The Sound of Music

Snapshot of my computer screen depicting the music pattern of a piece of classical music using Microsoft’s Windows Media Player. The visualization theme I used was Bars and Waves, Ocean Mist. I love to see these waves oscillate up and down following the pattern of the music. Photo by ©Omar Upegui R.

Nope, today’s blog post has nothing to do with the 1965 movie “The Sound of Music” about a young woman who leaves an Austrian convent to become a governess to the children of a Naval officer widower.  The motion picture was brilliantly performed by Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer.  As much as I loved this classical musical, today I’m writing about the best music enhancer I’ve met to create musical magic with my computer system.

The name of this outstanding musical software is Audio Essentials created by SRS Labs.  Audio Essentials is a downloadable software that delivers home theater quality sound to any PC. It can be had for $29.99 from the Internet with a credit card payment.  It’s great for playing games, movies, music and audio books.

SRS Audio Essentials is fully customizable and works with all PC-based media players and content service providers to bring surround sound to anything you watch or listen to on your media player, like music, movies, podcasts, games and even streaming content.

Some of its awesome features are:

• Intuitive User Interface – Advanced AV receiver look and feel
• Music, Movie and Game Modes
• Maximum Bass Response
• Immersive Surround Sound
• Volume Leveling and Volume Maximization

Using this software you have two options:  Stereo/SRS 5.1 or Stereo/SRS 5.1 Surround.  I preferred the latter.  With 5.1 Surround, Audio Essentials will create the musical illusion of having six different speakers instead of two, (e.g., LS, L, C, R, RS and Sub).  The difference in quality is spectacular in search of a better word.

Snapshot of the Audio Essentials player fully displayed. This picture was captured from my computer screen the best I could. At least you can distinguish the buttons and read the words. Photo by ©Omar Upegui R.

The sound features of Audio Essentials are the following:

• 3D Trueban Level:  Enhances base.  Use in combination with, the truebass speaker size control for best performance.
• Focus:  Raises the perceived elevation of the stereo image.
• Truebass Speaker Size:  Optimizes truebass for the speaker size.

This is the minimized picture of the Audio Essential player captured from the computer screen using my Canon PowerShot A720 IS. Photo by ©Omar Upegui R.

After downloading and installing SRS Audio Essentials’ software, I tested it by playing The Four Seasons by Antonio Vivaldi.  What came out of my Harman/Kardon’s speakers knocked my socks off.  It was music descending directly from heaven.  Even though my speakers are relatively small—3″ wide x 4 1/2″ tall), the results were absolutely astounding.  Every single sound could be distinctly heard;  voices, violins, guitars, oboes, flutes, repercussions—you name it.  I had never listened to Vivaldi’s music on my computer like yesterday afternoon.  It was magic in the air—literally.

If you are a music fan and can spare $30.00 bucks, I strongly urge you to take a look at this extraordinary software from SRS Labs.  After listening to your music with this sound enhancer, you will wonder how you could have ever lived without it.  Good Day and enjoy your music at a higher level of quality.  This is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God.

Source:  SRS Labs – Audio Essentials Download

Read Full Post »

Rhythms of Africa – Part Two

It’s an undisputed fact that Afro-Panamanian have played a significant role in the creation of Panama. Some historians have estimated that up to 50 percent of the population of Panama has some African ancestry.

The descendants of the Africans who arrived during the colonial era are intermixed in the general population or are found in small Afro-Panamanian communities along the Atlantic Coast and in villages within the Darién jungle.  Other Afro-Panamanians are the descendants of later migrants from the Caribbean who came to work on railroad construction projects, commercial agricultural enterprises, and especially the Panama Canal.

Important Afro-Caribbean community areas include towns and cities such as Colon, Cristobal and Balboa, in the former Canal Zone, as well as the Rio Abajo area of Panama City. Another region with a large Afro-Caribbean population is the province of Bocas del Toro on the Caribbean coast just south of Costa Rica.

Most of the Panamanian population of West Indian descent owe their presence in the country to the monumental efforts to build the Panama Canal in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Three-quarters of the 50,000 workers who built the canal were Afro-Caribbean migrants from the British West Indies. Thousands of Afro-Caribbean workers were recruited from Jamaica, Barbados and Trinidad.  Some of them died.  Others decided to stay and contribute to the development of the nation.

