Updates from the world's leading classical music label
Today marks the beginning of the Chinese New Year, which is a moveable feast, unlike its western counterpart that always falls on 1 January. It also differs in adopting a particular zodiac animal, repeating the association after every 12-year cycle. Today, therefore, marks the Chinese New Year of the Horse, succeeding the Year of the Read More …
Garibaldi’s Red Shirts are marching triumphantly en route to the successful Risorgimento, the establishment in 1861 of a united Italy—though the actual ramifications were complex and true uniting took longer. Lustily they sing, and the song on their lips is none other than Va pensiero, the Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves from Verdi’s Nabucco (8.571000), Read More …
Whatever the instrument, mastery of performance technique is a daunting challenge. But spare a thought for string players who probably suffer at the hands of exploitation more than others. Not content with demanding accuracy and fluency over a range of some four octaves, composers frequently dip into the strings’ cosmetic box, giving them makeovers that Read More …
Western concert flutes today may look entirely different from the perforated bones played by our distant ancestors, but the technical principles are exactly the same. No matter how sophisticated the instrument has become over the years, we are still all basically blowing over a hole in a hollow tube to make a sound. Any composition Read More …
Although the sacred message of Christmas remains steadfast, the season’s secular makeovers tend to morph more readily. Who would have thought, for example, that the uplifting tale of Santa’s iconic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (8.990013) would already have hit a second-generation upgrade? Yet now we have the song of Pablo the Reindeer who, if you Read More …
This week’s posting appears on December 6, which happens to be my birthday, so a few observations about music loosely associated with that thought might be in order. December 6 also carries the significance of being St Nicholas’ Day. St Nicholas, the patron saint of choristers, was the devout Christian Bishop of Myra who, so Read More …
Last week, I posted about metadata. One of the comments mentioned the grouping field, which reminded me that it’s time I shared some tips on getting the most out of iTunes. It’s not the perfect jukebox application for a classical collection, but it’s pretty good, and with a bit of fiddling, you can make it Read More …
When we talk about digital music, we use “metadata” to mean the artist, title, and other information that comes with (or is attached to) a recording. I’ve spent a big chunk of this week on several projects involving classical metadata. Since “the right way to tag classical music” has been an ongoing theme for my Read More …
Today, I want to talk about headphones and cables. It’s nerdy, but useful. Just about every audio system has some wires coming out of it. Whether you bought cheap cables or expensive ones, these are often the most neglected part of any set up. As a general rule, it’s a good idea to try to Read More …
My last post was about the frequencies missing from MP3s.1 Today, I want to talk about bit rates. To make sensible decisions about bit rates, it helps to understand a bit about how MP3 encoding works. When your computer makes a CD into an MP3, it has three main ways of making the music take Read More …