It’s lily season. This year’s Botanica pictures can be viewed here.

(Via John C. Wright.)

A bit of Copland:

(Via dm00.)

And a little dance:

(Via Mark Sullivan.)

The last one reminds me of this classic.

Identify the speaker:

1. “I have actually outlived myself.”

2. “Defend me, Spaniards, from the Germans, who do not understand and have never understood music.”

3. “All the doctors who wanted to forbid me to smoke and to drink are dead.”

4. “Beauty of sound is beside the point.”

5. “Thank God! Finally a Reich Chancellor who is interested in art!”

6. “There is, thank God, a large segment of our population that never heard of J.S. Bach.”

7. “Beethoven was wrong!”

8. True or false: Debussy served as the thirty-third grand master of the Prieuré de Sion.

9. Who told a tenor saxophone player to play a descending major seventh with “sex appeal”?

10. Who was known to wear “a peach-colored shirt, a green tie with white polka-dots, a knit belt of the most vivid purple with a large and ostentatious gold buckle, and an unbelievably loud gray suit with lots of black and brown stripes”?

11. Who, according to Pierre Boulez, “… had displayed ‘the most ostentatious and obsolete romanticism’”?

12. Who, according to Pierre Boulez, was “… a ‘performing monkey” whose methods betrayed ‘fascist tendencies’”?

13. Who was apparently born near Cologne in 1928, but actually was of extraterrestrial origin and had lived many past lives?

14. What is 8′37″ better-known as?

15. Who was “the best drug connection in New York”?

Answers

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Am I satisfied with them? Not entirely. The frames need a bit of adjustment, which I’m hesitant to do myself, and while I do have good distance and close-up vision now, intermediate vision, such as is necessary when working at a computer, is confined to an annoyingly small region. I may need to get a second pair specifically for work.

However, I’ve never been completely satisfied with any of the glasses I’ve purchased in the last 20 years. My new pair, even with its problems, is a better fit than the second-last pair, which was expensively mis-manufactured and ill-fitted by the optician at his shop. And my new pair does pass the crucial test: I can read all evening long.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, I can still find plenty at Amazon.com.

Something isn’t quite right in this picture. Although the spine of the book on the left end states that it is also “Fugitives of Chaos,” actually it’s “Titans of Chaos,” the conclusion to John C. Wright’s trilogy.

More very miscellaneous links:

An excess of empathy?

Jimmy Webb, theologian.

“Lord Byron was a vampire? You would have to pay me money not to believe that.“

The rains have stopped for the moment, and my Echinocereus triglochidiatus finally opened. The grey blotches on the epidermis are due to the workers who painted the house last year, who painted the cacti, too.

Here’s a curiosity I recently came across: “Uta ni Katachi ha Nai Keredo,” by Doriko, featuring Hatsune Miku on vocals:

Yes, it’s just another instantly-forgettable ballad featuring one of the many nasal sopranos that infest Japanese popular music, but there is something remarkable about this recording.

(Via Martin.)

There is no such person as “Hatsune Miku.” Miku is a computer program that emulates a singing voice. Most examples I’ve heard of Miku singing sound unexpressive and artificial, but with a good programmer it is sometimes possible to believe that you’re listening to a real singer. As Martin says, “Considering how most pop artists these days seem to fall back on pitch correctors and all manner of electro-magic in the studio to the point where even their voices are effectively digital, maybe I shouldn’t find this too surprising.” We’re approaching the point where you can’t tell if a singer is real or rendered.

There’s another aspect to the recording that I also find remarkable, though it’s become commonplace these days. As best as I can tell, this is the complete membership of the band Doriko:

One guy with a couple of keyboards and a computer. It is nearly impossible nowadays to be sure whether a particular instrument in a recording is real or synthesized. For all I know, there may not be a single real drum kit among all the Touhou musicians in Japan.

Let’s see. It is now possible to synthesize all the musical lines of a pop music recording, including the vocals, well enough that they sound “real.” There is software to create and harmonize music in almost any style you can name, and other software to generate verse of varying degrees of intelligibility. How much longer before a completely computer-generated song becomes a major hit?

*****

Hatsune Miku is astonishingly popular in Japan, in part because the company that released the software designed a distinctive character to represent Miku. Her twin green ponytails are as familiar as her voice. Here’s a news report on her popularity (click on the icon in the lower right corner of the player to enable subtitles):

For those of you who have computers up to the task, there is “MikuMiku Dance,” freeware you can use to animate Miku. Here are a couple of examples featuring Hatsune Miku as a dancer rather than a singer: “Balalaika;” “Bolero.”¹ And there’s also this.

1. Based on the final minutes of this.

Stephen Bennett: “C.E.O. (Comanche Executive Officer)”

Steven King: “Medley: Puttin on the Ritz/42nd Street/It Don’t Mean a Thing”¹

Steve Lukather: “Naima”

Steve Morse: “Cruise Missile”²

Steve Stevens:”Melt”³

Steve Vai: “The Attitude Song”⁴

For Steves Hackett and Howe, dig out your old Genesis and Yes albums.

I regret that I don’t have any Steve Kaufman handy (what I have is on cassette, but my tape deck died several years ago). He is the only person to place first three times in the National Flatpick Competition at Winfield (Mark O’Connor only did it twice). If flatpicking is what you like, he’s your guy.

If you don’t know who Stevie Ray Vaughn is, you have some remedial listening to do.

Update: In celebration of April 15, here’s Stevie Ray:

1. The bass you hear is actually the sound of the two lowest strings on King’s guitar run through a separate pickup and electronically transposed an octave down.
2. Jerry Peek, bass, and Rod Morgenstein, drums
3. Tony Levin, bass, and Terry Bozzio, drums
4. Stuart Hamm, bass, and Chris Frazier, drums