adamyntium

Category: arts and entertainment

  • “Last Stop” game review: Great sound, good looks, but mixed feelings

    “Last Stop” game review: Great sound, good looks, but mixed feelings

    The Last Stop game sounds intriguing on paper and literally sounds great… with outstanding voice acting and a masterfully composed and performed score.

    This makes the uneven narratives and unsatisfying ending all the more disappointing.

    NOTE: This game is available on PC, Playstation, Switch, and Xbox

    To quote the publisher: “[Last Stop is] a video game about secret lives, the ties that bind and how magic can be found in the mundane […] a single-player third-person adventure set in present day London.”

    I actually recommend against watching the trailers unless you don’t mind being exposed to some spoilers.

    The gameplay

    This part’s straightforward. There just isn’t much “gameplay,” at least in the traditional sense. I’ll explain more in a moment, but in the meantime, have a listen to the marvelous score while you read; you can select amongst the 71 (!!!) music tracks by clicking the three-line icon on the top right of the embed below (but see Spoilers warning below!)

    WARNING: Song titles may be spoilers; consider listening to the songs without looking at the titles 🙂

    “Last Stop” full soundtrack, composed by Lyndon Holland
    and performed by the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra

    So what’s “game play” like? Well, you stir tea. Reassemble broken china. Play an orchestral piano (!) duet in one of the more actually delightful ‘mini-games.’ And you walk a lot! But mostly you just choose dialog options which — until the last 10 minutes of the game — generally don’t affect anything other than the immediate verbal responses. Again, until the end, “Choose Your Own Adventure” this ain’t.

    If “walking simulators” aren’t your thing,
    then this game almost certainly isn’t for you.

    I love games where you get to explore and experience at leisure, generally without worrying about ‘dying’ or even really getting stuck. But — unfortunately in Last Stop — the game is so ‘on the rails’ that there’s barely any free exploring to be enjoyed.

    At first I was a bit annoyed by the lack of interactivity and near-total lack of agency… feeling that the performative actions required to move the game forward were both unnecessary and unhelpful. But then I oddly grew to appreciate the forced engagement. While the game’s three (eventually) intertwining stories could have almost certainly fit into a short TV mini-series, even the limited interactivity here still at least slightly increases the immersion and connection.

    The sound

    The voice acting in Last Stop is simply stellar! The spoken dialogue is clear (though subtitles are on by default — helpful for non-Brits given the British accents!), and the intonation is heartfelt but not campy. And while some might find the voice of the young kid (I think age 9?) to be grating in its effusiveness, I appreciated the cheerfully sassy and playful tone as a bit of comic relief :).

    As for the music, oh wow! Especially the tracks associated with John, Jack & Molly theme… such a wonderful combination of joy & whimsy & regret and more. And the balance is perfect; the music never crowds out the dialogue; it’s noticeable and emotionally powerful without being obtrusive.

    Oh, and the score is really brought to life by the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra; what a pleasant surprise in professionalism and depth for what I perceive to be a not-huge-budgeted indie production!

    Didn’t listen via the YouTube embed above? Well, below you can listen to at least snippets on Spotify 🙂

    The graphics and animation

    I appreciate when game artists eschew the look-de-jour — photo-realism — and instead go with nearly any other style.

    With Last Stop, the artists have indeed crafted characters and an environment that help keep one immersed and feeling connected, effectively telegraphing character emotions and a delightful sense of London (or at least London’ness). This pleasantly avoids the “uncanny valley” effect of photo-realism in other games that encourages scrutiny but lacks enough realism to achieve believability. Colors pop, shading is nicely done, and transitions often feel sweepingly cinematic.

    The animation style is… a bit more of a mixed bag. For instance, when you’re controlling a character’s walking or running, direction transitions can be Sims-like jarring. And the animation choice to have characters walk in place if they hit a ‘wall’… well, that feels simply awkward and annoying :(. In other situations, though, particularly in cut-scenes, characters’ motions seem more fluid and realistic. And facial expressions and overall movements tend to be pleasantly expressive and overall fairly decent.

    The characters

    This is where things start to get a bit more… mixed :-(. All of the main characters are well-fleshed out… for better or worse, since one of them in particular is just an awful person (albeit with some backstory ‘justification’), and some others make choices of the sorts that teens are wont to do in horror films (e.g., “There’s a killer on the loose, there are strange noises in the basement, let me go investigate… alone and unarmed!”). But on the other hand, teens \_(ツ)_/¯ amiright?

    The Jerkface and impulsive teenness aside, the characters (at least the main ones) are relatable and reasonably nuanced. As with many other reviewers, apparently, I particularly took to the trio of John, Jack, and Molly (and their friend Shaz), who collectively appear in about one-third the game’s running time. Despite some warts and such, they turn out to be pretty decent, likeable, and growing-over-time characters. Often rather funny, too! Other character arcs (or lack thereof) were, unfortunately, often less… rewarding.

    One other positive note, though: there’s a darn good amount of diversity. This London has plenty of folks — both starring and supporting — of Indian and African descent, with a laudable array of skin tones. There’s also diversity in relationship types, with a sister of one of the characters in a loving relationship with another woman.

