Dark sarcasm

January 22, 2013 2:57 PM

[soundcloud] Classical piano take on Pink Floyd by The Royal Academy of Music Master’s Degree Graduate Aysedeniz Gokcin. -via-
posted by maggieb (23 comments total)

It sounds like the score to a silent Fritz Lang film. Cool.
posted by sendai sleep master at 2:59 PM on January 22, 2013 [2 favorites]

Oh, man, am I the only one that would love to have a complete piano-scored version of The Wall layered over Metropolis?!
posted by sendai sleep master at 3:01 PM on January 22, 2013 [2 favorites]

This is great. Thanks for posting.
posted by Measured Out my Life in Coffeespoons at 3:26 PM on January 22, 2013

whoa, from the same artist : The Crying Harmonica & The Speechless Piano
posted by mannequito at 3:29 PM on January 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

I love Pink Floyd, and I usually play classical music while I'm working. This is a marriage of two perfect things.
posted by chatongriffes at 3:29 PM on January 22, 2013

So, this is kind of amazing.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 3:35 PM on January 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

What surprised me is that she's worked from not just the studio source material, but live shows as well, because she's incorporated elements from them that are nowhere to be found in the studio recordings.
posted by sutt at 3:38 PM on January 22, 2013

[this is good]
posted by Joey Michaels at 3:51 PM on January 22, 2013

From about 1:45 to 2:00 of this song I literally stared into space trying to imagine how her fingers were doing what they were. And then the awesome way she keeps a kind of rythm of the original song is just..... wow. So good.

Thanks!
posted by lattiboy at 3:56 PM on January 22, 2013

MeFites who like this may also like the work of Christopher O'Riley, particularly his Radiohead interpretations including Paranoid Android and Karma Police.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 4:08 PM on January 22, 2013

Dark sarcasm? Or sarchasm?
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:08 PM on January 22, 2013

This is how you do a pop-to-classical conversion. The great strength of concert music (i.e. "classical", though Liszt is technically a Romantic-era composer) is in the depth of expression, the ability to really exhaust an idea or a feeling. To take a theme, and through the artful pursuit of variations on that theme, explore every facet of its being.

Popular music --even really good serious critically acclaimed popular music-- is still often quite superficial. That's not a bad thing, it's just the nature of the medium. Popular music skates along the surface of our emotions, our thoughts. Sometimes it skates on the knife edge of that surface, but it rarely plunges.

But a good piece of concert music? Awww yeah. Let's soak, let's marinate in that emotion. Suck the bone dry. Let it wash over you like the evening tide, filling you up till your burst. They may be apples and oranges and so it's not really fair to say that this "cover" is better than the original, but sometimes you don't just want a slice of apple, sometimes you want the whole orange: the pulp, the rind, the juice, and the seeds.

[Ok so maybe I'm coming a little too strong with the metaphors, but I really like this. Thanks for sharing.]
posted by Doleful Creature at 4:13 PM on January 22, 2013 [2 favorites]

While this is a great adaptation, I'd be hard pressed to agree that Pink Floyd's The Wall "skates along the surface of our emotions" and "rarely plunges." Have you listened to the album, Doleful Creature?
posted by Inkoate at 4:26 PM on January 22, 2013

Yes, I've listened to it many times. One of my favorite albums. But I stand by what I said, even for The Wall. It does have a few moments of depth but I don't feel that the entire album is really all that deep.
posted by Doleful Creature at 4:53 PM on January 22, 2013

This gets a big "oh, Hell, yes!" from me. :)
posted by tantrumthecat at 5:23 PM on January 22, 2013

That works quite nicely.
posted by Relay at 5:34 PM on January 22, 2013

But I stand by what I said, even for The Wall. It does have a few moments of depth but I don't feel that the entire album is really all that deep.

Perhaps, but the current tour that Waters is on (and which he keeps extending again and again like an Ozzy farewell tour) is astounding and something which should not be missed if one has a chance.
posted by hippybear at 6:40 PM on January 22, 2013 [2 favorites]

no dog's orgasm in the classroom
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:53 PM on January 22, 2013 [2 favorites]

Wow. I think I'm struck most by how different these classic rock chord progressions sound, because they're not at all what one expects to hear from a piano composition in this sort of style.
posted by spitefulcrow at 8:15 PM on January 22, 2013

Hey, no fair! She's talented and gorgeous.
posted by bz at 9:23 PM on January 22, 2013

Wow. That was fantastic and very different to most of the rock-to-classical instrumentation I've heard. She really worked with the stylistic differences, which is what makes a good cover in my opinion: it brings something from the original and something new that makes it completely different.

(Also recommending O'Riley, whom I saw with Matt Haimovitz last year. It was one of the best shows I saw.)
posted by immlass at 8:11 AM on January 23, 2013

[this is amazing]
posted by dg at 8:01 PM on January 23, 2013

"Dear Soundcloud, in your new version of the site could you please remove the feature that allows disabling the totally not-distracting and not-inane user annotations that pop up constantly every 5 seconds?", said NO ONE EVER.
posted by Rhomboid at 6:50 AM on January 24, 2013