22 May 08

7 students today. Last week Rice didn't show up because his first child was born -- congratulations to Rice, his wife and his little boy!
Someone asked if we are going to continue doing the class during Summer Quarter. I hadn't planned that far ahead! I have to ask BCC if a room is available.

I asked if anyone had any adventures since met last week. Pinar said she had been to Westport on the Pacific Ocean coast. Coincidentally a work friend of mine was at Westport on the weekend with a bunch of surfer friends of hers!

I mentioned that my favorite place on the Washington coast is Rialto Beach (photos). It's very far from Seattle -- about 4 hours by car, but it's so wild and beautiful! Well worth the trip!



The most important musical thing to note for this week was, of course, the upcoming Eurovision contest on Saturday.





I told the class that a Seattle band has the #1 album in the USA this week: The album "Narrow Stairs" by Death Cab For Cutie (bio) is the number one album. I said that I really like the first single from the album "I Will Possess Your Heart" (long video, short video, lyrics + interpretation) and watch the video multiple times each day. (The longer version of the song is better than the short one -- it builds up and allows more time for the song and video to develop.) After I pointed out some of my favorite lines from the lyrics Pinar mentioned that she liked them -- she hadn't really understood the lyrics that way before I explained them.

Since the songs is so clearly about the pursuit of passion I asked the class if they know about the book The Alchemist (info) by Paul Coelho. Most of them knew about this book. It is one of my favorites.

I mentioned that I had gone to a concert by Yoshida Brothers (info) last night. It was a lot of fun. What was also great about the evening was that I heard about the Yoshida Brothers from one of my Language Of Music students almost two years ago and I was able to go see the show in Seattle with her!


The concept that the Yoshida Brother's do of combining traditional music with modern touches inspired one of the students to show a video from China of the Twelve Girls Band (女子十二樂坊) (info) where 12 women play traditional music, but clearly with a very modern presentation (video).

I asked if this kind of music is usually played by men or women in China. The answer was, "It's usually men, that's the selling point of the Twelve Girls Band!" I'll have to keep my eyes open for their next (first?!?) concert in Seattle!

I remembered that I wanted to play a song for Marianna, who likes heavy music. The song is "A Tout Le Monde" (video, lyrics) by Megadeth (bio). I wanted to play it for her because Marianna likes women heavy metal singers and this song the woman singer from Laguna Coil (bio). I don't think Marianna had heard this song before but she said she likes it. It's a very commercial song for Megadeth, but I have to admit to liking the vocal melodies a lot.

As a further example of the singers that Marianna likes she played "Broken" (video, lyrics) featuring Amy Lee from Evanescence (bio) together with the band Seether (bio).

Suddenly we had a theme for the class -- duets between men & women!


Someone chose Mariah Carey (bio) + Boys II Men (bio) "One Sweet Day" (video, lyrics). Pinar, our resident opera singer, said she can't stand Mariah's "breathy" style of singing. I have to agree.





The next duet chosen was Ricky Martin (bio) with Meja (bio) "Private Emotion" (video, lyrics).








Next duet: Dido (bio) (who was unknown when she did this song) and Eminem (bio) "Stan" (video, lyrics). An inspired choice!







From one classic (of one genre) to another classic (of a completely different genre): Andrea Bocelli (bio) and Sarah Brightman (bio) "Time To Say Goodbye" (video, lyrics + story).






The last duet (and song) of the day was "Try Touching" (or is it just called "Touch"?) (video) by Younha (bio) and Wheesung (bio).

15 May 08

Today was Hong-Bo's birthday -- Happy Birthday Hong-Bo!!

Today was a beautifully sunny, warm Spring day! Correspondingly hardly any students showed up to hang out in our room... at first there were only 3 students :-(( .

We decided to forgo the internet connection in the room and go sit outside on the grass and chat.

