Okay, Japanese culture might not be everyone's cup of green tea, but for Big Passy it is a unique and treasured delight. And remember, these are the guys and girls who brought big breakthroughs to the shores of our western world. (The awesome Nintendo WII, Sony PS3, fresh sushi and burning hot saki immediately come to mind as my personal favorites!).
So for everyone's cultural enlightenment, this blog post contains some very unique and colorful Japanese songs and dances.
February in Melbourne certainly has seen a lot of summer festivals. The final one we are covering here at Passy World is the "Japanese Summer Festival". This was held at the "Docklands", which is a fairly new waterfront area they have developed here in the city of Melbourne.
This was the first time I have been to Docklands. I must say that I was not very impressed. The whole development is just all this modern concrete and plastic fabricated into some kind of barren fake opulence, lacking dramatically in gardens or any natural charm whatsoever. Give me Hawthorn or St Kilda, or further down the coast where I live anyday!
There are some photos of Docklands at the start of the slideshow below. So take a look and judge for yourself.
Melbourne's weather wasn't too "summery" at all, but at least it didn't rain. In fact it was still warm enough to wear some shorts.
The following Wondershare Slideshow contains some photos taken at the Japanese Summer Festival on February 27th 2010. When you get through the whole show, the last picture should be of Japanese women dancing with hats. If you missed any pictures then click on the big arrow in the center when the slideshow ends.
Note that we can click on the bottom of the slideshow on the "Manual Play" option at any time. We can then advance through the photos one by one at our own pace. This allows us to stop for longer on the photos that we really like, and quickly bypass the ones that we are not interested in.
(Push the Play button arrow below if the slideshow is not already running).
In between woofing down delicious wasabi coated sushi, we also took a few short videos of the main entertainment on offer.
With the lack of bright sunlight, the videos have not turned out quite as clear as we had hoped, even though they have been encoded from .MOV files intohigh quality as "On2 VP6 700kbps" FLV's. I am suspecting that the Lumix ZS3 camera prefers bright sunlight to cloudy conditions. (Don't we all!) This is probably not that surprising, as my previous Sony camera was exactly the same.
The first video is of the "Bon Odori" Japanese Summer Dance.
This dance had at least a hundred people moving around a giant circle. It was impressive to watch, especially the intricacy of the more experienced dancer's hand and arm movements.
This next video is of the "Yosokoi" dance, performed by young Japanese school students from Melbourne. The Yosakoi Dance was started after WWII in the city of Kochi in 1954. It is a modern rendition of Awa Odori, a traditional summer dance. Yosakoi-style dancing has subsequently spread throughout much of Japan.
The next video is of Big Passy's all time favourite Japanese dance: The awesome "Nanchu Soran". This dance really rocks, and with the JBL speaker system at the festival really blasting the sound out with crystal clarity, it was a high energy topping experience.
The movements of the dancers reflect the actions of Japanese fishermen hauling in their nets.... (which looks like skillful demanding work).
Here is a bit about the dance's history (from http://mutsudaiko.org/nanchusoran.html).
What is Nanchu Soran?
The Wakkanai South Junior High School (alias "Nanchu") in Wakkanai City, Hokkaido was a junior high school known to people as a school that became rough over 20 years ago, and deep division formed between the teachers and students. However, teachers and the students made up a new Soran dance by bringing together the powerful "Soran Bushi" song of Mr. Takio Ito who presented the concept of the folk song to a certain teacher, with the hope that it would help to make the division disappear some day.
The slogan of Nanchu, from its graduating students to its lower classmen is "The mind is adjusted to one, and I will aim at the top of Japan.” With this spirit and much hard work, the students and their teachers went on to win the Prime Minister’s grand prize at the 10th Japanese Folk Song dance competition.
After winning the competition, the story of Nanchu and their Soran dance was aired on Tokyo television and many people were moved by their story. From the broadcast many people found that power of the dance speaks to the heart and it extends in the soul.
