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Western music history

2011-11-08T02:59:00.000-08:00

SUMMARY OF WESTERN CLASSICAL MUSIC HISTORY. By Marlon Feld.

Kohler & Campbell Piano

2011-11-04T14:56:00.000-07:00

Kohler & Campbell Piano.

See its history here. In summary, the brand started its production by Charles Kohler and John Calvin Campbell in NY, 1896. It was acquired by South Korea piano manufacturer Samick in 1988.

Born To Run (lyrics)

2011-08-17T19:45:00.000-07:00

Born To Run - by Bruce Spreensteen.

No comment on the music. But for the lyrics, I like this one: "The highway's jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive". My colleague has this on her googlechat name card.

Nokia Fugue

2011-07-09T14:30:00.000-07:00

So it's true, someone is still writing classic music in modern days ..

Nokia Fugue.

Here is the composer's website.

The Set Theory

2011-05-02T00:29:00.000-07:00

All About Set Theory. This is the theory of Schoenberg behind his twelve-tone methods.

A history of western music

2011-04-24T20:20:00.000-07:00

A history of western music, 8th Edition, J. P. Burkholder, D. J. Grout, C. V. Palisca. (January 30, 2009)

《西方音乐史》第六版／（美）格劳特、帕利斯卡著；余志刚译. 人民音乐出版社. 2010年9月:ISBN 710303408, 772页

《西方音乐史》第四版／（美）格劳特、帕利斯卡著；汪启璋、吴佩华、顾连理译. －人民音乐出版社，1996年1月：ISBN 7103013101，791页

重要的单卷本西方音乐史
西方音乐史教学大纲
关于新版格劳特《西方音乐史》及其历史写作
“2007外国音乐经典论著翻译出版研讨会”综述
关于西方音乐史研究的一些思考
《西方音乐史》读书笔记（elvenring 09新年补充版）
(上海音乐学院)编译室记事
音乐翻译专业的双子星——顾连理、吴佩华的艺术人生及其音乐译作初探
中央音乐学院2007年硕士研究生入学考试参考书目
中国音乐学院硕士研究生招生中外音乐史考试大纲
中国音乐学院考研一站式信息

To translate book: 1) make sure it is not translated yet, 2) get copyright authorization from original author, 3) contact publication house.

For example, see here for review of the translator of 西方文明中的音乐.
马爱农：怎样才能成为一个好的文学翻译工作者
李勇军:民国中期稿费标准摭谈
翻译公司克扣自由译员翻译费的几种损招

The Haydn/Mozart String Quartet Quiz

2011-03-15T23:34:00.001-07:00

The Haydn/Mozart String Quartet Quiz

Hu Xia

2011-02-27T01:17:00.000-08:00

Professor Hu Ning told me about his son Hu Xia, in the party at Jade Dynasty Seafood Restaurant on 2/26/2011.

胡夏公共主页
zh.wikipedia.org: 胡夏
YouTube: 胡夏火柴天堂

A History of Western Music - 7th Edition

2011-02-12T14:54:00.000-08:00

Online book A History of Western Music - 7th Edition.

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina

2011-02-09T23:49:00.000-08:00

Introduction at wikipedia: Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (3 February 1525 or 2 February 1526 – 2 February 1594) was an Italian Renaissance composer of sacred music and the best-known 16th-century representative of the Roman School of musical composition. He had a lasting influence on the development of church music, and his work has often been seen as the culmination of Renaissance polyphony.

Introduction at Catholic Encyclopedia.

Organum

2011-01-29T15:14:00.000-08:00

Organum.

The Beauty Song

2011-01-22T22:15:00.000-08:00

佳人曲: 北方有佳人，绝世而独立，一顾倾人城，再顾倾人国，宁不知，倾城与倾国，佳人难再得！

English translation of "The Beauty Song":

Version 1: From Beauty song from house of flying daggers:

An extraordinary beauty in the North
She's the most beautiful being of the world
From her first glance the city bows before her
From her second glance the empire falls into ruins
But there isn't such an empire or a city
that we can love more than this beauty

Version 2: From [1][2] plus my modification (the last 3 sentences):

Dazzling beauty in the north
Peerless and graceful is she
One glance from her and a city falls
A second glance leaves the whole nation in ruins
Don't you know that
Even with the cost of a city and a nation
Another such beauty could be found nowhere else

Personally, I like the second translation much better.

