Chopin & Leisure Suit Larry

1 (17) — *Track 33 from LEISURE SUIT LARRY IN THE LAND OF THE LOUNGE LIZARDS (AGI) (Sierra On-Line, 1987).*

SEPTEMBER 29th 2018 — As a little exercise, I turned a “chip tune” ditty from the first LEISURE SUIT LARRY game into sheet music.

This is one of the most famous themes in the world, from the 3rd movement (Marche funèbre) of Chopin’s PIANO SONATA NO. 2 IN B FLAT MINOR, Op. 35 (FUNERAL MARCH).

Anyone who grew up playing computer games in the 1980s heard this theme in dozens of games, and it probably appeared in hundreds, typically as the game over music. A lot of classical music ended up in games in those days in particular, as various creative adaptations for often highly limited sound chips or synthesizers.

Chopin wrote this theme in B flat minor, but for this game it was transposed up a whole step (two keys on the piano keyboard, whether white or black), to C minor.

As the first step, I extracted the sound file from the game, then used a free program to convert it into MIDI data. But it turned out that — whether the problem arose from the original sound file format, the conversion process, or the eccentricities of the MIDI standard — the resulting MIDI file was unusable as such. It looked nothing like the above orderly notation, the score instead being full of 64th notes and rests and so on, and the measure breaks were all off.

I could always have gone to sheet music of the sonata as Chopin wrote it, but I wanted to follow this particular adaptation of it. So I wrote the above based on the messy data from the MIDI file, correcting the timing and other issues to create this still very faithful result. It follows the rhythms and of course exact notes of the piece as it appears in the game.

Finally I analyzed the piece for the chords and added those. I’ve done this kind of analysis of hundreds of pieces and I find it a great way to learn. It means going through every note and rest and every other detail in a piece of music and seeing how it all fits together.

And one of the nice things about it is that no piece of music is too short or simple for this type of analysis. Every piece is rewarding to do and can teach something.

Chopin is one of my favorite composers. But I want to write more about him in an entry of his own. So that’s another story.

My interest in music

78A0AC66-DB2C-4055-B5A8-724B04EDACA2 — *A music room in the City Library of Jyväskylä, Finland, summer 2017.*

SEPTEMBER 27th 2018 — Things have been moving in this direction for me for a long time, and it’s now true to say that music is my most absorbing pursuit and interest. It’s become much more than a hobby.

I’ve come to feel that music is the highest language. I don’t mean this as a quaint metaphor but the literal way of it. More can be expressed with music than words, and it can go further, and there is more beauty for me in a few well chosen words, such as good lyrics or lines of poetry, than a whole novel.

And it has gotten to the point where I would prefer to be pursuing music full time, which is what I do in my free time already.

I am so aware that life is a limited thing. I would prefer being able to pursue only things that have my fullest interest, and that has become music and other arts that involve the possibility of performance, rather than what I have been doing so far with my life, in terms of studies and work.

I will keep doing as much as possible on my own, but I wish I had someplace I could go study and learn music among professionals. A school or apprenticeship of some kind.

Transposing

13123248_1090773754299543_3400489455148463480_o — *From 2015.*

SEPTEMBER 27th 2018 — I have been writing so much music lately, including many variations, that I found myself transposing in my sleep.

Awaking from fitful sleep, due to the construction crew outside doing the Hammerklavier, to seeing notes moving down or up and Cs become As and so on.

But not complaining. I see it as a glimpse into my subconscious, pushing my transposing stat up in background mode.

Let’s listen to Bob Dylan in Iceland: 1959

*The bible for this occasional series. I bought my copy from the University of Iceland bookstore on campus.*

SEPTEMBER 26th 2018 — Welcome to the first installment of “Let’s listen to Bob Dylan in Iceland”.

Prelude

Join me on this journey through all of Dylan’s recorded and officially released tracks in chronological order — the order in which they were recorded, as listed in the massive, useful reference tome BOB DYLAN: ALL THE SONGS: THE STORY BEHIND EVERY TRACK (2015) by Philippe Margotin & Jean-Michel Guesdon.

