From: owner-precious-things-digest@smoe.org (precious-things-digest) To: precious-things-digest@smoe.org Subject: precious-things-digest V6 #90 Reply-To: precious-things@smoe.org Sender: owner-precious-things-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-precious-things-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk X-To-Unsubscribe: Send mail to "precious-things-digest-request@smoe.org" X-To-Unsubscribe: with "unsubscribe" as the body. precious-things-digest Saturday, May 26 2001 Volume 06 : Number 090 Today's Subjects: ----------------- did venus recieve the same hype "strange girls" is ? [JNe9027355@aol.com] Re: precious-things-digest V6 #88 [Mallettdove@aol.com] Re: Tori's instruments [YelloStarGlasses@aol.com] Re: touring in the near future [Mallettdove@aol.com] Re: precious-things-digest V6 #89 ["Megasus" ] Re: Tori's instruments [Richard Handal ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 25 May 2001 04:18:25 EDT From: JNe9027355@aol.com Subject: did venus recieve the same hype "strange girls" is ? Did all of you also engage in this guesswork and such for venus, or choirgirl even? AJ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 25 May 2001 16:05:59 EDT From: Mallettdove@aol.com Subject: Re: precious-things-digest V6 #88 In a message dated 5/25/01 12:07:49 AM Eastern Daylight Time, JNe9027355@aol.com writes: << Hey, does tori hire new members for her band everytime? >> No, she sticks with the same people for a very long time. <> What are you referring to when you say extras? ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 25 May 2001 00:21:22 EDT From: YelloStarGlasses@aol.com Subject: Re: Tori's instruments In a message dated 5/24/01 9:10:01 PM US Mountain Standard Time, ToriphileMaria@aol.com writes: << Ok, can someone please tell me what the following are: the harmonium (I'm assuming this is like an organ, what's the difference btwn the two?), a clavichord , and Kurzweil?? Ive heard them all mentioned before and I'd like some more info on them. Thanks!! >> Clavichord is like a miniature piano, with about half the keys of a grand. It produces a very small and delicate sound, and if I remember correctly, the dynamics are produced by the stroke of the finger, the clavichord doesnt have pedals like the piano. the Kurz is like an electric keyboad. You can produce different types of sounds or melodies (like the beginning of Iiee with the breathy sound). Harmonium is like an organ, softer I think. I hope i got all those instruments right, im a music major. haha. Hope that helps a little ;) ~~*~chrissie~*~ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 25 May 2001 15:57:01 EDT From: Mallettdove@aol.com Subject: Re: touring in the near future In a message dated 5/25/01 12:28:06 AM Eastern Daylight Time, choirboy_hotel@yahoo.com writes: << maybe he'll pop up in the tour with just his wailing guitar, no bass, no drums, just tori and caton on some songs >> I think Caton is gone for good. It's about time, how long could you possibly work with the same musicians. It all starts to sound the same after a while. Precious Things, Cornflake Girl, etc. I would personally love it if she were to tour with someone who encouraged 'her' to change a but and to sample different musical styles instead of it always being about what she wants. Would it kill her just to try something different for once? I know that's not going to happen though, so onward. << 'no matter what you're expecting, it's nothing like what you expect.' >> Well, I doubt that it will be very different from what she's done in the past. She's not very eclectic and she doesn't change her person that often. Most likely, she's still the same piano-humping, drooling, screaming, non conformist she's always been. Oh, and I wonder how many times she's going to say 'fuck' on this tour? Probably every night. 'Fuck' is a great word when the moment calls for it, but she vastly overuses it sometimes. Maybe she should learn to shock her parents by not saying 'fuck'. That would be a change. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 24 May 2001 23:02:59 -0700 From: "Megasus" Subject: Re: precious-things-digest V6 #89 Couple replies here to the digest :) AJ wrote: > whaddya mean, be sober? does tori stay inebriated throughout the whole tour? > i doubt that. ...and i doubt she stays sober throughout her whole tours > either. She's pretty off n on, right? Just popping in from lurk-dom..... I don't remember where it was quoted, but Tori has said she doesn't do anything -before- shows... that she'll sometimes have a drink after a show to celebrate the success/ending of another night. So from what I understand, when we see her up there she's sober. :P And I think she's walked away from most of that kind of stuff since the baby was born... Just my .02 :) Also.... ashy- said: >and another thing, do you think that tori having tasha >with her that she'll be nixing the meet & greets at >shows? that wouldn't be nice of her at all lol When I heard the whole "gonna be touring in a way" she hasn't in a long time, I instantly thought... meet and greets. Did she do meet and greets on her first tour? If not... I'm kind of afraid she wont do them this time. With the baby and all, she's probably become alot more concerned with safety issues. Her security guys have always been uptight about letting her do these things, but she's always wanted to.. maybe now she'll back away because she wants to keep her baby safe. Which is -totally- understandable. Mothers do everything possible to protect their children. But at the same time, it would really suck.. because I missed out on meeting her last time, and was hoping to this tour. Either way, it's not up to us what she decides.. and I'm sure we'll have a great time no matter what. *sigh* Even if I don't get to meet her face-to-face.. maybe someday.. who knows. :) I'll try to be optimistic, but... I wouldn't be upset if she nixed the meet and greets for her baby's sake. my other .02 ;) ~~Megasus ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 25 May 2001 05:02:19 -0400 (EDT) From: Richard Handal Subject: Re: Tori's instruments MaRia asked: > Ok, can someone please tell me what the following are: the harmonium > (I'm assuming this is like an organ, what's the difference btwn the > two?), a clavichord, and Kurzweil?? Here we go. Grab a lovely beverage. Harmoniums produce sound by forcing air through reeds--like harmonicas, accordions, and