What does the Eurovision Song Contest mean to You? to Us as a Nation?

Empire of Song: Europe and Nation in the Eurovision Song Contest

Royal Conservatoire of Scotland staff and students can read this recent scholarly article by Katherine Meizel - it'll interest anyone concerned with music in a cultural context.  Use your RCS login if you're off-campus.

This article is available to the RCS community because we subscribe to Taylor and Francis Online.  Just one of the many web resources we curate for you!

Save this link

We are the very helpful Whittaker Library at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, here to help students and colleagues with their information needs.

Rhinos become Extinct. What happens to Old Format Audio, though?

What do white rhinos and vinyl records have in common?

The British Library has an initiative to gather information about the UK's recorded heritage

Wikipedia image of white rhino

before the formats become unplayable. Here's the news, as shared with us by IAML, the International Association of Music Libraries:-

Last week, the British Library announced a startling fact that probably rings true for many people who work with sound recordings:

“Professional consensus is that we have approximately 15 years in which to save the UK’s sound collections before they become unplayable and are effectively lost. The solution is to digitally preserve them, but the scale of the task required is considerable and time is running out.”

The British Library has launched the Save our Sounds program to address this issue. You can read more about it on the British Library’s Sound and Vision blog (link is external).

A few days later, the British Library announced an initiative to “collect information about our recorded heritage, to create a Directory of UK Sound Collections.” For more information and to participate in this census, click here (link is external). The census will be open until the end of March.

If you know of an organisation which has lots of old recordings - an opera company, maybe, or a specialist archive - do them a kindness and share this with them!  Otherwise it won't just be white rhinos that are becoming extinct!

If you're from beyond Scotland, would you like to know more about Burns Night?

Are you celebrating Burns Night?

25.1.2015

This Sunday is the birthday of Scotland's national bard, poet Robert Burns.  The Whittaker Library has plenty of his songs on the shelves, and CDs of them being sung.

One of our web resources is ideal for finding out more about him, though: Scran is jam-packed with images, digitised documents, recordings ... and they have a special feature about Robert Burns at the moment.

Click to visit here - Staff and students of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland can login using their RCS password to get the fullest access to this great online resource.

• Scran homepage: www.scran.ac.uk
• Whittaker Library Catalogue

Remember Making Slime? Well, Now Slime Makes Music!

Did your mum allow you to buy slime from Toys'R'Us?  (Here's where you tell if you had a liberal or a hard-liner for a parent!)

Well, forget getting your hands dirty.  Here we have found a blogpost about real, actual slime inspiring electronic music composition.  Weird? No kidding!  It's on RILM's Bibliolore blog, which specialises in unusual, surprising or otherwise whacky musical research.

You know you want to find out more!  Here it is:-

Slime Mold Music 

by RILM

Listen to Something Different! Alexander Street Press uploads more Recordings

The Whittaker Library at Royal Conservatoire of Scotland subscribes to the Alexander Street Press music streaming service, Music Online: Classical Music Library.

Alexander Street Press is continually adding to the collection, making it bigger and better all the time.  Here's their latest ouput:-

AUDIO:

 

A list of all released audio is included below.

Classical Music Library (CLMU): 133 albums (1,916 tracks) from Nimbus, LSO Live, Hänssler Classic, Chandos, Donemus, Mode Records, and others.

• Lorin Maazel Conducts Beethoven & Bartók (Hänssler Classic)
• Vaughan Williams: Sir John in Love (Chandos)
• Selected Works by Katia Tiutiunnik
• Cuba Espana (Nimbus)
• The Greatest Film Scores of Dimitri Tiomkin, Richard Kaufman (LSO Live)
• Dmitry Shostakovich: Symphonies Nos. 3 and 10 (Mariinsky)
• Piano Music of Argentina (Stradivari Classics)

Staff and Students at RCS can access the collections HERE.  Use your usual login if you're off-campus.

Would You Like to Go to the Antarctic? A Genuine Opportunity for Artists and Creatives

We saw this intriguing tweet over the weekend.  It's for real - a residency in the Antarctic!  So how about it, composers?  Or CPP practitioners?