As the four of us walked out of the room Jorge and EJ walked up, carrying a guitar and a violin respectively. So we all sat on the grass and listened as EJ and Jorge played some songs and others tried their hands at the instruments. It was very fun and idyllic hearing the guitar and violin float on the warm air across the square.

We didn't really talk about songs like we usually do. But we have pictures!

8 May 2008

Only 5 students in class today! I wonder where everyone was?...

With such a small group the conversation was very different from how it usually is with the larger group. It was a nice change!

First of all we found out that Minnie had her birthday the past week -- Happy Birthday!

Then we found out that Hong Bo's birthday is next week!

Today we actually hardly talked about music at all. We talked about:

* "Time" (understanding "time" in a linear way versus thinking of all time and history existing at the same time).

* Deja-vu

* Dreams/dreaming

* UFO's and life on other planets

At some point someone mentioned that they had seen Britney Spears wearing a dress that had Korean writing on it, but which made absolutely no sense in Korean! We looked the picture up online and the Koreans all laughed their heads off.

I can well imagine how silly this must look in their eyes -- I have seen a lot of non-sensical English on many questionable fashion statements in Eastern Europe!

In the end we hardly heard any music today, but we really had great conversation!

1 May 2008

14 Students today. The theme was "love" songs, though I realized that since it is "May Day" we should have made the theme "work" songs.

I started the class by trying to explain this idea. And I played the most "work" song in America: "Take This Job And Shove It" (song, lyrics) by Johnny Paycheck (bio). However, I think I failed in two ways with this song:

1. Most students didn't realize why anyone would dislike their job so much as to write a song about hating it.
2. I couldn't explain the phrase "shove it" very well in class, so I don't think most of the students understood it. Here is a defintion from Dictionary.com: "go to hell: a term of contempt, abuse, disagreement, or the like."

Before we sent into love songs, I asked if anyone had had any musical adventures in the past week. No one had. I asked Jorge if he has improved on his harmonica. He said he hasn't really, but he started learning how to play "Sweet Home Alabama" (song, lyrics) on his guitar. (I noticed there are a lot of videos teaching you how to play this song on YouTube.)

Lyrically there is a lot of commentary in this song, but I found it hard to explain to the class all the references. I think the problem is that most of the references are from the mid-1970's -- about 20 years before most of my students were born! Here's a Wikipedia article which explains the song.

I also mentioned that their song, "Free Bird" (song with lyrics) is considered an American song classic. I tried to explain that it is a joke in America at concerts for people to yell out "Free Bird" at the performers. I'm not sure myself why we all think this is so funny... Mercifully I did not make the class sit through the entire 9-minute song, including the *very long* guitar solos at the end. Here's more information about the song.

I explained, too that the band who wrote this song, Lynyrd Skynyrd, is a typical southern US rock band and that the band suffered a tragedy when it's airplane crashed, killing 3 of the band members, including the singer, but some of the band survived. The story of Lynyrd Skynyrd is an interesting tale of a prototypical American band.

Ok, enough of the Skynyrd, on to love songs.

First choice was "As long as you love me" (video, lyrics) by Backstreet Boys (bio). The student who picked the song says he likes it for the lyrics. Indeed, the lyrics are about true love: loving a person exactly for who they are and whatever they have done in the past.



The next song chosen was "Crucify My Love" (video with lyrics) by X-Japan (bio). The class really liked the lyrics to this song.







The X-Japan song had a melody that reminded me of the song "Calling You" (original song with clips from the movie, lyrics), which is one of my favorites, though it is very sad and melancholic. The song is from the movie "Bagdad Cafe" (info). I love the original version, but I also really like George Michael's version. I think he hits the restrained melancholy perfectly. Apparently Celine Dion also covered it, if you like her (dramatic) style. You can see, it's a very popular song!

As so often, I had never heard of the band (X-Japan) that the class chose, even though the band is extremely popular in Asia. I love finding out about new bands!

