brainstorms

Thursday June 08, 2006

random 10 [meme]

A Ballad	Stan Getz [The Artistry Of Stan Getz, The Best Of The Verve Years]
Logos Part One (B)	Tangerine Dream [Dream Sequence - The Best Of Tangerine Dream]
Just To Hold My Hand	Big Boy Myles [Creole Kings Of New Orleans]
Sitting On Top Of The World	Howlin' Wolf [Chess Blues 1954-1960]
Jeep's Blues	Duke Ellington [Ellington At Newport 1956]
Moustahil	Natacha Atlas [Halim]
Who You Fighting For?	UB40 [Who You Fighting For?]
La Chute	Yann Tiersen [Le Phare]
La mamma morta	Maria Callas [A Night at the Opera]
See Ruby Fall	Johnny Cash [The Essential Johnny Cash 1955-1983]

Wednesday May 03, 2006

caught between...

shuffle served up brian eno's caught between from his latest another day on earth. [i could not recognize it right away; for a while i thought i was listening to an early pink floyd track long forgotten...]

Reaching out
To still the sand
No light connects
The breaking moments
Drifting to another shore
There's nothing here
That I could change at all
Nothing at all

Sunday April 02, 2006

random 10 [meme]

this random 10 courtesy of a python script to parse through my itunes library xml, and random's sample(population, k) function. guts of the script:

... lib = minidom.parse(args[0]) topdicts = lib.getElementsByTagName("dict") songlist = topdicts[1].getElementsByTagName("dict") samplelist = sample(songlist, 10); for song in samplelist: ... pull out name, artist, album etc ... format into a table

Rouge	Miles Davis [The Complete Birth Of The Cool]
From The Heart	Johnny Adams [Jockomo Jockomo - The Sound Of New Orleans R&B]
The Lovely Sweet Banks Of The Moy	The Chieftains [Water From The Well]
Queremos Paz	Gotan Project [La Revancha Del Tango]
Thanks A Lot	Johnny Cash [The Essential Johnny Cash 1955-1983]
Fishin' Blues	Taj Mahal [The Best Of Taj Mahal]
Eh, Petite Fille	Clifton Chenier [Alligator Stomp - Cajun Zydeco Classics]
O Fortuna	Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra Conducted by Riccardo Chailly [Carmina Burana]
N'est-ce plus ma main	Roberto Alanga And Angela Gheorghiu [Duets and Arias]
Monochrome	Yann Tiersen [Le Phare]

Monday March 13, 2006

waterfront ...

my shuffle finds another heart-tripping john lee hooker masterpiece i had not heard in years: i cover the waterfront

I cover
the waterfront
watchin'
the ships go by

I could see
everyone's baby,
but I couldn't see mine

I cover
the waterfront

I could see
them meeting their loved one
shakin' hands and laughin', talkin'
with their loved one

I couldn't see mine.

I still cover
the waterfront

a little girl
walked over to me
said o johnny
I said yea

so personally
and so long
coverin' this waterfront

I looked around
and to her face
I said I'll be here
till my baby come down.

...

[i have no idea where the various online lyrics for this song came from; they are quite different than what hooker is singing. this is a part of my transcription of the version included in the ultimate collection 1948-1990. corrections welcomed]

Sunday February 19, 2006

random 10 [meme]

meme seen in geoff's blog. 10 random selections from my music library, courtesy of itunes.

Bottomliners	Brian Eno [ Another Day On Earth]
Aubade: Vive amour qui reve	Angela Gheorghiu [Arias]
Symphony 25 IV. Allegro	Mozart [ The Late Symphonies]
Bizim Eller	Hasan Cihat Orter [ Anatolian Folk Music]
Deacon's Hop	Big Jay McNeely & Band [ Blues Masters 5: Jump Blues Classics]
Sol De Maiz	Illapu [Music Of The Andes]
Mademoiselle D'Gascony	Wynton Marsalis Septet [The Marciac Suite]
One For Mort	Booker Ervin [Jazz With Prestige]
Como Olvidar	Placido Domingo [ 100 years of Mariachi]
Going Back To New Orleans	Joe Liggins & Honey Drippers [ Creole Kings Of New Orleans]

[updated links. i only buy rip-able cds.]

