You’ve all heard this bit of Beethoven before, likely more times than you’d care to given its cultural familiarity and prominence in the canon of Western music.

But this past Sunday, an old re-run of RadioLab’s episode on “Time” pointed me to a recent project that has re-imagined Beethoven’s famous Ninth Symphony, not with a re-instrumentation, or a re-arrangement, or even a re-recording, but with a revolution in the relationship between the music and time.

9 Beet Stretch is a recording of the Ninth Symphony that has been digitally slowed down to fit not into the space of a typical 70 minutes, but rather into an entire day! That’s right, in this recording, each of the notes, chords, and rests lasts approximately 24 times its normal length without pitch alteration. The whole symphony takes an entire day to be heard in this recording, and the result is not what you’d expect. I’ve been listening to this thing on and off for the past couple of days (the entire work is continually streamed across the internet), and I’ve got to say, I’m hooked.

Rather than simply dulling the magnificence of this work by the pace, 9 Beet Stretch allows the listener to hear things in the work that have never been heard before as he literally basks in the sonic landscape that is Beethoven. At every moment, you are fully aware that yes, this must be Beethoven’s Ninth, but you entirely find yourself lost in the time of it. As music played for ambient effect, there’s not much that begins to top this.

In short, turn the lights down low, turn the speakers way up, grab a glass of wine, and give a listen.

….almost got this white boy dance.

Even six years of living in this town still brings its fair share of “firsts” as last evening I attended my first opera, Wagner’s Das Rheingold, the first part in the massive four-part Ring Cycle that my little town is undertaking with both great ambition and reckless economic abandon.

While the music sits firmly in the mid- to late-19th century Romantic tradition (a musical adjective that all too often sends many of my friends running to the hills), the costumes of last night could only be described as nothing short of dreamlike Tim Burton-esque-with-a-hint-of-Star-Wars. In other words, as one of my frequently opera-going colleagues put it, “eurotrash”.

In all honesty, the opera was amazing, even if it bordered on sensory overload. Complex romantic chord progressions, layers of character and thematic leitmotifs, redonkulous costumes, and supertitles that were only visible on an adjacent wall of the auditorium made the 160 minute performance quite an endeavor to follow. But I guess that’s what opera is basically like.

My only complaint is that I discovered that in opera, since the actors and singers must take the entire stage, the orchestra is thusly relegated to a pit, which significantly limits the scope and power of their volume. The pre-recorded clips played at the conductor’s pre-performance talk were themselves louder than the musical strains coming from the opera itself, a reality which I found a bit disappointing.

Oh well. One down, three to go, and although I won’t get a chance to see any of the rest of this here in LA this year, it might just be worth it to check out the next part, The Fellowship of the Ring Die Walküre, when the San Francisco Opera takes this on for themselves next summer. Apparently, it will have a California Gold Rush theme. Interesting.

One of the best purchases I ever made was in 2004, when I drove past a yard sale, saw a piano for sale, slammed on my brakes and bought the thing. Best $150 bucks I’ve ever spent. Plus, the sight of literally rolling the thing 50 yards up the street and into my apartment gave the neighbors amusement for years to come.

Unfortunately, the wooden stand has since become dislodged, and no amount of screwing it back in does the trick, resulting in hours of sheet-music-less piano improvision, which, while certainly entertaining for me, is far less so for my upstairs neighbors. No complaints yet, but it wouldn’t surprise me if I get one soon. Simply put, Chopin has not been heard for ages, mostly due to this lack of a music stand (and the fact that I’m not much of a fan of Chopin).

However, two days ago, while reading one of my favorite blogs, Lifehacker, (essentially an cross between a tech-junkie and DIY – website), I read a post in which a reader fashioned a workable iPad stand using nothing but a metal clothes hangar. Suffice it to say, that post and accompanying video was all the inspiration I needed to adapt a pair of well worn clothes hangars to my current dilemma.

Violà!

I was born before the internet. Well, sort of, at least. In the 28+ years I’ve been alive, the single greatest cultural progression has occurred as the result of an exponential growth in technology. My goodness, we may not have flying cars yet, but we do carry around little boxes in our pockets that enable instant communication with both personal contacts as well as a potentially large, and widening audiences. Some of this stuff is getting freakishly advanced.

Yet, in one major arena, technology has not only failed to improve things, but has led to major steps backwards. Today’s Bangalore Mirror “reports” that since the advent of the mp3 and iTunes, ease of listening, ease of sharing, and ease of access have all replaced high quality sound recordings. This has been a growing trend among folks who really care not merely about what music they’re listening to, but how it sounds. NPR also did a piece on this a few months back with basically the same story. If anything, the past two decades have seen the quality-level of sound recordings simply drop. And not too many folks are complaining.

Now don’t get me wrong. I own an iPod and love it’s ease of transportation and ability to use BOOLEAN arguments to create insanely tweaked Smart Playlists. Yet, through a decent pair of speakers, I just don’t get the dynamic range that I would were the music heard through a CD, or better yet, a live performance. The worst thing is that music is too often relegated to simply background noise, or something that’s going while we multitask with doing work, cooking dinner, hanging with friends, or even writing a blog post (guilty as charged). Music is better than that!

