EDIT: Comments below revised.
SDG here with another Christmas song from Straight No Chaser, this time a straight rendition of Silent Night.
And also, I can’t resist posting a non-Christmas acapella song pointed out to me by JA.o reader Matheus on another subject beloved of JA.o fans. I have a few comments on this one below — but don’t read the comments below until you’ve watched the second video!
Straight No Chaser – Silent Night
Star Wars – John Williams Tribute
Comments on the John Williams tribute below.
(you did watch it, right?)
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HT to Bill for pointing this out: This song was written and recorded by an acapella group called Moosebutter. A different YouTube video is available showing , but not this recording of it (you can tell it’s the same voices, but not the same recording). The video above shows a “paid YouTuber” name Corey Vidal lip-synching a different recording of the song. Thos video was apparently made with Moosebutter’s cooperation, but lots of people (including me at first) haven’t glommed that Corey isn’t actually singing. Anyway, I’m keeping the Corey version here because the recording is cleaner, with less mugging, and I like the way it sounds better, but it does dampen my enthusiasm to know that that’s not the real guy singing.
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One of my favorite bits is the E.T. theme, where they’re doing Luke complaining to Uncle Owen about not getting to go to Toshi Station for power converters — they get Luke’s whiny tone exactly right.
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I also love the goofy dissonance between the soaring, majestic Jurassic Park theme and the sinister dialogue they put over it.
In case anyone is as slow on the uptake as me: It’s one guy lip-synching to the original recording which was sung by four different guys. This guy was just a fan who made the video on his own. I watched the youtube video about 20 times before finally reading the guy’s entry where he cops to the whole thing. Still, it’s pretty amazing.
I wondered about that — I did see the Moosebutter version with the four separate guys, but that recording was clearly different, so I didn’t know which was original.
Looking into it again, it looks like this guy Corey Vidal is a “paid YouTuber” who is working with a different Moosebutter recording than the one available on YouTube — maybe they rerecorded it for him?
I’d like to post the original Moosebutter video, but I like the recording of the Corey version better, so I’m going to leave that one up, but I’ll amend my comments accordingly.
“…he gets Luke’s whiny tone exactly right.”>>
I never understood the too-cool-for-school crowd who blast Hayden Christensen’s Anakin for being a whiny teenager in ATTACK OF THE CLONES and yet never say a word against A NEW HOPE and Luke Skywalker. I’m more and more convinced that people who love the OT and bash the PT are just bitter people whose fanboy fantasies weren’t fulfilled in the newer movies.
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Nerd rant over. Spock ears returned to dresser drawer.
…well, color me as one who tried his darndest to love the PT as much as the OT, and was finally beaten into submission by the sheer mediocrity of the PT.
I originally wrote 3.5-star reviews for Eps 1 & 2, and eventually had to downgrade them to 2.5-star reviews, with “Final thoughts” sections appended explaining my change of heart.
OT = better. (Whiny Luke notwithstanding.)
I’m with SDG in having wanted to like PT as much as OT but just couldn’t. Though I would say that PT suffers in comparison to the originality of OT (an odd thought, perhaps, because GL was basically making an homage to the old Saturday serials).
And I also have to admit that I hadn’t realized he was lip-synching to some else’s singing. For me it was the wookie sounds that convinced me he had to be lip synching, but I was impressed by his amazing range.
Ah well.
Okay, so I have a question about John Williams’ music. (Maybe TMC can address this one?) I was listening to Antonín Dvorák’s From the New World symphony the other day, and I thought I recognized a number of JW themes in it. Has JW made a career mining Dvorák? (There is an old saying about the best artists knowing enough to steal from the best.) If so, am I the last person to recognize it?
