Saturday 30 June 2007

Over the Rainbow



Nice version of this song.

Monday 25 June 2007

why can't a ukulele be taken seriously???

will small things always be humerous?

anyway, these are :-)

check it out

okay this is better than my google hack implementation

check this out

its a radiohead search performed using the google hack that i mentioned earlier in this blog. YES this is a miles better implementation of the google mp3 hack than my cobbled together attempt.. its got a built in flash mp3 player and everything...

ah but not I can hear you purist cry, its not as barebones beutiful as yours joseph!!

hehe yes if you are into seeing the barebones then use mine, if you want a quick and easy hack then use these guys mp3 salad implementation.. fair enough.

Anyway, hope you enjoy the classical strings take some radiohead classics.. :-)

mod_musicindex

so you run a server do you...?

well maybe a lot of people don't, but lets just imagine that you do. To be honest its going to be true for more and more people as time goes on. Why must running a server be a corporate thing?

A half decent internet connection and PC is all you need to run a server, and of course some server software and a little bit of know how.

Thankfully the software is free. In fact, you could even run a server from your XP installation.

Please note i am not recommending that everyone goes home and sets up a web server on their home PC, that would probably just be asking for trouble, but it is definitely something you should feel comfortable playing around with, just don't leave it running all the time.

Anyway, this brings me onto my music related theme:

You are running a web server and you are serving MP3's or other music files. Wouldn't it be nice if there was a damn easy way of serving these files (even if this is only ever to yourself remotely accessing your server from work etc)

Ta Daaaaaa... mod_musicindex

mod_musicindex is an Apache module aimed at being a C alternative to the Perl module Apache::MP3. It allows nice displaying of directories containing MP3, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, or MP4/AAC files, including sorting them on various fields, streaming/downloading them, constructing playlists, and searching. It also provides features such as RSS and Podcast feeds, multiple CSS support, and archive downloads.

Sunday 24 June 2007

Discover New Music

Here is a quick run down of my favourite ways of discovering new music:

First up is Last.FM

Last FM is an internet radio service that plays music based on either similar artists to the one you suggest (with a few songs from the actual artist in there as well) or based on keyword matching.

Artist Matching is nice, but on a lot of artists the selection of music is seemingly a bit random and the playlist is short. This is a draw back of the "social networking" system that Last.FM uses to build up its database of music to play you based on your artist selection. Basically people volunteer to install a plugin called audioscrobbler which monitors the music that you play. If you play Radiohead and then play some Feeder, then it is going to link these two artists together. Quite a simple idea really.

However lets "the people" occasionally play some mozart, but mix it up with some James Brown. Then if you type Mozart it is going to give you James Brown. Not exactly what you were looking for maybe..?

Last.FM was recently bought by CBS for a cool $280 million. They are obviously doing something right!!

Next up is Pandora

Pandora does not suffer from the "random links" effect that is sometimes present on Last.FM as it is not based upon user listening data, but instead on an algorithmic analysis of the music. It is essentially a front end for something called the Music Genome Project. This is an in depth analysis of songs taking into account around 400 characeristics.

The main drawback with this system is that such in depth analysis takes time and there is a lot of music out there, so its quite easy to find something that is not listed. Namely classical music is completely omitted (at the time of writing) though they do make it clear that they are working on it - great stuff :-)

Music Blogs (Often Featuring Free to Download MP3s)

The best music blog discovery site that I have found to date is Elbows. This is essentially a music blog search engine. Search for an artist, song or keyword to find a blog featuring an MP3 of that search phrase. Then visit the blog and browse all of the posts. If you find a good blog then check out the links on that blog to discover more blogs. Prepare to lose HOURS!!!!

Note - using SongBird for the MP3 blog browsing is really nice - it is an MP3 Blog optimised browsing system and looks remarkably like Apple's corporate MP3 offering.

Internet Radio

Internet Radio is a very simply concept. Its just like radio, but it's on the internet. In fact if I am going to talk about Internet Radio, should I just talk about Radio??

