I found it kind of nice to remember some of these older tunes, but she clearly didn’t have the same reaction. The interesting thing with the Suzuki Method is that it really emphasizes memorization – so much so that even now, many decades later, I still can remember most of these songs. Even though I may not have actually touched a violin in years.
Musician Martin Molin (a member of the band Wintergatan) created a fantastic device that’s powered by 2000 marbles. The device handles percussion, xylophone, and bass, all the while recycling a torrent of marbles that makes the machine seem less like an instrument… and more like an entity with its own circulation.
I joined on August 2, 2011. The first thing I listened to was “Call of the Playground” by Shudder to Think. The song I played the most was Ordinary, by Copeland (a surprise). My most-played album was The Weatherman, by Gregory Alan Isakov (not a surprise).
When this happened, I was thinking that I wish I had a t-shirt. So I decided to just write in on a whim to ask. Lo and behold, I got a reply pretty quickly – and got sent a shirt in the mail several days later.
While Spotify is the main streaming service in the US (which still baffles me), I chose Rdio because I just preferred Rdio’s interface. I tried Spotify initially, and just found myself confused as to how to navigate songs and collections. Going to Rdio after Spotify was like a breath of fresh air. Clean, intuitive. Well designed.
Yume is an interactive song that you can control in your browser. Created by White Vinyl, you can move some of the elements on the page to adjust the volume of various samples.
I was reminded a lot of the Music Animation Machine, and how amazing those visualizations were to see over 11 years ago. I can’t recall specifically whether that project was an inspiration for my attempt at visualization (back when I still used Flash, and Gould” target=”_blank”>animated a Bach piece by Glenn Gould).
I don’t think I know Sufjan Stevens’ music enough to call myself a fan, but when I find a song I like by him… I really fall for it. I heard he had a new album out called Carrie & Lowell, and I’ve been listening to it (the whole album) pretty nonstop, while I’m working on my computer at home….
“Repetition can actually shift your perceptual circuitry such that the segment of sound is heard as music: not thought about as similar to music, or contemplated in reference to music, but actually experienced as if the words were being sung.”
The title track is the one that really caught my ear. His music is reminiscent of an earlier age, which I’d be able to identify more accurately if I wasn’t so out of touch with music history. Give the song a listen, and you’ll see/hear what I mean.
This video really got me thinking about mixtapes again. Hearing some of the songs in the video brought back a very strong sense of nostalgia. Even though they weren’t necessarily songs I actively liked or listened to, they very much brought back a sense of being a teenager again.
One really awesome thing about Twitter is that you can follow people who are way smarter than you. And oftentimes they post up links to really awesome things that you would never have come across, without their help. Case in point: Wavespot, a really cool, live editor that will create an audio sample based on user input.
It’s a very clean and simple page, and a lot of fun to play with. Took me a try or two before I realized that the space bar shifted everything into a new grouping. It would be interesting to be able to paste in short sentences, so that everyone could “hear” what a certain phrase sounded like.
Came across another great Echo Nest project by Paul Lamere entitled Six Degrees of Black Sabbath. It’s based off of the popular Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game, and attempts to find the links between two musical artists in the fewest number of steps.
My friend Dave is releasing a new album in January, under the name Jettison Tape. You can actually listen to the entire thing right now, here…d