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X-P.E.

X-P.E.
Originally uploaded by rubykhan.

Thank you finn!

This One Doesn't Go to Eleven

Guitar Hero is a solid gold hit; a sell-out across all major gaming platforms with a booming ebay/craigslist trade emerging for guitars sans game. I enjoyed a perfect song recently, and I was rewarded with 5 embossed gold stars. But this got me thinking... I hate gold stars! Unfortunately I kept thinking.

I love Sonic Youth and The Stone Roses, but much of the game "play" feels like a chore. Shouldn't I be able to make my own playlist, instead of slogging through a music selection geared for alternateens? It's an mp3 and a guitar tab, it should be trivial to roll your own. With the Wii selling nearly two million units a month, and many of those sales ending up in the hands of older gamers (all the way up to retirement homes), there needs to some diversity in the musical selection and avatars.

The game also punishes you for improvisation - it's DDR in a guitar neck. This is the third iteration in the Guitar Hero series, and Mario and Katamari have shown us how satisfying games can be when you remove walls - shouldn't a game whose heart is live performance do the same? Instead we're mindlessly mashing buttons. We may as well be cup stacking. There's also a second level of performance in video games when playing games in a social setting. For spectators, there's absolutely no visual interest in following the action, unless you need a headache.

Guitar Hero is exhilarating and addictive because listening to music is fantastic. Considering this, it's remarkable that the music industry has still managed to paint themselves into a corner they probably won't get out of. There's a tremendous opportunity for music technology that breaks in instead of breaking down the more you experience it.

"Everyone looks all geeky and not self-conscious and not trying to look cool. Everyone was kind of jumping around. No one knew how to dance." - Henry Rollins, from Punk Love over at Radar.

Major Redux Redux

There's quite a kerfuffle brewing around the Apple's "inspiration" for the iPhone commercial.

We've covered this ground before, repeatedly. I'm looking forward to surveying blogistan when all is said and done to compare results and opinions.

Meanwhile - do kerfuffles brew? If not, what do they do?

Multitouch at TED

I've been skeptical of the hype surrounding multi-touch displays, but I just saw Jeff Han and Phillip Davidson demo their garage band-like-music player, and it was a little mind-blowing. "Instruments" are basically widgets that generate sound waves not unlike a Pro Tools or Garage Band time line. But here of course an instrument is limited only by the imagination of the programmer. Han and Davidson demoed keyboards, a "guitar," a simple sin wave generator, some shakers and cymbals and the iSaw.

The "instrument"

Since their display can handle many hands at once (not just two), instruments can be passed back and forth between musicians. Since they can scale in and out quickly without losing any resolution, there's a very high limit for the number of concurrent instruments. There's one global "clock" which controls the musical timeline, but individual instruments can move at their own pace. In a nice touch, the clock is round (you know, like a clock), instead of the left-to-right baton that has become the standard in sound software

I tried playing their "guitar," which looks a like a yellow football field since it's just a rectangle with some "strings" in it. Of course strings can be added and removed, the shape of the instrument can be stretched and smushed, and the display is quite sensitive to the "touch" of a finger hovering over it. When you consider this, one piece of string instrument software could emulate the behavior of all string instruments known and imagined. I attempted to make a movie of this by holding my camera phone between my teeth while I played, but I was shooting too low.

Here's a gratuitous celebrity shot of Han and Davidson demoing the instrument for Thomas Dolby and Peter Gabriel

Electronic performance today looks like a DJ or someone like Thomas Dolby sitting behind turntables, a keyboard, sampler or a powerbook or thinkpad. I've seen almost all of my favorite DJ's live - Cut Chemist, RJD2, The Executioners, Z-trip and so on, but truthfully the most you can experience by watching them is the thrill at being near their technical mastery, and perhaps some smugness that you know enough to appreciate it. Thomas Dolby opened yesterday's sessions with a performance, and although he is of course a master at his craft his performance basically consisted of banging on a bunch of buttons in rhythm. But with this technology, electronic performance is moving back towards true expression with your hands and vocals, and the audience gets to see not just the glow of the back of the powerbook but perhaps a display of the instruments themselves.

