As we head into 2012 I wanted to take a minute to say a thank you to the regular readers of ‘Music is My Life’. Your comments have added a great deal to each article and I have enjoyed reading them immensely.
It is with this in mind that I thought I would use today’s blog post to ask if there is anything you wish to see more of in the New Year?
Would you like to see more reviews of books or CD’s? This could be of new music coming out or existing music I own. Would you like more reminiscences of concerts I have seen and performances that have especially moved me? I could try to include more interviews if you enjoyed these or include more polls for you to vote on. Tell me what you’d like to see and I will do my best to include it for you. The blog wouldn’t be anything without the readers and your views and opinions are valued.
I hope you have all had a relaxing Christmas break and wish you all a healthy, happy and prosperous New Year.
There is something about a good Christmas song that gets you instantly in the festive spirit. Whether it be a traditional carol or a classic pop song, when you first hear it you will be transported back to your childhood and exciting nights waiting for Santa.
I’m unsure if other countries place as much importance on the Christmas Number 1, but in the UK the Christmas Number 1 is a coveted spot and it is hotly fought over every year. You can get novelty tracks which are short lived, more classic tracks that you play year on year, the soulless fare from X-factor that has dominated the Christmas charts in recent years or even the odd Protest song to fight back against the X-Factor drivel.
I took great delight when the Rage Against the Machine song ‘Killing in the Name’ song beat the X-factor song to Christmas number one a couple of years ago and I happily bought many versions of it to help it along the way, encouraged others to do the same and I was an ardent supporter of the campaign. Not only is the band and song awesome, but it was worth buying, even though I already owned it, to stop Simon Cowell controlling the chart again. It isn’t especially festive, but I happily play this song every Christmas and will continue to do so for a long time to come.
Other songs instantly make you think of Christmas and you will get strange looks if you play them at other times of the year. The Pogues song ‘Fairytale of New York’ is one of these and I can’t help but feel festive when I hear it. Bandaid’s charity single ‘Do they Know it’s Christmas?’, Wham’s ‘Last Christmas’, Wizzard’s ‘I Wish it Could be Christmas Everyday’ and Slade’s ‘Merry Christmas Everybody’ are Christmas pop standards and if I don’t hear each one at least once during December then my holiday season isn’t complete.
There is also something about the crooner and rat pack singers that makes you feel all Christmas-y and Bing Crosby singing ‘White Christmas’ makes me feel warm and nostalgic every time. Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra have the same effect.
Of course there have been some dire Christmas songs over the years, like Mr Blobby and most X-factor singles, but thankfully these don’t stand the test of time and they don’t get repeated year on year. I guess they are OK for marking a particular year though.
The list is almost endless and I could go on and mention loads more, but the point I am making is that music is as a big a part of Christmas as the mince pies, Christmas tree, Festive films and Turkey dinner. And whilst some shopping centres will play these songs on an endless loop from October onwards, if you manage to avoid this saturation, the songs will still have a resonance and fill you with festive cheer. I have my own Christmas compilation playing in the background as I write this and it’s making me want to spread my buoyant Christmas spirit to those around me and what more can you ask at this time of year?
I wish you all a warm and happy Christmas and I hope you get lots of new music to share and delight you in the coming year.
Occasionally I will come across a song that I love so much it almost becomes an addiction and I have to play it over and over until I’m saturated it in. I’ve had this before with the song ‘Hide and Seek’ by Imogen Heap and I played this song numerous times each day for many months. But I’ve experienced this again recently with another song that had me hooked so badly I could barely go an hour without playing it and when I did, I would play it two or three times in a row.
The song in question is ‘Somebody That I Used to Know’ by Gotye.
I heard of it first via a magazine recommendation and I checked it out on YouTube. I must’ve played it ten times that first night and I was mesmerised by the video, the music and the lyrics. Then I did the unthinkable (for me) and I bought that single track from itunes, my first ever itunes purchase. The complete album the song features on was only available on import and was very expensive, but the song had caught me so badly that I had to have it with me the next day at work. So, one trip to itunes and a few clicks later and I had the song on my ipod.
The thing with an ipod and itunes as I’ve mentioned in a previous article (‘Where’s the nearest iPod anonymous meeting?’) is that it counts how many times you’ve played a track and I could soon see that within two days I had played the song over 50 times. By the end of the week it had slowed a little, but I was over 100 listens and still going strong. It had become the most listened to track on my ipod in the space of a week.
One friend warned me not to ‘kill’ the song by overplaying it, but I couldn’t help myself and by the middle of the week I had decided if I wore the song out then so be it, I had to keep playing it.
I played the song to my assistant and she also loved it. I’m sure some of the music I’ve played for her has hit very wide of the mark and when this song came along to captivate her she was as addicted as I was. If we played it and when it ended I was still working, her hand would sneakily reach out and press play one more time until we were bobbing our heads along to the intro and then singing with gusto at the chorus.
She, like me, adored the chorus and the powerful lyrics. We would sing them out loud and laugh and smile as we both accentuated certain parts. We both adore the part when Kimbra joins the song and the way she adds impact to the songs crescendo and balances out the male point of view at the start of the song.
I’m guessing the addiction with this song isn’t just a problem I suffer with, as when I first played the song on YouTube a few weeks ago it had 13 million views and when I went back again recently this figure is rapidly climbing to 18 million.
