Fuddland
At some point, presumably around the time Audioscrobbler became one with Last.fm, the format of the RSS feed changed, so it’s time for an updated version of my original feed parser. [Requires a PHP-based site.]
If it’s something you’ll find useful, just:
install MagpieRSS if you don’t already have it on your server
download the new version of the script and change the settings at the beginning
See it in action on this very site [of course I’ve added an extra bit to the code which filters out all the Spice Girls tracks I listen to].
Thanks to Robert for making me aware of the change — check out his alternative script if this one doesn’t float your boat.
In: Indexed / GoogleAdsense & Music
2005 / 09 / 26 – 17:56 | Top
For no real reason, I’ve decided to reveal some statistics about the music I listen to.
A few years ago I started using my PC as my all-in-one entertainment centre — stereo, radio, DVD player — and the whole reason I signed-up to Audioscrobbler last year was in order to get a genuine, unobscured insight into my musical tastes, and not try and make out that I only ever listen to obscure acapella trance-dub from Norway. If my most listened-to song turned out to be You Can Count On Me [The Theme from Hawaii Five-O] by Sammy Davis Jr., there’d be no point in denying it any longer. [Thankfully this turned out to not be the case. It only comes in at number 14. Ha!]
Read the rest of “This is in no way a picking-up of any batons”…
In: Music
2005 / 05 / 20 – 14:32 | Comment [1] | Top
When Paul McCartney wrote Yesterday, he was sure that he’d copied another song; the melody sounded very familiar, yet he, nor no-one that he played it to, could tell him exactly where they’d heard it before. Eventually they decided that it was an original piece, but it was just so good that it made you feel as though you’d already heard it [which goes some way to explain why it’s apparently the most-covered song ever.]
On a musical high from re-stringing my guitar, I decided to dust off my long-neglected mandolin, give it some fresh strings and have a little play. After double-checking that I could still remember the basics of Losing My Religion [which, sad as it may be, was essentially the reason I bought it in the first place], I worked out the beginnings of a couple of short, original tunes. Or so I thought.
Now I’m in no way claiming to have written the mandolin-equivalent of Yesterday, but one of them sounds familiar. Sometime-housemate Kav also thought it was someone else’s tune, but after we’d ruled out Peter Gabriel’s Salisbury Solsbury Hill, we can’t pin it down. If you’d like to have a go, have a listen and see if you can identify it. [Do excuse the fairly shoddy playing, it’s been a couple of years since I last picked up the thing, and I don’t generally like using a plectrum, but you really have to with a mandolin.]
In: Music
2005 / 03 / 29 – 18:23 | Comment [13] | Top
I could try and use this weekend’s unexpected loss [and subsequent full retrieval from backup] of my weblog database as some sort of backwards justification for not writing anything for nearly three weeks — if I’d written anything recently, the backup might not have been current enough to restore everything — but I fear that wouldn’t wash with anyone [least of all me], so I suppose it’ll have to be the boring old: I just haven’t felt like it. No real reason beyond that.
I started to write about the things I’d been doing over the last few weeks, but it all seemed rather pointless: I already know, and why should anyone else care? I find myself being less and less interested in writing weblog entries which are little more than reportage [such as, erm, this very entry]. But then commenting on, or having an opinion about, current affairs requires actually reading the news from time to time, something which I’ve also become rather lax about of late; I still skim the headlines of the BBC’s various RSS feeds, but rarely click through to the main article.
Instead, I’ve been lending a helping-hand to friends in a spot of bother [involving, amongst other things, a weekend of painting and decorating which was the most fun I’d had in ages]; forging new friendships; rekindling old ones; and of course, doing a bit here and there towards completing my PhD. The pressure’s really on but the end remains frustrating, tantilisingly just out of reach.
I decided recently that I needed to listen to some really authentic blues, and after a tip-off from a scene in E.R. of all things, I went right back to near the beginning of recorded music and got hold of Robert Johnson’s Complete Recordings, the fruits of just two recording sessions in which he laid down his repertoire of songs, classic blues that are still being covered by today’s artists.