    The story(ies)

    But the story, dear readers, is regrettably the part that has me hovering right between “lightly recommend” and “lightly dis-recommend” when it comes to this game, and I’ll start with the elephant in the room… the ending.

    The last 5-10% of the game, frankly, maintains the visual and aural delights of the first 90% but is otherwise jarring, amateur’ish, and, well, kind of head-scratching. There are just too many times I was grumbling, “Oh, come on, that just doesn’t make any sense!” or “Really? All the possible creative options, and you chose such a safe, pedestrian one?” and also “WAIT! You never explained…” 🙁

    But perhaps most painfully, of the six possible endings… three are bittersweet, and the other half are just downright depressing.

    So after spending about 6 hours playing this game, I was left with disappointment, confusion, and quite a bit of sadness… not only about the endings themselves, but about the lost potential, about what this game could have been.

    Okay, enough about how I felt about (and at) the end. What about the middle, the journey?

    In a nutshell… one of the stories was delightful if a bit predictable, another was thematically uncomfortable and featuring a character whose motivations & origin were never explained, and a third just felt implausible in too many ways, particularly from the perspective of character motivations.

    Thoughts on the three stories (MINOR SPOILERS)

    The “Paper Dolls” story has little in the way of twists and turns, but it’s by far the most good-natured, humorous, and relatable story.

    “Stranger Danger” is uncomfortably beset by extensive gaslighting and related emotional abuse. In the early-to-mid part of this story, I kept hoping for a twist that’d upend one’s understanding of characters, but this never came. Worse, the entire story and many of the characters felt somewhat hamfisted.

    “Domestic Affairs” just had too many unanswered questions / situations in which character motivations were either grossly unexplained or poorly manifested. Among other things, the malevolent “set-up” seemed implausible, and — more importantly — the grand mission itself… really, all those decades of work… motivated by that!?

    Towards the last 30 minutes or so of the story, the characters and — to a lesser extent — the plots become intertwined. But I found the environment and narrative turn to be deeply disappointing. At least loosely (if not thematically) it reminded me a bit of how I felt at the conclusion of the TV show Lost. “All that investment, all those intriguing threads… for this?! Really?!!”

    Bottom line

    Note that Last Stop is one of the games included free with an Xbox Game Pass membership. Reviews seem frankly fairly consistent — engaging journey, disappointing ending — so if you’re okay with that as your likely experience, you have little to lose but a few hours of your time.

    For the rest of y’all, well, I suppose the decision is a bit tougher. If you’re up for an oft-nailbiting and roller-coaster journey and are less concerned about the destination, then for you this may be money and time well-spent :).

    *** MAJOR SPOILERS *** Gripes, questions, and other musings


    CLOSE THIS NOW IF YOU DON’T WANT SPOILERS! 😮

    Okay, now that I’ve double warned you…

    *** Things that frustrated me

    – Stranger Danger: Re the Stranger… who is he, the Devil? What exactly were his powers? And — more importantly — what were his motivations? All that aside, I found his emotional abuse of Donna to be very uncomfortable and not the sort of thing I enjoy experiencing in a video game (I don’t like violent, bloodshed’y games, either). And his rising from the dead (“Donna, you killed me…”) was… seemingly a pretty damn cheap and annoying plot device.

    – Domestic Affairs: What was the deal with Amy?! Had Pete hired her really just to ultimately blackmail Meena?! And when Meena rants about being set up (seemingly re the murder of Amy)… was that really orchestrated by Pete? How could he have known / directed the gunfight with Spider?! More importantly, given Meena’s background and hugely problematic baggage, why would Pete be grooming her (?) for a mission that’s so important to him? Er, moreso, seriously, all of that incredible, risky effort… to “save” a girl he had a boyhood crush on? REALLY?!! Overall, just so much didn’t seem realistic / logical in this story, particularly from a motivations standpoint.

    – Paper Dolls: Well, I found this to be just charming overall and have few complaints :). Except maybe Jack’s growth in maturity and kindness was perhaps a bit sudden, given how he seemed to be so self-absorbed at the beginning?

    – The ending: Ugh, the ending <sigh>. This felt like a really cheesy mix between a bad X-files episode and an equally-bad original Star Trek episode. Traveling to the other end of the galaxy and we see… what largely resembles an American Old West town, complete with saloon, train, etc.? All the aliens are apparently bi-pedal and generally humanoid in appearance except for their funny rubber face masks. Most seem to understand and speak a bit of English. And the purple-skinned creature that rescues Meena… just happens to be headed to the capitol and is comfortable with and willing to help an alien stranger? Not to mention the crazy coincidence of a human-breathable atmosphere, Meena and gang surviving seemingly without water or food, etc. etc. etc. Oh, and all three of the main characters just *happening* to show up at exactly the right place & moment (I mean, I’ve seen deus ex machinas before, but ugh).

    And yes, lots of other questions, too…

    – Given that the Stranger’s “disappearings” upend other folks’ memories of the past, why did Vivek remember all those folks going into the Stranger’s house, since all of those people were apparently disappeared? And why was the Stranger disappearing all those folks anyway?

