7 posts tagged “evanescence”

My sister and I went to a concert, "An Evening of Romantic Music", by the UTD Musica Nova (I was part of it before, and still guest perform with them occasionally). They played works by Mendelssohn, Schumann, Chopin, Barber, and even Bernstein. My favorite piece is this "Lust Fantasy" (I believe it's called? **) by Robert Xavier Rodriguez (also the director of Musica Nova), performed by Jeff Lankov on the piano.

(** It's Fantasia Lussuriosa in Italian)

If you don't have time (or patience/interest/whatever) to watch the whole clip, at least forward to the 5:00 mark (close to the middle of the clip but not quite... it's about 12 min long) for an interesting twist on the performance.

The original file was huge... like 250MB. I used Helix Mobile Producer to convert it to H.264, reduced the frame size from VGA to QVGA, and the bitrate from almost 3Mbps to less than 500kbps. The resultant file is less than 40MB, and I tried uploading it to youtube but forgot that besides the 100MB size limit they also had a 10min time limit. Vox is better in this regard!!

Playback of the two files on the N95 don't look too different. However if you do a seek, you can see the smaller file has less I-frames and so you get ghost-images for a couple of seconds if you seek to a non I-Frame (I think I set it to every 5 sec.). And of course since the resolution is different, the first file will look better output to TV, although I haven't tried.

I'm not a good pianist by any means, but playing the piano is one of the best ways I can find to relax. It has been a tense weekend with tax returns and all, so I'm glad I had the piano for company. Plus I wanted to see if the AV Sync issue has been fixed with the firmware update. (Yes, it has!) If you like Evanescence and are brave enough to hear my playing, here's the piano part of "Good Enough":

Evanescence - Good Enough (Piano)

6 comments

Same edits were made with HMP as with the previous clip. While the AV Sync and audio gain are much improved, I really don't care for the washed-out effect. It's as if someone turned the EV way up (in photos too). I think the retail version of the firmware doesn't have this problem though (which is good). Mine is supposed to be a newer version but apparently they changed something in the wrong direction.

I guess then these are not very good examples of N95's video capabilities? Oh well, just an excuse to share some piano music. Hope you like the first one and can tolerate the second....

Took a day off, drove up to OKC for Evanescence concert. It was super kick ass. We got floor tickets and I was screaming through the whole thing (I don't usually scream). Lost my voice the next day.

Brought my N95 into the auditorium, but decided not to use it. There were guards who seem to know how to pinpoint the good cameras. Too many people were using their camera phones so they ignore the low end flip phone kind. I bet the moment I whip out my N95, they'll be all over me. Just like in the previous Evanescence concert, I got caught and escorted out of the concert hall. I was using the N93 only for one minute... whereas there were people using their sidekicks and what-nots throughout the concert and nothing happens to them.

So I decided to just enjoy this concert and not worry about taking pics or videos. But before that, during the day, we went around OKC to Myriad Botanical Gardens, Oklahoma City National Memorial, and Oklahoma City Museum of Art. Here are some pics from the trip:

I'm sorry to say this... but Oklahoma City was really boring. We got bored early in the afternoon. The "Crystal Bridge" in the Myriad Botanical Gardens was closed for renovation. Bad timing... it would have been cool. The memorial was quite moving... but I was busy rubbing my eyes because of the dust and allergens stirred up by the strong winds. I haven't had an allergy attack this bad in a long time. My eyes were very red, people thought I have been crying at the memorial. My sinus, eyes and throat continue to hurt for two more days after that.

The drive to Oklahoma City and back was an easy one. About 3 hours each way, and I did all the driving, while Bruce and Howie (fellow fan I got to know from the EV forums) napped. I almost dozed off a couple of times (since I had less than 10 hours total sleep the previous 3 nights) but kept myself awake by fantasizing about travelling the world, to much more interesting places than OKC....