This is my first TED, and although I was a little skeptical about the tales of "Ted moments" and flashes of inspiration, I have to sheepishly admit that I think I just experienced my first.

Interview with Ian MacKaye

Gothamist: Interview with Ian MacKaye:

And at some point even though I felt like we had worked really hard to tune the environment to our wavelength – in other words it was all ages, we were mindful about the lighting and making sure the security behaved themselves and we didn’t have inflatable beer bottles behind us – despite all that the irony was that my work – or art, or that thing that I do - was by and large being presented in venues where their economy was based on self-destruction. That was discouraging for me. Because ultimately the bar world is actually self-destruction. I’m not saying that alcohol is evil or there’s some moral issue on that front but rather that the [alcohol] industry traffics in self-destruction and ultimately smoking and drinking is sort of like taking yourself apart.

The Morning News' Digest

I just noticed The Morning News Digest, "A weekly round-up of books (Mondays), mp3s (Wednesdays), and videos (Fridays)." This is my 18 year-old self's internet holy grail. My 30 year-old self is a little overwhelmed with a "books to read" list fifty titles long and an impossibly large mp3 collection, but this is still a fantastic resource.

Birkin Still in Beta

Paging Mena Trott!

I bought this second-hand [sporran purse] in Edinburgh three years ago, and a more useful little thing one couldn't own. It's the envy of Paris. I gave up on the [Birkin] bag right away. That bloody thing. I told Hermes they were mad to make it. My one was always full and it ended up giving me tendonitis.

Jane Birkin abandons the Birkin, via Agenda Inc.
Also of interest: Tom Cruise is "still in Theta." Mena's Corner is now no longer a dinosaur feed according to NetNewsWire. Stingy Bar and Scribbling.Net remain.

Dealership Corrupted

Seeing "database corrupted" on my dashboard gave me pause, until I realized that Database Corrupted was the correct behavior.

Strich Armstrong

The Huffington Post's Contagious Media Festival launched today, and my early favorite is Awwwwstrich. It's only thirty seconds and well worth your time. In fact, I claim that if you watch it twenty times it's a good use of ten minutes.

Ostrich! Ostrich!

Tuberaider Video

It's come to my attention that not everyone knows about Tuberaider, J-Smooth's best of YouTube blog. Enjoy The Meters live, Popping and Locking Lessons and Chaka Khan Playing the Drums.

MisfitsCentral.com

MisfitsCentral.com Lyrics:

20 EYES
-------
20 Eyes in my head
20 Eyes in my head
20 Eyes in my head
They're all the same, they're all the same

20 Eyes in my head
20 Eyes in my head
They're all the same, they're all the same

When you're seeing 20 things at a time
You just can't slow things down, baby
When you're seeing 20 things in your mind
Just can't slow things down
 
Then all those eyes
They're just crowding up your human face
Then all those eyes
Take an overload

Before 43 folders and 20 things, I had Glenn Danzig and the Misfits.

Blogging all Open Tabs

Today's Rocketboom is pretty exciting. Camera "2" is back!

we make money not art returns to form with Architecture for bicycles and Video-game rapid prototyping

The first fiction collection on Lulu that I actually think I'm going to buy: How to Leave a Place by Ariel Gore. (PubSubbing Erik Benson - you are going to like this too)

U.S. President George W. Bush shakes hands with Albert Hubo (robot). Apparently there are some bones from eyebeam in that skeleton.

Jeff Chang is Still Recovering From Hurricane Meters. I didn't even know they were touring! I'm a shadow of my former self (as I listen to a "leaked" copy of Shakira's new CD (I love it)).

And since I've got to have some vitamin geek in this post, here's John Siracusa on consumer RAID options and filesystem architecture. (Mom: He's worried about Dad's iMac crashing and losing all of Lauren's photos. So am I, but I'm not that worried. If we lose the photos, we lose them, right?)

