Rocknerd » Musician

Only a NAZI would set A=440Hz.

David Gerard — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 11:26:25 +0000

If you don’t tune to A=432Hz, you are defying the natural order of the universe, and JUST LOVE HITLER.

Just three more!

David Gerard — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 13:26:14 +0000

“There are dozens of “art guitars” with multiple necks that can never be played. It’s just about the look for some of these creations. So, the NGM decided to go one further and create a guitar with 8 necks — more than any other in the world — that can actually be played. If you’re going to make something like that, it should be real. We got 8 guys together to prove it.”

How to fire a band member.

David Gerard — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 14:48:35 +0000

Bluegrass firing squad, and other termination procedures. Leaving them at the truckstop is only the third option on the list. “It is true, however, that if one of your band members is completely off his/her rocker, the statistical odds are that person will play an instrument that’s tuned in 5ths.”

Play trumpet so awesomely that your brain explodes! Literally.

David Gerard — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 21:13:23 +0000

You thought trying to make a living as a rock musician sucked? You should be giving prayers of thanks that you’re not a classical musician.

The hope of Audacity.

David Gerard — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 19:19:11 +0000

People seem insufficiently aware of Audacity, the open-source sound recording and editing program. This is the four-track everyone desperately wanted twenty years ago. If you have a vaguely realistic mental model of recording sound to tracks and doing things with it, you’ll be able to use it never even reading the manual. First time I used it, it was three hours between installing it and uploading the finished recording. You may be unable to work computers, but if you know what you want to do with your recording then this will let you do it.

You can’t handle the truth.

David Gerard — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 15:29:42 +0000

For my birthday, my darling girlfriend just gave me some shitty, shitty eight quid laptop speakers from Curry’s, to serve as cruel and vicious Truth Boxes for mixing in LMMS! They’re powered from USB, they do 0.5W RMS total (5V at 500mA), they’re about 2.5″ in diameter each, the bass barely exists and they are just what I wanted, because if I want a mix that survives anything it has to work on these. Listening to stuff through them is revelatory. For added cruelty, mix in mono. I am most pleased.

All praise the Hammond B-3.

David Gerard — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 19:58:49 +0000

Andy Updegrove is a computer standards lawyer. This is about as far from rocknerdery as you get. But I deeply appreciated his piece from 2005 on the Hammond B-3 Organ and how it has “has received recognition as an instrument in its own right — something even Stradivarius failed to achieve.”

The opening chord of “A Hard Day’s Night.”

David Gerard — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 23:09:52 +0000

You can’t figure that chord out, can you? Turns out there wasn’t just guitars in the studio, but a piano as well — as determined by mathematical analysis of the recording.

Shut up ’n play yer Wangcaster.

David Gerard — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 01:30:43 +0000

Solid body electric guitars are only shaped like an acoustic for reasons of familiarity — get the neck right and you can do anything else. Unfortunately, there are those who fail to recognise the difference between “can” and “should.” The Lego one is way cool, though.

Kids think Guitar Hero controllers make music.

David Gerard — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 02:48:28 +0000

From Jed: Wayne Coyne from the Flaming Lips has a double-necked guitar where one neck is a Guitar Hero controller. “He went with the Guitar Hero controller because he feels that it’s replacing regular guitars in childrens’ perception of how guitar is played.” Oh dear.

Never mind. How about a few rounds of Guitar Praise? Shred with the sounds of Contemporary Christian Music! All praise!

Ten thousand statistically grammar-average band names.

David Gerard — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 13:29:56 +0000

When building MusicSeer (now inactive) in 2002, Brian Whitman needed a way to ferret out bad user information. So he wrote something to generate 10,000 nonexistent band names. Many of which of course now exist. See how you go.

DIY advance copies.

David Gerard — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 20:50:58 +0000

Oasis are giving away three songs from their forthcoming album, Meet The Beatles. Not as downloads — as sheet music. With Arts Council funding, no less.

Join us now and free the samples.

David Gerard — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 22:47:05 +0000

Andrew C. Bulhak buys a drum machine program. He uses it for years. He discovers his stuff is stuck inside it and he can’t get it out. What does he do? Reverse engineers it, of course. (Slides from Dorkbot talk.) Possibly the obscure format is commercial secrecy, but more likely (as is usual in these cases) it’s just appropriate shame. Binary-coded centimal?