I love harpsichords.
Trance version. Not bad.
Music
I think this is the album Z showed me one morning? Anyway, thanks, this is exactly what I was looking for except I wish it was a real orchestra. Well, if classic rock can make it to the London Symphony Orchestra and video game music gets regular concerts now, maybe someday…
Reminds me of someone else…
Chris‘s latest blogsack post about the evolution of popular bands reminded me of an old entry of mine in which I quoted lyrics from a 2005 Black Eyed Peas song and then one of their new (at the time) 2009 songs, just to note the hilarious ironicals. Thanks to shiny 2011 technology, I can now embed the videos for you to easily make the comparison yourself.
2005 – From Monkey Business (such a good album)
2009 – From Boom Boom Pow (ugh)
Oh yeah, and the autotuning thing GREAT. I can’t even listen to this entire song.
I wouldn’t care about it if they didn’t decry in 2005 precisely what they decided to do a few years down the line. In their exact words, no less (“boom”). Oh well, they’re not together anymore so all’s well that ends well.
Here’s the old entry quoting the choice lyrics for full ironicals.
I forget what I was looking for (something trance), but I ended up seeing something that reminded me to look for this song and then I remembered how much I used to like this band:
I should try to find more symphonic metal. Scandinavians are good at that.
I love everything melodic, progressive. Any genre. Give it to me.
Edit: For fun, another classically trained cross-over (popera?) artist, Sarah Brightman, and her “Captain Nemo” song (though the “Nemo” in the Nightwish song above refers to the Latin for no one).
(Brightman’s pretty much my favorite singer. I much prefer her rendition of Phantom of the Opera to the recent film version with Emmy Rossum.)
Mostly the same as last month, trying to focus on folks who haven’t been at EZ before or who don’t get out here often and not so much on big names that are pretty much guaranteed to be here. Here are my votes for December, again in no particular order:
Orkidea (how could I not vote for him after that magical night last month 
), Talla 2XLC, Airbase, Röyksopp, Adam Szabo, Rank 1, Eric Prydz, Ronski Speed, Tritonal, Daft Punk, Pendulum, Heatbeat (or just Matias Faint), Nitrous Oxide, Daniel Kandi, Stoneface & Terminal, Yuri Kane, Ørjan Nilsen, Jochen Miller, Arty, Mat Zo, Beat Service, Timo Maas, Eco, Michael Gray, Audien.
One thing I realize about my music preferences is that I really, really love a lot of chill, melodic (ALWAYS melodic), proggy stuff that many people find boring in EDM. I mean, I get it. Electronic dance music. But for me, I don’t need music to be high energy all the time, even when I’m out and seeing DJs live. Get this, guys. Sometimes it’s nice to go to a symphony and listen to music sitting down! I realize to most people going to a nightclub to rock out to a DJ/band is not even on the same planet as the symphony, but to me, it is pretty much the same. I feel the same, anyway. Don’t you? And isn’t that the point? To feel… something?
I think I just lost everybody there. I can imagine you all scratching your heads and backing away now.
Click here to submit your votes for who you want to see at Electric Zoo 2012.
It’s time to give in input for who you’d like to see at Electric Zoo. I already know the popular guys are gonna be put on there a thousand times over (Armin, Tiësto, Guetta), so I focused more on lesser known artists, folks I’ve never seen perform, and people who weren’t at previous EZs. And since I had extra slots, I just filled in some popular DJs I don’t mind seeing a billion times. Damn do my picks sway heavily towards the cheesiest, uplifting trance. And oldies. Bugger off if you have a problem with that.
My list (in no particular order): Yuri Kane, Gouryella (joke vote), Ronski Speed, Röyksopp, Adam Nickey, Adam Szabo, Tritonal, Heatbeat (Agustin Servente/Matias Faint), Daft Punk, Roger Shah, Eco, Zack Roth, Rank 1, Eric Prydz, Nitrous Oxide, Daniel Kandi, Filo & Peri, Ferry Tayle, Darude, Pendulum, Michael Gray, Ferry Corsten, Above & Beyond, Kaskade.
A lot of these are just throw-it-out-there picks. I don’t even know if some of these guys spin. I scrolled around my last.fm stats to find some inspiration. I forgot I used to like house and it was bloody hard to find it in the city (hip hop and reggaeton was still popular). Y’all poo-pooed me then, WHAT ARE YOU ASSHOLES LISTENING TO NOW, I ASK? SHM, David Guetta, LMFAO!? (Please don’t say dubstep.)
I’ll see your sawtooth oscillator and raise you one supersaw.
