Podcast #4

A brand new podcast has just spewed straight out of my mouth and into the digital ether! It's here:

20.12.08 - Haagcore #4: Sinterklaas - https://www.yousendit.com/download/TTZra0ZSZEttNExIRGc9PQ

It includes such things as an exploration of the dutch origins of Christmas traditions, some poetry and even a specially written christmas song. Hope you enjoy it. I'm back in Lincoln on Monday.

Also, Spot The Difference:
America:

Britain:



<---------PODCAST SPOILER ALERT!!!-------->

Oh, and if your wondering what I'm talking about in the podcast when I mention people blacked-up in 15th Century Spanish clothing, I'm talking about this:


Also, here's some pictures of the rioting in Greece:
Information: http://www.indymedia.org/en/index.shtml
Pictures: http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=en&article_id=933804

dp

Advertising Statistics

I recently rediscovered an advert I have been trying to find for ages because it is a classic example of the spurious use of misleading figures in advertising and really irritated me when I saw it many months ago. It recently appeared very briefly in Charlie Brooker's advertising edition of Screenwipe.

The product is L'Oreal Collegen Replumper and one thing that struck me the first time I saw it is the very odd numbers used to justify the products claims, as seen in the screenshot below:



Firstly, 217 women is a ridiculously small control group for testing a naturally distributed cosmetic product.

Secondly, the figures don't add up:
"Plumps and Smooths, 81% agree" out of "217 women tested"
Let's do the math:
How much is 81% of 217?:
81/100=0.81
0.81 x 217= 175.77 women.

175.77 women agree?
175.77 women?!

OK, maybe this isn't fair: if a survey is taken, some women may choose not to answer the question, in which case, they would not be counted as one of the 81%, even though they could be counted as one of the 217. In this case we can work out the amount of women who agreed with the statement by multiplying 0.81 by every number between 217 and 1 and finding out which numbers give non-decimal integers:

No. of women tested	81% of No. of women tested		No. of women tested	81% of No. of women tested
217	175.77		97	78.57
216	174.96		96	77.76
215	174.15		95	76.95
214	173.34		94	76.14
213	172.53		93	75.33
212	171.72		92	74.52
211	170.91		91	73.71
210	170.1		90	72.9
209	169.29		89	72.09
208	168.48		88	71.28
207	167.67		87	70.47
206	166.86		86	69.66
205	166.05		85	68.85
204	165.24		84	68.04
203	164.43		83	67.23
202	163.62		82	66.42
201	162.81		81	65.61
200	162		80	64.8
199	161.19		79	63.99
198	160.38		78	63.18
197	159.57		77	62.37
196	158.76		76	61.56
195	157.95		75	60.75
194	157.14		74	59.94
193	156.33		73	59.13
192	155.52		72	58.32
191	154.71		71	57.51
190	153.9		70	56.7
189	153.09		69	55.89
188	152.28		68	55.08
187	151.47		67	54.27
186	150.66		66	53.46
185	149.85		65	52.65
184	149.04		64	51.84
183	148.23		63	51.03
182	147.42		62	50.22
181	146.61		61	49.41
180	145.8		60	48.6
179	144.99		59	47.79
178	144.18		58	46.98
177	143.37		57	46.17
176	142.56		56	45.36
175	141.75		55	44.55
174	140.94		54	43.74
173	140.13		53	42.93
172	139.32		52	42.12
171	138.51		51	41.31
170	137.7		50	40.5
169	136.89		49	39.69
168	136.08		48	38.88
167	135.27		47	38.07
166	134.46		46	37.26
165	133.65		45	36.45
164	132.84		44	35.64
163	132.03		43	34.83
162	131.22		42	34.02
161	130.41		41	33.21
160	129.6		40	32.4
159	128.79		39	31.59
158	127.98		38	30.78
157	127.17		37	29.97
156	126.36		36	29.16
155	125.55		35	28.35
154	124.74		34	27.54
153	123.93		33	26.73
152	123.12		32	25.92
151	122.31		31	25.11
150	121.5		30	24.3
149	120.69		29	23.49
148	119.88		28	22.68
147	119.07		27	21.87
146	118.26		26	21.06
145	117.45		25	20.25
144	116.64		24	19.44
143	115.83		23	18.63
142	115.02		22	17.82
141	114.21		21	17.01
140	113.4		20	16.2
139	112.59		19	15.39
138	111.78		18	14.58
137	110.97		17	13.77
136	110.16		16	12.96
135	109.35		15	12.15
134	108.54		14	11.34
133	107.73		13	10.53
132	106.92		12	9.72
131	106.11		11	8.91
130	105.3		10	8.1
129	104.49		9	7.29
128	103.68		8	6.48
127	102.87		7	5.67
126	102.06		6	4.86
125	101.25		5	4.05
124	100.44		4	3.24
123	99.63		3	2.43
122	98.82		2	1.62
121	98.01		1	0.81
120	97.2
119	96.39
118	95.58
117	94.77
116	93.96
115	93.15
114	92.34
113	91.53
112	90.72
111	89.91
110	89.1
109	88.29
108	87.48
107	86.67
106	85.86
105	85.05
104	84.24
103	83.43
102	82.62
101	81.81
100	81
99	80.19
98	79.38