There are reasons to prefer the OT over the PT (I personally think the OT films are generally better movies, although I’d put III up there with IV and V, and I find the universe of the PT more interesting), but the romantic dialogue and acting of the young male leads are not particularly compelling ones. 🙂
Off-topic(?), SNC does it again. Thanks for posting, SDG. 🙂
So it turned out that the guy was just lip-syncing a third-party song…Just when I make a comment worth mentioning on the body of the blog, it reveals itself as a semi-hoax…:)
It’s funny because what really caught my attention on the video was the quality of the music and voice editing contrasting with its simple look, considering that I’m neither a Star Wars geek nor a John Williams diehard fan (being more of a John Barry kind of guy myself).
Anyway, I think that SDG’s earlier points about the subtleties such as the reactions of the faces to each other still apply, as well what he said about the creativity displayed by those fans in such endeavors. That is what makes me like these You Tube videos, like those fan-made “Comedy Trailers” for horror and drama movies – such as that famous one for The Shining posted by Jimmy a long time ago – and “Horror Trailers” for comedy movies, like this truly outstanding one in my opinion.
(Hey SDG, I hope this one isn’t in any way deceptive like the other):)
Okay, This one is also not a religious approach to Christmas, and I’m confident that the voice is dubbed, but you might just enjoy it, even if you’ve seen it before.
Thomas, I tend to agree with you, at least on a general point. I can respect the thoughts of someone like SDG who thinks that the PT are not as good, or are mediocre, or that sort of thing. On the other hand, I believe that one of the reasons people seem never to be satisfied with anticipated sequels – like the PT, or the last two Matrix films, or any number of other cases – is that they think too much about what will happen and then are dissapointed with anything that turns out differently from what they went in expecting to see.
As far as the PT is concerned, I also think that their part of the story caused them problems. I can only speak for myself, but I typically find the first 15-20 minutes of any film, no matter how good it is, either boring and uninspired or rushed and contrived. That’s just sort of the nature of beginning a story. Same goes for the books I read… My thinking is that beginnings, before the story is set up and the characters are people you care about in some way – are like that. The Episodes one and two happen to basically be the first “20 minutes” so to speak of the Star Wars saga, and that’s why I think they fall flat to many. On top of that, you’re dealing with characters the fates of which you already know, and so a tremendous degree of the dramatic and emotional impact that the films can have is sort-of taken away.
At Hans request, I briefly looked into the influences on composer John Williams. His early film music is heavily influenced by late romantic sounds, such as Mahler,and Strauss. I suppose Dvorák’s could be in there, as well, especially with the use of modality. I suspect, however, that William’s most famous science-fictiony music sounds like Dvorák’s because of the use of the “heroic fifth”. You hear it at the beginning of the Star Wars theme as well as Superman (in fact, the two themes are remarkably similar from a compositional standpoint in that Williams, in Star Wars used the heroic fifth and half-cadencing on V/V using the supertonic in the prominant position (one above the tonic), whereas in Superman, after the heroic fifth, he uses a V7 half-cadence (with an added 4th?) with the subtonic in the prominant position (thus, the two themes are somewhat the inversion of each other).
His early influences, Mario Tedesco and the famous pianist/teacher Rosina Lhévinne, also explain why he sounds like a romantic composer. William’s early teacher, Tedesco, before he fled Italy and settled in Hollywood to become a famous composer, was friends with many Italian composers, such as Respighi, which may account for the impressionistic sounds of William’ works. William’s teacher at Jilliard, Lhévinne, was well-known for her Russian interpretations and it is interesting that William’s later scores have begun to have a Russian neoclassical sound in the style of Prokofiev and Shostakovich.
I suspect that it is the use of the fifth as well as modailty that makes his music sound like Dvorák’s.
The Chicken
Thomas and Shane,
I too actually liked the PT better than the OT, and thought they got better throughout the trilogy. Until today, I thought I was the only one in the universe who felt that way. Maybe it’s because I was never a huge Star Wars fan to begin with and didn’t actually see the first three movies until I was in my teens. Had I been a bigger fan, I would likely have been more disappointed by the PT; I had a lot of gripes about the LOTR movies, and I’m the biggest Tolkien fan I know.