In fact, I am going to a concert on May 21st as a direct consequence of this class: I will go see the Yoshida Brothers (bio, a famous song/video) because one of my students once played their music in the class and I thought it was a great mixture of traditional Japanese music with modern music.


The next song chosen was "Friday I'm In Love" (video, lyrics) by The Cure (bio). I said that it's true that the song has the word "love" in it, but how is it is a "love" song? The answer: It's about loving the weekend, not a person. Good interpretation! :-)



Another student picked up on the theme of days of the week and chose "7 days" (video, lyrics) by Craig David (bio). Well, this use of the days of the week is much different than the song by The Cure! I think it's pretty clever ;-) .

We had recently heard another Craig David song and I mentioned in that post how he used the vocoder. I was surprised to hear that this song also uses a vocoder. Does he use a vocoder on *every* song?!? I mentioned the vocoder in class, but the students didn't seem to know what I meant, so I played the song which uses the vocoder effect to the maximum: Cher's "Believe" (video, lyrics). Vocoder overdrive!!


The next song chosen was "The Way You Look Tonight" (video, lyrics) by Rod Stewart (bio). (Note about Rod Stewart's bio: I wonder if the student who chose this song knows about his long history, ranging from rocker to disco quee... er, I mean king.)

At this point I asked the class who has had a "love songs" compilation CD given to them. A couple of people raised their hands. One woman said she had received one, but had thrown it right away because she didn't like the guy who gave it to her. A couple of the guys have made love songs compilations cds for girls. Including me! ;-))


Next song chosen was "Beautiful Disaster" (video, lyrics) by Kelly Clarkson (bio). The student who chose this song like Kelly's voice a lot. But lyrically it's also an interesting twist on the "love" theme; similar to the first song, it's about loving someone just how they are.



The next song was "Everything" (video with translated subtitles) by Misia (bio). I asked the student why she chose this song and her answer is that she likes the voice and the lyrics: she wants to be everything for the guy she is in love with!




I hadn't asked Ira for a song in a while, so asked her which song she wanted to hear. Her brother had actually chosen one for her, so we listened to "Angel" (video, lyrics) by Massive Attack (bio). It is true that this song includes the word "Love", but it build too slowly and the music is rather foreboding, so we took it off rather quickly. That said, I actually like Massive Attack and their "foreboding" music a lot. My favorite song by them is "Teardrop" (video, lyrics), which is another very melancholic song. Like the song "Calling You" earlier, I like the woman's voice floating over the top of the simple, melancholic music.

These songs by Massive Attack reminded me that another British "trip-hop" (definition) band has just brought out a new album: Portishead (bio). Trying to work in the theme of "love" I showed a bit of the song "Sour Times" (video, lyrics), but I don't think the class is into this kind of music; it's rather dark... Their music is like soundtracks to films: in fact, I believe that's how they started -- writing film soundtrack music. I really like Portishead and look forward to hearing their newly released album "3".

The last song of the day was by the Korean grop Jewelry (bio), but I don't remember which song it was, sorry!

Mark you calendars: May 22 - June 15, Seattle International Film Festival

Hi Everyone,

This is not exactly music-related, but Seattle has a renowned yearly International Film Festival that I want to make you aware of. This year it runs May 22 - June 15. Here's the website:
http://www.siff.net/festival/ .

Note that the full schedule of films will be posted on May 8th.

Unfortunately it is hard to get tickets to most films as they usually sell out. But perhaps you will see a film is playing that you just *must* see...

Mark your calendars: May 23-26 Folklife Festival @ the Seattle Center

Hi Everyone,

Every year there's a great, *free* music festival over the 3-day Memorial Day weekend down at the Seattle Center (under the Space Needle). It is called "The Northwest Folklife Festival". Here's the website: http://www.nwfolklife.org .

The festival is about both seeing/hearing music but also about *participating* in the music and events.

Here's a link to the list of performers and events to participate in:
http://www.nwfolklife.org/P_F/festival.html .

