Black Walls’ new album Acedia is available for pre-release purchase.
I’ve had Ken’s artwork on my wall as a huge print for the last couple of years. I’m stoked that this is now out.
work as if you live in the early days of a better nation
Black Walls’ new album Acedia is available for pre-release purchase.
I’ve had Ken’s artwork on my wall as a huge print for the last couple of years. I’m stoked that this is now out.
I’m a late adopter of Shazam, which is a semi-magic music recognition service. I just gave it a ten song shuffle from my collection.
Shazam matched:
Shazam found no match for:
Shazam was completely wrong about:
So: 50% hit rate, 50% miss — and one false positive. Adequate.
Karl recommended I try SoundHound. It matched:
Soundhound didn’t match:
So it knew about Withered Hand and Old Man Luedecke, but didn’t know about Marissa. About the same; maybe slightly better.
It’s music swap time on MetaFilter. Here’s what I chose:
It’s here on Spotify: MeFi Swap 2012-1.
It appears that my musical choice has this effect on people, as this just happened on a collaborative jukebox I’m aware of:
Oh well.
This is the music that powered the year for me:
Here’s six not from 2010 that also helped make the year:
Podcast: scruss-best_of_2010 [mp3]
Dammit, is it really December? Anyway, this is what I listened to this year:
Must be getting old; two of the albums (Bertrand Belin and Brett Dennen) I bought because I heard tracks on the radio. Consequently, I predict Lawrence Welk in my best of 2011.
What with the sad loss of Wild East Compact Sounds this summer, my sources of music are now limited. eMusic, bless ’em, have been my source of indie stuff since about 2003. They were cheap, had a fixed price per download, and carried a raft of indie stuff and no major label tat.
Not much longer; got this in my inbox:
So, yeah, the full announcement: major label content, minimum 49¢/track, and variable pricing. Exactly all the reasons I wouldn’t want to use them. Good call, eMusic, for a battered-about subscriber since 2003.
I was initially confused by the pricing. I pay 36¢/track, so I couldn’t see how their promise that “your monthly payments will not change and you will still be able to download the same number of tracks available today, if not more, depending upon your current plan“. Then I see their new menu:
So basically they’re crediting me with a fake $4.48 a month (oh wait; “30 days”, not a month; they so want you to forget to download stuff by making the cycle date change) so I can still get my 35 downloads. Since they hint that there will now be variable pricing, I’ll bet the new stuff will be >49¢, so I really won’t be able to download as many per month after all.
They’re saying that the new pricing will allow them to do a bunch of fun stuff:
We’re also committed to making eMusic a better member experience. We recently rolled out improvements to Browse and Search pages. And we’re hard at work on a host of new features and enhancements including a music locker, which should allow you to stream your music collection from any desktop or mobile device. In addition, improvements to eMusic’s social features, to better connect you with our editors, other members, artists, labels and your friends, are also in the works. We’ve sketched out an ambitious slate, and it will take a little while to get there. We hope you’ll continue on the journey with us.
I don’t want all that social fluff. The MP3s work just fine on any mobile device, so streaming them just adds more crud. I want fixed price downloads, not some half-assed music locker. Where, oh where is Frank Hecker and swindleeeee when you need them?
Dr. Friendly Rich knows my name.
I like this album a lot. Colleen and Paul have been working together for years (I saw ’em as Jack and Ginger in 2006), and this music needs to be heard!
