this one, as I just recently downloaded it and am still in the “zomg must listen to this 50 times in a row” phase, but there’s not a single thing I dislike about this song. It’s got such a unique sound and is simultaneously upbeat and kind of haunting. I’ve had it stuck in my head ever since I downloaded it.
Hide and Seek (A Capella Cover) by Dan Wright
Better than the original, in my opinion (sorry, Imogen!). Can I have a favorite chord of the year? If I can, it’s definitely the chord at 2:49. I love it.
Hula Hoop [Mark Ianni Bootleg] by Omi
As anyone can probably tell by looking at the songs I tend to post on here (or just by looking through my yearly music lists), I have a soft spot for remixes and mashups of songs that I enjoy. This is an example of that. The original Hula Hoop is okay (I think it’s got 3 stars from me?), but in keeping with the apparent theme of this year’s top five, this remix has a lot more energy and oomph to it. Kind of techno-ey.
Now, pie charts!
Pop dominated in terms of the number of songs downloaded, but things were a little more even in terms of playcount.
Onward to year eight!
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