I recently had the opportunity of being present in a special day celebrating the contribution of the Afro-Caribbean community to the general culture of Panama.  The venue was the Banco General of Plaza Porras.  The branch was fully decorated with paraphernalia pertaining to West Indian culture, their workers were dressed in typical African clothes, and a group of young students performed exciting African dances.

Yesterday I included several monochromatic pictures of these young dancers.  You are probably aware that I’m posting more and more pictures in black and white.  After viewing the work of Vivian Maier, a nanny who turned street photographer, I’m hooked to this mesmerizing category of photography.  This doesn’t mean I’m obliterating my taste for color pictures.  There will always be room for color pictures in Lingua Franca, intertwined with black and white images.  There is something in these pictures that I’ve learned to appreciate.  Monochromatic pictures are more creative and artistic, since they are not tainted with the color of reality.  Photographers say that, “light illuminates but shadows define.”

Today I will post the same six pictures of the dancing students, but in full vibrant colors.  If you prefer color over black and white pictures, then this will be your cup of tea.  It’s interesting to compare the differences between both sets of snapshots.  Here we go.

Credit: ©Omar Upegui R.

Credit: ©Omar Upegui R.

Credit: ©Omar Upegui R.

Credit: ©Omar Upegui R.

Credit: ©Omar Upegui R.

Credit: ©Omar Upegui R.

I hope you have enjoyed Part One and Part Two of the Rhythms of Africa.  If you are a dedicated reader, I strongly recommend the book, “Out of Africa,” written by Danish writer, Karen Blixen, a.k.a. Isak Dinesen.  You will never forget this classical book about Africa.  Good Day.

Read Full Post »

Quotes

“To achieve great things, two things are needed—a plan, and not quite enough time.”

Leonard Bernstein

Read Full Post »

The Sounds of Wall Street

‘Wall Street’, reads the sinister old gag, ‘is a street with a river at one end and a graveyard at the other.’  This is striking, but incomplete.  It omits the kinder garden in the middle.’

Frederick Schwed, Jr. author of the book, Where are the Customer’s Yachts?

Ever since the Wall Street meltdown of 2008, I’ve been reading articles, watching movies or reading books describing the insights of the historic event.  I’ve also researched the circumstances that led to the Great Depression of the 1930s.  October 24 and October 29 of 1929 are known as Black Thursday and Black Tuesday and the collapse cut the value of shares by many billions of dollard.  Herbert Hoover was then President of the United States.

History explains that the reason behind the crash of 1929 was uncontrolled debt.  People had bet all they had and more besides.  Guaranteed nothing could go wrong, they invested their savings and borrowed more.  As such they had “leveraged” their assets, namely they had borrowed against their assets and gambled that money in the stock market too.

Unfortunately the assets that investors had often borrowed against were shares; hence they had nothing of worth to sell in order to settle their debts when the markets crashed.

To get out of the financial mess, Franklin D. Roosevelt came up with the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which made it illegal for banks that took public’s deposits to engage in investments activities in the stock market.  FDR also introduced a package of social measures which he called The New Deal.  These measures would establish a number of laws to regulate the errant banking system and stock market and others to get the national economy moving again.  It did, until the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed on November 12, 1999, by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.

The repeal of provisions of the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933 effectively removed the separation that previously existed between Wall Street investment banks and depository banks. This repeal directly contributed to the severity of the financial crisis of 2007-2010 by allowing Savings & Loan banks to gamble with their depositors’ money.  It was going back to square one all over again.

The highly leveraged companies, the assumption that “nothing could go wrong”, the ever-increasing debt to buy stuff people didn’t even need, the predatory lending and all the evils of Wall Street’s new musical chair’s game came back into full swing.  People commented, “Everyone here is dancing in the bubble, and no one has the guts to admit the bubble is about to pop.”  Then in mid 2007, the stuff hit the fan.  Iceland, Ireland, and Portugal blew up and Spain is standing in line.  Nobody knows what happens next.  Even the United States is struggling to control its $14.3 trillion public debt.

In 1987 Oliver Stone came up with a memorable movie which captured the ambiance of the economic bubble.  The name of his movie was Wall Street.  I’ve seen it about three times, and would see it again anytime.  Several months ago, I went and watched the sequel, Wall Street 2:  Money Never Sleeps.  It wasn’t as good as the first one, but Michael Douglas still has the mojo and saved the picture from oblivion.  The songs included in Wall Street 2 were awesome, specially the song, Home by Brian Eno and David Byrne.  I stream it almost every other day using YouTube.

