Music

Rock and Roll

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 22:39:00 +0000

This is a really nicely put together history section on Rock and Roll through the 50's and 60's, part of StinaLisa's Home on the Web. There are samples of songs from the era and it's obvious a great deal of effort was put into this sites creation. Very very nice, check it out! Click on the graphic or the title of this article to go there.

Dream at Tempo 119 - SilverSun Pickups - Air Campaign

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Fri, 23 May 2008 11:50:00 +0000

Ok, I know I'm totally obsessing with this but damn this is a good song and it's not getting airplay around here, I don't know about elsewhere but not here. Lazy Eye and Well Thought Out Twinkle, more the former than the latter are, but Dream at Tempo 119 is not and it's a totally cool song and absolutely should be getting some air exposure.

I hope there isn't some reason that Silversun Pickups are trying to keep it a big secret or something, but it's on a Billabong surf video so can't be trying to keep it THAT big of a secret.

So let's try to get this some airplay. If you haven't heard it, go listen to it, there is a link on the previous post. Or buy the CD and listen to it in high quality. There is a load of good music on Carnavas so it isn't a waste. Actually, the above link is a live performance and slightly faster paced; you might want to go to their MySpace page and listen to it there.

Just to make it clear, NOBODY is paying me squat, not money not favors, nadda for this. I'm doing it because I want to see good music succeed and this is good music. If good music succeeds there will be more good music.

Once you've listened to it and are convinced it's good music, write to Lazlo and Harms at KNND, at lazlo@1077theend.com and harms@1077theend.com and tell them they should add Dream at Tempo 119 by the Silversun Pickups to their playlist.

Other things you can do, if you're not in this area, contact your favorite indie station.

Also, CALL KNND 206-421-1077, or vote for it on the top ten countdown. Spread the word around, let's get this some air play.

Firwood Torched

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Wed, 21 May 2008 00:53:00 +0000

The Firwood roadhouse, an 85 year old roadhouse in Fife burned to the ground Friday morning (May 16th). Federal investigators have ruled the fire to be arson. Being located out in the middle of nowhere, it was one of the few places one could still go to hear live music played loud unencumbered by city noise regulations that plague music venues in Seattle and many other major cities.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to an arrest in the arson that destroyed the Fabulous Firwood Roadhouse. To report information, call Fife Police Lt. Tom Thompson at 253-896-8287.

Dream at Tempo 119

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 11:28:00 +0000

I stumbled upon a song by the Silversun Pickups that I had not previously heard in a Billabong Surf video. It was so awesome I felt a need to mention it here. It's called "Dream at Tempo 119", I've included the lyrics below, but all I can say is if you haven't heard it, do, it's awesome.

It should be getting air play. I don't know why it's not, but go to SilverSun Pickups Myspace Page, there is a player on the right side; click in it, and scroll down to Dream at Tempo 119 and listen to it.

Dream at Tempo 119

I took my seat and stared, at the cardboard screen while no one cared.
While the lights stayed on, the familiar buzz was now long gone.
I just waited there, as the music soared into the air.
As the lights went down, she said don't open your eyes.

At tempo 119, they took to the crowd and aimed towards me.
As the circle closed, I held onto the one with splintered clothes.
Twenty years before, she said don't open your eyes and you can swim.
All my friends ignored, she said don't open your eyes.

Don’t open your eyes, and said goodnight.
Don't open your eyes, and said goodnight.

I couldn't end it there, as her wooden bones grew through her skin.
Crumbled naturally, as her limbs and leaves had broken free.
Twenty years before, she said don't open your eyes and you can swim.
Wanted nothing more, she said don't open your eyes.

Don’t open your eyes, and said goodnight.
Don't open your eyes, and said goodnight.

File Sharing and Music Quality and Diversity

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 11:06:00 +0000

It's been a number of years since the record industry killed Napster, the first significant file sharing system. At that time, we were told that file sharing would result in a lack of new music, creativity would disappear, new music would become a thing of the past.

As other file sharing networks replaced Napster, exactly the opposite has happened; artists that would have never gotten past the industry payola system got exposure and there is a wealth of creative music. This era is really a golden era of music after decades of strict industry control.

I believe that the whole issue of copyrights and patents need to be looked at more closely. The idea was that patents would give the inventor incentive to invent more and overall benefit society. The idea was that copyrights would give the author incentive to write more. Overall the system seems to be harming society more than it is helping.

Corporations, huge multinational soulless corporations are the flaw in the patent and copyright system. They simultaneously prevent the inventor or author from being substantially rewarded while at the same time they largely deny society the benefits in the name of maintaining a tightly controlled monopoly and huge incomes for themselves.

You won't find all of this new creative music everywhere. You won't find it on the radio for the most part because the industry still largely controls what is broadcast. The exception is small college radio stations, internet radio stations, and a new breed of low power FM station that are independent.

The record industry done their best to try to squelch these stations by charging exorbitant license fees to air materials they own. This backfired though because many of these stations adapted by playing only independent artists, thus giving those artists more exposure, exactly what the record companies were trying to avoid.

It's a weird coincidence that these independent artists are often referred to as "Indie" artists; while the independent promoters that pass the payola to the radio station corporations are also referred to as "Indies".