In: Fudd Work & Local News & Music & Site News
2005 / 03 / 09 – 08:31 | Comment [6] | Top
Apple’s new iPod shuffle and it’s “innovative” notion of random playlists is precisely how I usually use my own MP3 player: very rarely do I copy entire albums into its 256+64Mb memory. I just fire up either Rio’s bespoke synchronisation application or Windows Media Player and copy over a random selection of my music, and enjoy the playlist for a couple of days before uploading a new one.
It’s because I knew this was how I wanted to use my player that I didn’t opt for a proper iPod in the first place: I don’t want all my music with me at all times, but listen to only ten percent of it on a regular basis — I want to be pleasantly surprised by a song I haven’t heard in years. And if I forget the name of the song or which album it’s on, I have a handy LCD providing the basic metadata, something Apple decided wasn’t worth adding — I can imagine that might lead to some frustrated users desperately trying to recall the name of the singer whilst out and about, having no choice but to try and remember to look it up later on. I can understand the thinking behind not including a display [reinforcing the fact that it’s designed for random play, as well as cutting the cost I should imagine], but personally I prefer to have the information readily available.
There’s an interesting [and lengthy!] look at the idea of shuffled playlists over at City of Sound.
In: Music & Science / Technology
2005 / 01 / 13 – 12:38 | Comment [1] | Top
Although I like to mess around on the guitar — and lately, the piano — making up tunes, I lack any formal music training and know nothing beyond a few basics about the difference between keys and modes, or about modulation, or even reading music. Whilst on the one hand I quite enjoy this ignorance — not knowing really what you’re doing frees you up to a certain degree, being guided by what sounds right without the distractions of the theory — on the other hand I am conscious of the fact that the music might not be as sophisticated [note that this does not mean “complicated”] or original as it could be, and on the other hand I tend to be quite conservative and not as confident as I might be if I knew about the less common scales. [With three hands I really should be a wizard piano-player, music theory expert or not.]
Read the rest of “Howard Goodall’s 20th Century Greats [and why I’m not one of them]”…
In: Music
2004 / 11 / 28 – 17:42 | Comment [1] | Top
One of my favourite lyrics goes:
And your bones have been my bedframe
And your flesh has been my pillow
I am waiting for sleep
To offer up the deep
With both hands
But when no words will do, it’s hard to beat three shades of Pachelbel’s Canon in D.
The latest issue of Total Guitar magazine has a feature on the top 100 guitar riffs of all time, the first 20 of which are reported by the BBC.
Sweet Child O’ Mine - Guns N’ Roses
Smells Like Teen Spirit - Nirvana
Whole Lotta Love - Led Zeppelin
Smoke On The Water - Deep Purple
Enter Sandman - Metallica
Layla - Derek & The Dominoes/Eric Clapton
Master Of Puppets - Metallica
Back In Black - AC/DC
Voodoo Chile (Slight Return) - Jimi Hendrix
Paranoid - Black Sabbath
Crazy Train - Ozzy Osbourne
All Right Now - Free
Plug In Baby - Muse
Black Dog - Led Zeppelin
Ain’t Talkin’ ‘bout Love - Van Halen
Walk This Way - Aerosmith with Run DMC
Sunshine Of Your Love - Cream
No-One Knows - Queens of The Stone Age
Paradise City - Guns N’ Roses
Killing In The Name - Rage Against the Machine
I don’t know some of those songs, but I’m at least familiar the bands and it’s clear there’s one thing common to all the riffs: they’re all played on electric guitar. I’ve got nothing against electric guitar riffs and there are some classic ones in this list, although obviously I’ve got my own preferences [most of Jimi Hendrix’s songs deserve to make the top 100, and “Little Wing” should be way up there, along with Bernard Butler’s killer opening to Suede’s “This Hollywood Life”]. But, ignoring the rock bias of Total Guitar and its readers, I see no reason why acoustic guitar riffs can’t be as good as electric ones, so in an attempt to redress the balance I had a look through my song collection and tried to pick out a list of what I consider to be great acoustic riffs.
The line between a riff and a chord progression is blurred at the best of times, and it becomes especially difficult to distinguish the two in an acoustic song where the guitar is generally utilised to a greater degree to “fill out” the song more than an electric guitar backed-up by rhythm guitar, bass and drums. It became much more about deciding what I considered a riff, a chord progression, an introduction or an all-out solo, and then ruling out the song if it fell in any but the first category; no doubt some of these will still be contentious choices.
