Episode 228 - High Strung (Live from The Beacon Theatre)

[willycliffton 10]

21 hours ago, RyanHorn said:

I’m wondering how the fake lawyer first met up with Johnnie. He says that he always met him outside the office? Does the lawyer just go cruising around looking for naive guys with accents? Who arranged their first meeting?

Ruby and Johnnie don’t tell each other their names until they’ve been walking around town for at least half an hour. 

The old couple at the fancy event... they’re swingers right? Why else would they grab two people half their age to dance with?

At the final performance, the guy comes out and drums for LITERALLY TEN SECONDS and two impatient men in the audience loudly ask “where is the violinist?” And “where are the dancers?!” 

That old couple are definitely swingers

[DrGuts1003 462]

On 12/9/2019 at 12:44 PM, Cameron H. said:

OMG! The HDTGM Christmas movie is amazing! I’m so excited! It’s...

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

 

I just saw on Facebook who will be the guest for this episode.  Without spoiling anything and because I don’t know how to use spoiler tags on these forums, I’ll just say that everyone’s Christmas wish will come true.

But I was curious when this episode will drop.  The next scheduled episode is the 20th, the night this show will be recorded.  Will we get a regular episode on the 20th and then this one on January 3rd?  Will they delay the release and drop this the week of Christmas?  Will this be a bonus episode?  Or a Stitcher Premium exclusive?

[DanEngler 5249]

58 minutes ago, DrGuts1003 said:

Without spoiling anything and because I don’t know how to use spoiler tags on these forums, I’ll just say that everyone’s Christmas wish will come true.

I just added a Spoiler option to the text editor toolbar. Just select the part of your post you wish to obscure and click the button that looks like an eye.

[AlmostAGhost 2718]

3 hours ago, DrGuts1003 said:

I just saw on Facebook who will be the guest for this episode.  Without spoiling anything and because I don’t know how to use spoiler tags on these forums, I’ll just say that everyone’s Christmas wish will come true.

But I was curious when this episode will drop.  The next scheduled episode is the 20th, the night this show will be recorded.  Will we get a regular episode on the 20th and then this one on January 3rd?  Will they delay the release and drop this the week of Christmas?  Will this be a bonus episode?  Or a Stitcher Premium exclusive?

I just saw this too and came here to express my joy!

Though weirdly, I've been to a live HDTGM ep once before and... same guest. Haha not that I mind! I've also seen her own podcast live a couple times.  

I'm wondering if we'll have to wait a year until next Christmas season to get it in our feeds tho

[joshg 207]

On 12/7/2019 at 6:01 AM, grudlian. said:

It is definitely not progressive at all. A ton of dance movies are specifically about classical dance clashing with contemporary street dance before ultimately coming together for a dance finale. It's the plot for the original Breakin'.

It also seems especially weird at a contest put on by a school where dancers are simultaneously listening ballet and contemporary. Wouldn't you expect them to blend styles on occasion?

It's all very lazy and confusing because there is contemporary dance, and then there is contemporary ballet.  As a ballet dancer, one would assume that "contemporary" in Ruby's case meant she had to learn contemporary ballet, where you're still on pointe but not limited to the classic French moves. So maybe, giving this movie more credit than it deserves, the judges were shocked to see straight-out urban hip-hop style dancing, where the Crew weren't even on pointe.

[joshg 207]

On 12/7/2019 at 1:43 PM, gigi-tastic said:

Did anyone else get upset when the Bad Boys of Violin began dueling with their bows?  I always thought those were fragile! So I googled and apparently BOWS ARE FUCKING EXPENSIVE . At the cheapest you can get one for $50 to under $100 for a fiberglass bow. Carbon fiber is $50- $300. But our Bad Boys look like they have wood bows. That's gonna set you back $50 for a cheap brazilwood into the $1,000s. You can apparently go well over $5,000 for a bow. A violin bow should cost 20-25% of your violin.   Something tells me Bad Boy Violinists don't buy cheap bows.

https://orchestracentral.com/ufaqs/much-violin-bow-cost/

Don't forget that jerky violin boi  was borrowing the school's bow. The lender guy literally said, "You break it, you buy it."  You would think that, after he broke his own bow merely by playing Bartok, he would choose to avoid other violent bow-related activities such as, I don't know, whacking someone else's bow in a game of Fiddle Fencing.