Recorded music is to live music as porn is to sex, and the recording industry are nothing more than musical pornographers. Both industries rely on using the legal system to control competition from other channels. Much of what the porn industry does sits on the border of legal, "obscene" material is defined sufficiently vaguely that exactly what is legal and what is not is open to interpretation. This allows large producers with large lawyer staffs to control the market and kills the small producers.

Similarly, the record companies want to control what artists get exposure so that only those that are friendly to the industry get exposure. That means only artists that will accept contracts which provide little compensation to the artist and much compensation to the record companies get exposure. Artists which make a lot of money through live performances obviously are not favored since they are less dependent upon the recording industry.

Payola is still alive and well in radio, it's big business. The recording industry sidesteps the payola laws by allowing "independent" promoters to take care of the payola aspect of the business, and they in turn generously compensate these promoters. The change in radio station ownership laws in 1996 have allowed a handful of corporations to own the majority of radio stations in the United States. Disk jockeys no longer have the freedom of choosing any of their music. Nor is the choice left in the hands of a music director at the station, instead, a mega-corporation hands them a play list, detailed to the minute, of what they will play, the same thing the other 500 stations owned by the corporation plays, based upon who paid them to promote what.

There are some bright spots. A number of years ago, a pirate radio station, called Free Radio Berkeley, told the FCC where to go when they tried to shut them down. They went to court, arguing a first amendment right, and the courts agreed. They remain on the air and provide education for other potential broadcasters to get their own stations on the air.

The FCC never took the case to the supreme court, for if the supreme court ruled the same way the district and state supreme court ruled, the FCC would essentially lose a substantial portion of their enforcement capacity. Instead, they went to congress and asked for the creation of a low power class of FM broadcasters so these people could be afforded a legal avenue towards freedom of speech and they would be able to continue to regulate the industry.

The broadcast industry went ape shit, not wanting to lose control of the markets to these small broadcasters, and severe restrictions were placed on low power FM, among them, they can't operate commercially, which substantially undercuts their revenue base. Of coarse there are ways around that but it's a form of legal harassment and restraint. Do you see the similarities to the porn industry here?

It's the same with file sharing. The industry really can't shut it all down, they'd like to but there are lots of legal uses for file sharing systems, and in reality it's the legal uses that they are concerned with. File sharing services can legally be used to share music that the artist or copyright holder allows to be shared. There are many independent artists that make money either through touring, or self publishing, and use these file sharing services to get exposure for their works. When a normal person has a choice between "real" music and the cookie cutter formula crap the record companies sign, the latter seems much less attractive. Of coarse, the record companies could actually offer real artists fair contracts but that ain't gonna happen.

Getting back to the porn analogy, I encourage everyone to go experience live music whenever you get the chance, the real thing is always infinitely better.

Ringles

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 17:50:00 +0000

According to an article in Billboard, Sony BMG has come up with a plan to market something it refers to as Ringles; this is a play on the old idea of singles.

When I was a kid, we'd buy 45's, 7 inch vinyl recordings that had a hit song on one side and a not yet heard of song on the other, referred to as the "B-side". B-sides would occasionally become popular in their own right and if you bought a Beatles or Beach Boys single usually both sides were getting airplay.

Sony is taking this idea, putting a hit, a lesser known song, and perhaps a remix or old song, along with a ring tone on a single CD in a paper slip-sleeve cover with a suggested retail price of $5.98 to $6.98, and they expect the wholesale price to be "under $4" (which probably means $3.99).

Now I like the basic concept; when I was a kid, and granted that was forever-ago, we used to buy these 45's for 25¢ each. Over time they increased to eventually being $1 each which is at about the point where I stopped buying them. Now, for comparison, gas at that time went for around 30¢/gallon so for some reason Sony feels that an inflation rate twice that of gasoline is reasonable.

In short I think the pricing is a total rip-off. CD blanks are less than 17¢ a piece now and I've found places that do bulk pressings for 9¢ a piece in large quantities, so how can they justify selling wholesale at almost $4 per piece and retail for $6.98? It's not like the artist is actually making money; any artists making decent money are doing so touring.

Screw that! If they put high quality music VIDEOS on there with 96 Khz sample rate, NOT copyprotected, so I can play them in WinAmp, burn a bunch to a custom DVD or whatever the I want to do with them, then yea maybe it would be worth the price. Just as well though, it seems the mainstream record companies don't get any real artists anyway, just belly button girls and burned out pseudo-rock stars.

Vincent

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 01:50:00 +0000

Brian Aubert of the Silversun Pickups - Modified

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 05:03:00 +0000

If you liked these recordings before, go check out this post with videos of Brian Aubert peforming Lazy Eyes and Well Thought Out Twinkle, again. I've moved the video over from youtube.com to veoh.com because it allows much higher quality.

Incidentally, when one viewer left a comment criticizing the quality of the video, I replied that they could see a higher quality image on veoh.com, youtube deleted my reply which I think is tacky.

If you're an artist in the Pacific Northwest and you'd like some free network exposure. Contact me, I'd love to video your performance and make it available assuming it's material I think my readers / viewers will be interested in.

