Archive for the 'Music' Category

42 down, 2015 to go

Published
by
Austen
on May 19, 2008
in Music
. 0 Comments

Well, I’ve successfully rated 42 songs in my iTunes music library. #42 is “Here Comes the Sun” on Abbey Road by The Beatles. Yes, I’m still on the B’s. And I have like 5 more Beatles albums to go. And I don’t care if I said I would do 30 a day over 2 weeks ago, 42 is a big achievement, ok? I will rate all of my music. Eventually. I promise.

But the really great thing about this, is even though I’m only on the B’s, this is forcing me to listen to all of that music I rejected and always used to skip over, and (surprise!) it’s actually really good music! Who would’ve thought?

For instance, most of the stuff on The Band’s greatest hits album is actually pretty good, in fact… they’re pretty great. Who would’ve thought there’d be such great music on a greatest hits album?????

iTunes: Operation Rate

Published
by
Austen
on May 3, 2008
in Life, Music and Technology
. 0 Comments

I don’t rate my iTunes music as much as I should, partially because I don’t listen to the majority of my music. I’d say that approximately half of my music is (was) rated, and that it’s about that much I have actually listened to. Then, only about a quarter of my library do I actually consider even thinking about listening to on a daily basis.

Then, today, my ratings were lost when iTunes had a hiccup and I had to re-import all of my music. No problem, I just had to tell iTunes where all my files are again. But I lost all my playlists and ratings. (This is like the 10th time this has happened to me, and this time I’ve actually found a backup solution… to use for next time.)

So I am going to re-discover my iTunes music by going down the list and listening to and rating everything in my library. Starting with “Take on Me” by a-ha and ending with “Valerie” by The Zutons. I figure that if I listen to two albums, or approximately 30 songs a day, it will take… 2083/30=69.433333333333333 days.

That’s a little over 2 months, and I won’t do it completely some days so I would give this 2 or 3 months until it’s finished. Of course, in order to make this work I can’t add any new music so I won’t be distracted. So I won’t be done until the end of July. Wow. School’s almost over, yay!

I figured that if I posted this public self-promise on my blog and spent the time photoshopping the picture above I might actually do it. Or maybe not. We’ll see.

Mini Review: Once

Published
by
Austen
on January 29, 2008
in Movies, Music and Reviews
. 3 Comments

If I could sum up Once in only 3 words, I would say: Rent it now.

once.jpg98% on Rotten Tomatoes and me should be reason enough to see it. Yes, I am wholeheartedly recommending this movie because it is amazing. Ok, let’s start from the beginning…

Once is really a modern form of a musical. It works just like a musical, there’s a basic story and songs that interweave with it to further intensify the characters’ emotions. Only this is a super low budget independent film, and instead of showtunes music, it’s - how do I say this - real music that you wouldn’t be afraid to have on your iPod. The actors in the film are actually musicians and the music is theirs.

I don’t want to give too much of the simple story away, but basically: Guy meets girl. Girl has kid from previous marriage. Guy is struggling street musician whose previous girlfriend cheated on him. Guy and Girl record CD together. Not going any farther, it’s a really a great little story with some really great music (be sure to buy the soundtrack after seeing the movie, it’s worth every penny.)

A.O. Scott mentioned in his review of Once that all the glitz and millions of dollars that are poured into movies like Dreamgirls don’t quite equal the heart and soul of Once. (I’m using more mushy words in this review than usual)

So, all in all, if you enjoy music, see Once. If you enjoy movies, see Once. If you enjoy both, well, you should have already seen it. But yeah, see Once. After this review, I have nothing more to do than give Once:

[rating:5]

Bruce Springsteen in concert

Published
by
Austen
on October 21, 2007
in Life and Music
. 5 Comments

I saw Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band in concert Thursday night with my parents. Just for the record, I’m not embarrassed about going with my parents. I just wanna clear that up. To the left is a pic of my dad via his camera phone during the concert. He was pretty happy.

