Category Archives: To Be Updated

NAC Pops show – 80s Mix Tape

The Writing Life of a Tadpole
January 12 2020

This was outing #6 of the year (following 1 OLT, 2 NAC, 1 hockey game, and 1 Gladstone) to see the NAC Pops show called “80s Mix Tape” with conductor Stuart Chafetz and singers Julie Reiber and Bryce Ryness. The show was a collection of 21 songs from the 1980s performed by the NAC orchestra, with 8 instrumental versions and 13 with lyrics. The full playlist (with two extra songs) is at the bottom.

The show kicked off with the instrumental version of The Final Countdown (Europe), and it was good, but not amazing. A nice light opening. They then went directly into a song with the female singer, Call Me (Blondie). I felt like she was doing a pop lite version of the song, no real grit, and the version I’m used to from Blondie has more deeper tones behind it. Or so I thought. However, you’ll see in the playlist version below, my memory might be off because it isn’t much darker/deeper in tone than the version I heard last night. It didn’t amaze me.

They then segued to the male singer doing Wake Me Up Before You Go Go (Wham). And I thought we were in trouble. I really like the song, and the energy of the original is enough to keep my toes bouncing if it is on the car stereo or headphones. I remember actually having it on a cassette tape, yes I’m that old, and listening to it on my no-name walkman while doing my paper route. It kept me moving and avoided my mind going numb while doing it. Yet the male artist seemed completely flat. Plus, I’m used to a radio version that is slightly sped up I think, as I consistently hear the CD version and think it is about 10% too slow.

We’ve experienced this before though. The orchestra is always great, but despite hiring Broadway singers to front the songs, the versions often come off somewhere between a theme park summer revue offering, a low-rated Glee episode, or high-end karaoke. One last year with “women of rock” had that problem in places.

Then the guy headed into Careless Whisper (George Michael) as a duet with the woman, and it was decent. At least I thought so, Andrea wasn’t sold.

Back to the female singer, the show moved into True Colors (Cindi Lauper). And suddenly that “deeper” sound that I was looking for in the Blondie song was there. Deep, rich, not poppy, and she was awesome. Andrea thought she was a bit off-tempo, but I loved it. Ironically, this is the second time this week I’ve seen that song performed, although the other time was just on TV. I watched the premiere of the show Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist and it was sung by her father played by Peter Gallagher. The full episode is available on YouTube, not a bad show. Nothing “extraordinary”, more like a Glee replacement. I’ve cued up the Peter Gallagher intro scene although you can jump ahead two minutes to the actual singing (for context, he’s in a catatonic state but she “hears” what’s going on in his head).

Back to the NAC…the next song was Broken Wings (Mr. Mister), and again, another decent version. Maybe we’re back on track? The NAC did three instrumentals following this:

  • Theme from Chariots of Fire — I have no idea why so many people think this song is amazing, I want to fall asleep for the film, the soundtrack, and well, even the name;
  • Theme from Ghostbusters — hard to describe, but I felt like the balance was off in the orchestra, maybe needs more strings than brass, I don’t know enough to define, while Andrea thought it was okay but would have been better if sang; and,
  • Theme from Back to the Future — it was an awesome rendition, with the combo of “old Western” pomp with a bit of Huey Lewis’ infused pop mixed with suspense music from Indiana Jones-style adventure themes.

Continuing the same theme, the last song of the first half was Huey Lewis’ “The Power of Love” — aaaaand we were back to sucking canal water again.

Intermission was great, which I wouldn’t normally mention, but we wandered down by one of the other theatres which is showing Unikkaaqtuat right now from the Indigenous Theatre series. While we were there, we got to see some amazing posters they have put up about the Innu stories featured in the play. Really spectacular imagery provided by Taqqut Productions. Anyway, I digress.

When the second half started, they followed the tradition of the first song of each set being an instrumental, and they went with Everybody Wants to Rule the World (Tears for Fears). Really well done.

