Some days ago I heard the camp Lebanese singer/songwriter Mika’s debut album “Life in Cartoon Motion” (I don’t listen much to the radio…) and thought “Hmmm… Freddie is back…” Today I invested in another returning Mercury; the Meltdown Revolution for Wii. Pas mal du tout !
Continue reading ‘Mercury observations’
Archive for the 'Music' Category
Today I release yet another small ditty upon the world. I started it in March; inspired by a weather phenomenon occurring that month here in France called Giboulées. That is rainstorms that are over as sudden as they appear. A very soaking phenomenon. Get it from here.
This time around I'm posting a small cover song I did of the excellent Meat Puppets original "Lake of Fire". My version is inspired by great The Penguin Café Orchestra. Download it from here.
Well, this song started out as a tribute to "Vagabond" by Air and Beck, a slow bluesy electronic piece that I like a lot. Then I tried to write lyrics for it, but I didn't come up with much and came to think of an old Built to Spill song where they quote various rock'n'roll bands through time, so I did a twist on it…
Continue reading ‘New Song: “Sung”’
WhiteRoom - WhiteRoom on Jamendo
I must say this is one of the best albums I’ve come across so far on Jamendo. Brilliant!
My favourite track today is the big-band jazzy Gomez-like ditty ‘Barcelona’. Tomorrow it might be the more laid back ‘Simple Mood’.
Thank you WhiteRoom!
Lewis tipped me about a brilliant computer program the other day; SPEAR. Brilliant! What it does is, basically, that it analyses any soundfile you care to give it and finds a way to represent it as a set of sine tones - partials. The result can be played back in the program and it will sound impressingly close to the original file. (I was particularily baffled by the percussive parts of pieces.) Since the sound is deconstructed, so to speak, in this way, we can do many very interesting things to the sound, like removing any partials below a threshold dB-level (to get the "main" tones), or selecting partials using a lasso tool and playing only "parts" of the full sound. You can also slow down, speed up - and even pause the reading of the sound while the playback is in perfect tune. Great fun!
Spring, or rather pre-spring (not really winter here in Lyon this year), has made me want to focus on two video games that I have been neglecting lately; good old Photoshop and Cubase!
Continue reading ‘Spring’
My good friend, and composer of contemporary music; Lewis said when I showed him Electroplankton on my DS: “This is the future of music - if we are lucky.” A very fitting reaction indeed. This title by Toshio Iwai is neither a “game” that is not a game, nor an “instrument” that is not a instrument and not really a “music composing tool” that’s not a music composing tool. It’s more in the lines of a composition - an interactive composition. An interactive composition inspired by video games as well as music software and musical instruments.
Rythm based games are in the wind these days. At least in my wind, or the area of the wind I’m in. Anyway; I have been playing three quite different, but all very good rythm based video games lately. The two first I had to import from Japan; “Daigasso! Band Brothers” and “Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan!“. That the third one, “Mario & Luigi - Partners in Time“, is so heavily dependant on rythmic patterns came more as a surprise to me.
Continue reading ‘Games and Music’
