Category Archives: Music

Local Music Personal

Guitar adjustments – maybe I don’t suck so bad after all

February 20, 2009 – 2:47 pm

pacifica_oldviolinI recently took my electric guitar into our local shop to get it adjusted by the resident luthiers, since I’d noticed lately that it was tending to go sharp on higher frets even when tuned correctly. At first, I wasn’t sure if it was just me, since learning for a year on an acoustic meant I often tended to use too much force on the fretboard of the electric and introduced accidental bending (since the string gauges on the electric are lighter, and steel rather than bronze). After a while though, I became pretty convinced that it was getting more pronounced and that it wasn’t down to my lack of skill, although that still needs plenty of work too ;) .

So, I was introduced to the issue of humidity and how it affects the guitar, which I hadn’t been particularly aware of before (I vaguely remember reading about environmental conditions, but hadn’t had any problems with the acoustic). Obviously wood being organic, it absorbs water from the environment or loses it, and thus can change shape slightly, particularly as so much tension is involved, meaning the original set-up needed adjusting once it had settled into the prevailing conditions at my house. I got it back the next day and am extremely pleased with the result – no more sharps up the fretboard, and a slightly lower action too which makes it easier to play. I can now wail away without wincing at a dodgy sounding chord – well, not because of that, anyway. :) What was also nice was that they did it for free – I guess not that surprising since I only bought the guitar from them a couple of months ago, but still I wasn’t assuming that would be the case so I appreciated it, and it certainly vindicated my decision to buy locally rather than save a bit of cash ordering online. My aim now is to get good enough that when I feel like buying more guitars (which I’m beginning to realise is inevitable eventually if I keep this up), I can try them out in the shop without feeling self-conscious – difficult when the store owner demos the kit by cranking out some great-sounding licks then hands it over to you! I’m not quite up to banjo dueling just yet. :)

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Comedy Music Tech

Creep, as covered by Songsmith

January 29, 2009 – 6:32 pm

Microsoft Songsmith is a research project that generates accompanying music to a singer’s voice (and optionally instruments), presumably using the same approach a chromatic tuner uses to identify notes. Some genius decided to feed Radiohead’s classic song “Creep” into it, to see what it would do. This is the simultaneously horrifying and incredibly funny result:

Jump to 1:55 for the ultimate effect. Oh, the humanity.

Edit: click here for more musical attrocities. Your ears will hate you, but it’s a laugh innit?

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Games Music

How did I miss Mute Math in 2007?

January 20, 2009 – 3:13 pm

Rock Band has come through again for introducing me to music I might not have otherwise have come across; this week’s DLC included ‘Typical’ by Mute Math:

It’s a great track, and I’m definitely buying it – the drum chart in particular is really interesting, very Reni-like. The video was deservedly nominated for a Grammy, but I totally missed it at the time and I don’t remember hearing it on the radio. They were apparently also responsible for the Transformers movie theme, which I guess is pretty high profile, but I didn’t pay much attention, owing to the fact that the Transformers movie was, IMHO, a total shambles once the actual transformers appeared (although perhaps those with ADHD or a chronic amphetamine habit might have enjoyed the following 90 minutes of fast pans and motion blur).

Good stuff anyway.

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Music

Happy 50th Birthday, Motown

January 12, 2009 – 12:53 pm

I read in the news today that Motown is 50 years old this week. They have plenty to celebrate, being (of course) the label that launched Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson, Diana Ross, Michael Jackson and Marvin Gaye. It was also the spiritual centre of the soul & funk movement in the 60′s and 70′s (as well as having a political civil rights angle), that produced so many classics that I remember hearing a lot while I was growing up – even though that was at the tail-end of the golden years.

Motown’s influence has been huge, encompassing modern hip-hop and R&B, the Northern Soul movement in the UK (which the Commitments represented in an out-of-time way), then on to Acid Jazz / Funk bands like Jamiroquai, Brand New Heavies and Groove Collective, and of course most recently & publicly Amy Winehouse & Duffy, who both harken very much back to that era (and Duffy is obviously gunning for the Dusty Springfield look). The music world owes a great deal to Motown, and I for one doff my cap to them on this anniversary.

And if you’re looking to celebrate with some modern soul / rock, you could do worse than to visit the Ghosthounds site – as an unsigned band they’re providing some free mp3′s and they’re very good. You can even play one of their songs (Ashes to Fire) in Rock Band 2 :)

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Games Music

No Rock Band 3 this year

January 8, 2009 – 12:15 pm

Via CrispyGamer, Harmonix have confirmed what I pretty much suspected, that there will be no Rock Band 3 in 2009. I’m not surprised, they already have the Beatles game in the making for 2009, and unlike Activision, Harmonix aren’t in the business of spamming the world with as many rushed sequels as they can manage before the general public gets bored.