As you can see by the chart above, the only possible number of women who could have agreed with the statement are either 200 women or 100 women; either 17 or 117 less than their advert implies: that's either 7.83% or 53.91% less - bringing the possibly of a major discrepancy between the figures presented and the actual 'research' carried out!

Needless to say, I should get out more.

dp

Podcast #3

Here's the next installment:
Haagcore #3 - Herfstvakantie:
https://www.yousendit.com/download/Y2ovUWVvQTZoMlhIRGc9PQ
Sorry if you've been waiting for it but these things take a while to get recorded.

Hope you enjoy it.

I'm all in a bundle of excitement for the Huddersfield Festival...

dp

Some Dutch Advice

A Dutch friend has just given me the most brilliant explanation (using the power of metaphor) as to why the legalisation of cannabis makes, sense compared to banning it, and I just HAD to share it with you:

If parents say to their children: "do not build a fire in the house while we are out", they will come back and find their house burnt down. But, if they say to their children "you are allowed to build a fire in the garden", then they will come back to find both house and garden unsinged.

That is all,

dp

coming soon: podcast featuring; ontbijt koek, the economy, Markets, Greg Chops' Diet, and much, much more.

It's been far too long...

Imagine my horror upon discovering that, after my initial burst of blogging euphoria, it had been more than a month from my last posting. I quickly strove to correct this, creating the following (the accompanying podcast will be uploaded in a few days):

Back at the end of October was half term, which saw me visiting Ghent, probably the most beautiful place I've ever visited (apart from under my duvet in the early hours). Below I present a picture of what could possibly be the most ornate Fish Market in the world:Imagine buying your halibut from that! Also, you can see what I would describe as 'Beautiful building overkill': a cathedral, a bell tower and a large church right next to each other:

The two buildings below (notice the tower of the large church to the left of the belltower) were the other side of a square from the badboy above. Ghent seems to like packing its punches in nice and tight: The Cathedral was ornate to a scale that puts Lincoln to shame and features not only a Rubens' painting (which was pretty mind blowing) but also a Van Eyck.

And here's a picture of the castle:
In blogging, as in life, it never rains; it pisses it down so hard you get pneumonia. So here's some more things for your eyes and mind:

An interesting thing about The Netherlands is that most of their beers are imported from Belgium, because the people in that country have an uncanny knack of making good stuff. Last month I discovered a brand which I have not seen anywhere since: Piraat (or pirate, in english) beer: http://www.vansteenberge.com/htm/2en/21200en.htm. It's 10.5% vol. (would pirates drink anything less? I think not!) and according to the linked website "This is a world-class amber colored beer. American beer connoisseurs give it 98 out of 100. No other beer scores better." It is unprovable and probably fictitious phrases like this that the large, unregulated and unrefrerenced network like the world wide web was designed for. It's also interesting to note that on the same website the beer Augustijn is described as: "It is somewhat less well-known, but according to beer enthusiasts without a doubt the best and finest beer made by brewery Van Steenberge." So who knows which is best.

I found out yesterday that one millionth of a century is only 52 minutes. How many millionths of a century have you wasted today?

The American election, eh? You can tell it's going to be a good government when someone is voted for simply because they're not somebody else. Not that I'd know anything about it; due to my mistrust of the Corporate News-Media I only get my American political information via Stephen Colbert...

And finally: Belgium had a revolution! In 1830! After an opera! Now there's something they don't teach you in school. (Probably because they're to busy teaching you about the Nazis and the wrongs of every other country in the world apart from our own). Which reminds me about a fantastic I saw on TV a while ago and recently rewatched. It suggests that the First World War was really a war over oil, being that the first British troops of the war were despatched in the Middle East rather than in Europe; that Germany was attempting to build a massive railway line to transport oil from there and that this would spell trouble for a British Navy which had just switched from oil to gas. (Also it's not really believable that any country would put massive amounts of time and resources into defending a country as economically insignificant and resource bereft as Belgium (no matter how good their beer and chocolate is)). The video is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQhhrzHKMhI. It's in 9 parts.

