tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-364164832024-02-08T09:52:06.796-08:00HemiolesqueStuff for musicians and music lovers.Chris Palmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02979002923888032580noreply@blogger.comBlogger103125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36416483.post-90089100518502849272009-12-24T20:55:00.000-08:002009-12-24T20:55:30.194-08:00De-GooglizingGreets peeps. I’m moving this blog to my home server as part of my general de-Googlization. It’s new and permanent home will be<br />
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<a href="http://noncombatant.org/blog/">http://noncombatant.org/blog/</a><br />
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Comments don’t work right now, but maybe they will someday!Chris Palmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02979002923888032580noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36416483.post-25244048643132547852009-12-23T21:19:00.000-08:002009-12-23T21:19:24.712-08:00GroovesharkGrooveshark seems pretty cool. Hopefully the ads, and/or the $3/month fee to get rid of the ads, get them some profit. I still don’t see why we can’t just pay $<var>N</var> per month for unlimited legal downloading in lossless, but hey...<br />
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<a href="http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/album/Monk+Suite+Kronos+Quartet+Plays+Music+Of+Thelonious+Monk+With+Special+Guest+Artist+Ron+Carter/3092114">http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/album/Monk+Suite+Kronos+Quartet+Plays+Music+Of+Thelonious+Monk+With+Special+Guest+Artist+Ron+Carter/3092114</a><br />
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Ron Carter valiantly inserts some jazz into the scene, and it’s not as bad as what they did to Hendrix, so that’s something.Chris Palmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02979002923888032580noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36416483.post-42644251140146622942009-12-23T19:02:00.000-08:002009-12-23T20:48:41.723-08:00Multitouch Display as Music Interface<p>This is pretty cool (from <a href="http://hackaday.com">Hack A Day</a>): <a href="http://hackaday.com/2009/12/22/subcycles-multitouch-music-controller/">http://hackaday.com/2009/12/22/subcycles-multitouch-music-controller/</a>. He mainly seems to manipulate timbres with it, but not so much melodies. Maybe that can come later? Anything to reduce the laptop staring phenomenon.Chris Palmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02979002923888032580noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36416483.post-51577311079030202802009-07-05T17:58:00.003-07:002009-07-05T17:58:54.145-07:00T-Bone Burnett InterviewIn this interview, <a href="http://mediasearch.wnyc.org/m/20123690/t-bone-burnett-soundcheck-monday-09-june-2008.htm?q=t+bone+burnett">T-Bone talks about his new audio delivery system and music in general</a>. Awesome!Chris Palmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02979002923888032580noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36416483.post-73380118256420302182009-07-05T16:54:00.001-07:002009-07-05T18:11:38.095-07:00Cancelling My Emusic.com Account; Sound GeekeryI’ve been a big fan of emusic.com for years, but it’s time to let them go. Not because <a href="https://www.emusic.com/account/notification.html">they recently raised prices (they also expanded their catalog)</a>, but because all they offer is shitty MP3s.<br /><br />Raising prices is fine, and I’m really glad for them that they’ve managed to expand their catalog. That must have involved intense negotiations with the major label goats.<br /><br />However, even high bit-rate MP3s are noticeably worse than CDs or WAVs — do a back-to-back listening test on decent home stereo gear, it’s pathetic — but emusic sells only 192Kbps (VBR) MP3s. Sorry, guys... CDs really were an improvement over cassette tapes.<br /><br />A couple years ago I did an MP3 (192Kbps) vs. WAV listening test with some metal (Gojira’s “Ocean Planet”), and had a friend do the same experiment. I didn’t tell him what I heard, but he responded that he heard exactly what I did: the bass frequencies were “richer and fuller” on the WAV (ripped from CD). I also thought the stereo imaging suffered in the MP3. The end result was that the tricky interplay between the drums and the bass guitar was muted in the MP3 — I think the sound difference actually affected the musical content of the song. And that was metal; the problem is worse for more subtle music.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.emusic.com/messageboard/viewTopic.html?topicId=189290">Emusic subscribers are asking about quality, too</a>. They aren’t getting any answers.