6 posts tagged “music”
I've heard a lot of people claim their illegal downloading of music is sort of like Robin Hood, stealing from the rich music companies and giving to the poor (themselves). Makes it sound almost noble.
The trouble is that there is too much good free music for this analogy to hold up. Which is why I like to compare it to stealing bottled water instead. Everyone knows bottled water is not really that much better than that which effectively comes out of your tap for free*. They make an insane profit by convincing everyone they need expensive, fancy bottled water, the greedy bastards. So let's fix this injustice by stealing the bottled water. Except then the retail outlet loses money. And you could just get the water from your tap.
It's the same, in my opinion, as illegally downloading music, except with the roles reversed (the makers unfairly lose money, not the distributors). If you really cared about the injustice you wouldn't steal the music, you would do more to support various movements such as Creative Commons which give artists much finer control over how their music is used and netlabels which as a culture tends to give more rights over to the artists.
I'm building up a catalogue of good sources for free music at the moment. I've got a few sites, but I want to be able to cover a wide range of music, and unfortunately a lot of good free music does tend to skew to the hip-pop/drum and base/instrumental side of things. I'm also working on some criteria by which to classify a record label as "fair", which obviously is more difficult than "the artist has chosen to put the music out for free" which is why I'm starting with free music.
* For this to work, think of the water bills as equating to your internet bills, though it doesn't really. But it fits better than Robin Hood. Besides, most people I know using the Robin Hood example have never paid their own water bills.
I've been trying to find good free music recently to bulk up my collection. I can find some half way decent industrial metal and the likes but am struggling with one area.
Part of the problem is I'm not entirely sure how to classify it. The closest I can come is "dark ambient", but whenever I try and find dark ambient music I come across a lot of electronic stuff which isn't really what I want. What I like is something with a deep sense of emotion and strength, usually bought out through strings. Below are some good examples, if you have a better name for the genre, or know of any good free music that is similar please link me.
Justin Lassen
The McCarricks
American McGee's Alice Soundtrack
I decided that if there was to be a musical made about me (why the hell would anyone do that? :S) this song would most definately have to be included. It describes very accurately a period in my life:
*MC Hammer - Can't Touch This [metrolyrics.com]
What song or lyrics are stuck in your head at the moment? What album is it from?
Submitted by Lox Ly.
I currently have "She's a primadona, primadona. She's a diva from back in the day", which is from Ookla the Mok's [otmfan.com] P.M. Prima Donna [otmfan.com]. I tend to get alot of Ookla the Mok stuck in my head of late, their tunes are just too damned catchy. For a while I had the lyrics from Mr. Worf [otmfan.com], "I’ve got two dead wives and a son named Alexander" [otmfan.com], except I keep getting it the wrong way round, getting instead "I’ve got two dead sons and a wife named Alexander". I don't watch Star Trek enough to know the Klingon's opinions on homosexuality, but I don't think I would have an gonads left if I made that mistake to his face.
(I realise that he doesn't actualy exist. Also, to pre-empt, the female version is Alexandra, not Alexander)
I am working on a modification for Half-Life 2 which is probably more similar to UT2004 and Q3 in terms of pace and gameplay. As part of this, I have been hunting myspace [myspace.com] for suitable artists to do the background music.
Though all this fruitless searching (I still can't find the right genre to describe what I need) I was reminded of possibly my favourite album, the American McGee's Alice soundtrack.
Composed by Chris Vrenna (his Tweaker [tweaker.net] stuff is also worth a look) it is a fantastically dark chamber music soundtrack that incorperates the use of broken toys woven into the melody to generate an eery victorian drama in itself.
It works extremely well as the background music for the game, which is one of my favourite games to play (despite the fustrating combat system, which only becomes a problem about half way through). It really adds to the Victorian mental institution feel to create an emersive, scary yet fun game.
But it also works very well as a soundtrack in it's own right. In a similar vein to Justin Lassen [empireofmodernthought.com] and The Longest Journey soundtrack it, as previously mentioned, fits into the dark chamber music genre and is great for listening to on the bus to drown out other people and sink into your own thoughts. The album is also littered with humerous samples from the game.
It is well worth a listen, and even buying. I absolutely adore it, and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys a bit of introspection.
There seems to be a lot of discrepency amongst music applications and devices as to the difference between shuffle and random. In fact, you'd be mistaken for thinking there isn't one. And to a large extent that is true, but only because the developers don't seem to have a dictionary to hand.
There are two distinct ways of randomising a list of items that you are using in a live manner (the prime example being a playlist for music or video, but also a random picture slideshow and other such things). I think these are best explained in terms of a deck of cards.
Method 1 - The shuffle
Take a deck of cards. Shuffle them. Take the top card, look at it, and then discard it. Do this until the deck runs out, then repeat from the begining.
Method 2 - The "At Random"
Take a deck of cards. Pick one at random, look at it, then replace it. Repeat.
To support my interpretations, here are some word definitions:
"shuffle - 4 tr & intr to jumble up (playing cards) randomly." - http://www.chambersharrap.co.uk/chambers/chref/chref.py/main?title=21st&query=shuffle
"at random without any particular plan, system or purpose; haphazardly" - http://www.chambersharrap.co.uk/chambers/chref/chref.py/main?title=21st&query=random
So now we are clear on the difference between shuffle and random, what should you use when? Well, as a general rule shuffle is better suited to small lists. It avoids repetition, which in a small list becomes obvious and tedious. Random, however, works better in large lists as you do not always want to have to go through every item before one repeats. Also, the chances of repetition dramatically decrease with large lists and the implimentation is often smaller, quicker and more efficient.
The main offender of this confusion would seem to be Apple, their iPod Shuffle really being an iPod Random, though shuffle sounds better. But there really is no excuse in media applications; I would just like to be clear when I select shuffle or random what is happening. Or ideally, I'd like to be able to select from both. I have a large music playlist, which I want on random, but a small video playlist that I would love to be able to use shuffle on.