Recording Music

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 02:59:00 +0000

Live music is best, no doubt in my mind, you can't do better than live. But practicality makes it impossible for us to go some place and play music or listen to others play music and so we record music so that we can listen to it later.

Recorded music sounds best when it sounds like it did live, but that is often a lot more difficult to achieve than one would think. Some of the issues are technical, some are psychological.

A big psychological factor is room acoustics. If we are in a room that is acoustically hard, that is to say it contains a lot of reflective surfaces and so we hear the direct sound produced by the musicians and a lot of reflections off of various objects, delayed by some milliseconds, our brains tend to adjust what we hear. We'll hear the echoes but they will seem to be at a low level relative to the direct sound, even if they are not, and will add to the ambiance of the sound unless the echo is extreme.

However, if we record that performance, and then later listen to it with headphones, so that we don't add echo from the acoustics of the room we are listening in, the reverberations will often seem overwhelmingly loud and annoying. For some reason, in the absence of the original environment, our brains do not perform the same filtering that they did when we were there.

If we take steps to eliminate room acoustics, feed electric instruments directly into a mixer and close mic those which are not electric, mix the whole mess down and record it, then if we listen to that it will sound flat and dull.

To sound natural, we need to hear some reverberations but they need to be at a lower level than usually are naturally present when recorded. Commercial recordings often address this by taking the direct feed and close mic approach and then adding some fake reverb.

When recording live music, there is a sweet-spot, a distance from the performance that, when recorded, will have just the right amount of reverb to sound natural without being overwhelming. In my experience this is usually fairly close, but not right up to the instruments. With amplified music this is not always possible because the amplified sound output may come from multiple diverse sources.

Assuming you can get a decent acoustical sound to record, there are various additional challenges. Live music has a high peak-to-average ratio. Musical peaks may be 20 decibels or more above the average level. These peaks are too brief in nature to read on VU meters, and sometimes to brief for peak led circuitry to response, although the latter definitely will respond faster than a physical meter. If the led peak indicators do not have a capture function, they may flash too briefly for you to see.

Analog tape recordings didn't clip hard, that is, instead of sound reproduction remaining linear up to some hard limit, analog recorders got progressively less linear as their design levels were exceeded. This has to do with the non-linear characteristics of magnetic recording heads and media. Because of this "soft" clipping, analog recordings wouldn't suffer greatly if an occasional brief peak exceeded the intended recording level.

Digital recording isn't like this. Once the bits are all ones or zeros you can't represent a signal that goes beyond this. The signal is hard clipped. This can result in many high order harmonics and intermodulation distortion products. The intermodulation products are the most objectionable because they are not harmonically related. When you make a recording on digital media, you have to allow enough overhead for the peaks to be recorded without clipping.

Consumer equipment, like the camera I recorded Brian Aubert with will generally do this automatically, within limits, but if you are using professional equipment you need to allow plenty of overhead. Keep in mind that a sixteen bit digital recording should have a signal-to-noise ratio of around 96db, so you are not obligated to keep the level right at the maximum to avoid noise.

Sample rate is another thing to be aware of. People often cite the Nyquist limit, which states that the maximum frequency you can digitize is half the sampling rate, as an argument suggesting that 44 KHz is more than adequate. I am going to disagree and I will elaborate on why.

First, because it takes at least two samples to record a cycle of a waveform, aliasing occurs as you approach half the sampling rate. Consider for example, sampling a 22 KHz signal and a 44 KHz sample rate. The phase relationship becomes important. If sampling and the signal are in phase with each other, then you sample once at the positive peak of the input signal, and then the next sample at the negative peak, and the resulting sample has a high amplitude. But what happens if you shift the sampling relative to the input signal by 90°? Then one sample happens just as the signal is crossing the zero line from positive to negative and you get a value of zero, and then the next signal happens as the signal crosses the zero line from the negative to the positive, and again you get a value of zero. The signal has completely vanished!

Instead of sampling a 22 KHz signal, let's sample a 21,990 Hz signal, what happens? The sampling goes in and out of phase with the sampled signal ten times per second. In effect, the 21,990 Hz signal is modulated at 10 Hz. You will get an alias signal at 22,010 Hz because the encoding isn't entirely linear, particularly when the signal is a high enough frequency that it is only sampled twice per cycle. What's worse, if you actually get audible information above 22 KHz, it will alias to frequencies below 22 KHz. For example, a 25 KHz signal will produce an alias at 19 Khz.

To avoid this aliasing, low pass filters are employed to roll-off frequency response before half the sampling rate is reached. So for example, you might roll off audio that is going to be sampled at 44 KHz at 20 KHz. However, there is a problem, filters introduce phase shift, and the more steep the roll-off, the greater the phase shift. There are those who will argue that humans can't hear phase relationships, I would argue they are full of it. I believe distorted phase relationships ruin your ability to acoustically locate a sounds source.

