Euphonic Remarks

I implore you to go toodle around Encyclopedia of Music in Canda. It is a great resource for finding out about all the wonderful music Canada has to offer. If you’re an up and coming artist check out the listing of record companies and distributors. Going on a road trip? Find a festival to drop in on. Feeling competitive? Here’s a listing of competitions? How ’bout that?

In short, if you’re in anyway interested in the Canadian music scene, go to this site. There is endless fun to be had.

Continuing on the theme of an earlier post on unsual instruments here is this awesome musical house. It seems that someone decided to make their house into an instrument, or a house sized instrument depending on your perspective.

All the Architectural instruments are based around strings. The Architecture becomes the structure, bridge and resonator for these giant stringed instruments. Specially developed brass wire and piano wires are used as “the strings” of the instruments. The use of long string technologies developed by Bill Close allow for the instruments to be architectural in scale. The complex patterns of strings are extension of the architectural lines of the house and become an integral part of the visual experience.

SanDisk has rolled out a new music player that plays music off of microSD cards. The cards come loaded with music in the same way that a CD is. The player will also play cards that you load yourself so that you may make your own mix tapes.

It seems to me that this is one step backward. I remember being asked years ago what physical media would replace disks, and I replied “Solid state”. You see, with the growing capacity and plummeting price of memory chips I thought that in the future, you would put a cartridge in a box to make the music go. I was so wrong. While, yes, some sort of physical media is needed to store whatever music and video information you want to play, it has become antiquated as a way of distributing that information. It’s all done with wires and radio-waves these days.

The future of personal player?

Slotmusic sounds like any other mp3 player with the exception that instead of plugging in the player to your computer to load it up, you have to plug in a microSD card to your computer… and then plug the card into the player. Somehow I don’t think adding in an intermediary step to the proccess is a feature. Sure, the whole point of having these cards is that you can buy them preloaded with music, or swap out the 1GB worth of music for another GB when you need a change of playlists. But let’s be honest here, say you have an average file size of 5MB per song, a 1GB player would then hold approximately 200 songs. At 3 minutes a song that’s 10 hours of music that you could listen to straight without ever repeating. If the player had a 10 hour battery life I would be impressed. The idea that I would need to switch over 1GB cards is silly. It doesn’t work with how people use their players; which is to cram it full of songs they like, listen to it a few hours a day then change it up every couple of days. For the true music junkies, who have buds grafted into their ears, it’s worth it to shell out for a few extra GB to meet their needs.

Here’s another point. MicroSD cards are tiny. They are appropriately sized for losing. I don’t want to keep track of something that is less than the size of a postage stamp.  Then there is the issue of price. These preload cards are going for around $15. I remember when CD’s first got a toehold in the consumer market. They went for around $14, which was about 50% more than what one used to pay for tapes and records. It was said that the jacked price would come down to the $9 level once CD’s became more ubiquitous. I think you all know how that story ended. Given that album lengths are roughly 10 songs, you would be paying $1.50 a song. Of course you’re paying over the $1 a song model that iTunes has going on, that extra 50 cents per song is going towards paying for the card (or lining the pockets of the fat cats).

Don’t get me started on the enviromental impact. Instead of buying one storage device that lasts the lifetime of the player, you are potentially buying additional storage devices throughout the lifetime of the player. So much wasted energy and materials in production, transportation, packaging.

The only thing they have right is the price of the player.  At $20 one might think of picking it up, but if you wait 3 months I’ll bet you can pick up a typical 1GB player for that price anyway. Save your money, slotMusic is going nowhere.

If you’ve never heard of Todd Snider then it’s time you did. His latest album “Peace Queer” is to be released on the 14th. That’s either today or tomorrow, depending on where you live. I’ve been listening to Mr. Snider for some time now and it’s never a let down. He consistently delivers amusing ditties, delivered with dry wit. The genre he works in is typically country/bluegrass with folk leanings. If I had to compare him to another artist it would be John Prine. One of my all time favourites is “Statistician’s Blues”. It’s a good one to start with if you want a sampling of Snider’s musings. Check it out, you may be have a new artist to add to your playlists. As for me I’ll be picking up the new album as soon as I can.

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. That saying is never more true when talking about one’s taste in music. A cute little story coming down the pipeline recently: Judge sentences rap music fan to Bach, Beethoven. Now I suppose the lesson in all this is don’t subject others to your trash or you will be subjected to theirs. Words to live by, and really, the cornerstone of civility.

URBANA, Ohio (AP) — A defendant had a hard time facing the music. Andrew Vactor was facing a $150 fine for playing rap music too loudly on his car stereo in July. But a judge offered to reduce that to $35 if Vactor spent 20 hours listening to classical music by the likes of Bach, Beethoven and Chopin.

Vactor, 24, lasted only about 15 minutes, a probation officer said.

It wasn’t the music, Vactor said, he just needed to be at practice with the rest of the Urbana University basketball team.

“I didn’t have the time to deal with that,” he said. “I just decided to pay the fine.”

Champaign County Municipal Court Judge Susan Fornof-Lippencott says the idea was to force Vactor to listen to something he might not prefer, just as other people had no choice but to listen to his loud rap music.

“I think a lot of people don’t like to be forced to listen to music,” she said.

She’s also taped TV shows for defendants in other cases to watch on topics such as financial responsibility. As she sees it, they get the chance to have their fine reduced “and at the same time broaden their horizons.”

You have just over two months to get your award winning song crafted. Astral Media Radio and Canadian Music Week are presenting the 16th Annual National Songwriting Competition.

The deadline is on Friday, December 12, 2008, but don’t take my word for it read the rules and regulations. I must admit it’s a sweet Grand Prize too:

• $10,000.00 in cash (first runner up receives $2,500.00 cash)
• TASCAM 2488 NEO PortaStudio – 24-track Self Contained Audio Work Station
• NEUMANN TLM 49 Professional Studio Microphone
• 30 hours of mixing and mastering time from METALWORKS, Canada’s #1 Recording Studio
• Complete Website Design & One Year Web Hosting from J.E.T. MEDIA AND DESIGN
• $5,000.00 National Radio Promotion Package from dB PROMOTIONS & PUBLICITY INC.

Just what you need to kickstart your burgeoning music career.

It’s been a while dear readers. I’ve had a lion’s share of my time taken by the arrival of my second offspring. But I’m here now to serve some music goodness.

I’ve found some wonderful examples of instrument making gone amok (much of it having to do with scale, hehe). For instance a real playable tiny grand piano or a giant accordian. If the size of an instrument is important to you, you might be interested to put something that is 36 inches to your mouth. If that’s not enough for you this one is 41 inches and requires two people to blow it. Still want more? Here’s a horn that needs 6 midgets to blow it.

There’s also the freaky instruments contingent. This guy built a giant bass banjo. In fact, for a whole whack of fun and wild instruments check out the gallery of www.oddmusic.com. This one looks like a metal horn of plenty spewing forth musical goodness. Speaking of the horn of plenty, ever wonder what vegetables sound like? Look no further the Vienna Vegetable Orchestra. They play instruments carved from all manners of veggy goodness. The Harpejji is apparently what happens when you smoosh a piano and a guitar together. And this is what happens when you mix a Hurdy-Gurdy with Furbies. Maybe some instruments just shouldn’t be made, but how fun would the music world be if no one tried to do weird and wonderful things.