Since the broadcast many other teachers in elementary, junior and senior high schools have introduced the Soran dance into their classes as part of their physical education programs. The spirit of Nanchu and its charm on people keeps increasing in the whole of Japan, and has even extended to foreign countries, including Australia.
The final video shows a very short segment of a very colorful Japanese Hat Dance. I am not sure of the history or significance of this particular dance. The soundtrack has a very unique vocal style indeed. But I suppose to the Japanese, the vocalist on this soundtrack is as soulful as Aretha Franklin is to us folks in the west.
That's about it for the Japanese Festival. What a wonderful hot wasabi experience it was!
Over the next few weeks we are planning to get back to doing the usual computer "How To" posts, as well as some guitar items that several people have been asking for.
This third and final post covering the Big Bands Sunset Festival is all about the Mordialloc Jazz Orchestra ("MOJO"). This time we went along with some friends to the MOJO Blues Brothers Tribute show. They played just about every song from the movie, and it was a perfect warm beachside evening. This was definitely the high point in the whole Jazz Festival series.
The following Wondershare Slideshow contains some photos of the Mojo Band taken at the Big Band Sunsets Festival on February 20th 2010. When you get through the whole show, the last picture should be of the crowd watching the band. If you missed any pictures then click on the big arrow in the center when the slideshow ends.
Note that we can click on the bottom of the slideshow on the "Manual Play" option at any time. We can then advance through the photos one by one at our own pace. This allows us to stop for longer on the photos that we really like, and quickly bypass the ones that we are not interested in.
In Manual mode: Use the Prev and Next buttons to move through groups of photos at a time, then click the specific photo around the edge that you want to view.
(Push the Play button arrow below if the slideshow is not already running).
Here is a short 1 minute clip of Mojo playing some big band music as part of their first set (before they do any Blues Brothers numbers):
Here is another short video taken during the first set.
It covers part of a Trombone solo during a Big Band number:
These videos were all taken with the Panasonic Lumix ZS3 compact digital camera. We used the wind noise reduction setting, and it all seems to have worked reasonably well.
Here is a video of part of my friend's trumpet solo during the Big Band set:
Finally, here is a short clip covering part of Mojo's Blues Brothers tribute set.
We did also take a few other clips, but they either had wind or crowd noise in them, or some dancing dude sticking their big melon head right in front of the camera at the exact wrong moment!
Lesson Learned: Shoot ten times as many mini movies as what you think you will need.
So that's it for Passy World's coverage of the 2010 Big Band Sunsets Festival. There is one more concert on Saturday Feb 28th, but unfortunately it looks like Big Passy won't be able to make it due to a prior engagement.
Definitely Mojo Jazz is something to pencil in for attending in February 2011.
This week's Friday Funny is all about funny rap songs.
Let's begin with an old favorite from one of the funniest guys on YouTube: Weird Al Yankovic
Big Passy loves writing rap rhymes like this little beasty one:
Hey I'm Passy and I'm da nerd The webs I make are real superb. I know dudes like 'em from the number of hits They view my stuff they're in love with it.
I like to get my axe and play Anything loud in a rythmic way. It gives me what I take for a ride My good vibes make the homeys smile.
Okay, maybe I'll stick to nerding.
Here is a very deep and meaningful rap tune (not!) with a little too much use of naughty words that all had to be bleeped out:
In this life you need to stick to what you're good at. If you got literary skills for rapping rhymes, then best not to attempt anything too numeric - as per these examples from the "Street Census" blog:
"Thirty-two grams raw, chop it in half, get sixteen, double it times three. We got forty-eight, which mean a whole lot of cream Divide the profit by four, subtract it by eight We back to sixteen..." -Foxy Brown ("Affirmative Action")
This is bad mathematics... don't try it at home!
"I can double my density from three-sixty degrees to seven-twenty instantly." -Canibus ("Funk Master Flex Freestyle")
Obviously, Canibus slept through mathematics class the day they covered units of measurement.