As for the concert, I think Amy Lee's voice was better in the Dallas concert we saw last October, but this time they performed more songs, including 2 for encore. They ended with my favorite - Lacrymosa, after which I turned to Bruce and said "I bet they'll do an encore this time (they didn't in Dallas) and play My Immortal". Sure enough, the grand piano rose up to the stage and Amy's beautiful playing and haunting voice filled the auditorium...

If I had half as good a voice as her, this would have been my career of choice. Play the piano, sing, travel... and somehow incorporating flying into there and my life will be complete.

14 The Last Song I'm Wasting On You

1 comment

Audio: What's your favorite hidden track or song from an album?
Submitted by Kristine.

This is not a hidden track, but a bonus track from Evanescence's "The Open Door" album, if you pre-ordered it from iTunes. I don't normally use iTunes (and no, I don't have an iPod), but for this I did. It's later released as a B-side to the Lithium single (although I didn't get that). I'm a big fan but not an obsessive one. I've gone to two of their concerts (flew to Little Rock for the first one), and planning a third one (road trip!), but never stood in line for hours to get a pic or an autograph. Maybe I'll try that at the next concert? Although I don't look forward to being trapped in a sea of screaming 16-year-olds... no offense, I know they're just excited to see Amy Lee and the band, but uncontrolled high-pitched high-decibel sounds just hurt my ears and especially my head.

I'd like to mention the song "Ghost Love Score" by Nightwish (in their "Once" album). It's not a hidden track, nor a bonus track, but it's a great epic piece that's over 10 minutes long, and glorious every second of it. My main regret is not hearing Tarja perform this song live... (before she was "fired" from Nightwish)

07 Lacrymosa

Audio: If you could sing like anyone, living or dead, who would you choose to sound like?  Share a song of theirs.
Submitted by aa.

This is an easy one. Either Amy Lee of Evanescence or Tarja Turunen (formerly) of Nightwish. Here is a song, Lacrymosa, from Evanescence's "The Open Door" album. (For some reason my browser will hang up when I try to embed the audio in the post...?)

Addendum (2/23): Internet Explorer was the culprit... it can't handle the script used to embed media in posts. Now, using Firefox, everything works fine. However, this only started happening a couple days ago. Previously I had no problems with IE either. Anyone knows why this is, or am I the only one with this problem?

Not sure if the slide show is the same as the "transition" thing DaveT asked about. But anyway here's a clip of it in action on the N95. The one-hand operation was abit clumsy but I was holding the N93 in the other hand to capture the video. Sorry about the red dot, that's the focus assist light from N93. I'm not sure if it can be turned off. Anyway I like the fact that you can set a soundtrack to the slideshow. In this demo I used Lithium by Evanescence.

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"Show us your favorite framed photos."

How do I choose? I fill the main hutch in our living room with nothing but framed photos. I like them all... those with family, with friends, of our Steinway and flowers and butterflies...

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I guess if I had to pick a couple from this collection, I'd choose these two: first one framing my parents' 25th anniversary photo (top left) + family portrait with parents and sister (top right) + a picture of my grandparents when they were younger (bottom); second one framing one of my favorites from our wedding pictures.

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If you ask Bruce what's his favorite photo (after our wedding ones... hopefully), I'll bet he'd say it's the one I took of him and Annie Haslam. As for me, I haven't had a chance to meet my favorite band in person yet, so for now my favorite Evanescence pic is the one I took at their 2003 concert in Little Rock. I added these few lines before framing it:

Plane tickets $400
Hotel & rental car $100
Concert tickets $75
Watching Evanescence LIVE in concert $PRICELESS

Oh, that reminds me. The pic I submitted for the previous Vox Hunt also contained a framed photo: me snuggled between Bruce and Sting!!

Piano intro of the piece on my Steinway. I've only practiced it for less than 15 minutes before recording it so please be nice! Waiting to get the full sheet music and finding time to practice some piano...