l-dopa

Hold me close now tiny dancer! Pictured above is my very favorite chord, D# major 7th. But if you don’t yet have a favorite major 7th chord, you may want to check out the gorgeous and free Pianochord MacOS X Widget. Combine with the tabulature available from the OGLA and you’ll be fumbling through competently playing that Ben Folds song for that disinterested girl you’re hot for in no time.

UPDATE: Download it again. It’s been bumped to version 2, and now it actually plays the chord and receives MIDI events to get the root. Outstanding!

~jeff

Music Thing is asking a very, very important question: is this the worst music video ever?

Discuss. Include your work. Include counterexamples.

Keep in mind what time of year we’re approaching. I like Chuck Closterman’s writing a lot; also recommended is his candy-like essay compendium of a couple years back entitled “Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs“.

~jeff

Bob Moog died a few months ago while working on a project. The synth world was in a tizzy — would this be Bob’s Eyes Wide Shut?

Well, to all those who have worried and fretted and are named Jeff, this is the answer.

Little Phatty is an analog MIDI synth with glowy blue knobs. I’m not entirely certain how you make analog MIDI, but I understand little enough about it that I can imagine such a thing.

Anyway, it is my sincere hope that Jeff will purchase and love this so much that he’ll give me his keyboard.

Not that I’ve ever heard Jeff use a keyboard for much more than either playing piano or a MIDI controller for something else. But I can hope.

Holy God! You’ve got to see this. Sven König has created some of the coolest music software* I’ve seen in a while. Reminds me a lot of the album “Plexure” by John Oswald, except some of Sven’s output actually sounds somewhat listenable.

~jeff

* HINT: to make YouTube video watchable, click the white rectangle with a dot in it. That will remove the crudly embiggening and show the video at the original resolution it was meant to be shown in**.

** WARNING: Video may contain trace amounts of “You Can’t Touch This”.

Insanely cool (and free!) modulation delay available for download here; combine with the Crystal AU analog synth plug-in we covered here before for some seriously mind-melting “Logan’s Run” style synth-work. Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.

~jeff

from Pitchfork:

…I’m impressed that Pitchfork writers continue to churn out turgid prose such as this excerpt — a music review that casually presupposes general knowledge of geometry and ballistics — even after being called out on their bullshit by David Cross over a year ago. Well played, Pitchforkmedia.com! (slow clap)*

~jeff

* …having said that, Keith Fullerton Whitman’s “Playthroughs” has proven to be a wonderful ambient set for long car rides, and is overall one of the best albums I’ve ever picked up on Pitchfork’s recommendation. So I kid — because I love.

David Icke is a former soccer player who keeps churning out poorly written, even-more-poorly supported, conspiracy theory that’s like Cheese Whiz™ for your soul. David Icke posits such political figures as Al Gore as blood slurping satanists, and claims the reptilian humanoids (yes! lizard people!) who are running this whole planet (again, yes! lizard people!) can be recognized by their clammy hands. David Icke doesn’t believe in margins or proper punctuation, nor does he rely too heavily on anything even remotely approaching logic. David Icke thinks whole civilizations are thriving in the center of the earth, and controlling our every facet of existence.

David Icke has a son.

And David Icke’s son has a rock band.

~S

This is simply glorious.

You know, to some extent, I miss the days of passionate but incompetent fan publication. If you look at early role-playing games, they were total labors of love, created by people without the skills to create them. The passion came through, though. Likewise, the fanzines of days past. A shitty web page just doesn’t have the “labored for hours at my kitchen table” feel.

If anyone here is a fan of Talking Heads, the Holy Grail of obscure Talking Heads songs has now seen the light of day on iTunes. My beaten-up, poor-sounding, cut-off version of the Speaking in Tongues version of The Lady Don’t Mind can now rest in peace.

link.

1). Sam Beam a.k.a. Iron & Wine

2). Will Oldham

3). Devendra Banhart

~jeff

Can I Get An Amen? is an audio installation that unfolds a critical perspective of perhaps the most sampled drum beat in the history of recorded music, the Amen Break. It begins with the pop track Amen Brother by 60’s soul band The Winstons, and traces the transformation of their drum solo from its original context as part of a ‘B’ side vinyl single into its use as a key aural ingredient in contemporary cultural expression. The work attempts to bring into scrutiny the techno-utopian notion that ‘information wants to be free’- it questions its effectiveness as a democratizing agent. This as well as other issues are foregrounded through a history of the Amen Break and its peculiar relationship to current copyright law.

… this comprehensive documentary on this infamous 6-second loop is fascinating to me, as during college in 1998, I created a bunch of fairly popular Mac OS 9 soundsets*; one of which, entitled “Jungle2Jungle” was based entirely around the “Amen Break”. It was cool.

Watch/listen to the video here.

~jeff

* …the most inexplicably popular of which was the Mac OS 9 “Howler Monkey” soundset, which triggered the horrible, horrible sounds of Howler Monkeys every time the user clicked a window or opened a menu. The best feedback I got was an email from a man who lived deep in an actual jungle who doubted the veracity of my howler monkey samples (and rightfully so!) because “he heard howler monkeys… all the time… every day”.

Directions on how to get the really cool and free Crystal analog synth Audio Unit working with your copy of GarageBand 2 or higher:

1. Download the DMG, run the installer.
2. Fire up GarageBand. Create a new project, key of C.
3. Get Info (command-I) on the default track (”Grand Piano”). Click on the little triangle next to “Details” to expose the Generator and the Effects. The “Generator” is the source of the sound, the “Effects” are what post-process the sound — think of them as guitar pedals and you’re not far off.
4. Select “Crystal” as the generator. If you don’t have a USB MIDI keyboard (and really, why don’t you?) turn on “Musical Typing” (command-shift-K) and play that funky sawtooth. Hello, “Logan’s Run”!
5. Now select one of the other 127 totally excellent presets by using the drop down next to the “Crystal” generator drop down.
6. When/if you get bored of those, make your own by clicking the tiny little pencil all the way to the right. Good luck.
7. Save your patch at any time by selecting “Save Instrument”. This will save the generator and any effects you’ve applied.

~jeff

U2 gets on my nerves, and it’s no secret that aside from a song or two — tops — Elvis Costello makes me want to maim. Coldly. Chillingly. Without logic. Without calculation. Without mercy. So why would I like this song? Aside from an ill-conceived bridge section, it’s so hopelessly derivative of those I mentioned, as well as many others that come to mind that I’m lukewarm at best over (Feelies, Long Winters, etc). I’d say it was like the chocolate-and-peanut-butter-together trip, but I like those components both as much if not more so alone. That’s certainly not the case with regard to the aforementioned ingredients.

Anyway, now my sweet tooth is acting up. And with the spoils of valentines day lying about, I’m off to get a treat. So while I inch my way closer to adult onset diabetes and all of its blissful complications that will, god willing, waltz me towards renal failure and eventually throw me from this mortal coil, take a minute to listen to this song and try to figure out why it has infected me so.

Not that I think I need to, but I’ll take this time to remind you that “Because you’re a pussy” isn’t really what I’m looking for.

Wow, we’re having a Super-Mario-themed weekend. Check out what I just taught myself:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

*.

~jeff

*recorded straight to tape using a Yahama P-120 and GarageBand’s “Orchestra Steinway Piano” software instrument patch; which is — in my opinion and not that you asked — one of the best sounding and playing acoustic piano patches every created, if not certainly the best you can find at the “around $100 level”.