And no, this wasn’t my idea. Of course it was my parents’ idea, and as they would note, their money. They were on the phone at 9:00 AM the day the tickets went on sale, and perhaps by extremely good luck got the tickets for… well, the price wasn’t that bad.

Anyway, it was very good. Everyone in the band looked like they were having the time of their lives - almost as much as the 40,000 people in the audience. It was also very loud. Like, my-mom-had-to-wear-earplugs loud.

And big. I didn’t know that so many people listened to Bruce Springsteen in New York City. Actually, come to think of it, I didn’t know that so many people listened to Bruce Springsteen period. Everyone there seemed to know the songs by heart, and during some songs you could barely hear Bruce singing - the audience was doing it for him.

Here’s the first song from his new album, called “Radio Nowhere.” For some reason this song reminds me of “I Want to Know” by the Mavericks. It’s probably just me though.

[audio:http://www.netsua.com/audio/bruceradio.mp3]

Oh, one last thing, Bruce Springsteen looks really funny when he sings. He’s smiling, but he looks… well, just funny.

[Photo from the LA Times)

Weird Al - You’re Pitiful (music)

Published
by
Austen
on August 24, 2007
in Music
. 3 Comments

This is way old news, but for those of you who haven’t heard this song, you have to. It was supposed to be the first song on Weird Al’s most recent album, Straight Outta Lynwood but James Blunt’s agents stopped Weird Al from making it and it never appeared on the album.

Anyway, it’s been released online for free as an mp3, and it’s a great song!

[audio:http://media.thechrispirilloshow.com/mp3/yourepitiful.mp3]

The Office theme shortened?

Published
by
Austen
on August 17, 2007
in Life, Music and Television
. 1 Comment

So - I woke up this morning, went to the bathroom, got myself a bowl of cereal and sat down on the couch to watch last night’s Office re-run, fresh from 5 months ago… or was it? All was going well until I got to the part where they play The Office theme.

Something was wrong… They cut the theme down from 20 seconds to a mere 4! What used to be a nice montage of clips from The Office had turned into a fast, cut-down collection of notes and four shots of Scranton, Pennsylvania! This is the beginning of the end of The Office theme!

I remember them doing this when My Name is Earl started season 2, but it orinally had a minute-and-a-half entire storyline summarizing the first episode. Here, they’re cutting 15 perfectly fine seconds out of the show… for what? All Office fans know that the show’s theme is an essential part of the experience.

Before it is gone forever, here’s the full-length theme:

[audio:officetheme.mp3]

Hopefully these horrific events won’t continue once Season 4 starts. (Only 40 days!)

John Hiatt - Master of Disaster (music)

Published
by
Austen
on July 7, 2007
in Music
. 0 Comments

We get Paste magazine, which is mostly about independent music and movies. Every issue they have an awesome “Sampler” CD of full-length tracks from new albums. Most of the music isn’t great, but there are a couple of good ones on each CD. “Master of Disaster” by John Hiatt is one of them…

[audio:masterofdisaster.mp3]

It’s a very, very sad song. I love the saxophone solo and the sound of his voice throughout the song. Oh, and thanks to 1 Pixel Out for the audio player plugin.

Dear Sister SNL spoof

Published
by
Austen
on June 16, 2007
in Music, Television and Videos
. 0 Comments

I’m not quite sure what this video is, but when I saw it on my Uncle Bob’s blog I just couldn’t let it up. The video is from SNL, and it parodies this scene from the O.C. second season finale. The music is by Imogen Heap.

I don’t know why this video is so devishly stupid and funny, but it is.

UPDATE: NBC took down their free advertising. Sorry!

Software Review: MusikCube

Published
by
Austen
on May 5, 2007
in Music, Reviews and Technology
. 0 Comments

musikCube is yet another open source music player and organizer. Only with this one it’s all about the basics.

