Monday March 31, 2008

Loudness war and perfect pitch

So, it's not my imagination - music is getting worse. I found this article from IEEE on how the amplitude of music is going up on one of my friend's blogs and found it truly fascinating. I had heard that this was getting worse, due to the way MP3 compression worked - but this article was enlightening! It seems that MP3 compression has improved enough where loss of quality is no longer as necessary, but that "louder" music attracts more attention - so that's what the sound engineers are going for.  What this really means is that my wacky friends that insist music sounds better on vinyl are right.

There was a follow on article that blew my mind - it covers pitch correcting software used in more than 90% of recordings today. I find this shocking, because I consider part of being a good singer to have a good sense of pitch. It's hard, I know - I've heard some recordings of myself where I'm learning a new song where clearly my sense of pitch at that moment was... a little off. This just seems to me too much like cheating.  How do we really know what we are listening to?  Clearly, I'll have to continue to go  see live theater if I want to see the real thing.  The second article is "multi-media" so you can actually hear the pitch corrections as they are applied.

Speaking of live theater, rehearsals for ATC's Best Little W****house in Texas are going exceedingly well. We did our first run through this week. Yes, still lots to polish, but we're really getting there!

Tuesday October 30, 2007

Bridge School Benefit

I made it to my first Bridge School Benefit concert this past Sunday.  Performing on the 28th were Regina Spektor, Tegan & Sara, My Morning Jacket, John Mayer, Tom Waits & Kronus Quartet, Jerry Lee Lewis, Neil Young & Metallica. *whew* It was quite an incredible lineup, and with the exception of Metallica, I was quite impressed with how quickly each performer set up & tore down to keep the show moving. All sets were acoustic.  I had never heard of Regina Spektor before the concert, but I was very impressed with her music - I'll have to get one of her albums.

Maybe I'm just too easy, but I loved Tegan & Sara, too. I had only heard their one big song before, and was impressed with the rest of their material. I also hadn't known before the show that they were twins. Pretty neat.

Tom Waits with the Kronus Quartet had to be the best performance of the evening.  The energy was amazing, the crowd was thrilled, he sang new songs and old songs and didn't hold back at all.  I particularly liked his performance of The Day After Tomorrow.  His energy and connection to the audience was just amazing.

It was quite an honor to see THE Jerry Lee Lewis perform as well. He did all of his big hits; Roll Over Beethoven, Sweet Little 16, Good Golly Miss Molly, and Great Balls of fire and a few more.  We got to dance to Jerry Lee Lewis live - wow, truly a once in a lifetime experience.

I feel asleep during Neil Young.  I swear, most of his 35 minute set was one song (and my friends, who did not sleep, agreed).  I like Neil Young, he was just a bit too mellow for me live.

And then there was Metallica... oh, sweet, Metallica, what are you doing?  First of all, it took them at least 40-45 minutes to set up (other bands did tear down & set up in 15 minutes), then their roadies came out and did sound checks for at least 10 minutes - conflicting horrendously with the music the amphitheater was playing to entertain us during the break.  If I never hear a monotonous "Hey, Hey, Hey" again, it will be too soon.

I love Metallica. I saw them the first time in the 80s on their Justice For All tour.  I have most of their albums, I used to play many of the Black Album tracks on my bass guitar.  I was just really annoyed with the long delay and annoying roadies, so I started in a bad mood. For some reason, they chose to do mostly covers - which is alright, but covering Rare Earth? That was a bizarre choice.  It got better, as they moved onto Nazareth covers and finally into Metallica songs.  I'm not sure why they did so many covers, when it was much more interesting to hear Metallica songs done acoustically  (and in one case, a completely new arrangement).  I think this was my 5th or 6th time seeing them in concert, and I guess I just wanted more Metallica. Once they got to playing, and playing their own stuff, they ROCKED.

It was a great day out - I love being in the lawn for these types of concerts. Much more freedom for dancing, walking around, and just hanging out.

Friday January 20, 2006

Time flies when you've got good music I've been reintegrating myself back into the Solaris Security community over the last couple of weeks, and doing a bit of traveling. (note: Canada is very cold in January).  I'm working on writing up some stuff for how-to on the crypto framework, and considering doing a submission for our internal tech conference in May.

