the Indaba Ace of Base Remix.. aka Damn you infective Pop Music Hook!!!

Pulled down the files to do this contest, but with lots of other family commitments and work in Jan., it just didnt happen.

Made the mistake of crusing over to the Indaba music website and checking out the entries. One thing led to another.. and the songs 'hook' melody was burned into my brain. Burnt the midnight oil and did a quick one tonight. It's rough, there are some breaks and timing that need fixed, but I'm still amazed at what technology allows us to do in this day and age.

Timeline wise.. I had all the files pulled into the app probably about midnight, and 3 hours later finished the final mix down. Sometimes the brain needs pure, creative "play".

The main instrumental was a whole step 'detuned' for some reason. Had to run it through Amazing Slower Downer (a cool Mac OS X app that lets you speed up or slow down music without affecting the pitch, unless you want to?) first before pulling into Garageband. I didnt get it done in time for the contest unfortunately :(

Here's the main Indaba contest webpage... Be foreward, you'll be humming this song to yourself all day! :)

Ace of Base “I Saw the Sign” Remix Contest..
Listen to some of these remixes.. the talent of the submissions on
this website blows my mind.

The Sign Ska Punk Style
Ace of Funky Base Remix
I saw the Jazz/dubstep Sign
RMX-I Saw the Sign (Deadhead mix)
the sign remix (ace of base meets the Matrix!)
The Will Breaks Sign Remix
Casper lost his tape deck remix
The UB40 Sign

Which of these things is not like the other?

Remember back to those early days of Sesame street?  
"One of these things is not like the other...?"

What follows are some incredibly strange combinations of songs, 
that actually do go well together (when 'mashed up')


Check out this classic Doors song, combined with Blondies' hit "Rapture"

Deborah Harry and Jim Morrison, together.. actually that's not so odd afterall!

Take a danceable 80's song from 'one hit wonder' group Dead or Alive, combine it with the angst of Nirvana to get "Spins like Teen Spirit"


We bring the 'Sexy Ghosts' back in this Ray Parker Jr/Justin Timberlake mashup


What's a post about music without some mention of Lady Gaga? Christopher Walken
just nails the lyrics on this one!


Another Lady Gaga with those guys from Dead or Alive. "You Ring Me Right Round"

Lady Gaga ft. Beyonce vs Dead or Alive - You Ring Me Round (Like a Telephone) - Mashup by FAROF from djfaroff on Vimeo.

Finally.. the Beatles, Kinks and LCD Soundsystem help you 'Get Back to where Daft Punk really *has* Got You' :)

Drums Without Frontiers - Peter Gabriel Remix Contest Entry

More dabbling in Garage Band. Stayed true to the original, but added tons more drums, some phase shifted vocals and an 'industrial' ending.. Always thought the original sounded a bit "thin" :)



Incredible amount of talent on this website.. just check out these other mixes that put mine to shame...amazing stuff!

The GarageSale Remix.. (all acoustic percussion)
An acoustic take.. (guitars)
Dub/Reggae Mix
A 70's funk... wah wah guitar remix
An 80's Daft Punk Disco Version
WorldMix Bongo Version
80's Synth Pop Version
Rock Style..1
Melodic DubStep
Rock Guitar
Synthy Groove
PinkFloyd/Kansas Remix..
Unplugged
Another synth style remix
The piss remix.. :) (funny)
Atmospheric Mix
Flatbred Mix
Babboon Bop Mix

Yes I can still play piano and sing.. but is it really music? :)

I hadn't played around with Garage Band (or any musical stuff) on the Mac for quite some time. It's all I can do as of late to sit down and play a few songs on the grand piano downstairs.

The other night after a back and forth on Facebook with Gretchen (high school friends, neighbors back in Rose Hill KS) the subject of that old standard "Perfect Country and Western" song came up.. yeah the one by David Allan Coe? In a fit of desperation.. after I got the song stuck in my head, I plugged in the mic to the Tascam US122 interface and layed down this quick vocal Sometimes singing makes it go away for me :)

Now that your ears have recovered that horrible beating.. prepare yourself for what is to come!

A week or so ago, I noticed that one of my followers on Twitter.. (yes I can say that snoopdogg is one of my followers ;-) was doing an online remix contest.

In the past, Trent Reznor of NIN (nine inch) has done these. The *really* cool thing about what Trent does, is that he makes the original digital datasets available in several different forms. These are the raw tracks in Apple Logic, Garage Band, or Avid's ProTools. You pull the whole shebang down and fire up the application and it's as if you were sitting in the recording studio as the console engineer! Pretty neat learning tool, even if you dont produce anything useful. It is also really cool to see what other people come up with. Sometimes the best part is just hearing the other ideas that people/artists have when given the same starting point.


Snoop had released a track on his new disc called 'That Tree' and he posted the individual audio tracks for download.

I'm such the music nerd from my band and keyboard/synth days that I pulled down the .zip file a few weeks ago, figuring that I'd just have the tracks to play around with.. not really time to edit anything useful.

After hooking up the condensor mic and the Tascam XLR/Midi interface to the Mac, I got fired up to dive back into at least Garage Band. It was a newer version that I'd not ran since I installed iLife 08 several months back.

Garage Band (although lots of pro musicians like to poo poo it) is really an amazing program for what it does, and for how easy it is to use. I wish *any* musical instrument mfg. Yamaha, Roland, and the like, would come up with as intuitive of an interface. That is really why I play my keyboards so little these days. I have to scour the manual of my Yamaha Motif ES88 to remember how to do even the simplest thing. The UI's on most synths leave a *lot* to be desired!