The point of musikCube is to provide a music library organizer and player that’s simple and runs fast. And it really does. Obviously based on the iTunes interface (but what isn’t these days?), musikCube only gives you what you need. The interface is as basic as possible, and very customizable.

Not only that, but musikCube also has a large array of plugins to help extend the functionality of it. But what makes musikCube appeal to me beyond other programs like Songbird and Amarok is how fast it runs. I don’t have a super-fast computer. My computer is over 4 years old, and it’s full of applications that hog all 384 MB of my RAM. This has made running iTunes on it a bit of a hassle, as it degraded the functionality of my other programs.

But when I tried out musikCube my computer didn’t skip a beat. It loaded up, I imported my music, and I started playing music. The difference between the processing power that iTunes take up to this is enough to make me leave iTunes behind altogether. But I can’t, and for two reasons. One, I have almost 200 songs bought from the iTunes Store, and two musikCube doesn’t yet support iPod integration, although it is in the works.

But besides that, musikCube just works. It has a fantastic mini player, support for tagging, EQ, web radio, and even “dynamic” (smart) playlists. And finally, it also has something called “Collected” which is sort of like a place to put your music that you haven’t yet listened to, and aren’t ready to put into your library yet. Sort of like a queue of music.

Before, I could never have Firefox (with multiple tabs,) Photoshop, Gaim and iTunes playing music open all at the same time. But with musikCube, it’s like it isn’t even there. That’s how music should be heard… in the background, not hogging all of your system’s memory.

musikCube is available at musikcube.com as a free 3 MB download for Windows 2000 and XP only. Installation is quick and easy. And you won’t be disappointed.

World’s Largest iTunes Library

Published
by
Austen
on April 22, 2007
in Music
. 0 Comments

Glenn Wolsey has an interview with Will Friedwald, owner of the world’s largest iTunes collection:

849 GB | 172,150 tracks | 809.2 days
2,935 artists | 11,561 albums
iTunes library database file - 282 MB
iTunes library XML file - 259 MB

And about how fast iTunes runs with his massive library…

Essentially the problem is that iTunes was designed for people to buy music from the store, to put CDs on their iPods, and then, perhaps lastly, to store some of a personal CD collection in the library. It was NOT designed for what I am doing with it, which is to store, manage and access a major music collection of nearly 200,000 tracks. As a result, when I am working with the full 800 GB library, it is painfully slow, getting around the library, doing searches, and editing info on individual tracks or whole albums just takes forever!

As an example: when I want to edit the information on an individual song – the “metadata” as technically-minded people call it – I highlight the track, then I press Apple-I. With a small library (under 50-100 GB), the edit info window comes up instantly. But with my 800 GB Matrix, I have to wait three or four minutes before the window comes up. That’s time enough to go to the bathroom, make a cup of coffee, or entertain myself with 99% of the clips on youtube!

It’s a very interesting article, and after reading it, it’s apparent that Will is just a normal guy… with a huge collection of music.

iTunes slower on Windows

Published
by
Austen
on April 20, 2007
in Music and Technology
. 2 Comments

I love iTunes. It’s a great program to manage my music with. It has a great interface, and a beautiful layout. But I have noticed a HUGE difference between its performance on Windows and Mac. Is some of it due to that fact that my computer is 3 almost 4 years old, and that the Mac in question is not even a year old? Maybe.

But I seriously believe that iTunes performs better and faster on a Mac. Is that unfair yes? Is it wrong? Not really. Of course iTunes is faster on a Mac, it’s by Apple and it’s hard to just “convert” a program to another platform. But still, sometimes I wonder what it would be like if iTunes just worked faster, My main problem is scrolling, it’s anything but smooth. And then, when I have a bunch of other programs open, it’s basic functions like playing a stoping songs turn super-slow.

Has anyone else noticed a difference in speed between the Mac and Windows version of iTunes?