    – Why didn’t an apologetic Frank just give the bracelet to the Vape Lord to give to John/Jack rather than making one of them come to him? More broadly, what’s Frank’s association with Earth?

    – Yet more Frank questions, so to speak :p. At the beginning, who was he waiting for? What was the bit about “refunds”? And why do the aliens even have portals to Earth if the humans are so dangerous?

    Ugh. I guess I’m just really annoyed with what I perceive to be the crappy ‘worldbuilding’ of the alien world and other sci-fi elements when other aspects of the game were generally smartly fleshed out (characters, the city of London, etc.)

    Score: 6 out of 10

    Pros

    • Great voice-acting
    • Compelling, lovely soundtrack
    • Exciting journey
    • Pleasant graphics
    • No “getting stuck” frustration

    Cons

    • Disappointing ending
    • Especially uncomfortable theme in one story (may trigger some)
    • Dialogue choices affect very little until the choices at the end
    • Some character motivations remain unknown or quite questionable

    Looking forward to your comments & questions below!

    Re SPOILERS… I’m gonna go with allowing spoilers in the comments; just please put “SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS” at the top of your comment so people can skip it if they want.

    And people reading the comments… do so with the understanding that you might encounter spoilers, so proceed cautiously below if that’s a concern!

    Want to play Last Stop?

    Visit the publisher’s site for more info
    and links to buy the game on PC, console, etc.

    Learn more / buy now

  • Broken Age – brief review and (discrete/discreet) hints

    Despite my general geekitude, I’m not much of a video game player.  I’ve never owned a gaming console, and the last game I can recall gushing over is World of Goo, which came out in 2008 (!).

    But Broken Age has utterly charmed me.  Here, watch one of the trailers:

    The game is drawn in a bright and whimsical manner and features an orchestral soundtrack which complements the visuals and themes outstandingly; I never felt pulled out of the moment nor annoyed by the music.  And yet the score (which I purchased as part of the game package) stands up well on its own.

    I spent about 6 hours playing through what’s currently available in the game*, which means either I’m particularly dense, sorely out of adventure-gaming practice (ah, the bygone days of Sierra Games!), or just apt to adopt a more leisurely playing pace than most folks (who seemed to finish the chapter in about 3-4 hours).

    One of the greatest strengths of this game, IMHO, is that — while there is indeed peril (like maidens being eaten by a monster!) — you are never faced with do-or-die related stress in the course of gameplay.

    Fall through the clouds?  A bird will save you from a splattery demise.
    Forget to pick up a critical tool?  No worries, you can go back and get it later, and in nearly all cases, with little hassle.

    You cannot die.  You cannot make decisions that result in you having to painfully backtrack.  Instead, you can safely amuse yourself by doing things repeatedly ‘wrong’ (e.g., placing or combining objects with deliberate silliness), rewarded by the oft-cheeky responses and free of any risk to the ultimate progression of the game.

    An angry tree confronts Vella
    An angry tree confronts Vella

    But this insulation, I believe, is also the game’s greatest weakness.  By protecting gamers from the consequences of their choices (or actually, not giving us any real story-changing choices at all), Broken Age dampens the emotional heft of the experience, the sense of achievement upon the chapter completion, and, really, any deep urge to replay the game.

    And although the voice acting is excellent overall, the characters seem somewhat weakly developed.  Not only are they mostly unaffected by the (really, inescapable) actions of the gamer, they don’t seem to grow or even emotionally modulate much at all.   One could argue that the characters’ cries of sorrow and excitement were exhibited years ago outside of our gaze… but that’s little consolation to those who were expecting a bit more nail-biting, angst, and joy throughout the scenes.

    Some have also decried the apparently too-easy nature of the puzzles, nearly all of which involve transferring an object onto or to a person or thing.  But personally, I liked the puzzle difficulty level. Although I embarrassingly had to look up hints a few times, I found that nearly every puzzle was reasonably logical… and sometimes rather chuckle-worthy to boot.  With that said, those who are ardent adventure gamers (or just way smarter than I am) should probably think of Broken Age as a beautifully prepared interactive story with small, entertaining speedbumps ;).

    So am I glad I purchased this game? Would I recommend it to others?  Absolutely, and yes.

    Assuming I spend a total of 12’ish delighted hours once the second and last chapter is released, that amounts to a cost of about $2 an hour — quite a bargain, if you ask me.  Also, I have faith that the Broken Age characters will start to get fleshed out more.  And perhaps there’ll even be multiple endings that depend upon the gamer’s choices!

    But even if characterizations and player agency aren’t deepened, I am confident that I’ll have enjoyed nearly every minute with the story, music, and overall experience.  True, I wish the characters had been written in a way to help us care about them a bit more.  And as suggested above, I’d have appreciated a more ‘choose your own adventure’ style branching to up the excitement.  But with all that said, Broken Age offers hours of un-frustrating delight and a story with intriguing potential, IMHO making it well worth your time and money.

    —

    And now for some helpful tips and hints!  To unveil spoilers, just mouse over the text between the brackets 🙂 (anything unobscured is totally not a spoiler!!!)

