Category Archives: Music

I must own this

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A guitar that tunes itself by measuring the pitch of each string as you play it.

Also in that story, another automatic tuning product that has a library of different tunings, and allows you to switch between them on the fly — even in the middle of a song.

Now, how do I convince Gail that I need this?

iPod Meme

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iTunes Survey copied from cahwyguy:

How many total songs?
6919 songs, 20.9 days, 41.79GB

Sort by song title – first and last
First: A by Barenaked Ladies
Last: 99% Of Us Is Failure by Matthew Good

Sort by time – shortest and longest
Shortest: You to Me (0:04) by Bystander (entire lyrics: “Everybody says ‘ you’ to me” — the is an actual bleep in the song)
Longest: Octavarium (24:00) by Dream Theater (second longest is “A Change of Seasons” (23:08), also by Dream Theater)

Sort by Album – first and last
First: “Abacab” by Genesis
Last: “90125” by Yes

Sort by Artist – first and last
First: AC/DC
Last: 54-40

Sort by Album Artist – first and last
I’m not sure what this means – why is “album artist” different from “artist”?

Top five played songs:
The top song is In Between by Linkin Park with 4, and then the next 20 (the rest of Linkin Park’s Minutes to Midnight album, all of Saga’s debut album, and a Robben Ford song I was trying to learn on guitar) are all tied at 3. Not a very useful stat thus far. Ask me again in a couple of years.

Find the following words. How many songs show up?
Sex: 6
Death: 4
Love: 239
You: 535
Home: 42
Boy: 34
Girl: 60

First five songs that come up on Party Shuffle
1. Extra Pale by Goo Goo Dolls
2. 5 Days in May [Live] by Blue Rodeo
3. Naked Sunday by Stone Temple Pilots
4. The Journey by Joe Satriani
5. The Master & Margarita by The Tea Party

Scaramouche! Scaramouche! Will you do the fandango?

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We went to see We Will Rock You in Toronto again last night. Gail and I saw it back in August, and we loved it, and since my dad’s 70th birthday is coming up, we decide to take my parents and my sister to see it. They all loved it, as did we, although the crowd didn’t seem to get into it as much this time as the first time. The guy singing the lead role (“Galileo Figaro”) was the usual guy, and he was very good, but when we saw it in August, the guy playing Galileo was not even the understudy, he was the second understudy, and he was simply amazing. He had easily as strong a voice as the regular lead, and I found his speaking easier to understand, since he didn’t have the slight French accent that the regular lead does. The female lead, Scaramouche, was played by a Toronto girl named Erica Peck in her professional stage debut. The fact that it’s her debut is unbelievable to me, since she was simply outstanding. Her acting was great, her singing voice is incredible, and she just looked really comfortable on stage. The entire cast was really good, but Scaramouche was my favourite character, and Gail’s too.

While looking through the program before the show started, I noticed a vaguely familiar name in the band — the drummer was a guy named Sean Kilbride, and it took me a few seconds to place the name. He was the drummer for Haywire, a PEI-based pop-rock band in the 80’s that I was a fan of. This is the second time I’ve noticed something like that at a musical theatre performance — when we went to see The Lion King a few years ago, I found that the musical director was a guy named Rob Preuss, who was the keyboardist for both Spoons and Honeymoon Suite back in the 80’s.

Eric Clapton vs. Elton John

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Here are ten reasons why the guitar is a more difficult instrument to play than the piano:

