The first YouTube viral video that blew me away, in terms of content and in showing the potential of democratized video, was the anonymous Korean kid shredding Pachelbel's Canon in D in his bedroom:
I remember watching that, and now re-watching it, it's still amazing. This kid has serious skill, I could watch it over and over.
My father, a life-long musician and music teacher, always told me the hallmark of a good piece of music is that it can be transposed and arranged into any other genre of music and still sound amazing. I don't know if he was right or not, but this seems like decent evidence he wasn't all wrong.
> the hallmark of a good piece of music is that it can be transposed and arranged into any other genre of music and still sound amazing
I would also make a similar claim, that almost any piece played on classical instruments sounds good. I would point out at Apocalyptica as an evidence.
I agree in some sense, an astonishing number of Bach pieces have been rewritten for a bewildering array of instruments and sound absolutely amazing. But Bach is kind of like Math, it's true regardless if it's written in chalk on a chalk board or in mustard on an umbrella.
Yet there's also plenty of great music that really only sounds good on the instrument, something about it is very "subjective" with respect to the particulars of the orchestration.
I'll sometimes spend hours digging into covers of favorite songs on youtube, and it really is amazing how different kinds of music can survive this kind of instrument shifting.
I also have a collection of CDs of Pictures At An Exhibition with all kinds of odd versions. These include ELP, Tomita, Mekong Delta, a brass band etc, as well as various solo piano and orchestral versions.
That can only be true for melodic music. Genres like drone, techno, or ambient, which rely on sound design and often have no tonal content whatsoever, obviously can't be "played" with a music instrument or transposed to a different one.
I agree to a point, but sound design can still be part of playing musical instruments, especially electrically amplified instruments.
One of my favourite YouTube channels is Effectology, where Bill Ruppert pulls out a wide range of sounds out of an electric guitar and guitar pedals (Electro-Harmonix guitar pedals in this case):
Beyond the sounds available from effect boxes, you can also trigger MIDI signals whilst playing musical instruments, so in that way there's no sound that can't be played in a live setting.
Sounds like it. I remember reading at some point that tempos changed significantly at one point, so that many of what we consider slow boring classics were originally meant to be as lively as this rendition.
Yeah thats the whole point of the period instrument performance movement. A lot of Early Music sounds different (better) to me when it's played with faster tempi and smaller ensembles with period instruments.
There were so many rival versions, it almost became a competitive sport. MattRach was also amazing -- better than the original, I think. He did several versions....
I'm pretty sure that video is what got me to signup for Youtube 2 days after it was released - amusing to see my uploads from then, 10 years later, still getting views (and annoying Youtube comment emails).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjA5faZF1A8
The Times wrote a story about it here: "Web Guitar Wizard Revealed at Last"
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/27/arts/television/27heff.htm...