<br /><br /><a href="http://hemiolesque.blogspot.com/2008/12/rip-your-cds-for-weird-price.html">Lossy compression is dead</a>. It was a solution to a problem that no longer exists: poor bandwidth and expensive storage. In 2009, we get megabits per second to the home and a GB of storage is $0.10 or less.<br /><br />Add to this the fact that quality control suffers (almost every audiobook I’ve downloaded form emusic has had at least one terrible error — the emusic commenters complain too) and parts of their catalog have disappeared (I can’t re-download some stuff I got before), and emusic is no longer looking like such a good deal. I’ll spend my $30 per month at <a href="http://www.amoeba.com/">Amoeba</a> instead.<br /><br />In fact, even “CD-quality” sound (44,100 16-bit samples per second) is really not good enough to capture all the sound a human can hear. Producer and musician <a href="http://herot.typepad.com/cherot/2008/06/t-bone-burnett.html">T-Bone Burnett has started releasing albums on DVDs with 96,000 24-bit samples per second</a>. I hope, although doubt, that it will take off.<br /><br />According to my handy <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Music-Tutorial-Curtis-Roads/dp/0262680823"><cite>Computer Music Tutorial</cite></a>, the dynamic range (in decibels) is roughly 6 times the sample width, and to avoid aliasing (high frequencies mangled into lower frequencies) you need to sample at a rate at least twice as high as the highest pitch you’re trying to record. (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist_theorem">See here for more nerd details</a>.) Although the theoretical maximum of 16/44.1 recording is pretty damn good, and although <a href="http://hemiolesque.blogspot.com/2006/10/your-cds-sound-like-shittles.html">the loudness war does more damage than the digitization process does</a>, you never really get the theoretical maximum. Digital recording is done at 24/96 (or even better), and it’s only downsampled and truncated in the last stage to fit the CD format.<br /><br />16/44.1 can sound very good indeed... but in 2009, that’s the minimum.Chris Palmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02979002923888032580noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36416483.post-30131082992602436342009-07-05T16:38:00.000-07:002009-07-05T16:53:15.704-07:00Does Twitter Have a Better Business Model Than Warner Music?From Techdirt (<a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20090623/2337095343.shtml">http://techdirt.com/articles/20090623/2337095343.shtml</a>):<br /><br /><blockquote>We keep talking about artists who are connecting with fans, and giving them a reason to buy, and it seems like every day we hear of more and more new and creative ways that artists are doing this — even as the naysayers stop by daily to insist it’s impossible for such things to scale. It’s a blast to see it scale more and more every day and prove them wrong. The latest example comes from Amanda Palmer — who we’ve written about a few times before. She's the singer who has been fighting with her major record label (Warner Music’s Roadrunner) for not just being a pain to deal with, but for making it harder for her to both connect with fans and give them reasons to buy. For example, she got caught in Warner's stubborn decision to fight YouTube over payments, and had all her videos taken down from YouTube against her wishes. So, at a concert, she told fans to upload the video to YouTube as she sang a song begging her label to drop her.<br /><br />[...]<br /><br />However, now she’s going much further, much of it using Twitter to closely connect with fans. She recently explained three separate experiments, all done on a whim this month, which allowed her to bring in $19,000,</blockquote><br />Oops.<br /><br />In related news, I recently saw Suffocation and Necrophagist (Suffocation is on Roadrunner). Awesome show. I went with Phil, who had a video on YouTube of himself drumming along to a Suffocation song. He got caught in the Warner jihad, and only after contacting Warner, Roadrunner, the founders of YouTube, and Suffocation did he finally get his video back up. More than 3 million views, and Warner wants to shoot themselves in the foot. So Suffocation put him on the guest list and gave him some all-access badges, and they were his biggest fans! It was an adorable love-fest. Fuck you, Warner!