    • After you load the game but before you start playing, be sure to set the “Letterbox” setting to Vertical!
      Otherwise, you’ll end up with blurry and chopped off imagery, as wisely noted by Benjamin here.  Don’t ask me why DoubleFine decided on such a lousy default! 🙁
    • Which character’s story should be played first?  Is it important to switch between the stories at certain points?
      Doesn’t matter too much, though I’d recommend playing as Shay to start… both because his puzzles are easier than Vella’s, and also because the subsequent storyline packs a bit more “ohhhhhh!” when you do it in that order.  There are no spots in which moving the story forward requires character switching, though, and the grand reveal at the end of chapter 1 is great regardless of what order you play the characters in.
    • Is anything time-sensitive? (e.g., is there ever a point at which decisions must be made in a particular number of seconds?)
      Not from what I could tell.  Ah, thanks to a thoughtful comment by Enrico on Google+, I was reminded that there’s at least one puzzle that is time sensitive.  Thankfully, though, if you mess up, it’s very easy and fairly un-time-consuming to re-try 🙂 (and this is as good as any place to remind y’all that hitting the spacebar will typically jump you through spoken dialog)
    • Any other misc wisdom?
      Sure!  Talk to every character a lot.  You’ll not only want to exhaust every conversation option when you first meet them, in many cases you’ll want to chat with them later to get additional hints (or even just some more laughs :).  Oh, and grab anything and everything.  I don’t think there was a single grabbable object I didn’t use, and somehow you’ll never run out of space to put everything on your person :).

    In Shay’s world…

    1. Propulsion?!
      • Hint 1a: [You’ll find sweet success by revisiting a room you likely were in rather early in the game.]
      • Hint 1b: [I scream, you scream, we all scream for this cream.]
      • Answer:  [Go to the ice cream avalanche room; on top of the mound, there’s a can of spray cream.  Use that when in outer space to propel yourself forward.]

    In Vella’s world…

    1. The fuss about gus
      • Hint 1a: [Try approaching this from… a different angle.]
      • Hint 1b: [I’d give you another hint, but you might really fall for it.]
      • Answer: [Tackle Gus from above by falling onto him via the cloud hole above.]
    2. Jerk bird!
      • Hint 2a: [He’s always going to be a jerk.  Don’t worry about him, concentrate on the ladder!]
      • Hint 2b: [You’ll get to the bottom of this by thinking of combos.]
      • Answer: [Put the big cloud shoes on the ladder.]
    3. Hit him, Alex!
      • Hint 3a: [Yeah, and he’s got a big mouth!]
      • Hint 3b: [(help him) Open wide!]
      • Answer: [Keep his mouth open with the ladder, then shoot the laser into his mouth.  Ow!]

    Let me know in the comments if you need some additional careful hints, but do be careful not to inadvertently add spoilers yourself! 😮

    *Note that only the first of two chapters is available for sale at present; the purchase price of the game today (as of Feb 23, 2014) includes both the current chapter and the one promised for later this year.

    P.S. — Hey you.  Yeah, you awesome person who read all the way to the bottom of this post.  I just noticed that I have a Steam 25% off coupon for Broken Age (I discover this two days after buying the game!).  If you’d like it, just email me at my first name at the domain lasnik.net :).  I’ll cross off this postscript once it’s claimed.

  • Where is the artistic passion? Thoughts on passion in society

    On my blog post yesterday, my friend Righini had commented in part:

    […] i notice how much love you put in everything you do from writings to music, and i’m amazed and my heart feels warmed! What’s your secret root? Where do you take all this strength?

    I started to write a really, really long reply in the comments, and then realized… hmm, perhaps I should just make this into a post, so here I am! 🙂

    *  *  *

    I truly believe that everyone has enormous passion inside, but this too often gets stifled due to fear, ignorance, lack of inspiration and role models, and lastly, distraction (“SQUIRREL!” :p). Some examples:


    Fear of being different
    Drawing from Hollywood (eeep!)… on “Glee” there’s an athlete who had tons of music in his soul, but was afraid to let it out for fears of being ostracized by peers.

    There’s a reason in the U.S. that kids playing instruments in band are (usually derisively) called “Band Geeks” or “Choir Fags.”  Maybe now it’s more cool to be in choir or band, but back when I was in high school, it generally wasn’t.  I think kids often repress the expressive depths of their passion (in all forms) because they’re afraid of being different, and — in the case of guys — quite possibly afraid of being perceived as feminine or even gay.


    Ignorance
    My best friend in high school was a fellow geek (imagine that!).  Couldn’t sing a note.  That is, until he somehow ended up in choir and also my singing telegram group after a bit of arm twisting.  Here’s someone that never thought he could really sing, and by the end of the year, he had excellent relative pitch (and even blips of perfect pitch) and was a truly valuable member of our ensemble.
    And more importantly, it wasn’t until these experiences that he discovered a love of making music.  Got the darned biggest smile on his face when voices blissfully converged, just like the rest of us grinning fools.

    This was undiscovered passion, and I doubt I’m exaggerating when I note it likely changed his life.

