Imagining books and music in quirky and creative ways
“The players all played at once without waiting for turns, quarrelling all the while, and fighting for the hedgehogs; and in a very short time the Queen was in a furious passion, and went stamping about, and shouting `Off with his head!’ or `Off with her head!’ about once in a minute.” —Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
A man wearing a top hat in a crowded Continue reading “Hyperbole in Literature…and Classical Music!”
A while back I posted a brief, 30 second piece and talked about how it reminded me of Tinker Bell (Classical Music Stories: Tinker Bell (Plus Flash Fiction Challenge!)). But little did you know I had more Peter Pan stories for the other bajillion movements in the piece! (Mwah ha ha!)
Here are just a couple of them: Continue reading “Classical Music Stories: Peter Pan”
Some people have what’s called synesthesia, where they actually see colors while listening to music, but what if it was the other way around? Have you ever wondered what colors would sound like??
Robert Starer has! Continue reading “Piano Music About Purple! (And Other Colors)”
This morning I was browsing Pixabay’s collection of public domain images to make my class PowerPoint presentation a little more fun. While I did find some useful pictures to help break up the text for my project, I also found some truly hilarious and weird photos that were too good not to share. Enjoy:
I’m not entirely sure what this is or what made someone think to create it but I’m Continue reading “The Most Amazing and Bizarre Public Domain Images…”
I’ve started realizing how weird my brain is when it comes to music. Probably everyone has had an experience where a tiny bit of a song gets stuck in your head on repeat. But have you ever had a tiny bit of a song combine with another tiny bit of a song?
For example. Continue reading “Your Brain, the DJ (When Songs Spontaneously Combine)”
Have you ever thought about how much repetition there is in music, whether popular or classical? It’s so ubiquitous that it’s easy to forget about how weird it actually is. If you were reading a book and the exact same chapter was repeated you’d probably be scratching your head and wondering if you had a messed up copy. But in music, that’s the norm! So Continue reading “Repetition in Pop Music, Classical Music, and Poetry”
Otherwise known as what happened last week.
This past week has been kind of a weird one in terms of things I’ve thought about or done, so I thought I’d list them out. (If anyone’s doing cognitive research on weird brains this is the post for you.) Continue reading “Unique Music Associations (Plus Bacon and Cotton Eye Joe)”
I have discovered…drumroll please…the classical music equivalent of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody. And it’s so exciting.
“Tzigane (rapsodie de concert)” is a piece for violin and orchestra, written by Maurice Ravel in the 1920s, and it uses this hilarious back-and-forth between musical styles in a really similar way to Bohemian Rhapsody. Continue reading “The Bohemian Rhapsody of Classical Music”
Optional Bonus Challenge: Listen to the piece first before you read the rest of this post. (It’s less than 5 minutes long and you know your poor eyes could use a break!) While you’re listening, imagine who the characters might be and what they might be doing if the music was a film score to a book you’ve read. It could be Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland or a different book– entirely up to you! Then you can read what I imagined below and compare the two stories (and comment letting me know how they ended up being similar or different!!).
Again, totally optional. And now without further ado: Continue reading “Classical Music Stories: Alice in Wonderland”
Disney music has been re-composed in the style of famous classical composers.
This is not a drill. Continue reading “Disney Music In the Style of Famous Composers”
If Mermaids Wore Suspenders 