music

My “I Don’t Care about the Grammys” Post

I used to watch the Grammys every year. I remember always enjoying it growing up, but somewhere along the way, I just . . . stopped. It wasn’t a conscious decision I made one year. I think it just gradually trailed away. I’d forget they were on, or I’d tune in late. I’d catch highlights on YouTube, if I heard something was particularly interesting. And now? I just don’t really care one way or the other. This despite the fact that I really enjoy the Oscars and Tonys and Emmys each year. The biggest difference is that I’m heavily invested

On Music Composition

My Bach class is finished now, and I have to say how much I enjoyed it. Yes, it made my Tuesdays insanely busy for five weeks in a row, but I got to learn about things I didn’t know a whole lot about previous to the course, and learning is something I really like. In addition, it turns out that the lab part of the class was focused on composition. I’ll be honest: in the lead up to the class, I didn’t really pay any attention to what it was going to be about other than Bach. I like Bach.

One Eileen to Rule Them All: 30 Different Versions of Come On Eileen

A friend posted about a polka version of Come On Eileen yesterday on Facebook, and suddenly it reminded me of my personal favorite version (the ska cover by Save Ferris.) And so of course I had to look it up on YouTube, which led me to poke around to see what other covers of the song were done. A different friend does a yearly Christmas carol bracket challenge, where she posts about 30-40 different versions of the same carol. They’re paired up one by one, and people vote to determine which is the best version. She’s done it for years,

Mid-Maine Youth Orchestra

Back in . . . September? October? I can no longer keep my dates straight. In any case, back in the fall, Tomas and Daniela decided that they’d like to try out of the Mid-Maine Youth Orchestra, on the off chance that the group would actually be able to do something this year. It’s a regional ensemble that Tomas had tried out for once before, but this time they had more time, and they figured they could put more work into the audition pieces. After much practice and recording of their auditions, they were accepted into the group around December,

Performing in Church

Tomas and DC were asked to perform yesterday for our local congregation’s Christmas program. Well, I suppose it would read better if I wrote “Tomas and DC were volunteered by me to perform,” because I sort of readily threw them under the bus. It’s just they’d done such a good job last time, I thought it would be great for them to have another shot, especially with more months of lessons under their belt. The piece this time was “The First Noel.” The arrangement in our hymnbook turned out to be too tricky in some spots for DC, and I