How Do You Feel About Blog Podcasting?
Posted by Mitch on Nov 21, 2009
Yup, that’s my question: how do you feel about blog podcasting?
One of my new online friends has a pretty nice blog. However, the majority of her posts are short podcasts rather than the written word. Initially I was listening to her posts, but stopped pretty quickly. I had to think about why I didn’t like them, and I knew it had nothing to do with her or what she was talking about.
What I realized, and this may not be fair, is that I felt somewhat manipulated. Let’s think about this one for a little bit. We all want people to come to our blogs and participate in the experience. So we put together what we hope are thought provoking and entertaining posts, sometimes teaching, sometimes making people laugh, and sometimes just ranting a little bit. We might add a picture to help illuminate what we’re trying to articulate, or we might share a video here and there.
Why do we do all of this? Because we hope that people will stay on our blog for a little while. We hope that maybe they’ll like what they read, and want to read more. We hope that maybe they’ll be interested in one of the little things we have on the side of our blog, click on something, and we’ll make a little bit of money. And we hope that people will write comments, engage us in thoughts and conversation, and generally have a good time.
So, what about podcasts? Well, with either a podcast or video presentation, you pretty much have to spend a bit of time either watching or listening to it. You can’t speed read, which I do, and you can’t anticipate what’s coming. You’re pretty much stuck for anywhere from 2 to 10 minutes of listening to someone talking about whatever it is they’re talking about, or showing you. That’s why I almost never visit another blog by a guy I like, because almost all his posts are video, and I just don’t always have 10 minutes to hang around to watch a video.
Now, every once in awhile, if they’re showing you a presentation of something, that makes a lot of sense because it’s easier to show people how to do something that trying to just tell them how to do it. But what if it’s an every day thing? How much do you want to visit a blog to have to listen to a presentation every time?
I know someone’s going to say “yeah, but you have that “listen” button at the top of each post. True, but I put that there to give people an option as to whether they wanted to listen or read my post. I know some of my posts get quite long, and one of my wife’s gripes is that she hates reading long posts. But every once in awhile I’ll ask her to check a specific post out, and she’ll listen rather than read and enjoys that.
There are some websites that will put up a video, but also have the written transcript so that you get a choice as to which way you want to go. I love that option, and yes, sometimes I will just sit back and watch or listen to something instead of reading it. But it’s an option, a choice, and I love having choices.
I don’t want this to look like I’m beating up on anyone whose content is totally media driven. I’m asking this question because I really want to know what people’s general opinions on this are. If I started creating posts by recording them and, instead of writing much, just wrote a headline like “Have you heard about Google Wave? Here’s my take on it” and then posted an audio file, and all my posts were like that, would you still visit and listen to an entire file each time and still want to comment on it? Would you be encouraged to go to any of my other posts to listen to more podcasts or watch more videos if that’s all you could do when you visited one of those?
Share with me; let me know your thoughts. I’m wondering if it’s me, the guy feeling a bit old lately, or if I’m more normal than I think I am sometimes.
My Top 19 Favorite Classical Pieces
Posted by Mitch on Oct 19, 2009
This is something different, in a way. I’ve posted on my top 10 favorite TV shows, my top 16 favorite sci-fi movies of all time, and my five top presentations in history.
Now, it’s time for my top 19 favorite classical pieces ever. But it comes with a twist. Instead of just saying I like Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, which isn’t on the list so it’s a throwaway favorite, I’m indicating which movement is my favorite if it’s a long piece. That is, if there is a favorite within a long piece, which you’ll see what I mean as I go through some of these. I’m betting this won’t be one of my more popular posts, as I’ve got a feeling most folks who stop by here probably aren’t into classical music as much as they might be into TV, but hey, I wanted to do something like this, with clips and such, and so here we go. By the way, these particular posts take a lot of time to put together, but I’m trying to show y’all that, when necessary, I will put in the time to bring you something special; whether you like it or not. By the way, Beethoven is my favorite composer, and you’ll see a lot of his stuff here.