Sampling at 48 KHz verses 44 KHz gives you another 2 KHz usable audio spectrum, or allows the use of a less steep low pass filter. Better still is sampling at 96 KHz or 192 KHz which really allows the full audio spectrum to go unmolested. I buy music in DVD format when I can because I can hear a non-trivial difference in DVD audio verses CD audio (assuming the DVD audio is not compressed, usually with a movie it will be compressed because otherwise it will take too much space). DVD's can be recorded with either 48 KHz or 96 Khz audio sample rate, and can be either uncompressed (LPCM) or compressed (Dolby Digital).

The 96 KHz rate doesn't get used much but for the best possible audio quality, that's the way to go. Understand though it will eat a lot of space, so whether or not you can use that will depend in part on how much program material, the quality of video, etc. If you want to include decent quality video and the program is long then you're either going to have to use compression or a lower sample rate or both.

Most audio compression schemes are "lossy", which means they save space by throwing away some of the data. Generally, audio is sampled and then converted via a fast Fourier transform into what frequencies were present at what amplitudes in a time slice.

People are less sensitive at the higher and lower frequencies than to midrange frequencies, so generally signals that are below a threshold amplitude at a given frequency are eliminated.

A signal of a given frequency will mask out other nearby signals that are substantially below the amplitude of the masking frequency, so those are eliminated.

Humans have more temporal resolution at higher frequencies, that is, we can detect changes in the amplitude of a higher frequency more frequently than a lower frequency, so, some encoding algorithms like Ogg, don't include low frequency sample data as often as high frequency data.

Most higher frequency content in music is harmonically related to lower frequency content so some schemes eliminate data for frequencies above 7.5 KHz, and then try to reconstruct the content based upon frequencies that are half of those in the 7.5 KHz - 15 KHz range. This is known as band replication. This eliminates non-harmonically related frequencies, it also assumes a constant power relationship between fundamental and harmonics, but in real musical instruments, the harmonic relationships vary from instrument to instrument and are responsible for each instruments unique sound.

Fewer bits can be used to encode a wider dynamic range if the encoding is not linear, some compression algorithms take advantage of this by using u-law or other non-linear encoding schemes.

Every encoding scheme makes trade-offs and there is some variability in an individuals sensitivity to various factors. Some encoding schemes seem to work best with certain types of input.

My own experience with compression is limited to Digital Dolby, MP3, and Ogg. Unfortunately, the math is way over my head and the explanations of the differences aren't too useful without understanding the math behind them, so I can speak only from my experience.

In my experience, if you can go with uncompressed, if the space is there, then do that. No compression means no compression artifacts. It also means a big file which on a fixed size media where the audio has to compete with other things, may be problematic.

If you have to use some form of compression, I've found Digital Dolby/AC3 and AAC pretty good in terms of minimizing damage over all, at relatively high bit rates. AC3 seems to work well for a broad range of musical and non-musical sounds.

I have found MP3's generally are ugly, the ambiance seems to be missing and MP3 recordings sound flat. In addition, if the music is complex in nature, it seems to "blur" the sound for lack of a better term, individual instruments become hard to distinguish. Also, the temporal resolution of MP3 is inadequate at high frequencies and does ugly things to percussion. MP3's work best for very simple music, flute, guitar, or piano solos for example, and then only with VBR or 320 Kb/s or greater bit rates.

For low bit rates and complex music, Ogg seems to do well. It doesn't tend to lose the ambiance the way MP3 does. However, if the bit rate on Ogg is too low, it sounds almost like an old cassette recorder with a bad capstan, that is, a flutter effect. Ogg also seems to sometimes fail on very simple music like a piano or guitar solo. It's very strange, but in those situations it sounds as if the fundamental is attenuated and only the harmonics are audible or are exaggerated relative to the fundamental giving a stringed instrument a hollow sound. Oddly, this does not seem to be a problem if the music is more complex, multiple instruments are playing, chords are being played, etc.

Now with all that background, my complaints about modern recorded music follow. I am convinced that MOST recording studio engineers are deaf. I can think of no other explanation for the crap that is churned out.

First, clipping, damn idiots, if you've got a media with 96 decibels of dynamic range (typical CD), you do NOT need to make the recording as loud as possible, allow some headroom. Digital clipping sounds UGLY. Cymbals sound like gated white noise, their metallic resonances gone. Snare drums sound like gated white noise. In fact, everything above 4 Khz sounds like gated white noise when the high frequencies are clipped.

Bass, don't clip the damned bass either! If bass is allowed to clip the entire recording then bad intermodulation distortion results. I like the Weezer song Island in the Sun, but damn the whole recording is clipped on the CD, the bass intermodulates everything else, and the percussion sounds like gated white noise. Having heard the song performed live without the IM distortion and with real instruments it sounds SO much better, I want a recording that sounds like that. Why, deaf engineer recording idiots, can't I have that?

Same is true for the Red Hot Chili Peppers song Snow. Not nearly as bad, but still in the louder portions of the song it is notably distorted and clipped, much better than Island In The Sun, only the peaks are chopped off while Island In The Sun is pretty much clipped to hell all the way through the song.

