Kasabian’s Club Foot will ROCK YOUR FACE OFF. Heck yes. Happy weekend, everyone.
UPDATE: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s Shuffle Your Feet will also rock your face off, possibly more so than the previous song, simply because it features hand-clapping.
DVICE has written a bit about a new software called Direct Note Access — it gives absolutely unprecedented control over musical recordings.
Until now, [correcting pitch] was only possible with single notes — an exaggerated example can be heard in Cher’s 1998 hit, “Believe,” which used the competing Auto-Tune system. For more than a decade, that software has been the recording industry’s dirty little secret, fixing any out-of-tune notes crooned by an individual singer or played on any single-note instrument. But this breakthrough takes that magic manipulation many steps further, allowing engineers to create entirely new music from existing recordings.
With this astonishing software, engineers can dig deep into < a mix. For example, they could change each individual note of a guitar chord, or fix one wrong note played by a musician in a symphony orchestra. It’s like Photoshop for music.
Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser make up the band MGMT. I’m addicted to the grinding bass and counter melodies in their catchy song “Kids”. Give a listen to the full song at Last.fm.
Death Cab for Cutie’s video for their latest single “I Will Possess Your Heart” is REALLY GOOD. I usually complain how the video distract from the song… but this complements it quite nicely. Oh, the song’s from their upcoming album Narrow Stairs.
Keep your eye out for live webcasts April 25-27 from the 2008 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. A quick description of the festival from wikipedia:
About nine months ago, I really got into the musical stylings of Paolo Nutini, a 20 year old Scottish singer/songwriter busting out some alternative hits. I think I first heard the music because a guy in my P-Chem class was playing “New Shoes” (fantastic song). Anyhow, after taking a break from an album for a while, I find it’s really useful to go back to it and see if the music has any staying power. Well… Nutini’s album holds up really well. Take a listen to Jenny Don’t Be Hasty to see what I mean. Go ahead, turn it up and jam, I’ll wait.
M.I.A.: Back in Action with ‘Kala’ at NPR Music writes:
M.I.A. rhymes with the swaggering bravado of a street rapper, only she favors bandoliers over bling. Parse the songwriting though, and the sensibility awkwardly falls somewhere between party girl and guerrilla fighter. The message lacks cogency, but her hooks do pack potency, even when they sound nursery rhyme-inspired.
I’m not a bit American Idol watcher, but Mykala just pointed me towards this fantastic cover of Lennon’s “Imagine.” It’s this 17 year old David Archuleta, and he’s just spot-on perfect with every note. I think we have a winner!
Consider this: one month after only part of a song called “New Soul” by Yael Naim backed the first commercial for Apple’s Macbook Air, the song debuted at #9 on the Billboard Hot 100. Disregarding its precipitous tumble down the charts after that, it is easy to see that featuring music on TV can have a profound effect on sales. This brings me to my idea: illustrated radio.
Know the song “Hallelujah”? The one that goes “I heard there was a secret chord that David played and it pleased the Lord, but you don’t really care for music, do you?” (That was from memory!) Anyhow, I first heard it but Rufus Wainwright, and loooved it. However, there’s much much more to this song. In this great piece, clapclap.org covers everything you’d need to know about the song.
NPR is great because it has interviews where the interviewers actually research their guests and ask them good questions. So, it’s interesting to hear this: NPR Music: KT Tunstall: Greater Than the Sum of Her Sounds. Sure, we hear some great studio recordings of Tunstall songs, but you actually learn something interesting and useful things about the artist. I’ve had this up in my browser for over a month, so I’m glad to have finally gotten the chance to listen. That said, the NPR music site is a really high quality integration of articles, samples, and full interviews. Color me impressed.
An article entitled “Math Trek: The Grammy in Mathematics” from Science News Online explains how Jamie Howarth, with the help of mathematician Kevin Short, used an awesome technique to restore an old Woody Guthrie recording (emphasis mine):
Feist sings “Sea Lion Woman” live, on YouTube. The description:
damn this rocks live!
That’s pretty accurate.
Sasha Frere-Jones blogs music at the New Yorker online, and he provides interesting details about about Britney Spears’ latest album.
Perhaps to offset consumer anxiety generated by Spears’s well-documented personal struggles, she and her advisory committee have spared no expense and have exhibited exceptionally good taste in hiring. The songwriters and producers who contributed to “Blackout” are as close to an all-star team as pop has right now: the producer Nate “Danja” Hills, a protégé of Timbaland who co-produced many of Timbaland’s recent hits; the proven songwriters Sean Garrett and Kara DioGuardi, as well as the up-and-coming and increasingly reliable songwriter Keri Hilson; the once dominant, now dormant super-producers the Neptunes; and, best of all, the Swedish production duo Bloodshy & Avant, responsible for older songs such as “Toxic” and “Me Against the Music,” which made Spears as deservedly ubiquitous as she wanted to be.
Put your hands up if you dig live pedal looping. Check it out on YouTube with KT Tunstall and her performance of Black Horse And The Cherry Tree. You only have to watch the beginning because… I know you’ve already heard the song 56,000 times.
You are all I need
You are all I need
I am in the middle of your picture
Lying in the reeds
It’s all wrong
It’s all right
It’s all right
It’s all wrong
It’s all right
It’s all right
It’s all right
The Foo Fighter’s latest single, ‘The Pretender’, off of their newest album “Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace,” is one hell of a song. I use “hell” here instead of my standard “heck” because this is rock, and rock music deserved profanities in descriptions of it. So, give ‘The Pretender’ a listen. If you don’t get it the first time, give it another try or two. You’ll come around.
Matt Haughey’s Thoughts going through my mind while at the dentist, listening to my iPod and on nitrous for the first time piques my curiosity about the day at dental school where you practice novocaine injections on your peers. Hmm, I wonder if everyone has to practice gas, too.
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