Author Archives: Raymond Yee

NPR Music Takes Me Beyond Bach

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The heart and soul of my musical life is the work of J. S. Bach. By no means, however, is Bach's music is the only music I care about!  Bach absorbed so much music before and around him -- and in turn, transformed music fundamentally for everyone who came after him.  I desire to partake in the world of music with the same omnivorous spirit as Bach had.

I'm working hard at broadening my musical understanding.  I've been exploring many different sources and hope to write about those sources.  (I'm reflecting on my sources not only to further my musical education but also to help me develop software to aid people to learn about music (among other things).)

Let me start with NPR Music, which strikes me , as a relatively new fan, as a vast source of musical news and knowledge.  Naturally, I've been consulting the classical music section to help me look more deeply into J. S. Bach but also to look beyond.  You would think that I would have already dug up all the good Bach treasures in the NPR archives, but I just found  such oldies but goodies as  "Variations on Bach, for a New Century" (from 2004).  There's a fantastic archive of musical artists to explore. I'm slowly warming up to deceptive cadence, the new classical music blog.

I praise the intimate, informal, and energetic videos of the Tiny Desk Concerts for sparking an interest in music for which I had no previous exposure. Part of me thinks I should check out the entire archive of concerts, including upcoming live concerts. However, if I'm not careful, I can easily get overwhelmed with too many concerts to listen to.   Tiny Desk Concerts introduces new material at a good rate, not so much that I get overwhelmed; The videos are enticing enough for me to watch virtually everyone of them.

Abigail Washburn on NPR

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NPR must love Abigail Washburn, who has been featured quite a bit lately.  I don't mind.   I've gotten into learning about Washburn ever since I saw her Tiny Desk Concert and listened to her new album City of Refuge. Yesterday, she was interviewed on All Things Considered.  Fascinated by her connections to China (she was going to practice law there until she got a recording contract!), I particularly enjoy her rendition (YouTube) of Kangding Qingge.   BTW, Washburn is married to the legendary banjoist Béla Fleck, whom  I only recently came upon because of his appearance in Bach and Friends.

Autumn books and colors

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I'm glad that I walked home this afternoon, which gave me an opportunity to figure out where the CMU Bookstore is. I always get a little burst of intellectual energy walking among assigned textbooks for courses which are either familiar or new to me. Autumn colors do much to compensate for the impending darkness of winter days.

Daily Notes: 2010-08-04

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I want to resurrect an old form for me, the daily blog entry. I've not been blogging much, though I've been an avid Twitter user. Tweeting is certain much easier than blogging, but does it accomplish as much. I know that a least a handful of people read my Twitter stream. It's probably not the case for my blog.

[Writing in progress...]

To write is to corral runaway thoughts

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I've been an on-again off-again blogger for over ten years. Writing is hardly a passing interest for me, but I am not one of those people who must write all the time. Writing takes time, and writing well takes continual practice. Not surprising, I get sidetracked, and my blogs remain dormant, often for months on end. There's not enough time in the day, I complain, especially when my early morning hours, what I have called my "novel-writing time" is devoted to another craft I'd like to practice: programming.

Inevitably, like the prodigal son, I return to my writing places, hoping for reintegration. Usually I do so only when it feels as though my head is going to explode if I don't write. I know that feeling is a lie; I don't ever have as many great ideas it seems. If I'm lucky, the few good ideas swimming around in my head are just tangled up in their own convolutions. Writing is for me then the most powerful way of clarifying my thoughts, of getting to the heart of the matter. Words are only approximations for thoughts but they have great advantages. I can share them with others, and they persist beyond my transitory brainstorms.

Personal intersections: Ozu, Berkeley, and Freebase

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One of the wonderful aspects of living part of the time around Berkeley is having access to such events as a next week's symposium dedicated to the work of Japanese director Yasujirō Ozu.  Years ago, it was the Pacific Film Archives (which is involved in this symposium) that introduced me to the work of Ozu.  Even though I won't be able to spend much time at the symposium, it serves as an occasion to revisit the filmmaker's work, which touched me deeply by its portrayal of family relations.  I'll start by watching again his most famous film Tokyo Story, which is conveniently available to be streamed to my computer via Netflix.   I'm also taking this as a chance to explore the coverage of Ozu's films in Freebase (roughly speaking, a Wikipedia of facts in database form). As a fan of Ozu and Freebase, it's natural for me to verify whether film is indeed one of Freebase's strengths.  (It's a promising sign that Freebase lists 26 films to Ozu's credit.)