Doublespeak in the Record Industry

"Apple is nearly finished with the technical work necessary to enable consumers to transfer music from content-protected discs to their iPods," the label said in a statement detailing its copy-protection plans"This is an important step for EMI and Apple, but even more so for music consumers who will soon be able to legitimately port music from protected discs they own to the iPod."

The tone over at arstechnica is rightfully skeptical of this claim, but neglects to call out EMI on their ridiculous language. As if I can't "legitimately" "port" music from a CD I own to another device now. The logical extension of this logic for the EMIs and Sonys of the world is that eventually their CDs will only "legitimately" play on their own CD players unless a "port" is involved.

"The Soft Bulletin" With Two Labels

"The Soft Bulletin" With Two Labels
Originally uploaded by david.

Who needs side three?

Zoe's Radio Show

Zoe's Radio Show is back for the fall season. It's very good.

Embarassed by the Archives

It's tidy Sunday! I'm cleaning out my lists and piles, physical and virtual.

I'm often so embarassed for my past self. If you could eavesrop in my head you'd hear a chorus of: I said what? What the heck was I thinking? Did I actually write that down? (Am I the only who beats myself up over awkward conversations and old memories?) And as neurotic as I may be about the past, I'm equally nostalgic for it. Weird!

Also, why do I have four (digital) copies of Michael Jackson's Unbreakable? I mean, everyone needs one. But four?

Downhill Battle's DJ Z-Trip Interview

Link: Downhill Battle - DJ Z-Trip Interview.

When youy are a year late on linking to a story, it's new again.

Nike, Dischord and Mambo Kurt

From WFMU's On The Download, via nedlog:

In honor of Nike ripping off Minor Threat and then apologizing over the incident, here is a cover version of Fugazi's Waiting Room by Germany's Mambo Kurt.

This is OK. (mp3)

Dischord, Nike, Appropriation and Homage

Over at Off the Hoof Mike follows up his earlier comments about the Minor Threat/Dischord flap with a discussion of appropriation:

Appropriation belongs to the disempowered. It's about the control of identity.

When the empowered attempt to appropriate the culture of the disempowered it's an act of aggression, not appropriation.

I was really happy to read this.

I also dispute the notion that the record cover rip off was an 'homage.' It was basically a forced celebrity endorsement. Ian MacKaye and his music is revered in the skating and punk communities, on the same level that Lebron James is in Basketball, Mia Hamm is in Soccer, or Lance Armstrong is in Cycling. These folks are very well compensated - I wonder what kind of package Nike will offer Ian MacKaye.

The Lazy Ass Village Voice

Over at randomWalks, Adam posted "randomWalks: afrocentric hip-hop is a big shrug," a link to a Village Voice article where they claim that the Coup and Kweli's lyrics are too political for mainstream hip-hop. Typical lazy ass Village Voice reporting. Adam quotes: "People in the streets are now being told what hip-hop is and what it looks like by TV."

Or, it could be that Talib and the Coup are both wack rhymers now. Just because they come correct politically doesn't mean they get a free pass on skills. Listen to their old stuff next to their new stuff, and it's clear they just got lax with their work. Have your whiskey at the ready, though, it's depressing.

The subtext of the discussion is that hip-hop fans can't think for themselves, which is plain false. From Public Enemy to Common to Goodie Mob to Kanye West, there's clearly a thirst for political hip-hop - but not at the expense of good rhymes and beats.

Mos Def and Talib Kweli were on the top of the world when Blackstar was good, but they just dropped it, and I bet they KNOW they dropped it, that's why it's Village Voice reporters doing the whining. Every once in a while I hear a dope new Mos Def verse, and it's like "Woah? What's that from??" "Oh, it's something that's just been in the vault for four years, coming out now." There is nothing hip-hop fans want more than a worthy followup to Black on Both Sides, one of the top five hip-hop albums of all time, but it just doesn't seem likely.