The Wild Ones - Suede
Tears in Heaven - Eric Clapton
Losing my Religion - R.E.M. [mandolin riff!]
High and Dry - Radiohead
Kielbasa - Tenacious D
Here Comes the Sun - The Beatles
Warehouse - Dave Matthews Band
The Shining - Badly Drawn Boy
Lie in our Graves - Dave Matthews Band
You Light the Fire - Bernard Butler
Loser - Beck
In: Music
2004 / 05 / 02 – 19:32 | Comment [11] | Top
I don’t listen ever to the radio for music; I much prefer to put my own specific choices on, or trust WMP’s automatic playlist generators to keep track of my MP3 collection. However, after reading about Radio 1’s landmark 10 Hour Take-over — firstly over at City of Sound and then in more detail at hackdiary [how cool is it to be able to read first-hand accounts from the people who built the system?] — I’ve been tuned in since ten o’clock [actually, not really “tuned in” as I’m listening via their broadband stream, now that it works properly], and it’s very entertaining — much better than shows dedicated to specific genres.
The idea is simple: from ten o’clock this morning until eight o’clock tonight, all playlists are scrapped and the entire output is dictated by the public texting- or emailing-in their requests, which are processed and managed by some nifty bespoke software. It’s made for some genuinely eclectic mixes — for example, here’s what was played in the last hour or so:
- Coldplay - Shiver
- Janet Jackson - That’s The Way Love Goes
- Dolly Parton - 9 to 5
- Felix - Don’t You Want Me
- Joy Divison - Love Will Tear Us Apart
- Foundations - Build Me Up Buttercup
- Suede - Trash
- House of Pain - Jump Around
- Manic Street Preachers - A Design For Life
- Paul McCartney - We All Stand Together (The Frog Chorus)
- Hole - Celebrity Skin
- Dennis Waterman - I Could Be So Good (Theme from Minder)
- Men at Work - Down Under
- Elbow - Newborn
I’m definitely impressed at the technology running everything — nothing seems to have fallen over so far — but it’s the choices made by the Great British Public™ which have made this idea really successful: I keep listening because I want to see what’s coming up next — it really could be anything. [Gah, they’re playing “Do the Bartman” now — perhaps it’s not such a great idea after all!]
2004 / 04 / 12 – 12:37 | Comment [1] | Trackback [2] | Top
Just so you know, if any of you wanted to purchase Norah Jones’s lovely new album but were a bit concerned that the so-called “copy protection” would prevent you from ripping it legitimately onto your computer, to transfer to your portable MP3 player for example, let me reassure you that I’ve ripped it with no problems using nothing more than Windows Media Player on Win XP.
When the CD is inserted a dialogue box pops up asking the disconcertingly vague question, “Certain files need to be updated in order to play this CD. Proceed?” Hitting Cancel and opening up Media Player allowed me to rip it error-free to my library. I don’t know what would happen if I’d hit OK — perhaps this would have locked the CD — but I wasn’t going to chance it.
The same is true of the Dave Matthews Band’s Central Park Concert; I haven’t tried playing either album in my portable CD player, but I suspect the same thing will happen as with Radiohead’s last effort: I’ll have to burn a new CD from my rips in order to play them.
In: Music
2004 / 03 / 19 – 14:40 | Comment [2] | Top
2004 / 02 / 04 – 10:31 | Comment [4] | Top
2004 / 02 / 03 – 14:54 | Comment [2] | Top
2004 / 01 / 21 – 21:12 | Comment [2] | Trackback [2] | Top
2004 / 01 / 21 – 00:34 | Top
Read the rest of “adam masterson and thea gilmore at the charlotte”…
2003 / 10 / 27 – 10:27 | Comment [5] | Top
2003 / 09 / 21 – 11:41 | Comment [4] | Top
2003 / 04 / 15 – 12:53 | Comment [6] | Top
2003 / 04 / 09 – 23:35 | Top
2003 / 03 / 13 – 21:13 | Top
2003 / 02 / 09 – 15:52 | Top