    Lack of inspiration and role models
    I think tons of kids (and I focus on kids, because by the time you’re an adult, you’re often set in your ways)… I think most kids don’t realize the beauty of really listening to and making music. Their role models are (typically) highly paid athletes, pop or rap stars. How can they fall in love with choral music, with classic jazz, with quiet beauty and clever complex rhythms much less the idea of making this music themselves when they aren’t exposed to potential role models? Each time I go to the symphony, I become more and more depressed at seeing an audience on the cusp of dying (in a way, literally, to be morbid).  How many kids go to orchestra or jazz concerts? How many kids can even afford to go see musicals nowadays? How many kids are watching “Billy Elliott” vs. movies-that-bang-or-bite?  Few.

    And on a related note, with writing nowadays people are bombarded with short-form (e.g., Twitter, Facebook Updates, etc.), so when it comes time to express themselves, they follow the pack and mimic what they see.  Sure, there are folks writing detailed essays, even people still writing books (!), but when one asks oneself, “Could I really do this?” the gut answer is no.  Too much time to write a book and get it published.  Too much effort to write a detailed blog post (I’m sure this one of mine — hardly supremely artful, really — will take at least an hour to write and lightly edit).

    Ironically, the “could I do this?” answer is technically moving towards “yes” (with cheap videocams, easy blogging platforms, even free music notation software online!) but the emotional roadblocks are still high and the societal inspiration is still low.

    At least in America, our society doesn’t seem geared towards collaborative or deep individual expression for the “common person” anymore.  For example, in the 1930s-50s, Harlem was covered by massive ballrooms where the cool kids (not just accomplished dancers) would go regularly to not only find love (hey, some things never change :D), but also passionately express themselves artistically on the bandstand or the dance floor.  Take the Savoy Ballroom, which spanned a full city block, had two big bands on tap every night, and was crammed full with well-dressed folks young and old, black and white, dancing the night away together.  Today, we have “clubs” but — while some might disagree — I just don’t think it’s the same.  And the Savoy and most of the massive ballrooms of its time no longer exist.

    Distraction

    Despite working for a pretty awesome company, I cannot help but think how much I could accomplish in my life if I didn’t have to work, and yes, I realize that’s hardly an original thought ;-).
    BRB.  Gotta go check my e-mail and Twitter and Facebook and… ah, another IM.  And here’s another text message.  And…
    Oh, sorry.  Got distracted.  By work (is the ability to work from home liberating or shackling?), by home stuff (searching, furnishing, cleaning, repairing, hosting…), by boring-life-stuff (license renewal, money management, sleeping), and by online stimulus (oh look, another IM!) and so on.
    I’ve largely turned off IM, I don’t watch TV, I’m trying to read tech news and gossip less often, and I’ve finally mostly-beaten my college-uber-frugality-mentality (oh, look, I can save $5 if I spend 30 minutes searching for a better bargain online!), and so on.  But still, after the day’s minutes are totaled up, it’s sobering and depressing to see how little free time is left.  And then there’s the second guessing; what if I had spent an hour composing music instead of writing this whining blog post? 😉
    *  *  *
    Then there’s the distinction between talent and passion.  As noted above, I believe everyone’s got passion deep in their soul, but not everyone (yet) has talent. Of course, not everyone cares, but that’s a different issue 🙂
    Or is it?  I touched upon fear earlier as one blocker of passion, and perhaps that’s more central than I initially assumed.  How many people suppress potential passions because, talentwise, they’re “not good enough.”  And in this situation, I wonder if those now-ubiquitous talent competitions on TV help or hurt.  On one hand, they could be providing inspiration (“Wow, look at that awesomeness!”), but often I worry that they deepen the divide between those who express passion and those who resign themselves to witness it.  “Oh, I could never do that!”  Passion becomes something that is intensively, often expensively cultivated, practiced, refined, and — particularly disturbing to me — judged.  Whereas in the olden days people routinely sang and danced in a communal way, now the passion has become glitzified, rarefied, something other people do, people who are better than you.
    *  *  *
    The answer:  less talk, more action 🙂
    I sometimes worry that I’m becoming too much of an old soul.  Too nostalgic, often for a life I never lived, experiences I never experienced.    Too disdainful — often hypocritically so — of popular culture, of frenetic multitasking, of Likes rather than Loves.
    It’s easy to be critical, to be wistful, even to be angry.  It is much harder to re-channel that into productive passion rather than indignation.  So my advice to my future self is this:  create rather than lament.  Passion is still around us, and it speaks for itself.

  • Some new AdamMusic (and some highlights from music past)

    I’ve been quite-rightly bugged by some of my friends to play more piano. So yesterday, I stayed at work late (actually ’til nearly 2am!) and banged out some stuff on the now slightly-out-of-tune-but-still-serviceable grand piano in one of the lobbies, filmed with my slightly-old-and-suboptimal-video-recording camera, and documented in this run-on-but-still-comprehensible sentence.

    The first bit is from a mini-medley I improv’d based upon songs from the musical “In The Heights,” which I had the great pleasure of seeing in San Francisco a few weeks ago. 