Somebody pointed this out to me and it’s true: the 2nd and 3rd prequels make much more sense if you assume that Anakin is using his Force powers (unconsciously or consciously) to make Padme want him.
And yes, Luke was whiny — but he got over it. Anakin didn’t. He whined his way into genocide and mass murder, and kept whining all the way.
Which is not at all like the real Darth Vader of the original movies. Darth didn’t go whining to the Emperor every five seconds.
Thanks, TMC. I think I understand most of that. I’ll have to think about it, but I see your general point. Very interesting. (All this modern music.)
I’m the biggest Tolkien fan I know.
Do you mean in person, SB, or at all?
I don’t know, Maureen. I’ve known a (thankfully small) number of whiny (I prefer the Briticism ‘whinging’ as more desciptive) late-/post-teens who I think, in retrospect, if they had powers like that, mightn’t have minded engaging in a little genocide and mass murder, especially directed toward me, but then they usually stop whinging, even if they still hate me [for keeping them out of medical school, typically].
Very cute, Hans. I’m mesmerized because the dog could spend so much time in the ice without freezing.
Yes Hans, fortunately this one’s singer, even without the opening titles, would be no mystery for those who have seen When Harry Met Sally.
And by the way, speaking of Christmas songs, has anyone seen Raymond Arroyo singing a couple of them on his last show?
There’s only archived audio, but those who may want to see it can watch the encore next Friday (December 26).
If it’s cold enough, Matheus, snow is very dry and doesn’t make good thermal contact easily, nor is it very dense.
I believe that video was made near Ely, Minnesota, “Gateway to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW)”.
Has JW made a career mining Dvorák? (There is an old saying about the best artists knowing enough to steal from the best.)
It’s said that he “mines” nuggets from a long list of composers. Some call it “inspiration”. Some call it “substantially similar”. There are many words for it. If you’re a Dvorák fan, in addition to themes found in the “New World” symphony (such as the Jaws theme that’s said to begin the 4th movement), you’ll also, for example, recognize the E.T. theme in the final movement of the E minor piano trio, Op. 90 (“Dumky”). As the saying goes, talent borrows, genius steals. How that applies to JW is anyone’s opinion.
For those of you who have enjoyed SNC and (are willing to) use iTunes, you can get a free copy of their Auld Lang Syne at the iTunes Store. You can find it on the front page or click on “See All” at the “Free on iTunes” section. It’s a “Protected AAC” format file.
Thanks, Lynne. (I can say that he’s a better composer than I am.)
Hmm…I finally got a chance to watch the two videos and I must say, they are cute. I do have a few comments. I am torn between commenting as a musician or scientist, however.
The SNC performance was good, but somehow, I don’t think this is the sound that Fr. Josef Mohr (words) and Franz Xaver Gruber (music) had in mind for Stille Nacht. The chording in this performance is, in my opinion, too complex for the simplicity of Christmas. Christmas is about the birth of a baby, the simplest of human beings, not the creation of an android with dual-core memory. I am a bit of a purist when it comes to liturgical music.
I was fortunate to do my doctoral work in music at a university that had a men’s glee club that was voted “Choir of the World” in an international competition (and my undergrad university’s men glee club wasn’t bad, either). I, myself, am a great singer only in the genre of pieces composed for male voice and bathtub. The rest I leave to more experienced voices. I can carry a tune, to be sure, but it whines and complains, all the while and sometimes begs to be set down.
As for the Star Wars setting, I think I figured out how he did it. He recorded each track, separately, in audio-only format, then, he recorded (lip syncing each one) the video for each track. Nice use of technology and not a bad voice, either. I could use this approach for a teaching tool – record a sentence of each lecture in one of four boxes. That would keep the student’s attention.
My horror story in performance is something like this only much worse. The famous avant-garde composer, Terry Riley, composed a piece for a famous instrumental recording artist (I won’t say which one) such that the performer is overdubbed 16 times with the same melody that starts each time displaced by an eighth-note. The perform plays a discant on top.