In reverse order, here we go:
19. Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances – I have to say this up front; I hate ballet. I don’t like dance like this. I do, however, love the music of a bunch of ballets. This is one of my favorites, though I don’t have any stories saying why because I really don’t know why. I couldn’t get a video that just keyed in on the part I love the most, but it’s contained within here.
18. Orff’s Carmina Burana O Fortuna – I first heard this in college and was blown away by the power of the chorus. This was definitely something I wasn’t prepared for, and yet I loved it from the minute I heard it. I used to know all the lyrics to this bad boy; those days are gone. O Fortuna is the first song from Carmina Burana, and I decided to share a bit of my favorite artist of all time, Michael Jackson, with this song.
17. Gershwin’s An American In Paris – This is a very long piece, almost 24 minutes long, so the video I have of it will only give a short portion from the beginning. I grew to love this song when I saw Gene Kelly, one of my favorite old movie stars, in the movie of the same name. Now this guy was a man’s man when it came to dancing, and the dance sequence was something else. The music was perfect for what they did with it.
16. Puccini’s Turandot, Nessun Dorma – This is a classic opera piece, and within the last couple of years, it was made popular again by Paul Potts, who won Britian’s Got Talent with it. However, the guy who owns the song as his own is Luciano Pavarotti, who I have singing it here.
15. Gershwin’s Porgy & Bess, Summertime – One of the most famous opening songs in operatic history, Gershwin gets two places from me with this powerful song, here sung by Kathleen Battle, who I was going to marry in my past life so she would just sing to me every night. Later I heard she can sometimes be difficult to work with, so I guess I got lucky there.
14. Randall Thompson’s Alleluia – This is one of my favorite choral pieces, and I’m sure it has something to do with it also being one of the first choral pieces I sung when I was a freshman in college. I’ll own up to it; I had problem singing German lyrics, even though I learned how to speak a little German, as well as write it, when I was 10 years old. Those days were gone by the time I reached college, though. But this is one word throughout, crafted well by Thompson, and I always imagined that we sounded this good every time out.
13. Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy, choral part – My first Beethoven piece on this list, the choral part could actually also be called the fourth movement. The reason it’s not is because it’s a fantasy, not a symphony or a concerto, even though the piano is prominent throughout the piece. I always want to play this piece; instead, I was one of the boys of the chorus, but not very good since it was German once again.
12. Beethoven’s Pathetique Sonata, 2nd movement – I don’t know a piano player worth anything who hasn’t played this piece. It was one of the few classical pieces that I actually knew how to play without music, and I played it very well if you ask me. However, it’s also the piece I played for my first piano teacher in college, who absolutely cringed when he heard me play it the first time. He asked me where I heard it from, and I told him from a Glenn Gould record; seems Gould was considered a “hack” by “true” classical pianists; who knew? So, I played it his way sometimes, and the way others played it at other times. Kind of like this version here.
11. Gilbert & Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore, “My gallant crew, good morning” – Gilbert & Sullivan wrote some pretty funny stuff, and it was how political commentary was done back in their day. This particular song is one of the funniest, in my opinion, as it cites a captain who’s more interested in how he’s perceived by his men than in how the job gets done.
Interlude – Andre Watts playing Chopin’s Revolutionary Etude – This isn’t one of my favorite pieces, but Andre Watts was my favorite classical pianist ever, and it’s the only piece I can find of him playing on YouTube that I kind of like. He was the guy who reminded me that I wanted to play piano. And he had style!
Top Ten Time!
10. Beethoven’s 6th Symphony, 1st movement – Also known as the Pastoral Symphony, Beethoven easily captured the free spirit and loveliness of being out in the wilderness. There’s a video montage to this song in Disney’s Fantasia that matches up to the music really well. When I need to calm down some evenings, this is one of the pieces I put on.
9. Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, overture – I love this entire piece, and actually had hoped to play it at my wedding one day, at least the recessional part. I have to say that the movies they’ve made for this are, well, weird, especially the one with Mickey Rooney in it as a young man; I’m not really sure how old he was. It’s actually another ballet where I love the music and the singing, but hate the dancing.
8. Johann Strauss’ Die Fledermaus, overture – Since there were so many Strauss’ who composed music, you get his first name here. Okay, I admit it; I grew to love this piece because of a Tom and Jerry cartoon. Many old cartoons were matched up with classical pieces, which is probably why I like them so much. In this case, one of the top conductors in history, Seiji Ozawa, is conducting.
7. Bizet’s Carmen, Habanera – Who hasn’t heard Carmen, let alone this piece, which is Carmen’s signature song? What’s wild about this clip is that the first time I ever saw Carmen, this is the lady who was singing it, Agnes Baltsa, and that was back in the late 80′s. This guy at the hospital I was working at invited me to go, as he had box seats, and man, I’ve never gone to another opera if I couldn’t get box seats. She still looks the same to me, as this performance is from 2006.
6. Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, 1st Movement – I love this entire piece, and it was my dad’s favorite piece of music ever. The first movement is spectacular, and there’s no build up to it. As for Sarah Chang, who I have playing it here, she was a child prodigy who pretty much owned this song for awhile. Itzhak Perlman and Midori both owned it at certain times also. But she was 14 in this clip; makes some of you feel inadequate, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, because it’s a long movement, you only get about half of it here.
5. Prokofiev’s 3rd Piano Concerto, 3rd Movement – I’d never heard this piece of music, though I knew of Prokofiev because he also wrote Peter and the Wolf, until I saw the movie The Competition with Richard Dreyfuss and Amy Irving; I had a major crush on Amy Irving at the time. They have her “playing” this song at the end of the movie, which wins her the competition. It’s one of those piano pieces that not only sounds great, but visually it’s a stunning performance piece. There are two ways of playing the ending on the piano; one has a lot more flash than the other one.
4. Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, 4th Movement – Beethoven’s 9th Symphony is also known as the Choral Symphony, and the 4th movement is also known as Ode To Joy. Imagine this; it was Beethoven’s last symphony, and he was deaf when he wrote it, then conducted it. And, while he was conducting it, he got the timing incorrect, but the orchestra played it the way it had been rehearsed by someone else. In total it’s a great piece, but this finale is, well, classic.
3. Beethoven’s 5th Piano Concerto, 2nd movement – Yup, another Beethoven piece. The 5th Piano Concerto is also known as the Emperor Concerto, as it was written for Napoleon. However, Beethoven realized what kind of man Napoleon actually was and stripped “emperor” from it. However, it was put back after his death, and people still call it that. Now, remember my mentioning Glenn Gould earlier? Well, this is him playing this movement, and, well, you’ll see that he’s definitely an unconventional piano player. But this movement is beautiful, and another piece that I put on when I need relaxing.
2. Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto, 1st Movement – This is just spectacular, and once again it’s a very long piece of music. It was considered way out there in his time, so much so that it was actually hated and scorned for about 10 years, until he brought it to the United States and became a star. I thought about posting both halves of this because it’s Van Cliburn, one of America’s first well known classical pianists, but instead I’m just posting half of it so you can get a feel for it, and if you want the rest of it you can go to YouTube to listen or buy it from my link in the title (talk about hitting one over the head with a hint!).
1. Rachmaninoff’s 2nd Piano Concerto, 2nd Movement – This is the very first song I pull out when I need relaxing, and one that I practiced for two years, only to get very close but no cigar on. It sounds like it would be easy to play, but homeboy must have had big hands because my hands just couldn’t get it done. Many of you will recognize part of this from a song Eric Carmen did in the 70′s called All By Myself. And it’s this piece that I actually have on videotape from the 80′s of Andre Watts playing, which I’d hoped would be on YouTube; oh well, we’ll just have to deal with this version.