The program also explains the Euro/Dollar theory for the invasion of Iraq - something I didn't give much creedence to until I remembered the amount of countries that America had 'intervened' in during the 20th Century:
1911 - Mexico (supported insurection of pro-British Fransisco Madero)
1912 - Mexico (supported insurection against now anti-American Fransisco Madero . By 1914 Mexico was in Civil War)
1915 - Haiti
1916 - Dominican Republic (pro-American Dictatorship implemented)
1917 - Cuba (pro-American dictatorship implemented)
1950 - Korea
1953 - Iran (Britain and US backed overthrow of elected president and pro-West despot installed)
1954 - Guatemala (CIA topples elected president Jacobo Arbenz Guzman and pro-American leader installed)
1961 - Cuba (Bay Of Pigs)
1964 - Vietnam
1970 - Chile (Nixon asks CIA to look into the possibility of a coup d'etat)
1973 - Chile (coup d'etat occurs, though American involvement debatable)
1981 - Nicaragua (Reagan authorizes a covert CIA force made of Nicuraguan exiles with the aim of overthrowing the government)
1983 - Grenada (invasion against Marxists)
1985 - Poland (backs anti-Soviet efforts ($8million a year)
1989 - Panama (invasion)
1992 - Somalia
1994 - Haiti
etc.
although, of course, all this is nothing compared to the British Empire at the height of Imperialism and Colonialism.

dp

p.s. actually it all got a bit dark and serious at the end there.

Tot ziens!

Just your average day...

Wake up, go to a lecture, go to Rotterdam, meet Steve Reich, go home, go to bed: pretty much just your average day here in The Netherlands.

Of course, there's a reason for all of this:
Yesterday, me and a few friends headed over to Rotterdam for a concert of Steve Reich's music, which included 'Clapping Music' played by the man himself (still decked out in trademark baseball cap, even when on stage), 'Different Trains', 'Music for Pieces of Wood' and 'Tehilim'. Though being in an odd position to the stage (on a balcony that stretched towards the back left of the stage) that caused some pretty odd acoustics, the concert was pretty fantastic. 'Clapping Music' and 'Music For Pieces of Wood' in particular were wonderful and, from my position in the audience at least I could hear a whole set of different acoustic phenomena colouring the sound due to the shortness of their attacks.

Anyway, after the show, there was an interview with the man himself in the foyer and I got to ask him a question about 'Different Trains' (something along the lines of 'Why did you decide to have a live string quartet in the piece rather than having them all recorded and making it a straightforward tape piece?' Answer (something like): 'I'm interested in live instruments and when the cello and viola double the vocal samples in the recording you get a personification of the characters the samples are of'.')

We hung around a bit afterwards, asked him some more questions and got this lovely picture with the man himself: Does this look like a man who's 72?
(Maya, Christiaan, Steve Reich, Robert, me; see if you can spot one of the most influential composers of the last century?)

Apparently he's working on a piece for tape and rock 'n' roll band, called '2x5', which I think is being performed in Manchester next year, and a work for the Kronos Quartet and electronics for November 2009.

Unfortunately this is going to make very little sense to anyone who doesn't know who Steve Reich is, in which case, I suggest some youtube therapy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU23LqQ6LY4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhhIZscEE_g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMA8CRyNUMc

dp

Haagcore Podcast #2 - Prinsjedag

Well, the new podcast is up at:
Haagcore Podcast #2: Prinsjedag: https://www.yousendit.com/download/bVlCSXQrdzhtNEozZUE9PQ

It includes everything you could wish from a podcast, as long as the things you wish for are: anti-monarchism; Dutch food, trams and toilets; radiohead covers; me going waaay off topic; The Large Hadron Collider; Soulful Dave P and my Top 5 Favourite Dutch Things (as of 16 September).

Thanks to everyone who said they liked the first podcast.

THE REDEEMER
I have recently had an idea which I have decided to call 'The Redeemer' (both after Our Lord And Saviour, and after the most powerful weapon in the computer game Unreal Tournament 2003).
It was inspired by some music I have been working on lately: The first piece of background music in the podcast is a dance track made almost entirely from samples of the much (and unfairly) maligned 1990s Britpop band Sleeper. I have also just heard a new Soulful Dave P track now up at his myspace, in which he samples Jethro Tull's track 'Dot Com' (a song with possibly the worst chorus ever written) from the horrifically bad album 'J-Tull.com'.

These both inspired me to set up a project whereby the idea is to take the worst pop songs in recorded musical history and turn them into solid pop gold.

I'm not talking about novelty records, I'm talking about just earnestly meant but genuinely awful music, like: New Kids On The Block, Zodiac Mindwarp and The Love Reaction, and Pj and Duncan's second album. I'm talking about music so bad that its creators are too embarrassed to sue for copyright infringement; music so bad that it would turn up on the list of 'pros and cons' you'd draw up if you were deciding whether or not to commit suicide.