Well no not really, whilst the airwaves are expensive to use and are dominated by lots of advertising, the cost of running an internet radio station are comparitivelly tiny. Also there is no limit to the number of radio stations (unlike normal radio where each station must have it's own special piece of very limited bandwidth).

There are loads and loads of internet radio stations out there. To discover them is usually as simple as clicking on the internet radio section of your favourite media player.

Other than that - use the usual techniques to find an internet radio station.

Conclusion

There is a hell of a lot of music out there and more and more ways to discover it. For me the music discovery process has pretty much become my music listening experience. I always enjoy listening to the old favourites and it must be said I have amassed a quite respectable music collection already in my young life (yeah i'm still young I think)

However, sometimes its nice to not even know what track is going to come up next..

If any of you discover any more great discovery resources, please do post them in the comments!

Friday 22 June 2007

maybe i'm already asleep

wow, not really what to say.. this blogis great, but exceptional...

in particular this track made my mind feel like it was already somewhere else...

The blog track selection opens up with some very creative drumming which prompted me to post something on Jonny's facebook as he is undoubtably the keenest percussionist I know.

Then it just kind of moves on into another world of highly unusual but overwhelmingly endearing alternative music featuring some crazy sound effects, western sounding guitar and cello combos.... like it :-)

maybe i'm already asleep

Thursday 21 June 2007

make this for cubase...

someone needs to make this as a tool for cubase...

check it out

Surely there must be enough people now who have never even touched a "real" fader to let us start to let go of the conventional mixer paradigm and start to think of new and much more artistic/intuitive ways of controlling the mix..

this is a great example of the kinds of things we could do...

and its quite a good laugh ;-)

Trying to Find Siamese Dream by the Smashing Pumpkins

Well I wanted to post about the fact that I regard Siamese Dream by the Smashing Pumpkins as one of my all time favourite albums..

Short of directing you to use Bit Torrent (ooooh cheeky) The best I could find was this MP3 Blog:

125 albums you should own

Shame about the MP3 quality :-/, but even so - regard it as a taster and then download high quality copies of the stuff that floats your boat! (ahem - i mean get yourself onto the highstreet and buy a CD of course!!)

Looks like a lot of people are still buying albums, well thats cool to be honest - because I for one have no idea how the music industry is going to continue paying its executives to socialise on a full time schedule and make a very respectable living out of it.. god damn they might end up having to sit behind a computer all day and do some actual work like the rest of us...

Alina Simone

Came across this one whilst using Song Bird (my god im in love with this program)..

the MP3 blog in question was large hearted boy, nice - worth checking out.

This talented girl is releasing her debut album later this year, sounds very nice.. check out some of the tracks:

black water
saw edged grass

Alina Simone Myspace

Good Vibrato: String Quartet No. 2 (”Bucephalus”)

mp3



Good Vibrato

Contemporary classical is often obscure to the point of almost amusical. This is close to the bone, but there is enough in there to merit a listen. Whatever your reaction its definitely interesting!

If you aren't used to this kind of thing it's definitely an eye opener. It's interesting - i was in the position of watching MTV TV or Kerrang TV or something - (I don't actually have a TV, it was round at my sisters) and these channels are dedicated to Metal and Rock (usually genres that are about counter culture, alternative ideas and individualism)

Fork me, it sucked.

It was about as original and inspiring as corn flakes.. :-/

I really hate above all hearing auto tuned vocals. Basically, the way I see it - if this plug in is needed, then please - find another vocalist. There has been decades of great music without any of this kind of cop out - and now that we can turn the human voice into a synthesiser perfectly tuned instrument - anyone can become a lead singer...

NO NO NO,

There are loads of great singers out there - please for the love of Music - just use someone who can sing and who can impart real human emotion into their singing.

Ah well - I suspect the new millenium's first decade of musical contribution will be relgated, somewhat like the 80's into over produced plastic cheese hell. Never to be taken very seriously by any audiophile in the decades to come..

" Wow check out that lack of dynamic range.. my shit hot year 2050 model speakers really show up how the production of the year 2007 lacked almost all taste. Man even records that are 30 years older sound better!