And there you are, my favorite classical pieces. Of course there are plenty more that I could have thrown in, but this post is long enough, even if most of it is video. Please, listen to some of them, and let me know what you think.
I Want You Back – Jackson Five
Posted by Mitch on Jun 29, 2008
The day my dad left for Vietnam is 1969 is the same day that the Jackson Five showed up on the Ed Sullivan Show performing I Want You Back. To this day, it’s my favorite song ever. I told my wife that if I ever go into a coma, this is the song, along with the rest of the Jackson Five collection, to play if she ever hopes I wake up.
So, without any further adieu, I present the Jackson Five:
Never Saw It Coming
Posted by Mitch on Jun 14, 2008
Sometimes you see something where else that only posting a trackback won’t do. Instead, I’m going to post this little humorous video for you and also give props to the Virtual Voyage blog I first saw it at (which has now been discontinued). If this doesn’t make you laugh or feel good, you’ve lost your funny bone:
The Truth Behind The Oil Crisis
Posted by Mitch on May 14, 2008
I’m not usually a conspiracy theory kind of guy, but sometimes a guy comes along with a delivery and a message that’s just so compelling that you want to share it.
Lindsey Williams is the author of the book “The Energy Non-Crisis“, and he seems to have been an inadvertent insider, of sorts, on some of the conversations about oil and it’s future way back in the early 70′s, around the time that the Alaskan pipeline was just starting to make a name for itself. He’s a former preacher who undertook a goal of becoming a counselor for the men who worked on the pipeline, and was invited to become a non paid board member, where he heard some of the most amazing stuff. It bothered him greatly, and thus he’s made it his crusade to tell the world, or at least the United States, what’s going on, and offers his own opinion as to what needs to be done about it, but why it won’t be done.
I was fascinated by it, and I have to admit that parts of it are hard to swallow. But he’s got some proof, and that’s more than most conspiracy theorists have, so everyone can watch this and make up their own minds. It’s kind of long, so either watch it in chunks, or watch just the first five minutes and make a decision off that. But if you actually make it through the whole thing, well, it will give you lots of stuff to think about.
As a teaser, there’s supposedly a good chance that, before it’s all over, we could see gas prices between $6 and $8 a gallon; that’s worth watching this bad boy.
I Wish I Could Do The Beat Box
Posted by Mitch on May 11, 2008
How many folks remember the early days of rap when one of the most popular members of rap group was the guy who could do the beat box?
For those of you who don’t remember, or aren’t hip to this, the beat box guy was the one who made all the sounds that sounded like, well, whatever he wanted them to sound like. Some guys could make themselves sound like record scratching; some sounded just like drums. Some could sound like other instruments; it really didn’t matter. They helped keep the beat when music wasn’t available, and then they would carry it over when there was some music later on. These guys were essential for adding a whole heap of flavor to the beat, and it probably made some groups like The Fat Boys viable in the industry.
Well, a blog post from The Assimilated Negro titled More Beatbox Assimilation; Where Da Ladies At has captured a nice cross section of current masters and challengers to the throne. I thought it was better to link to his blog rather than post them all here.
And, though I once referenced the song in another post on this blog, why not share the real thing, right? So, below, here’s Push It:
A PC Sense Of Deja Vu
Posted by Mitch on May 7, 2008
Wow, talk about your weird senses of deja vu. My wife and I were just talking yesterday about this video made by some kid last year where he was crying about the treatment Britney Spears was getting from the media for her, uhhh, aberrant behavior. We were discussing it because there’s talk that this kid is possibly going to be offered some kind of reality TV deal; talk about having one’s 15 minutes extended into 30.
Well, now there’s this, which isn’t exactly the same thing, but it’s pretty close. I read about it on John Chow’s Blog today, and I thought it would be neat to, for once, possibly be on the forefront of a viral video campaign.
And so I bring you “Leave PC Alone!”
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