Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Show 104: Dances

[Added on 2015/7/18:  This used to be called Show 4.  I've renumbered the shows, so that this one is Show101.  The July 4th show for this year will be numbered numbered Show201, and so on.  If you didn't figure this out yet, my first show aired the week of July 4th, 2014.]

This edition hopefully was all about dance.

We started with a Waltz, just so people remember what a dance is (jk)!  Then we take a detour with Baroque and Renaissance dances --I have to say that it would make better sense to make a video of this show than just a radio broadcast; after all dances are fun to watch, too--  Minuets, Allemandes, Courantes, Sarabandes, Gigues, but no Pavanes.  We also have a couple of Hornpipes, after which we go into Latin dances: Samba, Cha-Cha (apologies in advance: it was Autumn Leaves), Rumba, and a Tango with a tenuous connection to Wilpo.

I should have put in a little Baila, but I wasn't thinking ...

P.S. Apropos of nothing, In the show on the 19th, we had a little-known George Harrison song sung by Sam Brown: Lead a Horse to Water.  It was on the DVD, but not in the CD.

Friday, July 18, 2014

Show 102: Songs

[Added on 2015/7/18:  This used to be called Show 2.  I've renumbered the shows, so that this one is Show102.  The July 4th show for this year will be numbered numbered Show201, and so on.  If you didn't figure this out yet, my first show aired the week of July 4th, 2014.]

2014 July 19th  (Saturday)
Part A    Part B   [Not yet linked:] Part C, Part D

This show is to be two hours long; this will be the format from now on, until they change something.  It is chopped into 4 (roughly half-hour) sections, A, B, C and D.

The theme is songs, from classical arias to popular songs.  The first example is a song by Julie Andrews, followed up with a variety of songs from various places, and by various singers, including Emma Kirkby, Paul Simon, Bryn Terfel, Paul McCartney, Paul Robeson, and Sam Brown [more than our fair share of Pauls], Arlo Guthrie, Ben Heppner, and featuring composers from Bach and Arne to Wagner and Schubert, George Harrison, and Richard Strauss.

I apologize (on the show broadcast last night on the radio) for the awful bass rumble I could hear when I listened through the Internet via Tune-In Radio.  I compressed the files, to reduce the volume variation, but as a result I amplified the low-frequency background noise during silences.  For the podcast files, I put in a high-pass filter, which is supposed to fade out the deep bass, but of course that makes the bass a little less ... you know.  Bassy.

I’m afraid that this show is using up more of my most favorite tracks faster than I really intended.  Out of the 1,000 or so hours of music I own, about 10 hours comprise the music that I really, really wanted to share, and at the rate of an hour a week, I could stretch them out over many shows.  But this two-hour format is eating up my collection twice as fast!  You guys will have to listen to junk beginning around September.  You know how it is; you buy a CD in which there’s maybe one song you really want, or two...  These days, I tend to buy one track at a time.

The song by Tom Lehrer to end the hour is getting to be a tradition that I enjoy; I’m going to have to dream up a way of continuing the tradition.  We must find new traditions to make the 2-hour format interesting.

Archie

Sunday, July 13, 2014

Show 101: Trios, and Show 103: (International) National anthems and folk music


[Added on 2015/7/18:  This used to be called Show 3.]


I was recently given a spot on WXPI Radio, which I named Archie’s Archives.  (Until I provide them with some sexy publicity material, I probably won’t get on their website.)

Show 1, 2014 July 4th
Part 1    Part 2

The first show was all about Trios!  Yes; I had completely forgotten it was a national holiday; the program was actually prepared to be aired several weeks earlier, but we had transient problems (problems just getting started).

The material was essentially what was in the post on Trios on my Blog, but on the air I decided to use a lot less of my own MIDI stuff, and more traditional music from commercial sources.

Show 3, 2014 July 11th
Part 1    Part 2 

The second show was assembled only after I realized that I had missed the opportunity to do some fun stuff for July 4th.  This was just as well; I imagine that by 7:00 p.m. (showtime) of July 4th, people would be either sick to death of Independence stuff, or still at the fireworks.

I have national anthems of many lands, well, a few lands; and then a bunch of folk music from more places.  (Katie liked this show a lot.) 


Coming Up: the next two blog posts will be be on songs (7/18) and dances (7/25).