If you are in Seattle over that weekend I highly recommend attending the festival.

24 April 2008

Theme for the next class (1 May): Love songs! (although, since it is May 1st, we *should* do "work songs"...)


Only 10 students today -- a relatively small class for this quarter... Coincidentally the students who often go to the evening English conversation group at a church in Kirkland after our class on Thursday afternoons were all gone -- was that church trying to take my students?!?! ;-) . Well, the 10 of us (including one new student) had fun anyway!

I arrived at class tired after a long day at work. I mentioned to the class that I wish I could take a "cat nap", which means a short nap where you don't fall into a deep sleep. The concept of napping started a short conversation about napping habits of people around the world. For example, where some of my students are from people sleep on buses and on trains, sometimes even standing up. One student from China said it is common to take a cat nap after lunch there -- I have to say that every day after lunch I get really drowsy and would like to take a short nap. But I never have the time for that!

I asked the class if anyone had any musical stories or adventures in the past week. EJ, one of the new students from Korea, mentioned that she feels like she needs to buy a violin so she can play. She asked if I know of a good violin store to recommend. I asked one of my musician friends who suggests Kennelly Keys (website), which has a store in Bellevue Square (map).

Naturally I wanted to ask the new student to introduce us to his musical taste, but first I mentioned to Pinar that there is an exceptional a capella vocal group called "Le Mystere de Voix Bulgares" coming to Seattle on May 27. This group became very famous in the late 1980's, but apparently still tour a lot. To show what the music is like I did a quick YouTube search and found this clip.


After showing the song I mentioned that the guy introducing the band in the clip is one of the most famous American television personalities of all time, Johnny Carson (bio). Every American over the age of 30 knows who Johnny Carson is!

Inspired by the Bulgarian a capella group one of the students showed a clip of an a capella group from China. This song is apparently to ensure a successful hunt.

Finally I asked the new guy -- another student from Colombia -- to choose a song. Inspired by the conversation about the violin he chose "Tabaco Y Chanel" (video) by Bacilos (bio). The violin intro to the video version of the song isn't the full intro he wanted to hear, so he played us the full intro through his iPod.

He said he's loved this song since he was in 4th grade. The song is about longing for a girl. The melancholic feeling of it has always spoken to him. Interestingly, the band is based in Miami and is made up of musicians from different Latin American countries.


At this point I had to show a clip of a great violin player from Seattle, Geoffrey Castle (website). Geoffrey plays often with my friends Children Of The Revolution. But his solo stuff is really good, too. To show his talent I played a live clip of his: "Float Downstream" (video).

I noted that he was creating layers of sound by recording a bit, then looping it and playing new bits on top of it. In this way he sounds like a whole quartet (or maybe quintet)!

To show another example of this layering technique I showed my favorite example of it: KT Tunstall (bio) doing "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree" live on French TV (video, lyrics). My brain could not keep track of that layering!




Todays theme of songs was "Children's Songs" so I asked who had a children's song to play. Pinar had a whole list! She chose "Mozart - 12 Variation "Ah, vous dirai je, maman" K.265" (video) aka "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" played by the Turkish pianist Fazil Say (bio).

At this point we asked around the room who of the students play instruments. In the class we have pianists, a violinist and a couple of guitarists. It was suggested to make a band out of the musicians in the class. It would be great if the musicians would bring instruments with them to show their talent to the rest of the class ;-) .

Jorge, the new student from Colombia, showed us that he carries a harmonica with him as he is learning how to play it. We asked him to play a song and he obliged. He's good!

Back to children's songs: Dave, who is from Vietnam but studied in Russia, choase a Russian children's song (video). Apparently it's a song about smiling, but neither of our Russian students was in the class today so we couldn't ask for a translation...

The conversation moved to the topic of melancholic songs. A melancholic Turkish song "Ask-i Kiyamet" (video) by Emre Altug (bio) was chosen.








