ClassicalCode

The other day I responded to an ad for free opera libretti and magazines on Craigslist. The woman was trying to find a good home for about eight boxes of what turned out to be her deceased friend’s libretti, Opera News, and San Francisco Opera programs.

The libretti are going in to my library (more on that later) but the rest is of little interest to me, as I don’t have the time to go through them. The woman who died was a life long opera fan so these items span a range of dates. I would imagine that the programs especially have some value as collectible items. Let me know if you are interested in rooting through them. They are yours if you want them.

As for the libretti, there were about 41 of them. I got them because, as a singer, they can be VERY helpful in translating arias and entire roles. If you are ever interested in borrowing any of them, I have listed my complete collection after the jump:

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Here is a tag I wrote, and multi-tracked, as a custom ring tone for my cell phone.

The text:

Hello, hello hello hello! Hello, you phone is ringin’. Hello, that’s why I’m singin’: “Hello.” (Pick up your, cell, phone!)

The tag: 

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For more multi-track barbershop fun, check out the “barbershop” category of this blog.

Another attempt at barbershop multi-tracking:

Still to work on:

• Rhythm (especially bad in bell chord: “gone, gone, gone, gone”)
• Consonants (Clear, but unobtrusive)

Again, this tag is from this (No. 19) collection of barbershop tags. The arranger is not cited, but the .pdf says the tag was sung by the Dealer’s Choice in 1973.

The tag:

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Previously:

• Love Letter’s Straight from the Heart
• Lord, You Made the Night Too Long

I learned a good deal from the “imperfections” of my first barbershop multi-track and was anxious to try another one to put this knowledge to use. So I did.

The improvements I made were:

• More natural vowels
• Better tuning
• More head voice (less pushed tone)
• Better blend

Areas that I still wish to improve are:

• More natural consonants
• Cleaner tuning of leaps
• Cleaner cut offs for breaths (unashamed)

As before the music is from this (No. 98) great collection of barbershop tags. However this time, neither the arranger nor the quartet are cited.

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On Chamber Singers tour to ACDA some other guys and myself (currently called Four Sweaty Guys in a Practice Room) started singing some barbershop tags, which lead Paul to show me this great online collection in .pdf format. Now that we are back, I had a chance to play though a bunch of them on the piano with Jason Pano, and we found this gem: “Love Letters Straight From the Heart”

The .pdf file says it was written by Fred King in 1981 and was sung by the Pros And Cons.

I thought it would be ideal canidate for my first barbershop multi-track. So, here you all go:

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My (now ex) choir just toured to Anaheim, Souther California, to sing for a choral conductors’ convention, ACDA. It is a huge honor for our choir to be invited to sing here. Here is a clip from a pre-convention concert we gave in St. Boniface.

From Paul Kim’s description of the video:

San Francisco State University Chamber Singers under the direction of Dr. Joshua Habermann sings Rosas Pandan, a traditional Filipino folksong arranged by George Hernandez, performed at St Boniface Church in Anaheim on Feb 26, 2008. Sung in Visayan about the beautiful maiden Rosas Pandan.

More video’s can be found on Paul Kim’s YouTube account.

As some of you may know, I collect items that I find on the ground. Over the last few weeks, within a two block radius of my apartment, I have found three identical copies of this document. Does anybody know what the “Henry system of music transcription” is? Or how it reduces the need for page turns? Or why someone has been pamphlet-bombing my neighborhood with propaganda against it?

My brother took a music course in his undergrad and as part of his coursework wrote a minuet. Its been sitting on the piano at home for some time, and a few days ago my parents, on the advice of my aunt, suggested that I record it for my grandparents. So, without further ado, here is “Minuet” by Nate Eldredge.

(Please excuse my pedantic playing, and the added upper lower neighbor tone “embellishment” near the end of the first repetition of the “B” section.)

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My idol, Paul Kim, put a few videos of my (our) choir on Youtube. He is the one singing the bass solo part in this one.

From Paul’s Youtube description:

San Francisco State University’s choir concert, December 15, 2007 at Most Holy Redeember Church in the Castro. “1st Katisma” – from “Vigilia” by Einojuhani Rautavaara, sung in Finnish. Conducted by Dr. Joshua Habermann.

Thanks Paul!

With the advent of limerickdb.com, which is full of nerdy limericks because it was started by the author of xkcd, I was inspired to author some nerdy limericks within my field of nerd-dom.

First the “Famous poem rewritten as a limerick” type*:

A man held his boy by his side
as through the dark night he did ride.
The boy’s health; it lessened,
The Erlkönig beckoned!
When they finally got home, the boy’d died.

And then the “Only funny to a small group of specific nerds” type:

When singing the minor mode keys,
in F# you must mind your ‘sis’.
Though vulgar and raw,
descending from ‘la’,
letter names are pronounced as: ‘fees ees’.

I have submitted them both, but have yet to see them appear on the site.

* For more info on “Der Erlkönig” check out it’s Wikipedia article, and Fischer-Dieskau/Moore’s performance of the Schubert song. Creepy.

Update: I looks like my submissions to the database have been denied. Not up to snuff?