China's Got Talent 2010

2010-12-19T16:35:00.000-08:00

China's Got Talent 2010 (8/8) Champion 刘伟 (Liu, Wei). Armless. Play piano by feet. Sing as well. I think his sings not so well, but plays piano really touching.

Second place: 張馮喜 (Zhang, Fengxi). Only 6 years old. She does good talk show.

Russian beatboxer etc.

2010-12-18T23:31:00.000-08:00

Russian beatboxer. This is funny.

Amazing Glass Artist!

Homeless Singer Has Amazing Voice (youtube version is here). The singer is actually not a homeless, but an artist called Luc Arbogast. He has two voices, one male and one female. He sings medieval songs. He is a French. This is his myspace homepage.

Dog Dancing to Merengue Music. Very funny.

The Musical Genius - Derek Paravicini

2010-12-18T23:18:00.000-08:00

The Musical Genius - Derek Paravicini. Born July 1979 prematurely by 15 weeks. Blind, has symptoms of autism and partial mental impairment. He can convert any hearing into piano play though. He can also memorize most of the pieces of music he heard just once.

Derek at CBS.

Wiki: Derek Paravicini

Official website: Derek Paravicini

Video Editing

2010-10-04T02:09:00.000-07:00

I'm making videos recently.

I use Sony DSC-T90 to shoot HDTV-720p quality video. The format is MP4, which can be played by VLC media player.

Next I use VideoPad Video Editor to edit it. Different clips are cut and put together. It seems like the subtitle added is not in nice font. It looks rather stout. When saving movie the YouTube HQ format (.flv, 854x480, 25.00 standard frame rate) so far gives the best quality. I tried other formats such as HD1080, HD720, Widescreen TV and Traditional TV, and used other file format (primarily .wmv), all give aliased graphical effect. .flv format can be played by VLC media player. However there is no way to drag on the progress bar, once you do the VLC media player ends the play. Also the VLC media player needs download and install for most windows users and not so convenient.

So I use the Prism Video File Converter Plus to convert from .flv format to .wmv format. This has much better quality than the .wmv file directly generated by VideoPad Video Editor. I'm hoping to add subtitles using Windows Movie Maker now.

Well, Windows Movie Maker does not keep the widescreen setting of the movie. So I'm now trying Subtitle Workshop. It's said the version 2.51 is the best, latter versions not as good. So I downloaded Subtitle Workshop version 2.51.

- 10/19/2010
Subtitle workshop 2.51 works great.

VideoPad Video Editor can directly save the movie to .avi format (parameters: custom, 1024x576). This has the best quality, even better than the previous .wmv format converted by Prism.

Font: when saving as .avi, font height 26 looks the best. When saving as .wmv converted by Prism, font height 24 looks the best. Previously I mentioned the font looks stout. That was because the font's border color is white. Set it to black then it's perfect.

- 12/3/2011
Extracting audio from video.

Extracting audio from video can be done using the recent version of VLC media player (version 1.1.11). But when the video is big, VLC will crash. The workaround is to extract the audio from the original video and compile it into a small video file, for example, a video with a still image.

This latter task can be done in two steps: 1) Open the video in VideoPad, split the audio track from video track, choose the audio section needed, open a still image and compile the chosen audio track with the image, save to a new video file (e.g., in wmv format). 2) In VLC media player, open "Media -> Convert/Save", follow the instructions, the audio can be saved into OGG, mp3, mp4, flac, CD formats.

James Jean

2010-07-18T02:31:00.000-07:00

James Jean is an artist originally from Taiwan.

This is his website.

Here is one animation video made by him.

Online Book: Fundamentals of Piano Practice

2010-05-21T15:32:00.000-07:00

Fundamentals of Piano Practice. 270 pages. Available on amazon.

This book is written by a physicist Chuan C. Chang. The book includes two parts of material: 1) Piano technique, 2) tuning your piano. The book can be downloaded in PDF format. I have not read this book yet but think it's worth a reading since it's an art performance book written from the angle of a research scientist.