I like Adam's Q-tip quote, of course. Adam - check out Fat Beats Radio. the new Q-tip song is so good. Also check out "Dangerous," ten years ago OC dropped more fantastic rhymes in one verse than most MCs do in an entire career. And if that's not enough, you get to find out what MF Doom thinks about when he puts on his metal mask every morning.

Eyebeam & Contagious Media

I'm going to head over to Eyebeam tonight to check out their eavesdropping panel. I'll tell you what they say.

Besides their panels and work in Contagious Media, the folks at Eyebeam have their fingers in a whole bunch of other pies: The ongoing work of Cory Arcangel, who's Data Diariez is showing at the Rhizome installation in the new museum, the continuing development of Forward Track and Reblog, and of course Kottke.org.

I want my MP3

Russell Beattie, who works for Yahoo, comments on Yahoo music store's licensing of Microsoft's Playforsure:

This is exactly what I was talking about: one more service based on Microsoft's DRM. Urgh! We're just handing them the keys to the kingdom!

I feel the exact same way - I can't believe this isn't a bigger story. Competitors to Microsoft - especially head to head competitors like Real and Nokia are anchoring new media platforms in a proprietary system controlled soup to nuts by... Microsoft. They're the Avon Barksdale of closed technology.

In less than twelve months Real and Nokia are going to be selling iPod competitors (hidden in satellite radios and N-series phones) and in less than 24 months Microsoft's going to pull the rug out from all of them with the X-Box 360 mobile.

Hot Rockin!

The Band To Band Linker (first noted back in July) is back and better than ever.

abandon all hope, ye who enter

Oliver Wang on American Idol: "abandon all hope, ye who enter"

For a national culture that force-feeds its brand of hopefulness down the world's throat, AI pulls the curtain back to reveal that depths of delusion that optimism can foster. Seriously, the sheer level of desperation exhibited on the show numbs the mind. I'd say it'd almost be endearing to know that someone pawned their wedding ring in order to finance their audition but mostly, it's just sad in a small, despairing kind of way. If and when that particular contestant gets booted off the show (and it's going to happen, no doubt about it), you just wonder how far she'll drop before smacking bottom.

There's more at Pop Life. I like what Oliver says but I think the show's producers are a little more self conscious than that. I think people tune in not to live vicariously through the discovery of new hopes and dreams, rather to laugh at people with very little talent.

Anil Dash: Star and Buckwild can kiss my ass

Anil Dash: Star and Buckwild can kiss my ass. The audio clip in question has popped up in my inbox a few times, and it's pretty unbelievable. It's nice to see the issue getting some attention, and hopefully Clear Channel, Star & Buc will apologize.

Mindshare

kottke says:

Meg, Ev, Paul Bausch, Ben, and Mena are PC Magazine's People of the Year,  Recognized for something called "blogging".

Pat Riley once observed that as Michael Jordan's legend grew his name shrunk - from Michael Jordan, to Michael (temporarily causing a cultural logjam with "The Gloved One"), to Mike (thanks, Gatorade), before finally settling down at "MJ." The Washington Post referred to him briefly as "M" during his ill-fated stint with the Wizards, but it didn't stick. I bring this up because I call "Paul Bausch" "pb," even though I've only met him a few times. He never scored a double nickel in The Garden, but he did invent the permalink.

Thanks to Google Suggest, we have a whole new way to think about the alphabet. A is for Amazon, not Apple. Will this replace the NATO Phonetic Alphabet, which was "developed in the 1950s to be intelligible and pronounceable to all NATO allies in the heat of battle"? Fifty years later, the Google Alphabet suggests a different set of priorities: Paris Hilton, Tara Reid, Verizon and Zip Codes.

I enjoyed a brief stay as the #1 David Jacobs, but I'm humbled to occupy second place heading into the new year.

Happy Birthday Milla Jovovich

Milla Jovovich is 29 years old today. To celebrate, here's her chart topping single "Sweetheart."