The idea behind the project would be to sample these tracks in such a way to make them good music. They say you can't polish a turd - but, damn it, I'm going to try!

Suggestions for songs to use would be welcome; and if anybody has too much time on their hands and wants to participate by creating their own track, that would be awesome: we could set up an online community for making bad stuff good! Contact me if you're interested.

DATES FOR YOUR DIARY
Just so you know when I'm back in the country:
October 28th-1 December - In Huddersfield for the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival
Arriving 10:10am at Leeds Bradford - Flying Back 17:55.

Christmas:
22 December - 4 January. In Lincoln.

Hope everyone is cool.

dp

The Story So Far...

I'm currently splicing together the next podcast; I thought I'd wait until I had enough to say until posting something as I'm aware how easily these sort of diary-style things can quickly disintegrate into; "this week I have been mainly eating pasta and looking at wool" which is never very interesting.

The main things that have happened over the last weeks have been getting my time table or 'agenda', as they're called over here. I've got quite a lot of old-school theory lessons to be going to, which start next week and I'm pretty stoked about it all, been doing quite a bit of composing and completely unnecessary things like staying up until 3am creating a dance track solely out of samples from the 1990s britpop band Sleeper...

Also went to Amsterdam at the weekend for the Gaudeamus Music Festival, which is basically a festival for new composers and new music. Went to a 192 speaker 'wave-field synthesis' performance of electronic music and saw a 'night of the unexpected', which was a similar thing to the one that occured at last year's Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. Ceephax was playing there and did an absolutely fantastic set of old-school acid house on a table full of synthesizers, sequencers and drum machines.

Anyway, there is more to say, but I shall leave you waiting for the next podcast installment.

dp

P.S. Everytime I hear something about the American election I can't help but be reminded of the tagline from this film:
[apologies for the link to the poster going down.]

Haagcore Podcast #1

Well, here's the first of perhaps more podcasts. I hope you like it!

26.08.08: Haagcore #1: http://www.yousendit.com/download/Q01GQndIcHZlcEt4dnc9PQ

It's taken a while to upload it and it'll be up on the yousendit server for a week, I'll try and find a more permanent home for it later.

I finished the podcast on Tuesday. Since then I haven't really done an awful lot. I went up to Scheveningen, which is the seaside bit of the Hague. It's got a pier and is one of those odd 'resorts' (like Cleethorpes or any of the seaside towns of the English East Coast) with the requisite amount of sand and water, but also a "refreshing" North Sea breeze. Oh well, come global warming they'll be laughing...

I also found out where Radovan Karadzic is being tried. I might pop along at some point, if that doesn't sound too weird...

Also, I have been contemplating the worth of my music degree after receiving a set of questions in an email, from one of the music theory tutors from the conservatorium . The email was sent to all new composition pupils in order to guage their theoretical backgrounds. I enclose below the questions and my answers:

1. Are you able to analyse a fugue of Bach? [Do e.g. you know the 4 different types of answering a theme?]

No

2. Have you ever analysed a sonata of Beethoven by yourself?

No

3. Are you familiar with other styles of art music, like Ars Nova, Renaissance, Romantic Age?

[E.g. do you understand the isorhythmic technigue of Machault; have you analysed a mass of Josquin; are you able to analyse the harmony of Wagner or Bruckner?]

I understand the isorhythmic technique of Machaut but have not analysed a Josquin mass, very little of Wagner and none of Bruckner

4. Have you ever written a 3 part motet in modal style (counterpoint)

No

5. Have you ever written a "Bach fugue"?

No

6. What is the level of your eartraining

- sightsinging (both melodies and rhythm)

Very poor

- dictations (both melodies and rhythm)

Quite poor

7. Did you do a music history course?

I did a musicology module as part of my bachelors, but this mainly focused on 20th Century music

8. Do you have a bachelor degree? (If so, and you want to be exempted form a certain class I need some proof.)

Yes, from Huddersfield University in the UK

WHAT EXACTLY DID I DO IN THE LAST 3 YEARS?

Tot ziens!

dp

Because I'm Haagcore

Hello, one and all and sundry, welcome to my blog.
After being in Den Haag for a week I thought I would keep you all up to date using the 'internet' (you may have heard of it). The following posts will, I hope, act like digital postcards; although if you really want the effect of a postcard in digital form I suggest you only read them a week after I have arrived back in the country.

But ,I am fickle when it comes to technology so as well as this blog you will also be able to find links to my podcasts, such as the one below, which are a bit like having a conversation with me, except I do all the talking.

dp

P.S. and, please, forgive the pun! (I am pretty hardcore, though).