I’ll be sharing Spotify playlists of all these songs, to go with each entry. I have no particular agenda with this series other than to enjoy, educate myself, and see what thoughts occur. I also welcome comments and thoughts from my readers.

For those looking to go deeper, I recommend the book mentioned, and likewise a free PDF that can be found online, THE BOB DYLAN SONGBOOK by Eyolf Østrem. It includes background information, lyrics, tabs, and fingerpicking patterns.

1 (16) — *From THE BOB DYLAN SONGBOOK by Eyolf Østrem.*

Dylan won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016 in recognition of the enormous contribution to culture he has made with his songwriting. I was actually in Iceland the day this was announced, visiting the Icelandic family that were my gracious hosts, and chatted about it with them, between bouts of the middle sibling of the family strumming his guitar (a musically gifted family).

But now we rewind back to 1959 and a soft start for this series, since only one song from this year is part of our syllabus:

“WHEN I GOT TROUBLES” (E major) — May 1959

Bob Dylan — born Robert Allen Zimmerman — has just turned 18 and remains undiscovered and without a recording contract.

At the home of a friend in Hibbing, he sings into his friend’s microphone and tape recorder a blues song of his own, “WHEN I GOT TROUBLES”, accompanying himself on the guitar.

The recording is of poor quality and cuts short, but for anyone interested in tracking his progress, this is of course gold. As pointed out by the authors of ALL THE SONGS:

“His voice remains in a lower register, almost confidential in style, and the guitar playing is quite poor. Yet an impression of depth emerges from his interpretation.” (p. 13)

Young mister Dylan is on the path.

Spotify playlist for this entry, “Let’s listen to Bob Dylan in Iceland: 1959”:

Let’s read THE GRAMOPHONE in Iceland: No. 3 — August 1923

1 (14) — The only picture in this issue is of the author of the article on Byrd on the 300th anniversary of his death, the Reverend Doctor Fellowes. Unfortunately many of these early issues are minus the advertisement pages, which I would love to see included for every issue. Fortunately this will change with later issues.

SEPTEMBER 24th 2018 — The third issue of THE GRAMOPHONE bears the cover date August 1923.

Reverend Edmund H. Fellowes, Doctor of Music, contributes a one-page article on English Renaissance composer William Byrd to mark the 300th anniversary of his death. This was a time when music from times this far in the past was only starting to be recorded, and its admirers therefore treasured every new release.

Few of these early recordings of Byrd are on Spotify, but four that are are mentioned in the reviews section. All played on the harpsichord by Violet Gordon-Woodhouse:

“ROWLAND OR LORD WILLOBIE’S WELCOME HOME”, FVB. 160.
“THE QUEENE’S ALMAN”, FVB. 171.
“GALIARDA”, FVB. 255.
“EARLE OF OXFORD’S MARCHE”, FVB. 259.

See this earlier post in this “Let’s read” series for a photo of Ms. Gordon-Woodhouse. She did a lot to increase the popularity of the harpsichord and awareness of its importance in the history of music.

I have to mention one more Byrd song cited in this issue, though the recording is not on Spotify, because it has such a great title: “WHY DO I USE MY PAPER, INK, AND PEN?” Most great composers also had great senses of humor. Bach composed a COFFEE CANTATA.

An aside: These back issues of nearly a century ago (at the time of writing this) are treasures. But they are also relics. For example, the N word appears in this issue.

As someone with an academic background (the unwelcome effects of which I have long worked to shed), I am personally not shocked by such things — because anyone who has done any reading of old texts has seen this type of language in old texts all too often. But it is good to realize times have changed since then.

That said, I assume an intelligent readership, so I won’t be climbing on any soapboxes or wasting space commenting further on matters like this. But I did not want to sweep this under the carpet.

Francis Brett Young in an article called “At Random”:

“A little time since, I was asked to contribute to a symposium on a question raised in America […]: whether the cinematograph had not rendered the novel superfluous. The question seemed to me a silly one, for it disregarded one of the fundamental functions of the novelist, which is the achievement of verbal beauty, with all its suggestions, in prose.”