I’m gradually playing the song less now, but still about 5 or 6 times a day and I have loved every play of it so far. I haven’t ‘killed’ the song yet and I guess like ‘Hide and Seek’ after a few months away from it I will come back to ‘Somebody That I Used to Know’ and love it all over again with renewed vigour.
Music is my passion and this song is a particularly addictive morsel, but I’m so glad I found it and have it in my life. Now I just need to buy the album it came from (after already buying Gotye’s other albums) and I have to see him live. These things are all just ways I feed my habit.
When I heard of a method of learning a language all based around music I thought “that’s the very thing for me”! I enjoy learning new languages and you may have an inkling what my thoughts on music are.
Earworms produce various language learning CD’s where the lessons are put to various types of music and all you have to do is relax and listen to each song to gradually pick up new vocabulary and grammatical rules.
The theory is that in the same way as a catchy song or lyric will stick in your head, so too will the new language you hear. This idea goes back many years and before the invention of books or the internet many societies remembered and passed down stories via song. It has even been shown that Australian Aborigines were able to navigate across vast distances using the lyrics in traditional songs as descriptions of the route.
According to the literature with the CD’s the Earworms technique has produced average test results over 90% compared with the average 50% with more traditional methods. It also cites studies showing how we only use a portion of our brain and linking learning to music accesses another area of the brain to accelerate learning. With claims like this I thought it was well worth a go.
As I have a huge personal interest in Japan I thought I would start with the Japanese Earworms course and as soon as it dropped through my letterbox I loaded it onto my ipod and slipped on my headphones to surround myself in the music. I did as the course suggested and didn’t actively try to memorise anything and I just listened to the CD as a piece of music in it’s own right.
Japanese Earworms
There are two speakers on the course, a male and female and they talk along with the music, sometimes in time with it and sometimes across it, but they never clash with the music playing.
The music here is meant to be catchy and the first track certainly is. I found myself repeating words and phrases even after I stopped playing the CD. But, some songs are better than others and whilst the course does play a variety of styles, some music sounds a touch twee or not especially catchy. I found these tracks the hardest to remember. This is a flaw in the course, if the music doesn’t engage you, or you don’t find it catchy, the you are virtually missing a whole lesson from your memory.
But this is a minor niggle and all in all I found myself remembering most of the language taught.
The funny thing is, if I find myself unable to remember a phrase or word then all I have to do is start ‘singing’ the part of the song that it relates to and pretty soon the word has come to me. Proof if ever it was needed that the concept works, although I’m unsure if I’d get away with that in a shop when on holiday or in a business meeting!!!
Overall I found the course a good way to acquire new vocabulary and grammar and whilst it isn’t perfect, if you use it in consort with other methods then I think this is a very useful tool to learning a new language. You may not enjoy every song on offer, but if you are a music lover like myself, then it is certainly worth a try.
On the 18th September my wife and I climbed aboard a train and headed into London and the Southbank for this years Japan Matsuri. This is a large festival where all of your senses are delighted with hot and cold food, craft stalls, martial arts demonstrations, musical performances, ikebana demonstrations, art exhibitions and much more besides and as you may have guessed, all from or about Japan.
Lanterns hanging in trees on the Southbank.
After wandering about to get our bearings and savouring the sights and some of the food on offer we headed over to the main stage to see a Taiko drummer group perform. As we stepped into the stage area the first thing we noticed were the lanterns and origami cranes that decorated the sides of the floor space. Large ikebana displays were sat at the side of the stage looking stunning in their complexity and composition and large drums were being set up ready for the performance. The occasional woman in Kimono only added to the atmosphere and before long I was eagerly looking forward to what was about to come.
Lanterns and Origami cranes hanging in main stage.
Two wonderful people (an English man and a Japanese woman) were introducing the various acts and performers throughout the day and at this point the petite Japanese lady stepped on stage and said a flurry of words in Japanese, only to be followed by the gentleman saying similar introductory comments in English. Then a group of girls of various ages (from The Japanese school, London) stepped onto stage and prepared themselves to perform.
The Taiko performance.
They held up their drum sticks high and then launched into their performance spinning around one another as they took it in turns to hit the deep, bassy drums. It was a visual as well as an aural treat. The first piece gave them a chance to settle into their performance and then the music became more powerful as their set progressed.
You could tell the older girls had been playing for longer as their technique and strength allowed for a deeper, richer sound to come from the drums and there was something elemental about the deep drum notes and the cries that the girls let out to punctuate each particular piece.
You could feel the drumming through your feet and against your chest as they played and the music quickly became hypnotic and powerful. The drums are played with such skill and the combination of higher and lower pitch drums, along with the occasional handheld bell-like-objects builds into a forceful and resonant wall of sound that vibrates deep into your core. Despite the alluring smells of hot food wafting up to me from the riverfront below and the bustle of the crowd mingling about me, I completely focused on the music and performance and, as in past experiences when I have seen Taiko drummers, I felt deeply moved by the time the performance had ended.
This was just one of the musical performance my wife and I experienced throughout the course of the day, but I have to admit it was one of my favourites. I knew what to expect from visiting past Matsuri’s, but it didn’t take away from the power or my enjoyment one iota.
The perfect blend of British and Japanese.
I can’t wait for next years Matsuri to experience the delightful aspects of Japanese culture and to see some incredible Japanese music again and of course to fill my stomach with the amazing food on offer. I always come away with my belly and bags full of food, but it is the fullness the music gives me that lingers the longest.
