Tangata Whenua
There are 3 albums I'm looking into getting:
- Playground Battles by The Feelers
- Hope & Fears by Keane.
Yes, that's only two - I realise that - there are 2 albums I'm looking into getting. I'm so tired I think I might actually head to bed before 11 tonight. I woke up at 6am this morning to be in town in time for my exam! Way too early for me and now I'm feeling the consequences of 4 and a half hours sleep :( (cue "poor baby" noises from Chris and Janks).
Random tit-bit of information for the day: A quasi-hemi-demi-semiquaver is 1/32 of a crotchet note! A quaver is half a crotchet; "semi" means "half", so a semiquaver is half again; "demi" also means "half", as does "hemi" - both of them are half of the note again; "quasi" means "almost" - a quasihemidemisemiquaver is "almost" a hemidemisemiquaver. Actually, it's half. This means that if you play a peice [piece?] of music at 60 beats per minute, and you came across a triplet of quasihemidemisemiquavers, you would have to play each of them in about 0.021 of a second. That's faster than I can play. That's like the musical equivalent of a strobe-light! I had wondered what those funny looking notes with five strokes were called when I saw them in a peice of music. I'm still wondering how the composer expected people to be able to play them! They can be found in the first movement ofBeethoven's Sonata "Pathetique" Op. 13.
Fascinating isn't it. There is no note smaller (thankfully).
It still bothers me how you're expected to play them.
I've decided I'm going to use more kiwi slang in my everyday vocabulary. Words like:
- hooray (goodbye, farewell, see you later)
- corker (very good)
- puckeroo (tired out, exhausted)
Man I haven't heard anyone say they're puckeroo for years!
I think a big problem with New-Zealander's today is they have forgotten their heritage. New Zealand as a whole has largely forgotten its past, and remnants of that distinctly Kiwi culture only survive in isolated rural areas and such places as Speight's beer ads and cliches such as "number 8 fencing wire". Personally I feel this loss very deeply and for some reason always have. New Zealand culture, only having had 140-odd years to grow before we opened up to the outside world, has therefore been drowned before it really got off the ground. We have no charactersitic architecture like older cultures - you can't point to a building in New Zealand and say "that is distinctly Kiwi" (unless it be an old bush-hut made of tea-tree or a half-buried Maori village). Neither do we have our own form of artwork or our own language. All we have are old sayings, memories, and grainy photos. These things are extremly fragile when bombarded with American Hollywood, Asian plastic toys, and Polynesian traditions. It's not that I'm racist or xenophobic - most of my best friends are from overseas - its just that I mourn the loss of Kiwi-ness that occured when we opened ourselves up to the world. We have lost a sense of who we are. I think this is the reason behind most of the outcry against immigrants and stereotypes such as "asian drivers" and the "inability to tell what country you're in when walking down Queen Street". It's not that these people (for the most part) are xenophobes, its just that deep down inside they wonder where the Kiwi heritage has gone, and fear that it may be being trampled into the past.
Personally I consider it a tragedy.
So much for being in bed by 11. Well, now I'm going.
Hooray~
- Playground Battles by The Feelers
- Hope & Fears by Keane.
Yes, that's only two - I realise that - there are 2 albums I'm looking into getting. I'm so tired I think I might actually head to bed before 11 tonight. I woke up at 6am this morning to be in town in time for my exam! Way too early for me and now I'm feeling the consequences of 4 and a half hours sleep :( (cue "poor baby" noises from Chris and Janks).
Random tit-bit of information for the day: A quasi-hemi-demi-semiquaver is 1/32 of a crotchet note! A quaver is half a crotchet; "semi" means "half", so a semiquaver is half again; "demi" also means "half", as does "hemi" - both of them are half of the note again; "quasi" means "almost" - a quasihemidemisemiquaver is "almost" a hemidemisemiquaver. Actually, it's half. This means that if you play a peice [piece?] of music at 60 beats per minute, and you came across a triplet of quasihemidemisemiquavers, you would have to play each of them in about 0.021 of a second. That's faster than I can play. That's like the musical equivalent of a strobe-light! I had wondered what those funny looking notes with five strokes were called when I saw them in a peice of music. I'm still wondering how the composer expected people to be able to play them! They can be found in the first movement ofBeethoven's Sonata "Pathetique" Op. 13.
Fascinating isn't it. There is no note smaller (thankfully).
It still bothers me how you're expected to play them.
I've decided I'm going to use more kiwi slang in my everyday vocabulary. Words like:
- hooray (goodbye, farewell, see you later)
- corker (very good)
- puckeroo (tired out, exhausted)
Man I haven't heard anyone say they're puckeroo for years!
I think a big problem with New-Zealander's today is they have forgotten their heritage. New Zealand as a whole has largely forgotten its past, and remnants of that distinctly Kiwi culture only survive in isolated rural areas and such places as Speight's beer ads and cliches such as "number 8 fencing wire". Personally I feel this loss very deeply and for some reason always have. New Zealand culture, only having had 140-odd years to grow before we opened up to the outside world, has therefore been drowned before it really got off the ground. We have no charactersitic architecture like older cultures - you can't point to a building in New Zealand and say "that is distinctly Kiwi" (unless it be an old bush-hut made of tea-tree or a half-buried Maori village). Neither do we have our own form of artwork or our own language. All we have are old sayings, memories, and grainy photos. These things are extremly fragile when bombarded with American Hollywood, Asian plastic toys, and Polynesian traditions. It's not that I'm racist or xenophobic - most of my best friends are from overseas - its just that I mourn the loss of Kiwi-ness that occured when we opened ourselves up to the world. We have lost a sense of who we are. I think this is the reason behind most of the outcry against immigrants and stereotypes such as "asian drivers" and the "inability to tell what country you're in when walking down Queen Street". It's not that these people (for the most part) are xenophobes, its just that deep down inside they wonder where the Kiwi heritage has gone, and fear that it may be being trampled into the past.
Personally I consider it a tragedy.
So much for being in bed by 11. Well, now I'm going.
Hooray~
posted by David | 11:43 pm
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