View current page
...more recent posts
Another scrupulous music diary entry. The three tracks I last posted begin and end abruptly so they can be looped. "hiphop_guitar" and "darkest_nerk_scanner" are just fragments, but dense enough to be the seeds of longer songs. Eventually more phrases and instruments will be added but I felt like posting them. "free_alpha" is a complete, albeit completely simple song written for a synth called, um, Free Alpha, that came free with a book I bought on softsynths. I think the sound is ear-tickling gorgeous and I plan on experimenting more with it. Another product from the Linplug company that came with the book is the RM F, which is a rhythm sampler/beatbox thing. I was fooling around with it last night, and got it to play the "Miles Sampler Kit" I downloaded a few months ago from humanworkshop in the Netherlands. Someone sampled drum hits and a bass from an old Miles Davis (electric period?) LP and the RM F plays them like a drum kit. What I did wasn't good enough to post but it's another milestone in my learning process. (For some reason it didn't work in Kontakt; I need to try again.) I used the velocity controller in the sequencer to emphasize certain beats during a fade-in, which sounded kind of cool.
UPDATE: OK, I got the Miles Kit fired up in Kontakt (a software sampler) and wrote a little tune for the dead guy to play. I feel like Herbert West, Reanimator--except the tune isn't all that lively.
Miles Kit Experiment [mp3 removed]
UPDATE 2: This is the "free_alpha" bass line with a new lead--a really sweet Sid patch called "inshore":
"Alpha Inshore" [mp3 removed]
Okay, big props to Bill for guest-posting today. Definitely check out that "America heals" video he, I mean I posted on his page. It's funny and all because it's over the top kitsch but it makes me angry because I feel the whole red state response to 9/11 was so orchestrated by the media. (No offense to my friends in those states, I'm speaking of the monkeymass who supported the Iraq war.) 9/11 wasn't a war, it was a terrorist act by individuals, and everybody got all jacked up into Pearl Harbor mode. Pearl Harbor the movie flopped but this made the entertainment industry (including news outlets) quite a few bucks. Dave contrasts that schmaltzy video with Matt Freedman's twin towers pieces I just posted, cheekily suggesting that it's the former, not the latter, that will communicate the agony of the day to the greatest number, but I think the "crusty, unempathetic" New York art world has as much claim on the day--no, more--because they live here and went through it, as opposed to the millions who experienced it vicariously on the boob tube and then went into bombadier mode.
LA Drunk Tank, 1955
--bill schwarz
I'm supposed to be guest-posting for Tom today but he laid down so many rules for his page I kind of don't feel comfortable saying much. I predict much of the action will be on my page where Tom is posting as me, I mean, guest blogging for me in a reciprocal arrangement. Please check out this post-9/11 red state inspirational music video, it's way better than the arty stuff I, I mean, Tom posts. And scroll down to see what Tom, I mean I, and others have to say about it. Abraham Kalashnikov's reading is especially good. --bill schwarz
This song was popular in 1972 (at least on FM, "underground" radio--I was thinking it was Cheech and Chong but it was David Peel). It's all this page has to contribute by way of commenting on what is surely the Most Momentous News Story of Our Age, the passing of you know who:
The Pope Smokes Dope
David Peel and The Lower East Side
Chorus:
The pope smokes dope, God gave him the grass
The pope smokes dope, he likes to smoke in mass
The pope smokes dope, he's a groovy head
The pope smokes dope, the pope smokes dope
(oh yeah! 3x)
*
God is high on mescaline, Satan's high on smack
Popes in Rome get stoned on grass, Jesus freaks are back
Jesus Christ a super-hippie never shoot up junk
Popes in Rome get stoned alone, priests, in church get drunk
(Chorus)
Now Jack 'n' Jill went up the hill, to fetch a pail of water
Jill forgot to take her pill, now she's got a daughter
Taking pills is not a joke for a groovy Pope
Birth control can be a toke of marijuana smoke
(Chorus)
The pope is getting higher (re: higher! higher! - 4x)
(Chorus)
Cha! Cha! Cha!
Two interesting discussions of electronic music:
Kim Cascone on glitch music
Kelefa Sanneh vs Ben Neill on Moby [via NEWSgrist]
Both talk about music as "post-" something--Cascone uses the term "post-digital" and Sanneh/Neill hash out the meaning of Francis Fukuyama's "end of history" in the pop music context. Also, both use the dreaded term "electronica." Yes, it's just shorthand but it still violates a major tenet of Ishkur's Guide (now in version 2.5!):
This quote from Neill is especially good:
...um, Classifications Consortium.
With design superseding art, art appropriates the commercial because otherwise it feels obsolete, and art changes from a product industry to a service industry. Dematerializing, if you will. Is that bad? Is that why we have “the end of music”? I think it’s more because in today’s sensational story-driven world, how can something as mental as “Music” (especially instrumental music, which is nearly impossible to write about and therefore to sell) compete with gang wars between rappers and Michael Jackson’s sex scandals?He's defending Moby as a symptom of something good that almost happened in pop music in the '90s (anonymity, decentralization, no more friggin rock stars). Sanneh is somewhat knowledgeable (but snide) about the "paradigm shift" electronic dance music almost pulled off back then, but is still attached to the "great man" view of history--and the paradigm of newspapers needing stories on said friggin rock stars--and thus gives Moby disproportionate credit (on the up-side of his career) and blame (on the down) as a "shifter."
"hiphop_guitar (fragment)" [mp3 removed]
"free_alpha" [mp3 removed]
“darkest_nerk_scanner” [mp3 removed]
Starting tomorrow, I'll be having a guest blogger. It's Bill Schwarz. That will be taking up most of his time, so I'll be guest blogging over at Schwarz. Be sure to let us know if you can tell the difference.