Thursday September 15, 2005

just the beat

it is just the beat.
the fancy chords don't mean nothin'
if you ain't got that beat;
throw them fancy chords away.
get this slow beat.

john lee hooker, teaching the blues [another hooker gem re-discovered through ipod shuffle]

bryan has the beat.
yea.

[thanks to anonymous, fixed spelling of chord]

Monday September 12, 2005

wolfram tones [bingley bingley beep]

ah, those splendid yet boring sounds of cellular automata. wolframtones is an experiment in a supposed new kind of music. pretty interface, but i do not know what to make of the results; thus far everything that has been generated for me from wolfram's computational universe [tm] sounds remarkably similar to the music i had heard during mid-eighties from various energetic computer music experiments at york university and ryerson. [i spent quite a bit of time listening to those experiments in stochastic music - i was in computer science and also an electronic music dj for radio york] so far as i can tell, the only thing that is different from what i heard in the past is the level of aggrandizement. [this is new kind of science and new kind of music. see faqs]

related listening: oscar sala, elektronische impressionen [i do not know if any of sala's works have been issued in cd form. i have this as an lp]

[wolframtones noise and this new kind of science stuff reminds me of the great mark twain quote: Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid.]

Wednesday September 07, 2005

375 that's my number...

from clive thompson's [blog] the snobbery of ipods, part 3, a neat statistic:

Q: how many songs does a digital music player contain on the average?
A: 375.

[it turns out 50% of players hold less than 100 songs. given apple's 53% share of the market, that may mean a lot of people are using 512 meg shuffles]

[musical suggestion: toots and maytals, 54-46, that's my number, in roots of reggae, 1991]

Friday September 02, 2005

customer is always wrong

EFF's new The Customer Is Always Wrong: A User's Guide to DRM in Online Music is an interesting read.

Imagine if Tower Records sold you a CD, but then, a few months later, knocked on your door and replaced the CD with one that you can't play in your car. Would you still feel like you "owned" the CD?

i do not buy music from online music stores for obvious reasons; i would however consider buying music from magnatune. they are not evil. [blog]

sum, ergo cogito.

[i am, therefore i think borrowed from shermer's skeptics society.]

Wednesday August 31, 2005

tunelessness in itunes

foiled again. i can load up my ipods directly from a mac in my home lab hosting a music library of several hundred CDs, but if that library is shared to our ibooks upstairs, no loads: shuffle playlist does not show the shared library, nor is it possible to drag-drop. [ok, so i can drag my ipod downstairs to the lab and drop it onto the library cradle.]

itunes will pass. music will remain.

Thursday August 11, 2005

itunes with freedb...

pinky, are you pondering what i am pondering?
narf, i think so brain, but how could i get itunes to work with freedb and still help you conquer the world?

i find the current itunes cddb customer lock repulsive but not unexpected from apple. also in keeping with this mode of business, gracenote (what a whopping misnomer) has dropped support for the original cddb1 protocol, which freedb also uses, and switched to a proprietary protocol. so the current dns workaround to use freedb instead of cddb no longer works. [interesting note from feurio about cddb2. also description and reference implementation of an alternative: compact disk metadata protocol]

i will be blunt. i never liked itunes. every passing day, i like it less, and wish for its eventual irrelevance like safari.

[addendum: geoff wondered if i am a mac user. my daily laptop is an ibook; all my photography and graphic work goes through macs. [see here and here for some notes] on the other hand, all software development is done on solaris, freebsd or netbsd, and sometimes on suse. i would disagree about browsers, but that will have to wait for another entry.]

