Category Archives: Music

Music

We’re big on myspace: The Public Betas

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Ok, so Tom was around today and helped finish a second song for the Public Betas. Also gave me the motivation to fix the bridge on the other song and now they’re both up on the band’s myspace page. Sorry if it sounds a bit amateurish – a professional musician/sound engineer I’m not. But it’s fun, and hopefully funny. You can listen to the first two songs – the Firefox Love Song and Transparent Emotion (the Google Talk Presence Information Song) on Myspace.

The band is me (all instruments and some vocals), Tom and Chris (songwriting expertise and geek knowledge), Mazmo (vocals on the Firefox love song and hopefully more in the future) and Pob has helped out (general whiz on all production and musical things ever). Mazmo and Pob are The Minutes Music, so you should check that out — they sound well good.

Enjoy! And add us as friends on myspace if you’re that way inclined! Chris, we need to work on music videos. Think: youtube sensation.

Music, Writing

The bearable meaning of song lyrics

When I was fourteen, and the Weezer blue album was new, I remember having a conversation with my Dad. “Daddy,” I said, “when they sing: ‘I write these stupid words/And I love everyone’, do you think they mean they love every one, as in everybody, or every one of these stupid words?”

It was a question of some importance to me. And my Dad said “You know, Armand, I really don’t care.” It wasn’t an insensitive statement — he just didn’t understand why I was curious. I can’t remember if I was upset or not at the time; I suspect not, but rather just wrote it off as a generational thing.

And at various points over the last few years, I’ve lost my curiousity over things like that, and have been worried that I’ve fallen up a generation. But for the last few months, I’ve been curious again. Maybe it’s just that I’m doing more writing at the moment, of song lyrics, the novel etc. But it’s nice to think idly about these things again, as they flit in and out of the pile of things that matter to me. And its a big pile.

Music

Music deconstruction

Writing a bit more music lately has had me dissembling the music I listen to in my head. I used to be good at this – when I spent a bit more time with my guitars, back in the day, I could isolate a track and work out the chords/bass lines were with some success (for songs of a certain (low) level of complexity). These days, have somewhat lost the knack but thinking in terms of multi-track recording is helping. At any rate, it’s adding a layer of enjoyment to my appreciation of it all.

Although I still don’t listen to the lyrics well enough to sing along, but that is probably a good thing…!

Music, Personal

The Melangogost

Sigh. Still a lot of life-admin to do. Some part of me was feeling so positive about this evening that I thought I’d come back and write half a dozen songs for The Public Betas. Needless to say, I haven’t, but rather had a pleasant evening of cooking and online grocery shopping with Monkey Sister. Which has been nice – am resolved to be less anti-social, acknowledge that I’ll never manage to read the whole internet, and spend more time with people. Which, methinks, is a good amibition.

That said, I do have a few things I’d like to blog about, and think I might do a kind of melange blog post. A melangogost, if you will. And even if you won’t. The things are:

New music (to me, anyway): listening to [[Gotan Project]] (thanks Nick), [[The Fratellis]], Athelete and more. Getting into my Indie a little (INDIE), but still looking for new recommendations. Tell me of more of these, how do you call them, bands? Also listening to The Minutes Music, which I do quite like even though they are my friends… ;)

New outlook: the whole turning 26 thing shouldn’t have mattered. But I no longer think of myself as ‘yoof’, really, as the last vestige of that fell away when I ceased to be entitled to a YP travel card. So I’ve made a list of things I want to achieve; big, difficult things that I really, really need to do to make my life more… exciting. Will keep you posted. The list currently stands at:

    travel (have holidays to Havana and Edinburgh booked, which is something)
    write novel (erm, slow progress)
    band/music (well, I have a myspace page),
    get fit (more on that soon…)
    get driving license (have established I’m entitled to swap my Malaysian license for a UK one, I just need to order the form off the non-functional DVLA site)
    buy house (nope, no chance)
    get famous (erm, stranger things have happened?)
    get rich (erm, again?)

New path: I have, for no particular reason, started to be quite interested in Ninja stuff. Well, there is a reason; it’s this website. It’s unbelievably funny. It confirms my belief that little is funnier than ninjas or pirates (Guybrush Threepwood AND Johnny Depp are testament to that truth). Much as I’d like to follow the path of a pirate, I think using my newly purchased sword (oh yes), I can make better use of time by learning the way of (some form of martial art). My sister’s bloke, the Keeper of the Goat, might agree to show me some useful sword forms. He’s an Aikido master and I think has a grade three belt in grass intimidation (ok, not my joke, which you’ll note if you watch the askaninja videos…).

New season: Winter is annoying me. I mean to kick its ass this year.

New puns: ‘oyster moment’… it was touch and go. My Monkey Sister is a genius.

And that’s it for now. I’m going to go practice some sword forms… and then maybe do a little composing for The Public Betas. Wish me luck!

Update: Managed to both learn some sword forms and write some music tonight (although the sword forms need work, and the music sounds a little too much like the Smashing Pumpkins…) — still, a start!

Music, Technology

Hi Fi indie house

I’ve done two things lately: first, got a bit carried away on eBay and used some knowledge (and hi-fi prejudices) acquired from time spent with my father when I was younger to get a new (2nd hand) sound system. B&W 601 series 2 speakers matched with a Cambridge Audio A300 amp has got me some sweeeeeeet, awesome value bi-wired sound. Works well for the music recording too, but note for all wannabe rockstars: the A300 doesn’t have a headphones output (!!) so to monitor recording you’ll need to split the signal coming out of your soundcard and run the sound through headphones there. Or find some similar solution.