Every thousandth track from my library:
Track | Title | Artist | Album |
---|---|---|---|
1000 | How the West Was Won and Where It Got Us | R.E.M. | New Adventures in Hi-Fi |
2000 | Lesson 8 / Ex 3 | David Hamburger | The Acoustic Guitar Method, Book 2 |
3000 | Way of Woe | Peter Stampfel | The Jig Is Up |
4000 | Exercise: Changing Chords | Jack Hatfield | First Lessons Banjo |
5000 | The Edison Museum | They Might Be Giants | No! |
6000 | Got The Jake Leg Too | Ray Brothers | |
7000 | Light Is Returning | Rise Up Singing: The Teaching Disc O | |
8000 | Birmingham Sunday | Rise Up Singing: The Teaching Disc J | |
9000 | Bring Me A Leaf From The Sea | Carolina Tar Heels | Mountain Frolic (Rare Old Timey Classics 1924-37) – Disc D (1925-30) |
10000 | Window to Mars | Elf Power | In a Cave |
11000 | The Book Of Doves | Alasdair Roberts | Spoils |
12000 | Grounded | Pavement | Wowee Zowee |
13000 | O Holy Night | Classic Carols | Classic Carols (Piano-Vocal Harmonies) |
14000 | Track 23 | Peter Gelling | Teach Yourself Harmonica |
15000 | Priscilla | The Soft Machine | The Soft Machine |
16000 | Colours | Gorp | Shapes And Colours Game |
17000 | The Mayor Of Simpleton | XTC | Upsy Daisy Assortment |
18000 | Jóga | Björk | Homogenic |
19000 | Everything Merges With the Night | Brian Eno | Another Green World |
20000 | Great Races – The Marathon | Ivor Cutler, et al | King Cutler, Part 6 |
21000 | Coal Creek March | Dock Boggs | His Folkways Years (1963-1968) Disc 1 |
22000 | The Ghost You Draw On My Back | Múm | Summer Make Good |
23000 | Tidy (Previously Unreleased Demo) | Dressy Bessy | Little Music: Singles 1997-2002 |
24000 | Careless Soul | Daniel Johnston | 1990 |
25000 | Introduction | Joyce Ochs | First Lessons: Dulcimer |
26000 | On A Monday Morning | Rachel Unthank and the Winterset | Cruel Sister |
Whee! New album from everyone’s favourite musical genius/loony! More details at the Piety Street Studios Blog.
Delightful cover letter too:
circa 1969, on Hee Haw:
Again, to my own rules; what I discovered this year, and not necessarily ten:
Quite a bit of Scottish content in there, I know.
Some late arrivals and miscellaneous:
This year, I can revert to my own slightly unusual system of the music that found me during the year. I listened to a lot in 2009:
So I was at The Dakota Tavern last night, expecting to see nana grizol with Colleen and Paul. I got there far too early, and notice that there was no sign of Theo Hilton or the rest of the band. I learned from Colleen (whom I’d met before) that they’d been stopped at the border, so Colleen and Paul were playing a longer set, and Colleen’s partner Ron Sexsmith would play later.
Immigration for musicians annoys me. The costs of visas, and the processing time required, basically means that most bands I’d want to see risk getting turned away at the border. Since touring is how these bands make their living, everybody loses.
Still, Colleen and Paul – assisted by a couple of Colleen’s friends – ended their set with a lovely version of Jeff Mangum’s arrangement of I Love How You Love Me [mp3, lo-fi phone recording].
When I first heard of Alvin Lucier‘s “I Am Sitting in a Room” I thought it would be interesting to attempt a recreation with the tools I had on hand. Rather than shuffling tapes around, I recorded on my iPod Touch, and then e-mailed the file to my laptop to play back. I repeated this sixteen times. This is what I ended up with: my name is not alvin [mp3].
I’m pretty sure all I ended up recording was the hard drive and the backlight on my MacBook. By the final iteration, the cricket-like chirping is centred pretty close to 5400 and 16000 Hz.
(originally posted on Banjo Hangout)
I’ll give you a hand with this …
Yeah, that’s my right hand. Spare me the tree-frog comments, but note how I’ve carefully numbered the fingers.
You play banjo, so you know stuff in the key of G. So you know three chords: G, C and D7. Musicians are fiddly bunch, with all their sharps and flats and all, but notes go A B C D E F G, then back to A as they go up. If you start with G = 1, you’ll see that C = 4 and D = 5. Let’s not worry about the fact that you (probably) play a D7 chord, but look at the key of G hand:
For some reason (look up chord theory, or chord progressions) the 1, 4 and 5 chords sound good together. Some people write ’em as I, IV and V if they’re feeling all fancy and classical like.
I hate to break it to you, but not all tunes are in the key of G. I know, it’s hard to take. What if it’s in A? Well, use the hand, with A as the first (or root) chord:
So to play those nice sounding 1-4-5 chords in A, you need to know A, D and E (or E7, if you’re feeling folky). In this case, the D pretty much has to be the real finger-stretching D chord (hard for us tree-frogs) or it’ll sound naff.
If you’re singing along to your old Pete Seeger 78s, yer traditional folk/gospel/church songs are in C. Hand to the rescue!
So, for the key of C, you need the chords C, F and G (or G7). F is a nightmare on a guitar, easier on a banjo, easiest of all on an autoharp.
Just in case you ever need a song in D, here’s that hand again:
You guessed it – D, G and A (or A7).
That’s how Chris Coole taught me it. It’s a bit of a simplification, but it works for me.