Oh hey there. It's been a while. Been busy doing my own things, listening and discovering more music in my quest to find that platonic, archetypal piece that is in my head waiting to get out, and maybe even attempting (gasp) to try my hand at composing a thing or two myself.

As someone whose knowledge of music is all informal, taken from bits and pieces at my own leisure, I doubt I have anything more interesting to say that coffee hasn't already said. The passion in enjoying something like this, however, and not just music, but anything, is admirable as all hell and deserves a badge. Passionate people who are passionate about things are cool.

I really dig Shostakovich's music myself. His 5th symphony is a great one. A lot of shostakovich's music is really colored by the area and time he was living in, and you can feel it in the anger that coffee mentions in his post.

My favorite Shostakovich piece has to actually be his Second Symphony, which doesn't seem as popular as most of his others, and is a piece even he disliked, but I managed to find some beauty in it, especially in the latter half.

If anyone likes angry, ferocious pieces, I would heavily recommend Gavriil Popov's 1st Symphony. It's sad he got soviet folks angry, causing him to be more conservative in his composing.

That explosion at 5:18... Potent stuff there.

Here's something on Popov:

http://www.therestisnoise.com/2004/09/the_popov_disco.html

Thinking of a piece that gets me as passionate as coffee here seems like a fun idea, so I'll try that. I would say Erik Satie's Le Fils Des Etoiles is a piece that speaks to me:

I feel as though there's a secret in this piece that careful study will unravel. It feels alien and otherworldly to me, almost as if it it is out of place in history. Here's an orchestrated version arranged by Toru Takemitsu:

For whatever reason, when I think of pieces that get me passionate, I also feel compelled to post this piece:

Scriabin in general gets me excited. How many other composers have the courage to write a piece to signal the end of the world?

And of course he had to die before finishing it... They always die before finishing it!

Oh hey there. I haven't been on in a while (mostly busy with real life stuff), but I'm always up to share some classical music I love to others.

If piano pieces are what you want, OftenBen, here are a few pieces that I absolutely love:

Ravel - Miroirs no. 3: Un barque sur l'ocean:

This is a wonderful piece by ravel in a series of piano pieces, all of which are good, but this one is my favorite of the bunch. It's calm, melodic, meditative and very oceanic if I do say so myself. A wonderful piece by one of my favorite composers.

Ravel - Piano Concerto for the Left Hand

As a lefty, it is almost an obligation to post this wonderful piece by Ravel. Would you believe this piece was composed for famous Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein's brother? Didn't even know he had a brother before discovering this piece! Paul Wittgenstein lost his hand in a war but still wanted to play piano, so he got Ravel to write this piece for him. Unfortunately Ravel was incredibly displeased at Paul when he performed it, because Paul decided to change a few things in the piece to make it more palatable to his musical tastes. This is a wonderful, heroic sounding piece, just like Paul.

Alexander Scriabin - Piano Sonata no. 5

I've listened to a lot of versions of this piece, but Sultanov imo does it best. When I first listened to this I felt as if I was listening to some cosmic otherworldly music. Really amazing stuff here.

Simeon Ten Holt - Canto Ostinato

Got two hours? This piece is really something beautiful. Whenever I listen to this piece it's like my mind wanders through medieval labyrinths. It's a very minimal, meditative and almost transformative piece. My favorite part of the entire piece has to be section 88.

A very dark and lonely sounding, but beautiful part. Unfortunately this isn't my favorite version, but it's the only one on youtube. The one I first listened to, and is my favorite, takes it much faster and spends more time repeating 88 quite a bit.

Kasputin - Piano Sonata no. 8

This piece is very jazzy. Kasputin is a perfect blend of jazz and classical that is really worth a listen if you like either genre.

Valentin Silvestrov - Last Love

Silvestrov is a wonderful Ukrainian composer. His sixth symphony is one of my favorite symphonies of all time, but this isn't about symphonies, lol. This piece in particular is terrible. Yeah right; It's stunningly beautiful. As is this piece by him:

He's well worth a listen to, but be forewarned, he is a modern composer. Other pieces by him might be a bit more inaccessible for those who dislike modern music, but if you give him a shot, I think you'll grow to like it. Try this piece:

Walter Abendroth - Piano Concerto

The stuff you find on youtube, I tell ya. I don't know much of anything about this guy, but I found this when randomly listening to obscure composers on youtube and really like it. Perhaps it's not Tchaikovsky, but I found it nice enough in any case.

