The Shape of Song is a Java applet that analyzes and visualizes MIDI files:
The diagrams in The Shape of Song display musical form as a sequence of translucent arches. Each arch connects two repeated, identical passages of a composition. By using repeated passages as signposts, the diagram illustrates the deep structure of the composition.
Pretty cool. I think the server's pretty stressed out right now though, it's going very slowly.
Here's the source for Look and Feel Years Younger (41MB). Post your remixes to the forums or email 'em to me, I'd love to hear them. If I haven't mentioned before, it's pretty weird listening to the source for my old songs. All I can think of are all the things I'd do differently if I was recording it again today, which is probably made worse by being bored with the song altogether. Still, when I hear problems that I could fix now it at least gives me the feeling I've been learning something here and there along the way.
After reading an article about garageband.com selling tons of albums for artists, I decided to give it a whirl. A few weeks ago I submitted Making Me Nervous there. Based on user reviews, it's going to be the track of the day in the Alternative section on July the 14th. Here's the little badge I get to display:
Kinda neat. Guess we'll see what happens on the 14th.
Happy Canada Day everybody (who is Canadian).
A couple of people expressed interested in hearing my electric kazoo when I got it. So here's my 3:45 opus Me Screwing Around With My Kazooka Brand Electric Kazoo and My Boss GT-6 (5MB).
Three more remixes for you all:
Thanks!
I switched Sellout Central to Wordpress a few weeks ago, which was a bit of a rough ride due to the additional challenge I put on myself to not allow myself to break any URLs in the transition. Wordpress is faster and seems to have more features than Movable Type, but also has a lot of "quirks" and, uh, "character" if you want to put it that way. Enough research smooths that out a bit, but it takes a while. Overall I'm pretty happy with it and would like to switch on this site.
The main thing holding me back from that right now is moving the design over. I really don't want to jam this stupid table-based design into the guts of Wordpress and I also really don't want to spend the next six months of my life trying (and failing) to come up with a nice browser-friendly CSS design.
Besides being a totally amazing watch, The Popular Demo is extra cool because they released the tools to make your own demos with the engine. The quality is pretty stunning, I don't think a video made with it and rendered at high quality would be out of place on television. I wish I had the time to try and jam one of my songs in there because that would be super awesome.
Well, that is now in the bag. It was a pretty good experience in that I learned an awful lot since I had 100% no clue about live sound. I got some real helpful advice and a better idea of what the hell the deal is with playing live. Didn't really make me feel like a flawless rock god, but that I guess is what the booze is for.
The first Brad Sucks live rehearsal at a real place where bands play with real PAs and so on is in like two hours from now. Kinda nervous, kinda looking forward to it, I hope it all goes okay. Playing live is what I've been working on lately instead of recording new songs. If all goes well, I'll be able to start playing live shows, stop worrying about translating my songs into live format and start putting down some new material.
Wish me luck!
Joe Taylor points to the Internet Archive's New FreeCache project. For musicians this means a free and easy way to offload the bandwidth of their hosted songs. You just put "http://freecache.org/" in front of your URL and it does its thing. For instance, here's the freecached version of Making Me Nervous.
That is both handy AND dandy.
Engadget shows how to make your own pirate radio station with an ipod. Great, great stuff. Makes me wish I had an iPod.
Pitchformula, by Loren Jan Wilson, is pretty awesome:
This project combines a computer science background and a songwriting hobby with an unhealthy obsession for popular music reviews. In it, I attempt to come up with a new computer-assisted songwriting method which takes music critics' opinions into account. By writing software to statisically analyze the content of several thousand record reviews from the Pitchfork music website (www.pitchforkmedia.com), I generate a set of compositional guidelines based on the musical preferences expressed by the critics. I then use those guidelines to write and record a couple of original songs, discussing in detail the relationships between the songs and the data that I have collected.
The word lists and their values and the songs he made which I do think sound a fair amount like the sort of music the average Pitchfork reviewer would go for.
Here's a batch of new remixes: Borderline (Bill Berry Mix) - Bill Berry, who did a really cool Making Me Nervous cover electrona-fies Borderline.
Borderline (Alike Mix) - A Borderline remix which does funny things to my mind with its rhythm, almost dub/reggae-ish.
Making Me Nervous (Paranoia Remix) - Specialneeds remixes Making Me Nervous, plenty of cool electronic sounds in here.
Thanks! Also I made a listing in the extras section for the source that's currently available.
I've been working away on my one-man live show. Full recorded rehearsal/run-through at a real live venue is this weekend. Hopefully it will go OK and I won't just flat-out die. I've been looking around for a lead instrument I could play with my mouth while playing guitar. I'm no good at harmonica and I wanted something that just gave a simple tone that I could process. I've been trying to make the kazoo work for me with mixed results. It's been a pain trying to set up a decent mic setup.
But today a friend of mine found the Kazooka electric kazoo on eBay:
It's a kazoo with a pickup in it that you can just plug straight into any old guitar pedals or effects processors. You can listen to demos here, it's pretty awesome. I ordered one for $14 and I'm looking forward to getting it. Seems unlikely I'll have it by the weekend though so I'll just have to pretend I guess, pawing sadly at the air where my super awesome kazooka should be.
SexyJosh, who contributed the cool Making Me Nervous cover the other day sends in the Borderline (SexyMix)
Hetesi Peter Pal sent in the Making Me Nervous Cyberpest Mix and the Borderline Cyberpest Mix.
Here's a Quicktime video of famous producer Steve Albini giving a talk to the MTSU Recording Industry Audio Engineers Society. I haven't watched it all yet, but from the intro I think the gist is going to be about running a recording studio and also that digital recording sucks. Update: There's a bit of digital recording sucking in there, but all in all he seems like a pretty balanced guy who prefers analog. Cool video, lots of interesting stuff.
And here's my Borderline (Stutterbug Mix). I'm pretty happy with how this one turned out. It keeps a lot of the original but turns into more or less a whole other song. I think.