<br /><br /><object width="445" height="364"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/MJJHk4hSFB4&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&border=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/MJJHk4hSFB4&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&border=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="445" height="364"></embed></object><br /><br />On the other hand, <a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20090618/1858245284.shtml">this story on Techdirt</a> leaves a lot of questions unanswered, as the commenters point out.Chris Palmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02979002923888032580noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36416483.post-50510734033944795342009-06-19T17:29:00.001-07:002009-06-19T17:29:50.030-07:00Cool Blog/DudeCheck out <a href="http://xsdg.blogspot.com/">Omari’s blog</a>.Chris Palmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02979002923888032580noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36416483.post-82254358746602644352009-02-21T22:07:00.000-08:002009-02-21T22:06:14.730-08:00Music and LearningI recently started taking guitar lessons with the patient and wise <a href="http://westbrookmusic.net/">Luke Westbrook</a>. I’ve probably taken about 8 years of private music lessons, on and off, since I was 12. It’s great to back into it!<br /><br />My current projects are to (a) transcribe the entirety of Vernon Reid’s tune “Afrerika”, including the guitar solo (I’ve got the tune and the first couple bars of the solo); (b) to try to match some hip new chords to Ornette Coleman’s “Jayne”. (Fsus9, #4 under a G melody? Maybe!); and (c) to learn a chord-melody arragement of “Naima” by Coltrane.<br /><br />Over the holiday break I took a bass lesson from my friend Al Vorse in Minneapolis, and that was helpful too: a good technique exercise and some tips for walking over changes.<br /><br />My old friend John was asking why I would take lessons again, after I’ve already taken so many. It’s a reasonable question, because after all you can play lots of good music and have good fun with much less education than I have. Many people do.<br /><br />But I’m into music for the long haul, and there is always something more to learn. In my case, <em>tons</em> more to learn. My jazz education is pretty incomplete, and there are lots of technique things I’d like to clean up, such as playing everything without a pick.<br /><br />It’s also important for me to concentrate on something outside of work, because my work is pretty involved and I could easily spend every waking hour doing software security engineering stuff. (Like music, it’s bottomless.) Gotta keep the brain flexible!Chris Palmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02979002923888032580noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36416483.post-44863661182971983032009-02-21T21:22:00.000-08:002009-02-21T21:46:45.761-08:00Making the Most Out of Simple GearAfter too long a respite, I’ve been playing music with people again lately. Last weekend I jammed with my co-worker Chris, and I brought almost all of my effects pedals. It was a mess! Too many wires, too much complexity, not enough reliability. Part of the problem was that I had them all loose, not mounted on a pedal board, but the rest of the problem was just the sheer number. Like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floyd_Rose">Floyd Rose wang bars</a>, that kind of setup is for people with roadies!<br /><br />Then today I was jamming with a new group, and I brought only a <a href="http://www.fulltone.com/ocd.asp">fuzz box</a>, my tuner, and the <a href="http://guitargeek.com/gearview/829/">venerable Boss PS-2 Pitch Shifter/Delay</a>. Three pedals feels about right. Then this evening I rolled them all up into a proper pedal board. I was thinking, “Perfect... But a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorus_effect">chorus pedal</a> would be nice.”<br /><br />Then I realized that with the pitch shifter, I can get a chorus effect. I put it into manual pitch shift mode, then dial up the fine-tuner knob to unison harmony. Then, extremely carefully, I dial it ever so slightly flat. It’s easy to dial it a hair too far and get a deep warble swim effect (also cool).<br /><br />For non-music-nerd readers, you’ll likely recognize the chorus effect as the sound Nirvana used in their song “Come As You Are”. I recorded a snippet of it without chorus, and then chorus kicks in halfway through.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.noncombatant.org/audio/come-as-you-are-excerpt.mp3">http://www.noncombatant.org/audio/come-as-you-are-excerpt.mp3</a><br /><br />Here is another, more complete example (an excerpt from the song “Nouvelle Chanson” by my old band Boshuda), again with chorus off at first and then on:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.noncombatant.org/audio/nouvelle-chanson-excerpt.mp3">http://www.noncombatant.org/audio/nouvelle-chanson-excerpt.mp3</a><br /><br />So now the Pitch Shifter/Delay is really three effects: echo, harmonizer, and a credible chorus. Three is a good number!Chris Palmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02979002923888032580noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36416483.post-3029089484729115012009-02-02T19:23:00.000-08:002009-02-02T20:11:02.915-08:00100-year Software: Half-baked musings and some citationsImagine a computer program which, when run 100 years from now on whatever computers they have in 100 years, produces the same output (given the same input) as that program does today.