105: Mad Men

Is your Instagram feed getting as weird as mine?

Name That Tune

This week’s Name That Tune was submitted by Listener Jeremy, but he submitted it to me (Will) secretly because he wanted to test Joey’s mettle with a piano selection. Joey (and the rest of you) will have to think a tad outside the box for this one!

As always, your goal is to provide as much accurate analysis as possible. First try to get the nationality, year, and genre, then make educated guesses about the composer and — if possible— the piece. If you know the piece immediately, send us an email at toneprose@substack.com instead of commenting so the rest of us can have fun guessing. 

Last Week’s Results
Tone Prose 104
Chopin, Polonaise-Fantaise

A spirited amount of gameplay on last week’s edition and lots of success to celebrate. Listener Marcello wrote in with the exact piece, but Chopin was correctly guessed by Listeners Laurie and Eric.

I (Will) guessed the Schumanns (Schumenn?), Liszt, and Tchaikovsky. Listener Jeremy added Saint-Saëns and Mendelssohn to the mix.

Think you can stump your fellow Listeners? Go ahead and try!

Head to our Google Form to upload a 30-second clip of an unidentified piece of classical music for us to try to identify.

Feed Me, See More

As far as social media is concerned, I’m primarily a Twitter addict, but I also use Instagram, and until fairly recently, I thought it was sort of a holdout against the general enshitification of the internet. It usually served me attractive people in attractive photos/videos doing things that I found attractive. Lots of vegan cooking videos, tours of small European cities, and clips from amazing classical music performances.

I’m sure I’m not the only person to notice the ad creep to the point that every corner of the app is now pretty saturated with solicitations. That hardly distinguishes it from its social media peers, but what I have found really interesting of late is the types of goods and services that are being surfaced for a user like me. 

An “Institute” for media composers who want to conduct their own music:

Some dude’s online course about how to memorize pieces:

A season announcement for a random chamber orchestra in Texas. This is a really annoying thing that the algorithms should be good at but actually suck at: they’re always advertising concerts in Helena, Montana and Lima, Ohio.

A “school” of music that wants to teach me what makes “chamber” special:

This:

A clarinetist advertising his latest performance:

This is sort of like the first one, but this guy targets music theater / Broadway music directors who want to improve their conducting. Take a look at his videos first so that you will not hire him to teach you conducting.

An agency announcing a new artist (composer) in their roster. This isn’t strange as an ad per se, but it’s the type of thing I’d expect to see in a trade publication like Symphony Magazine rather than something I’d scroll past between eggplant recipes.

A game-changing email for musicians. Maybe I should be advertising Tone Prose!

This guy is trying to get you to pay him to tell you how to get work as a composer’s assistant in Hollywood. It’s tough out there!

Upbow music is offering violins on your Music:

This at least looks cool but I have literally no idea what they want me to buy:

I think this is a thing where the Europeans have caught on to scams like The American Prize:

This is just a random media composer promoting a single cue that he scored:

A pipe organ dedication concert:

One of the many middle-men concert promotion orgs that lets you buy into performing a concert at Carnegie Hall. (Far be it from me to knock it — this is how I got to do a concert there!)

This composer is literally promoting the English Horn solo he wrote:

Anyway, I don’t begrudge anyone their hustle — like I said, it’s tough out there! I have just found amusement in the totally unexpected avenues of life that people are choosing Instagram for advertising exploitation.

And you, dear Listeners? I have a feeling our readership isn’t the most SM-heavy user base, but have you found weird examples of your own out there in the wilds of the internet? 

Tone Praise

Antonio Vivaldi, Five Hours of Cello Music

What better way to celebrate the newsletter’s second anniversary?

Tone Prose is a co-production of William White, Joseph Vaz, and the Listeners (i.e. you.)