Writing about: NPR : Music—The PT Piano Puzzler

Name that composer – this guy has recorded a series of well-known tunes in the style of one of the great composers. Excellent fun :-)

I love those moments when suddenly something becomes completely clear. Last night I suddenly, for the first time, really understood how to play oboe.

I played for years when I was at school, but I never really put in the time to practice, and so progress was slow. I passed grade 5 and was working on grade 7 pieces, but then just totally stopped when I got to uni, really.

My big problem was always stamina. Oboe has a reputation of requiring very strong lip muscles to hold the embouchure (the shape of your lips around the reed), and I was always collapsing after 45 minutes. Now, since about christmas I’ve been playing almost every day, and could play for an hour, but then I was totally exhausted.

My oboe teachers always used to tell me not to “bite the reed”, and I didn’t think that I was. But after reading a description of how to make sure that a reed is playable I realized that I was. I was using my lips to force the reed to make a noise, whereas I should really just blow the thing and let it play itself.

The change was immediate. Suddenly, my tone improved drastically (I’d been blaming my v. basic oboe), and I can play for hours. It means that I have to learn a new type of control, but this is coming easily. I suddenly have a completely new level of sensitivity to tone and dynamics that I have never experienced before.

My technical skills are returning (slowly), my sightreading and theory are recovering, and now I’ve got a nice dark tone rather than a rather raspy effort.

I love it when things come together like this.

This is a “Circle of Fifths”, which shows the interrelationships between major and minor scales, and their key signatures. I’ve recently been playing quite a lot, and it struck me just how much I’ve forgotten. So, I made this to help out. There’s also a printable PDF version too.

So, a while back I signed up for Audioscrobbler, now Last.fm – it’s a music network site and some more. But I mostly found it interesting because it can keep track of the music you’re listening to. In fact (good grief) it seems to be a year to the day since I joined up. And here are my all-time (for the last year) top artists, of the 6137 tracks that I’ve listened to…

I’ve been listening to an old favourite again – the soundtrack from Lola Rennt (Run, Lola, Run). If you’ve seen the film, you’ll know that the music is an important part of the whole, and it really has the sense of driving the film forwards.

It’s a good old-fashioned techno/trance affair, with a few remixes of some of the tunes. I wouldn’t say that it’s an album that you’d sit down to listen to, but as music to turn up when you’re trying to focus on work it’s excellent, and there’s a real sense of urgency that helps me to focus on what I’m doing.

So, four stars. It’s no work of art but it got me through revising for my finals, and it’s helping me write my thesis, so it can’t be that bad ;-)

Writing about: Nina Gordon (MP3 2.3Mb)

Saw this on Boing Boing Blog – a quite amazing cover of NWA’s Straight Outta Compton (MP3 2.3Mb)