<br /><br />Should the data survive, even if new software is required to interpret it? And/or should the software itself survive, still functional? I think it depends on the nature of the application: whether it is <em>productive</em> (Microsoft Word) or <em>performative</em> (a video game). The real hard problems arise when the data format is so complex and/or incompletely specified as to require an essentially performative application (examples: Microsoft Word, web applications).<br /><br /><ul><br /><br /><li><a href="http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/~howard/papers/sfs-longevity.html">http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/~howard/papers/sfs-longevity.html</a><br /><br /><blockquote>With a vast number of resources being committed to reformatting into digital form, we need to begin considering how we can assure that that digital information will continue to be accessible over a prolonged period of time. In this chapter we will first outline the general problem of information in digital form disappearing. We will then look closely at 5 key factors that pose problems for digital longevity. Finally, we will turn our attention to a series of suggestions that are likely to improve the longevity of digital information, focusing primarily on metadata. Though this chapter was written for the digital imaging community, the observations here will be useful for all communities wishing to assure the longevity of any type of digital information.</blockquote><br /><br />In particular, this tragedy makes me sick:<br /><br /><blockquote>Though the advent of electronic storage is fairly new, a substantial amount of information stored in electronic form has deteriorated and disappeared. Archives of videotape and audiotape such as fairly recent interviews designed to capture the last cultural remnants of Navajo tribal elders may not be salvageable (Sanders 1997).</blockquote><br /><br /><blockquote>How can we ever hope that the files we create today will be readable in our information environments 100 years from now?</blockquote><br /><br /><li><a href="http://constantine-plotnikov.blogspot.com/2007/02/software-system-longevity-paradigms.html">http://constantine-plotnikov.blogspot.com/2007/02/software-system-longevity-paradigms.html</a><br /><br /><blockquote>The basic principle is that we ensure that the data survives, and an application is a transient thing anyway. It could die any time. Upon restart it will be able to work with the data again. Some data could be lost, but this is a known risk that should have been calculated.</blockquote><br /><br /><li><a href="http://lonesysadmin.net/2008/05/20/java-se-for-business-software-longevity/">http://lonesysadmin.net/2008/05/20/java-se-for-business-software-longevity/</a><br /><br /><blockquote>Now that virtual machines are killing the hardware replacement cycle I’m left with only my software lifecycles, which really aren’t all that much better than hardware cycles. If those get longer, and I can guarantee an operating environment for 15 years, the amount of staff time and effort it takes to maintain these operating environments will drop rapidly. I’ll be able to upgrade when it makes more business sense for me, like when I’m replacing an application, or I decide it’s too much work to support 7 different versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Not just when a vendor decides they’re done with an OS.</blockquote><br /><br /><li><a href="http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=/iel4/52/15098/00687939.pdf?temp=x">http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=/iel4/52/15098/00687939.pdf?temp=x</a><br /><br /><blockquote>Software lives longer than most organizations expect — a mean age of 9.4 years for applications of fundamental importance to the organization, according to one study. And it is living longer than before, up from 4.75 years in 1980. Nonetheless, software should live longer yet. Long-living software has many advantages. First, as a software application survives, it works. It benefits the organization that created it and the users that use it, and it pays back its development cost. Second, as a software application survives, it changes continually, functionality being added and modified to meet changing needs. In this continual evolution or maintenance, software fulfills one of its