“Z.” rues the loss of a record:

“I only had an opportunity of playing the last-mentioned record once, when the interpretation made a great impression on me, and I am sorry to say that the disc has disappeared from my review shelves. Perhaps my colleague, Mr. J. Caskett, was so much pleased with it that he has literally devoured it, or it may be that he sat on it by accident and buried the fragments in the garden without daring to confess his crime.”

I miss this kind of relaxed, conversational style in publications like THE GRAMOPHONE (these days minus the definite article). Also, digital music — much as I deeply appreciate it and its availability — means no such anecdotes or musings could come about anymore, except with the hardy souls who never abandoned physical media.

Another flight of fancy from “Z.”:

“Much is lost if they are not played with the loudest needle, and although the scratch is not unduly in evidence, so exquisite is this music that I have never felt such bitterness against chemists for not being able to do what they ought to be able to do. If I were a despot, I would summon before me the leading chemists of the day; I would immure them in a completely equipped laboratory, and I would give them two years to eliminate the scratch from gramophone records. The penalty for failure should be imprisonment for the term of their life in a cell lit by acetylene gas and covered with encaustic tiles. Here they should spend the rest of their unnatural lives, listening day and night to the strains of a cheap gramophone playing on a scratchy record ‘I’M FOR EVER BLOWING BUBBLES’. Their food should be sent in to them from the Eustace Miles restaurant in Chandos Street; their lightest reading should be Freud, Jung, and Ernest Jones; and doubtless, if I really were a despot, I should be able to devise all sorts of additional horrors, which in my present state of limited power I have neither space nor time to enumerate.”

He did well enough already. Eccentric digressions like this in these vintage issues often make me smile. They are very human, and more of human life and of humanity comes through when writers are allowed real freedom of thought and expression, and the luxury of enough space. Something has been lost since these days, at least when it comes to most music journalism.

Less charmingly, “Z.” strays from the eccentric to the crude with this:

“Not that I crave to hear the words of what is one of the most tiresome songs ever written, and one that by some curious misfortune of mine second-rate sopranos always choose to sing whenever I go to a concert in Italy. I nearly committed sopranocidio by throwing a lemon squash at the last woman I heard sing it.”

Hardly gracious or gentlemanly.

So while I admire some aspects of these older approaches to music journalism, things like this occasionally cool these warm feelings.

Back along more amusing lines, “Z.” again of a record:

“I thought that it was a really good record; but, alas, with each succeeding performance it becomes more tinny, and if I play it much more I shall be able to preserve tomatoes in it.”

Frank Swinnerton comments on the limitations of the day’s recording technology:

“The gramophone cannot yet reproduce the letter ‘S’. It cannot yet render satisfactorily the full volume of an orchestra or the pure tone of the pianoforte. Always the orchestra has a tinny vibration — a dwarfing of the original; nearly always the piano has many notes — particularly loud notes — resembling the banjo. Pang, pang, pang… Strings are still the most satisfactory instruments for mechanical reproduction.”

A recording already mentioned in this “Let’s read” series and available on Spotify:

Norman Allin singing Albert Ketèlbey’s Shakespeare setting “BLOW, BLOW, THOU WINTER WIND”. “Z.” says it “can be used for frightening cats.” I like this composer’s orchestral pieces more, though.

In the “Gramophone Societies’ Reports” (yes, people used to gather together to listen to music on the gramophone), Ernest Baker of The South-East London (Recorded) Music Society comments on Wagner’s music:

“It covers the whole gamut of musical emotion; it has such amazing descriptive power and is so full of pure musical beauties. We have the music of the sea, of fire, the air, love, life, and death — all painted by a master-hand upon an immense canvas.”

All this reminds me of Iceland as well.

An article called “A Decca Romance” tells the story of a portable Decca gramophone that a British battalion hauled around in “a large clothes basket” in World War I. Everyone brought back records when on leave, in England or Paris, for example, and records were also ordered by post.

“Strange homes that old Decca has had, up and down the villages of France, in ruined houses, in huts, in tents, in transport lines.”

After the war was over:

“It was put up for a raffle in the village, and no less a sum than five pounds was raised for the Benevolent Fund of the battalion’s Old Comrades’ Association, while the man who won it for one shilling is not grumbling at his bargain. Long may it flourish in its new home!”