They followed it up with the male singer doing In the Air Tonight (Phil Collins) and while I thought it was “okay”, Andrea thought it was really good. Perhaps my reticence is more that I’m not a big fan of the song — I’ll listen to it occasionally, but if I have a skip function, it won’t stay on my playlist long. I am not a big fan of slow ballads, no matter how well done. Doesn’t stop me from singing along if it’s on, but I wouldn’t willingly choose it more than about once a year.

And then we come to the price of admission. Holy snicker doodles. The orchestra did an instrumental version of Smooth Criminal (Michael Jackson), and sure, the overall orchestra part was solid, as always. But the OMG part was that they had the concert master / first chair violin Jessica Linnebach do a showcase for the song. All of the individual artists are good, let’s face it, they are in the NAC’s orchestra. No small feat. And she is the associate concert master for NAC and concert master for most of the Pops series. Sure, we’ve seen the overall concertmaster, Yosuke Kawasaki, perform, usually something to do with more classical pieces specifically for a violin solo. But Jessica? Almost never on her own.

She was absolutely awesome. And was likely exhausted at the end of it. I pulled some videos from YouTube. Here she is after winning a competition in NYC:

And a more classical piece (34 minutes long, so maybe she wasn’t tired after Smooth Criminal!).

Alas, no separate recordings on iTunes to enjoy. Sigh. Hope to see more of her solos in the future. The playlist has a version of the instrumental, but it doesn’t do justice to her violin contributions.

Moving on, we had Alone (Heart) and the female singer did a great job again, leaving me to wonder what happened in the Blondie song at the start…was it just a stylistic choice? Sound levels were off?

Next up was The Spirit of Radio (Rush), performed as an instrumental in memoriam for Neil Peart, the drummer of Rush who passed away on Friday. I’ve included an instrumental as well as the original in the playlist, partly as the song isn’t that familiar to some. But there are some snippets that are frequently sampled by radio stations for their jingles and internal promotions, so you’ll recognize the segments when you hear them.

The orchestra followed up with another instrumental And So It Goes (Billy Joel). Every time I hear this song, either in the original or in instrumental, it makes me think of Newfoundland. There is an almost Irish lilt to the music that goes past the up-tempo beat of Cape Breton, and more of a sweeping landscape song. Really good version. The playlist has both a cheap instrumental version as well as the original by Billy Joel.

They then went on to the wrap-up phase of the concert with five songs with the singers. I didn’t much care for any of the versions:

  • 867-5309 / Jenny (Tommy Tutone) was flat, and the only interesting part was that the orchestra members were singing backup, which I’ve never noticed them do before;
  • If I Could Turn Back Time (Cher) was okay, certainly clear articulation, and Andrea thought it was good;
  • Addicted to Love (Robert Palmer) was awful, I have NO IDEA what he was going for in sound, some sort of weird accent thrown in too;
  • The Heart of Rock and Roll (Huey Lewis) was another bad theme park revue version, or a bad cover band at a fireworks display; and,
  • Celebration (Kool and the Gang), which while not much better performed, at least had two things going for it — energy and audience participation.

And it is an interesting side-note to the performance. Normally, the average age of the Pops audience hits in the high-50s / low 60s probably. Definitely an older crowd. I’m 51 and I’m younger than most attendees by at least 10 years. Which is common for most orchestras, since the tickets aren’t cheap, we went for dinner, and we had a babysitter for six hours, plus parking. So most goers are either older or have more disposable income, or both.

But last night’s crowd was decidely skewed younger. 30s and 40s, I would say. And the result was LOUD. The NAC got cheers, people singing with the last song, and standing up and dancing. Normally, Ottawa is a sitting crowd. Often a complaint for Bluesfest, folk concerts, and hockey games. But the audience could actually be heard last night. Which was a special feat since the weather kept a lot of people home, with a less-than-capacity crowd.

In the end, my review is probably the same one I will always have for Pops outings — the orchestra is awesome, the singers are hit and miss.