At this point I mentioned seeing a movie a few months ago about music in Turkey. The movie is called "Crossing The Bridge: The Sound Of Istanbul". I showed the movie trailer. The film is a great introduction to music in Turkey. It can be reserved and checked out from the King County Library (www.kcls.org).

Someone asked how big the Ottoman Empire was at its height, so we looked at a map of it.

Remember, the musical theme for the day was children's songs, so the next songs chosen was "Doraemon" (video), the theme song for a famous Japanese children's show.

Somehow -- I don't remember now exactly *how* -- we got onto the subject of animal sounds in different languages. We went around the table making the sounds of the following animals in each of our native languages:

• frogs
• roosters
• dogs
• cats

and more...

There was a lot of laughter around the table! How can different cultures hear the sounds of animals so differently?!?

Suddenly someone played one of my personal favorite children's songs on the screen: "Mahna Mahna" (video). More laughter in the room! (Here is a whole article just about this song!)




At this point I *had* to show the Swedish Chef: "making donuts". I don't think the class quite got how funny the Swedish Chef's style of talking is in English. But they did laugh about his method of making holes in the donuts.

I tried to explain that when the Swedish Chef talks he doesn't really make sense in English, rather it's just kind of funny sounding. In the US we call his talking "bork bork bork". Here's a full explanation of the Swedish Chef's charms.

I showed that you can choose "bork bork bork" and many other made-up languages for your Google interface. For example, click here to see the "bork bork bork" interface. Here is the "Elmer Fudd" interface. There are many other options in the "interface languages" list on the Google preferences page.

To end the day Jorge played a Maroon 5 song "Sunday Morning" (video, lyrics). With that we decided to make the theme for next week's class "Love Songs" -- it's been 2 1/2 months since Valentine's Day, after all!

Speaking of Maroon 5, I showed the class a website where can find a lot of (legal!) downloads of live concerts, including Maroon 5 and Smashing Pumpkins. The site is www.archive.org and it has a list of all bands with live recordings on the site.


See everyone on Thursday, May 1st -- be ready to play us your favorite love songs!

17 April 2008

Theme for April 24: Children's songs.


16 Students today, including 4 new students! It's great to have so many people show up. And I am glad when I see them talking amongst themselves on the side -- the hour is about conversation, anyway!

The new students introduced themselves: name, where they are from and what kind of music they like.

For those Asian students who have an English name (as opposed to here using their name from the country where they are from) I asked how they cam to choose the English name they use. There are many answers. Often it is the parents who chose the English name. Or they choose an English name that sounds similar to their Asian name.

To start with the music I asked one of the new students, EJ, to choose a song. She likes classical music and has recently been getting into "crossover" music. She chose Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 (video) played by Maksim Mrvica (bio). EJ mentioned a few times as we watched the video that she thinks Maksim is very good looking ;-)) .

Mrvica is from Croatia and I ended up explaining that my last name, Zitkovich, is also Croatian. And I told about how it was annoying when I was in school to be called Zitko-bitch by the other school kids. But all in all I didn't have a traumatic school experience and nowadays I am happy to have a unique name.


The next new student is from Colombia. Everyone in the class wanted to know who besides Shakira (bio) is popular in Colombia. Carlos chose "Me Enamora" (video) by Juanes (bio). I have never heard of Juanes but apparently I have had my head stuck in the sand -- all my international students knew about him and the video has been watched over 6.5 million(!!) times.

I asked Carlos if Juanes is a good guy and Carlos said yes, he has the impression that Juanes is a good guy. I have read his Wikipedia bio and it mentions Juanes's humanitarian work, so it does sound like his is a good guy! This was an excellent choice to introduce the class to another singer!


The next new student, Kiseo, chose Clazziquai Fiesta (song without video) by Daishi Dance, a house DJ from Japan. I can't find any biographical information about this guy!