The thing that’s probably more interesting is the music I’ve been playing through it lately. I had a pretty hard-rockin’ 90s. Not death metal or anything – but lots of G&R, Nirvana, the Foo Fighters, Weezer, Metallica, Ugly Kid Joe etc… Hard rockin’. Recently I’ve been acquiring a taste for more indie music… partly influence of some of the people I’ve been hanging out with (like Chris and Tom) but also was pointed to Athlete by Mazmo and have pretty much been listening to their album on repeat for a week now, as you’ll see if you check out my Last.fm page. I’m enjoying the music (Athelete are chilled, catchy, singalongtoable). I am slightly worried that by the 2010’s I’ll be onto folk music, and by 2020 I’ll be listening to Mongolian throat singing. My hard-rockin’ ness is degrading…

;-)

Also really getting into Gorrilaz. I need more exposure to music generally, I think. At school, we used to visit each other with a stack of CDs and go ‘listen to this’… and so got a lot recommendations on a lot of new music. A similar thing happened at Uni with MP3s… but more recently this has subsided somewhat. Ah well – am signed up to an Indie night next weekend so hopefully get some new recommendations then (might need to use Shazam a little…).

In the meantime, if you think of anything I should listen to let me know in the comments. Some further useful indications of my musical tastes from Last.fm – but be warned – a couple of occasions when I left iTunes playing on random has somewhat messed with my history there**.

** also my excuse for listening to any really awful music. I’m sure I don’t own the Hanson album. I can’t do. Can I?

Music

Remastering in progress

For those of you anxiously awaiting ‘The Firefox Love Song’, it is currently being re-engineered and recorded. Pob liked the song when he came around to help tweak it, and has decided that it has to be re-recorded from scratch to get it sounding really good. He’s promised we’ll retain some creative control, though, which is clearly important ;).

Mazmo had even come around to record the vocals! But think we’ll persuade her to do it again when Pob’s laid down a better version of the audio… (I’m hoping to get to play at least one guitar on the remastered version, but we’ll see)… In any event, it looks like the credits list on the Public Betas’ first single is growing ;).

We’ll keep you posted. If enough people comment insisting to hear the demo (let’s call that number 15 so it is quantifiable ;)) then I’ll stick it up.

For those waiting for the novel – sorry. I’ve been distracted. It is being worked on…

Internet, Music, Software

The Public Betas

The studio post public betas recording session Yesterday I initiated a new concept for Saturday night entertainment (well, new for me anyway) – Chris and Tom came around for a few beers and some collaborative creative development.

What, prithee (underused word), is collaborative creative development? Well, apparently its when friends sit around drinking and discussing ideas for, in this case, a song. Chris and Tom being some of the erm, more technologically literate of my friends, this ended up having a moment of epiphany involving Family Guy, and open-source internet browsing. And so the Public Betas were born.

I’ll upload the output once we’re done with the post-production work (and possibly after I’ve found someone else willing to record the vocals), and Chris is working on the music video and myspace page. ‘The FireFox love song’ – coming soon to all good record stores…

We’ll be an internet sensation any minute now.

It was a very entertaining (and different) evening. The latter portion of the evening, once my fingers were too sore to pick up another guitar and we’d lost interest in the song, was spent looking up cool stuff on YouTube, the whys of the mentos/diet coke reaction, and discussing why the ‘sudo make me a sandwich’ webcomic is funny. It was entertaining…

Music, Personal, Technology

Psychic iPod

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Ok, ok, so maybe I’m just still a little excited about the iPod. After all, it is all sleek, glossy lines, a drop of shiny black heaven with a light (so bright) that brings warmth to even the darkest soul; it’s filled with glorious, glorious music and, well, the interface works so well. (I know, that last bit didn’t fit with the tone of the rest of my description, but hey, I’ve always valued form and function).

But the music its been playing for me — it’s like its sensed my mood and picked, from 12,000 songs currently on it, exactly what I needed to hear.

Today that was 80s rock ballads — including the ever emotional ‘The Touch’, by Stan Bush, made famous by the Transformers movie. Ah, Optimus: you were too young to die.

’tis funny how the music you need to hear has a way of finding you. I’ve found that. That is to say, I’ve found that music has a way of finding me. Even when I’m not looking.

I’m in a very weird, purposeless mood.

Music, Technology

Happiness is a full iPod

I’ve just expanded my MP3 player family with an iPod video 60GB and am extraordinarily pleased with it. Selecting the 4GB of music for my Nano has been slightly tedious, and whilst I still love the Nano — it is great to have the chunkier iPod with all of my music on it.

For longtime readers, I still maintain my principles against Apple: the lack of functionality of the iPod compared with other MP3 players is annoying — why can it *only* deal with Quicktime video? Why can’t it play back other file types? Why can’t it record audio? Why doesn’t it have an FM radio built in? Why doesn’t it… etc.

The answer, in almost every case, is to help Apple make more money by selling own-brand accessories. Clever business model – but annoying for me. Made even moreso by the fact that no-one has, as yet, come up with an MP3 player that competes with the iPod on sleekness and interface.

Come on, you guys!!

Be interested to see what Zune looks like when it comes out, although I’m anticipating that the first generation of ‘full screen’ video portable entertainment hubs is going to be mediocre as hell. We’ll see…