Posts tagged music

DIY ambience

Otomata may well be the most beautiful thing I’ve interacted with in a while. Using some pretty simple cellular automata rules, a la The Game of Life (no, not that one), one can create simple musical sequences that, depending on the placement and direction of the individual units, can slowly evolve and thereby produce an ever-changing melody.

This is programming or writing music at its best. No words to distract, structured enough to keep focus, yet random enough to keep from going mad. It’s like having endless variations of the theme from “American Beauty” at your fingertips. Brilliant.

April 20 2011 · Link

Every year I make an effort to wade through the 1,000 or so songs that comprise the SXSW MP3 showcase that is offered up before the festivities in Austin begin. It’s a worthwhile, if sometimes tedious, task that has introduced me to bands that I wouldn’t have discovered otherwise.

I go at the process in fits and spurts, aided immensely by iTunes and the following AppleScript (launched by FastScripts), which allows me to quickly can songs (usually by speed/death metal bands with names like “Hammerstrike” and “Ogg the Slayer,” as well as overly earnest solo males) whose first 10 seconds convince me that my time would be better spent elsewhere:

tell application "iTunes"
    set curr_rating to the rating of the current track as text
    set curr_track to the name of the current track
    set curr_artist to the artist of the current track
    set curr_dur to the duration of the current track
    set curr_dbid to the database ID of the current track
end tell
set keep_song to display dialog "Keep \"" & curr_track & "\" by " & curr_artist & "?" buttons {"Yes", "Yes, and skip to end", "No"} default button 3
if button returned of keep_song is "No" then
    tell application "iTunes"
        set rating of every track of playlist 1 whose database ID is curr_dbid to 20 as number
        set played date of every track of playlist 1 whose database ID is curr_dbid to current date
        set enabled of every track of playlist 1 whose database ID is curr_dbid to false
        if the database ID of the current track is curr_dbid then
            set player position to (curr_dur - 1)
        end if
    end tell
end if

if button returned of keep_song is "Yes, and skip to end" then
    tell application "iTunes"
        set played date of every track of playlist 1 whose database ID is curr_dbid to current date
        if the database ID of the current track is curr_dbid then
            set player position to (curr_dur - 1)
        end if
    end tell
end if

Songs that are worth visiting again get 2-4 stars, while the rest slowly get culled or rated as they come up in future playings. Of the 1,000 songs, perhaps 10-15% really stick.

In the five years that I’ve been doing this experiment, I’ve been reluctant to hand out the coveted five star rating. “Unless” by Outrageous Cherry got it back in 2005, but it’s an honor only to be bestowed on the most perfect of songs.

I’m a bit behind on the process – I just finished 2009’s batch – but I am happy to announce that another five-star song has been found. It’s called “Punch and Judy” (video) and is by the British Band Little Thief. Like so many of these bands that I find, their website and MySpace page is woefully sparse and out-of-date. Perhaps it was just their fate to get together long enough to put out some truly wonderful songs before disappearing back into the flow of daily life, unsigned and largely undiscovered.

This impromptu performance on the London Tube is worth three minutes of your time and is a beautiful moment by a band whose joy in making music is quite apparent.

October 19 2010 · Link

Kickstarter - Pittsburgh Alt-Folk Collective Boca Chica is Recording their 3rd Album!

Great people who write catchy tunes. I’m in. If anything, it will help ensure that Hallie’s entertaining band update emails keep appearing in my inbox. While no longer in Pittsburgh in body, I can remain there in spirit.

I love microfinance.

August 20 2010 · Link

"The perfect dad band"

The Fader:

Look, this is not going to come out right but Band of Horses is the perfect dad rock band. Whiskey, cigars, silent trips out to western scenery. This is what dad is listening to while you shut the fuck up in the back and play the license plate game. And then when you get old enough to raid your dad’s record collection, you go see them play at that awesome psychedelic club in Tuscon or wherever that is in this video. Then when you become your dad you show old videos of your youth like in this video. Band of Horses is the male cycle of growth distilled. Just because you have tattoos doesn’t mean you can’t raise a family and just because you’re a dad doesn’t mean you can’t jam.

Of the legacies I’d like to leave for Gus, cultivating a taste in good music is one that is particularly important. I do believe that Band of Horses is part of that plan. Since receiving Infinite Arms for Father’s Day (see?), and after seeing them play in Minneapolis last weekend, my love for the band has been growing, as evidenced by their meteoric rise to the upper tier of my Last.fm library.

(I’d also like for Gus to appreciate good beer and violently oppose all coercion by his future uninformed teen-aged peers to rip it up at a bonfire with a case of Old Miller-Bud Genuine Light 2025 Bull. Yes, I have high hopes for that boy.)

July 22 2010 · Link

Just a Little While

Michael Gregory, of Auto-Tune the News, has penned a gem of a pop song. Though the mp3 of the song misses the 2:42 mark of perfection by a couple of seconds, it’s close enough to lend credible evidence to the theory.

$0.98 for the song, and the thought that my small contribution may help genius like this continue, seems like a good deal to me.

March 9 2010 · Link