I finally dug it out. After living more than 8 months in my new apartment, I have finally extricated my looper from the recesses of my storage cabinets.

And whilst some of my more opinionated friends see using the looper as only a form of “musical masturbation”, it certainly makes it simple to transform a single piano chord progression or guitar lick into something with slightly more depth, more tonality, and to the potential chagrin of my new upstairs neighbor, more volume.

At least I don’t own a drum set anymore (my keyboard synth will just have to do).

No, the title of this post does not, in fact, allude to the suckers who shell out millions into the pockets of Steve Jobs, but something else entirely.

It was 8:45pm in the midst of a sea of people standing in eager anticipation of Thom Yorke’s Coachella appearance when the guy standing in front of me finished his apple. Rather than simply dropping the core, the sheer absurdity of the situation called for something unexpected, and he leaped vertically intending to anonymously launch the core at least a good 50 feet away.

Unfortunately, like a muffed golf shot, his execution of his launching trajectory did not match his mental planning. The apple core shot nearly straight downwards and only about 8 feet forward directly onto the the heads of some very close, and now very confused neighbors. Embarrassed at both the reality of his error and the proximity of his neighbors, our culprit entered a crouching position, rendering him completely invisible to the gaze of his potential accusers, as his newfound surrounding community shielded him from the wrath of the apple victims.

But to my surprise and delight, there was no fight, no harsh words, and no animosity whatsoever. In fact, the whole crowd got a general laugh out of it, as the communal struggle of standing for hours on end put it all a bit in perspective. We were here to hear great music, and in exchange, we give up a bit of personal space, a bit of individuality, and jointly enter into something amazing that only a group of people can experience and enjoy to the extent that we did. Bouncing up and down with the crowd who not only had a decent sense of rhythm, but also were lyrically knowledgeable is in a whole different category than simply cranking one’s car stereo to 11 on the way to work.

In general, it seems that there are certain things that can only be truly experienced and lived in community, rather than in isolation, music being merely one of them. Por ejemplo, teaching a great lesson with your classroom is one thing, but working with a team of teachers to together improve the education of kids on a department level is nothing short of inspiring. Giving a bottle of water to a homeless person is fine, but nothing like volunteering with an team of people all committed to a greater cause, focused on the root of the issue.

On our own, we’re alright, but together, stuff happens on “a whole ‘nother level”.

Overall, and perhaps unsurprisingly, it was a great weekend. Temperatures were moderate (80s), people were (mostly) friendly, and the musical acts were amazing, seemingly more so than in the previous two years. As such, it’s been difficult for me to pick out my favorite musical experience from the weekend, as there were simply so many. Going in to the festival, I hadn’t really heard of many of the bands, but thanks to a handy online playlist, I was able to whet my appetite and get a sense of who I actually had an interest in seeing. Circled are all the sets I attended, followed by comments regarding my favorites:

Friday:

• Proving that yes, in fact, good music does come out of Syracuse, Ra Ra Riot rocking with a perfect blend of guitars and strings. Wish we’d seen their whole set.
• Passion Pit basically redeeming the concept of the synthesizer.

Saturday:

• Temper Trap being one of only a handful of bands that can realistically use falsetto to actually bring a level of beauty to an otherwise driving rock song.
• In what was perhaps my favorite (although it’s a tough call) set of the weekend, MGMT proving that the influence of The Kinks can still be felt in 2010. I had only planned to catch the beginning of this set and then move on to see another artist, but I simply had to stay and hear the whole thing. Amazing. Amazing. Amazing.
• The blues is not dead! Jack White’s newest musical incarnation (as the drummer, no less!), The Dead Weather absolutely reinventing what you can do with 1 guitar, 1 bass, 1 drum kit, 1 singer, and 3 blues chords.

Sunday:

• Taking a cue from my man Jon Brion, Owen Pallet proving that a violin, a voice, and a looper is all that you really need to create a musical feast.
• Living up to the hype, Phoenix being perhaps the best showmen of the entire festival. Everyone in the crowd was 100% into their set. I was a bit skeptical at first, but they won me over.

Overall, an amazing festival that I will be sure to attend next year as well. Who’s with me?

Dante is experiencing a revival of sorts. The classic poet who authored The Divine Comedy has been thrust into the foray of computer gaming, with the release of EA’s Dante’s Inferno, a game which attempts to combine modern violent gaming with “books you’re forced to read in high school”. What’s next? A first person shooter of Lord of the Flies?

Last night, I got to attend a contemporary short opera (entitled “La Commedia) composed in 2008 by Louis Andriessen. The piece was a wonderful juxtaposition of the minimalist styles of John Adams and mid-20th century Count Basie. It was a bit tough to sit through nearly 100 minutes of un-intermissioned performance, but ultimately well worth it, as the sections of violins, violas, choir members, and electric guitars completely enveloped the hall.

I think this weekend’s Coachella will also provide musical impressiveness and general enthrallment, albeit in a slightly different format (think 100+ degrees, sweaty crowds, and earplugs).

Sometimes you’ve just got to hear it from the man in black.