Wagner pieces or extracts mentioned in this issue with some relevance to Icelandic sagas (though none of the recordings mentioned is on Spotify), cited again here for their evocative titles (Wotan = Óðinn / Odin):

SIEGFRIED

“Forest Murmurs”

“Forging Songs” / “Siegfried Forges the Broken Sword”

“Mime’s Treachery to Siegfried”

“Siegfried Follows the Forest Bird”

“Brünnhilde Hails the Radiant Sun”

“Brünnhilde Recalls Her Valkyrie Days”

“Introduction: Wotan Invokes Erda”

“Siegfried’s Ascent to the Valkyrie Rock”

“Brünnhilde Yields to Siegfried”

Plus the related composition, not part of the opera:

SIEGFRIED IDYLL

GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG (TWILIGHT OF THE GODS)

“The Parting of Brünnhilde and Siegfried”

“Hagen Meditates Revenge”

“Gunther and Gutrune Welcome Siegfried”

“Prelude: The Rhinemaidens Scene”

“Brünnhilde Kindles the Funeral Pyre”

Spotify playlist for this entry, “Let’s read THE GRAMOPHONE in Iceland: No. 3 — August 1923”:

This issue is available as part of the magazine’s digital archive, which every subscriber (a month or a year, digital or print+digital) gets access to.

Earlier entries in this series:

Let’s read THE GRAMOPHONE in Iceland: No. 2 — June 1923

Let’s read THE GRAMOPHONE in Iceland: No. 1 — April 1923

Let’s watch THE RAY BRADBURY THEATER in Iceland: 1.01: “Marionettes, Inc.”

*Title card with appropriate “digital clock” typeface.*

SEPTEMBER 20th 2018 — Ray Bradbury loved cinema and cinematic storytelling all his life.

From trips to the movies with a beloved family member when he was a boy, he fell in love with the form and it never ended.

Two characteristics permeate all his writing: all of it is lyrical — he had the soul of a poet and that’s why he’s one of my favorite writers — and much of it is powerfully sensual. It engages all the senses.

He said one could film any of his stories by simply turning each sentence or paragraph into a shot. All the information was there, he said, in his writing: what to show and when and how.

From 1985 to 1992 the world enjoyed his TV series THE RAY BRADBURY THEATER. It was filmed on location in many countries: Canada, the United States, New Zealand, and France.

Ray personally scripted every episode and proved his profound and natural understanding of how to tell a story in this form. His work for the series is a model of what to do and not do in scripting film and television.

(I prefer saying just “film” from now on. These are mini-movies in all but name.)

Scenes are allowed to unfold without drowning everything under too much dialogue. Just enough is said and not said. Sights, sounds, and yes, through the power of his work and that of his collaborators, also smells, tastes, and tactile experiences come through.

Iceland is to me Bradbury country and more like the remembered land of my childhood than anywhere else I have been as an adult. Magic is still possible here. The elements have power, like in his stories. The wind has a presence unlike anywhere else. There is the sea, there are mountains and waterfalls, and dark nights and summer cottages in pristine nature.

Stories live here and are respected. As is poetry. As is music. I write this in a snug bedroom with a great big bed and a slanting ceiling of the kind that through some geometrical alchemy seems to fire the imaginations of all creative people. I wish more than anything that I could really share all this.

In any case, Iceland is a great place to watch THE RAY BRADBURY THEATER. I also did so in Paris last winter, and before that in Finland. As an adult, and long ago, first in childhood.

“Marionettes, Inc.” (1985), directed by Paul Lynch (who also directed many episodes of the STAR TREK spin-offs), is not among my favorite episodes. I felt casting James Coco (1930–1987) as the protagonist was not the best choice.

But like all these episodes, this one too affords many incidental delights. Here are some of them.

A printer much like one we had at home for our Commodore 64,

are interestingly “marionette”-like as well.

In this very first episode, Ray and his collaborators found a way to tell potential censors what to do.

Another detail Ray probably enjoyed as much as the staff at Computer Junction.