[joshg 207]

On 12/8/2019 at 8:07 PM, grudlian. said:

I would assume an arts college probably has some classes for younger people. Not necessarily beginners but people with talent/promise/rich parents. I want to say some of my art/music professors in college taught lessons on the side but I can't remember if they used the college itself.

 

On 12/8/2019 at 7:44 PM, Cam Bert said:

Also I want to ask one more question, what's the age range?

It seems on one hand post-secondary because they are going out drinking, but yet they have kids their practicing music. Do those kids have tutors their for their regular schooling? 

I believe this was a conservatory, modeled after Juilliard, as opposed to a performing arts high school a la Fame.

Schools like Juilliard, Manhattan School of Music, your state university School Music or Dance, etc. are standard 4-year college programs with a Bachelor's degree (they also offer Masters and Doctorates). Almost all of the courses are arts-related (private lessons, group classes, rehearsals, ensemble, theory, music history, ear training, etc.) but you may have to take one humanities per semester. 

The little Asian kid was probably a pre-college student. Most of these schools offer lessons to students younger than college age to help pay the bills and recruit for their degree programs.  At a prestigious school like Juilliard the pre-college program is widely seen as a foot-in-the-door for acceptance through the highly competitive admissions process.

[joshg 207]

On 12/8/2019 at 9:48 PM, Cameron H. said:

I get that the whole city is their campus, but I have to imagine that the community at large must be sick to death of all of these clowns. Everywhere these kids go, they’re trying to one-up the townies. If you live in that neighborhood, you must have to be constantly prepared to be shuffled off to the side so the conservatory kids can cut loose. Thinking of having a fun night at the club? Forget about it. A bunch of calorie deprived ballerinas have just cleared the dance floor to engage in some over-choreographed nonsense. Maybe you want to just go to the neighborhood pub and listen to some live music and watch some traditional dancing instead. Well, fuck you because the Madame Oksana’s contemporary dance class has just pushed the tables together and the nerdy, bad boy violinist with the serial killer smile just stole Angus’ instrument to play Swan Lake remixes. April even threatens one of the ladies dancing “You’re going down!” These people are just trying have a fun night out on the town for fucks sake, and they don’t need your hyper-competitive, rich kid bullshit bringing them down!

I take it you're not looking forward to the sequel, "High Cs", where a bunch of young opera singers cut loose by crashing neighborhood Karaoke bars?

[joshg 207]

At the risk of stating the obvious, I just want to point out that "Strings and Dance" competitions are not a thing. Sure, there are dance competitions. But they dance to something called MUSIC, not any one particular instrument.  Why distinguish strings from, say, woodwinds or percussion? Are they judging the playing or are they judging the dancing?  If they're supposed to be judging the overall symbiosis between the two art forms, then who gives a shit what kind of instruments are playing the music? What happens if Group B had the best dancing but Group C had the best violinist? There were 3 judges on that panel.  We would assume that at least one was a dance expert and another was a violin expert. How would they be expected to agree on anything? it's like speaking different languages. There very much do exist string competitions...there are competitions for every instrument.  But the judges are experts on that instrument, and aren't going to be distracted by another discipline which they know nothing about. On America's Got Talent the 4 judges have different backgrounds or areas of expertise, but the point is they are judging based on commercial appeal across the board, not artistic merit as they would do in a conservatory.

Add to these complications the fact that the three groups were performing completely different styles. In fact, the only thing they had in common was that there was a dancer and a string player.  One had ballet and a back-up orchestra. The other was faux-hip-hop with an urban dance crew. With all those variables (and only three entrants) it's a miracle they picked anyone.

 

Finally, if Johnny was so against formal classical training, why did he have "sforzando" tattooed on his arm, an Italian term only used in formal classical score-reading?

 

[joshg 207]

Late to the party here, but for anyone still curious about the difference in violin-playing ability between the two main actors...

check this out! If you don't watch the whole video at least check it out from 10:20.  They demonstrate what the music would really sound like based on the visuals. Hilarious.

