Musician – Rocknerd

Image from Duolingo, showing screen options

Duolingo Music.

12 November, 202412 November, 2024 Musician 0

In October last year, Duolingo announced it was adding a music course to its suite of languages to learn.

Valedictions, Vangelis

5 June, 20226 June, 2022 Musician, Prog 0

It seems to be all a little bit disturbing to write shortly after the death of Klaus Schulze, that one must also put finger to keyboard to comment on the loss of Evángelos Odysséas Papathanassíou, better known as “Vangelis” on May 17th.

An image carefully constructed to make musicians cry.

19 May, 202219 May, 2022 Classical, Musician 1

Musicians who have a casual attitude to the continued use of their eyes may want to look over this advertising image and see if they can spot a single thing right about it.

Protodome: 4000AD (2020). A chiptune jazz-funk EP played entirely on a 1-bit square wave.

13 April, 202013 April, 2020 Jazz, Musician, Record 0

Art as a response to limitations.

Records: Nero Bellum, Am I Dead Yet?, O.R.k. (2019).

12 July, 201924 March, 2020 Industrial, Musician, Prog, Record, Rock 0

Mary Byker being precisely the right amount of too clever for his own good is a pleasing surprise when clearing down the review pile.

Links: BitTorrent “web” client, the women of Rolling Stone, Deerful how-to, “Despacito” on kazoo.

17 September, 2018 Indie, mp3, Musician, Pop, Rocknerd, Writing 0

I can kazoo this on my own.

Links: Spotify metadata, VU meters, songwriting camps, Disney defends fair use, the history of Smash Hits.

20 August, 2018 Audio, mp3, Musician, Pop, Writing, Your rights 0

Twenty deadly diseases.

Links: Dragon Ball Super mass piracy, origin of the gated reverb snare, the return of illegal raves.

25 March, 2018 Dance, Film, Links, Musician 0

Plus Salman Rushdie’s disco turn, and “Ace Of Spades” played on an actual spade.

Links: Dick O’Dell/Y Records, DX-7 presets, Mony Mony, going algorithm-free, Hypebot.

7 January, 20188 January, 2018 Musician, Pop, Post-Punk, Writing 0

Into the hot.

Links: Chapter Music, Damned Industrial top 20, ZynAddSubFx terms, iTunes shutdown, vinyl clog.

24 December, 2017 Indie, Industrial, Industry, Links, mp3, Musician 2

Yes, I’m still here. More exciting things from the big world!

Links: Sgt. Pepper, Raincoats, Severed Heads on DAWs, Tommy Keene RIP.

25 November, 2017 Industrial, Links, Musician, Pop, Post-Punk 0

These are places that are gone.

Links: Reviews and auteurs in the streaming age, Grant Hart’s last interview.

13 November, 201713 November, 2017 Links, Musician, Punk, Writing 0

It’s all about the hook.

Links: TR-808 in Wikipedia, the Nick Cave graphic novel, punk podcast, Big Muff.

25 October, 2017 Links, Musician, Post-Punk, Punk 0

And Laura Cortese and the Dance Cards.

Links: Devo “Satisfaction”, failed electronic instruments, subgenres of electronic music.

26 September, 2017 Esoterica, Links, Musician, Post-Punk, Writing 0

It’s all about the bleep, even with guitar, bass and drums.

Pop links: The missing V chord, why pop comes from Los Angeles, how earworms work.

19 August, 201720 August, 2017 Links, Musician, Pop 0

Pop music is a virus, and I still get the shingles outbreaks.

Producers: Max Martin literally farts a top ten hit; Butch Vig; Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies.

14 August, 201715 August, 2017 Esoterica, Links, Musician, Pop, Punk 0

“Always give yourself credit for having more than personality.” parp parp parp

Synth links: Detroit techno, old gadgets, TR-08, Alan Vega, making your synthesizer fart.

12 August, 2017 Dance, Musician, Punk 0

The one thing anyone wants from a new synth.

Well chaps, SoundCloud may be buggered. Save what you can.

14 July, 201714 July, 2017 mp3, Musician 0

Despite a possible last-second rap rescue, assume SoundCloud is probably still at risk and you should be downloading and preserving.

Links: Declining guitar sales, I Feel Love, tinnitus.

25 June, 201725 June, 2017 Dance, Links, Musician 3

And The Damn Book.

Links: AIR Studios Montserrat, Carl Bernstein the pop critic, net neutrality for musicians.

7 June, 2017 Links, Musician, Writing, Your rights 0

The net neutrality article is particularly important.

Lester Bangs on Brian Eno.

16 May, 201717 May, 2017 Esoterica, Musician 0

“It’s not a hard instrument, actually. People think synthesizers are difficult and mysterious, but in about a day you can understand how to use it. In about five years you can understand how not to as well.”

Video: Go-Betweens, techno in six steps, a pop hit in four minutes.

13 May, 201713 May, 2017 Indie, Musician, Television 0

Some telly to finish your day.

Links: How to rig the charts, musicians’ vending machine, a malware music player, Internet Archive.

7 May, 201718 May, 2017 Audio, Industry, Links, Musician 0

I’m sure Harry Styles will categorically deny that anyone from any of his teams paid anyone to do anything whatsoever toward this chart rigging effort. Any moment now.

There’s drum machines, then there’s a machine drummer.

30 April, 201730 April, 2017 Musician 0

Our robot friends move into the acoustic version too.

Musical user interfaces, copyright companies being themselves, the worst of Rolling Stone.

16 April, 201716 April, 2017 Links, Musician, Writing, Your rights 0

You need to see the ideas for music software interfaces.

Links: A dumped Steinway, Kim Dotcom’s terrible album, early TR-808 hits, the history of disco.

6 April, 201718 May, 2017 Dance, Links, Musician 0

“There was lots and lots of good music that was actually made but it never saw the light of day because it wasn’t Kim’s taste. His taste is what you can hear on that fucking atrocious album that actually got released.”