Valentina Lisitsa

2010-05-18T03:15:00.000-07:00

I like this play, both the music and the pianist.

Valentina Lisitsa plays Rachmaninoff Etude Op. 39 No. 6 "Little Red Riding Hood".

Lola Astanova

2009-09-10T21:16:00.000-07:00

Youtube homepage: http://www.youtube.com/user/LolaAstanova

This is a very passionate young pianist with amazing skills, power and speed. She's also good in composition. The following two are in the style of Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev, which in her words, is a kind of music joke of distorted baroque/classical arrangement.

Here's her version on Rihanna's "Don't stop the music":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lqorloj2YZY
I can listen to this many times without stop, without feel bored.

Another one of her version on Madonna's "Music":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pfeohQSaS8

Rachmaninoff Moment Musicaux No. 4 in E:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPEd8AZX5dQ

Lola was born in former USSR. She started learning piano at 6 and began on-stage performance at 8. She received MS in piano major from Rice University and now resides in New York.

Other very good young female pianists include Valentina Lisitsa and Valentina Igoshina. But I'd prefer Lola Astanova.

Adiemus

2009-04-19T18:54:00.000-07:00

What is "Adiemus"?

It's the title of a series of albums by British composer Karl Jenkins.
See wiki page on Adiemus.

I like this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL8kZ-iVk90
I have heard this music at a bookstore but couldn't find out what music it was.
Now I know.

Some interesting stuff

2009-02-14T17:21:00.000-08:00

How To Juggle Three Balls

Some pop songs on guitar

2009-01-27T22:58:00.000-08:00

Take Me Home Country Road (John Denver)
Yesterday Once More (guitar solo, Vocal by Carpenters) (Richard Carpenter, John Bettis)
Edelweiss (From Sound of Music)
Romance Of Love
Green Sleeves
Red River Valley (solo1, solo 2)
Canon in D (solo 1, solo 2) (Pachelbel)
龙的传人
青春
同桌的你
Also lots of songs by 罗大佑, e.g., 童年

FAERIE'S AIRE and DEATH WALTZ

2008-12-15T05:09:00.000-08:00

What supernatural sheet music!
Page 1, Page 2.
Another link, which contains the midi performance of page 1.

See more scores of this kind.

A little nightmare music

2008-12-06T15:10:00.000-08:00

Very funny performance.
Here is a 7-minute trailer to A little nightmare music
By the Igudesman and joo: Aleksey Igudesman & Richard Hyung-Ki Joo.

Audio Editting

2008-11-22T15:20:00.000-08:00

Audacity is an open source software used widely for audio editing.
Audacity use the LAME MP3 encoder to convert audio files into MP3 format.

See "Where Do You Create and Share Your Audio Files and Remixes?" at youtube for relevant suggestions.

The following are my current steps from collecting raw recording to compile into audio and video:

1) Digital voice recorder is first used to record the sound into wav format. The raw file is rather dry. This can be seen from the "ocean mist" wave shape when played in windows media player: one only sees some very small individual mist peaks, instead of the normal wide and abundant mist.

2) Open this raw file in Audacity and export it into MP3 or WAV format. Then the wave shape becomes normal. Audacity has the function to remove white noise, but trying it doesn't show that the effect was actually good due to sound distortion, so I gave up.

3) After this, windows movie maker can be used to incorporate the audio into a video, which can then be uploaded to youtube. In this step, one should use the audio file exported from Audacity. Using the raw file would result in plenty of noise, and sound quality totally screwed.

However, it should be noted that seems the automatic "processing" function of youtube would trim the video to remove silent ending. This leads to the loss of the last chord in the second version above, which appears in the end after a while of silence. That's bad. The solution is to add some variation to the end. Since the sound cannot be changed, an end title page can be added (change font color to be the same as background, so words won't show).

Online music resources

2008-11-10T15:20:00.000-08:00

Youtube no doubt is a comprehensive source.

http://www.medici.tv is one dedicated to audiovisual programs in performing arts and documentary. It was launched on April 30, 2008.

http://imslp.org/wiki/Main_Page stands for the International Music Score Library Project. Lots of open source music scores can be found on this site. It went online on February 16, 2006.

