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BBC Offers Beethoven Symphonies for Download
Simon80 writes "BBC Radio 3 is making performances by the BBC Philharmonic of Beethoven's 6th to 9th symphonies available for free download for the next few days only, as the second part of a trial to 'test listeners appetite for downloads'. During the first part, the first 5 symphonies were offered, and over 650,000 people downloaded them."
So, where can I get the earlier performances? I assume someone might have them available for download somewhere. Thanks. :)
Free classical music downloads. Sure, the recording of the performance is still copyrighted, but aren't there any "free classical performers" out there?
Don't forget scene.org.
Excuse my ignorance, but what is ABR?
ABR is average bitrate, that means the bitrate changes dynamically throughout the song depending on which parts need it most. For this a psychoacoustic model is made which effectively acts like the human ear.
Examples of places where you can reduce quality are after loud sounds followed by relatively quiet sound, for example Wild Thing.
Many classical forms have become pompous, whiny and annoying to modern ears. I, for example, can't stand any Vivaldi, Haendel, Beethoven. I've enjoyed them all, mind you, when I was younger, but I've grown out of it. These days, I enjoy Mahler, Rachmaninoff, or Franck much more, and I'm getting to be really fond of Ligeti, Xenakis and all the really modern composers.
I believe music is like wine: when you start drinking some, you prefer the sweet, easy-going ones. Then as your tastebuds develop, you start getting more and more into wines that you once thought were bitter and undrinkable, and you start "understanding" them more. What I mean is, music, like wine, is an acquired taste.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
So, if I download it ten times, do I have ten legitimate copies I can spread to friends?
The main reason for all of this: supply of classical musicians vastly exceeds demand. On the supply side, music schools, universities and conservatories worldwide are graduating thousands of performers of classical music every year. On the demand side, you can count the number of classical music professional orchestras in most countries in the low single digits; the reality is that the market for classical music concerts is much smaller than the market for popular music concerts.
However, what this means for the future of open-licensed freely downloadable recordings of classical music is less clear. There is no shortage of brilliant musicians already employed full-time in other paying jobs like music teaching who might consider getting together with others to perform classical works under some sort of open licence, like one of the Creative Commons licences . I suspect that as more people become aware of the open-licensing phenomenon in other media, more classical music performers will help create a similar bandwagon for classical music recordings.
Why oil price increase equals economic trouble (Score: Interesti
I think a better factor was that the disc diameter had to be able to fit within 5 1/4 inch disc drive bays, and then that manufacturing technology at the time only permitted a certain spiral density.
Still having a musical heuristic to validate its use as a musical storage format is a good idea.
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Went ahead and made a _trackerless_ torrent for those of you who want all the symphonies in this BBC series.
c kerless.torrent
Grab the torrent here: http://home.no.net/nexus/beethoven_symphonies_tra
Now, this is my first atempt at a trackerless torrent and you will need a client with trackerless support to use it (Newest Azureus and BitComet comes to mind)
When in danger, whewn in doubt! Run in circles, scream and shout!
I have not listened to much Beethoven (aside from bits and peices in movies and such), so something like this is an excellent opportunity.
Why? is it really too hard to spend money on music? or is a 5 dollar bargain cd of weiner philharmoniker too pricey
If anyone knows any places to legally download performances of other classics, please post them.
http://www.itunes.com/
After a while people noticed that the changes in the bitrate were in some cases too audible and reduced the illusion and immersion of the encoded audio.
So, Average Bit Rate tries to avoid that by keeping the variable bitrate somewhere around the specified bitrate.
> I reckon the 9th Symphony 67 minutes.
It depends on the pace set by the conductor. I have copies ranging from 59'43 to 69'34.
> Incidentally all of Beethoven's symphonies are very long.
And longer than expected at the time. Famously, during the premiere performance of the 3rd, someone in the audience shouted that he'd "give a kreutzer" for it to be done and over with.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
As I understand it, nobody plays the original Beethovan|Bach|whoever scores, because modern instruments don't sound the same as the ones he composed for.
Everyone plays modern arrangements of the classical pieces, which someone does have a valid copywright to.
Theoretically some gifted fellow could sit down with the original score, re-orchastrate it, and release that arrangement with a friendly license.
Slashdot the BBC, hahahahahahahahaha
I'd like to see that happen. Lol.
Some where on the BBC website is a diagram of their network design. Its huge.
Shoot me
For encoding classical music, AAC is far better than the alternatives. Ogg Vorbis is close, but last time I checked had some issues with harpsichords (not sure if they're fixed now, but encoding, say, a Brandenbug Concerto would result in some quite unpleasant distortions).
If you have a license for the Dolby Pro codec, then you will find it's quality to be superb. If not, the only source of music encoded with it that I know of is iTMS. The PsyTEL AAC encoder is also very good (close to the Dolby Pro encoder, passing it in some areas), but the last time I looked it was Windows-only - although it's a command-line app so it probably runs fine with WINE.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I can understand that one's personal music taste changes, but your post makes it seem like Beethoven's 9th is something of a bygone era (musically speaking). Someone else mentioned that Beethoven's music evolved as he became more mature (again, compared to his 9th). I don't think that one can classify his 9th as immature, annoying, etc.
His 9th symphony was composed at the end of his life. I can understand perhaps calling his early symphonies "immature" but his later ones were works of an original, genius mind.
The 9th symphony was the first symphony to add singers in a symphony. I have heard some people refer to it as a work that helped start the Romantic period. Finally, Mahler spent his entire life trying to immitate the "greatness" of Beethoven's 9th. Whether he succeeded or not is a matter of interpretation.
http://www.classicalarchives.com/
It's interesting - although the BBC has the FULL RIGHTS to distribute this music as they see fit (including free), the record companies were STILL whining about it, and going on about "how it would destroy the record industry" etc. The record companies were on the BBC news at least twice whining about this.
This proves the truth - record companies just don't like competition.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
I don't mean to disrespect them in any way, nor am I complaining that they are overpaid; however, the starting salary for a 1st violinist in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra is over $100,000. There are far too many great musicians who are indeed trying to scrape a meager living, but members of prominent orchestras are not such people. Of course, as you said there are more costs than that to an recording, and it is of little surprise that there are not more distributed for free.
English is easier said than done.
Beethoven is a good place to start, because even if you don't have any musical inclination, his work will quickly become familiar to you. It's literally as recognizable as Nine Inch Nails -- just as you know when you hear some synth work by Reznor, even if you've never heard it before, you'll also know when you hear something by the lovely Ludwig Van.
Mozart is the same way for a lot of people. But ultimately, sticking with the old dead German guys is like learning about rock and roll and stopping with the Stones and the Beatles. Try some Faure on for size, too -- "Pavane" is almost as recognizable as Beethoven's Fifth, and there are a lot of Faure discs that include it and some other very good stuff.
The Wikipedia suggestion is a good one.
You can write software in small discrete chunks.
You try to write music a bar or two at a time and you're going to wind up with a mess.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
Sigh.... So many kids think everything should be free. The cuture of entitlement is disgusting.
How are performers supposed to pay for food and shelter?
They deserve to be paid.
As far as linux being free, pfft...you get what you pay for (a virtually useless desktop environment for anyone who needs to actually *produce* something on a daily basis).
And people who do nothing but develop free software will soon learn they cant pay their bills and will end up living in a box. Or, they will get smart and realize they should be paid for their efforts if others find it usefull and gain from its useage.
Only kids living in their parents basements think everything should be free cause they've never worked a day in their life and mooch of their folks or society.
Moochers never prosper.
I've been upgraded to "bad"!