Want to work with the sounds of the Antarctic? Why not pitch your idea to the Australian Antarctic Arts Fellowship? 

"The Australian Antarctic Division administers the Australian Antarctic Arts Fellowship, enabling those with a non-science focus to experience Antarctica and Australia's activities there, so that they may communicate this unique experience and understanding to other Australians.  Applications are now open for the current round. Applications must be submitted via the online application form, by Monday 30 March 2015 at 4pm AEDST.

"Information for applicants - The program aims to nurture the production of excellent and significant works of art and interpretation by professionals in the creative arts, humanities and social sciences [...]

"Some applications under the Australian Antarctic Arts Fellowship may be accepted from citizens of other Antarctic Treaty nations.* These applicants must have the support of their own nation’s Antarctic program, and must be able to demonstrate a capacity to reach a significant audience, preferably including a significant Australian audience."

*Lots of countries, including the UK, are signed up to the Antarctic Treaty.

Inspiration for a Song? Historic St Kilda Diaries ...

If you're a student of Scottish music, maybe looking for a song idea, then this might spark your imagination:-

Diaries of St Kilda Couple to be put Online

These diaries were kept by the minister and his school-teacher wife, in the early 20th century - see the feature that was in The Scotsman last week.

If You Perform, and You Have Come Across Finnegan's Wake - This is Intriguing

We found this via Twitter over the weekend.  You probably have to know something about James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake, to realise that this is an intriguing opportunity to take part in something big.

Here's what the website says:-

"Waywords and Meansigns is an upcoming audio version of James Joyce's famous text, Finnegans Wake, to be read in its entirety. The book will be divided into 17 sections, and there will be a different music/reader/performance group assigned to each section. Featuring established as well as up-and-coming artists, Waywords and Meansigns will offer a version of Joyce's work that is stimulating, accessible, and enjoyable to even the most casual of readers and listeners."  

"Expect recordings to begin surfacing in early March of 2015.  Interested in contributing? Get involved."

You can read this article from the New York Review of Books, if you want to know what Finnegan's Wake is all about:- "What to make of Finnegan's Wake", by Michael Chabon.  (July 2012, NYRB)

NB We know no more about this project than you do! If you're interested, please contact Waywords and Meansigns to find out more.

Ancient and Modern Glees, anyone?

When not promoting online resources and librarianly expertise, Karen sometimes finds herself peacefully cataloguing 'finds' from the past.

See what glee clubs were singing in the early nineteenth century ...

The Harmonist

Are you Reflective, Reflecting, a Creative Music or Drama Practitioner?

REFLECTIVE PRACTICE | ECITCARP EVITCELFER

REFLECTIVE PRACTICE | ECITCARP EVITCELFER

Has your tutor suggested keeping a reflective journal?  Or they might have called it a 'learning journal'?

Have they suggested looking at the documentation that other Masters students have submitted in previous years?

Here in the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, the Whittaker Library can help!  Take a look in our catalogue - we've done the searching for you here.

If you're not on campus today, don't worry - we have e-books which may also be useful to you, eg:-

• Reflective Practices in Arts Education (2006) click here.
• Jennifer Moon - Learning Journals (2006) click here.

Here's a direct link to our catalogue if you'd like to try searching further keywords.  Happy hunting!  

We are the very helpful Whittaker Library staff at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. We first posted this in April 2014, but it seems very relevant to what our students are doing right now, so we're reblogging it!

• Library catalogue 
• Library website 

Preparing your Kodaly Musicianship Written Assignment or Presentation?

Brush Up on Kodaly!

Some of our students are preparing assessments for the end of next week.  The Whittaker Library has a lot of useful materials in the library including an e-book (24:7 access on that one!).  

• All our Kodaly textbooks are HERE. 
• The Houlahan ebook and a couple of other useful weblinks are HERE.  (The e-book will need students to login using Shibboleth, where you identify the RCS in a list of institutions, then use YOUR usual RCS login). 
• And all our Kodaly printed music IS HERE.

Do drop into the library if you need any help finding resources!