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NAC Pops show – The Music of John Williams

The Writing Life of a Tadpole
October 19 2019

My wife and I enjoy the NAC Orchestra shows, particularly the Pops, and if it wasn’t for simple cost and logistics, we’d sign up for them every year. Instead, we pick and choose the shows we want along with some others. With 17 shows across multiple venues, this was outing #2 this year. The theme for the night? The music of John Williams, namely from all his soundtracks of the greatest hits of films.

Up first was the Main Title from Star Wars (1977), and it’s a great blockbuster opening. From there, they slid into Superman March from Superman (1978). Just those two alone would be worth the price of admission for some people, including me.

After that, they went through The Flight to Neverland from Hook (1991), excerpts from Artificial Intelligence (2001), The Cowboys Overture from The Cowboys (1972), and Theme from Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). They’re all good, and the Cowboys Overture has that big epic Western feel to it. But none are amazing.

The first half ended with Devil’s Dance from the Witches of Eastwick (1987) (aka Dance of the Witches), which I don’t remember being quite so Hallowe’enish in its feel, and then the blockbuster Raider’s March from Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). Pick these two plus the first two, and I could call it a night.

The second half started off with Liberty Fanfare (1986) which apparently Williams composed as a tribute for the re-inauguration/opening of the Statue of Liberty. Okay, not amazing. Suite from Far and Away (1992), Theme from Schindler’s List (1993), Hedwig’s Theme and Harry’s Wondrous World from Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone (2001) followed, and while they were all good, only Hedwig’s Theme had a bit of innovation in it to keep it interesting. The concert master and first chair violin Yosuke Kawasaki played Schindler’s List, which was a great violin piece, but not really a challenge for the master.

Next up was the Shark Theme from Jaws (1975) and the sound is iconic. Plus conductor Jack Everly played with a hand puppet shark for laughs during the piece, which was fun. I was a bit disappointed with the Main Theme from Jurassic Park (1993), didn’t really excite me, although perhaps that’s because it is from the start of the movie before chaos reigns.

Last on the official programme was the classic “Adventures on Earth” from E.T. The Extra Terrestrial (1982). It felt great to hear, although that may be partly because we just watched it a week ago with our son.

For an encore, they dusted off another Star Wars one, which was one of the marches from Return of the Jedi, I think, as it has the lighter Ewok theme worked into it a couple of places.

Overall, 17 pieces for the night, although I would have been perfectly happy with just five of them. Six if you include the encore. Still, the rest were all nostalgia for the movies, and enjoyable.

If you’re interested, here’s an Apple Playlist with all the music:

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AstroBlog 2019, outing #18 – Naked-eye and binocular viewing at the cottage

The Writing Life of a Tadpole
August 27 2019

I’m usually a “telescope-only” sky observer. But last Thursday, August 22nd, I was up at the in-laws’ cottage, and after a couple of previous nights of “no go” seeing, the night was still looking iffy. Clouds were rolling in from the West, and it wasn’t obvious if it was even worth setting up the scope. I’ve done the same before at the same location, and almost always, the clouds sock me in.

So I decided not to set up. Instead, I went and borrowed their simple terrestrial binoculars and gave it a go while sitting on the dock. I could see Jupiter and Saturn easily with the naked eye, but I couldn’t resolve the discs with the binoculars. While they are better quality design, they aren’t very strong (7 x 25 perhaps?), and they seem to be out of collimation. Everything I tried to resolve ended up having a skewed shape to it.

No problem, I did some playing around with a planisphere and picked out a few objects. The Big Dipper, Arcturus, Vega, the trapezoid / “Keystone” of Hercules, Antares, and I *think* I saw Altair but I wasn’t 100% sure.

Oddly enough, I was still seeing meteors. And the clouds shifted direction, so I could have set up, even though it was still kind of windy and a bit chilly. Nevertheless, a fun quiet night of just enjoying the whole sky.

