11 October 2012 (Thursday)

!! First of all a bit of housekeeping: Starting next week, for the rest of Fall Quarter the Language Of Music conversation group will change from Thursdays to TUESDAYS. Time will still be 4:30pm. Location will be HUB 337. But for this quarter we have to move to Tuesdays. !!


Now to the notes from last week's class: 6 students came, one of whom was new.  

Somehow I was talking about my apartment and how I can see the ships going in and out of the Seattle harbor.  And I mentioned that every day I look at the real-time map of ships passing through Puget Sound. It's at www.marinetraffic.com. I then showed how you can zoom out on the map, then scroll over to Asia and see -- in real time! -- the ships going in and out of ports in Asia, for example Tianjin in China.  Or in the strait between Taiwan and mainland China.  It is *crazy* to see how many boats are on the water out there! With the online map one can see the shipping all around the world -- in real-time! Most of my friends think I'm geeky for liking this website so much, but I think it's cool.

Since we were looking at maps I then asked some of the students to show where their apartments are in their hometowns on Google Maps. They told me about what the neighborhoods are like around their homes and we even looked at their homes from the street view of Google Maps.

Finally we started listening to some music.  One of the students had been in New York City during the break and he had gone to a few Broadway shows.  His favorite one was "The Lion King" (info), so we watched the clip "Hakuna Matata" (video, lyrics, song info).

The next song chosen was "Sing Together" (video, lyrics, song info) by Train (info). The student who chose it said the song makes her feel good and she likes the idea of people singing *together*.

 
I can't remember exactly how we got to this subject, but I told the class about the online music service Pandora (info, website) and Spotify (info, website).

Pandora is a great way to discover new music because you tell it a band you like, then it suggests other songs that are similar to that band. You can say "I like this song" or you can say "I don't like this song" and it will refine the songs it suggests to you based on your taste.

Spotify is simply an online music service with almost every song you might want to hear.

I should also mention again the mobile phone app Shazam (info, website) which lets you use your mobile phone to listen to a song (for example in a store or in a bar) and then it will tell you which song is playing.

The next song chosen was "Turning Tables (live)" (video, lyrics, song info) by Adele (info) which the boyfriend of the student who chose it had sent to her because she loves violin and guitar.  And Adele's amazing voice!  

I told the class that a Seattle singer, Vicci Martinez (info) had covered the Adele song "Rolling In The Deep" (video) as her audition for the TV talent show The Voice (info). 

One of the students said she had seen a 13-year old French girl do "Rolling In The Deep" (video) on a French talent show.

Then we watched a 15-year old Korean girl do "Rolling In The Deep" (video) on a Korean talent show!

Here's Adele's original version of "Rolling In The Deep" (video, lyrics, song info).

So we ended up watching and comparing all these different covers of the Adele song.  It was fun to see how the different singers do that song. I think the Korean girl did the best job of putting her own style into the song.

With that we had to leave the classroom.  We talked more about the students' hometowns than music today, but it was a fun conversation.

Don't forget, from now on TUESDAYS!! (4:30pm, HUB 337)