Here is a quick look at my current guitar setup. The previous system was built around a Roland GR-55 Guitar Synthesizer: a great gadget, but quite complex. So after selling it on Craigslist, as well as a few other items, I started building my new rig around my laptop. Here is the plan for this unending work in progress.
This iTunes advert is worth watching frame by frame as you fly through 12 Beatles album covers. There is some nice motion graphics work here and what appears to be some new cell animation, and even a bit of 3D, done in the same style as Yellow Submarine.
In this excerpt from his CBC radio program, Randy Bachman (The Guess Who, Bachman Turner Overdrive) explains the opening chord to the classic Beatles tune, A Hard Days Night. George Harrisson once described this sforzando 12-string sting thus:
It is F with a G on top, but you’ll have to ask Paul about the bass note to get the proper story.
George Harrisson – (source The Beatles Bible)
Bachman’s interest in this strident kickoff chord took him to the source. During the recent remastering sessions of the Beatles collection, Giles Martin invited him to Abbey Road for a listen. “What do you want to hear?” asked Giles, two-time Grammy winner and now official custodian of the material. Randy went straight to a ProTools assisted examination of that iconic signature, a chord that opened the song, the album, the movie, and sonically defined the The Beatles early mop-top era.
Roll on down the vinyl highway with Randy’s Vinyl Tap, Mr. Bachman’s critically acclaimed CBC radio show. And special thanks to SonicState.com for turning me on to the video.
Printed concert tickets are rapidly becoming a relic of the past. Today, there are probably more tickets coming out of home inkjet printers than popping out of countertop trapdoors in ticket booths. Even inkjet prints will soon be supplanted by cell phone simulacrums.
I for one will regret the passing into history of this bit of memorabilia, having saved almost every concert ticket from my teenage years to date. Long after the T-shirt have faded and the battle scars healed, a little box of show stubs remains my own ticket to fond memories of the past.
PeterGabriel.com is looking for any tickets, trinkets or other items you may have for the upcoming 25th anniversary of the So album, as they prepare for a special release edition. They are asking “you to help us build the story of So with your own memories”. So if you have any original So merchandise, posters or tickets from the tour, pop over to petergabriel.com/so-submissions and upload a scan and your story.
Here’s Peter with more info:
Chico Marx played 88 keys like no other. His showy technique was visual enough to play to the back of a packed broadway theater, and was as much of a joy to watch as to hear. In the video above actor/comedian/corrector of common mispronunciations Wayne Federman deconstructs Mr. Marx’s phalangeal choreography.
To complete the lesson, be sure to check out Chico’s masterful 1935 performance of All I Do is Dream of You from A Night at the Opera 
As required by a little known Texas law, state residents are required to pay homage to Willie Nelson once every two years minimum. Tonight I happily fulfilled my obligation.
The Fab Faux perform the second side of Abbey Road. This live, in-studio staging is a spot-on quality performance of an ambitious project.
Brad Smith is a video game programmer in Ontario. What does he do when he’s not coding modern gaming wonders? He codes for vintage game hardware. Below is an excerpt from his epic note-for-note, 8-bit recreation of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, as one would hear it through a Nintendo Entertainment System circa 1983. Download the whole “album” from Brad’s web site.
The digital release was inevitable. The only remaining question was distribution; Apple, Amazon, EMI web site, or some new online upstart. Who would have guessed that the initial digital release of the Beatles catalog would arrive on physical media; a bulbous green USB memory stick that is as ugly as it is useless.
So the music gets put in silicon, the silicon into metal, the metal into plastic, plastic into boxes, boxes into trucks. The trucks are driven to giant brick and mortar buildings, then more trucks take them to smaller brick buildings. So thanks a bunch EMI. We would have loved to welcome you to the 21st century by cleanly zapping Beatle bits from there to here, but instead you hand us music with a carbon footprint as large as the device we use to listen.
Can this even be considered a true digital release? Technically yes, but it’s delivered in a physical enclosure, just like a CD and we already have those.
I have always been perplexed at the hubbub surrounding the eventual digital release of the Beatles catalog. Most fans have the material on CD and many have vinyl (I have both) and have already ripped them to various iDevices. Digital distribution would only bring a new level of purchasing convenience to those filling out their catalog or newly discovering the band … or so we thought.
