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I watched a great "Know Your Meme" video today, which helps explain Auto-Tune, the pitch-correcting software that Cher first used in the 1998 song " Believe," made most popular by the rapper/singer T-Pain, and which is now the source of lots of great internet videos. Weird Al even makes a guest appearance to explain how it works: As they point out in the video, what makes Auto-Tune truly great though is when it's used to make music from non-musical sources. My personal favorite are these songs: "A Glorious Dawn," by Carl Sagan and featuring Stephen Hawking: and "We Are All Connected," with Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Bill Nye: And it's always worth watching I'm On A Boat, which will be literally true for me in about a month. current weather: Clear, 49, Wind: calm Tags: auto tune, carl sagan, music, t-pain, weird al
Current Location: 41°08'39" N, 81°30'05" W
Current Mood:  amused
Current Music: M.I.A. - Paper Planes
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Lifehacker had a very interesting post the other day called The Best Sounds for Getting Work Done. Among some of the suggestions was a website called SimplyNoise.com, which features a white noise generator. It does exactly what it claims - generates white noise. You can adjust the volume level manually, or you can select the "oscillate volume" button for something like a wave-crashing effect. Besides white noise, you can also choose from pink noise or Brownian noise. I would explain the difference, but after having read the Wikipedia entries on them I still have no idea what they are exactly. I do like the way they sound though, especially the Brownian noise. I've actually used this at work some. It helps flood my cubicle with a soothing sound and forces out other sound, very useful when coworkers are playing music by Tool or Disturbed. There's also some discussion of ambient music, and specifically Brian Eno's Music for Airports, which lots of people love to listen to while trying to think. I've been listening to it and I like it so far. I started to realize sometime last year that when I listen to music, there are really 4 possible states I can be in, and that all of my music could be sorted into 4 (slightly overlapping) playlists to match those states: Upbeat Vocal, Upbeat Instrumental, Ambient Vocal, and Ambient Instrumental. Upbeat Vocal music is loud music with words. Songs falling into this category tend to get me pumped up and grab my attention - meaning they're best when I want to wake myself up or stay motivated, but can spare brainpower towards actually listening to this music. This kind of music is great for exercise or driving my car, but terrible for trying write a Livejournal entry, do calculations at work, or play a videogame that requires a lot of concentration. Upbeat Instrumental is also loud and upbeat, but since there are no words, I can find it a little easier to focus on a task. A good example of an upbeat instrumental song would be upbeat videogame music, a symphonic version of a hard rock song, or a good chunk of the music from Battlestar Galactica. Doing something particularly mentally taxing can still be a little tough when listening to this sort of thing. Ambient Vocal stuff that helps me relax, but still might be a little distracting. Relaxing, but if it has words I still have a tendency to get distracted. And then finally Ambient Vocal is music that just kind of slides into the background, basically music that is good to work to, as above. Some songs overlap into more than one category for me, and sometimes I may mix two of them together, but not often. The big obstacle though, is that it takes forever to go through my music and decide which playlist I want it in, and then it becomes a real beast to maintain the list, or transfer it to my mp3 player. So although I started thinking about this last year, I've only really got it about half complete. Which kind of sucks because it's only really useful when the playlists are available wherever I access my music. Anyway, if there's one thing I'm certain of it's that pretty much no one would want to read about my music tastes, so I'm sorry if you made it this far. Really the important things in this post were SimplyNoise and Music for Airports, so hopefully you just stopped there and didn't make it this far into my inane ramblings! current weather: Mostly Cloudy/Breezy, 55, Wind: SW 14, Rain today: 0.49"; I woke up to a thunderstorm this morning, since then it's been chilly and very windy. The power went out at work for about half an hour today at lunch. Looks like lake effect showers up in Cleveland too... getting to be that time of year Tags: music, sound, white noise, work
Current Location: 41.144N 81.501W
Current Mood:  tired
Current Music: Brian Eno - Music for Airports 1/2
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Vision One, another Röyksopp song: There was a time when all the shadows of these tall buildings
Would throw their cape around each corner of the grassy fields
And one by one, each huge shade, would color the green with black;