characterizing functions: its modifiability, its capacity for change, its softness. Functions are embodied in software instead of in hardware expressly because they can be changed. Change, and the resources that go into change, are its mission. Finally, as a software application survives, its quality improves. Errors are encountered or found, and removed. An operational profile emerges, and the software is adapted to it. The users who access it and the applications that connect to it explore, exploit, and optimize its capabilities</blockquote><br /><br /><li><a href="http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=284308.284365&dl=GUIDE&dl=GUIDE&CFID=20195306&CFTOKEN=59168537">http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=284308.284365&dl=GUIDE&dl=GUIDE&CFID=20195306&CFTOKEN=59168537</a><br /><br /><li><a href="http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~yelick/cs267-sp04/lectures/08/lect08-mpi-intro.pdf">http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~yelick/cs267-sp04/lectures/08/lect08-mpi-intro.pdf</a><br /><br />Interesting remarks on slide 1.<br /><br /></ul>Chris Palmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02979002923888032580noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36416483.post-34153624774203555592009-02-02T19:15:00.000-08:002009-02-02T19:22:14.973-08:00Acrassicauda: Iraqi metal bandThe NYT has this <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/arts/music/03metal.html?_r=1&8dpc">fun article about Iraqi metalheads Acrassicauda</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>Vice tried to help resettle the members to Canada and Germany, and kept them afloat with cash — as much as $40,000 paid from Vice’s own coffers, sponsors and donations collected online, according to Suroosh Alvi, a founder of the company and one of the directors of the film.<br /><br />“We had outed them and endangered their lives,” Mr. Alvi said on the way to the Prudential Center, where a small Vice crew was filming every handshake and wide-eyed glimpse of Metallica’s mountains of equipment. “They were receiving threats from Iraq while they were in Syria.” He added, “We had a responsibility.&rdquo</blockquote>Chris Palmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02979002923888032580noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36416483.post-88932271651832207862008-12-31T22:58:00.000-08:002008-12-31T23:04:54.111-08:00That Just About Sums It UpFollowing the Wikipedia links around <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intertwingularity">intertwingularity</a>, I visited <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson">Ted Nelson’s page</a>.<br /><br /><blockquote>Ted Nelson promotes four maxims: “most people are fools, most authority is malignant, God does not exist, and everything is wrong”.</blockquote><br /><br />But, Ted, <em>some</em> things aren’t wrong...Chris Palmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02979002923888032580noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36416483.post-34901843359828367812008-12-31T22:45:00.001-08:002008-12-31T22:50:37.188-08:00Meshuggah and Cynic (!!!) at Slim's on 4 Feb 2009<a href="http://slims-sf.com/slims-bin/showcal?date=2009-02-04">OH HELLZ YES.</a> I just bought my ticket. Actually I bought 3 dinner tickets — the sound is better in the back where the foodz is.<br /><br /><blockquote>Intent on decimating the boundaries of extreme music with their metric art, Sweden’s Meshuggah will be returning to North America in February on a 17-show headlining tour presented by MySpace Music. Direct support to Meshuggah will be provided by the legendary progressive metal band Cynic. Opening all shows will be technical progressive death metallers The Faceless from LA.</blockquote>Chris Palmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02979002923888032580noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36416483.post-18293705344152240942008-12-31T16:30:00.000-08:002008-12-31T16:53:01.405-08:00More on Digital Archival Storage“<a href="http://www.bl.uk/ipres2008/presentations_day2/43_Rosenthal.pdf">Bit Preservation: A Solved Problem?</a>” by David Rosenthal discusses the problems with our current understanding of the reliability of data storage systems. He examines the (comical) claims of storage system vendors and of optimistic researchers, exposes the fact that the claims are meaningless and untestable, and proposes a new metric: “bit half-life”.<br /><br /><blockquote>The most abstract model of a bit preservation system is as a black box, into which a string of bits <var>S</var>(0) is placed at time <var>T</var>(0) and from which at subsequent times <var>T</var>(<var>i</var>) a string of bits <var>S</var>(<var>i</var>) can be extracted. The system is successful if <var>S</var>(<var>i</var>) = <var>S</var>(0) for all <var>i</var>.