So you probably have three choices: wait patiently, read old posts, or follow what I’m doing at February Album Writing Month.
Category: stories and more
meta posts; thoughts about music itself rather than a specific work or artist
Charlie Cheney’s Music Exam (Filters)
And one more show with Charlie. Too much information. No; not here. That’s what the show is about.
It used to be that you’d read Rolling Stone or get music suggestions from the DJ on the radio. But now that there’s far too much music even to hear it all on the radio, let alone discuss, how do you filter out all the noise and zero in on the music you’ve never heard of, but want to hear?
Charlie Cheney’s Music Exam (Social Networks)
Two more shows with Charlie (it’s been two weeks; it’s a weekly show. Coincidence, or design?)
On the December 8th show we talked about social networks. In this one, you get to hear me completely blindsided because I hadn’t gotten Charlie’s email telling me what we were talking about so I hadn’t done my homework. I realize I don’t really sound like a blathering idiot. I only felt like one. (My fault, not Charlie’s. Charlie is a gracious and entertaining host.)
As always, no autoplay, please. Click the little button. Yes, that one, the pointy triangle thing.
I Guess I’m Floating, Too
[l1P]P” border=”0″ align=”left” />erhaps not, but it would be fun.
Daughter Rush keeps sending me fun new music. She finds some of it through some terribly not confused people at a blog called I Guess I’m Floating.
Severely eclectic tastes, subtle humour, and the occasional typo. (Dent May is so fun, but his ‘diddys’ are really ditties. Ah, well.)
I’m tempted to follow them meself, but it’s another excuse for Rush and I to connect, so I’ll leave it to her.
For now.
Opening Pandora’s Box
[az]B000BNWJXM[/az]Lately I’ve been listening to Pandora a lot. A demonstration of the value of The Music Genome Project®, Pandora allows you to create your own radio station based on a single artist or even a single song.
Using a database of 400 different aspects of descriptions of music, it matches up music in their files with the artist or song you’ve chosen as the seed for your station. The consistency is impressive.
But that’s also the drawback.
You’ll be introduced to new artists, certainly (it’s how I discovered the chewy goodness of Maggi, Pierce and E.J. But since every song is carefully chosen to match existing criteria, you won’t stumble across gems which are fundamentally different from what you’re already listening to.
I keep making new stations (you can have as many as you want) and seeing how far I can stretch it before it breaks. From the perspective of “if you like X, you’ll probably like Y” I haven’t found anything better.
Charlie Cheney’s Music Exam (Tribes)
No, this won’t be on the test.
Musician and musical entrepreneur Charlie Cheney is doing an online radio show and for some reason decided he should talk to me a lot. We’ll be foisting this nonsense on an unsuspecting world every Monday evening for the foreseeable future. Check Charlie’s BlogTalkRadio page for the schedule, time, archives, and all that blather. And call in! Call and actually talk to us during the show! Your very own voice will appear right here in these podcasts! You’ll be as famous as I am!
Maybe that doesn’t mean as much as it could, huh?
Since I hate noises automatically starting on web pages, you’ll have to click the ‘Play’ button below to listen.
200
Two hundred posts.
The first was March 12, 2002. That’s 2,414 days ago. 6 years, 7 months, 8 days.
Not a great average, every 12 days, but there were times I lost my way and went months (194 days, over six months, one time) without posting.
My life isn’t remotely what it was when I started. Much gain, some loss.
And lots and lots of music.
A not entirely but almost random list of two hundred songs: Continue reading “200”
Mulligan
Here we go again . . .
Rush bought the Little One a copy of ‘Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel’ which I haven’t read for years. It’s not music, but it fits the title.
February Album Writing Month, 2008 Edition
[l1P]P” border=”0″ align=”left” />lease put your seat trays up and raise your seats to their upright position: it’s time, once again, for over 1,000 lunatics to gather at FAWM and try to write 14 songs in 28 days. Well, being a leap year and all, we’ll each try to add a collaboration, making it 14.5 songs in 29 days.
Won’t be around much during February, since it’s also shaping up to be the biggest business month of the past nine.
Read all about the February Album Writing Month at the website, and spread the word, if you so desire, with this here PDF with a bit of pertinent information.
Thresholds
[az]B000BTJC22[/az]Every day, I try to practice my piano chords, a few bass lines, and some guitar chords. I decided that tiny little incremental steps would be better than a) pretending I would someday take lessons or otherwise invest a lot of time to get up to speed quickly and b) never doing it.
The odd thing is that I’ve reached a tipping point. My guitar playing improved exponentially over a few days. When I added diminished and suspended chords to my piano practice, it took two days to get comfortable, instead of the weeks it took for both majors and minors. (Check out Duane’s free online/email piano lessons. Excellent resource.)
It’s had a direct affect on my songwriting, being able to play chords on the guitar. Two completely new songs in a week, and completed music for some lyrics I wrote 18 months ago. The first new song is the first time I’ve totally given in to my country roots. It came out sounding a lot like Alan Jackson, which makes pretty much no sense at all. Maybe I’ll even post demos here.
Practice may or may not make perfect, but it sure makes better.