"My paragraph alone is worth five mics (uh-huh) A twelve song LP, that's thirty-six mics (uh-huh)" - Redman "5 Boroughs"
Uh-huh.. da huh... how does five go into 12 or 36?
And now a great rap for all the computer gamers out there. (The sound quality is suspect, but the concept is brilliant).
Now here is what we might refer to as extreme "Rappling On":
"Now you know that I'm the Queen of Miami All that loud talkin lyin save that sh*t for your mammy Sounds like "blah, blah blah, blah bla blah-bla" I'm like uh-huh (uh-huh) okay (okay) Whassup (whassup) SHUT UP!" -Trina ("Here We Go")
Some rappers aren't exactly known for their mastery of the universe:
"Thirty-eight revolve like the sun around the Earth." -Jay-Z, ("It's Hot")
Jay-Z probably has head spins whenever he tries to remember anything from his high school Science classes!
Here is a funny send up of Soulja boy, made by some Jewish dudes called "Kosha Boy" :
And while we're parodying Soulja Boy, how about this cute little version by good old Alvin and the Chipmunks:
Soul to Soul and Gangsta to Gangsta It's bye from Passy the original prankster. So that's a rap, and the end of this funny. Have a great weekend just spending up money.
This post is all about Making Charts and Graphs in Excel 2007.
Here at Passy World we have scoured the web and identified some great slide shows and Free Online Tutorials. These will soon turn you into an Excel Charts Wizard.
First of all there is plenty of good help for Excel at various Microsoft pages, such as the one shown below. This page has an excellent five and a half minute demo video on how to make charts and graphs from spreadsheet data.
Here is an iframe into that web page. (Which works in Firefox, but usually does not work in Internet Explorer..... Go Figure..).
Click on "Play Demo" link in the bottom right hand corner of the iframe below. Your web browser should open a new window and then load and play the Excel Charts "How To" video.
Alternatively, you can click the link below to open the Microsoft page in a new window:
So get into those Excel Graphs for your mathematics classes!
Finally, here is an Excel 2007 graph of how the PW Online Survey results are looking so far:
IF YOU HAVEN'T DONE SO ALREADY, THEN DO OUR ONE CLICK SURVEY AT THE TOP RIGHT HAND CORNER OF THIS WEB PAGE. JUST CLICK ONE OPTION IN, AND THEN CLICK THE "VOTE" BUTTON.
Combo La Revelacion are a Latin jazz band that play the kind of music that we really like here at Passy World. We had not seen the band live for a couple of years, and so it was a real treat to see them yesterday at the Mordialloc Jazz Festival.
The following Wondershare Slideshow contains 30 photos taken at the Big Band Sunsets Festival on February 20th 2010. When you get through the whole show, the last picture should be of some chairs and people sitting around. If you missed any pictures then click on the big arrow in the center when the slideshow ends.
Note that we can click on the bottom of the slideshow on the "Manual Play" option at any time. We can then advance through the photos one by one at our own pace. This allows us to stop for longer on the photos that we really like, and quickly bypass the ones that we are not interested in.
(Push the middle of screen Play button arrow below if the slideshow is not already running).
Here are a couple of one minute videos we managed to take of the band. We used the Panasonic ZS3 Lumix compact camera, and Adobe CS3 Flash Encoder to reduce their size to 500 x 281 pixels for this blog post.
Because the outdoor concert was so close to the beach, there was the problem of wind noise. We tried out the wind reduction setting on the Lumix camera, and it did help considerably. A tripod probably would have helped as well, but Passy was too lazy to cart one around with him.
This clip has a bit of wind noise in it, even with the auto reduction turned on. However it gives a a quick idea of the type of cool music that CLR play.
Combo La Revelacion are definitely worth catching live for some real toe tapping, percussion clapping, funky Latin jazz grooving. See their website for information about upcoming gigs.
Also stay tuned for the third and final part of the Mordialloc Jazz Festival in an upcoming post.