<br /><br />No real-world system can be perfect and eternal, so real systems will fail. The simplest model of these failures is analogous to the decay of radioactive atoms. Each bit in the string independently is subject to a random process that has a constant small probability per unit time of causing its value to flip. The time after which there is a 50% probability that a bit will flip is the “bit half-life”.<br /><br />[...]<br /><br />There is no escape from the problem that the size of the data collections to be preserved and the times for which they must be preserved mean that experimental confirmation that the technology chosen is up to the job is not economically feasible. Even if it was the results would not be available soon enough to be useful. What this argument demonstrates is that, far from bit preservation being a solved problem, it is in a very specific sense an <em>unsolvable</em> problem.</blockquote>Chris Palmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02979002923888032580noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36416483.post-5199839567995193192008-12-27T12:11:00.000-08:002008-12-27T12:14:48.692-08:00Max/MSP Tutorial for Guitarists<a href="http://www.whattheheller.com/">Brian</a> pointed me to <a href="http://www.cycling74.com/story/2008/3/12/142316/512">Expand Your Guitar, vol. 1</a>, a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max/MSP">Max/MSP</a> tutorial for guitarists. Sweet!Chris Palmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02979002923888032580noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36416483.post-52448919126333825472008-12-27T12:07:00.000-08:002008-12-27T12:09:28.876-08:00Reason to CelebrateOlivia Judson in the NYT <a href="http://judson.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/23/the-ten-days-of-newton/">repeats Dawkins’ suggestion that we celebrate the birth of Isaac Newton</a> rather than that of the other guy.<br /><br />Works for me.Chris Palmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02979002923888032580noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36416483.post-20201679973061145832008-12-25T19:09:00.000-08:002008-12-25T19:11:45.779-08:00Captain Beefheart’s Painting<a href="http://grumplicio.us/">David</a> pointed me to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Beefheart">Captain Beefheart</a>’s <a href="http://www.artnet.com/artist/17294/don-van-vliet.html">painting, available for cheap at ArtNet</a>.Chris Palmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02979002923888032580noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36416483.post-50615646016927218842008-12-23T12:27:00.000-08:002008-12-23T12:43:23.410-08:00Hardline HardcoreThe NYT has two stories right now about Muslim and Orthodox Jewish music: “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/23/us/23muslim.html">Young Muslims Build a Subculture on an Underground Book</a>” and “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/23/arts/music/23mati.html">Hanukkah Receives Kosher Pop Welcome</a>”.<br /><br /><blockquote>“I’m a Muslim and I’m 100-percent American,” Ms. DeWulf said, “so I can criticize my faith and my country. Rebellion? Punk? This is totally American.”<br /><br />...<br /><br />The novel’s Muslim characters include Rabeya, a riot girl who plays guitar onstage wearing a burqa and leads a group of men and women in prayer. There is also Fasiq, a pot-smoking skater, and Jehangir, a drunk.<br /><br />Such acts — playing Western music, women leading prayer, men and women praying together, drinking, smoking — are considered haram, or forbidden, by millions of Muslims.<br /><br />...<br /><br />One band, the Kominas, wrote a song called “Suicide Bomb the Gap,” which became Muslim punk rock’s first anthem.</blockquote><br /><br />Sure, that makes tons of sense. PS: Grow the fuck up.<br /><br /><blockquote>Matisyahu, who was born Matthew Miller, sings explicitly devotional songs about God, Moshiach (the Messiah) and Orthodox Jewish identity. By setting them to reggae, rock and hip-hop beats, and after working his way up the jam-band circuit, he also reaches listeners with their minds on more secular pursuits, like dancing and drugs. Simcha Levenberg, the M.C. who introduced him, drew big laughs with jokes about marijuana and LSD, although Matisyahu’s song “King Without a Crown” insisted, “If you’re trying to stay high, then you’re bound to be low.”</blockquote><br /><br />Man... kids these days.