    [ If you’re curious and/or bored you are welcome to check out my slightly-alternate take ]

    Note that — as with all my medleys — this doesn’t contain an exact replica of the melodies, which I could make… but it’s more fun to stretch them a bit :).  And you’ll probably catch that I was particularly taken with the song Alabanza from the musical, so — unlike in one of my typical medleys — my riffing on this one tune takes up about 80% of the medley.


    *  *  *

    I also recorded last night another one-take quick improv, which I’ve entitled “Western Clouds“; and this one’s without even really a central melody line. One of these days, I’ll actually discipline myself to compose another real, honest-to-goodness non-improv’d piece.  But that takes a lot more than the 5 minutes it takes to flip on my video recorder and play whatever comes to mind!  Perhaps I’ll build upon one of my improvs.

    *  *  *

    Lastly, I thought this might be a nice opportunity for me to highlight a few of my older playings (they’re not really performances, so what should I actually call them?).  I’ll try to make this list a reasonably interesting/diverse cross-section of my work.

    • A medley I composed and performed last summer at the Beantown 2009 Dance Camp.  I have made dozens of these medleys, ranging from somewhat distinct to massively different.  It’s a source of fun and pride for me to be working on these at camp, often incorporating songs I hear just minutes earlier in the camp talent show 🙂
      • NOTE:  You can turn on annotations for this medley when viewing it by clicking on the bottom left icon and selecting the “turn on annotations” link.  Then you can see the names of the songs I’ve drawn from.
    • A longer improv, entitled “Nine out of Line.” [An AdamOriginal, not based on specific songs]

    And the ones below were written/recorded over a decade ago (eeep!)

    • “After Dinner,” one of the more popular ballads I’ve composed.  This, along with other songs below, was recorded on my very aged Ensoniq TS-12 keyboard or formerly-owned (and even more aged) Roland W30 music workstation.
    • Two very short and more upbeat / silly songs:  “Coffee for Silke” and “Heike in the Park,” both recorded for friends who were visiting me (actually over a few minutes while they were visiting :-).
    • Saxy Me!  Short and catchy.
    • Move it!  I used to have this as my answering machine message back when people used answering machines and had fun messages.
    • 5-4-J.  A piece in 5/4.  Written for someone whose first initial is “J.”  What a sappy sap! :p

    Interested in hearing more?  Visit one or more of these pages on my excitingly-named adamlasnik site:

    *  *  *

    Sadly, the vast, vast majority of my hundreds of performances are seemingly lost forever (classical piano recitals, choral performances, jazz band concerts in high school and college, etc.).  Bummer.

    But… I recently bought a dual cassette deck (linked for you kids who may not have seen one in the wild!) because I have the (perhaps overly optimistic) feeling that there may be some ancient AdamMusic on old tapes sitting in my closet.  We’ll see!

    In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed this bit of Adam-music’ing!

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  • Cirque du Soleil show “Ka”

    I saw this show in 2008 with three colleagues in the $99 section ($109 after tax)… pretty center, towards the back (best seats available).

    Cirque du Soleil "Ka" poster
    Copyright 2013, Cirque du Soleil

    My thoughts:

    • Very comfortable seats!
    • A little too much fighting-oriented for my taste.
    • The hand-shadow part was touching and beautiful and clever.
    • Call me a dunce, but I really didn’t follow the story line at all. Okay, two sides… some bad people trying to kill the others, but that’s about all I grokked. And the Cirque folks are too damn cheap to give out even a small program? That’s a piss-off after such pricey tickets.
    • Yes, the stage was unbelievable! I know it may sound silly to gush about a moving platform, but… really, you won’t appreciate how amazing this is and how much it adds to the performance until you see it.
    • Costumes, music… very impressive.
    • Theatre… oddly not so impressive. Except for the amazing stage and comfy seats, pretty uninspiring.

    By the way, I was easily able to obtain tickets the day of (albeit not-outstanding seats), so if you’re not picky, you probably don’t have to worry about booking far in advance. Then again, this was for a Tuesday night, so if you’re arriving on a weekend, your mileage may vary.

  • Cirque du Soleil’s "O" show in Las Vegas – my review

    So what did I think of Cirque du Soleil’s show “O”?

    Absolutely beautiful.  I think my mouth was open most of the time, and I’m glad there weren’t flies about (just people flying, and they’re bigger.  And sexier.  And waterproof, apparently!)

    One of my friends that attended with me joked (okay, somewhat lamely) that the show is called O because everyone keeps breathlessly sighing or marveling “Ooooooh!”  But maybe she’s right.

    Some quick specific thoughts:

    • I sat in row M.  If I had my choice, I’d sit in maybe row D or E.  I’d rather see expressions and subtle movements, even at the slight expense of getting “the overall picture.”  Row M wasn’t bad at all, though.
    • The expensive seats are $165 after tax.  That hurts.  Shockingly, I still think it was worth it, and I may attend again when I’m in Vegas next year.
    • My three friends and I got last minute tickets (and, as noted, fine seats) by arriving just over two hours prior to a Thursday early show.  I’m guessing this’d be much less successful Fri-Sun.  And we got the *last* remaining tickets.  So I’d indeed recommend booking ahead or—if you’re available to see a show on a weekday, get there 2.5 hours early and bring a snack to eat in line.
    • I didn’t quite click with the clown scenes.  Cute, but not particularly funny or entertaining.
    • Sure, the feats of the performers were insanely amazing, but I was more taken by the artistic creativity and beauty of the show.  There were a few sections in which I thought, hmm, maybe this is a bit repetitive, but overall, the show captured and held my attention strongly.
    • Gotta pee?  Go well *before* the show starts, or you’ll be pretty frustrated with, well, all the water around ;-).  And there’s no intermission!
    • O is in the Bellagio hotel, and the buffet there is outstanding!  My friends and I were amazed at the quality and diversity of food that was available for our 9:30pm dinner!  And, unlike most buffets, (non-alcoholic) drinks are included at no extra price… including fresh-squeezed OJ.  Yum!

