Here’s one of the songs I made in Fruity Loops. It’s called “Cold Sleep”. Tell me what you think.
Download the MP3 here.
I got the Flash player from this site.
Archive for the 'Music' Category Page 2 of 3
Grand National’s track “By the time I get home” was playing on Triple J yesterday and since then I’ve had a chance to sample some of their older music, which I have to say is really quite listenable. To give you some idea without wanting to sound like a tryhard critic, it’s sort of funky indie rock with occasional jazz elements. Last.fm has a list of similar artists which so far have all been pretty good, too. Check out some Grand National tracks at their Myspace page.
Here’s how it works: you open the Last.fm player and tell it an artist you like. It then plays you similar artists via streaming radio (128kbps MP3). If you listen to at least 50% of the song, it is “scrobbled” which is a silly way of saying “remembered as something you like”. You can also express your love for tracks which as far as I can figure just adds it to your list of loved tracks. Conversely you can also ban tracks so they aren’t played again. Another awesome feature is the Winamp plugin which records the songs you listen to in Winamp and contributes to the scrobbling database. The website even matches you up with other Last.fm users with similar tastes in music!
The software is apparently open source for those worried about what info it actually collects. And yes, there are Linux (source) and Max OS X players too. There’s also an iTunes plugin, and it can even scrobble your iPod’s usage data.
So far, I’ve tried music similar to Hybrid, Massive Attack and Pendulum and have gained an appreciation for some awesome artists I hadn’t heard much of before, including Thom Yorke, Air, Zero 7, Everything but the Girl, Lamb, Layo & Bushwacka, Morcheeba and The Crystal Method. I haven’t let the scrobbler loose on my collection yet because I’m still enjoying all the fresh stuff it keeps dishing out!
There’s only a couple of downsides that I’ve noticed about Last.fm. Firstly, I feel sort of obliged to switch it off if I’m not within earshot for a few minutes so I don’t give false positives. You can still listen with scrobbling turned off though. Secondly, if you skip too many tracks in a row it sometimes runs out of tracks and you have to switch to another station. This is apparently due to radio licensing laws which restrict the number of tracks that are available at any one time. In my opinion these are pretty minor for the benefits you’re getting.
I totally love it! It’s a great way to hear new music, and much better than plain old streaming radio because you can skip tracks you don’t like. They even have widgets you can chuck up on your website/blog! Check out my profile.
Ahh… the fine art of Karaoke. A much loved pastime among Japanese Sararimen after a long hard week at work. Also unfortunately popular as the novelty activity at work Christmas parties. But Karaoke is not immune to the digital revolution. Forget the bars in midtown Tokyo. Forget that dingy room out the back of your local. And forget the alternate video track on your favourite cheesy movie.
Karaoke is reborn. And its new home is YouTube. Surely this is more embarrassing than regular karaoke?
I just discovered one of the major benefits of having a dual-core processor: when I render a song in FL Studio, I can actually continue using my computer! This completely negates the major downside to rendering FL songs so now I have no excuse and can render them all! Hmmwwhahaha!
Congratulations to the Lisa Young Quartet on their album Grace being awarded Best Vocal Album at this year’s Australian Bell Jazz Awards. I know how hard these guys worked on their album so it must be great to receive recognition like this. Well done guys!
On a recent bus trip I was flicking through my MP3 player for something to listen to and stumbled across an album I hadn’t played in ages; Pnau’s Sambanova. Half-way through the track Keep on Truckin’ I suddenly thought “Damn, this is such an awesome song, why don’t I play it more?” I played the whole album and was thoroughly impressed but at the same time a bit ashamed I’d let such a work of pure skill lie dormant in the depths of obscurity for so long.
A few days later, the curiosity was nagging at me and the googling started. I found out some interesting info. Pnau are actually an Aussie dance duo and the original release of Sambanova was pulled from all record stores in 1999 for uncleared samples, only a week before they won the ARIA for Best Dance Release. I also read about their second album, Again which I proceeded to source through the usual channels ;-) It proved rather difficult, the album obviously not that popular but I eventually found a copy. It wasn’t quite what I was expecting but still a mostly decent album.
I have no idea about genres and believe pigeonholing music for the sake of it is an exercise in pure wankology. But at the risk of sounding like a total wankologist, I’m going to propose that Sambanova is probably “electronic funky breaks”. This classification is only necessary to illustrate the difference between the two albums. Again sounds more like “downtempo drum-n-bass”. I feel like a traitor for attempting to label music that simply defies classification, so ignore this whole paragraph and decide for yourself.
I will say that Again is harder to listen to, in the way that Pendulum and The Presets are sometimes hard to listen to. It’s only good in small doses. Sambanova is very easy to listen to in the way that Hybrid (Wide Angle) and Massive Attack are easy to listen to. But you don’t want to overplay it until it’s that annoying background noise you just have to turn off or you’ll go insane. After this whole experience, I can attest that Keep on Truckin’ has made it into my Perfect Song List.
It’s finally arrived! Yesterday I received my *signed copy* of Josh Pyke’s debut album Memories & Dust (pictured). The songs are awesome and overall the album is much more happier sounding than his EP, Feeding the Wolves. My favourite tracks so far are Forever Song and Mannequins, and I find they’re stuck in my head all day and that’s only after a couple of listens. His classic Middle Of the Hill is the only track from the EP to make it to the album, which is how it should be since you don’t buy an album expecting only 5 new songs. And it fits in with the other tracks seamlessly.
I really have to hand it to Josh for just being so damn bloody talented. When I first heard him on Triple J (almost a year ago now) I remembered he clearly stood out amongst some of the crap they play (come on, some of it is truly awful but no ads, so hey…) Initially I was hesitant to jump straight into the deep end with his music, as some of the lyrics seemed a bit too literal, but when I heard the EP I saw the light and was totally hooked. Goldmines blew me away with its catchy acoustic riffs, and overt environmentalism. I’m still not exactly sure what it’s about but it’s trying to make a point, without being preachy or obnoxious which I truly admire. Usually when I’m not sure about an artist or show I’ll give them more airplay until I decide either way. Fortunately, Josh’s music grows on me the more I listen to it then I end up really loving it. The same thing happened with The Presets and Pendulum.
If you’re a fan and don’t have this album yet click over to JB and if you’re quick you might get one of the signed copies while they still have some. I’ve examined the signature in detail and it’s definitely authentic (not printed). I wonder how many he signed, the poor guy!
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