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What are your Yes music champagne moments?

Nominate your champagne moments!

Over the coming holiday period, I won’t have time to record the usual album episodes. What I’d like to do instead is create a couple of episodes made up of what you regard as the best moments of Yes music – the moments which remind you why you love listening to Yes – your ‘champagne moments’.

I’d like as many YMP listeners as possible to submit their ideas by Tuesday 13th December through any one of the following routes:

  • Leave a comment on this blog post
  • Ring the voice mail number (on the right) and leave a message
  • Send an email to show@yesmusicpodcast.com
  • Upload an audio file to the new ‘GoAruna’ site (click the link on the right) – please make this .wav or .mp3 (44100Hz and 128bps if you understand this stuff)
You can submit as many champagne moments as you like but I might have to select one or two if lots of people get involved – as I hope they will!

Please get involved!

 


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Technology and music – always a good thing?

Technology for technology's sake?

I’m looking forward to releasing a great interview I did yesterday with guitar guru, Mike Murphy. He was in the US, I was in England. We spoke to each other via the miracle of Skype. The sound was clear and there was only a slight lag – as you will hear.

This is another example of how technology has revolutionised communications – I couldn’t have done this interview at all only a few years ago.

However, is technology always positive ? Does music always benefit from the latest in technology?

Wood and cat gut or iPad and Animoog?

When Yes recorded their earliest albums, music recording technology was at a comparatively early stage – and so was instrument technology. Of course, all musical instruments are products of the current state of technology and always have been. A Stradivarius violin was ‘the latest thing’ in the 1680s – it was the Animoog iPad app of its day.

However, it sometimes seems to me that more technology can mean less creativity, less need to innovate. I remember hiring the first video camera I ad ever seen when I was about 17 years old. It had no zoom function so to make the film interesting, I had to create the angles and simulate the zoom myself. The result was a slightly bizarre but highly-creative, interesting movie. I wonder if the same is true with studio technology?

I’m no musical Luddite…am I?

Clearly, something like 90125 would not have been possible without the creative use of the latest technology (and the involvement of a genius producer like Trevor Horn) but when it’s possible to create any effect you like easily and quickly in the studio, do musicians come to rely too much on this and too little on their own musicianship and flair?

What about all those ‘manufactured’ acts through the last 30 years, culminating in the X-factor production line – without technology would this be possible – and would it be a good thing or a bad thing?

Let me know what you think.


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Announcing new Yes Music Podcast interview specials

Step up to the mic

I’m really enjoying the weekly exploration of Yes albums and I hope you are too!

In between these episodes, I’m also going to start doing a few interview specials. This is because I know there are many people out there who know more than me about aspects of Yes and have different perspectives. I’d like to hear what they have to say and also share this with you.

So I’m in the process of organising Skype chats with some very interesting folk who will make fascinating guests. Here’s a flavour of what’s on its way:

  • A Yes fan guitar teacher with lots to say about Yes guitarists and their special styles
  • A Yes fan prog rock musician
  • A Yes fan prog rock website owner and ‘3rd cousin of Yes’
  • Several others!

If you have a story to tell, why not get in touch? In the meantime, watch this space for some great conversations…coming soon.


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Changes to email updates

stamps
What do you want in your email updates?

Hi everyone. I have just changed the Yes Music Podcast email updates.

If you have already signed up for updates via email, you will have been getting a message every time a new blog post or episode is posted.

For boring technical reasons, this was messing up the Yes Music Podcast listing in iTunes and only 3 episodes were showing up.

So, if you sign up now for the email updates, you will still get all blog posts and episodes. However, if you are already receiving emails, you will now only get the episodes. If you are OK with this, that’s fine by me. Otherwise, please sign up again using the email sign-up form on the right hand side of every page.

 

Sorry for the messing about!

Kevin


Creative Commons image credit CeresB