Today I've been listening over & over again to the Dogs Die In Hot Cars debut album "Please Describe Yourself".  The songs are incredibly catchy - I'm already humming along (thank goodness I have the door shut).  "I Love You 'Cause I Have To" and "Celebrity Sanctum" are very fun.  The bands website claims they are indescribable, saying they were influenced by Nirvana & Red Hot Chili Peppers.  Well, they don't sound a thing like those other bands, but are incredibly reminscient of XTC with their melodic harmonies & bright guitar.

Yesterday's CD of choice was the soundtrack to SPAMalot. Wow - what fun!  The is different than when I saw the show in 2004 in Chicago (before it "premiered" on Broadway), but every bit as enjoyable.  I love all of the Diva songs - especially "The Song That Goes Like This".

I'm coming to the realization that my CD collection has reached well beyond the limits of what I can actually reasonably listen to.  I'm constantly finding CDs on my shelf that I totally forgot I had purchased.  It might be time to go more portable and get an MP3 Player.  Of course, realizing how I can be quite lazy, I think I'd need to go for a very large MP3 player so I can hold most of my CDs.  This may be a time consuming process, but will let me experience some old favorites like Carter the USM, Front242, Ministry, Shawn Colvin & Annie Lennox, that are currently gathering dust.

Of course, that would mean getting a decent home computer to drive the ripping... hmmm, this is getting expensive. For now I'll just keep rotating my CDs at the office :-)

Thursday September 15, 2005

Oasis - and what's wrong with Liam?!?! I know - I keep promising to blog more often, but Update 1 is keeping me INCREDIBLY busy! What a release - this will really be phenomenal when it comes out, if I do say so myself :-)

I ventured to Mountain View's Shoreline Ampitheater again last Sunday, Sept 11th, to catch Kasabian, Jet & Oasis.  The one strange thing about the entire concert was the complete lack of mention by any of the performers that it was such a solemn anniversary. In fact, the only mention of the US by any of the performers was an insult by Noel of Oasis.

Kasabian had a *lot* more energy this time, and their stage presence was greatly improved since the last time I saw them. Still, they have room to grow, but there was a lot more connection to the audience.

Jet's psychedelic "thinly disguised phallic symbol" backdrop was interesting, to say the least.  Their lighting and high energy made for a really fun set.  We were up dancing for more than just a bit :-)

Now the headliner, Oasis.  I've just recently started getting into their music, and Liam claims that not only are they bigger than the Beatles, but now they are even more important than Elvis. Huh?!?!  Their lighting consisted of what looked like Christmas lights strewn over their various amplifiers and hanging from the flies, flashing red & blue lights with white spotlights that were rereminiscentf being pulled over by a police officer, and some pale muted amber lights.  Liam stood in one position (which looked incredibly uncomfortable - legs straight, bent at the waist towards the too low microphone with his head crooked up, thumbs through his beltloops) the ENTIRE set, only moving when it was his brothers turn to sing (when he left the stage entirely).  The music was great, but there was zero interaction with the audience or even with each other, leaving much to be desired.

Well, I'd better run back to my never ending inbox.
(2005-09-15 11:08:29.0) Permalink Comments [3]

Sunday August 21, 2005

Coldplay was incredible! Ok, so I've been out of town almost this entire summer, but... I did make it back to Mountain View to catch Coldplay on Friday.

The show was supposed to start at 7PM, but Janet & I sat in the cold until the opening act, Black Mountain, came on about 7:40PM.  They were ok, getting better as they went on, but surprisingly went on for almost a full hour.  Ok - we were ready to see Coldplay... waiting... waiting.... waiting ... more than an hour later, the band finally came on!

Coldplay was incredible - doing all of my favorite songs from each album, spicing up the lyrics with references to San Francisco and our major landmarks.  Their rendition of the "Scientist" was amazing - Chris Martin sped up the ending to seemingly impossible speeds.  He even managed to work in lyrics from Depeche Mode's "Somebody" later in another song.  At one point, he came out to the middle of the audience to sing just a *bit* closer to us all.

All we could say as we walked away was "Wow."  It was a phenomenal show - they really are better live than they are recorded.