Well I missed the memo on the key signature of the song *and* the beats per minute (tempo) so I just took a guess at it.. besides it's RAP.. how hard is that to pitch bend/time shift etc? We'll.. I was slightly off, not too bad I suppose for a few hours of messing around.

See if I improved the original or not? Frankly I dont really like this song that much, and I tried to at least add some intro music/tracks with organ, and a bit of old school funk and I cut several minutes out of it.. just goes on too long IMHO

Check it out.. you can click on the original and my version on the embed. below :)

-tim

ps: That DAC song is still in my head.. and I keep thinking of a twisted.. 'skapunk' reggae version (with appropriate lyrics ;-) look out.. it just might happen!?



I give you the 'ThathonemasterTreeMix' Peace out G's!

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The Love Me Nots released their new video this week

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The Love Me Nots "You're Really Something" from Jd of Damaged Goods Media on Vimeo.
Check out their latest review in Java (a local coffee shop rag)

Their next live show is Nov. 21st @ the Yucca Tap Room in Tempe, AZ.

"Deepnote"

The hardware (BSEE) geek side of me thinks this is
pretty cool! OTOH, how lazy have we become when
we build a robot to actually play our video games
*FOR* us!!! :-)

Secrets of the Guitar Heroes
(Eddie Van Halen Interview in Rolling Stone)

Did people think that you were a guitar
player from Mars or something?

I remember a long time ago we were playing and someone
told us "A&M Records is here to see you guys."
And it was Herb Alpert. I met him years ago later and he came
up to me. He goes, "One of the biggest mistakes
I ever made was passing on you guys." I'm going,
"I remember exactly what you said, too. You said the
guitarist is too psychedelic and too much uncontrolled
energy." I asked him why? He goes, "I didn't
understand what the hell you were doing 'cause
it was so unorthodox." It didn't make any sense to him.

White Girls Cant Rap!!!

Don't assume that anyone who can speak can rap, it's not that easy. Just as a singer masters pitch and tone, a rapper must sound natural. Nothing about this female Long Island trio sounds natural. They don't try to pretend they're anything they're not. But being well-educated, literate nerds from Long Island doesn't for convincing rappers make. Still.. the punk/new wave synths popping from the background make this one sound catchy, check it out after the jump.


Northern State - "A Girl For All Seasons"

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Northern State - "At The Party"

Checked out the U23D Movie last Sat. night at
the Az Mills IMAX Theater in Tempe, AZ. I can say
it's probably the closest I'll ever get to seeing
them in concert! Very well done. More comments and
video after the jump:

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As one reviewer put it:

"Even if you have seen them in concert,
unless you’ve been in the first row or actually
been on stage with them, you haven’t seen anything
like this!"

For more U2 goodness.. check out this vintage
film/interview from 1981 (Tom Synder show)

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Ooops! Keyboards are playing back about a 1.5 semitones above normal.
Eddie tries, but can't transpose on the fly

Ow My ears!

modernist polytonists might have enjoyed this
but im sure even the beauty of dissonance went way over that crowd's heads :-)

40 Years ago today...

I do remember some of the songs but more from radio airplay a few years later.

(I only turned 3 in the fall of 1967)

Did see a copy of the vinyl in the local used bookstore the other day. Almost picked it up, but the thought of having to go haul the turntable out of storage, hook it up etc: got the best of me. Maybe I'll swing by on the way home and see if its still there? :-)
-tim

40 Years Ago Today

(one of the blog's comments....)

There is an interesting aspect of this record that most
younger people have never experienced. My first copy of
the LP was a monophonic copy, because the cheap phonograph
I owned could handle the sound of mono records better.
I always had a feeling that the sound of the mono release
was different in some way to the stereo release.
Not because all the sound came from one speaker,
but in the overall sound presentation.

Years later, I discovered that their producer,
George Martin, actually did mix their LPs differently
for mono and stereo. If you have to opportunity to hear
Pepper in mono, do it. The experience is quite remarkable.

One standout difference is in Lucy in the Sky. Te mono
mix has an almost fuller sound, almost Spector-ish, and
it swirls over the listener in a far more "psychedelic"
way than the stereo mix. In fact, I was so enamored of
that sound, it actually took me a long time to get used
to hearing Lucy in stereo.

I don't believe there's a commercial mono release on CD,
but I know there were bootleg versions floating around
for a while.

The Love Me Nots - I Do

Caught live in Boston this past weekend. (not my video.. someone elses)

Very cool local Phx AZ band. Moving up the
charts, starting to build the buzz and get some airplay

The Love Me Nots "Move In Tight"

If a Strad plays in the forest...!? Fascinating read

LearnLicks.com: Videos from fellow musicians sharing favorite licks and tips

LearnLicks.com: Videos from fellow musicians sharing favorite licks and tips

Help Key: How to Record Your Music Demo on the Cheap

Help Key: How to Record @ Home Part II

http://guitarshredshow.com/

The Subwoofer that Shook the World!

TASCAM has discovered an incompatibility between Apple's "Tiger" OS 10.4
system software and Steinberg's Cubase LE v1.07 installer. For a
successful install of Cubase LE, install it on your Mac first, then
install Tiger. If you have purchased a new Mac with Tiger pre-installed,
Cubase LE will not install. US customers should contact TASCAM Parts at
(323) 727-7617 or parts@teac.com to receive a new installer disk that is
compatible with Tiger. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Find *ANY* Song!