Allowing changes that we could not have foreseen
Everybody let us gaze upon the world we've created
Let us rest our eyes up by the great machine, as we wave goodbye
Feel the evening breeze caress us while, the cities are dying
As we watch it fall into a modern state, a modern time
Remember when we'd hear the distant sound of human life
A zillion noises whimper as they traveled through the sky
And one by one, each new sound, has faded away with time
Allowing changes that we could not have foreseen
Everybody let us say goodbye to all our notions
'Cause it's not enough to say that we're humane, when we're left behind
It's too late to think that we can worship human emotions
'Cause we've already evolved into machines, in our mindsTags: Röyksopp, music
Current Location: 41.144N 81.501W
Current Mood: happy
Current Music: Röyksopp - Vision One
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I drove down to Columbus today to see Dad and Grandpa Wilson for Father's Day. On the way down, I was surprised to see that there are new highway signs on I-77 south of the Central Interchange in Akron - and they're all in Clearview. I know, who cares, but I figure I've written so much about that it was worth mentioning. I thought it looked great. Of course, they replaced all the Route 8 signs this winter, with the old font, so it probably won't show up there until 2025 or something. On the way back, NPR had a great story on All Things Considered about the Battlestar Galactica concert that was held in Los Angeles last week, and about the music of Battlestar Galactica in general. I love the BSG soundtrack so much - in fact, it's one of my favorite things about the show. It was a great story, clearly Guy Ross (or whoever wrote for him) is a BSG fan. I actually got goosebumps when they started playing the 12-note piano piece from the last few episodes. I guess Katee Sackhoff actually performs that part on stage with Bear McCreary at the concerts. I'm starting to feel the moving crunch. I've been moving things over steadily but it seems like it's taking forever. I have a truck reserved for Sunday the 28th, so that will be the "big items" move day. I need to do a lot of address updating this week, probably time for a mass e-mail too. Everyone loves mass e-mails, right? current weather: Partly Cloudy, 68, Wind: N 6; It was hot today in Columbus but apparently it never got so hot here (78) Tags: bsg, clearview, columbus, dad, father's day, grandpa wilson, moving, music, npr
Current Location: 41.197N 81.433W
Current Mood:  busy
Current Music: none
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I never would have expected an entire episode of Battlestar Galactica to revolve around a piano, but it did, and man, was it a great episode. Only three episodes to go... Anyway, I just wanted to put up what I thought was a particularly great scene. I'm going to LJ-Cut it though because it could be considered a spoiler. If you don't watch the show at all, and won't ever, it's perfectly safe to view because you won't really know why it could be considered a spoiler. And obviously if you watch the show and are caught up it's fine. But I would hesitate to show it to someone who watches the show but isn't caught up. Ultimately, it's just someone playing piano. It's who, and what they're playing, that are the big deal. Oh, actually now that I think about it there's something else that's even more of a spoiler. So probably no one will watch this because if you've already seen it you don't need to see it again (unless you're me and you watch it over and over). ( Piano Playing )There's actually already a really impressive tutorial that someone put together to play the music yourself on the piano: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtjfqyNW69QAnd hopefully I got LJ-Cut to work properly for once. Tags: bsg, music, piano
Current Location: 41.197N 81.433W
Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: Jimi Hendrix - All Along The Watchtower
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Röyksopp is one of my favorite groups, and apparently they have a new CD coming out next month called Junior. Besides just their music though ("Remind Me" is that song from the GEICO commercial that I love so much), they have really great music videos. This song, "Happy Up Here," is from the new CD, and has a great video which channels a bit of Space Invaders: Happy Up Here from Röyksopp on Vimeo. They've got all of their videos at http://vimeo.com/royksopp/videosBut I want to share three more :). This one is "Only This Moment," another song I like, with a video which is supposed to have something to do with the 1968 Paris Riots: Only This Moment from Röyksopp on Vimeo. "What Else Is There?" is one of my favorite Röyksopp songs, although the video is kind of weird: What Else Is There? from Röyksopp on Vimeo. And then finally, a video I've posted before, but this is much better quality; the video for "Remind Me," which won the 2002 MTV Europe Music Award for best music video, and is definitely my favorite music video: Remind Me from Röyksopp on Vimeo. Tags: Röyksopp, music, videos
Current Location: 41.197N 81.433W