Bach Inventions and Sinfonias

2008-11-06T00:59:00.000-08:00

Bach wrote 2 collections of short fugue pieces for music education of his pupils. They became popular exercises for beginners. But of course their value is far more than just exercises.

The 15 2-part pieces are called inventions. The 15 3-part pieces are called sinfonias. These are numbered as BWV 772–801, altogether 30 pieces.

Here is an article on these inventions and sinfonias.

The performance of all these inventions and sinfonias by Glen Gould can be found on youtube.

I think these pieces are not particularly melodic. They are good demonstrations of fugue music though, and good finger exercises.

For inventions, I like No. 9 and No 13 most, especially No. 13, since I ever heard live performance on this.

Piano collections

2008-10-26T04:45:00.000-07:00

This favorite list will grow as I listen to more.

Bach
-

Badarzewska
- The Maiden's Prayer

Beethoven
- Fur Elise WoO.59
- Moonlight sonata 1st movement [Piano (Wilhelm Kempff)]
- Pathetique sonata 2nd movement [Piano (Glenn Gould)]
- Turkischer Marsch Op.76 [Piano (Evgeny Kissin)]
Note: Beethoven has 32 sonatas. All are introduced at wikipedia.

Chopin
- Fantaisie Impromptu in C# Minor, Op. 66 [Piano (Yundi Li)]
- Nocturne Op. 9 No. 1 [Piano (Vadim Chaimovich)]
- Nocturne in E-flat Major Op. 9 No. 2 [Piano (Yundi Li)]
- Nocturne no. 20 in C sharp minor Posthumous [Piano] [Piano, part]
- Etude “Chanson de L'adieu”in E Major Op.10-3 ("Tristesse", Good bye) [Piano]
- Revolution etude (Op.10-12) [Piano]
- Waltz in A minor (Op. Posth.) [Piano]
- Minute Waltz (Waltz in D flat major, op.64, No. 1) [Piano (Kissin)]

Debussy (1862-1918, French, Impressionism)
- Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune [Dance accompaniment]
- Clair de lune (Moonlight) [Piano] [Piano (Marianelli)] [Orchestra]
- Syrinx [Flute]
- Beau soir [Violin & Piano]
- Dieu! Qu'il La Fait Bon Regarder [Chorus]
- Arabesque No.1 [Piano]

Grieg
- Nocturne Op. 54 No. 4 [Piano]

Liszt
- La Campanella (Clock) [Piano (Yundi Li)]
- Liebestraum (Dream of love) [Piano (Evgeny Kissin)]

Mendelssohn
- Spring Song Op.62-2 (from Songs without words) [Piano]

Mozart
- Turkischer Marsch K.331 [Fun: Two pianos]

Rachmaninoff (notorious for being difficulty)
- Piano Concerto No.2 [Piano (Rachmaninoff)]
- Piano Concerto No.3 [Piano (Kissin)]
- Preludeium cis moll [Piano (Rachmaninoff)]

Rimsky-Korsakov, Nikolai
- Flight of the Bumble-bee [Piano (Yuja Wang)]

Saint Saëns
- The Carnival of the Animals: The Aquarium [Orchestra]
- The Carnival of the Animals: The swan [Cello]

Schumann
- Traumerei Op.15-7 (Fantasy) [Piano (Horowitz)]

Tchaikovsky
- Piano Concerto 1, 1st movement [Piano and Orchestra]
- Nutcracker suite [Piano (Mee-Hyun Ahn)]

Pachelbel's canon in D Major

2008-10-09T14:03:00.000-07:00

Similar to the Air on the G String by Bach, Pachelbel's canon in D Major is famous Baroque music.

Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nPyLLedfAs

See introduction and score.

Composers

2008-08-30T16:25:00.000-07:00

- David Nevue
Youtube link: Solitude - Just serves as a gateway link. This song by itself is not very interesting to me. I like his greensleeves arragement.

Green sleeves

2008-08-28T13:14:00.000-07:00

Green sleeves is a song written possibly in the 1500s in England, and said to be one of the most widely spread songs of Europe. This song was mentioned in Shakepeare's 1602 drama "The merry wives of windsor", suggesting that it might be already popular then. Folk story says it was written by King Henry VIII for his wife Anna Boleyn, although this must be just a legend since the song was written in a style known in England only after Henry VIII passed away.