EMI will sell DRM-free music on iTunes

Published
by
Austen
on April 3, 2007
in Music and Technology
. 1 Comment

I know that this is a bit old, (a whole day!) but I just want to give my two cents on this little piece of news…

From Cnet:

EMI’s entire digital music catalog will be available in premium DRM-free form via iTunes in May, the music label said Monday at a press conference in London. Beatles tunes under EMI’s control, however, are not part of the plan.

Higher-quality music files, which will play on any computer and any digital-audio player, will not replace the copy-protected EMI music currently sold through iTunes. Rather, they will complement the standard 99-cent iTunes downloads and will be sold at a premium: $1.29 per song.

When I read this, I just though “Good for EMI!” Now that they’ve done it, another major label is sure to follow, and soon it won’t be who’s selling DRM-free music, but who ISN’T. And seriously, I thing that the $1.29 deal is very fair. Sure, all of those 30 cents can add up, but it’s a small price to pay for actually OWNING your music - and it’s in higher quality. This idea is SOOO Apple, and I applaud them (and EMI) for making it work. Hopefully, you’ll be able to upgrade your old music also.

And about The Beatles. Who really cares anymore? People have been speculating about when they’ll be on iTunes for years! And everytime Apple settles something with Apple (heh), it’s like, “oh, now there’s a chance!” but then it doesn’t happen. Most people who want The Beatles already HAVE The Beatles. I mean, do you really think that anyone’s holding out on buying them until they’re on iTunes?

The Strokes

Published
by
Austen
on April 3, 2007
in Life and Music
. 1 Comment

I just obtained via flash drive (Shhh!!!) all 3 albums by The Strokes, plus a couple of their music videos from my brother Alex. (Yes, Alex also bought me Stadium Aradium - although I did ask for it)

So far I’ve only listened to their first album, “Is This It?” in full, but judging from it their music is very good. They’re not the best band EVER, but I found that the subtle harmonies in each song really grow on you every time that you listen to it, so I find myself liking them more and more. I have yet to listen to their newer stuff, but “Is This It?” is a solid first album, in my opinion.

Also, I have not forgotten about your other music suggestions. Mike and Bob, I bought some of The Clash, and Graceland is on my to-do list. I’ll keep you all posted as I discover new music to fill up my iPod with.

Red Hot Chili Peppers - Stadium Arcadium

Published
by
Austen
on February 22, 2007
in Life and Music
. 6 Comments

I think I’m going to have to revise my Top 5 CDs of All-Time list, because this is seriously the best album ever. Weird Al is out, and Stadium Arcadium is #1!!! But really, I got the album for Christmas (sorta) from Alex, and it’s just plain awesome - doubly, because it’s a 2-disc album.

There are so many good songs on this album! And they’re not all the same - it explores a wide range of music, from alternative to hip-hop. I highly recommend that everyone who reads this checks it out, because it’s simply just great.

Here are some of my favorite tracks from the album:

  • Dani California (Won 3 Grammys)
  • Snow (Hey Oh) (The most popular Chili Pepper song on iTunes)
  • Stadium Arcadium
  • Slow Cheetah
  • Especially in Michigan (This one isn’t even a single!)
  • Wet Sand (My favorite one, the guitar solo at the end is AWESOME)
  • Desecration Smile
  • Tell Me Baby
  • 21st Century

That’s about a third of the 28-song album, and those are only the REALLY good songs! So get it now from Amazon!

I actually heard a song on this album (Especially in Michigan) on Last.fm which is what ultimately pushed me to get it, so thanks a lot!

iJigg - the digg of music

Published
by
Austen
on February 10, 2007
in Music
. 0 Comments

I just found iJigg on Download Squad, and it’s really a great idea.

It’s like Digg, the popluar technology news site - but instead of users choosing what stories are displayed on the front page by “digging” them, they’re doing it by “jigging” music. There’s very little on there now, and of course the music is all independent, but the things that I’ve listened to in their little (embedable) flash player are really quite good. I hope that this takes off, as it’s a great idea, and a great way to discover (good) new music.