There are 28 songs in Wall Street 2:  Money Never Sleeps, but most of the songs play second fiddle to the 10 songs featuring David Byrne and Brian Eno in some form or fashion. In my opinion, Home stands heads and shoulders above all the rest.

If fact, the original soundtrack of Home is so cool I thought it would be nice to share it with you today.  At least these sounds of Wall Street will not evoke the gloom and doom of the global meltdown of 2008 nor will it pinch your wallet.  Here we go.  Enjoy the sounds of Wall Street and the song Home.  Good Day.

Read Full Post »

Tin Soldiers

When I was a young kid, growing up in a banana plantation in Changuinola, I remember receiving every Christmas a box with the most gorgeous tin soldiers.  I knew that Niño Dios would not forget the box full of those heavy and colorful tin soldiers.

Like modern Napoleons we would play with these toy soldiers for hours.  When they died, we turned them over, and when we felt like it, like a sheering demonstration of redeption, we gave them life again and placed them in an upward position ready to win the battle or the war, whatever the imaginary situation might be.  After an hour or so, we got bored and moved into something else.  Dancing with Hula hoops.  Yep, they were quite popular in the fifties.

As we grew up, Niño Dios stopped delivering the box of tin soldiers and we didn’t even noticed.  We wanted a Raleigh bicycle, a game of Monopoly, a set of bow and arrows, Roy Rogers ivory six shooters and other toys that were popular in Farm #8, where we lived.

I haven’t seen tin soldiers for a long time, but I know exactly how they looked.  They are embedded  deep in my memory.  They were part of my life.  When I read War and Peace by Leo Tolsty, I remembered the tin soldiers.  There  are some object you never forget, no matter how many years you accumulate.

While photo walking through the Coastal Strip last week, I saw a large soldier which looked very much like my beloved tin soldiers of Changuinola.  It was one of the  main character of the musical work The Nutcracker Suite, a ballet  composed by Russian Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in 1892.   The soldier I saw at the strip, was none other than the Nutcracker Prince himself extracted from the E.T.A. Hoffmann’s story, “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King.” My infancy years flashed back immediately, and I smiled with contentment.  I had encountered once again my beloved tin soldier.

If I may, let me introduce you to the enticing Nutcracker Prince at the Coastal Strip.  Here we go.  As you can see, he still wears his royal crown.

Photograph of the Nutracker Prince with his colorful uniform at the Coastal Strip in Panama City, Panama. Photo ©Omar Upegui R.

It doesn’t matter how many birthday candles I blow every year, the kid inside of me is intact.  This character released the kid inside of my soul during this Christmas.  It’s nice to feel young again.  Happy New Year!

Read Full Post »

A Little Girl Who Could

I remember vividly when Paul Potts stunned me with his extraordinary voice during the talent show called, Britain’s Got Talent. I couldn’t believe my ears. This humble cell phone sales rep turned out to be a spectacular opera singer who surprised the operatic world with his beautiful voice. It was totally unexpected.

Then came Susan Boyle and knocked the air out of me with her outstanding performance.  Another unexpected surprise from somebody totally unknown in the singing community.  She was fantastic and left the judges with an open jaw.

Now it’s time for another awesome surprise.  Her name is Jacqueline Marie “Jackie” Evancho born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with only 10 years old, but has the voice of a well-seasoned opera singer.  She started singing when she was eight years old, after going to see the stage show Phantom of the Opera.

Her mother heard Evancho singing songs from the movie and allowed her to enter a local talent contest just for fun. She finished as the runner-up and was voted the audience favorite. Eventually she participated in other talent contests and started a YouTube channel.

As was the case with Paul Potts and Susan Boyle, she received a standing ovation when she sang “O Mio Babbino Caro” (Oh My Dear Papa) from the opera Gianni Schicchi by Giacomo Puccini in the reality show, America’s Got Talent. Another star was born that day.

Below is a YouTube video of her performance at the America’s Got Talent show which I’m sure will lift your spirits.  This little girl can sing like an angel.

I wonder how many other amazing talents are out there waiting to be discovered.  When events like this happen, I feel so glad to be alive.  Good Day and enjoy the golden voice of this gifted child.

