Archive for the 'Music' CategoryPage 2 of 8

Muxtape: Bringing Back The Art of The Mixtape

Published
by
Hung
on April 19, 2008
in Music and Nerd
. 4 Comments

So I’ve just recently discovered Muxtape. It’s a site that allows you to make a little “mixtape” of songs by uploading and then choosing which order they go in. The interface is pretty easy to figure out. You click on a song (or just the area around the song) and it’ll play automatically. It was working pretty well last night but for some reason the thing is choking in Firefox for me right now (and making Safari crash AND making IE run out of memory), yay for compatibility testing!

Anyway, the site is neat because if you’re as old as I am, you might remember making mix tapes for your friends. There was an art to this. Instead of the crazy-huge capacities of an MP3 player that you have these days, tapes were limited to like, 90 minutes or something. And the order mattered too since tapes didn’t have skip functionality (unless you had a sweet-ass walkman with that feature built-in). Muxtape sort of forces a restriction on you by forcing you to choose only 12 songs, and by different artists (no dupes). Mix tapes were a labor of love and works of art! Muxtape is easier, but it also sorta reminds me of when I made mix tapes way back when.

So a few criticisms. First off, while Muxtape tries to keep it real by limiting you to the number of songs and artists, it’s still probably way illegal. I wonder why the site hasn’t been shut down yet. Not saying I’d like the site to be shut down, but the reality is that it’s totally un-legit. You might say it’s fine because it only lets you stream, but using Firebug, you can pretty easily tell what the address is for the MP3.

Also, lol at the constructed urls of the MP3s (the first get arg is “PLEASE=DO_NOT_STEAL_MUSIC”).

Last.fm also pretty much is THE place to go for finding new music, and they have tons of searchable (which you could argue is kind of important!) tracks available. Though I did try and recreate my mixtape on last.fm and two artists were missing (one is the IBM computer “singing” Daisy Bell) and of the 10 remaining songs, only 6 had the full tracks playable

So at least Muxtape wins as far as playability goes (though I did have to upload them myself)! There are probably some big legal issues that make it impossible for last.fm to do what Muxtape does. That’s probably good, since last.fm makes money for themselves and more importantly, artists, while Muxtape just makes money for themeselves (if you don’t count Amazon MP3 cuts going to artists). Last.fm makes artists money simply by streaming their music; no buying required.

Anyway, if you want to check out my own mix, go here. Hopefully it’s varied enough to be worthy of mixtape status. You must understand, I’m a bit rusty.

Jazz Standard Currently Stuck In My Head: My Foolish Heart

Published
by
Hung
on March 22, 2008
in Music
. 0 Comments

bob-mintzer.jpg

Well, it didn’t take long for Rick Astley to get out of my head. While on shuffle, my iTunes played the Bob Mintzer version of “My Foolish Heart” sung by Kurt Elling. It’s really a nice ballad. And the arrangement by Mintzer is nice and slightly weird as is his style.

The night is like a lovely tune, beware my foolish heart!
How white the ever constant moon, take care, my foolish heart!
There’s a line between love and fascination,
That’s hard to see on an evening such as this,
For they give the very same sensation.
When you are lost in the passion of a kiss.
Your lips are much too close to mine, beware my foolish heart!
But should our eager lips combine, then let the fire start.
For this time it isn’t fascination, or a dream that will fade and fall apart,
It’s love, this time it’s love, my foolish heart!

And, as usual when I get a standard stuck in my head, it’s really friggin’ stuck in my head!

This is Probably Slightly Unhealthy…

Published
by
Hung
on March 22, 2008
in Music
. 1 Comment

never-gonna-give-this-up.jpg

It all started as a joke. A RickRoll. Following a link like “Starcraft 2 leaked trailer!” and instead being presented with a video of Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up.”

But you have to admit. The song is pretty damn catchy. You know, with the whole peak of the chorus at “say goodbye!” The mp3 version of this song is much better quality than the youtube encoding.

Also, this past week something legendary happened. The first ever “real life” RickRoll via singing telegram. In the long term this kind of internet meme crossover is dangerous (imagine a real life Goatse.cx or a real life flash thing with the ghost popping out at you), but I approve of the creativity of the real life RickRoll.

Anyway, I should probably stop listening to this song. But I can’t. Like the title of the song states, I’m never gonna give it up… (never gonna give, never gonna give!)

They Might Be Giants Podcast: 31A!

Published
by
Hung
on January 28, 2008
in Music
. 0 Comments

For those of you keeping track, I sorta like TMBG again. They’ve gained back my trust with their newest album and powerful live show.

Anyway, today is a new podcast day! TMBG was pretty much doing podcasts before they existed (even before iPods existed!) via their dial a song service. So this is sort of an extension of that. Except the sound quality is much, much better.

Of special note are some new versions of old songs! According to the TMBG wiki, the songs were recorded at XM Studio, whatever that means. It’s pretty neat hearing new versions of Shadow Government, Withered Hope, and Mr. Me! The turtle sounds thing is pretty funny too, mentioning the Fibonacci Sequence. There’s also some songs about numbers that are no doubt directed towards turning children into fans of TMBG at an early age. Clever…

Anyway, I kind of want to split the podcast up into the individual songs and listen to them over and over and over. It’s that good!

Pianica GET! A Stunning Rendition of Oh Susannah!

Published
by
Hung
on January 17, 2008
in Music
. 0 Comments

Here’s a post that, for some reason, I kept in my queued posts and never published. Until now!!! I think I did this some time during the Summer. As you can see, it takes place before I moved to Ann Arbor! And here we go:

I got a Pianica! If you’re wondering what a pianica is, it’s like a melodica, except when Yamaha makes it they call it a pianica. More specifically, it’s sort of like this cross between an accordion and a harmonica, where you just get a keyboard and you need to blow into it to get the reeds moving. It’s “famous” for being in that manga, Nodame Cantabile, which I totally like, which is mostly why I bought it.

I practiced a bit today, but I really suck at keyboard. I never really bothered learning how to play, but I do read music, so that’s how I was able to BS my way through Oh Susannah:


Not very good, but this take was funny because I put a seven chord at the end. I actually like Oh Susannah a lot. The words make no sense. The reason I didn’t play any left hand at the end is because I found some free sheet music online, but they only showed the first page! GRRRR.

I think I’ll keep practicing and become the Pianica champion of the world! Or play music on the street for money. Either way it should be interesting.