To be honest, I don’t think there’s much they could do to improve Rock Band 2 anyway, it’s a highly polished game and DLC keeps it fresh (and to be honest, I have so many tracks that we already have almost too much choice when we play – not that it will stop me buying more). The only thing I can think of that I would like them to add is optional recognition of separate cymbal inputs, to be compatible with the Rock Band 2 cymbal add-ons and the Ion Drum Rocker, and maybe an optional hi-hat pedal (both kits have a spare port for this to be added). They could do this via subtle icon changes in the drum charts, like they do for hammer-ons and pull-offs in the guitar tracks. Entirely optional so as not to disadvantage people with RB1 kits, and those that don’t want the extra difficulty. Of course the downside of this is that it would further encourage me to blow money on more plastic instruments. (edit: ok I thought of something crucial – a cowbell attachment!).

It’s not as if they need to make another one commercially either. The music game genre may be falling out of fashion, but that’s mostly because casual consumers are being overloaded with too many titles, plus everyone has less of a need to buy retail copies when good DLC is available – how many people skipped RB2 and GH:WT because RB1 + DLC was enough for them, or even GH3 (if they don’t know any better)?. Activision are only interested in multi-billion dollar, recurring retail franchises, so of course it might worry them, but Harmonix have always been dedicated to the music genre, way before it was a commercial success, and so are not just following the money. Rock Band may not sell as many copies as Guitar Hero, because of the brand recognition and better platform coverage, but it doesn’t need to – Harmonix is a smaller, more focussed business that concentrates on pleasing the more serious fans (I’m pretty keen, but so many people on the internet are incredibly serious), who in turn have rewarded them with enough retail and DLC purchases to keep their business easily hitting expectations – as their recent huge bonuses show. I’m sure that more quality DLC plus the guaranteed sales of the Beatles game this year will be quite enough to keep them happy, even if overall the music game genre shrinks when the general public stop buying yet more Guitar Hero. Activision may drop the genre if it starts bringing in less money, but I seriously doubt Harmonix will, it’s in their genes.

Interesting to see them talk about Led Zeppelin again. Good luck with that ;) As for the keyboard interface – not that bothered about it personally. I think the current 4-instrument set-up is plenty.

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Music Tech

Bye-bye DRM on iTunes

January 7, 2009 – 10:52 am

The MacWorld Expo 2009 is on at the moment, and yesterday was the keynote, which was interesting despite the absence of the turtle-necked wonder (get well soon Steve).

By far the best news was that the entire iTunes library is going DRM-free by the end of March 09. As of yesterday, 80% of the songs are DRM-free, and the remaining 20% will have their DRM removed in the next 3 months. Apple have wanted to do this for a while of course, but the music labels have been dragging their feet – only EMI were willing to do DRM-free on iTunes before this. No doubt pressure from Amazon’s download service helped – Amazon already sells a ton of CDs, so has clout with the music labels, but they couldn’t practically use any DRM themselves because they couldn’t use Apple’s, and if it didn’t play on an iPod, few customers would be interested. So in a strange kind of way, Apple helped Amazon go DRM-free, and once Amazon’s service matured (it’s 18 months old in the US, despite only just being released in the UK) that then made it untenable for the other labels to continue insisting on DRM in iTunes too. These labels held out for as long as they could though, because they desperately want to break Apple’s hold on the download market – that market they themselves refused to acknowledge existed until it was too late (and interestingly, the movie studios have been making almost exactly the same mistake with their content too – it’s only a matter of time before that goes the same way). And so finally, we reach the conclusion that everyone knew was inevitable anyway.

It also means that there is no longer a price premium for DRM-free tracks, which used to be 20p a track. There are also going to be price restructures on iTunes, with tracks and albums split into 3 price categories based on popularity and age (ranging from $0.69 to the current $1.29 – not sure about UK prices yet, proportionately that suggests 42p to the current 79p). Unfortunately converting your old DRM-saddled library still costs 20p per track, even though you can now buy it DRM-free for the same price you previously bought it. Still, I don’t have that many DRM-enabled tracks from iTunes anyway, since it put me off – I bought a few singles, on iTunes Plus when I could, but all my albums are still physical. The removal of DRM and the price changes will almost certainly mean I will buy more from iTunes. Amazon’s service is nice too, but it lacks the breadth of choice (~3m tracks compared to ~10m on iTunes, I’ve already found several things missing), and doesn’t have the same cohesion iTunes does, with the band bio pages, album cross-links, and Genius suggestions – which are not only more accessible when I’m playing music anyway, but they tend to be better quality suggestions than Amazon’s related links which are more based on sales data. The price competition is good though, I’m sure Amazon’s promotions on popular albums are a major cause of the new, more competitive iTunes price structure.

A side-effect is that all the tracks are now 256kbps rather than 128kbps, as iTunes Plus had been for a while. Overall then, a good day for digital music. Shame it took so damn long for the music labels to wake up.