Here is a relatively complex piano arrangement (by David Nevue): Green Sleeves (piano).

This is a vocal version (soprano with lute accompaniment): Green Sleeves (vocal). It contains the sections 1, 2, 3, 4 and 8 of the 8 sections in the lyrics, and is sung in a setting mimicking the mid ages. The variations of the tune is by Francis Cutting. It usually should be sung by a man (tenor) though.

A vocal version by man and ensemble: Green Sleeves (vocal by king singer's (A capella)).

Another one by orchestra: Green Sleeves (orchestra).

The lyrics says:
Alas, my love, you do me wrong,
To cast me off discourteously.
For I have loved you well and long,
Delighting in your company.

More about this song and its lyrics are at wiki: greensleeves.

Movie music

2008-08-15T15:49:00.000-07:00

Forrest Gump - original music cut from the movie

Forrest Gump - Main Theme - Piano Solo
Titanic - My heart will go on - Piano Solo
These two are played by yoursoul85. He seems to be a student in Germany. Very delicate rendition. Here's another one played by him: Sonata in A, K331 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. This one was used in Jet Li's movie Unleashed. It's also the one that The legend of 1900's "a mozart reincarnated" theme mimics. He also composes a little bit and here is a Jazzy one: Whatever Comes. His performance reminds me how Germans are known as perfectionists.

Bram Stoker's Dracula: Music video
This is a quite famous vampire movie. See wikipedia's introduction to it.

Some movies are made specifically with music or musicians as main theme. For example:
- The Pianist (2002). Story of a Jewish-Polish pianist survived the 2nd world war. See scene of Chopin Ballade No. 1.
- The Legend of 1900 (1998). This movie features Jazz music, and has been introduced in an early post.
- Amadeurs (1998). Life story of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. See scene of Mozart v.s. Salieri. I'm really sick of the weird laughters of the "Mozart" in this movie though.
- A song to remember (1945). A biography of Polish pianist and composer Fryderyc Chopin.

Young Korean Guitar Player

2008-07-29T03:10:00.000-07:00

Sungha Jung - With or Without You - Sungha Jung
Another talented kid.

The legend of 1900

2008-03-29T01:23:00.000-07:00

This is what I watched on the last day of the week of Spring break.

This movie is about an orphan, named Danny Boodman T. D. Lemon 1900, born and raised on a ship. He was blessed with the talent of a natural pianist, joined the band of the ship and became well-known. Later the inventor' of jazz, Jelly Roll Morton, boarded the ship to challenge him for a dual in playing Jazz. But 1900 managed to beat him. Although being encouraged by many including his friend Max to leave the ship for a real life on the dry land, he couldn't handle the pressure of facing the complicated uncertainty of the world beyond the ship, and decided to stay as a sailer on the ocean. For this reason he lost the opportunity of becoming rich and famous (well, he was already famous, otherwise Jelly Morton wouldn't come for a dual), as well as the opportunity of chasing a French girl who traveled on the ship to immigrate to America, whom he secretly admired. Eventually, after the WWII, he stayed on the ship and sank with it when the boat was blew up.

The movie was made in 1998 by the Italian directory Guiseppe Tornatore. It featured the actor Tim Roth. The music was composed by the Italian composer Ennio Morricone. In 2000 this movie won the Golden Globe Award. See wikipedia for more information about this movie: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_1900

This movie features lots of piano scenes:
- Magic Waltz
- Jazz dual I
- Jazz dual II
- Playing Love
- Piano meditations
- Child prodigy

There is also an online collection of its sound track.

It's a movie worth watching for whoever enjoys listening to and playing piano, especially Jazz.

American idol 08' Top 11 (3/18)

2008-03-26T02:50:00.000-07:00

This is the second week for Beatles' songs.

Michael Johns - A Day In The Life Not bad. On the other hand it is not as good as the initial ones. His voice does not sound so complicated as should be. In general it's not bad but lacks variation, a little bleached. Shining moment is what's needed to impress the judges.

David Archuleta - Long And Winding Road Very good, although cannot say brilliant.

