hearts of space | news

PGM 900 "CINEMATRONIC" : Week of Jan.29th...

And it has come to pass in the year two thousand ten, dear spacefans, that we reach another numeric waypoint in our journey together. For our 900th program special, we bring you music that fulfills what one of our artists calls "the quest for the acoustics of emotion beyond any cultural or geographic limits."

On this transmission of Hearts of Space, we consider the mainstream of popular film music today: a muscular, melodic ambient fusion of classical, electronic, and ethnic "world music."

Our story starts in the 19th century with DEBUSSY, who broke through the conventions of classical orchestration with impressionistic sound paintings like "The Engulfed Cathedral."  We have an electronic version by Japanese musician TOMITA from 1974.

Then, almost 100 years ago in Paris, 1913, Russian composer IGOR STRAVINSKY's music for the ballet The Rite of Spring famously caused a riot at its premiere. It was too early for electronic instruments, but his scandalous combination of the symphony orchestra with primal dissonances and intense "pagan" rhythms set the stage for what has become the music of epic movies today.

The pivotal figure in the development of this style of film score was Greek composer VANGELIS. Beginning with CHARIOTS OF FIRE in 1981, he extended "pagan classical" into "symphonic electronica" — merging synthesizers, rock and ethnic rhythms, and Greek folk melodies. And from there, spacefans, you can draw a straight line to JAMES HORNER'S music for AVATAR.

On this 900th transmission of HEARTS of SPACE...a program called CINEMATRONIC.

Music is by VANGELIS, ADIEMUS, HANS ZIMMER & LISA GERRARD, AUSTRALIS, KARL JENKINS, JAMES HORNER, IMMERSION THEORY, CONSTANCE DEMBY, PAUL AVGERINOS, LIQUID MIND, and FRANK VAN BOGAERT.

[ view playlist ]     [ view Flickr image gallery ]     [ play 30 second MP3 promo ]

PGM 899 "SOUNDCLOUD" : Week of January 22nd...

The history of electronic music extends across most of the 20th century, and continues to evolve in the 21st. And it's not just technology; electronic instruments and the electronic studio have rejuvenated old styles of music and helped create many new ones.

The common thread in the story is sound. Never before have musicians had so much control over this crucial aspect of music.

From the early experimenters and electronic simulations of classical music, through the renaissance of so-called "tone-color" music in the 1970s and 80s, the infinite variations of electronic dance music (starting with Disco), to the personal music of thousands of individual artists and composers — electronic sound provides an infinite palette for creative expression.

On this transmission of HEARTS of SPACE, we borrow our title from a hot web service for electronic musicians called soundcloud.com. Music is by ESA KOTILAINEN, ERIK WOLLO & BERNARD WOSTHEINRICH, PATRICK O'HEARN, IGNEOUS FLAME, SLEEPING ME, OOPHOI, and STEVE ROACH. It's a journey in the ever-evolving world of electronic music called SOUNDCLOUD. 

[ view playlist ]     [ view Flickr image gallery ]     [ play 30 second MP3 promo ]

Flash Player update

UPDATE 2 :  The re-launch on 1/20 was still not 100% right, so we once again reverted to the previous version 2.7.7 while our Flash bad boy went back to school for some additional counseling.  We're now scheduled to roll out the new player on TUESDAY, JAN. 26th. We will be testing it as thoroughly as we possibly can and hope that's the end of this round.

UPDATE 1 :  On Tuesday 1/19 we installed an improved version of our custom Flash media player. Within an hour we uncovered two bugs that did not show up in our testing. One of them was minor, the other one was limiting our Prepaid Minutes users to 30 second samples. No way! 

We decided to roll back to the previous version of the player, fix the bugs and relaunch the new one, which we did on Wednesday afternoon 1/20.  We apologize for any inconvenience.

ORIGINAL MESSAGE :  This new version of the HOS custom Flash player fixes some minor issues and improves various aspects of normal operation. It should load automatically when you arrive at HOS.com.

Among the changes:

[1]    BANNER/PLAYER: When you arrive at HOS.com, the player displays our banner image full strength for 10 seconds, then changes to the "interactive" view (banner dimmed, controls visible) for another 10 seconds. If you don't interact with the player it then reverts to the full strength view (minimum text and controls). Anytime you move the cursor over the player, it immediately reveals the interactive view. After 10 seconds of inactivity, it will fade back to the full strength view again while you are playing music.

[2]    VOICEOVER ON/OFF (microphone) button now works anytime. Previously you had to make your choice while a program was actually running. Now you can press it anytime and it will toggle between on and off. As before, the player will save your choice when you log out and log back in.

[3]    IMAGE GALLERY LINK: We've added a visible text link for the new program's "Image Gallery." It's visible when the player is in the "operation" view. The gallery is a collection of 18 Flickr.com images that relate to the current week's program. There are thousands of awesome photographers posting millions of great images on Flickr. If you enjoy our banners, please take a moment to view the entire gallery and click through to view the "photostreams" of the source photographers.

[4]    SCROLLWHEEL SUPPORT: We've Improved support for scrollwheel operation on Macs. This was not working on some combinations of the Mac OS and browser, should be much improved now.

TO VERIFY PLAYER VERSION: Right click on the Flash player to see the version number. The current version is 2.7.7. If you see anything lower than this number your browser is holding on to an old version. Please click the "Reset" link at the upper left corner of the site. In the few cases where this doesn't work, You can clear your browser "cache" by following the instructions in our Help! section, or write to [email protected] for assistance.

:: SH

PGM 898 "ATMOSPHERIC CONDITIONS" : Week of Jan.15th...

