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« Older Entries | Newer Entries »Great Singers Who Can’t Sing
[ 4 Comments ]Posted on September 15, 2010 by admin in Music
Wednesday, September 15th, 2010How a video of a seven year-old started an hour-long debate about great singers who can’t sing. Who would YOU put on that list?
  Why Does Tom Waits always end up on lists like this? |
If you want to get a friendly but heated argument started, just start naming singers that can’t sing. I did this by accident the other day when a friend played me the clip of then 7-year-old Connie Talbot singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” on “Britain’s Got Talent” (also below). There are a few points where she wobbles and eviscerates any concept of accurate pitch, but immediately follows with gut-wrenching feeling and a dynamic vibrato for her age. Overall, she “puts it across” with incredible impact, and you’d have to be pretty damn jaded (or maybe just hate kids) to not get at least a little bit of a teary eye. So the debate started when I said pretty much what I just said here, but elaborated by saying something like “but there are plenty of singers who can’t sing that we love to listen to, people like Tom Waits, or Frank Sinatra, or Fiona Apple“. That was an unfortunate choice for a short list, because if you want to get jumped by an angry mob that’s foaming at the mouth wanting to kick your ribs in with steel-toed boots, just be sure to pick at artists that have a rabid cult following that’s based more on an emotional connection to the artist than a well-considered analysis of their singing skills and gifts. Like Tom Waits. Or Barbra Streisand. Before I go on to share the expanded list that resulted from the ensuing debate, I should provide some background on how my opinions are guided. I grew up in a music store with well-tuned concert-pitch instruments around all the time, so on the one hand have an impeccable sense of pitch. On the other hand, I also love music from all over the world with all its non-western tunings and scales, and the first instrument I played with passion was the electric guitar, an instrument that can be horrifying in its lack of proper intonation. And as a singer, I have great pitch, but resort to odd styling and diction to mask my feeble or non-existent vibrato. Imagine a weird amalgam of Bing Crosby and Richard Butler of The Psychedelic Furs. So understand that this is mostly about taste, and is meant to be more about analysis and opinion than “criticism”. Feel free to chime in with your own picks, I’d like to do a followup with video clips as examples. Oh. One more thing. Bob Dylan sucks. Read the rest of this entry »
The iPad As A Musical Instrument?
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on September 7, 2010 by admin in Music
Tuesday, September 7th, 2010Well, maybe not quite yet, but here’s a roundup of some tools that are available that point to a cool future for multitouch musical instrument controllers.
Way back in November of 2008, we took a look at the state of innovative tactile controllers for music. At the time, the coolest cutting edge tools were mostly research projects, certainly not something you’d pick up at the local music store. Well, this is finally beginning to change. For professional work, and for about two grand, there’s the JazzMutant Lemur, which is probably beyond what a lot of musician/songwriters or dabblers need. And if you have the brains and can get your hands on the hardware, there’s the Töken multitouch screen running Emulator (video below). But the iPad – in spite of being an annoyingly closed platform – is coming into its own as a somewhat interesting tool as more sophisticated apps become available. And the overall cost of working with an iPad can’t be beat. After the initial purchase of the iPad
This Viral Will Fizzle Fo Shizzle
[ 12 Comments ]Posted on September 2, 2010 by admin in Music
Thursday, September 2nd, 2010Snoop Dogg’s campizzle with Norton Antivizzle is entertaining but probably won’t sell much software.
 You’d have a knowing smirk too, if all you had to do for this kind of exposure was give away two concert tickets. |
Whoever wins the new Norton Antivirus/Snoop Dogg anti-cybercrime rap contest over at HackIsWack.com is destined to be at least as famous as M. E. Hart. Oh. Sorry. You probably didn’t know he was the “rapper” in the 1994 Don’t Copy That Floppy campaign (video below). You know, the one you don’t remember. This marketing campaign by Norton is so full of fail in so many ways that I don’t know where to start. First, I’ll acknowledge that yes, I’m talking about Norton Antivirus, which is part of their goal. In fact, here. Go buy some
Understanding Rap Music
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on August 22, 2010 by admin in Music
Sunday, August 22nd, 2010You can learn about a lot of things by researching them on the web. Rap music isn’t one of them. But GoogleRaps is here to help.