    Anyway, go see the show.  Quite an experience! 🙂

  • Pandora Mobile highlights awesomeness but also severe lame-itude

    Do you know Pandora?  If you’re in the United States, where Pandora is legally available, you may have come to enjoy this awesome uber-customizable music radio over the past years.  If you’re not in the U.S., perhaps you’ve discovered the beauty of anonymous proxies :cough:, which I’m not going to mention here :p.

    But perhaps you didn’t know that Pandora has become available on mobile phones!  More good news:  It’s available for free on phones that run the Windows Mobile operating system, free on Sprint phones, and free on (some versions of) BlackBerry phones.  Ironically, it’s also free on the iPhone, and I say ironically because AT&T apparently is charging—I swear I am not making this up—$8.95 per month to its other mobile customers for the privileges of using Pandora.  I mean, I love Pandora and all, but even if I were insane enough to be contributing to the income of the evilness that is AT&T, I sure as heck wouldn’t fork over that much dough for Pandora.  For an on-demand mobile music service?  Perhaps.  But for streaming radio?  You’ve got to be kidding.

    One other note on the Pandora Mobile offerings:  Apparently, I’m not supposed to be able to access Pandora Mobile because T-Mobile phones are not supported.  Which is odd, because I’m enjoying streaming music via Pandora on my BlackBerry Curve (on T-Mobile) right now.  Go figure.  I also shouldn’t mention that I was also able to do this while in Ireland a couple of weeks ago (listening to, appropriately enough, The Corrs on St. Patricks day 😀 ).

    *  *  *

    Anyway, if you’re an iPhone user or a non-AT&T subscriber, give Pandora Mobile a go!  If you’re an AT&T subscriber, well, heaven help you, and for reasons way beyond this Pandora issue.

    [Gee, Adam, tell us what you really think about AT&T :D]

    *  *  *

    Okay, okay, I’m thinking I should flesh this entry out a little bit 🙂

    Some stuff I like in the mobile app:
    – Seems to work internationally (though I can imagine this being “fixed” [sigh])
    – Works as a true background app on my BlackBerry!
    – Can play through my BB’s speaker (actually sounds decent!) or a headset
    – Song-to-song time isn’t bad
    – Nice graphics, simple, intuitive interface.
    – Access to all my stations 🙂
    – Can even view “Why [did Pandora play] this song?”
    – Thumbs up / thumbs down works.

    Some stuff I don’t like:
    – Takes a while to start up the app
    – No way to see detailed info on artist or song

    *  *  *

    All in all, pretty damn cool! 😀

  • A music solution that’s so brilliant, no wonder why the music industry has shunned it

    The other day I got a (yet another) piece of inbox spam on the otherwise cool service last.fm.  And no good can come from spam, right?

    Not sure what got into me, but I actually went to the site (which I’ll not name, so as to not potentially give them any customers).  And you know what?  They were doing something brilliant:  they were selling high-fi music tracks for 20 cents a piece.  No, that’s not in itself brilliant; Russian sites doing the same thing are and have been a dime a dozen.  What struck me as brilliant was their way of allowing music lovers to explore the *full length* of songs while still enticing them to buy the track.

    How did they do this?  It’s ridiculously simple yet, IMHO, likely to be remarkably effective:  they overwrote parts of each track several times with a moderately annoying audio blip (sort of a “chirp”).  Only the truly desperate would possibly stream and copy and store such a track as an mp3, and, as we know, the truly desperate are not one’s potential customers.  Had this firm been even more enterprising, they would have instead added once after each minute of song: “Sample brought to you by [companyname]; uninterrupted tracks just 20 cents!”  If they wanted to be both enterprising AND deliciously devious, they’d have seeded a ton of torrent sites with those tracks :D).  Or, at minimum, made it crazy-easy for bloggers to embed any track or album AND receive a cut of all proceeds from people clicking through to the site.

    Maybe I’m naive or missing something glaringly obvious, but it seems like everyone would stand to win with such a situation:
    – Music lovers would get to sample full-length (albeit slightly interrupted) songs, instead of dealing with the 30 second samples found on iTunes and similar sites.
    – Musicians would be happy to see samples of their work passed around in a way that wouldn’t damage their potential for earning revenue on the same tracks.
    – Bloggers and others distributing the tracks (especially if done so out of real passion for specific artists or songs) would be delighted to get commissions (though it’d be hard to grant commissions on just the bare passed-around MP3s).
    – The legit music sites hosting MP3s in this way would probably enjoy greater sales and profits.