I know you’re still crying about that pop DJ David Guetta taking the DJMag #1 spot from Armin van Buuren, so I hope this makes you laugh and cry some more and really think about your time on this earth.
Gareth Emery, ya’ll:
You know how there’s trance versions of classical songs/scores (like Tiësto’s “Adagio for Strings” and “He’s a Pirate”)? I want someone to do the reverse; take uplifting trance music and convert it to full symphonic pieces. Sort of like how the London Symphony Orchestra plays various classic rock tunes. Obviously you can’t do a direct translation because a 140bpm straight 4/4 bass-thumping high-hat-thwacking song that repeats the same 8 measures over and over would sound freaking stupid when played by an orchestra. But, you know, like an orchestral remix that just lifts the melody or something. I think that would be cool.
To be honest, I don’t like EDM versions of classical songs. I think they sound ultra cheesy and are usually not very artfully done, imho. They are the reason I thought trance was stupid for so many years. I also hate when they just take a song and throw a bassline down that may or may not even match the key of the original and call it a day (this applies more to pop music turned EDM).
I also want Bach to come back from the dead and produce. Harpsicords need to be in more songs. Yanni should make trance music. Classical throwbacks should be used in more than just metal.
Can we get this back in the Top 40?
Music should troll us from time to time:
Pfft, Yngwie thinks he’s sooo cool, but my synth has an arpeggio button that does this automagically! (Not… not really.)
Unsynthesize this please (~1:50):
And synthesize this. Okay, this one’s not my favorite, but you’re getting so close now, Yanni. You even have the whole PLUR thing going on. Just make a trance track already.
(I think this song of his would be great trancified. You’d have to unwonk the time signature and update those horrid early 90s synths, but I can totally see it.)
Speaking of time signatures, don’t you just love when they play around with it? My two favorite uses of unconventional time signatures ever:
I COULDN’T CONTROL MYSELF AND SPOOGED MUSIC ALL OVER THE PAGE, I’M SORRY.
I’m not going to talk about the DJs because who cares, but here’s some general impressions of the festival itself as compared to previous years:
- Incredibly crowded. Shit’s getting mainstream.
- The dust problem was 100% better. Made did good there.
- Entrance security was a complete joke. Inside the Zoo was stricter though. We saw a couple folks get busted, have their wristbands cut, and get thrown out. Security guy to smoker: “My job is to catch you. Your job is to not get caught.” Another guy upended a girl’s beer because she didn’t have a 21+ wristband on.
- I didn’t care for the tent layout. Being all in a row and too close together made you hear too many things at once if you weren’t right up to the tent. However, I realize the larger tent sizes probably made the old Grove Discotheque (2009)/Sunday School (2010) location too small to use and limited the arrangement of the tents.
- The Garden of EZ was nice, but I liked seeing graffiti artists transform the buses before my eyes last year and the Sonic Forest from 2009 was cool because it was interactive. I was hoping for more stuff like that this year, but it seems like the art really took a backseat.
I also only took about 5 photos this year, as opposed to like 200+ last year. I figured there were tens of thousands of other people per day taking cooler, better pictures and videos, and there would probably be a lot more media coverage, so why bother. I also could’ve easily gotten pics with some DJs, but I hate getting my picture taken and I’m not a fangirl. I don’t do the pics with DJs thing. (Rich has several bad pics of me staring into space as Marcus Schulz stands next to me talking to someone. Heh.)
Rich and I were a lot lazier about trying to see this and that DJ because we’ve already seen all the ones we care about enough times. We sat outside the tents and chilled out with drinks most of the time. We’re old and jaded.
Wait, are you even going?
I have high hopes for it this year. As the price increases year by year, so it has improved (maybe not at parity to the price, but it has improved), and I have faith that Made Event will take strides to correct any issues they’ve previously had. Read on for an overview of the festival.
I’ve been having trouble sleeping the past couple days and I woke up in the middle of the night with this song in my head, so now I have to listen to it 100 times to get it out of my head. I like the video, it makes me excited for EZ (though the photos are from Global Gathering 2010 in the UK).
(The only time I listen to the radio is when I’m driving, which is extremely rare since I don’t have a car.)
Or more like Tiësto’s new stuff sounds like everything on the radio. Everyone’s using those saw oscillators or whatever the hell you call ‘em. Dutch house invasion!
I’m really not complaining. So EDM went mainstream. So what? Who cares?
Discussions I found on these sounds, way over my head:
- pop sound sources
- Recommendations For SYNTHs Dance/Electro Current POP
(I was trying to find a non-vocal version of Chris Brown’s “Yeah 3X” when I found those links, ha. Go figure the guy on that forum who knows everything is from NL.)