Granados - Valses Poeticos

Very melodic and beautiful waltzes.

Theodor Adorno - Piano Piece

A very interesting dream-like piece.

Debussy - Images I: Reflets dans l'eau

Debussy is another favorite of mine, and this piece in particular is a favorite of mine. The first piece of his I ever listened to was his suite Bergamasque:

Which is very beautiful and contains the famous Clair de Lune, which you've probably heard somewhere else before in a movie or game or maybe mentioned by someone in a book. A very beautiful piece.

Steve Reich - Piano Counterpoint

A beautiful minimalistic piece. Minimalism might not be for everyone, but this piece, among others by him, are really something great. Watching the work slowly alter, evolve and change is really something that's a treat to my ears. His Music for 18 Musiciansis also a minimalist masterpiece, albeit not entirely piano, though it plays an important part in the piece in any case:

My favorite part has to be his section IIIA

The piano is performed by Reich himself, btw.

...I think that's enough for now. I could go on, but I think that's enough piano tunes and places to search for more piano tunes... Well, actually, one more:

Camille Saint Saens - The Swan

The piano is mostly in the background compared to the violin that just tugs at your heartstrings, but I think it still belongs here. It's a very beautiful piece.

I could never get it to work.

One time I thought I got it to work and changed all of my friends to cats, but then I realized if I were really lucid dreaming I would have done other things than change my friends into cats.

Other times I could tell I was dreaming thanks to the lightswitch trick, but I couldn't go farther than the acknowledgement that I was dreaming. I couldn't actually do anything. I tried with something that I thought was simple: Changing the color of a room. My dreams usually take place in the night time for some reason, so I thought I could change between morning and night, but that never worked. I could also never fly in a dream.

Sometimes the lightswitch trick doesn't even work. One time I remember dreaming that the lightswitch was broken instead of realizing that I'm in a dream world. The fingers trick doesn't work as well. I try pulling my fingers, but they don't extend like others say they should, so it oftentimes makes me think I'm awake when I'm not.

I suppose the best tip I know of is to keep a dream diary. Not just for lucid dreaming, but also to keep track of your dreams, since some really interesting shit happens in dreams. I can't even begin to explain what goes on in some of my dreams. It's amazing what stuff your mind can come up with.

All the other tricks tend to not work for me that well, but I guess it's like anything else; If you really want something and work for it, you'll get it. If you spend time thinking and trying to lucid dream, you'll get it.

It really was something amazing. It was a time when I think everyone was caught off guard and people felt like they could freely air out their long-held grievances with the way things were going. It had supporters the likes of Judith Butler, Lemony Snicket, and I personally will never forget this one by composer Philip Glass:

In those times you could really figure out who to look up to.

Interesting manga. Truthfully there's something about your review (Is it your review?) that could use more work, although I can't quite put my finger on just what it is. But it's nice that you picked what seems like an obscure manga out of everything else you could have done. I never heard of it, but you got me interested with the topics you mentioned.

The music in this movie was really something amazing, as is expected from Joe Hisaishi:

Some really great stuff here. This was my first experience with a Miyazaki/Ghibli film, and rewatching it made me appreciate it more. I should probably get on watching the rest of his stuff sometime soon.

As for prompts...

1. I think it's actually pretty good as a kid's movie all around. You have a clear set of people to root for and the show says its piece simply and beautifully enough for a kid to understand. I think kids can appreciate the setting and it just has a very whimsical feel (Even the music exhudes this wonderland feel to it) even with some of heavier imagery and stuff.

2. I don't think so. There are right and wrong people though, the people being in harmony with nature being painted as right.

My takeaway from this film is: Take care of nature or else nature will take care of you!

Also, I really dig the design of the Ohms. Japan just has a knack for creating cool looking creatures.

Really shows how things can get blown up from misunderstandings on the 'net. If this was someone smaller time than Colbert and someone more malicious was bent on causing some harm, a lot of lives and careers could be ruined from misunderstandings and the media picking up anything that smells of the smallest amount of controversy for coverage, views and so on.