concertinas do. Organs force air through pipes. The harmonium was invented in 1840 by a Frenchman who patented it with the French Patent Office, although what he really did was to improve upon some ideas that had existed already; it wasn't a 100% new invention. Although not technically an organ, harmoniums are sometimes called reed organs or parlor organs. There's a secondary difference between an organ and a harmonium. Organs force air using a system of bellows in a manner which gives a lot of control of its speed and pressure as it passes through the pipes, making it possible to increase volume and attack much more so than with the system of moving the air through the reeds that harmoniums use, which is a bladder arrangement more like bagpipes have. The bladder system requires that air be pumped into it to fill it up most of the way before it is then squeezed, forcing air through the reeds. This is why on the DDI Tour it would take Tori a little pumping of her harmonium before she could begin really playing it. The bladder is also somewhat elastic, and unlike the bellows of a pipe organ which have wood sides that squeeze together (typically, with folds of leather between them), there is little control that can give quick bursts of air which would increase volume quickly from one moment to the next. This whole dynamic tends to give harmoniums a labored sound, kind of like wheezing of the lungs in someone who has a lot of congestion. There is also another kind of harmonium used in music on the Indian sub-continent, mainly in the Sikh religion. This is something developed over there as a result of the English having brought over (during their dominance of India) the full-size harmoniums which had become popular in their parlors back home. The Sikhs and/or others on the sub-continent developed this more portable version of the harmonium that's very much like a horizontal accordion. It's used mainly in Sikh religious music, but Allen Ginsburg used one onstage as he would sit on the floor and read or sing his poetry. During the DDI tour I came to refer to Tori's harmonium as a "harmonium organ" to help distinguish between these two kinds of harmoniums, but technically, both are called simply "harmoniums," and one needs to know the context to know what sort of harmonium is being referred to in a given circumstance. BTW, I did real library research on this in 1996, using three or four standard music reference books including the "New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments," but since then a learned harmonium zealot put up an amazing harmonium website at . A clavichord is one of the earliest keyboard instruments. It allows for the player to hit a key harder and produce a noticeably louder sound as-- like a piano--a hammer is being struck against strings to produce the sound, as opposed to a harpsichord, which plucks the strings when the keys are played and allows little variance in dynamics and emotion. Clavichords were used mainly in homes by women some three and four hundred years ago. They're very small and don't have much range, and can't get loud at all. When I first heard Sneeze on Pele I heard clavichord, but the notes for the song didn't list it as one of the instruments. I then checked the back of the Pele booklet and saw Tori's keyboard tech was given credit for clavichord as well as for the other keyboards. There are stops (settings) that harpsichords can use that can make them sound very similar to a clavichord and I'm not good enough to hear the difference, so maybe clavichord is used on the Pele Sneeze and maybe it's not. At any rate, they had an insanely hard time getting the harpsichord loud enough to be usable on the DDI Tour. There's no way they could put microphones on a clavichord onstage and get it loud enough to be heard in any hall. It would feed back well before then. Raymond Kurzweil is the name of an electronics genius and inventor who owns a company that makes various things, keyboard instruments among them. He also developed a device for the blind that can read text aloud. Anyway, according to the July 1998 issue of Musician magazine, Tori plays "a Kurzweil K2500XS MIDI piano with Zip drive connected." It's a synthesizer with a lot of preset sounds on it, and it also plays samples put into it. A couple more things while I'm here. When the term "keyboards" is used, it can refer as much to a piano as it can to any other keyboard instrument. I keep seeing "piano and keyboards." It really should be "piano and *other* keyboards." So, pianos are keyboards and CDs are records. Had to get that out of my system. ;-) And last, the other day I replied to a post asking about the string sounds on the live Girl. I took it for granted that the questioner was accurate in thinking the string sounds were a recording of some kind which was played back during the song, but I did not remember it exactly and didn't pull a recording to listen to it. J'ason posted saying Tori played the string sounds live using the Kurzweil, so I defer to his excellent knowledge. I expect this could be determined by hearing a recording of the live Girl, but as I say, I didn't check one. J'ason has wonderful instincts and knowledge about the music, and he's put together an exceptional magazine called 'yes, said' which uses a lot of quotes from Tori herself about the music and the topics covered in it, which he combines with transcriptions that he does of some of her lyric improvs from the stage, quotes from her published interviews, and some fabulous, previously-unpublished color photos of Tori. He's already done three issues of it that I've seen and I can't say enough good stuff about it. Tori's personality and soul really come through in his publication. He never gets in the way of that. It's amazing what he's been able to do, and I whole-heartedly recommend that anyone looking to subscribe to a quarterly about Tori check it out. Major kudos to him. Here's a link to his website for more info: . Other new publications might be worthy, but this one has J'ason's personal vision and unique energy behind it, and as it's been published for several months already I've been able to see printed copies of it. Every one of them moved me deeply when I got it in the mail. To me, that's what it's all about. Be seeing you, Richard Handal, H.G. ------------------------------ End of precious-things-digest V6 #90 ************************************