And those autotuned vocals with clearly audible artefacts and ridiculous perfectly pitched harmonies.. man they sound like my 3 year olds toy synthesizer...


I'm telling you - thats how it's going to be....

Friday 15 June 2007

very chilled acoustic duo

this was the ideal last listen before zzz time

Fiske and Herrera

again, using songbird this site becomes a virtual album, very nice and easy to use...

I'm probably already too old to like this web site

being in the second half of my twenties... i'm probably already past it in the realm of pure volume.. however, i dont give a flying cockerel about this kind of thing.. its an interesting site for finding out about what the (overwhelmingly american) youth are on about the last person i knew who listened to this kind of music turned out to be a f**cking low life.. nice to not know you any more joel..

he anyway, like the wise man said, i aint bitter.. in fact i'm feeling pretty damn chilled :-D

Thursday 14 June 2007

Songbird

Well its been 24 hours since i discovered songbird and i think i have turned a new page .

Last FM was nice but always so limited, and how short some of those tune selections were, it quickly became boring...

Songbird has introduced me into the world of the MP3 blog, and fuck me I never thought the internet could be so good :-)

Problem is I find myself unable to bring myself to hit the sack, theres always another great tune waiting to be discovered, and not to give each tune the full listen is purely unfair - to yourself.

So hear (pun intended) is a reminder - start using songbird and enjoy the mu51ca1web

Nizlopi

this is some nice music... :-) i feel good when i am feeling this music. The feeling is modernity in contraflow with conformity. i love writing pretentious sentences that sound more than they mean. Sounds like Nizlopi are not victims of this vanity.. check them out: Nizlopi

Link found via handy google hack tool

This is one of those sounds that is uniquely british and undoubtedly honest. I like it a lot.

The Princess Bride

yeah its not music, but to be honest it made me laugh...

Might sound like a shit excuse, but honestly it was my girlfriend that asked my to download it (download torrent here btw)

For those of you that are paranoid about bit torrent... I really can't see this movie being one of those that they fuck you for... but hey, use peer guardian if you are worried..

Anyway - haven't seen this movie in a long time, but to be honest i think i enjoyed it more just now than i did when i was younger...

maybe because i thought the special effects were really funny.. the ROUS is a high point (rodents of unusual size)

I liked this movie - ideal after a couple of bottles of wine ;-)

Wednesday 13 June 2007

alternative media player

stumbled across this new audio/media player based on firefox... looks promising.. check it out songbird

Find MP3's using -inurl:(htm|html|php)intitle:"index of" +"last modified" +"parent directory" +description +size +(wma|mp3)

Came across a nice Google hack for finding MP3s that are out there in the big wild web...

i made this nice little search box so that you can just type in your favourite band, artist or whatever and the hack will be added to your search so you get straight to the results.

Have fun :-)



Enter an Artist, Band or Song to Search For:





-inurl:(htm|html|php)intitle:"index of" +"last modified" +"parent directory" +description +size +(wma|mp3)

Note: A few opportunist SEO's have already started to optimise for the hack, so the first few results might be useless - but page 2 onwards should be all gouda ;-) if you don't want to use my nice little tool then simply add this to your google searches:
-inurl:(htm|html|php)intitle:"index of" +"last modified" +"parent directory" +description +size +(wma|mp3)





explanation:
-inurl:(htm|html|php) the URL must not have htm, html or php in there - this prevents most web pages from being brought up

intitle:"index of" +"last modified" +"parent directory" +description +size +(wma|mp3) the Title of the page must have the phrases "index of", "last modified" and "parent directory" in there. The title must also have the words description, size, and wma or mp3

learn more

Tuesday 12 June 2007

Truth

true

Sigur Ros..

Getting Vocal on the Subway


Loads of Music Videos

Looking around the web for some nice musical diversion to see my day through, came across this collection of tunes and thought I would pass them to you.. not sure if this page will stay available for long but give it a go check it out.. nice :-)