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AstroBlog 2019, outing #17 – Backyard imaging attempts for the Moon, Saturn and some stars

The Writing Life of a Tadpole
August 13 2019

In my previous posts, I had the same three targets. The moon is easy (ISO24, 1/250s), although the fuller it gets, the more washed out if I don’t use a filter:

And I can see some single frames of Saturn are worse than others (ISO32, 1/10s):

But I was REALLY setting up so I could play with my camera centring. As I noted in a previous post, the feedback from an online FB group was that my EP wasn’t centred. So I wanted to ensure 100% that I was centred last night. For one of my stars off to the side, defocused into a doughnut, I was clearly NOT centred (screengrab of Night Cap below):

But I moved the stars around a bit in the EP and managed to get something a little more balanced:

And then BAM, I got this:

Only minor differences in positioning, no difference in my centring over the EP. The beauty of the adapter I’m using is that it centres on its own (the physical connectors are aligned so they ALWAYS centre properly). Which left me REALLY confused. Does that mean I’m only centred and aligned for that specific spot on the screen? Not out to the edges? I went back to focus, found a single star, tried ISO10K for a short 2s, and got this, a nice little dot:

I tried Altair, and dropped ISO to 8K while keeping it at 2s:

Under the heading of weird, I dropped exposure to 1/2s, and got this, with a few extra stars poking through more than they did above:

When I increased to 4s, I got some more stars, which makes sense:

I tried another EP, the Hyperion 36mm, and tested my “setup” with a screengrab:

And again, I could find at least one spot that was dead on.

But ISO 10K and a 4s burst? No additional stars. WTF?

So I did the same settings again. And got this:

More stars, different sized star capturing. I bopped over to a small open cluster, dropped duration to a single second, and ISO to 8K. And got more stars, but mixed pinpoint and not. Sigh.

Just for fun, I was wondering what would happen if I did a video of the cluster and stacked it. Nothing that useful, apparently.

A second video did NOT stack well at all.

I also tried a video of (I think) Altair again. Then converted in PIPP and stacked in AutoStakkert. After the one above, I wasn’t expecting much. But it actually seemed to work, while limiting it to I think the best 10%:

The little stars aren’t pinpoint, but overall, the image is promising I think. Now I just have to start figuring out why one works and the other one doesn’t.

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AstroBlog 2019, outing #16c – Backyard imaging attempts for stars and clusters

The Writing Life of a Tadpole
August 13 2019

In my previous two posts, I noted my standard setup for backyard imaging:

  • Celestron NexStar 8SE;
  • stock alt-azimuth mount;
  • an iPhone XS Max phone running Night Cap software;
  • the Phone Skope smartphone adapter; and,
  • a 25mm Celestron Plossl.

My last set of targets for the night was stars. Although my thinking was more like:

Okay, the moon is easy.
I’ve got a handle on planets.
Now I need to figure out how to do stars.

There’s a guy online named Loren Ball who can do an amazing job getting asteroids, and his stars are always pinpoint perfect. His technique is to use a hand-held magnifying glass to get his stars in focus, and then snap away. He sets his iPhone for ISO 8000, does 10s bursts in Night Cap, has documented all the buttons he pushes to do that, and then stacks 18 images in Nebulosity. Easy peasy lemon squeezy, it seems.

Nope, not even close. I had a few early shots about two months ago that I was happy with, and it seemed like I was on the right track. I took a stab at the Lagoon Nebula and got this on June 8th:

But getting back to that point has proven challenging. I thought I would start with a very simple object — Polaris. Nice, big, bright, can’t miss it. I followed Loren’s button-mashing order to the letter, set my ISO to 10K, and reduced duration to just 5s (the recommended time to start with). The brightness can present some challenges with the lighting in the image, not to blow it out, but it’s easy to see on the screen.