The Sun

Thanks to Anil, the song of the week is The Sun by Ghostface Killer, Raekwon, Slick Rick and the RZA. I couldn't believe that I didn't have this song on mp3 or vinyl, but I was able to find the track on J-Love's Best of Slick Rick Volume 2, which I bought at one of the three (3!) hip-hop piracy closets within 100 yards of my workplace.

Next up, the original version of Flowers.

Overheard this Evening

Ken Jennings is the KRC-One of Jeopardy.

iTunes Woes

Show Duplicate Songs
3176 songs, 9.9 days, 16.89 GB
I call this "the chore"

Surrender

I'm not sure when karaoke became a cornerstone of every twentysomething's wedding ceremony, but I think it's awesome.

New iPods

Jason Kottke wonders what's "out-of-the-ordinary" about announcing the new iPods via Newsweek. What's "out-of-the-ordinary" is that Apple obviously "leaked" the "Newsweek announcement" via "macteens.com."

Remember Manifesto?

On Monday O-dub posted a link to a Mos Def interview from 1998 on his blog Pop Life (not that Pop Life). A discussion about the role of white people in hip-hop ensued, and in his postscript O-dub says:

Now, if there's one thing I love, it's seeing white people bitch about black people bitching about white people

I love this too, and I'm white. Anyway, if it's not the most insightful discussion in the world, it's spirited. Hip-hop was a huge part of my life in 1998, and I identify with the sense of lost hope that O-dub is feeling. I must have played Manifesto 500 times; I literally burned through 4 copies of that vinyl. I definitely consider myself still a part of the culture, even though I'm mostly just a bedroom dj now.

Don't drink/Don't smoke

There are 2,779 songs on my iPod. Two of them are "Straight Edge" and "Straight Edge (Live)." And they just played back to back. The chances of that are 1 in 7,720,062.

A mix of both, I think

You certainly wouldn't see them glorify a black man who couldn't sing and dance on "American Idol." Nor would they prop up a clumsy, tone-deaf white person.

William Hung: Racism or Magic?

Shoo, Mann!

Brian Libby reviewed the Oregon Symphony's performance of Brahms and Schumann a few nights go and criticized conductor Paul Mann for interjecting mini-lectures about the music's history into the performance. Brian tied it all up with the wonderful pun "Shoo, Mann." Paul Mann himself commented on Brian's blog: "Shoo-Mann" - I'll remember that one. There's nothing I like better than constructive criticism. Ouch!

Greatest of all time? No way! Most Sampled of all time? Maybe!

What is the most sampled album of all time (Raising Hell, Illmatic, Criminal Minded?), and how soon until The Black Album is it? Check out the Jay-Z Construction Set:

The Jay-Z Construction Set is a toolkit with all of the necessary software and raw materials to create a new remix of Jay-Z's Black Album. It includes nine different variations on the Black Album, over 1200 clip art images, and a couple hundred meg of classic samples and breaks. Jay-Z Construction Set is being distributed off-line via CD-ROM and on-line through filesharing networks and protocols such as BitTorrent.

Downloading Music

Maybe downloading increases sales. [...] A Harvard professor found that a $60/yr. ch arge for broadband users would make up for all lost revenues. The government would give it to the affected artists and, in return, make downloading legal, sparking easier-to-use systems and more shared music. The artists get more money and you get more music. What’s unethical about that?

Aaron Swartz on music sharing. I'd like to see some more rigorous economic studies, as I don't think music sharing has truly exploded like it could and will, and I don't think $60 will really scale (and it certainly won't keep the labels happy).

"Earthtones: Music from the Latin Diaspora"

This is good.

Surrender!

With Quicktime 6.4's release, you should have less trouble watch .3gpp files such as our own surrender.

