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It was about 10pm last night and I figured I’d just do half an hour’s practice on the guitar as I often do. I often use headphones to avoid causing undue annoyance to the neighbourhood, and like a lot of music equipment my Pod has a 1/4″ headphone socket, despite the fact that most regular headphones use a 1/8″ mini-jack, so I use a converter that came with the headphones (Sony in this case), pictured below.

Looks innocent enough, doesn’t it? Well, it’s not – when I came to remove the jack from my Pod (because I was routing via my amp today), I was dismayed to discover that only 2/3rds of the adapter actually came out; the section from the first divider upwards stayed firmly in the socket. On examining the adapter, I saw that the tip was only held on my 4 fairly small metal clips, which obviously after repeated use had failed. These were not particularly cheap headphones, they’re quite decent, but clearly Sony had cut costs on the 1/4″ adapter thinking that not many people use it. Bastards.

Fortunately I did manage to remove the offending part but it took almost an hour of swearing and building specialised tools from bits of wire, screwdrivers and tweezers. These sockets are quite deep and thin, and it wasn’t helped by the spring-loaded clip that is designed to stop the plugs coming out easily. I thought I was going to have to send it in for repair, because I would just void the warranty by taking it apart myself and the logistics of the socket were daunting, but luckily bending some wire into a very long & thin hook, several retries (there are several pieces to the end section and they all came out separately) and a lot of irritation eventually bore fruit.

So that was almost an expensive piece of kit wrecked by a £1 converter. I think I’ll buy a decent one next time instead of using what comes with the headphones.

Oh hell yes.

Finally, one of the best British classic rock bands that was sorely missing from Rock Band makes an appearance on 20th October, and how:

• Another One Bites The Dust
• Crazy Little Thing Called Love
• One Vision
• Fat Bottomed Girls
• I Want It All
• I Want To Break Free
• Killer Queen
• Somebody To Love
• Tie Your Mother Down
• Under Pressure

Now, I could lament the absence of Don’t Stop Me Now, and Princes of the Universe which I would have loved, but really that would be being petulant because this list is pure class. Anyone with any sense has been crying out for Queen in Rock Band for ages, and now we have a duty to shut up and save our voices for some serious (or rather seriously bad) Freddy Mercury impressions. Now, where did I put my sparkly low-cut one-piece?

[Edit]Oh, and huge kudos to Harmonix for bringing us some Kula Shaker this week. Feel free to follow in that vein with some Ocean Colour Scene, Happy Mondays, Seahorses and Shed Seven guys

When Harmonix responded to GHWT’s user-created content feature by saying they wanted to hold off until they could do it properly, they definitely weren’t kidding. Today they announced the Rock Band Network, which will be online later this year (on 360 only for the moment, because it seems they’re piggy-backing on the XNA Creator’s Club to handle the submission and billing).

Rather than provide an in-game sequencer using samples like GHWT does, with RBN bands use their original master tracks, recorded using their usual software but presumably still split into the appropriate tracks, and gives them a set of tools (for PC I assume) to add the MIDI notes which will be translated into the instrument charts. They can also control animation and stage events to sync with their track. All instruments are supported including the vocal track (GHWT didn’t allow custom vocals); there’s no limits because the master track is always used. Once packaged up & ready, artists can then upload their music directly, set a price for it, and have it show up for purchase on the Marketplace where anyone can buy it, and the artist gets a cut of the revenue.

This is a superb idea. Not only do you get ‘proper’ music rather than just sequenced sample notes with no vocals (because the tools every band gets to use are the same as the ones Harmonix use to create their tracks), but there’s also a direct incentive for good independent bands to get their music on there, since it can earn them some money as well as get them publicity. I shudder to think how many tracks might end up on there – we’ll definitely need some reviews pronto to help point us to the best ones; it looks like the RBN website has that functionality built-in as a pre-release step using community reviewers (presumably this is also to filter out IP-violating music and dodgy content before it hits the masses too), but I’m sure the community will run with this as RockBandContent.com did once the tracks are public.

The great thing is that it probably won’t even be just ‘unknown’ bands that use this. Harmonix obviously have to prioritise their DLC pipeline, so they can’t cover everything (even though they seem to try). I can imagine there will be loads of signed bands who are just lower down the priority list who could take the matter into their own hands now, and get their music on there as a promotional thing. For non-US bands in particular (who, let’s face it, tend to end up under-prioritised compared to US bands), I think this could be very, very big.

I think this could be huge for both players and bands. The current 700 track selection could be paltry in comparison once this has been running for a while. Once again, Harmonix leads the way when it comes to tapping into the spirit of this genre!

Guitar Hero and Rock Band have been derided by some, with extensive cries of ‘learn a real instrument!’; however it’s my experience that by making simulated instrument playing more accessible to the masses, these games are responsible for many taking up an instrument for the first time, or reconnecting with a previously abandoned musical hobby.

It’s the latter for me – I was heavily involved in music throughout my school days, until an overly pushy music teacher sucked all the joy out of it (what, you have a free evening / weekend that you’re not playing music in? Heresy!), to the extent that I did the typical ‘teenage overreaction’ and quit every school orchestra, band, choir (yeah, I know, deeply uncool), music exam (I quit part way through grade 7), and extra-curricular musical activity (and there were many) all at once. It drove her nuts, which was highly satisfying, and was a wonderful release for me to go do other things, like learning how to code. For years I didn’t look back.