  1. Once you tune a piano, it’s tuned, and can stay in tune for years. A guitar that’s perfectly in tune at the beginning of a song can be out of tune halfway through that song. Plus, the piano is always tuned the same way. The key that plays a C note on one piano will always play a C note on any other piano. Guitars can be tuned in any number of different configurations — the open top string is usually E, but it might be D, or F, or something else; it depends on the tuning.
  2. On the piano, the right hand and left hand are doing essentially the same thing. They play different notes and such, but basically the same thing. On the guitar, the left hand is fretting notes while the right hand is picking or strumming them. Fundamentally different actions.
  3. A chord on a piano is usually three notes, sometimes four. On a guitar, you frequently have to play six-note chords with only four fingers (the thumb on the fret hand is almost never used).
  4. On the piano, there is one set of keys in strictly ascending order. You always know whether one note is higher or lower than another based on whether it’s to the left or right of the other note. On the guitar, there are essentially six different sets of notes which overlap. Is the 3rd string, 6th fret higher or lower than the fourth string, 12th fret? Answer: lower, but unless you play the guitar or have one in front of you, it’s not obvious.
  5. Unless you press the sustain pedal on the piano, as soon as you remove your finger from the key, the note stops. On the guitar, you can remove your hands entirely and the open strings will ring unless you deaden them.
  6. If someone has never played a piano in their life, you can teach them a C major scale in about 10 seconds: Black keys are grouped in either 2 or 3. Look for the 2 black keys together, and the white key immediately to the left of that is C. Hit that key, then each white key next to it (to the right) until you get to the next C. That’s it. Teach someone that, and if they find themselves at a piano a month later, they could probably repeat it. On the guitar, it would be 2nd string from the top, 4th fret, then 2nd string 6th fret, then 3rd string 3rd fret, 3rd string 4th fret, 3rd string 6th fret, 4th string 3rd fret, 4th string 5th fret, and 4th string 6th fret. Or instead of 3rd string 3rd fret, you could do 2nd string 8th fret. Or numerous other ways. I’ve been playing guitar for 20 years and I had to do little air-guitar fretting motions in order to figure out how write it down here. Someone who had never played a guitar before would have no chance of remembering the notes a month later. (On the other hand, playing a C-sharp major scale on the guitar is easy once you know the C major – just move everything up one fret. On the piano, I’d have to think for a minute to figure it out.)
  7. If you don’t play the guitar often, playing for more than a couple of minutes causes the tips of your fingers to hurt. Piano — no pain.
  8. You’ve got grands, baby grands, uprights, and other types of pianos, and they all look different, but excluding quality differences, they play pretty much the same way. Playing an electric guitar and an acoustic guitar are very different. 6-strings and 12-strings are also very different.
  9. With a piano, you play a note or you don’t, though you can play it louder or softer. Same with a guitar, but you can also play the note and then bend it, or hit the note below and bend up, or hit the note and slide up or down, or hit the note above and slide down, or hit the note below and slide up. You can bend strings behind the nut in some cases, and if you have a tremolo bar (aka whammy bar) or a slide, you have even more options. Plus there are natural and artificial harmonics, which are impossible on a piano.
  10. The location of a note in relation to position of the black keys tells you immediately what note it is. I haven’t taken a piano lesson in over 25 years, and I can’t read music anymore, but if you asked me to fine a G on a piano keyboard, I could find it right away. On a guitar, you just have to know, or remember the notes that the open strings play and figure it out from there.

Note to piano players — don’t get all bent out of shape. This list was made tongue-in-cheek.

Am I a music thief, or not?

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I understand the idea about why music sharing is wrong. If I want to listen to a CD as much as I want whenever I want, I should have to buy it, and the artist and record company should get some financial benefit from that. If my buddy buys a CD and I rip it, then both of us are listening to it as much as we want whenever we want, then the record company has only received payment for one CD. When I rip it, the record company and artist each lose some potential income so in a sense, I’ve stolen it. I get that.

Recently, I went to the local library and borrowed a CD by Liquid Tension Experiment. I listened to it for a while, and then returned it. Since then, every time I’ve been to the library and I look on the CD shelves, the one I borrowed is there on the shelf. In theory, every one of those times I could have borrowed the CD for another two weeks. I live in a small town, so the odds are high that I can get this album pretty much any time. I called the library (holy crap, look at me doing research for a blog entry!) and asked them if I was allowed to borrow a CD as many times as I want, and they said that as long as I return the CD to the library now and again (I can renew it without returning it, but only twice), there is no limit. This means that I can listen to this CD pretty much as much as I want whenever I want, and it’s perfectly legal, even though I didn’t pay to borrow it, the library doesn’t pay anyone each time I borrow it, and I didn’t pay to get the library card in the first place.

Here’s the kicker — when I borrowed the CD, I ripped it to MP3s. It’s now on my iPod. This means that I can still listen to it as much as I want whenever I want, just I could before, but I don’t have the inconvenience of having to go to the library to get it out or return it. The record company is still not getting any money, nor is the artist, but they wouldn’t have anyway. Was ripping this CD wrong, and if so, why? Who loses when I do this?

