Music

Orbital on making “Chime”

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Phil and Paul Hartnoll (Orbital) discuss their earliest hit, “Chime,” and talk about their career trajectory and more.

RiffRumble Metal: Get your entries in

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Record your best metal song with RiffWorks (Mac/Win) or FourTrack (iPhone) on your own, or with up to 4 friends worldwide using RiffLink online song collaboration. Over $4000 in prizes are up for grabs, including a Codella Stormchaser Guitar, Sonoma’s new GuitarJack 2 USB audio interface for PC, Mac and select mobile devices, and more.

Sonoma Wire Works asked me to be the judge for this year’s RiffRumble, so get your entries in.

The amazing counterpoint sequencer and other musical devices

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Luisa Pereira is a research fellow at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, a programmer, and a musician. Combining her love of programming and music, Luisa crafted a set of devices to generate music based on 300 year old composition theory.

Fantastic stuff. Follow the headline link for the details. One of her inventions, the Counterpointer, takes a melody set by the user and layers in automatically generated counter-melodies. Watch the Counterpointer video below and you’ll get the idea. Lovely.

Universal Audio’s API Vision Channel Strip plug-in

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Comprised of five API modules — including the famed 212L Preamp, 225L Compressor, 235L Gate/Expander, 550L EQ, and 215L Filters — the API Vision is UA’s most colorful channel strip plug-in to date, allowing you to inject your tracks with all of the warmth and personality of API’s flagship analog console.

UA’s plug-ins are the best. Period.

iRig BlueBoard

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Just when you start to wonder what IK Multimedia is going to come up with next, they deliver a pedalboard to control your Mac and iOS music apps wirelessly.

James Sherry Nirvana interviews, on the net for the first time

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If you are a Nirvana fan, these are a fantastic find.

Here we have three separate Nirvana interviews conducted by Sherry; all together, they add up to nearly an hour. The interviews catch Nirvana at three very different stages of their career. In November of 1990 Nirvana was riding the modest success of Bleach; in the summer of 1991 they were ready to release Nevermind and they knew they had something special on their hands; by 1992 they had already become superstars and were dealing with that. By the time the last interview rolled around, Nirvana had been named Metal Hammer’s “Best New Band,” which was just really amusing. Among other things, they discuss their willingness to pursue an idea that had been floated in 1991 of touring with Guns N’ Roses.

Jimi Hendrix documentary premieres Nov. 5

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Hear My Train A Comin’ unveils previously unseen performance footage and home movies taken by Hendrix and drummer Mitch Mitchell while sourcing an extensive archive of photographs, drawings, family letters and more to provide new insight into the musician’s personality and genius. Recently uncovered film footage of Hendrix at the 1968 Miami Pop Festival is among the previously unseen treasures featured in American Masters: Jimi Hendrix – Hear My Train A Comin’.

I can’t wait.

[caption id="attachment_38946" align="aligncenter" width="500"]Neale Cousland / Shutterstock.com Neale Cousland / Shutterstock.com[/caption]

Capo 3

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This is one of my favorite music apps. The new version now does chord detection among many other things.

RiffRumble Metal song contest

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Sonoma Wire Works is holding its annual RiffRumble competition and are giving away thousands of dollars in prizes. This time the RiffRumble theme is Metal and I will be judging the top five songs, after public voting has been completed.

George Harrison’s secret visit was first Beatle trip to US

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With all that’s been written about The Beatles, I’m amazed that I’ve never encountered this story before. This is well written and really gives you a sense of what George was going through at the time, a time before The Beatles had broken through in the US.

George asked the salesperson if they carried any records by the Beatles and was met with a blank stare of complete unawareness and non-recognition. This introverted George slightly, along with the jarring moment when he saw England’s biggest rock star, Cliff Richard, in his recent move Summer Holiday being played as a second string feature at the local drive-in. These two incidents stayed with George, and when he reported back to the other Beatles upon his return to England, we wondered if they could make it in the States, and actually thought they would flop.

Steve Albini’s letter to Nirvana

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Music producer Steve Albini had a conversation with Kurt Cobain about the possibility of Steve producing Nirvana’s next album, their final studio album, In Utero. Kurt asked Steve to put together an outline of his thoughts on producing and the letter after the jump was the result. So much great stuff in there.

BFD3

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This is an impressive looking upgrade for one of the best drum samplers on the market.

Elvis Costello and Saturday Night Live

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There’s a famous story about Elvis Costello appearing on Saturday Night Live, back in 1977, when the show was still pretty brand new. Because SNL is live, timing is critical. Costello was supposed to sing Less Than Zero and the show’s timing was based on that fact. But in the middle of the song, he suddenly stopped and switched into the song he originally wanted to play, Radio Radio. Pissed Lorne Michaels off and he was banned from the show. This is an old, well known story. If you are interested, follow the link above and you can watch the video.

Here’s the part of the story I did not know. In 1989, Lorne and Elvis made up and Elvis was invited back on the show as a surprise guest. Here’s how that went.

Apple’s iTunes Festival ad

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Apple’s new iTunes Festival ad.

“60 great artists. 30 amazing nights. Live and free on iTunes.”

You can still download the free iPhone or iPad app and access performances from each artist. Additional performances are available for purchase in iTunes.

Bring back some great memories, Jim?

Band’s fantastic response to winning top Canadian music prize

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Godspeed You! Black Emperor (that is the name of the band) won this year’s Polaris Prize, given to the best full-length Canadian album for the album Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend!. The album is brilliant, one of my absolute favorites, and you can listen to it in the embed below.

But what makes the linked article so worth reading is the band’s response to the folks who gave them the prize. Take a look.

Review: iRig Pro

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For the last week or so I’ve been testing out IK Multimedia’s new iRig Pro, the company’s audio interface that connects to iPhone, iPad and your Mac. That means that one interface can serve multiple purposes for you.[…]

Jimmy Page on the art of songwriting

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Daniel Rachel just released the book Isle of Noises: Conversations with Great British Songwriters.

Inspired by Paul Zollo’s seminal Songwriters on Songwriting, Rachel has managed to bring together a truly impressive ensemble of British tunesmiths, including Ray Davies, Jarvis Cocker, Mick Jones, Robin Gibb (why the hell not!) and Johnny Marr, among others. The results are hugely enjoyable, and the mind veritably boggles imagining the kind of cajoling and legwork Rachel must have put in to coax this rich and eclectic ensemble out of their country piles—not least the notoriously taciturn, the notoriously notorious Jimmy Page…

I love interviews where musicians talk about their craft (as opposed to their personal lives). Really looking forward to getting my copy. Follow the link above to get to an excerpt of the Jimmy Page interview.

Here’s a tasty bit of Page playing Chopin. The audio is a little out of sync (I think they captured the echo), but yum, nonetheless.