Another complaint, what you do with EQ, DAMN YOU idiot tone deaf engineers for ruining so much good music. A kick drum has a striker and it makes a friggin' noise when it hits the drum that is PART OF THE SOUND, and there are actually some transients in that sound. When you run it through a mush filter and roll off everything past 40 Hz it SOUNDS LIKE SHIT! A kick drum doesn't go wum wum, it goes THUMP THUMP! On the other end of the spectrum, cymbals, THEY HAVE SOUND BELOW 5 KHZ! A lot of the resonant characteristics that gives each cymbal it's unique sound comes from mid-range fundamentals. Filtering those out turns it into gated white noise hiss hiss hiss sounds that don't resemble the natural sound of the instrument at all. Horns same thing, you eliminate lows and highs and you totally destroy the total characteristics of the instrument. Half the time I can't even tell what type of horn is being played in a recording it's so badly screwed up. WHY? I've got a vinyl album of the Crazy 8's (for those who were don't know, before CDs we used to get music in the form of a spiral groove pressed into a 12-inch diameter plastic platter. Oddly, this primitive technology often produced surprisingly good fidelity at least initially but the durability had a lot to be desired. At any rate; the horns on this pressed piece of vinyl sound just like being there as they should, but most CDs I have suck, but there are notable exceptions.

Compression, reducing the dynamic range of audio. Again, with vinyl, when you had at best 65 decibels of dynamic range to work with, compression sometimes was necessary, and if it was reversible, Dolby, it really made sense, improved signal to noise ratio without destroying program content. On a CD with 96 decibels of dynamic range, virtually any music ought to fit within that without destroying it with compression. Granted, I can understand when you're recording belly-button girls or RAP instead of music, and your goal is to make it as loud as possible on a boom-box or crappy car stereo, then yea, I can understand ironing the audio as flat as a pancake in those applications, but STOP DESTROYING REAL MUSIC.

I have noticed a lot of the destruction seems to be something record companies inflict intentionally. I say this because so often I've heard artists start out on small independent labels, and the recording quality is excellent, a good example is Hearts initial album Dreamboat Annie on Mushroom records, the highs were crisp and clean, the overall recording was excellent. Then their next album came out on ABC Dunhill, YUCK! Gone were the delicate highs in the guitars and vocals that so contributed to the overall sound of the first album, in place of those, the usual clipped distorted mush.

I've repurchased, on CDs, much music over the years that I originally bought on vinyl or Beta Hi-Fi, but which has been destroyed over the years, or stolen (I had a bunch of my records stolen at one time years ago). Again, the CD copies almost always have been inferior to the original release. When there is considerably lower distortion, more dynamic range, and better frequency response on the CD, there is absolutely no excuse for this.

The Ventures and Surfaris on Vinyl were both great recordings, very clean, unclipped, but these were stolen from my parents house and later I re-purchased them on CD, yuck. The clean highs were replaced with clipped mush.

I have a Duran Duran compilation on Beta Hi-Fi tape. Beta Hi-Fi was a really interesting format in which the audio tracks were recorded as FM subcarriers on the video track. The fast head-to-tape speed of beta (relative to VHS) allowed a wide subcarrier with a high modulation index to be used. The result was superb audio, low distortion, good frequency response, high signal-to-noise ratio. Rio, by Duran Duran, had the cleanest wonderful highs in that recording. But my beta Hi-Fi deck wore out, and a modern replacement would run about $1,000 (yes they still make them if you're willing to pay a grand for a VCR), insane, so instead I opted to try to replace the content that was important to me. I first bought a CD with the songs on it, quality was absolute crap, highs on Rio were all clipped and distorted, voices were muffled, overall sound definition was lost. I then was given a DVD compilation as a gift, and it was much cleaner, closer to the original recordings, but still not as clean as the old Beta Hi-Fi tape.

Now, I know this isn't a problem with the DVD technology itself, because I have some, in fact most of my DVD records, are good to excellent. One in particular, a DVD of the Puffy Ami-Yumi Jet Tour, that's as clean of a recording as you can ask for. But most CDs are junk, most DVDs are better but most still have room for improvement.

What really bugs me is that these companies have multi-million dollar studios to record with or very expensive high end equipment to record live performance, yet most of the recordings are worse than what I get with relatively low-end consumer equipment.

Aside from the above, there are acoustical issues, the standard studio approach of putting everyone in their own booth, recording separate tracks, mixing it down, adding fake reverb, sometimes that produces acceptable results, most of the time it sucks and doesn't sound natural. The best recordings I've heard have either been live or where they've put everyone in a large studio, mic'd the instruments close enough to avoid excessive reverb but not so close as to get none and picked up just enough natural reverb.

Why am I writing all this? I dunno, I guess it hurts just a little less than physically banging my head against the wall although I feel that in all probability the end result will be the same. Maybe though, just maybe, it will encourage people to actually listen to the music they buy and be just a little more selective, and in doing so force the industry to start paying some attention to sound quality.

Hugh Masekela at the Triple Door Tavern Tonight

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 23:52:00 +0000

Caught the tail end of an interview with Hugh Masekela (Grazing in the Grass) on KBCS (Bellevue Community College student radio station). He is going to be performing at The Triple Door tonight. There will be two shows, an all ages show at 7:00PM and a 21+ show starting at 9:30PM. Tickets are $38. The location is 216 Union Street, Seattle, WA 98101.

