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Today's Dose of Culture


DonRocks

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Hit play, let them sing in the background, then cancel the exterminator. :) Amazing.

How real is this? And do you know how much it's slowed down?

One very odd thing is that they're extremely tonal (speaking in terms of a diatonic scale here), centering in the key of E-flat major (yes, I have absolute pitch), but not only that, they're modulating into related (nearby) keys as well on the circle of fifths - it's a very European (as opposed to Asian) music system this is based on which makes me a bit suspicious - why would crickets be masters of western music? The dominant goes to the sub-dominant, and then always resolves to the tonic - it sounds so "¦ perfectly early-renaissance choral, and just so pitch-perfect, that I'm just having trouble believing it's real, and there's enough melodic variation where it sounds composed rather than chanted.

I'm sorry to be such a grinch. :( If it's real, it's *beyond* amazing. Shortly after the 8-minute mark, the melody begins to be sung in *thirds* (a G and a B-flat against an E-flat harmony, then going up half a tone to an A-flat and a C) which seems "¦ well, have you ever read the thing about putting enough chimpanzees in front of typewriters, and eventually one of them will type Shakespeare?

On the other hand, nature provides us with some of the most absolute visual artistic beauty there is - so why not exquisite musical beauty as well? It's the European nature of this music that makes me extremely skeptical - I'm very curious to see how this plays out because although I hope it's true, it seems impossible to me.

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I thought that I'd seen *every* high-speed guitarist there was to see, but this guy surpasses them all. Don't stop after 30 seconds and say "Wow!" - you have to keep watching the entire video. I would not be at all surprised if this is *the* fastest guitar player who ever lived.

Vahid Iran Shahi plays Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee"

Watch until the end.

Just to verify, I wrote my friend Curtis, who made it to the final three (about 30 years ago) to be lead guitarist in Ozzy Osbourne's band. His response when I asked him if he'd ever seen anyone faster:

OMG!!!!!!
Never anything even close!!

"‹PS - I found a couple videos on YouTube of electric guitarists playing this piece TEN TIMES FASTER. I don't buy it - with Shahi, I hear every single note cleanly. Here's an opinion piece on the subject.

---

PPS - From my classical violinist friend Gary:

Dude it's a fake. The sound is electronic which is why you can alter it. I have the software.

And from my classical pianist friend Sasha:

Likely to be a fake.

Well, if this is a fake, it's an amazingly good fake, and tells me you can't trust *anything* you see on the internet. In support of this being a fake lies one very simple question: why haven't I heard of this guy before today? One other thing: if you were playing *that* fast, you wouldn't be smiling for the camera which he does in several sections, even at the highest speed.

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鬱

See that?

It's not a fingerprint.

It is a kanji character requiring 29 strokes to write.

What does it mean? Aptly, it means "depression."

That said, I had a feeling that the English version of Wikipedia might not be the last word on the subject, so I dug a little deeper and found "Crazy Kanji: What's The Highest Stroke Count?" on NihonShock.com

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Here's my culture for y'all today: J-Pop meets death metal. Thus: Babymetal

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cirhQ8iLdbw

So this plays into the esoteric intersection of fetishes between tattooed metal rocker-chicks and little Asian dolls - a pretty scary combo. :unsure:

How the hell did *you* know about this, SeanMike, hmmmmmmm? :lol: 

Cheers,

Jedgar Hoover <--- apologies to Lily Tomlin

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If you've ever stood on a stage and spoken or sung when no one had any right or opportunity to interrupt you, and an audience was entirely at your disposal, you may understand what power you have in that situation, even if you're not very good and even if you're scared shitless. Here is some kid named Josiah Green singing "Vittoria mio core", a little aria by the Italian Baroque composer Giacomo Carissimi, which I have loved for a long time. The kid isn't much good, although he seems like he might learn to sing one day. But I just love this little piece of video. Watch Josiah. He starts out a little bit scared. He realizes nobody is going to laugh at him. He stops being scared. He begins to feel his power. It doesn't hurt that probably more than half his audience of both sexes want to do it with him. (This is an advantage that some of us may never have enjoyed.) By the end he's glorying in the sway he holds over everyone within the orbit of his physical presence and the sound of his voice. The little toss of his head he gives at the end was never taught him, nor would it ever need to be. I love him, although I never heard of him before yesterday and don't suppose I'll ever hear of him again. Vittoria mio core.

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On 11/15/2013 at 6:32 PM, DonRocks said:

I thought that I'd seen *every* high-speed guitarist there was to see, but this guy surpasses them all. Don't stop after 30 seconds and say "Wow!" - you have to keep watching the entire video. I would not be at all surprised if this is *the* fastest guitar player who ever lived.

 

Watch until the end.

Just to verify, I wrote my friend Curtis, who made it to the final three (about 30 years ago) to be lead guitarist in Ozzy Osbourne's band. His response when I asked him if he'd ever seen anyone faster:

OMG!!!!!!
Never anything even close!!

"‹PS - I found a couple videos on YouTube of electric guitarists playing this piece TEN TIMES FASTER. I don't buy it - with Shahi, I hear every single note cleanly. Here's an opinion piece on the subject.

---

PPS - From my classical violinist friend Gary:

Dude it's a fake. The sound is electronic which is why you can alter it. I have the software.

And from my classical pianist friend Sasha:

Likely to be a fake.

Well, if this is a fake, it's an amazingly good fake, and tells me you can't trust *anything* you see on the internet. In support of this being a fake lies one very simple question: why haven't I heard of this guy before today? One other thing: if you were playing *that* fast, you wouldn't be smiling for the camera which he does in several sections, even at the highest speed.

PPPS - Tina S (the French teen "sensation" from 2015) was a fraud, too, and it's amazing that nobody has come out and said this.

(If these people weren't frauds, then why haven't we heard of them, five-years later?)

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On 3/12/2012 at 11:29 PM, DonRocks said:

Save this read for when you have 10 good minutes to spend on it. It's a fascinating piece about the first-ever electronic musical instrument, the Theremin (demonstrated for УльяновLenin (sorry, bit of pedantry there) in 1921 by its titular inventor). Apparently, people still play it - I'd never heard of it before now - and yet, it's that spacey-sounding thing in The Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations."

They say you learn something new every day, and damned if I didn't pull it off with only 30 minutes remaining on this lovely Monday.

Listen to the first few notes of the opening to the theme song of Alfred Hitchcock's 1945 film, "Spellbound," written by the great composer Miklós Rózsa (Academy Award, Best Original Score).

 

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