Current Mood: excited
Current Music: none
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A few minutes ago I was listening to Echoes of War, a new album that features a full orchestra playing music from a bunch of Blizzard videogames. It's pretty good, although listening to it made me really wish I still had the original soundtrack from Starcraft somewhere on my computer. I set out to remedy that, but in the meantime I knew I could find a video on YouTube of the the track I was looking for. I did, but then started watching some kid playing Starcraft music on an electric violin. It was pretty cool, but nowhere near as cool as this girl playing the Decisive Battle music from Final Fantasy VI on violin: Also, Aerith's theme: And To Zanarkand from FFX: That was freaking awesome. I really love how bit by bit, people who grew up playing videogames and loving the music are real musicians themselves now. Tags: final fantasy, music, starcraft, videos, youtube
Current Location: 41.197N 81.433W
Current Mood: impressed
Current Music: Eminence Symphony Orchestra - No Matter the Cost
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Exploring Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music has helped me find a lot of new music that I like, and it's also helping me organize my music a little better. One of the songs I found was "The Night" by Valerie Dore, from 1984. I had heard the melody before, because Scooter did a sort of remix/cover of the song in 2003. Here's the video on YouTube of the Scooter version, although it's NSFW, as there are boobs. Anyway, it's a cool song, of the Italo Disco genre, which is basically the continuation of disco music in Europe after it vanished in the USA around 1980. It's a bit of a misnomer since most Italo Disco music isn't necessarily Italian - so "Eurodisco" works too, only that covers the 70s and 80s, anyway, I digress. The video is on YouTube, and there are so many silly things in it I just had to post it. 1) Most Italo Disco is clearly sung by people for whom English is not their first language. That seems to apply to Ms. Dore. 2) For some inexplicable reason there is a guy playing drums and a keyboard in the video - even though this is totally electronic music and would have been played by a DJ, not an actual band. 3) That drummer's hair! Seriously, if you do nothing else, go to 0:35 and gaze in wonderment. 4) As pointed out in the comments, Valerie is certainly a much better singer than dancer. 5) Why are two people in 18th-century clothing intermittently dancing in the background? As totally ridiculous as the video is, I still love the song. Maybe it's just best left in audio form. Another cool song, just because I feel like throwing it in here, is "Pulstar" by Hypnosis, 1983. It was covered by Vangelis shortly thereafter, and I think that's the more common version, but I like the original best. Of course it doesn't have a music video, which is probably for the better. current weather: Cloudy, 25, Wind: S 9; Starting to warm up some, rain tomorrow, maybe that will help wash off my poor car Tags: 1980s, electronic music, italo disco, music, nsfw, videos
Current Location: 41.197N 81.433W
Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Valerie Dore - The Night
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If you've been to any sporting event (especially hockey) over the last few years, you have almost certainly heard the song "Kernkraft 400" by Zombie Nation - or at least some version of it. It also was in a part of "Shaun of the Dead," if you've seen that. Here's the music video. The video's not that great, honestly, but the part that I think would be most recognizable starts at 0:46 if you just want to skip to it: Anyway, what I think is so cool, and which I didn't realize, is that apparently the main tune for the song is actually taken from a Commodore 64 game from 1984 called Lazy Jones: There are all sorts of videos on YouTube that give the origin for a lot of the samples in electronic music. This video gives the origins for a bunch of samples from Daft Punk: This is all coming from my further exploration of Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music: http://techno.org/electronic-music-guide/Tags: 1980s, c64, daft punk, electronic music, music, youtube, zombie nation
Current Location: 41.197N 81.433W
Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Yellow Magic Orchestra - Behind The Mask
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Ben, the song you were asking about in Fallout 3 is "Butcher Pete (Part 1)" by Roy Brown: I found a page about a week ago that has the song list and lyrics for the music on Galaxy News Radio. Personally, "Mighty, Mighty Man," also by Roy Brown, keeps getting stuck in my head: "Civilization" is a funny song, but of course, "I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire" is my favorite. current weather: Heavy Snow, 28, Wind: NW 6; It's really snowing out there Tags: fallout 3, music
Current Location: 41.197N 81.433W
Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Roy Brown - Mighty, Mighty Man
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