    Your thoughts?

  • A cappella birthday silliness — much of it composed by me

    Back in high school, I was not only a band geek, but a choir geek as well!  But I did far more than just sing your standard choral music :-D.  I loved composing, arranging and teaching, and often performing short songs in vocal quartets, and I founded my very own singing telegram business (“The Birthday Brigade”) to support this habit.

    For $3, students could hire us to sing a special birthday song to one of the friends—in class, no less!  We even had teachers and administrators hiring us to sing for other non-students.  And by the end of our two year run, we earned enough money to purchase a sizable first-ever music CD collection for our school library (and back in the 80s, this was a big deal!).  Oh, and we also sang the national anthem at various school sporting events; one of the trios even got to sing at Dodger Stadium!

    Anyway, in the middle of our second year, we decided to sit down at my place and record a bunch of our songs.  We didn’t do many takes, we didn’t use a fancy studio (just my dad’s old tape recorder!), and the results were certainly not perfect, but I think we did manage to capture a lot of the fun and also show off our love-of-singing :-D.

    And alas, the “album” below (from 1989!) is missing some of my favorites, including “Mr. Roger’s [Neighborhood] Birthday” and “A Muppet Birthday” and no doubt others I’ve forgotten about.  But I hope you enjoy the songs nonetheless. [and feel free to see more detailed notes below the player widget]

    (I’m singing on all of these except “Love Me Tender”; I think tenor on all tracks)

    1) “And Why Not!” – music and lyrics composed by me.
    2) “Ole!” – lyrics (as they are) composed by me, and music arranged by me (original melody from “Mexican Hat Dance”)
    3) “Love Me Tender” – not sure who composed/arranged this one; the girls might have arranged this one themselves
    4) “Star Spangled Banner” – composed by Francis Scott Key, not sure who did this arrangement
    5) “Beethoven Birthday” – all composed by me, with deep apologies to Mr. Beethoven
    6) “Celebrate!” – music by me, and I think (but am not sure) that I wrote the lyrics, too
    7) “Merry Christmas” – sung to the tune of “We Wish you a Merry Christmas” with a tiny bit of lyrical substitution. I think I did the arrangement for this one.
    8) “See ya!” – composed, um, on the spot 😉

    *  *  *

    Edited on December 20, 2008 to add:
    I’ve gotten in touch with most of the people in this recording, which I previously didn’t list because I wanted to make sure my memory wasn’t failing me!  My fine co-singers were Robin (bass), Jen aka “Moose” (alto), Stacey (soprano) and Cathy (soprano).  Oh, and Robin insists that it was *his* tape recorder.  I’m still not convinced of that 😀 [and, yeah, I should ask ‘em if they’re comfortable having their last names here, and if so, I’ll add ‘em so they really get their fair notoriety :-P)

  • Help me raise money for music-in-schools!

    Hey there,

    I’m passionate about music, and I bet you are, too.  I’m even more excited about giving kids the opportunity to have their lives enriched through music… especially disadvantaged kids who so desperately need beauty, discipline, and ART in their lives!

    I just learned today that one of my all-time favorite music sites, Pandora, is teaming up with the fine philanthropic organization, GlobalGiving, to support non-profits in the area of music-for-kids.  Pandora’s even giving free posters to anyone who donates $10 or more (while supplies last).

    Here’s how you can get your donation TRIPLED or even QUADRUPLED!:
    1) Visit this information page from Pandora.
    2) Donate some money to any of the three organizations listed.
    3) Let me know about your donation (organization and amount), either via a comment on this entry, on this Friendfeed thread, or via e-mail (to adam at the domain lasnik.net).
    4) Check with your employer to see if they offer donation matching!

    I will personally donate a minimum of $50, and up to $250 of my own cash, depending on how much you BLADAM readers donate 😀
    In other words, if those of you posting a reply here (or in my e-mail) donate $250, I’ll then donate $250.  And my employer, Google, will match that.  And perhaps your employer will match your contribution, too… making our collective donation in this case between $750 and $1000!


    I’ll be making my donation this coming Monday evening, so get your donations in now!
      I’ve extended the deadline until Tuesday, Oct 13, 10pm PST

    Let’s shoot for $1,000 together… or even more!

    P.S.—If any other folks want to also contribute matching funds as part of this, post a comment here and I’ll add your name and offer below.  Let’s see this effort snowball!

    *  *  *

    Contributions so far:
    – Wysz: $50 (+ his employer matching)—$100
    – Jen: $10
    – Char: $50 (+ her employer matching)—$100
    – Jason: $50 (Jason’s employer may also match)
    – Katie: $10
    – Valerie: $50
    – Greg: $50 (+ his employer matching)—$100
    – Edythe: $? (amount of donation unknown)
    – Adam: $250 (+ my employer matching)—$500
    – Tiffany: $50 (+ her employer matching)—$100

    SUBTOTAL: $1,020

    BUT WAIT… Greg offered to throw in more money if the pool reached $1,000!

    – Greg: another $50 (+ his employer matching)—$100

    TOTAL:  $1,120.  WE ROCK! 😀