Read Full Post »

Baseball Music in the Air

Something the world will never forget about the 2010 FIFA’s Word Cup in South Africa, is the deafening sound of the vuvuzelas.  As you probably know, vuvuzelas are plastic trumpets, about three feet long, brightly colored and sound pretty much like an elephant. This noise-making trumpet of South African football fans became to symbolize the sport in the country.

We don’t have vuvuzelas in Panama.  Instead we have the murga.  A murga is a small music combo which consists of a couple of brass instruments, drums and other noise making artifacts.  They are widely used during the Carnival festivities, baseball and football games.  Their music is so contagious, it’s difficult to resist the temptation of dancing to their hot tropical rhythms.

When a baseball game is tight, and the winning run can turn to either team, the noise of the murga could make the difference.  The teams know that, so the make sure they bring in the noisiest murga to the stadiums.  When they start playing, the crowd roars like an African lion and the reaction is immediately seen in the field.  A baseball game without a murga is like an ocean without waves.

Below are several pictures of a murga playing at the Rod Carew baseball park in Panama City, Panama.  Here we go.

Photograph of several members of a "murga" of Panama Metro. Notice the African drums or "tumbas" on the left. The gentlemen with the green jacket was the leader of the group. Photo by ©Omar Upegui R.

Two members of the Panama Metro murga gives us the victory sign. Indeed, this team won the national championship. The festivities in the city were heard on the dark side of the moon. Photo by ©Omar Upegui R.

Picture of of a Panamanian murga in action. Notice the trumpet in the background. At this particular moment, the team was losing, thus the sad faces of the spectators. Photo by ©Omar Upegui R.

A close-up view of the murga's drum players in the middle of the crowd. Photo by ©Omar Upegui R.

Now it's time for the wind instruments to join the fun. As you can see, the murga blends beautifully with the crowd. Photo by ©Omar Upegui R.

Members of the murga take a well deserved break during the brief pause at the end of an inning. Energized with beer, they will continue their music joined in by the fired-up spectators. Photo by ©Omar Upegui R.

Europe has their own group songs, Africans have their traditional vuvuzelas, Argentina has their faithful barras, and we in Panama have our musical murgas.  All of them add spice and flavor to the game.  Yep, if you come to Panama during the dry season (December-April), I encourage you to drop over to a baseball game.  You’ll remember the experience for the rest of your life.  Good Day.

Read Full Post »

Fine-tuning the Tune

Photograph of a young student polishing his tune at the University of Panama -Curundu Branch. Photo by ©Omar Upegui R.

Read Full Post »

Music is in the Air

Photograph of a student of the University of Panama practicing his trumpet lessons. Yep, practice makes perfection. Photo by ©Omar Upegui R.

Read Full Post »

Back Then When Music Was Wrapped in Vinyl

During my lifetime—63 years—music has changed its wrappings many times as technology got more and more sophisticated.  During the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies, most people listened to their music through record players and radios.  Music was codified in plastic discs which rotated at 33 1/3 RPMs (revolutions per minute).

Sound was produced by placing an electrified needle through the grooves of the discs called records.  The quality of the sound was gorgeous.  You had the options to listen to monophonic, stereophonic and quadraphonic sounds.  Quite cool.  All was analog information.  Then came the digital revolution and the analog world went haywire.  The zeros and the ones took their place and they’re still here, and will be here for a long time I guess.

After the vinyl records, the music industry wrapped their music in a magnetic tape inside a plastic box.  It was called a music cassette or cartridge.  Even cars came equipped with cassettes and cartridges players.  You could buy recorded cassettes or you could record them yourself.  It was a very popular music medium during its time.

More knowledge was applied to music wrappings and the cassettes were replaced with compact disks commonly knows as CDs.  It was an instantaneous hit all over the world.  Shortly after, men with white robes inside electronic labs, came up with the digital video display, also known as DVDs and the music wrapping was changed once more.  Even as we speak, DVDs are widely used, even though there is a transition going on to another wrapping known as Blu-ray or BD.

Blu-ray (not Blue-ray) also known as Blu-ray Disc (BD), is the name of a next-generation optical disc format jointly developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA), a group of the world’s leading consumer electronics, personal computer and media manufacturers (including Apple, Dell, Hitachi, HP, JVC, LG, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, TDK and Thomson).

