Of Recordings

For when you have guests.

1. Everyone writes down the name of one artist (in secret).

2. Create a new Pandora station from all the listed artists.

3. No song skips!  (Thumbs up are OK.)

Last year Tom at Music Thing (RIP)¹ had a nice bit for 808 day.  Those are big shoes to fill, but I couldn’t let 9.09.09 pass without a mention.

I tried to think of some quotes about the 909 but drew a blank.  The 808 was as common in hip-hop as in techno, while the 909 is exclusively a house and techno machine.  I enjoy listening to hip-hop, but I don’t really feel connected to hip-hop culture.  But I do feel like techno, and electronic music more generally, is part of me, not just something to consume but something to participate in.  Perhaps that why I am so fond of the 909.

Here’s Daft Punk:

Here’s Jeff Mills:

1. RIP to the blog, not to Tom.  As far as I know.

Sorta hard to explain, so just check it out.

MS Paint Adventures is one part webcomic, one part crowd-sourced old school adventure game.  You probably should read/play the current story/game from the beginning.

I know I am late to the party, but I was out in the woods when it happened.

Curiously, the best blogging I read on the subject was written by Ta-Nehisi Coates a week before Jackson’s death:

Mike used to be beautiful. My sister Kelly just knew she was marrying him. And he danced so smooth and easy. I hate to think that what gave him that ability, was the same thing that ruined him.

After you start producing music everything sounds different. I rediscovered his music several years ago and was floored by the arrangement, production, songwriting, everything.  I know some of that credit is due to guys like Quincy Jones and Bruce Swedien, but remember that MJ wrote a lot of his best songs.

If you write, perform, or produce music, you can learn something from Michael Jackson.

This is my favorite MJ video:

I like the suits.  I like the lean.  I like the hottie with the fan.  I even like the cheesy coin flip.  I love the D-50 bassline.*  The staccato delivery is now a staple of modern R&B-- listen to Beyoncé’s “Crazy In Love” for example.

Here is a short history of the moonwalk (HT: The Midnight Man):

*OK, I have no idea what kit they used.  It could be a D-50 though.

5. Korg padKontrol. The bottom left pad occasionally fails to send a note off.  I usually map that pad to the kick drum, which fortunately is not important in electronic music.

4. Faderfox LC2. The channel 4/channel 10/solo button is gummed up.  The other controls just feel so damn nice, making the sticky one even worse in comparison.  It feels like the button might loosen up after pounding on it some more so I am optimistic.

3. M-Audio Keystation Pro. I had to wipe down the keys.  After bangin on low D a few times, it’s no worse for the wear.  One of the knobs is too loose but that predates the coffee.

2. NI Audio Kontrol 1. No noticeable ill effects, although I think this guy was pretty well out of the danger zone.

1. The plank that I put on my keyboard stand to hold my laptop. I just wiped it down and bam, good as new.

1. Live 7 is good.

2. The Faderfox LC2 is really good.

3. A clean install of Windows only seems like a good idea before you do it.

3a. Damn serial numbers and activations.

3b. I am almost ready to kick Buzz to the curb.

3b(i). Emphasis on “almost.”

4. I am working on a new audio software project.

4a. I do not yet know how serious it is.

4b. Boost.Python is a godsend.

If you were curious about the dearth of updates recently, I was preoccupied with travel.  I just completed a move from Norfolk, VA to San Francisco.  For our European readers, that’s about as far as from Brussels to St. Petersburg, except it’s twice as far.

As nooj and I discussed recently, imposing limitations on yourself can paradoxically unlock creativity.  If that’s the case, then I’m about to produce the best music of my life, because this is all the kit I could squeeze into my suitcase:

However, I clearly moved to the right neighborhood: I spotted an HR824 in the back seat of someone’s car today.

Grymmjack made a nifty screencast demoing Mopis alongside Pif Vokoder.  (NSFW language)

If the name seems familiar, you may have seen his GUI work on dozens of popular plug-ins.

Aaron strikes again.

Prosody, the use of tone and timbre to convey meaning in speech.  E.g., rising pitch at the end of sentence is a prosodic cue indicating that the speaker is either asking a question or a valley girl.

This is one of many interesting tidbits I picked up from This Is Your Brain On Music by Daniel Levitin.  On this more later.