Saying HOOO Like The Temple Owls

Inspired by reading Chuck D's interview transcript on Fox (thanks, Anil) and listening to the unbelievable C-Rayz Walz album, I got to thinking about about Hip-Hop. This really isn't that unusual, I've probably thought about Hip-hop every waking hour of my life for the last eight years.

But every two weeks I overhear a conversation that can be summarized thusly: "I used to love Hip-Hop, but it's no good anymore. It's so boring and violent. The beats are all the same. Rappers today are so misongynist." Etc, etc, etc. You know the talk. This makes my blood boil every single time. Hip-Hop is as great as it's ever been.

If you are guilty of the above crime of fronting on the current state of Hip-Hop you either have been too busy to head out to the record store and check out the new releases or have stopped listening to Hip-Hop, in which case you don't know what you're talking about and who cares about your opinion anyway?

For those of you who are "too busy," shame on you! But I'm here to help. Most of my records are sorted by artist and genre, but one shelf is particularly convenient to our turntables and the right half of it usually holds what we've been listening to. Here, completely unfiltered, are the ten rightmost records on that shelf.

• Now playing, left turntable: C-Rayz Walz: Ravipops. I'm not exaggerating when I say this is by far the best Def Jux release yet. Buy this record right now. RIGHT NOW.
• Now playing, right turntable: Aceyalone: Love & Hate. Aceyalone is the greatest rapper in the history of the West Coast, period. We're lucky to be alive in a time when he's making music.
• Souls of Mischief: Spark. They're back! It's time to place them among the all time greats, for no other reason than their consistency.
• Wee Bee Foolish: Brighton Beach Memoirs. Yeshua will never live up to the hype generated by his early projects on Fondle 'Em records, but that's fine because the hype was astronomic and this record is great. Emcees always accuse each other of stealing flows - Yeshua & the WBF crew are one of the few that have a legitimate beef.
• RJD2/Blueprint: Soul Position. I buy everything RJD2 is involved with on principle. This is not quite as good as his full album (Deadringer), but it's still great.
• T-Love: Long Way Back. Does it seem like amazing West Coast rappers grow on trees? Yes. Adriana, my Dad and I all love this record. I especially love it.
• RJD2: The Horror. Those of you who listen to "Compact Disc" are at a perpetual disadvantage because you miss the remix and instrumental tracks often available only on LP. RJD2 loves you, so he put out this CD which has most of his important remixes from other 12"s. I bought 5 records to get all these songs, you only have to buy 1 CD.
• InI: Center of Attention (White Label). The best hip-hop album that 99.99999% of the world doesn't know exists. Never released, featuring Q-Tip and Pete Rock on production. You can buy the vinyl from Fat Beats or Sandbox Automatic.
• Missy Elliot: Under Construction. I make no bones about loving this record. Sometimes I hear a snippet of a song in a car driving by and it's in my head all day. It's a terrible feeling and I rush home to my turntables.
• Cannibal Ox / Rob Swift: Cosmos. Also available at Fat Beats. Rob Swift's Sound Event is my favorite album of the last three years, but it's not in the "rightmost ten." Luckily, this single is, so I get to mention it.

All incredible works of art. I've excluded "Mingus Plays Piano." "Dog Faced Hermans: Those Deep Buds," and "Bob James: Nautilus," which are obviously not hip-hop records. I've linked to Amazon where available. If not, I saw each and every one of these records on the wall of Fat Beats this week, so they're out there. You have no excuse!

you may know this feeling

Just Like Heaven came on my iPod and I was strongly reminded of karaoke in Portland. I haven't had a vacation in a year, but I'm off next week and it can't come too soon.

In the future, bars and workplaces will erupt into spontatneous karaoke courtesy of ringtones and iPods. (or maybe I just REALLY need a vacation)

forsaken!

My Dearest Ms. Phair,

I've been a staunch defender of your recent work, much to the chagrin of many friends. They say you're crazy, you're a sell out, you can't sing, you act desperate and pathetic and have lost your youthful edge. I know better. I suspect that although irony made your name, you love pop music above all. So do I.