The format was developed to enable recording, rewriting and playback of high-definition video (HD), as well as storing large amounts of data. The format offers more than five times the storage capacity of traditional DVDs and can hold up to 25GB on a single-layer disc and 50GB on a dual-layer disc. This extra capacity combined with the use of advanced video and audio codecs will offer consumers an unprecedented HD experience.

After BDs what will come next?  I have no idea, but I do know that knowledge is presently being applied to change the music wrappings once more.  Perhaps the new music and/or video formats are already in the pipeline.  It’s very possible that Steve Jobs could be listening to an Apple prototype product right now at Cupertino, CA while he plans his next strategic launch.  Will it be the iSound gadget?

I had a large collection of long play records, also called LPs for short.  Most of them were given away or trashed; however I still have thirty-seven of those oldies in my closet.  Last week, my wife removed some of the dusted accumulated on top of the carton jackets and asked what should we do with them?  After thinking for a while, I decided to keep them.  It could very well be that technology will return to vinyl records in a back-to-the-future scheme.

We don’t have a stereo system anymore, so we can’t listen to our vinyl records.  We can only look at them and remember the Good Ole Days as they say.  Yesterday I took several pictures of them to share with you today.  Maybe it’ll strike a chord or two of your memory brain cells.  Here we go.

Picture of an album of The 5th Dimension dubbed, "Love's Lines, Angles and Rhymes." It was recorded by Bell Records, a division of Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. (Credit: ©Omar Upegui R.)

Picture of a Neil Diamond's album called, "Jonathan Livingston Seagull." This was the original motion picture sound track for The Hall Bartlett Film. The words and music were created by Neil Diamond and the Musical Director was Tom Catalano. (Credit: ©Omar Upegui R.)

Photograph of a hot Neil Diamond's album dubbed, "Hot August Night" recorded in concert at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles, CA. This event took place during a hot, sultry summer night in California on Thursday, August 24, 1972. (Credit: ©Omar Upegui R.)

Image of an orchestral music album dubbed, "The World of Your Hundred Best Tunes Vol. 10". You can't even begin to imagine how much I love this album. It was a gift given to me by a dear friend in Barbados, WI. The hundred best tunes were chosen by listeners for a radio program in London. (Credit: ©Omar Upegui R.)

This is another album of the collection of "The World of Your Hundred Best Tunes Vol. 8." Gorgeous pieces of classical music suitable for everyone. (Credit: ©Omar Upegui R.)

Picture of the music album "Overture 1812" conducted by Leopold Stokowsky as a host conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. This music composed by Tchaikovsky commemorates the withdrawal of Napoleon's troops from Russia in 1812. (Credit: ©Omar Upegui R.)

Photograph of the album "Mozart's Greatest Hits." This unique LP includes classical orchestra conductors such as Leonard Bernstein, Eugene Ormandy and George Szell. (Credit: ©Omar Upegui R.)

Picture of a classical album of Simon & Garfunkel, dubbed, "Simon and Garfunkel's Greatest Hits." Their songs "The Sound of Silence" and "Mrs. Robinson" are icons in American pop music. (Credit: ©Omar Upegui R.)

Photograph of the popular singer Andy Williams which invaded American homes during the Sixties and Seventies. Ronald Reagan described Andy's voice as "a national treasure". (Credit: ©Omar Upegui R.)

Photograph of the album, "The Best of Peter, Paul and Mary - (Ten) Years Together." The trio was composed of Peter Yarrow, Paul Stookey, and Mary Travers. The Sixties and Seventies music makers were in keeping with the period - revolutionaries and conservatives, weird, wild and wonderful. (Credit: ©Omar Upegui R.)

Picture of "Fiesta Ballenata" which is folkloric music from Colombia. I could dance all night with this type of Latin accordion music. (Credit: ©Omar Upegui R.)

A view of my old collection of 37 albums of vinyl LPs. I plan to migrate this music into CDs when my pocket feels healthy again. (Credit: ©Omar Upegui R.)

Oh, I forgot to say that another trend in the wrapping of music history, is the downloading of music from the Internet to your hard disk, iPod, iPhone, iTouch, MP3s, iPad and what have you.  The latest fashion is to have music with no wrappings at all.

Music downloaded through iTunes is digital music wrapped in binary units called bits and bytes.  Knowledge has carried us to a new dimension where reality is no longer visible.   Welcome to the future where physical objects are disappearing into the Twilight Zone of digital codes.  The ones and zeros have taken over our physical world.  Good Day.

Read Full Post »