Anyway, look for this sickly shiny green apple at a grocer near you on December 7, 2009 (Dec 8 in the states.) You know, this probably would have played out very differently, and year ago, had Steve Jobs just come up with a different name for his computer company.
Music making has involved button pressing since the 3rd century BC. Whether forcing air through tubes, banging hammers on strings or pushing voltage through USB cables, button manipulation is a classic interface between human and sound.
Push button music has evolved and exploded over the past few years. It’s history can be traced back to a number of arguable origins and originators. One of them is Brian Crabtree, who built his first prototype button matrix device in 2002. Inspired by Max, a visual programming language popular among musicians and multimedia artists, he built a “barely functional … constructed from parts found in an electronics salvage depot bin” device that would eventually become the Monome.
Brian believed that adding visual feedback to a musical instrument would facilitate intuitive interaction. His device first grabbed the attention of musicians and performance artists when a small video clip of his performance virally circulated among music blogs around 2004
In 2006 his fledgling company released a 64 button matrix controller, the 40h. Although only 400 of these “adaptable, minimalist interfaces” were produced, these buttony boxes sent sound waves and shock waves through the music hardware industry. And as popularity grew, so did the number of buttons on the Monome.
Musicians, DJs and technogeeks embraced the concept. Square rubbery buttons would no longer be confined to rows on drum machines. They were now showing up on new instruments and in new forms. Molded silicon replaced the traditional black rubber. Velocity sensitivity was also jettisoned to make way for much more interesting electronics; lights.
The translucent silicon allowed for LED back-lighting. This added a dramatic visual aspect to this new genre of instruments, comically referred to as “blinken lights.” But the lighting was not just for show. A well programmed lighting system turns a matrix of 256 identical buttons into usable, even friendly, device. It also breaks the spacial limits of the device allowing for an unlimited number of virtual buttons and displays.
In the next installment of Welcome to the Button Matrix, we will look at more push button oddities, the Tenori-on, the new Eigenharp, the AKAI APC40, and the soon-to-be-released (and already pre-ordered) Novation Launchpad.
Richard Evans gives us a rare look behind the scenes at a Peter Gabriel tour preparation. The group spent four weeks preparing for the 8 show tour of Mexico and South America. Two weeks of music rehearsal will took place in the “grey and grotty” Millside rehearsal rooms at Real World, followed by two weeks of production rehearsal.
Richard plays a kit consisting of a MIDI MalletKat, a MIDI Parker Fly Guitar, Ableton Live and “various other bits and pieces.” He explains how he recently reworked his rig down from a ProTools HD system with two “huge, great desktop computers,” to a MOTU 896 and a single laptop running Ableton Live.
Richard also takes us on a walking tour through the technology labyrinth that is Gabriel’s Real World Studios, including the impressive, non-grotty Big Room. Many thanks to guys at SonicState for documenting this.
For a more detailed look at Peter Gabriel’s secret world of music production, watch the three-part guided video tour at SonicState.com.
Below is a cool interactive music toy created to promote one of the poorest timed record announcement in recent memory.
Michael Jackson: The Stripped Mixes is an interesting collection of remixed early tunes. It’s worth a listen if you are into Michael or early Motown. Unfortunately, Universal chose to do the press announcement less than an hour after the Jackson memorial service at the Staples Center. Perhaps some Universal executive thought this would be somehow be greeted as a tribute, but fans read it as a morbid cash-in. Once again the music industry shoots itself in the foot.
Cooler than the album itself is the little remix machine below. Click on the “Play With It” button, then the “Mix It” button. This takes you to a sweet interface where you can isolate the various tracks. Check out Michael vocals with only a bass backing on “I Want You Back”. Or the percussion and piano on “ABC”. The combinations aren’t endless, but the nostalgic fun is.
It’s great to see pieces like this becoming available to the public. Sure it’s a way to sell the public music they’ve already bought. But as both Stephen Sondheim and Peter Gabriel have said “All they really like is what they know.” And I know I like this.
In the same vein, there is an iPhone app that was recently released allowing fans to remix David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.” Kudos to Virgin/EMI for better timing on this one. It was released to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the moon landing.