Kenneth Welsh in a role I prefer to his turn as Windom Earle in TWIN PEAKS.

Rather than a villain with a “talent” for disguise as convincing as a threadbare pantomime horse, here he plays just a regular guy.

Leslie Nielsen (1926–2010) was obviously an actor of many talents, but his appearance as Fantoccini is hampered by a supremely unconvincing attempt at an “Italian”(?) accent.

Blue light will also feature later in the episode.

Comfortably flared trousers as Fantoccini leads the protagonist to witness the early training stages of new “marionettes”.

This sequence features some great physical acting, with genuinely creepy jerky movements

as the marionettes try to learn to mimic human behavior convincingly.

This guy takes halting, stiff steps, occasionally reversing his movements before continuing forward.

Sensitively filmed “ordinary” locations can hold more magic for me than any excess of special effects.

Into the basement, and blue light again.

I need nothing more than this to be immersed: light and smoke are enough in the right hands.

surprises for the none too admirable characters.

A final climb up the stairs as we wonder whether either one of the married couple is human anymore.

This and every other episode of THE RAY BRADBURY THEATER is available as part of a DVD box set. Despite nearly VHS-quality video, it comes with my warmest recommendation.

The great auk and Fire Island

geirfugl — *Admiring the sea view with a friend on my first visit to Iceland. Late 2016, Reykjanes.*

SEPTEMBER 20th 2018 — When I first visited Iceland in 2016, my hosts showed me many places, among them the southwestern tip of Iceland and of Reykjanes (“Smoky Cape”) Peninsula, a memorial site for geirfuglinn, the great auk. Eldey (“Fire Island”), where the last great auks were killed in the 19th century, can be seen 16 kilometers off the shore.

Other than the one above, I currently have no access to the photos I took at this particular place, but following my earlier post where I mentioned the great auk, Thomas Bouakache Trosborg in the Facebook group “International Students at the University of Iceland” kindly offered the photos below to share here.

42059529_10217263557329949_604291161128960000_n — *The stone statue commemorating the last great auk. This and the following photos by Thomas Bouakache Trosborg.*

41968591_10217263564410126_3078555072267812864_n — *Iceland has documented and annotated numerous sites with durable information plaques like this.*

41991406_10217263559930014_7255934208177078272_n — *Eldey in the distance, to the southwest of this most southwestern point of Iceland.*

42094456_10217263558489978_4156205866262986752_n — *Information plaque about the fateful (for the great auk) island.*

Thank you for sharing these photos, Thomas!

The remains of the last male great auk were found in Brussels in 2017, as reported by ICELAND MONITOR:

https://icelandmonitor.mbl.is/news/news/2017/08/19/the_last_male_great_auk_has_been_found/

The Settlement Exhibition, Reykjavík

Version 2 — Landnámssýningin (“The Settlement Exhibition”) in downtown Reykjavík, late August 2018. The flightless bird pictured at bottom right is the great auk. The last known members of this species died in June 1844 on the island of Eldey (“Fire Island”). Cause of death? Strangulation. By Icelandic sailors.

SEPTEMBER 16th 2018 — As part of the course Inngangur að sögu Íslands (“Introduction to the History of Iceland”) by Markús Þ. Þórhallsson, we visited The Settlement Exhibition on the Friday of the first week of classes.

The building was constructed around the remains of a viking longhouse excavated in central Reykjavík in 2001.

1st day of school

Veröld (“World”) on the University of Iceland campus. This building — “hús Vigdísar” (“house of Vigdís”) — was founded in honor of Vigdís Finnbogadóttir (“Vigdís, Finnbogi’s daughter”), the first democratically directly elected female president in the world. She was president of Iceland from 1980 to 1996. Whereas my own country of birth, Finland, was the first, in 1906, to give women full political rights, i.e. the right to vote as well as run for office. But Finland got its first female president, Tarja Halonen, only in the year 2000. She left office in 2012.

SEPTEMBER 15th 2018 — My studies in Icelandic as a Second Language at the University of Iceland started with an orientation week in the penultimate week of August 2018. The first day was beautiful and sunny, warm but not too warm.