It's amazing what funny stuff can be found, simply by spending a few minutes on YouTube.com. So that's what we did for this week's Friday Funny.
We ended up finding a whole bunch of interesting Ventriloquist comedy clips.
Now the guys and girls that do this kind of comedy not only have to be great at developing material, but they have to do it for more than one character. Then they have to deliver it in a realistic scenario, as only a skillful ventriloquist can. At Passy World we have chosen what we consider to be a leading sample of the best Ventriloquists on the Net.
First up we have Jeff Dunham. He is a highly skilled Canadian ventriloquist who has several characters that he works with. Some of his material is a little risky, but also really funny.
Here is a short skit about cell phones and other things with Jeff's cheeky monkey character named "Peanut":
And in the following clip we again have Jeff Dunham. However this time he is iwth his southern redneck character "Bubba J":
Finally in our abridged Jeff Dunham series, his character of "Walter" the grumpy old dude:
Jeff has a number of other great characters, so check them out on YouTube some time.
Next up we have Legoland California's resident ventriloquist Kevin Johnson. In this clip he kicks off "Ventriloquist Week" on The Late show with David Letterman:
Nina Conti and her Monkey are also a brilliant combination. Her lips never move at all, and you can't see her neck pulsating either. Yet the monkey speaks brilliantly and naturally, as in this example:
Okay this last video isn't of a ventriloquist. However, it's a bit of an old favorite here at Passy World, and so we just had to include it:
That's it for another working week, hope yours was a good one, and let's now throw over to the weekend.
Also remember to roll your mouse over to doing our one click survey if you haven't already: YOU CAN FIND OUR ONE CLICK SURVEY AT THE TOP RIGHT HAND CORNER OF THIS WEB PAGE. JUST CLICK ONE OPTION IN, AND THEN CLICK THE "VOTE" BUTTON.
Today we're going to learn all about "Hammer Ons".
No... Not the indestructible MC Hammer, Hammerhead sharks, Hammer drills, nor the hammers from the Pink Floyd movie, or the legendary Jan Hammer hammering out a brilliant keyboard riff.
But today is all about a special way of playing guitar notes on the guitar fretboard. We bang down the second note onto the target fret, (instead of picking it), and we call this banging action a "hammer on".
A "Hammer On" is denoted by the letter 'h' in downloaded Tabs. The 'h' will always appear right before the note that's to be hammered. In real tablature the hammer on is noted with an arc that is above the two notes.
A hammer on involves two or more notes, but we only pick the string once. Using the example above; here is how it works. Your 1st finger presses down on the 7th fret, you pick the string, your 3rd finger hammers down on the 9th fret, you also continue to press down on the 7th fret with your first finger.
To play a Hammer On:
Place your first finger on the 7th fret of the 2nd string.
Pick the second string.
Continue to hold down the 7th fret; bang your 3rd finger onto the 9th fret.
If we play another note after the hammer on, we can play a triplet like this:
Moving pictures are worth many thousand words, and so here are some really good video clips about how to play Hammer Ons. First up is a good beginners lesson on hammer ons from Jody Worell:
Here is a more detailed beginner's lesson about Hammer Ons:
Now here is what we can get to by using a heap of hammer on triplets, with open strings. This is not easy to do and will take a lot of practice, but it sure sounds good when the dude plays it in front of the backing track. For some strange reason, this YouTube video can occasionally be painfully slow to load in.
Finally, one for the heavy metal guys, where they can use hammer ons to play scales on the low strings inbetween chords. This is called doing "hammer on legato scale riffs". This will take quite a bit of practice, but it sure sounds good once it's all working:
Also be sure to hammer on to doing our once click survey if you haven't already: YOU CAN FIND OUR ONE CLICK SURVEY AT THE TOP RIGHT HAND CORNER OF THIS WEB PAGE. JUST CLICK ONE OPTION IN, AND THEN CLICK THE "VOTE" BUTTON.