And at first blush, I was okay with it. The other stars aren’t pinpoints, but it seemed okay. Until I posted a few shots online, and people noticed that the “circular” field of view wasn’t quite circular. It’s a bit warped downward to the left. Which apparently meant my camera wasn’t perfectly centred over the eyepiece (although I think it meant my eyepiece was a bit crooked more than the centring was off — my new adapter pretty much CAN’T be uncentred, it’s moulded specifically for my camera, it lines up perfect every time). Loren’s view was that I wasn’t actually at 10K ISO. Except the app said I was, the EXIF data says it is. Not sure how I would know if I wasn’t, or how to check otherwise. Hmm…

M82 showed me a faint galaxy but the stars were elongated:

The stars really showed up as elongated for the Mini Coathanger cluster:

I tried to get clarification online about what those elongated stars meant…I thought I had already reduced the number of variables to focus on technique, as Loren kept saying I was being too complicated. But I had reduced to a single eyepiece, a 25mm Plossl, gives me about 80x magnification which is relatively easy to work with. The new adapter should have given me perfect centring if I put the lens in right. I used the magnifying glass to pinpoint my stars, so I should have been in focus. So what did elongated stars mean? Did it mean I was getting subtle star trails at 5s?

The response was almost immediate — the centring was off, so I wasn’t getting flat stars, not a drift/star trail problem. And my focus. Loren repeated, again, that I should use the magnifying glass, but I *had* done that, which I told him, but he kept repeating it, saying I wasn’t listening, and it finally just pissed me off. I had followed his instructions to the letter, even made a checklist to do it. When I’m frustrated, I appreciate someone offering help, but if they’re not listening to what I’ve done and instead just telling me to just do the same thing over again, it moves past help and well nigh into condescension, and just added to my frustration. At that point, I’m better off going on my own because that kind of rote help does not help at all. And to be honest, I’ve found the two groups I was using somewhat unpleasant in recent weeks for some of the conversations in it, maybe it’s the heat. Whatever. I unfollowed four astronomy groups and moved my focus to my own stuff and a couple of email groups I use. One of the guys on FB who was actually quite helpful is offering feedback through DM, so hopefully, I’ll figure this out in stages. In the meantime, I’ll share my other results.

A very light M10 globular cluster:

Some of the stars in M18 (an open cluster) were okay:

I like the “W” cluster, but you have to cock your head to the right to see it:

I tried twice for Albireo and the second one split the star properly, but neither were great:

I got a bunch of stars in M39 (open cluster again), but still elongated:

M2, a faint globular cluster, is the type that suggests I’m not actually getting up to 10K for my ISO — there should be other stars in those fields.

I liked the look of Epsilon Pegasus which I hadn’t seen before:

M12, another globular, gave me slightly better detail:

But when I tried stacking it, it didn’t improve anything:

I *really* liked M23, nice big open cluster, lots of stars and not as elongated (but I don’t know why!). Stacking didn’t change the outcome:

The target that Loren had suggested for me to try was M25 since it has so many stars in it. And as soon as I published it, the guys online said “You’re not centred” (see dialogue above). Which is true, obviously. So I need to work on my centreing some more (or more likely, the vertical-ness of the EP in the adapter).

Stacking didn’t do anything to help, even with 20+ pics of 5s each. Need to work on that, but as I said earlier, that’s a later priority. I moved on to the Blue Snowball. And, while I can’t say I got anything amazing, there IS something blue in there:

I tried for the Bubble Nebula, but got nada for the nebula. Even the stars around it aren’t great:

Dumbbell Nebula? Nada. Eagle? Lots of stars, no nebula.

I tried for the Swan Nebula, and I did get a faint bit of fuzziness near the bottom.

For the Veil? Nada. Hmm…Maybe I’m NOT at 10K ISO. Hmm…On the other hand, I looked at the Wild Duck Cluster for the first time. And I think it looks really cool with a lot of potential for the future.

When I figure out the right technique, Wild Duck and M25 will be my test subjects. And maybe the Lagoon Nebula again. See if I can get some more colour.

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