h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Most evenings when I'm browsing on h2g2, I have some background music on and very often I tend towards Radio 3. Speech radio is a bit difficult to follow when you're trying to read what's going on here, (all these intellectual conversations! )so music is ideal. At the moment I'm listening to Bach's Suite as arranged by Mahler. Great fun to sing along to. Well, actually, I was whistling for some reason.

Whoops, it's finished. A trailer now for some Hebridean songs they will be featuring tomorrow evening. A mezzosoprano and a harp. Just right at bedtime.

I should do this much more often.

It is indeed a treasure!

Haven't explored Radio £ for a while, and getting a bit fed up with some of the stuff on radio these days. Thanks for the tip, I must have a listen as I like background music, preferably without advertisements.

Websailor

I would download podcasts from there, too, but they are all "UK only". I ask you, what can possibly copyrighted on the "Early Music Show"???

I do like the lack of ads. That's one reason I've never been able to listen to Classic FM (another is Henry Kelly ). Their ads always seem so manic and frantic!

When reading (and if the radio is on) it is music only. Preferably instrumental music.

Can't read with music. The analysis-tongs are always out probing away.

TC, I´m not sure if the UK only is because of copyrights. I´ve got plenty of "Not available in your area" and it´s about all kind of videos (cbeebies, Bitesize for schools...)particularly with the cbeebies, there are some videos that I could see in the past but not now.

I need to improve my aural and oral English, so I listen to podcasts from bbc pages. Sometimes live from bbc4, quizzes like one minute talk, or the truth time, (the titles are not exactly so)It´s very funny, despite I don´t get all.

I usually draw or sew while listening. However if I´m in the kitchen cooking or potting with plants I listening to the spanish radio.

The bbc world news are associated to ironing.


I love the radio since I was a child.

Recumbentman - while I don't have such a trained ear as you, I do sometimes find myself distracted by the music and not concentrating on what I'm looking at.

When I was a schoolgirl my father once asked me why I listened to pop music while doing my homework. Even then, I remember I said that if I listened to classial music I had to concentrate on the music more and couldn't think about my homework at the same time. He seemed satisfied with that.

As for copyright, Maria - the Early Music show features new recordings of old music (AFAIK) so perhaps it's the interpretations they are protecting, rather than the works which, by definition, must be several centuries old.

I have podcasts from Radios 2, 4, 5 and 6 on my phone and listen to them constantly, but Radio 1 and 3 are mainly music and only downloadable in the UK. 6music is also mainly music, but they cut out the music and just leave the speech in the podcasts.

Tonight it's Tchaikovsky's 6th, the Pathetique. And I was moved to tears. Hardly appropriate for the "Tell me a joke" thread.

Some Monteverdi last night. And some 17th century opera - you could understand the words really quite well.

Now the Proms are on, listening to Radio 3 is an absolute must. For the past few days, Daniel Barenboim has been conducting all 9 of Beethoven's symphonies, played by his Divan orchestra. I am just listening to the enthusiastic, unrelenting applause after their rendering of the 7th. It would have been wonderful to be there.

I caught a bit of the third. Properly boisterous and extrovert. Wonderful wind soloists too.

Interested to hear Barenboim set up the Divan Orchestra in cooperation with Edward Said. I'm reading Said's autobiography 'Out of Place' -- fascinating.

Strange to think that Barenboim was married to Jacqueline Dupré. That seems sooo long ago.

"I ask you, what can possibly copyrighted on the "Early Music Show"???"

The programme itself possibly?

I think the availablity, or lack thereof, outside the UK may have something to do with the Licence Fee.

Do you mean that the licence fee payers also pay for the royalties? I can listen to the programmes but not download them as podcasts. (Except Tom Robinson's Intrudocing, because he only plays stuff that's freely available on the web.)

If you look at the BBC podcasts page, the ones that can't be downloaded from abroad are the ones with a little Union Jack underneath them.

Possibly I'm thinking of iPlayer... there's *some* sort of audio/visual BBC content that's unavailable because of the licence fee. I'm sure I didn't just make that up!

Yeah - we can't get TV on the iPlayer, just radio. But that is fairly unlimited.

Jerusalem

Fame at last. This morning I wrote an e-mail to Radio 3 and it was read out!!

Great when that happens. Remember the buzz of seeing your first post appearing on h2g2?