In the interview he talked about the record companies and that all they care about is the bottom line, and that they've promoted a lot of mediocrity towards that end, and that in turn has allowed mediocrity to enter into the music community.

I couldn't agree more. These days, the groups that I tend to find most interesting are those that are touring groups or independently publish, which, with the Internet, has become easier. He stated things got worse in the 90s but I really feel it got bad far before then, early 70's when disco got popular, and then to a much greater degree in the 80's when MTV arrived. Over time they started only airing high dollar videos that were expensive to produce, independent artists were squeezed out, just as they have been by the broadcast industry.

The Internet has allowed lesser known and lesser funded groups to get exposure. Talented musicians gather a following and then it becomes difficult for the record company and broadcast industry to ignore them and even if they do they're becoming less relevant since music can be distributed via the Internet and heard via the Internet.

Brian Aubert of the Silversun Pickups - Video Recordings

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 06:07:00 +0000

Updated September 3, 2007
I have moved the videos to veoh.com because the allowed quality is much higher. Give them a new watch and listen.

Well Thought Out Twinkle

Online Videos by Veoh.com

Lazy Eyes

Online Videos by Veoh.com

If you or anyone you know in the greater Seattle area would like to get some Internet video exposure for yourself or your band, please contact me.

Brian Aubert at KNDD July 27th 2007

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 23:44:00 +0000

I was under the impression that the entire Silversun Pickups band was going to be at KNDD, but just Brian Aubert showed up, however, he was by no means a disappointment, quite the contrary. Performing solo with an acoustic guitar Brian proved capable of producing a full rich beautiful sound.

Brian is an extraordinarily talented performer who does not rely at all on a studio to fix shortcomings. His live performance is every bit as accurate and perfect as his studio recordings.

Watching Brian perform, it becomes clear that he very much enjoys what he does. When he finishes a song, there is a smile that tells you he loves what he is doing.

He smiles a lot and his enthusiasm is contagious. There is no way to be in his presence and not have it rub off. A girl there wanted to be photographed with him and you can see how he accommodated her wish.

I was fortunate enough to get to video record him performing Lazy Eyes and Well Thought Out Twinkle. Both the audio and video came out excellent. I would like to find some way to put it up on the web streaming but the files are huge and in AVI format so I am still researching how to accomplish this without degrading the quality terribly.

Fans definitely appreciated his presence as well. Here he is signing autographs.

I should mention that you can see an enlarged version of these photographs by clicking on the photo.

If you'd like to see more photographs, click here to be taken to the Brian Aubert page of my photo gallery. Check back frequently, I'll find some way to get the video recordings online.

Silversun Pickups at KNDD Beach House July 27 1PM

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 17:52:00 +0000

SilverSun Pickups

The Silversun Pickups will be appearing live today, July 27th 2007, at 1PMon the DJ No-Name Show at the KNDD Beach House.

This image is from the Wikipedia.

Licensed under the GNU Free Documentation license.

Shins at KNDD Beach House August 31st

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 03:57:00 +0000

The Shins

The Shins performing in London.
This image adapted from an image on Wikipedia Commons.
Image licensed under a Creative Commons attribution 2.0 license.

The Shins will be appearing at the KNDD Beach House on August 31st, 2007.

The Blakes

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 20:29:00 +0000

While driving to Bellevue co-lo facility to fix a broken web server, (the very server serving this page), stuck in morning rush hour traffic, desperately tuning around the dial trying to find something other than morning drive time commercials and brain dead banter, I happened to stop on KEXP, the University of Washington student station that was formerly KCMU before Paul Allen dumped a bunch of money into it.

And just as I tuned in a song started up that just sounded good, got me as close to happy as I am capable of being anymore. The song is by a local Seattle group called "The Blakes" and the name of the song was "Modern Man".

I've never heard this group before in spite of it being a local band and I am impressed. They sound good. Where do I get this?

When I got home I first went to the KEXP website where they have the play list on-line. By every single piece of music they have a "Buy" button that takes you somewhere that you can purchase a CD or whatever, except for this song where they have "Album - Live at KEXP", "Label - KEXP", damn, it was an excellent recording.

More digging turned up a Blakes page on CD Baby, and a Blakes MySpace page. Both locations have samples of their work online that you can listen to. However, the CD Baby page has extremely low quality encoding, 32 Kb/s 22 Khz sample mp3, and only the first two minutes of each song, and the Blakes MySpace page has three of their songs online but it's choppy and cuts out.

I'm broke right now, but you can bet that when and if I ever do have disposable income again, that CD is going to be at the top of my music purchases list.

Red Elvises

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 06:52:00 +0000

The Red Elvises will be coming to Seattle and play at the Tractor Tavern in Ballard this Saturday the 14th.

They will be starting at 9:30PM, tickets are $15 in advance through TicketWeb and $18 at the door.

If you've seen the film Six String Samurai, they're the band that are doing the music and acting some of the parts in the film, and if you haven't, you should, it's a real twist on the usual post apocalyptic thing.

The Red Elvises are simply one of the funnest bands I've ever heard, versatile, and a tremendous sense of humor. Totally hilarious lyrical content, wonderful harmonies, melodies, and rhythm, smooth base, incredible guitar, and lots of positive energy. Flaming Cheese includes an incredible rendition of Zorba the Greek on guitar. How could that work? It works very well.