Kristy Lee Cook - You've Got To Hide Your Love Some people say she's boring and cocky. Fine with me, although indeed I agree it's kind of a boring arrangement, the voice is flat and dry.

Brooke White - Here Comes The Sun The judges said she'd get better song choice. She said many oks.

American Idol - Jason Castro - Michelle Simon said that this is a TV show rather than a radio show favors him because his guffy face sold it.

Syesha Mercado - Yesterday Not bad. Might be her best performance.

It's getting subtle. Some performances are not so easily distinguished as being good or bad. The judges sometimes say the performances are disconnected. I think the judges' comments are somewhat disconnected sometimes. Michael John's Bohemian Rhapsody is absolutely stunning, one can easily tell. But the performances here are hard to tell.

Ave Maria

2008-03-26T01:32:00.000-07:00

"Ave Maria" (Latin for Hail, Mary: a traditional Catholic and Eastern Orthodox prayer calling for the intercession of Mary, the mother of Jesus) - the ode to the Saint Maria. An aria. Many composers wrote different pieces for this theme. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ave_Maria

Ave Maria (by Franz Biebl)
- Chanticleer (America chorus)

Ave Maria (by Franz Schubert)
- Pavarotti (Italian)
- Michael Bolton (American song writer and singer)
- barbara bonney
- Svetlana Strezeva
- Jessye Norman (showing score)
- Yehudi Menuhin (Violin, 1947)
- Piano. Another Piano. Two pianos.

Ave Maria (by Bach/Charles Gounod)
- Celtic Woman (Irish music ensemble)

Ave Maria (by Giulio Caccini [Vladimir Vavilov])
- Sumi Jo (Korean)
- Celine Dion (Canadian)

Ave Maria (by Anton Bruckner)
- The University of Michigan Men's Glee Club 148th Annual Fall Concert
- Vienna boyschoir

Ave Maria (Giuseppe Verdi, from Act IV of Otello)
- Renee Fleming (American soprano) She once performed this just 2 weeks after giving birth.

Ave Maria Paien (Notre Dame de Paris song, 21th)
- French singer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY30Qgj6LJM

Young generation of pianists

2008-03-26T00:38:00.000-07:00

Li Yundi
- Chopin Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2
- Listz La Campanella
- Chopin "Fantasie" Impromptu, Op. 66
- Mozart Rondo Alla Turca (four hands with Jay Chou)

Lang Lang
His facial expression is funny.
- Chopin Nocturne Op. 27 No. 2
- Lang Lang and his father at Carnegie Hall - "Horse". I never knew his father is good at Erhu. I like this one.
- "I play piano like a multimedia website"
- Lang Lang & Marc Yu - Schubert Four Hands Part II
- Lang Lang Gone Mad

Evgeni Kissin (Russian)
- la campanella
- The Turkish March (Rondo Alla Turca)

Mee-Hyun Ahn (Korean)
- Tchaikovsky-The Nutcracker Suite for piano solo
Perfection with this piece. She teaches at Yale. Some say "those who can't do, teach". This is not true.

Oksana Bella (Russian)
- Chopin - Fantasie Impromptu
- Chopin - Nocturne
- La Cumparsita
She also composes.

Grigory Sokolov

2008-03-26T00:08:00.000-07:00

So energetic and firm.. this is Grigory Sokolov! (Russian pianist, 1950.4.18 - ) Although always a low key person, he definitely is among the best pianists of his generation. Listen to these:
- Couperin - Le Tic-Tac-Choc (So fluidish and easy. This is a hard piece yet sounds so effortless.)
- Prokofiev 7th Sonata - 3. Precipitato There is a jazzy groove in this composition.
- Stravinsky - Petrouchka: chez petrouchkag (Russian Dance?)
- Beethoven - Sonata No. 15 op.28 - III Scherzo Trio.

Best performers of his generation also include vladimir horowitz and Glen Gould. Glen Gould is most famous for playing the music of Bach.

François Couperin: (1668 – 1733) French Baroque composer, organist and harpsichordist. His family was gifted in music. François himself was called "Couperin le Grand" (Couperin the Great). He composed "Le Tic-Tac-Choc".

