It doesn’t sound any different than you would expect to hear here… and that is the point, isn’t it? Some things become a universal language, just by the nature of the device. This particular collection is from Japan, but it could have been from Ireland or Siberia or San Francisco for all the human ear can tell. The images being mostly still snap shots gives you no additional clues either. I do find this a tasty assortment of recorded guitar work, and look forward to adding it to the audio portion of my media collection, because it is so well done.
OK, this one is just downright silly, but has the same cunning as Bernstein’s Peter And The Wolf. Tricking children into becoming music lovers by explaining to them what is going on, or by making sure they get to attend a presentation by a live orchestra. I don’t care which method is used, I enjoy the fact that Wallice and Gromit’s Musical Marvels is helping more and more young people understand and learn to appreciate music.
BBC Radio 4 starts a new radio play with Terry Pratchett’s Eric tomorrow. They have broken the story into four parts, with part one airing at 2300 GMT on Wednesday, March 6th. If you want to get an idea of what you can expect, listen to the clip and try not to hurt yourself laughing. Terry Pratchett’s stories are always funny as hell, and BBC Radio does a first class job of rendering them in Radio Play format. And if you haven’t grabbed the Discworld App for the iPad yet, here is a little teaser for you…
Science Friday will be covering the impact of Sequestration on science and research tomorrow, but they also have a very fun guest: MC Frontalot. He’s not the only Nerdcore artist, but he is my favorite, and he just came out with a new CD, his 5th. Nerdcore is hip-hop for nerds, about computers, video games, science, and being geeky, so he should fit right in with the Sci-Friday crowd. You can listen to it on your local NPR radio station, download the podcast, or stream it live, check this page for the links to listen, or get the app. Or for the full geek effect, log in to Sci-Friday in Second Life and enjoy it in VR. Don’t forget to visit the MC Frontalot web site for the latest updates and tunes.
BBC Radio 4 Extra always runs some great radio plays; this week alone you can hear Terry Pratchett’s Wyrd Systers and a series of short Sci-Fi stories turned into audio books on Brian Aldus Presents. If you hit their Schedule for this week you can hit Monday and start from the beginning, as they let you listen to shows for the next six days after they air. Coming up on Saturday there is a program called Alexander Armstrong’s Radio Heroes, which will include classic episodes of radio dramas like Journey Into Space and Judge Dredd for your enjoyment. I spend an average of 7 hours a week listening to programs on this service, it always has some fun and interesting science fiction and fantasy.
Or at least new to me; they have been running The Sarah Jane Adventures: The Glittering Storm over on BBC4 Extra this week, with Liz Sladen doing the reading. I am hoping they have a bunch more from her, so there are still more new adventures even though she is gone. If you missed any of the episodes you can still catch them on their Listen Again service each day, or you can hear the whole thing in one go tomorrow at the first link I gave. Or you could even listen to it live as it aired in London tomorrow. Now if only they offered that service with their TV programming. They have been promising it for years, but there is still no subscription package available for watching the full BBC TV programming outside of the UK in real time that I am aware of. If anyone knows if they now have that service in place, I will be delighted to be wrong about that.