The tractor tavern is located at 5213 Ballard Ave NW, Seattle, WA.
Their telephone is (206) 789-3599.

Pandora

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 04:44:00 +0000

Pandora refers to their service as Internet Radio, but actually it is a music discovery service. It's a rather unique and clever concept and I find that I do indeed find new music that I like. Pandora is free though they do have some premium options.

Pandora has a large ever expanding library of music. For each song they enter into the library, they spend approximately a half hour analyzing various attributes such as melody, harmony, lyrics, rhythm, some four hundred attributes in all.

You create a "station" by defining a song or songs or artists that you like. Pandora then plays other music which has attributes similar to the songs you initially started with and for each song that plays, if you wish, you can vote on whether or not you like it. Pandora then uses that information to further refine those elements which you like in music.

Pandora has a wide selection of domestic music from the past and current and has quite a few lesser known artists. However, at present, Pandora does not have a good selection of world music.

Superbus

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 05:36:00 +0000

I want to tell you about Superbus, a musical group that I recently discovered via their Superbus Music MySpace page.

They're a French five piece group centered around female vocals. They initially formed in 1999 as a three piece group, Jennifer Ayache, Michel Giovannetti, and François Even. Two other members joined and then left and were replaced by Guillaume Roussé and Patrice Focone. In 2005, Guillaume Roussé was replaced by Greg Jacks.

They are often described on the Internet as a French POP band or French version of No Doubt, but their music actually spans a much broader range. They list No Doubt, Blink 182, Sum 41, Sublime, and Weezer as influences.

Some of their music is very popish but even there it shines for it's outstanding lyrics, very tight instrumentation, and very intricate melodies. Some of their music isn't pop at all, some of their music is the type that goes right to the soul and sinks in. Admittedly, they also do some music I don't like, some more industrial type that just repeats over and over. But on the whole I'd say I love about 80% of their music that I've heard.

They are a type of group you can't say you don't like until you've heard everything they do because they don't have just one genre or a few genre's, they are fairly versatile and hit some spots I wouldn't even know how to classify because I've never heard anything like it before.

Toots and the Maytals - Showbox April 22nd.

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 05:16:00 +0000

I just discovered Toots and the Maytals have a MySpace page. I've like a broad swath of music but they are high on my "I really like" list. I first heard "Bam Bam" on one of the local college stations, KGRG I think but I'm not 100% sure.

I wish I could find a link where I could link to it so you could hear but all I can find is the version with Shaggy singing it. While Shaggy is okay the version with Toots singing is just superb, he really does things with his voice that are un-matched.

Check out their page on MySpace. Good stuff. They will be at the Showbox on April 22nd!

Naturally 7 Subway Concert - This Is Cool!

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 03:18:00 +0000

Concert sauvage dans le métro !
Uploaded by lapapsprod

Plane Site

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 06:37:00 +0000

Plane Site played again at Mr. Spots Chai House. This will be the last time for a while as they are heading for Hawaii now. It was very crowded this time, probably due in part to the fact that everyone knew they were leaving. In spite of the heavy crowd I did manage to get a few more photographs.

The lady in the red dress dancing is Elke, the person who invited me to the first music making session and introduced me to this group of talented and interesting musicians.

Jeff Kimes playing didgeridoo and drumming. He is quite an amazing musician really. You can see he isn't a real large person yet the didgeridoo takes a lot of wind to play, you can watch his chest and shoulders heaving and yet he goes for quite a long stretch and while doing that drums a rhythm at the same time.

To his left is Mariah Reeves singing and I don't know who the red shirted guitarist is, nor the name of the person that is playing the digital drums and the Mac MIDI setup.

This is an less than good photograph of Liam. I attempted a number of better photos but was unsuccessful at getting a clear shot that didn't suffer from motion blur. Liam sings with Plane Site. He knows how to throat sing in addition to having quite a powerful and versatile voice. When he's not singing he's playing drums or dancing or running from one person to another. It is rare to see him in one position for longer than a small fraction of a second. I did use flash a few times this night but I wanted to keep it to a minimum to avoid spoiling the atmosphere for others.

Joe Gamble playing seven string electric violin, Jeff Kimes tamborine, and Mariah Reeves acoustic guitar. I'm afraid I didn't get any good shots of Mariah on Sitar this time around.

For more photos of this event, go take a look at my photo gallery album for this event.

Plane Site Mr. Spots Chai House 3/9 10:30 PM

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 22:39:00 +0000

Plane Site will be playing at Mr. Spots Chai House March 9th 2007 at 10:30pm.

I got to experience them on February 24th and highly recommend going. Before hearing Plane Site play, I was hard pressed to imagine how a sitar and didgeridoo could possibly work together but actually they worked together rather well. Mariah provided the majority of the vocals but Jeff also contributed as did Liam (not pictured here) though he suffered a sore throat that night.

They are asking for a $2 per person donation.