We had invited the performer to perform the piece, live, in the course of giving him some award. Naturally, that meant that there had to be sixteen live players playing the identical music starting an eight-note apart. We had enough grad students that every player in the ensemble was either a masters or doctoral student – it was arguably, the best ensemble of its kind on the planet (and the music was not slow, either). The conductor was a living legend who had conducted the recording artist when he was in college.
Talk about stress. If you lost concentration for even a second, there was. literally, no way to figure out where you were to start playing, again. When we would stop rehearsal (the artist was not there) to correct something, if someone even looked at someone the wrong way, they would start laughing, hysterically (and I do mean, hysterically) and it would spread like lightning through out the group. Talk about being wound tightly.
Well, we were supposed to rehearse the piece the day of the concert with the recording artist, but his plane got delayed. There we were, sitting on stage with no performer, when we got word that his plane had arrived. He drove straight to the auditorium, bags in tow, set down his bags, put his cold instrument together and walked out on stage and we sightread the thing, right there. Seventeen independent parts with no rehearsal. It was like in the video, multiplied by four and done live. It was the most stressful performance I have ever been in. This video reminds me of that.
Musicians have great stories. Find one and ask. There should be a book written.
The rise of YouTube is a bit like the old folk music that everyone sang during the Middle Ages, only in an electronic format. Folk music was the “social web/YouTube” of that period. It seems as though as electronics becomes more advanced, that even more complex social music will develop. This will become a new category in music history in the area of folk art.
The Chicken
The tribute was COOL! I have a nephew who I got into star wars (a little too much I think) and I copied the youtube video link to my email so I can try to show him it sometime.
I agree with you about Silent Night, TMC, but not all Christmas music is particularly simple.
if someone even looked at someone the wrong way, they would start laughing, hysterically (and I do mean, hysterically)
I went through something like that last Wednesday at practice. I was still rather tired from finishing grades the day before, and there is one alto who has her little jokes (often in response to mine). Every time I looked at her, I would start to laugh in anticipation of some joke. (She was actually being quite serious; all of this was going on in my addled head.) It got so that, toward the end when the two of us were the only ones singing Stille Nacht in German, I simply couldn’t look at her for fear of breaking out in laughter.
Merry Christmas, one and all!
Speaking of YouTube, this can go in the “No, it is I who will eat YOU!” file.
Dear Edward
It cracked me up. It must have involved a lot of rehearsing for the two guys to fit the suit.
“I was fortunate to do my doctoral work in music at a university that had a men’s glee club that was voted “Choir of the World” in an international competition”
I believe I know the international competition to which you are referring. There has AFAIK been only one men’s university glee club that has won that before, namely Ohio State University.
“Christmas is about the birth of a baby, the simplest of human beings, not the creation of an android with dual-core memory.”
I suspect that this theological tradition will be even less well known than my previous statement that Jesus is not in traditional conception a human person but one divine person, but some traditional Catholic theologians have cautioned against speaking of Jesus as a “human being.” The reason for it is that the statement “Jesus is a human being” can be understood or interpreted in an orthodox way or in an unorthodox way, and — according to these theologians — in any event uses language that if not unorthodox in use is at least not apt in expression. It’s kind of difficult to explain. They of course, being traditional Catholic theologians, acknowledge that Jesus bore a human nature — which human nature was authentically human and indeed a creature (a created thing) — but they believe it to be unorthodox or at least inapt to express this or attempt to do so by means of saying that Jesus is a human being. What it boils down to is that they say something is properly called a “human being” only when it is constituted with a human hypostasis (which Jesus traditionally did not have) — even if “human being” does not itself mean human hypostasis. FWIW, I tried searching the Vatican website for the various phrases “Jesus/Christ is/was a human being” and found zero results indexed by google.
(I agree with what you wrote as regards Christmas — I won’t comment on the Silent Night)