Fun and Annoying Musical Insturments: The Kazoo

I became fascinated with music since I first started playing the violin when I was young.  However, due to my busy schedule at work, I was not able to keep up with playing the violin in the little free time I had and decided to leave it at home, 1700 miles away from where I live now.  However, the music "spirit" still lives on inside me, and I tried my best to find time and explore the many different types of music that exists in this world.

During my exploration of music, I found this interesting musical instrument: the Kazoo.  Developed in the United States based on similar instruments from Africa, the idea behind the instrument is to hum through the instrument to induce an air current, which makes the membrane inside the instrument vibrate and create its distinctive sound.

The Kazoo is one of the easiest melodic instruments to play well, so to make things easy, this is how you play the Kazoo:

Kazoo picture form http://www.kazoos.com/pub/

 


After doing some research about the Kazoo, I found out that it has been used in the professional setting and record attempts have been made to assemble the largest Kazoo ensemble.  The new Guinness World Records was set on March 14, 2011 during a BBC event at the Royal Albert Hall.  The crowd 3,910 kazooists at Royal Albert Hall joined together to perform Wagner's Ride Of The Valkyries and the Dambusters March. 

Here are some videos that shows more about the event:

Video from YouTube.


Video from YouTube.

I find it really amazing that a simple instruments such as the Kazoo can be used in the creation of music and in musical performances.  With that, I will now acquire my own Kazoo and discover what I can do with it.

Kazoo Links:
How to play the Kazoo
Masters of the Kazooniverse: a musical group made up of kazooists

xkcd's Future Timeline Post - We're Doomed!

Now that I am back in civilization, the tech geek part of me is glad that I have access to the internet again. I have survived without the internet for a longer period of time, but hey, it is not that bad.

So, going through the usual webpages and blogs that I go through every day, I found myself looking at a recent post on xkcd: The Future - According to Google Search Results.

Image from xkcd.

It was quite a coincidence that a coworker talked about the many things that was predicted to happen in 2012 a couple hours ago.  We did not really talk about what was going to happen, but we did talk about the changes that us humans will see and how it would change the way we see the world and act.  Hopefully, those changes would be for a better world.

Going through the timeline, there are many things that I am looking forwards to see in the next 89 years (Linux becomes dominant OS - 2014, all UN member nations achieve Millennium Development Goals - 2015, US elects first married lesbian president - 2032, 80% of US has access to high-speed rail - 2036, tabacco industry fails - 2047).  However, some listings on the timeline are events that I would like to see happen on the timeline (US debt reaches 97% of GDP - 2021, Lake Mead evaporates - 2021, arctic summers ice-free - 2040, Social Security trust fund exhausted - 2041, Joshua trees nearly extinct - 2100).  In short words: We're Doomed!

Well, it makes a good read.  However, Google and I are not really futurologists.  In addition events in the future may not turn out to be what we expect them to be now.

So, what do you think will happen within the next 89 years?

An evening with Rodgers and Hammerstein

Last weekend, I went down to the Artemus W. Ham Hall at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas to listen to
Pops Concert by the Las Vegas Philharmonic orchestra.  For that evening, the concert featured music from the musicals of Rodgers and Hammerstein.

Rodgers and Hammerstein was a well known American songwriting duo that consisted of Richard Rodgers (1902 – 1979) and Oscar Hammerstein II (1895 – 1960).  Together, they created some of the most popular musicals of all time.  Some of the musicals created by them included: Oklahoma!, Carousel, The King and I and The Sound of Music.

During the golden age for musical theater, the musicals by Rodgers and Hammerstein were quite "revolutionary" as the songs were incorporated into the plot of the play, something that was not done before in musicals.  In addition, their plays contained many thought provoking plots, as issues such as racism, sexism and classism were addressed in many of their works.  Their plays would become famous all over the world and some of them would later be made into movies.

The first song I heard from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical was You'll Never Walk Alone from Carousel.  That was one of the more popular songs that became a football song for people all over the world (starting from the Liverpool Football Club in England).  Also, other songs such as Do-Ra-Mi were songs that would be known around the world.

Before going out to the concert, I managed to get a hold of a video recording of a concert featuring music from Rodgers and Hammerstein during the 2010 BBC Proms season.

Video from YouTube. Posted by BBC.

Armed with some background research, I was able to know about the music I was going to hear.  There was no way I could compare the Las Vegas Philharmonic and the Artemus W. Ham Hall with the orchestras and the concert halls back home, but it was good to know that Las Vegas dos have a classical music ensemble.  Other that the fact the spotlight operator annoyed me with his overuse of the spotlight, I enjoyed the concert.

Consensus vs. Confrontation Politics

One strange fact about me: I like watching and listening to the Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs).  I have no idea when I started tuning in to that, but it was probably after my attempt to figure out why people found Margaret Thatcher speeches amusing.  

More about the PMQs:  PMQs takes place every Wednesdays for half an hour and during that time, the Members of the Parliament in the British House of Commons ask the British Prime Ministers questions, in which the Prime Minister is obliged to answers.  Other government ministers have their own question time dealing with issues within their areas.  For more information about the PMQs and Question Time, read the following Wikipedia articles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Minister%27s_Questions, and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Question_Time.

According to the Wikipedia, the PMQs forms an important part of British political culture and, due to the natural drama of the sessions, it is the most well-known piece of Parliamentary business in the United Kingdom.  I like listening to PMQs as I am always entertained by the fact that the politicians can use that time to attack the policies of the opposing party, and poke fun of each other, while they are within the same room. 