The winter skies are a broad, constantly changing panorama: flat, gray shadowless light....chilled fogs with subtle, desaturated colors.... dramatic dark storm clouds... and brilliant clear days, with infinite horizons of the deepest  transparent blue.

The ambient music inspired by these environments displays a correspondingly wide range of tones, textures, and techniques: from foggy soundscapes and dark drones, to crystalline percussion and ethereal harmonics.

On this transmission of Hearts of Space, a program inspired by the winter skies called ATMOSPHERIC CONDITIONS. Music is by RUSSEL WALDER, JEFF GREINKE, the KEVIN KELLER ENSEMBLE, PETER GARLAND, DEMPSTER-HEASLEY-RIEMAN, JOHN LUTHER ADAMS, and TIM STORY.

[ view playlist ]     [ view Flickr image gallery ]     [ play 30 second MP3 promo ]

PGM 004R "THE LONGING" : Week of January 8th...

This week we return to the very first month of the national Hearts of Space program in 1983. While the memories of those days may be growing a bit hazy, the musical concept we were introducing then is still unusual: a fluid mix of electronic, classical, world folk music, the unfortunately named 'new age' genre, and what BRIAN ENO had only recently defined as "ambient" music.

Also unusual was the theme of the show, which focused on the emotion of longing. As we said then: "We'll be moving in the dimension of feeling, on an inward journey...to the spaces of the heart."

Emotions are energy-in-motion...fast changing and often hard to define. So we generally leave it to composers to "encode" them within their works. On this program we looked for a feeling, found a group of pieces that shared it, and put them together. They were all, or have become, classics. On this archive edition of HEARTS of SPACE, a program called THE LONGING.

Music is by HAROLD BUDD & BRIAN ENO, CONSTANCE DEMBY, SAMUEL BARBER, and PACHELBEL/KOBIALKA.

[ view playlist ]     [ view Flickr image gallery ]     [ play 30 second MP3 promo ]

Perigee and other astronomical misconceptions

OK, spacefans, I just got some schooling from a real astronomer about the title of Program 897 "Perigee." I'm a little embarrassed, but a lot better educated. (For the record, what I meant was "low energy point" which is called the "ground state" in physics. Not very poetic, though. "Nadir" would have been better...)

:: SH

From: Larry Krumenaker
Date: January 2, 2010
Subject: astronomical misconception in this week's playlist

Hello, Pair of Steves.

My name is Dr. Larry Krumenaker, I'm an astronomer and educator in Atlanta. I get your programming list every week.

This week I noticed your use of "perigee" for the 'low point' of the year. Unfortunately, you have used the word in a completely wrong context. "Perigee" refers to the closest point of a satellite or the Moon in its orbit around Earth.  The northern hemisphere's view of the Sun is truly at its lowest points for the year in our skies but it isn't due to perigee, the Moon and its orbit has nothing to do with it. 

I believe you were really meaning to use the word "perihelion," which is the Earth's closest distance in _its_ orbit around the Sun.  But even that isn't the cause of the Sun's 'low point' in our skies.  That's due entirely to the Earth's tilt.  The Earth's tilted axis points away from the Sun for Northern Hemisphere listeners of Hearts of Space. 

Thus the sun appears low because we're kind of looking way down toward the Sun shining high over the southern continental and oceanic areas, Australia, South Africa, etc.  At perihelion, we are actually closest to the Sun and, logically, that should mean we'd be warmer here in the US than we are, therefore, you can deduce that the solar distance has little, if anything, to do with our cold weather.  Unfortunately, this is an all too common misconception, that we are cold in January because we must be farther from the Sun.  That is quite far...from the truth.

It's the fewer hours of sunshine we have, and the more spread out and less concentrated sunshine that causes our low point of weather, and the tilted earth's axis that causes the low altitude of the Sun.  It has nothing to do with either the moon's distance from us, or our distance from the Sun.

If you want to astronomically distinguish between highest and lowest, the highest you can get is "zenith" or "zenithal".  The lowest point is the "nadir."  Using "perigee" for lowest is completely wrong, as the prefix "peri-" doesn't mean lowest, it means closest.  "gee" refers to earth, as
in "geology".  The opposite of "peri-" is "ap-" as in aphelion, the farthest distance from the Sun the earth gets (in July), or "apogee", the moon's farthest distance from the earth.  While one could perhaps conceive of perigee and apogee as highest and lowest distances of the moon from us, that would be linguistically wrong, and has nothing to do with the highness or lowness of our solstitial sun.

You can read more about my work in Atlanta teaching astronomy, and about my magazine The Classroom Astronomer, at my business website http://www.toteachthestars.net .

Sincerely,

Dr. Larry Krumenaker

Thanks for clearing that up, Dr. Krumenaker!

PGM 897 "PERIGEE" : Week of Jan. 1st, 2010

Happy New Year, Spacefans!

Here's one of life's imponderables: while our culture reaches some kind of high point during the end-of-the-year holiday celebrations, for those of us in the Northern hemisphere the natural world is at the low point, or perigee in its yearly cycle.

Beneath all the celebration, in the short, chilled days that follow the winter solstice,
 we find a quiet passage on the long journey to spring. We reflect on the year just past, 
and make plans and resolutions for the one to come. It's a period of active reflection, 
a time for looking both inward and outward…at once.

On this transmission of HEARTS of SPACE, we aim to help that reflection, with a wintry electro-ambient journey called PERIGEE. Music is by SENSITIVE CHAOS, BLUETECH, PAN ELECTRIC & ISHQ, RICHARD BONE, GLEN TARACHOW, GLEN DARCEY, BETWEEEN INTERVAL, GULAN, REMKO ARENTZ, and KLAUS SCHULZE.

[ view playlist ]     [ view Flickr image gallery ]     [ play 30 second MP3 promo ]