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Games Music

Kravitz-a-thon

January 2, 2009 – 5:01 pm

Yay, I can tick another artist off my wish list for Rock Band DLC, since it’s been leaked that during January Lenny Kravitz will finally be appearing. Despite petering out a bit around the ‘Baptism’ album (which I thought was a bit weak and self-indulgent), and something of a bounce back with last year’s ‘It Is Time For A Love Revolution’, his 90′s classics are still the best, and that’s where the upcoming RB tracks are picked from.

‘Are You Gonna Go My Way’ was one of the classic tracks I was sad to see exclusive to GH:WT originally, so I’m glad it’ll be DLC on Rock Band now. ‘Mr Cab Driver’ is also an excellent track to have. In the other two slots I would have preferred to see the likes of ‘Rock And Roll Is Dead’, ‘Always On The Run’ , ‘Again’, or the fantastically funky retro ‘It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over’, but instead we’ve got ‘Let Love Rule’ (great song, but maybe a little slow – I’ll have to look at the charts when they’re out before deciding) and ‘Freedom Train’ which is one of the few Kravitz tracks I don’t have in my collection, but according to this video features possibly the largest confluence of both big hair and wah-wah guitar in one song, ever.

Good job I got some Microsoft Points for Christmas!

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Music Personal

POD-licious

December 26, 2008 – 12:58 pm

I had a nice surprise from my wife this Christmas, a spangly red kidney-shaped surprise in fact – a POD 2.0. I’d been recommended one of these some time ago, but had put it on my ‘future purchases’ list since I didn’t think I was really good enough to justify buying myself one yet. I wasn’t expecting anyone to buy it for me, so it was a pleasant surprise to unwrap it. Of course getting it as a gift allows the whole purchase justification process to be nicely bypassed :)

I’ve only had a relatively quick play with it so far, but my goodness does this little box sound good. Heck, it even makes my playing sound better than I think it really is. I honestly didn’t expect it to make so much difference, but just plugging this inline between my guitar and amp instantly starts kicking out considerably better sound than I got before, even just cycling through the 36 preset modes. You can of course just plug headphones directly into the POD, or hook it up to a PC for recording purposes (it’s primary purpose for many people), but I like using it with the regular amp too since it seems to give a noticeably improved and more varied set of results.

Feature-wise, it’s fairly overwhelming compared to what I’ve been used to so far. As a comparison, my fairly decent practice amp supports 4 main amp models, with 6 effects, 2 of which can be active at once – plus the usual drive & tone adjustments. The POD meanwhile has 32 amp/cabinet models, 16 effects, plus loads of tweaks on top of each. I’ve hardly scratched the surface on this yet but the range seems great, and I’ve already found sounds that I hadn’t been able to get out of my regular amp.

This is going to be fun I’m sure, and anything that makes me sound better is a bonus for both me and those within earshot :) . Unfortunately I managed to strain my back playing with it yesterday judging by how painful it is today (sods law – why does everything I like doing knacker my back I wonder?). I obviously need to find somewhere higher up to put it instead of bending down to tinker with it all the time. I don’t think I need a pedal / stomp box just yet, I’m definitely not good enough to play live :) I’ll leave that to my cousin, who just told me on IM as I was typing this that coincidentally he was just given a floor-based POD for live playing. Show off ;)

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Games Music

Snow Patrol no longer overlooked!

December 23, 2008 – 10:17 pm

Yay, almost as if they read my last post on the subject, Harmonix have stopped overlooking Snow Patrol! Next week on DLC we’ll get ‘Take Back The City’ from their new album, A Hundred Million Suns.

I’d post a video of it here, except that YouTube says that it’s ‘not available in your country’. You know, that same country the damn thing originated from. Grr, getting really irritated by that message these days. Here’s LastFM’s non-embedded version instead.

Oh, and fellow Brits Deep Purple get a track too, ‘Space Truckin’, which just reminds me of a Dennis Hopper film called ‘Space Truckers’ which I caught the end of on TV one time. Wow, that was bad.

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Games Music

Harmonix *really* like Foo Fighters

December 19, 2008 – 9:55 pm

They seriously do. Next week, while predictably there’s a 3-pack of slightly toe-curling but at least somewhat unusual Christmas numbers (and with no Slade, thankfully), they’ve also lined up 3 more Foo Fighters tracks:

  • This is a Call (from debut album ‘Foo Fighters’, 1995)
  • Times Like These (from ‘One by One’, 2002)
  • DOA (from ‘In Your Honor’, 2003)

I’ve been crying out for DOA for ages, so this is great news. The other 2 are also very solid songs too, so this is a definite buy. The crazy thing is, Rock Band now features 17 songs by Foo Fighters, making them the most prolific band on the tracklist – closely followed by Pixies and The Who with 15 and 14 tracks respectively (obviously all these bands have done full albums for Rock Band). This isn’t a bad thing, I’d happily have FF’s entire tracklist on there (and very empty pockets), but I wonder whether it’s Harmonix’s preference, or just that FF (and handlers) are particularly forthcoming / cooperative etc.

Edit: Ok,  I’m wrong – Red Hot Chili Peppers has 20 tracks and AC/DC has 19!

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