<br /><br />Currently listening to: <a href="http://www.ladysovereign.com/">Lady Sovereign</a>’s <a href="http://c.ilike.com/d/0000/353/0000353518.mp3?fn=Lady%20Sovereign-I%20Got%20You%20Dancing.mp3">a free download</a>.Chris Palmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02979002923888032580noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36416483.post-87604295331460558332008-12-23T10:54:00.001-08:002008-12-23T11:48:21.730-08:00Rip Your CDs... For a Weird PriceI’m in Minnesota to visit the fam for the holidays, so I get to read the local paper, the StarTribune.<br /><br />In today’s paper, <a href="http://blogs2.startribune.com/blogs/technobabble/2008/12/23/living-life-without-cds/">Randy Salas talks about digitizing his collection of 2,000 CDs</a>. He used a service called iPodMeister, which takes as payment your actual CDs (!). In return, you get MP3s in various media and even a check. I guess they re-sell your CDs or something.<br /><br />I can’t imagine giving up my original media (a) at all; or (b) <em>for MP3s</em>! A while back I did an A/B test of CDs with 256kiB/s (variable bit-rate) MP3s, and unfortunately, there really is a sound difference. Even the high bit-rate MP3s suffer noticeable sound loss (surprisingly, in at least one case, in the bass). (Gojira has some great bass playing.) <a href="http://hemiolesque.blogspot.com/search?q=audiophile">I don’t subscribe to audiophile magical thinking</a>, but the difference was really noticeable on good speakers. iPod earbuds won’t reveal the difference, but decent headphones or decent speakers will.<br /><br />Lossy compression is dead! Storage is cheap. (When will emusic.com get the frickin’ message?)<br /><br />Currently on newegg.com, 1TB drives are $120. If you figure roughly 10MB per minute of stereo audio in WAV format — we’ll use base 10 since the drive manufacturers do (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(data)">Note 1</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MiB">Note 2</a>) — you can get 80,000 minutes of music on that drive (figure 20% for filesystem overhead to be safe). At that point, even lossless compression seems like overkill. Granted, you'll need to get two drives (<a href="http://www2.cs.uh.edu/~paris/MYPAPERS/StorageSS06.pdf">preferably from different manufacturers or at least different production batches</a>), but $240 is a small price to pay for that much storage.<br /><br />And it’s not economical to buy two 500GB disks, in case you were thinking of saving money: 500GB drives are $100. $240 is the current sweet spot for reliable storage. It so happens that that’s 1TB.<br /><br />And as for the copyright concerns: <a href="http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2007/08/first-sale-why-it-matters-why-were-fighting-it">you bought it, you own it, and can re-sell it</a>. Whether or not you can keep the MP3s after you sell the original media, I don’t know. Ethically, it “feels” wrong to me; legally, I am told that maybe you can.<br /><br />In any case, copyright law as it currently stands is on the wrong side of physics and economics (we are nowhere near the limits of information density right now!). Reality is going to keep punching copyright maximalists in the guts for a long time.Chris Palmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02979002923888032580noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36416483.post-53138391719753894222008-12-18T22:17:00.000-08:002008-12-18T23:43:45.678-08:00Gary Brawer and Crew Come Through Again<a href="http://brawerguitarrepair.blogspot.com/2008/12/its-exactly-right.html">These guys continually RULE.</a> A couple years back I had them deck out my black Gibson SG Special with Seymour Duncan pickups (Jazz neck, JB bridge) with push-pull pots to control coil tapping. They did a great job on that and it sounds just like you would hope.<br /><br />So I brought in my homebrew Frankenstrat. It had a JB in the bridge position, but it was a neck JB, or something — the poles didn't line up with the strings and it sounded like poop. I knew I wanted an active pickup to improve my Vernon Reid/James Hetfield wannabe sound — that “all frequency ranges louder than all the others” EQ — but I didn’t know how to get that. I told them what I wanted, and they came up with the EMG 60. (Gary said, “It came to me in a dream.”)<br /><br />Despite my constant whining to them “is it ready”, they were cool with me. Allen, who wrangles customers (and who <a href="http://www.mermen.net/allen.shtml">also plays with the Mermen</a>), is a sweet guy and a pro.<br /><br />The guitar sounds perfect (I’ll post some sound files when I get back from The Black Tundra). It’s bright, but not at all thin, with a “quick” response. Perfect clarity for complex chords even with ultra distortion. Yes, Virginia, E major 9 belongs in thrash metal.Chris Palmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02979002923888032580noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36416483.post-14219592039086089092008-12-07T13:54:00.000-08:002008-12-07T14:07:26.421-08:00Cool New Tech/Prog Metal Band: Terminal FunctionThey are Swedish, so I guess it’s okay that they crib from Meshuggah a bit. Who would complain anyway! And check out their <a href="http://www.terminalfunction.com/">hilariously nerdy web site</a>, complete with emulated Unix-like shell prompt!