Sorry it's been so long since my last update - I did a lot of traveling (favorite city just visited is a tie between Amsterdam, Holland and Bruges, Belgium).  I even managed to make it to DefCon in Las Vegas for about 12 hours - it was intense, as always.

So much has happened since my last post!  OpenSolaris - now that's very cool.  More on that later!
(2005-08-21 21:34:32.0) Permalink Comments [1]

Monday June 13, 2005

Could I be the next Jerry Springer? and other events from Live105's BFD Last Friday was Live105's  BFD music festival. What a phenomenal day!  We got there a bit late after a late lunch, just catching the sounds of Tegan & Sara as we approached the ampitheater.  We spent a long time in the Sun enjoying Ash, Hot Hot Heat, the Kaiser Chiefs and many other small bands on the True Music Stage.  My most annoying and disappointing act was The Bravery.  They have one "hit" on the radio which is a completely different sound than the rest of their music.  Appearing again at a Live105 event was the incredible rap sensation Lyric's Born, this time with a full live band and a more appreciative live audience - the resulting effect was an incredible 30 minutes of bliss.  I was also most impressed with Sleater Kinney, though disappointed at their lack of a bassist (as a sometimes bass player, I have a softspot for people who can master the instrument)

After wandering out of the True Music stage area, we were checking out some booths and found a few reps from the Jerry Springer show, apparently running a contest for "be Jerry for a day".  After a couple of beers, it seemed like a good idea to audition and sign my life away on the FIVE pages of disclosures.  The audition was relatively easy for me, as I've done so much theater, but I was not as quick on my feet as normal at making up lyrics to songs (which is what we were asked to do).  So... I instead started singing Violent Femme's Add It Up... and my audition was stopped.  All the same, snippets of my audition may appear in commercials for Jerry Springer, as I also made fun of people from Indiana (where I am from).

The main stage was even better, although I was disappointed with Kasabian's low energy start, Jimmy Eat World stepped up and put on a great show.  Things just improved from there, with one of my all time favorite bands, Social Distortion coming out and rocking HARD.  I've been fans of these guys for more than 10 years, and they are just amazing live now as they were years ago.  Amazing rifs, guitar solos in all the right places and  great lyrics.  Wow!

I thought Social Distortion's performance would be hard to beat, but Dave Grohl & the Foo Fighter's took it up a notch and did not disappoint.  Full energy, full throttle, all the way.  These guys rock harder in person than they do on any of their radio edits.  Incredible!  Dave Grohl even did a "jam session" which took him wandering through the pavilion, drinking other people's beers.  Later, Dave mentioned they were going to do something they'd never done before, then put their drummer on the microphone.  I first suspected that they were going to just swap instruments, since it's well known Grohl is an amazing drummer, but again Foo Fighter's surprised us.  They brought out a very good friend to be a guest drummer: Stuart Copeland of the Police!  Wow! They did "Next to You" and it was incredible.  Copelands beats rocked just as hard as any of the punk bands I'd watched that day, yet he did it in such a subtle manner. A small flick of the wrist, barely perceptible, and the beats were hard and fast paced. Impressive!  It will be hard for next year to top this. Wow!
(2005-06-13 15:08:39.0) Permalink Comments [3]

Tuesday December 14, 2004

Not So Silent Night Made it to Live 105's Not So Silent Night this year (finally!) on Friday night. Show was great! We missed the local band and Taking Back Sunday, but got there in time to catch a great set from Muse. The Killers had some serious sound issues - it was all kick drum! They sounded much better from outside than they did inside the pavilion - I couldn't stand listening to them, even with my ear plugs in. Franz Ferdinand was outstanding - very high energy. There was an amazing impromptu set from Lyrics Born - it's always very impressive when a rapper manages to sound better live than they do produced. Modest Mouse was disappointing. MM just couldn't get their act together - huge delays between each song, dragging the show to a halt. I would've loved to have heard some of their less mainstream stuff, but they didn't seem to get to it before I got bored and left.

Now I've just got to wade through the thousands of new email messages I have - and that's just at work!
(2004-12-14 11:48:39.0) Permalink Comments [0]