Beautiful Viennese Waltzes

Don't know. That was my question. 6/8 feels the best, but it's not a waltz, technically. I wonder what the dance gods say, technically.

Granted, you can dance vw to music in 3/4, 6/8, or 12/8...provided the tempo and overall feel is suitable. But that might just be the AT dancer in me coming out! ;-)
 
NielsenE said:
DRM=Digital Rights Management aka Copy Protection

I don't remember the current iTMS restrictions, but it was basically you could only burn a small (10?) copies of a given playlist if it included a purchased track. You could only run it on a small (3-5?) computers. It was hard/impossible to legally transfer a iTMS purchased file to a non-iPod portable player. (The last is the point that I think most people really cared about. The other two always felt like a decent compromise for stopping "mass-production" of purchased cds..

I believe the new DRM-free tracks of iTMS also also from a higher sampling rate so they are significantly better quality. Though I suspect you'd have to be a audiophile (not I) to tell the difference.
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Thanks for the explanation. I believe DRM-free tracks are CD quality but, not being an audiophile, I couldn't tell the difference.

Did you see where the McCartney catalog is on iTunes? I wonder if we'll be seeing the Beatles anytime soon.
 
LucyDiamond said:
Thanks for the explanation. I believe DRM-free tracks are CD quality but, not being an audiophile, I couldn't tell the difference.
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I don't think they were CD quality. I think it was splitting the difference between the current sampling rate and "CD" rate. . . Though I remember seeing some discussion of a sampling rate higher than CDs -- of course that's only useful if they are getting it from an original source that was sampled higher than the CDs in the first place.... but I think that was what some iTMS competitor was trying to roll out (and was only getting CD masters so it was a worthless advertising ploy)
 
Peaches said:
Don't know. That was my question. 6/8 feels the best, but it's not a waltz, technically. I wonder what the dance gods say, technically.

Granted, you can dance vw to music in 3/4, 6/8, or 12/8...provided the tempo and overall feel is suitable. But that might just be the AT dancer in me coming out! ;-)
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seems to me that the triplets in 6/8 are the natural domain for VW... that's what i hear, anyway. if you're dancing in triplet timing, whether slow or fast, you're waltzing in my book...:rolleyes:
 
Mine as well. The hair-split that I've come up with, regarding DH's "this isn't a waltz!" is: Ooh, this is a great song to which one would dance a waltz! He can't argue that point.

Edit to add: What originall promted my question was Joe's comment about 3/4 vw songs. And if you look in the technique manual, the accepted time signature for slow waltz is 3/4--nothing is mentioned about any other time signature. Why, I don't know. I'm just kind of wondering if the same sort of restriction applies to vw as well. Anyone have the vw manual out there? (Since the publishers were oh-so-kind enough to not include it in the standard technique manual with other things. *sarcasm*)
 
NielsenE said:
I don't think they were CD quality. I think it was splitting the difference between the current sampling rate and "CD" rate. . . Though I remember seeing some discussion of a sampling rate higher than CDs -- of course that's only useful if they are getting it from an original source that was sampled higher than the CDs in the first place.... but I think that was what some iTMS competitor was trying to roll out (and was only getting CD masters so it was a worthless advertising ploy)
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This is what the Apple site is saying:
Apple today launched iTunes Plus. The new option for iTunes customers features DRM-free music tracks that offer — for just $1.29 per song — high-quality 256 kbps AAC encoding for audio quality indistinguishable from the original recordings. iTunes Plus debuts with singles and albums from EMI’s digital catalog of outstanding recordings from artists such as Coldplay, The Rolling Stones, Norah Jones, Frank Sinatra, Joss Stone, Pink Floyd, John Coltrane, and Paul McCartney, a dozen of whose classic albums are now available on iTunes for the first time. [May 30, 2007]
​
link: http://www.apple.com/hotnews/

I'll probably try a couple songs I already have so I can compare and see if I can hear the difference.
 
NielsenE said:
DRM=Digital Rights Management aka Copy Protection
I believe the new DRM-free tracks of iTMS also also from a higher sampling rate so they are significantly better quality. Though I suspect you'd have to be a audiophile (not I) to tell the difference.
Click to expand...
256kbps - that is correct. Up from maybe 128?

I honestly cannot notice the difference either. All I know is that Apple stock is now at 121... They just bought me 2 new Mac Pros. :) <-- I kinda still wished I worked there. The new toys... Sigh. :)
 
Joe said:
No, they're 3/4. You can dance VW to 6/8, but that doesn't make the music waltz. :)
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What you're missing is that a time signature exists more for notational convenience than to be taken literally as a performance instruction. 3/4, 3/8, and 6/8 are all time signatures that could be used for vw-like music. And most likely at our vw tempo it will be conducted in two... one "beat" per "measure", switching to a three pattern (one per beat) in the slower sections found in most concert waltzes.

Just like dancers, musicians have their own "we say this but we mean that" conventions.
 
OK. So this took a bit longer than anticipated. Just to note--I haven't actually seen the sheet music to any of these songs, so I'm going just by how I hear it. Which isn't to say that someone else might hear it differently, or may have seen the sheet music and say I'm full of [samba]. I make no claims to actual correctness.

Examples of 12/8
  • "Scorchio" by Bond (from Classified)--debatably 6/8 because of the feeling of the swing, but the melody fits better over 4 sets of three; also, the swing is not very strong feeling; at about 1:40 into the song it calms down, and that's where I hear the 12 the most
  • "She Left Home" by Jane Birkin (from Arabesque)--this one is interesting b/c it starts out in 12/8 (listen to the phrasing of the piano), but then switches to 3/4 at 2:18.
  • "Fallin' " by Alicia Keys (from Songs in A Minor)--I love this one. You could argue very well that it's in 6/8 because of the swing to it. But the chord progressions seem very strongly grouped like a 12/8, the lyrics seem to fit better as 12/8, and if you back away from the triplets and the swing, you'll find it makes a nice NC2S. I can't think of any 6/8 song that you can also do a non-waltz-ish dance to. Altogether, I'd call it 12/8, but an interesting one.
Examples of 6/8
  • "La Del Ruso" by Gotan Project (from Revancha...)--syncopated as blazes, but definitely 6/8. There is no way you can only count it to 3 and have it feel right. The pattern to it repeats every 6 beats, which precludes it from being in 12/8. Mostly, though, the swing is so unbelievably strong in two.
  • "Tango Cancion" by Gotan Project (from Lunatico)--strong call and response feel; strong swing and feeling of two; second set of three is definitely subordinate to the first
  • "Shaman's Blues" by the Doors--again, very strong call & resposne and very strong swing and feeling of two; the melody is fit to 6 beats

Examples of 3/4
  • "A New Day Has Come" by Celine Dion (from album of same name)--generally, the "one" beats are pretty equally weighted (listen to the lyrics and the guitar chord); each set of three is pretty self contained; interestingly, the song changes meter to 12/8 (or 4, with triplets, whichever) midway through and then changes back; it switches to 4 at 3:39, and back out at 4:03
  • "Come Away with Me" by Norah Jones (from album of same name)--first tip-off is the tempo, it would be exceedingly unusual to have something that slow in 6/8; mostly, though, the swing is contained within one set of three
  • "Run for the Roses" by Dan Fogelberg (from The Innocent Age)--same as above
  • "La Valser di Mezzanotte" by Childsplay (from The Great Waltz)--a bit of an oom-pah-pah feel to it, but mostly, the sets of 3 all feel very self contained; also, the "ones" are evenly weighted
Hope this helps. I'm pretty sure all of these can be found on iTunes.
 
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