1 (11) — *Orientation event “The Keys to Success at the University of Iceland”.*

I was especially impressed by the warmth radiated by the head of the program, Professor Jón Karl Helgason (“Jón Karl, Helgi’s son”). He spoke softly and with a glint of humor, starting his introductory talk with a photo of his newborn son. He told us this was going to be our competition for the coming year — he expects us to match or exceed the progress of the young one.

This warmth is something I have rarely felt in the presence of Finnish teachers, but in Iceland it is not uncommon. Many Icelanders know how to bring warmth to a whole room, as Jón Karl did. It made the place feel welcoming and supremely safe. Whereas in Finland, in my experience, it is more common for rooms to have a constant low-level tension. It makes a huge difference.

But I don’t mean to put down Finns, who can have fine qualities of their own. And I have been fortunate enough to have studied under several exceptional ones.

*The menu at the student canteen Háma (“Gobble”) on my first day.*

During a break I found my way to the canteen, where I ate healthily: vegetable balls in curry pineapple sauce with pasta and salad, with a vitamin drink.

*First meal at my new “home away from home”.*

Other orientation week activities included a guided tour of the campus, hotdogs and soda in the open air, and of course a student party at the on-campus Stúdentakjallarinn (“The Student Cellar”) — with free bjór (beer).

As we were told during a later visit to the Settlement Museum, beer has long been important in Iceland. In the old days, no feast would have been possible without it, and feasts were very important community-strengthening events.

Landsbókasafn Íslands — Háskólabókasafn (“National Library of Iceland — University Library”) is the largest library in Iceland, with over a million items, including valuable manuscripts. So valuable that the library is surrounded by an actual moat. The building took 16 years to finish and opened in 1994.

I headed home in the evening to my apartment in Kópavogur (“Seal Pup Bay”), feeling it had been a good start.

*Aðalbygging (“Main Building”) at night. University of Iceland, late August 2018.*

I would soon be moving much closer to the university, however. But that’s a different story.

1 (12) — *A cool jazz trio jammed at Stúdentakjallarinn at the close of the first orientation day.*

“…a long, long time.”

Garibaldi drinks — *BABYLON 5: “Phoenix Rising” (1998).*

SEPTEMBER 14th 2018 — Our minds work in mysterious ways. Why are we sometimes suddenly reminded of something long in the past, with no obvious trigger for that particular memory? Things just find their own time to happen.

Today for some reason I was reminded of Garibaldi’s alcoholism storyline in BABYLON 5. The actor who portrayed him, Jerry Doyle, passed away in 2016 at the age of 60.

Along with those of G’Kar (the wonderful Andreas Katsulas) and Londo (the equally wonderful Peter Jurasik), his was one of my favorite storylines in this series that for many these days seems to have fallen between the cracks between the latter-day STAR TREKs and Ron Moore’s reimagined BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, which went darker than any popular TV SF series ever.

I just think there was particularly much truthfulness and emotional resonance to Garibaldi’s story, including the story thread of his struggles with alcohol. It was introduced in the first-season episode “Survivors” — still one of the early episodes I remember liking best — and came to play a bigger part later on.

I let my complete VHS collection go many years ago and haven’t repurchased the series since, as I rewatched all of it so many times in my earlier years that I still remember most of it nearly photographically.

From “Survivors”, for example, Garibaldi’s sad, regretful, softly spoken lines about how, long in the past, after a tragic event he crawled inside a bottle and didn’t come out for a long time.

I guess characters with regrets, and the numerous ways they cope or fail to cope with them, will be around, and relatable, as long as we human beings continue to fail so spectacularly and so often at being kind to one another.

Googling some of this today, I also noticed something interesting. In a much later episode, he sings “SHOW ME THE WAY TO GO HOME”, which became one of my favorite songs long after BABYLON 5 — so I didn’t remember it had featured on the show. (More of the interesting workings of our minds.)

Specifically, I came to feel very fondly about this song after a friend posted a few years ago that scene from JAWS with the main characters singing it, badly (that’s why it’s so good), in the little boat at night. I’ve since gone back to watch it again a few times.

One of those rare songs that can bring you up when you really need it.