Monday June 27, 2005

to shuffle and discover...

i have now been shuffling for a couple of weeks. with a fairly large music library [now halfway re-ripped into mp3, all aac moved into trash - i am opposed to all proprietary and lock-in formats] shuffling has one major benefit i did not think much about:

[re]discovery.

deacon john
deacon john
pray for me.
i don't believe
i don't believe
in no heaven
i don't believe
in no hell
when i die
where i go
nobody know
no no
hey hey

john lee hooker, burning hell [from the ultimate collection 1948-1990]... i had not heard this one for years. what a joy to rediscover it.

his intensity brings tears to my eyes.

Wednesday December 08, 2004

analog sound...

finally restored my technics sl-b2k turntable to perfect working order. a recent visit to bay bloor radio turned up a high-quality replacement belt from technics. [it turns out bay bloor radio stocks many turntables, quality parts, cartridges etc. a similar turntable goes for a couple of hundred dollars these days]

in the last number of years, i trimmed my record (vinyl) collection down to bare hard-to-replace essentials: some deutsche grammophon classical, blue note and other jazz, some rare electronic music pieces, including an album by electronic music pioneer oscar sala. one album that i cannot wait to listen again is a 1957 recording of grieg's complete Peer Gynt, conducted by sir thomas beecham, sung beautifully by Ilse Hollweg (Angel Records).

it is pure magic.

[i should compare the sound of my relatively pristine vinyl against its digital version appropriately found under EMI's Great Recordings of the Century collection]

[the picture on the right is that of a stanton 300 cartridge poised to land on george clinton's computer games.]

(2004-12-08 10:12:13.0) Permalink

Tuesday November 30, 2004

marsalis, sharing jazz, and a loss of magic

i think i have every wynton marsalis CD in my music library (excluding the greatest hits album), but i do not think i will ever have his latest, the magic hour from blue note in any form.

it is not the music.

it is the copy control.

i am not allowed to make a personal use copy of this CD for my ipod, and it will fail to play in a number of my CD players. this is especially ironic and disturbing when one spends some time thinking about the origins and culture of jazz music, and wynton's source material in general in conjunction with copyright laws. if that is too hard to do, i would especially recommend lessig's sharp and thoughtful Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity as additional food for thought.

[note: canadian copyrights, being reasonably sane, have a provision for private copying. we in canada pay a levy for this on blank audio recording media, including ipods.]

(2004-11-30 08:11:36.0) Permalink

Tuesday October 19, 2004

blue note: best jazz, re-mastered

blue note has given us jazz fans a gift. legendary recording engineer rudy van gelder (rvg) has been remastering a large part of the classic (alfred lion and frank wolff time) blue note catalogue. a list of the currently remastered catalogue is here.

i have been getting these audiophile rgv editions (i am a completist) and i am very pleased with the sound quality. each cd has the original lp cover; [most of them reid miles designs] there are often additional tracks [sometimes alternate takes, sometimes tracks previously excluded because of LP length limitations] along with new jacket notes and additional photos from the sessions. prices are reasonable so these are well worth getting in their CD form. [not sure if the remastered tracks are available for online purchases. i pod them from the CDs]

recommended listening for hackers:

solaris build: [jimmy smith] rockin' the boat or prayer meetin'
dtrace: [donald bryd] a new perspective
linux: [jackie mclean] let freedom ring
freebsd: [jimmy smith] The Sermon
c hacking: [clifford brown] memorial album
prolog: [dexter gordon] our man in paris
www: [bud powell] the scene changes
java: [grant green] am i blue
perl: [perl: not found]
scheme: [horace silver] song for my father
osx: [art blakey] indestructible or a night at birdland [vol 1 & 2]
plan9: [john coltrane] blue train

[yes i have these cds and have listened to them on these occasions. only exception: i do not mix perl and jazz!]

(2004-10-19 08:38:43.0) Permalink