Since PMQs are know to be "dramatic", there is a question on what type of PMQs people prefer, a cozy agreement, or a good punch-up.  Below is a video on what people's opinions are on that question:


Video from YouTube.  Posted by liarpoliticians.

This is different compared to the system in the United States.  PMQs and Question Time can give politicians an opportunity to voice their opinions about government policies and make sure that the government is accountable to the people it is serving.  Also, it provides a setting for politicians to have a debate about issues and policies, allowing all of us to be better informed on what is going in our government and the issues it is dealing with.  This is a lot better compared to getting news about our government from the news outlets.  Maybe one day, C-SPAN can be more entertaining.

In my opinion, consensus politics is functional and agreements can be made that satisfies almost everyone.  However, confrontation politics are always entertaining and at the same time can still be functional.  Well, for now I like to be entertained by my politicians.  So, if our politicians can stop screaming at each other on the news, I will go for confrontation politics.

Road Trip to Vegas: Day 1

Hello from Las Vegas, NV.  It is always good to be in a warm place in the winter.  Before I talk about life in Vegas and in Nevada, I should spend some time to talk about my road trip out west.

Day 1
I left my home in the Chicago area one cold January morning, heading to Oklahoma City, OK, my stop for the night.  Other than the fact that I was not able to merge onto the Stevenson Expressway and was stuck on the shoulder for a while (thank-you rush hour traffic), I was able to get out of Chicago without much trouble.

 Map from Google Maps.

Ah, Illinois corn/soy fields.  For now (winter), it was just fields of bare dirt.  I learned to appreciate this place over the past 3 years.  When I was living in Urbana, IL, I was quite attached to the places in Central Illinois and I would be missing it during my time out west. 

But, here is a quick snapshot of a the Central Illinois landscape with a combine harvester in the distance.

St. Louis, MO.  It seemed like I have a pattern of getting lost in that city when I was visiting the city by myself.  For two of the three times I have been there, I did not intent on even visiting the city (I still remembered the time when my flight was diverted there due to the stormy weather in Chicago).  Given my past visits to St Louis, I should know the city quite well.  However, I still did not know where I could find a place to get lunch in the city.  Here is a snapshot I took of the Gateway Arch during this visit.

Missouri!  I rode my bicycle through the state when I was during the Illini 4000 bike trip from New York City to San Diego, CA in the summer of 2007.  The Ozarks surprised us then as we did not anticipate for any hills between the Appalachians and the Rockies.  In addition, we were surprised by the amount of dogs that were chasing after us (dogs + bicycles = not a good mix).  But overall, Missouri was an interesting state, with cheap ribs, lawnmower races, and ambiguous civil war murals.

The civil war mural in Ironton, MO.  Photo from peakery.com.

Because of my bad experience with the hills of the Ozarks and with the bike chasing dogs, I did not like Missouri that much and was glad to be out of the state.  However, while I was driving through the Ozarks, I was amazed by the beauty of the forests and the hills, which was a different landscape compared to the flat fields of central Illinois.  So, with that experience, I guess I could put Missouri back onto the list of states to visit again. 

For this road trip, I decided to visit as many National Parks as I could visit so that I could collect more stamps for my National Parks Passport.  As I was approaching Springfield, MO, I decided to make a detour and visit Wilson's Creek National Battlefield.  The battle at Wilson's Creek between the Union army and Confederate army was the first major Civil War battle fought west of the Mississippi River.  The Southerners won the battle there, but was not able to capitalize on their success.  Knowing nothing about the place before visiting it, I was quite surprised that even with the Union loss at Wilson's Creek, that site became a National Battlefield.  As it was getting dark and I was still 4 hours away from Oklahoma City, I only had time to explore the visitor's center there.

The sun was setting by the time I found my way back onto I-44.  From this point on, I was just concentrating on getting to Oklahoma City as quickly as I could.  Fortunately I was able to get to the hotel at around 10pm, giving me enough time to unpack, relax in the hotel pool and hot tub, and to get some sleep.

Another New Year, Another New...

Hello Twenty-eleven! Another year just went by and it went by really quickly. Looking back on the past year, I realized I had done a lot and had also made a lot of accomplishments. I backpacked inside the Grand Canyon with other college students from my residence hall, graduated from university, took a course to become a Leave No Trace Trainer, and pulled off planning and writing the route for the Illini 4000's cross-country bike ride during the summer (woa, that was a busy first half of the year).

To be honest, I did not really blog much about what I had done during 2010. For 2011, I would hope to find more time to blog about my adventures. If I have enough time, I might go back and post some pictures and talk about some of the things that happened during the past year.

With the new year here, I still have to come up with my New Years Resolutions. Well, I will just keep them to myself for now. In general, some of the things I will like to achieve is to be more proactive. I think it is vague, but it is a good start.

For 2011, I will be leaving the corn/soy fields of Illinois for Las Vegas, Neveda to work on an internship. My response for my last achievement of 2010: YES! I have found something to do! And I have found something that I love doing! Speaking of which, I should probably sleep now as I will be up early to start my road trip out west.

To new friends: I will be a pleasure to meet you. To old friends: It was a pleasure and we will meet again. Before I go get ready for my new adventures, I will leave you with one of my favorite songs from Rodgers & Hammerstein's Carousel: You'll Never Walk Alone. Wherever we are, we will never be alone.


Video from YouTube. Posted by ximowb