In that song I noticed a melody similar to the main one in Tom's Diner (video) by Suzanne Vega (bio). [I saw Suzanne play here in Seattle this past Autumn -- it was a great show! You can see a video of her playing shortly afterwards in Amsterdam at www.fabchannel.com.]



As we watched that video someone commented how typical 80's the dancing was. I said that the most typical 80's dancing in my view is "U can't touch this" (video) by MC Hammer (bio). It's amazing how much money that guy burned through: he had $33 million and wasted it *all* until he had to claim bankruptcy (definition).


Everyone in class knows that song by MC Hammer, but I just had to ask if they knew the "original" version of that song: Super Freak (video) by Rick James (bio). None of them knew that MC Hammer had really just re-worked an existing song from 1981. And they were a little shocked by the tawdry (definition) nature of the video. Read the Rick James bio to see what a sad fate he also had. Note to self: I think the song "Super Freak" brings bad luck to anyone who sings it...

Next up we watched a video from a Chinese artist. But all the YouTube keywords were in Chinese and now I can't find it to link to :-(( . I noted that the video was posted by someone named "rainie777" but that person has 827 videos posted and I can't find the one we watched from all those videos!

The next choice was "Goodbye My Lover (live)" (video, lyrics) by James Blunt (bio). The student who chose this song specifically wanted the "live" version because he says it is much more emotionally performed than the "studio" version from the album.

The conversation moved to Blunt's other big hit "You're Beautiful" (video, lyrics). Some of the students didn't realize how the song is about longing.

Speaking of misunderstood songs, I mentioned (as I have in previous classes) that the song "Every Breath You Take" (video, lyrics) by The Police (bio) is actually a song about controlling another person. People play it at their weddings because they think the lyrics about being together with their loved one are sweet, but in fact the song is exactly opposite -- it's about control, not love!

I asked Marianna if she is going to a concert soon. She will go see Eyes Set To Kill (MySpace, official website). As an example of their music she chose the song "Darling" (video, lyrics).






The next song was "I don't wanna know" (video, lyrics) by Mario Winans (bio). The students had some questions about the lyrics mean, like what "playin' me" (="don't play me for a fool") and "keep it on the low" (="don't talk about it").




The next song chosen was "Hysteria" (video, lyrics) by Muse (bio). Jay said he tried to learn this bass part but it is too difficult. I should have pointed him to a transcription of the bass tabulature for the song.





A lot of people who like Muse also like Jeff Buckley (bio). Jeff is considered one of the best rock singers in the 1990's yet he tragically died at age 31. To show an example of his singing I showed two videos: "Hallelujah" (video, lyrics) to show his vocals and "Grace" (video, lyrics) to show he could rock out, too (hence the appeal to Muse fans).


The last song of the day was "Walking Away" (video, lyrics) by Craig David (bio). I personally like the use of the vocoder on his vocals on the song. I had the tune stuck in my head for a few hours after class!






Theme for the next class (April 24): Children's songs.

10 April 2008

Although I usually keep it a secret among my friends and co-workers, last week I mentioned to the class at the end of last week that the next class, April 10th, falls right on my birthday this year.

When I arrived at class I was showered with cards -- including two which play music when you open them ;-) -- presents and a cake. I was very touched by the kindness of my students!! I am not good at accepting presents because I can't express enough how much it means to me. So I just stood there saying "Thank you, thank you, this is so kind of you" but I don't know if they understood how much it touched me that they organized all this for me.
Here's a picture of the cake:
And here is the whole class while I cut the cake:


Everyone sang me "Happy Birthday" and then Happy Birthday was sung in each language represented in the class. We watched lots of birthday-related videos. The assigned theme for the week was "Saturday night songs" and we watched some, but unfortunately I didn't take notes during the class today and I have forgotten all the songs/videos we watched. Students, do you remember what we listened to and watched?

Two new students came today. What a strange introduction for them to the Language Of Music discussion group! I hope they still remain interested in how the class "usually" runs to come back!

3 April 2008

(placeholder until I type up my notes from the class)