Mr. Spots Chai House is located in Ballard on Leary Way just south of Market St. To get there from I-5 take the 50th St NE exit and head west through the Wallingford neighborhood and down over the hill towards Green Lake. When you get down to Green Lake Way take the gentle left up the hill towards Aurora not a hard left. Stay in the right most lane and follow it under Aurora and down the hill where it angles off to the right. At the bottom of the hill it will become Market St. Keep following it west past 15th Ave NW. Two blocks past 22nd Ave NW Leary intersects with Market (near the Ballard Bay theater), make a hard left and find a parking place. Mr. Spots Chai House is on the west side of Leary just south of Market St.

Red Elvises

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 23:06:00 +0000

If you've never seen the movie Six String Samurai, do so! Even if you're not a general fan of post-apocalyptic films, this one's worth seeing. This was my first introduction to the musical group, The Red Elvises, where they both act some of the parts and do all of the music for the soundtrack to this film.

These guys combine great music with an incredible sense of humor. As musicians go they are incredibly talented but the music is often very tongue and cheek. I have not yet had the pleasure of seeing them perform live but I've been told by others that have that they are a riot.

Check out their website above, they've got a "radio" on it that you can listen to a number of their pieces and they are actually not chopped and fairly high quality not crappy samples.

They will be playing in Seattle at the Tractor Tavern 5213 Ballard Ave NW (206) 789-3599 on April 14th and in Tacoma at The Swiss 1904 S. Jefferson Ave (253) 572-2821. For other tour dates see the Red Elvises website.

Seattle Music

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 05:21:00 +0000

I was born in Seattle, I grew up in Seattle, I'm personally devoid of anything resembling musical talent and I wish that weren't the case. I enjoy listening talented others make music.

I have a background that involves both a lot of exposure to live music (which I enjoy) and to technicalities involved in recorded music. I know what unmangled music sounds like.

When I was young, when I'd go to live music it generally was loud and sounded good. There is a place on Aurora and 155th known as Parkers that used to be a road house, and used to have a real nice setup and some great acts. It has since gotten destroyed into a Sports Bar and then re-destroyed into a Casino, not the place it was.

It used to have a nice stage with a central area in front for dancing and then raised areas on either side for dining and drinking. You could go in and have a really nice meal while listening to great music at the same time.

The sound there was loud but clean, the bass solid and robust, the percussion crisp, they had an excellent in-house sound system.

At the venues I go to now, the sound is crap. Generally no bass below about 80 hz or highs above 10 Khz, and the music is clipped and compressed to death.

You've got these damned noise laws that say you can't exceed a certain decibel level at a certain distance, and that's a weighted measurement because of the non-linear characteristics of the human ear.

Combined that with the fact that many people attending these venues want it to be loud and some of the sound characteristics of music and there just is know way you can have clean sound that you can actually hear.

You see music tends to have peaks that are about 20 decibels or more above the average levels. You perceive the loudness based upon the average levels but the peaks are necessary for music to sound natural, for the brassiness of the horns to have that characteristic or for the cymbals to have their characteristic sound.

So to make the music sound louder, the peaks are "clipped off". That allows you to raise the average power to close to what the peaks would have been, about 20 decibels more, without increasing the levels reading on some dick weeds sound pressure level meter.

Then human hearing falls off pretty rapidly below 80 Hz and above 10 Khz, so it takes a lot of energy in these area for us to hear it loudly, thus eliminating these frequencies can allow that audio power to be used in the spectrum we do hear loud increasing the apparent loudness without increasing Mr. Dick Weed's sound pressure level meter reading.

Seattle has killed the commercial viability for many artists to make music a living in Seattle. The limit of 10pm for all ages shows and the inability of many artists to draw enough of an over-21 crowd for commercial viability. The noise ordinances make the performances sound like crap relative to what they should sound like. The noise ordinances make it all but impossible for bands to find a place to practice.

I would like to see Seattle return to the music friendly city I grew up in.

END OF ALL AGES SHOWS IN WASHINGTON

noreply@blogger.com (Nanook) — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 02:50:00 +0000

This an from a post dated December 20, 2006. I did check the status though and there was a committee hearing on February 13th of this year. I have not been able to find any follow-up information with respect to the outcome of this hearing.

There is a new bill proposing changes to the State of Washington Liquor laws. There are many horrible ideas in it, the worst being the elimination of all ages shows at venues with alcohol. This means no more all ages shows at the Showbox, Chop Suey, Neumo's, Hell's Kitchen, etc.

This must be stopped. Mayor Greg Nickels can greatly influence this by opposing it. Make sure he does by writing him at http://www.seattle.gov/mayor/citizen_response.htm and Jordan.Royer@Seattle.Gov, james.keblas@seattle.gov and RmLaBelle@seattle.gov

You also need to write the liquor board - wslcb@liq.wa.gov and their lead on this, Pam Madsen -

and write your State representatives http://www.leg.wa.gov/legislature/ - this is VERY important.

Supposedly, Seattle City Attorney Tom Carr is behind this, probably working with the Seattle Police who have wanted to stop all ages shows since the 1980's.

write to Tom Carr here - thomas.carr@seattle.gov

more info on the bill will be posted at http://seattlenma.org/news/index.php

keep up to date on this at http://masslinemedia.com/smf/index.php?topic=657.0