Super-size

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You know today I was only asked one question, and one question only, you know what that was?
“Do you want the super size?”
You know, come to think of it, I want the whole fuckin’ world super-sized.
Super-sized guns
Super-sized planes
Super-sized satellites — think about how many more channels you could get with super-sized satellites
Super-sized sales — how do you super-size a sale?
How ’bout we super-size third-world debt relief?
Super-size love
Super-size honesty
Super-size government — come to think of it, actually nah, let’s not super-size the government
I’d like to super-size death
“Can I have a super-size of death?”
“I’d like a super-size of death with a Coke”
…
Let’s super-size this song
Really, that’s the goal, isn’t it?
If we can super-size the record, we’ll sell more records
It’s a super-sized record
That is after all, our ambition
…
Ambition, ambition’s a tricky thing
It’s like riding a unicycle over a dental-floss tightrope over a wilderness of razor blades
Ambition can backfire
Ambition means more, ambition means faster, ambition means better
What if you could super — can you super-size ambition?
Does it make you ambitious if you super-size ambition?
Around here, our ambition hurts more than it helps
Around here, our ambition throws a non-perishable item in the donation bin at Christmas, and then pats itself on the fuckin’ back because it thinks it’s done something decent
Yeah, we’re super-sizing ambition, make no mistake about it
Ambition will televise the revolution
And it’ll sell more fuckin’ commercial spots than the Super Bowl, the Olympics, the World Series, and the tragedy-du-jour combined
We’re super-sizing, we’re super-sizing the record
‘Cause we’re ambitious

Matthew Good
“Twenty-first Century Living”

Music meme

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I copied this from CaHwyGuy. The idea is to put your entire music collection on shuffle, and list the first ten songs that come up. Here they are (song name, with artist and album in brackets):

  1. Erotomania (Dream Theater, Awake)
  2. Rooster (Alice In Chains, Dirt)
  3. Masquerade (The Phantom of the Opera soundtrack — I’m pretty sure this is the Toronto cast)
  4. Just Good Friends (Close) (Fish, Internal Exile)
  5. If Dirt Were Dollars (Don Henley, The End of the Innocence)
  6. Do What You Gotta Do (Garth Brooks, Sevens)
  7. West Virginia (Big Wreck, The Pleasure and the Greed)
  8. Prelude: The Waking Dream (Triumph, Surveillance)
  9. This Suffering (Billy Talent, Billy Talent II)
  10. Listen (Collective Soul, Disiplined Breakdown)

Interesting how two of them (#1 and #8) are instrumental. All in all, a pretty good overview of my musical tastes, though I don’t actually listen to Garth Brooks all that often.

Ripping complete!

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I finished ripping my CDs today. The final total: 14 genres, 210 artists, 572 albums, 6903 songs, 20.8 days, 41.72 GB. The genres break down like this:

  • Alternative & Punk: 22 artists, 61 albums
  • Blues: 12 artists, 18 albums
  • Country: 6 artists, 17 albums (8 of which are Blue Rodeo)
  • Folk: 1 artist, 1 album (Patricia Murray, mentioned before)
  • Grunge: 3 artists, 5 albums (Nirvana, Silverchair, Soundgarden)
  • Holiday: 3 artists, 7 albums
  • Jazz: 2 artists, 2 albums (Donald Fagan and Harry Connick, Jr.)
  • Metal: 15 artists, 53 albums
  • Pop: 19 artists, 43 albums
  • Progressive Rock: 2 artists, 5 albums (Liquid Tension Experiment and Saga)
  • Punk Rock: 2 artists, 3 albums (Green Day and the Offspring)
  • Rock: 133 artists, 345 albums
  • Soundtrack: 5 artists, 18 albums
  • World: 1 artist, 1 album (Leahy, also mentioned in the above-linked post)

The ripping of all the CDs came with a cost (excluding time) — my old CD-ROM drive (and DVD writer) decided that this was simply too much for it to handle, and gave up the ghost on Friday. A few times last week, it occasionally stopped recognizing disks until I ejected them and put them back in a couple of times, until on Friday, it finally wouldn’t recognize any disks at all. Didn’t give me any errors, just didn’t recognize that there was any media in the drive. I went out to Factory Direct on Saturday and bought a new DVD writer for $50, installed it in two minutes, and was ripping again. Even better, the new drive is faster than the old one, and recognizes DVDs that the old one had trouble with.