Writing About: Similar to the books thing…, 18/04/05, Big Brother Towers

Bold: own it
Italics: Have listened to it properly

1. RADIOHEAD – OK Computer
2. U2 – The Joshua Tree
3. NIRVANA – Nevermind
4. MICHAEL JACKSON – Thriller
5. PINK FLOYD – Dark Side of the Moon
6. OASIS – Definitely Maybe
7. THE BEATLES – Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
8. MADONNA – Like a Prayer
9. GUNS N’ ROSES – Appetite For Destruction
10. THE BEATLES – Revolver
11. R.E.M. – Automatic for the People
12. THE BEATLES – The White Album
13. QUEEN – A Night at the Opera
14. COLDPLAY – Parachutes
15. OASIS – (What’s the Story) Morning Glory
16. ALANIS MORISSETTE – Jagged Little Pill
17. LED ZEPPELIN – Led Zeppelin IV
18. THE VERVE – Urban Hymns
19. JIMI HENDRIX – Are you Experienced
20. THE SMITHS – The Queen Is Dead
21. JOHN LENNON – Imagine
22. RADIOHEAD – The Bends
23. BOB MARLEY AND THE WAILERS – Exodus
24. THE STONE ROSES – The Stone Roses
25. SIMON AND GARFUNKEL – Bridge Over Troubled Water
26. BJORK – Debut
27. THE DOORS – The Doors
28. ABBA – Arrival
29. MICHAEL JACKSON – Off the Wall
30. DURAN DURAN – Rio
31. SEX PISTOLS – Never Mind the Bollocks Here’s the Sex Pistols
32. DAVID BOWIE – The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
33. THE BEACH BOYS – Pet Sounds
34. JOY DIVISION – Closer
35. THE ROLLING STONES – Let It Bleed
36. BLUR – Parklife
37. BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN – Born to Run
38. BILLIE HOLIDAY – Lady Sings the Blues
39. THE WHITE STRIPES – Elephant
40. BLACK SABBATH – Paranoid
41. THE SPECIALS – Specials
42. THE ROLLING STONES – Exile on Main Street
43. FRANK SINATRA – Songs for Swingin’ Lovers!
44. THE CLASH – London Calling
45. THE PRODIGY – The Fat of the Land
46. THE VELVET UNDERGROUND – The Velvet Underground and Nico
47. DIRE STRAITS – Brothers in Arms
48. PIXIES – Doolittle
49. ARETHA FRANKLIN – I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You
50. THE LIBERTINES – The Libertines
51. HAPPY MONDAYS – Pills ‘N’ Thrills and Bellyaches
52. PATTI SMITH – Horses
53. THE WHO – Tommy
54. LOU REED – Transformer
55. BOB DYLAN – Blood on the Tracks
56. PRINCE – Sign ‘o’ the Times
57. DIDO – No Angel
58. AIR – Moon Safari
59. ELTON JOHN – Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
60. THE JAM – All Mod Cons
61. JEFF BUCKLEY – Grace
62. FLEETWOOD MAC – Rumours
63. MOBY – Play
64. RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS – Blood Sugar Sex Magik
65. THE POLICE – Synchronicity
66. JONI MITCHELL – Blue
67. CURTIS MAYFIELD – Superfly
68. ELVIS PRESLEY – The Sun Sessions
69. OUTKAST – Speakerboxxx/The Love Below
70. PULP – Different Class
71. KRAFTWERK – Trans-Europe Express
72. MASSIVE ATTACK – Blue Lines
73. BECK – Odelay
74. STEVIE WONDER – Songs in the Key of Life
75. KATE BUSH – Hounds of Love
76. TALKING HEADS – Fear of Music
77. EMINEM – The Marshall Mathers LP
78. MARVIN GAYE – What’s Going On
79. GEORGE MICHAEL – Faith
80. SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER – The Original Movie Soundtrack
81. PRIMAL SCREAM – Screamadelica
82. JOHN COLTRANE – A Love Supreme
83. LOVE – Forever Changes
84. PAUL SIMON – Graceland
85. NICK DRAKE – Five Leaves Left
86. MEAT LOAF – Bat Out of Hell
87. DUSTY SPRINGFIELD – Dusty in Memphis
88. DE LA SOUL – 3 Feet High and Rising
89. THE STROKES – Is this It
90. MADNESS – One Step Beyond…
91. ROBBIE WILLIAMS – I’ve Been Expecting You
92. NEIL YOUNG – After the Gold Rush
93. PUBLIC ENEMY – It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
94. BLONDIE – Parallel Lines
95. THE EAGLES – Hotel California
96. JAMES BROWN – Sex Machine
97. THE STREETS – A Grand Don’t Come for Free
98. DEXY’S MIDNIGHT RUNNERS – Searching for the Young Soul Rebels
99. ROD STEWART – Every Picture Tells a Story

1. The HUMAN LEAGUE – Dare!

Follow-up to It’s all about the feeling from Group IV

So I’ve been playing guitar again. Since I got my new and shiny Vox pedal, I’ve been spending a lot more time playing than I have for a very long time. It’s funny how it all comes back – suddenly it’s like the old days again, the strings are just in the right place, and magically my fingers are where they should be.

I like feeling my fingertips toughening up again. I like sitting right by the amp while I’m playing, so that the feedback gives infinite sustain, makes the instrument come alive.

I like the feeling that the instrument is just an extension of myself, that I’m not thinking about the technique any more, but just feeling the groove :-)

Writing about web page http://www.voxamps.co.uk/products/tonelab/tonelab_se.htm

I am now the proud owner of one of these monsters.

I decided that it was time to replace the ageing Digitech RP-6 that I’ve been using for almost 10 years (good pedal for the time, but the electronic sound of it bores me now), so I had a look around what was on the market. Had a look at the Boss GT-6, but felt that it was full of gimmicks, not too much for a musician. So I got one of these, from iMuso.co.uk.

Mmmmmmm.

It’s excellent. Really good sounds – the presets are ok, but as ever, it’s once you start making your own patches that you get the sounds how you want them. I can’t comment on how accurate the amp simulations are – I’ve never played through most of the amps it models (c’mon – how many people have actually played on a Dumble?), but they certainly sound good, and distinctly different. To quote a review on harmony-central:

I now have Two Fenders (Bassman, & Blackface Twin), Four Voxs (AC15, 15TB, AC30, 30TB), Six Marshalls (JTM 45, Plexi 50, Plexi 100, JCM 800, JCM 900, Modded Marshall), Soldano SLO100, Mesa Rectifier, Dumble Clean and OD, and an Acoustic Simulator at toe tap … I just saved over $30,000 in vintage amps for $599.00.

And it’s HUGE. And heavy. And comes with it’s own gig bag (!). And it’s got a real, old-fashioned triode valve glowing away on top. Which is dynamically reconfigured depending on the amp that it’s modelling. Which is kinda cool.

There’s a definite learning curve with this thing; it’s massively flexible (2 channels on each patch, so you can switch the amp and cab over if that takes your fancy. Also, a quick Control switch that you can assign to anything useful – tap delay, pedal on/off, modulation on/off, whatever). Once you’ve worked out how to get around it, it becomes second nature. I’m impressed with how much control you have.

Happy purchase.