More singing competition

2008-03-11T00:40:00.000-07:00

Top 10 performance

David Archuleta's "Imagine" by John Lennon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbtC8Tdj-88
The strongest performance of this round.

Michael John's "You can go your own way": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjN4GFdkvrc
It's ok. But as Simon said, "there is no Moment".

Top 8 performance:

Jason Castro "Hallelujah": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0AT_rwiogc
without guitar, actually shows his voice. Not bad.

Michael Johns "Don't You Forget About Me": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVQeJ23tleQ
Song is ok, not special though.

David Archuleta "Another Day in Paradise": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-E5y11OpAM

In summary. All performances are not bad, but just not as fresh as first time heard their voices.

Britain's got talent '07

2008-03-02T04:34:00.000-08:00

Paul Potts - the Opera singer & cellphone saleman:
First performance - Sleepless tonight (nessun dorma): http://youtube.com/watch?v=DelJrP3P7tA
Semi-final - Time to say goodby: http://youtube.com/watch?v=rDB9zwlXrB8
Final - Sleepless tonight: http://youtube.com/watch?v=K_5W4t_CBzg
Caruso: http://youtube.com/watch?v=O16nOsG6Z3k
Although skills still can be improved (as opera works like an academic field), he simply has an amazingly touching voice.

Connie Talbot - only 6:
Final: http://youtube.com/watch?v=2cnRXmMn2Ag
She sang with her grandma.

Am's got talent '07

2008-03-02T04:10:00.000-08:00

Bianca Ryan - the 12-year-old unusual talent:
First performance: http://youtube.com/watch?v=prXfr_0IeN4
Final: http://youtube.com/watch?v=8uL3kWFQSpY
Somehow I feel the first is better than the final.
Spotlight - extended version: http://youtube.com/watch?v=DhVBtResJic
Here there are also briefs of many other songs by her.
Simon commented in this video that Bianca was potentially one of the best singers he ever heard of in his life.
Bianca - Merry Christmas: http://youtube.com/watch?v=dV8IE_vtTq8
Bianca - You light up my life: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRU7e9Qe-qI
Bianca - O Holy Night: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uXncfrRUi0
Her album was out in November 2007.

Taylor Ware - the 12-year-old yodeler:
First performance: http://youtube.com/watch?v=bDDEk2AMJAI
This should be better than later performances in the show, since the impression is totally fresh and unexpected. Later it seems to be repetition and not much new, and more country-style singing instead of yodeling.

Am Idol '08

2008-02-21T21:18:00.000-08:00

My favorite: Australian Michael John. He combines skill, style, taste, passion, strength and maturity. I hope he can win the entire competition. One judge Randy said he's like a rising legendary rock star. Whether he would depends on things other than his already-polished skill.
Bohemian Rhapsody: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le8fjhSQqIM
Light my fire: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgW54_Htkvg
A shorter audition of Light my fire: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_1Iv2zJQxg

David Archuleta is another natural singer. He's just 17, and much younger than Michael (who is 28). His voice is quite mature for his age. There are youtube videos of his performance at 12, those were already fantastic. Besides voice being mature, he is a typical teenager in every other aspect. He will shine when getting elder. I think his best audition is Shop around: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7jk-pP3rMA

Castro (20) is like the hot guy next door. He is pretty good with What a day for a daydream:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtHsqqE7Edg

Kristy Lee good with country music on Amazing grace:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8hxo--7ehU
But it's said she quitted twice for something like this before, and not so consistent with other songs.

Santa online

2007-12-25T02:09:00.000-08:00

Tracking Santa's Christmas Trek: http://www.noradsanta.org
Santa's blog: http://clauschronicles.blogspot.com/
Santa and Christmas at North Pole: http://www.northpole.com/
Send your email to Santa: http://www.emailsanta.com/
The official website of Santa: http://www.saintnick.org/

Hello world!

2007-08-17T15:34:00.000-07:00

After a long time, I'm creating a new homepage again. This time a blog.

The main reason is that my school e-account is almost full. So I have to move some files elsewhere. This may move beyond the point of just finding another space to relocate my files.

But wait, it seems the types of documents I can upload is really limited. The uploaded files also cannot be published to the public. So this may not be what I wanted. The use of this blog site thus degenerates down to just a blog.