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A year or two ago, IT Conversations was put under the umbrella of Conversations Network. Today the net has a new channel called "Media Conversations." Some of it is video content.

I'm putting this one, an interview with the author of The End of Control, on my MP3 player for the morning commute.

Later: I'd recommend it. Give it a listen. It's all about new paradigms in the music business -- appropriate today with the wind shifting a little more with the Nine Inch Nails move. I did think the interviewer was a little challenged to add value to the podcast. I don't know how many times he asked Gerd Leonhard the same question about how new artists manage to get noticed.

After commenting on my OPML blog yesterday about Les Orchard's brain dump post on outlining projects, I went off on a tear about Amadeus.

Mozart

When Les talks about not yet having committed to "paper" some of the work held in his brain, it reminded me of a scene in Amadeus. Simon Callow's character, who is producing The Magic Flute as a low-class vaudeville, demands the score and first is delighted to hear Mozart say it's finished. "Where is it?" he asks, and Mozart points to his head. "Here, it's up here," he explained. "Now it's all just scribbling. Scribbling and bibbling and bibbling and scribbling."

Not all of Amadeus was factual, but that aspect was, according to authoritative biographies. He was able to hear complete new works in his head, not just piano pieces or string quartets but full choral and orchestral pieces. Then it was only a matter of writing them down as though taking dictation.

The ability is shown or mentioned three or four times in the movie, the most thrilling one when he recruits Salieri to be his stenographer for the Requiem. Mozart is impatient that his nemesis can't scribble fast enough. That scene is an encapsulation of the whole plot of the movie (earlier a play): Salieri in obsessive and destructive awe of Mozart's complete originality. At one point Mozart describes that an instrument section (don't remember which) should map to a theme sung by the tenor section in the chorus. Salieri first doesn't even get it because it's so out of the box. Then you see the recognition dawn on his face. He sees what is meant. Beat. He's blown away by the genius of it. He's honored for the opportunity to be present at the creation, but all the while it's also about Mozart being what Salieri knows he never can be.

Can you tell I kind of like that movie? Now I want to watch it today. Want to come over?

I love my OPML blog. So much that I tend to post non-OPML things there. I'd just blog there exclusively, except that I want to find out more about what permanent hosting arrangements there will turn out to be.

I'll start trying to cross-post a few non-OPML items here. Ironically, Les sometimes has the same problem with a preference for posting to his OPML blog over his "real blog." I think part of the appeal is the ease of posting, and another part is the sense of community here. It's like a network of bloggers.

I'm all over the place in my musical taste. I realized this again when I was searching for music today. Searching on "Rocky," I found all these songs I could more than stand listening to:

Rocky Top - Ricky Scags
Rocky movie theme
Rocky Horror stuff
Rocky Racoon - Beatles
I Love Rocky Road - Weird Al's take on I Love Rock n Roll
Rocky Mountain Way - Joe Walsh

Somehow I feel like it means I'm not discriminating enough.

Nine seconds of Steamroller (.mp3). James Taylor song.

This more properly belongs on my OPML blog where I just used a lyric from the song as the headline for my post about reading lists.

Only thing is Dave just linked to it, and I didn't want to seem to be showing off for that big room. So I'll just perform here in the small parlor.

It's fun to be linked to from Scripting News. Makes my day, self-esteem-challenged, external validation junkie that I am.

What a nice way to use Flash: customizable blank sheet music. You can specify clefs. Make guitar tabs. Have to write in your own sharps and flats.

LOL! I must still be a little spacy and under the weather, because I just tried to open that image in Audition instead of Photoshop! Guess I was thinking sound.

Lots more downloadable scores are coming online now than there were just a couple years ago. Makes sense. I wish you could get this whole book digitally. Mine is all desecrated by a cat. More money in just offering the songs separately at 5 bucks each, I guess, but then I wouldn't get some of the lesser-known-but-also-great songs on there, like the two 30s Blues tunes Clapton revived so well: "Key to the Highway" and "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out." They are what turned me on to the blues when I was a kid, well maybe just out of college... anyway when I weighed less than 120 pounds.

Oh, sorry. You thought I was going to tell you something about it. I'm just wondering too.

Here's one opinion about it: some of the snippets are too short. And when they are too short paired with being too thrilling, like the 30 seconds they play on the DVDs of the TV show "24," that's double bad. Especially if you are an old fart who falls asleep on the sofa and you wake up all stirred up.

I like the theme. The deedle-deedle-deedle piano part I imagine to be running, and of course it trails off to Black Helicopter sounds.

My kids are making fun of me for getting hooked on an action show. They also make fun of me for blogging and podcasting my opinions about TV music. When I did kind of a dumb recording of TV westerns, comparing them to a theme from Tommy, my older son said he didn't find it weird for someone to enjoy thinking about stuff like that, but that putting your own commentary about it on the internet was quite another matter. I said, "Who else's opinions would I put on the internet?!"