Status update

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CD ripping status: I’m just over halfway through the alphabet now — just finished the M’s (Malibu Stacey, Marillion, Matchbox Twenty, Max Webster, Megadeth, Sue Medley, Metallica, Midnight Oil, Steve Miller Band, Mr. Big, Kim Mitchell, Molly Hatchet, The Moody Blues, Alanis Morrisette, Mötley Crüe, Alannah Myles). iTunes tells me that I have 16 genres, 153 artists, 391 albums, 4640 songs, 14 days, and 25.10 GB on my iPod. (Note that one double album counts as two, so it’s not really 391 albums, but 391 actual discs. I also have a couple of episodes of Battlestar Galactica from last season that I have not yet watched on there. Interesting facts about the CDs I’ve burned so far:

  • I have more songs by Billy’s (Dean, Idol, Squire, Talent) than David’s (Gilmour, Usher)
  • I have fourteen Led Zeppelin albums (including Physical Graffiti as two and the box set as four)
  • I have eleven John (Cougar) Mellencamp albums, all single albums. I never would have guessed there were so many, and I don’t even have them all.
  • I have an album by Helix? One by Heart? Two by Haywire? Four (including a double live CD) by AC/DC? I bet I haven’t listened to any of these in fifteen years.
  • There are at least four genres of which I have exactly one album:
    • jazz — Kamikiriad by Donald Fagan (lead singer for Steely Dan). Never really though of it as jazz, but I suppose that fits as well as any other category. I guess Steely Dan was kind of jazzy too, so once I get to the S’s we’ll see what they are.
    • punk — Dookie by Green Day. No argument there.
    • folk — by a PEI singer named Patricia Murray. I think it’s entirely sung in Gaelic. Someone gave it to me as a gift, I guess figuring that I’m of Scottish descent and my name is Gaelic (Graeme means “of the gray house”), so I must speak Gaelic.
    • world — the debut album by Leahy. More Celtic music from Canada’s east coast. (Update: they’re actually from Ontario) A whole family of fiddle players, piano players, guitar players, and singers. I saw two of them play live once, and one of the fiddle players, Donnell Leahy, was just incredible.
  • Nirvana’s Nevermind album, which spawned the whole grunge scene in the early 90’s and is not only a classic in the grunge genre but was basically the first real grunge album, is categorized not as grunge but as rock.

David Gilmour

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I went to see the David Gilmour concert movie today. It was recorded at the Royal Albert Hall during his “On An Island” tour last year, and will be released on DVD in a couple of days. A bunch of theatres across North America and in the UK showed some of the DVD, which was followed by a live half-hour Q&A session with QGilmour, and then a 10-minute live jam session. The whole show was unbelievably cool. Gilmour is an amazing guitar player — he can play fast but doesn’t always feel the need to (unlike others), his note-bending is amazing, and he puts so much emotion into the music it’s unreal. For this tour, he also surrounded himself with other amazing musicians, including Pink Floyd bandmate Rick Wright on keyboards, Roxy Music’s Phil Manzanera on rhythm guitar, and Graham Nash and David Crosby on backing vocals, and David Bowie also makes a cameo appearance. The concert was amazing — as a guitar player myself, I love to watch close-up video of great guitar players, and Gilmour is a master. If the entire thing had been two hours of footage of just his fret hand, that would have been fine with me. The Q&A afterwards was a bit disappointing, since Gilmour managed to avoid answering many of the questions. Still, I may pick this DVD up once it’s released next week.

Interesting but useless fact: while browsing the Wikipedia entries on Gilmour, Wright, and other members of Pink Floyd, I came across this: Floyd drummer Nick Mason owns a house that used to be owned by Camilla Parker-Bowles, the current wife of Prince Charles. David Gilmour used to own a house in London that he sold to Earl Spencer, brother of Diana, Princess of Wales, the late wife of Prince Charles.