Rhythm-action games re-awakened something in me that I’d forgotten was there – a love of participation in music. I think I had a long-established psychological block that associated playing music with something that was all hard work and no fun, because that’s what my experience had turned into. Sure, the games highly simplify the process, but that’s the point; by hiding the ‘work’ part away for a while, for me they reconnected a mental circuit between ‘playing music’ and ‘fun’ again which had long been broken. It’s been highly theraupeutic, and considerably cheaper than a shrink

So, I’ve picked up playing the guitar, and I’m getting along fairly well I think, but most importantly I’m enjoying it. I’ve also discovered via Rock Band that I find drums very satisfying, and I seem to have a fair amount of natural ability there – maybe not compared to some people online, but I’m competent enough to enjoy playing some of the moderately complex tracks the most (Keith Moon, you really were unique).

So, I’ve decided to buy a real drum-kit later in the year and see if I can learn to play for real. I’m going to wait a few more months, because I still have some problems with my back which disrupted my ability to play even simulated drums for a while, but as I’ve recovered I’ve been able to play more and more comfortably again. I’m not going to risk practice-related injuries before we go on holiday in August/September, so I’ll probably look to start in the autumn. I’ve pretty much decided what practice kit to get: the Roland TD-4k, which seems like a good starting point. I don’t really have room for a full acoustic kit, and an electronic one will be a little easier on everyone else Plus, the Roland’s sound really good these days, and I’ll be able to plug it into Rock Band if I want as an added bonus via a converter. Edit: slight issue with the TD4 though, you can’t individually map the MIDI codes for the open and closed hi-hat pedal (you can map open, and closed is assumed to be open-4 which won’t map to blue/yellow) – for that you have to go to the TD9 (more expensive) or the Yahama DTXpress IV (same price or cheaper but the pads & sounds are not as nice). Hmm.

I think it’ll be fun to learn anyway. I’ll probably never get as good as the guy below (acoustic cover of one of my favourite drum tracks in Rock Band), but as something to do away from the PC it’s a little more productive than just watching TV or playing games, and a nice bit of variety combined with the guitar. And it probably counts as a work out

Ok, this is very, very bizarre. Having bought tickets for the last 2 years, I got an email letting me know that the local summer-time comedy festival was returning this year, so I went to take a look at the lineup. The stand-up lineup looks pretty good, I recognise a couple of the names, and in any case it’s good to see people  you haven’t come across before.

But, the main thing that gave me a “WTF?” moment was the banner in the middle, claiming that Spinal Tap were coming over on the 7th June, as part of their tour for the 25th anniversary of their 1984 spoof rockumentary This Is Spinal Tap. Dude, no way! I’m looking for the catch here, but it would seem that in fact, the appropriate response is “Way”.

I’m in two minds about this though. On the one hand, it would be very cool to see these guys in person – This Is Spinal Tap is a cult classic. On the other hand, it has been 25 years (wow), I’m not sure if seeing them now might be a bit disappointing, and they’re holding it in what is essentially a tiny venue, for only £5 a head. Maybe that’s part of the joke (given that TIST is all about a band with delusions of rock stardom that never quite make it), I don’t know. I guess it can’t hurt to go and see since it’s that cheap!

Since the ticket office doesn’t open until Friday, for now there’s nothing to do but celebrate the classic scene:

Like many of my friends in the UK, I’m a Pandora-mourner. The great thing about Pandora was the great range of music, the unobtrusiveness of the client, and the robustness of the stream – all issues that Last.fm significantly under-delivers on in comparison. Not only is Last.fm’s interface not as pleasant, any time I’d stress my machine (such as hitting all the cores at once with a major batch build), I’d get streaming hiccups. And if there’s one thing that chronically interrupts a sustained groove, it’s hiccups.

Yesterday a friend of mine (thanks Jim) pinged me to recommend a relatively new service, Spotify. It seems to have been expanding significantly in the last few months, and knowing my friend had similarly high standards set by Pandora too, I decided to give it a go.

Wow. It’s great! Unfortunately like Last.fm it requires a download & install rather than in-browser play like Pandora, but it’s worth it. The interface is obviously influenced heavily by iTunes, which is no bad thing, and it’s very slick. The most important thing to understand is that unlike either Last.fm or Pandora, Spotify actually lets you pick the exact music you listen to. It has a ‘Radio’ mode too where it picks tracks for you, but this is only based on genres and time periods, rather than the music characteristics which made Pandora so great at introducing you to new stuff you’d like. But, it’s big advantage is that you can just use it just like iTunes and search specifically for tracks / albums / artists – and listen to exactly what you wanted right there, rather than being given ‘similar’ tracks. It’s like a streamed iTunes effectively, with a massive library – I’ve unscientifically tested it out and so far the range seems very good.

The sound quality is excellent, and most importantly it is completely unfazed by heavy CPU usage by other applications. As a test I did a full (fully parallel) build of Ogre in the background, while jumping around doing a few other things too, pretty much maxing out all my cores for a sustained period of time, and not once did the music skip. Yes!

Of course, there has to be a catch, but it’s a small one. In return for being able to access any music you like,  you have to listen to occasional adverts. These are basically just like radio ads, except that if you happen to go to the client while they’re playing, you get web links to the products – which I’m sure is a pro for the advertiser over regular radio advertising. Alternatively, you can upgrade to a ‘Premium’ Spotify account (a tenner a month, or 99p for a day pass) to remove the ads entirely. To be  honest, I found the ads to be less intrusive than those on regular commercial radio, which considering that you get to pick your music and don’t get some DJ talking inanely in between tracks, it’s overall a net gain.

I’m going to keep trialing it to see where it goes, but so far colour me impressed.

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?

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.

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

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.