Photo Hunters: Music

This is a terrific theme for this week, but I wish I had more energy and was feeling better to devote to it. Everyone in the family is a musician, and most of the kids have composed their own music… but I’m too exhausted and congested to muster the energy to snap photos of all their instruments!! So instead, I will treat you with some photos from our archives.

Here’s an interesting musical device: it’s a polyphon. It is very old, and we saw it when we toured the FX Matt Brewery in Utica, NY. There was a fire there a few years ago; I hope the polyphon was not damaged.

The thing looks like a music box, and lo and behold, it is! Kind of… It’s from Germany, judging by the engraving on the metal disk. I think it was considered to have been the German jukebox of the 1800s. I couldn’t tell what song was engraved on the large metal disk, but I strongly suspect it was a rousing rendition of “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall.” Ha! You can read more about polyphons here.

This is a photo from the Higginbotham home, in Oneida, NY. The Higginbothams were a prominent family in the settlement of the city. The first bank of Oneida was in their pantry room! Julia Higginbotham, an invalid daughter, was an accomplished musician, Read more

Rocket Science

My husband is a musician and therefore he listens to a ton of music. He’s had Napster for quite a while, but they just raised their prices. I have been hearing about a new downloadable music tool, MP3Rocket. Ever hear of it? It’s relatively new to the music marketplace. C|Net reviewed it and gave it 4 out of 5 stars. I decided to check it out!

I was wary at first. We are well aware of the recording industry’s tyrannical lawsuits against innocent victims, and have no intention of entering the fray. MP3Rocket has a page in their website devoted to the legalities of file sharing.

There are currently over 240 million users downloading and trading files legally on file-sharing networks. You can, for example, legally download music from over 850 bands, over 20,000 live concerts as well as have access to multiple software titles and games. File sharing is not illegal so long as you abide by all relevant copyright laws. Sharing copyrighted material without the permission to do so is illegal.

MP3 Rocket Inc does not condone piracy or breaking copyright laws. The MP3 sharing tools available on through our members area are powerful search tools & we recommend that you use your discretion when downloading music and movie files.

MP3Rocket encourages users to “stay legal.” It’s not a difficult task– never share any protected content (easily done by disabling the “sharing” choice in the software); only share public domain files (that’s an easy one for us, because the kids and I listen only to classical music or orchestral hymns), and never rename copyrighted music to make it appear as public domain music. It’s basically what Napster has been providing us, except that MP3Rocket is free!

MP3Rocket is most known for music sharing, but the software also enables you to access radio stations (200+!), games, and television. At almost 2 million downloads, it’s a very popular program. MP3Rocket is easy enough to download and install. It claims to have billions of music available. I did a quick search for Segovia and Beethoven, and found loads of choices. I am not terribly interested in downloading any music (I like my hard drive lean and mean), but I do like the radio station channels feature.

MP3Rocket is worth looking at if you are a heavy-duty music listener. It also has the TV channels (which I haven’t tried) and the radio stations features (which look good so far).

This and That

My kids like to listen to classical music while they do their schoolwork. It plays in the background, quietly, and one really isn’t cognizant of it as one does his work. But there’s always a piece that pulls me away from my own work and makes me perk up to hear it. It’s Bach’s Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring. It is exquisite. It starts out with this light string section, and a then a chorus of voices bubbles up; the voices suddenly fade and the strings rise again. There’s a very short example of it here. It’s so lovely that it catches my attention anew every time it’s played. It’s those strings that grab my heart; so beautiful.

I got an email back from the Stanley Theatre in Utica. Unfortunately, they are not giving tours until April due to ongoing renovations of the theatre. It’s a lovely theatre; I’ve been there twice but hadn’t taken my camera with me. I guess we’ll have to wait until spring.

I came upon my son giggling madly this week while reading his textbook. He’s studying ancient world cultures (fascinating) and was enthused with the ancient Sumerians and Assyrians. In his book, it stated that the most precious possession of the Assyrians was their cow. To be rich meant one had many cows. Therefore, the ancient Assyrian word for “war” literally means “to struggle for more cows.” His peals of laughter gave us all a good belly laugh!

At the dinner table recently, we remembered a very funny joke. I can’t remember who first came home with the joke… my husband tells the funniest jokes, so it was probably him. It goes like this: Many decades ago, during the space race of the late 1950′s, an American astronaut, a Russian astronaut, and a blonde were having a heated discussion in a local diner.

The Russian astronaut pounded his fist in the table and made the coffee cups bounce. “We Russians are going to be the first to get into space!”

The American astronaut smiled at the boast. “Oh yeah? We Americans are going to be the first to get to the moon!” He pounded the table and made the coffee cups bounce higher.

The blonde, not to be outdone, pounded the table, too. (nothing bounced). “Oh YEAH?” she huffed. “We blondes are going to be the first to get to the sun!” She sat back and gave the men a smug look.

The Russian and the American looked at each other quizzically. The American told her, “You can’t do that! The sun is too hot! You’ll burn up!”

The blonde, sensing her moment of triumph at these ignorant astronauts, burst out, “Nuh uh! We’re going to go at night time!”