 

[hotironskillet 137]

21 hours ago, DrGuts1003 said:

I just saw on Facebook who will be the guest for this episode.  Without spoiling anything and because I don’t know how to use spoiler tags on these forums, I’ll just say that everyone’s Christmas wish will come true.

But I was curious when this episode will drop.  The next scheduled episode is the 20th, the night this show will be recorded.  Will we get a regular episode on the 20th and then this one on January 3rd?  Will they delay the release and drop this the week of Christmas?  Will this be a bonus episode?  Or a Stitcher Premium exclusive?

I was also curious about when this episode would drop so I asked Paul on Twitter and he said that instead of releasing an episode on Friday the 20th, they'd be releasing this Christmas one on Monday the 23rd.

[DrGuts1003 462]

49 minutes ago, hotironskillet said:

I was also curious about when this episode would drop so I asked Paul on Twitter and he said that instead of releasing an episode on Friday the 20th, they'd be releasing this Christmas one on Monday the 23rd.

Awesome, thanks for getting an answer to this.  Can’t wait to roast some chestnuts by a trash can fire and listen to this.

[Ofcoursemyhorse 1043]

Am i the only one a little sad that they did this High Strung instead of this one

 

 

[gigi-tastic 2322]

22 hours ago, joshg said:

At the risk of stating the obvious, I just want to point out that "Strings and Dance" competitions are not a thing. Sure, there are dance competitions. But they dance to something called MUSIC, not any one particular instrument.  Why distinguish strings from, say, woodwinds or percussion? Are they judging the playing or are they judging the dancing?  If they're supposed to be judging the overall symbiosis between the two art forms, then who gives a shit what kind of instruments are playing the music? What happens if Group B had the best dancing but Group C had the best violinist? There were 3 judges on that panel.  We would assume that at least one was a dance expert and another was a violin expert. How would they be expected to agree on anything? it's like speaking different languages. There very much do exist string competitions...there are competitions for every instrument.  But the judges are experts on that instrument, and aren't going to be distracted by another discipline which they know nothing about. On America's Got Talent the 4 judges have different backgrounds or areas of expertise, but the point is they are judging based on commercial appeal across the board, not artistic merit as they would do in a conservatory.

Add to these complications the fact that the three groups were performing completely different styles. In fact, the only thing they had in common was that there was a dancer and a string player.  One had ballet and a back-up orchestra. The other was faux-hip-hop with an urban dance crew. With all those variables (and only three entrants) it's a miracle they picked anyone.

 

Finally, if Johnny was so against formal classical training, why did he have "sforzando" tattooed on his arm, an Italian term only used in formal classical score-reading?

 

I want to know what makes the strings instruments so special. Do they do wind instruments and dance competitions as well? Like just a bunch of competitions with each musical instrument section giving away millions in cash and scholarships? Because I am *almost* here for that nonsense! I'm dying to see a hand bell performer and a tap dancer take to the stage ! 

God can you imagine how pissed off other musical students would be to be denied the chance for that money and scholarship?

[joshg 207]

18 minutes ago, gigi-tastic said:

I want to know what makes the strings instruments so special. Do they do wind instruments and dance competitions as well? Like just a bunch of competitions with each musical instrument section giving away millions in cash and scholarships? Because I am *almost* here for that nonsense! I'm dying to see a hand bell performer and a tap dancer take to the stage ! 

God can you imagine how pissed off other musical students would be to be denied the chance for that money and scholarship?

It's almost as if the filmmakers retro-fitted a script to give their two leads something to do together.

[Movienista 0]

Correction;
Paul mentioned a second opinion that started with “Damien, it’s all for you!”

This is a quote from The Omen from the nun who hangs herself just after saying it. 

I’m new here and am starting off by correcting Paul (dick move on my part) but it’s worth clarifying since The Omen is a great movie.

[theworstbuddhist 572]

Just a heads up for anyone who cares to know that Michael Damian has brought us a sequel to High Strung called Free Dance, and it is on Netflix now (in Canada at least, so it's probably there too?) Instead of a violinist and a dancer it's a pianist and a dancer, I guess?