 Google Rap Maps. Is there anything Google can’t do? |
When someone asks me, “do you like rap music?”, I’m never quite sure what to say. Do I try to clarify their question by saying “You mean those audio recordings of rhyming rhythmic monologues about killing, misogyny, drug deals, narcissism, sexual organs, racism, and egoistic persecution complexes?” To which the answer would be “Um…no.” Unfortunately, that’s what a lot of people think of when they think of rap, so if you say “Sure, I like rap” then you risk being pigeonholed as someone who hates women and thinks shooting people is a noble way to resolve a dispute. And if you’re white, you’ll be subject to the additional assumption that not only do you approve of these behaviors, but you do so by co-opting the values of an oppressed subculture. My actual answer to the original question is probably something like “Yeah, I like rap music. GOOD rap music”, going on to explain what a useless term “rap” is. Using information from the internet does nothing to clarify the issues at hand. Wikipedia has a dry description of rapping that suggests that “rap” may be etymologically derived from “repartee” and then goes on to talk about things like the early influence of The Memphis Jug Band, but the term “rap” redirects to “hip hop”. Which in my opinion muddles the definition beyond belief, since the page itself defines rap as being merely one of the four “key stylistic elements” of hip hop. Yeah. Whatever. There are also a lot of sites that attempt (and mostly fail) at meta-ironic humor based on “whitefying” the meaning of rap lyrics, like SnacksAndShit.com or Underground Hip Hop For Dummies . One example: Lyrics from Krizz Kaliko’s Get Cha Life Right – ” I ain’t trying to be Bill Gates, I’m trying to be the nigga Bill Gates hates.” Translation – “Here’s one goal which is impossible and another goal which is not that hard and wildly unambitious”. There’s a much more elaborate form of this in a special Intellectualize Rap forum on SomethingAwful.com, but the problem here is that if you had a deep enough knowledge of the songs being referenced, you probably wouldn’t find any of the Demotivator-style images funny. For the best laugh, you could try linkbait-tripe-posing-as-actual-content like EzineArticles.com’s Understanding Rap Music, which informs you straightaway – in self-unaware deadpan hilarity – that “Many rap songs are fast-paced. It can be tough to tell exactly what is being said“. Thank you, underpaid content-farm hack Val McQueen, for the insight. And then there’s the “Yahoo Answers” of rap lyrics, UnderstandRap.com, which takes easily-decipherable lyric snippets and deciphers them for you. Probably the only resource we found that was both informative and funny was Rapgenius’ ne feature The Rap Map, which offers extensively annotated Google Maps of rap. With a little tongue in cheek. Know of any good resources for useful or amusing rap facts? Read the rest of this entry »
Best Coast’s Crazy For You & Surfer Blood’s Astro Coast
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on August 13, 2010 by admin in Music
Friday, August 13th, 2010Help us out with a late summer playlist. So far all we’ve got is some Best Coast and some Surfer Blood.
You know how hearing a simple pop song can instantly transport you to another time and place, and evoke all the feelings associated with it? Today I was sitting at an outdoor cafe in the sweltering humid 90 degree weather where I live, and was suddenly teleported to the crisp and tragically moody monochromatic autumn reality that hearing California Dreamin’ inflicts upon me. Which reminded me that probably the only thing I like about living in a part of the US that has seasons (dear God please help me get out of here before winter!) is the brief periods of moodiness that are inevitable first when you realize summer is ending, then later when everything starts literally dying, and then not too long after that when the deadly cold and passionless midwestern dread sets in. And to be clear, these “brief periods” I’m referring to last about three days, and then I otherwise really should be on medication. So I decided I need a late summer playlist to help ease the pain of the impending gloom. One of the first picks was easy. Best Coast’s Crazy for You from last month is a perfect beach pop backdrop for August with its mix of upbeat pop and moody, sixties-tinged, reverb-drenched teen ennui. It for some reason made me think of relistening to Surfer Blood’s Astro Coast, which made no sonic sense to me back in January when I first heard it, but suddenly does on a sweltering summer day. With all the guitars, reverb, and harmonies, both bands have a weird sort of Strokes meets Animal Collective meets Beach House kind of thing going on. Clips below. Any suggestions to keep a playlist going? Read the rest of this entry »