<br /><br />I got their album <a href="http://www.emusic.com/artist/Terminal-Function-MP3-Download/12078000.html"><em>Measuring the Abstract</em> from emusic.com</a>. A new favorite! Has elements of Meshuggah, Cynic, and Between the Buried and Me. Vocals are cookie monster, clean, and robot/vocoder (an obvious nod to the unforgettable Cynic).<br /><br />Currently listening to: “Dissolving Soul Fragments”<br /><br />And here they are playing mouth-guitar in their car. NERDS:<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/I5TRKSYrjAE&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/I5TRKSYrjAE&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>Chris Palmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02979002923888032580noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36416483.post-33765526654465756322008-12-06T20:03:00.000-08:002008-12-06T20:07:22.687-08:00More Fun With Synthetic ModesI really dig the whole-tone scale:<br /><br />C – D – E – F# – G# – A# – C<br /><br />I’ve found it’s handy to stick a perfect fifth in, as well:<br /><br />C – D – E – F# – G – G# – A# – CChris Palmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02979002923888032580noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36416483.post-18020696937875829932008-12-01T23:35:00.001-08:002008-12-01T23:35:55.624-08:00Okay, one more<a href="http://brawerguitarrepair.blogspot.com/2008/02/occasionally.html">A beautiful guitar</a>!!Chris Palmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02979002923888032580noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36416483.post-11520931606888936632008-12-01T23:19:00.000-08:002008-12-01T23:20:21.457-08:00Incredible FreakishnessI’ve been chewing through Gary Brawer and Co.’s blog, and found <a href="http://brawerguitarrepair.blogspot.com/2008/03/customer-is-always-right.html">this freaky gem</a>.Chris Palmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02979002923888032580noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36416483.post-12163666408828983032008-11-30T16:50:00.000-08:002008-11-30T17:07:06.105-08:00Allan HoldsworthOn the 16th (that’s two weeks ago to you and me, Russ), a hearty gang of peeps and I went to <a href="http://www.yoshis.com/">Yoshi’s</a> to see <a href="http://www.therealallanholdsworth.com/">Allan Holdsworth</a> with Chad Wackerman and Jimmy Johnson. Obviously it was great of course as you’d expect, but it was also verrah interestoing. Wackerman made what I thought was a strange mistake at the end of his first solo, apparently getting a bar ahead of the rest of the band! He had to do a loud snare count-off to get people back in synch, and then he was visibly upset. Holdsworth just gave him an eyebrow. It was cool, though; everyone was doing very well. On his next solo he was flawless and thus happy again.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.facebook.com/people/Alwyn-Quebido/1154918059">Al</a> lent me his <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Allan-Holdsworth/dp/B000WPE8A6">Holdsworth instructional DVD</a> which I highly recommend. It's a great in-studio concert with that same band, mixed in which Allan talking about the tunes and about his own personal music theory lessons. (The disc has an iPod-grade movie as a file as well as a PDF of the lesson booklet! Sweet.) Holdsworth claims that it’s best to figure out by yourself how chords and scales work, in your own way, but he also admits that you end up with personal terminology that nobody else understands. So in these lessons he has to translate his terms into standard terms, and it kind of gets in the way. There are two reasons to learn music theory, (1) to understand how stuff works and (2) to communicate your ideas to others, and a homebrew theory does not work for (2). It’s also more effort to achieve (1).<br /><br />Although I disagree with his approach, I can’t argue with results, and the results are total fusion goodness.<br /><br />One cool thing from the video is he spends some time on synthetic scales, including this weird one:<br /><br />E – F# – G – A♭ – B♭ – C – C# – D – E<br /><br />It’s surprisingly flexible, including a straightforward (ha ha) use as a sort of bi-tonal blues (E and B♭ major blues; C# and G minor blues).<br /><br />Currently listening to: The grinding of my laptop’s cooling fanChris Palmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02979002923888032580noreply@blogger.com2