New track Nightsky available at

• iTunes
• amazon
• CD-Baby
• 7Digital

artefact of extinct culture and people: Easter Island Long Ear Statue

In this video Jared Diamond is talking about the collapsing of societies. He shortly mentions new facts to account for the happenings to the Easter Island people and more recently the Salomon Islanders. I find this stuff highly interesting, what about you?

https://www.ted.com/talks/jared_diamond_on_why_societies_collapse

More on easter island by Jared Dianmond.

• Footstep Surf Music Band (tags: surf-music download)

MySpace.com – GomezAmps.com

Free bossa MP3s

Dial “M” for Musicology: Taboo!

quote form the campaign site:

Fair Play for Creators is an online forum set up by PRS for Music so that creators everywhere can publicly demonstrate their concern over the way their work is treated by online businesses.

Fair Play for Creators was established after Internet-giant, Google, made the decision to remove some music content from YouTube.

Google’s decision was made because it didn’t want to pay the going rate for music, to the creators of that music, when it’s used on YouTube.

Music creators rely on receiving royalties whenever and wherever their work is used. Royalties are vital in nurturing creative music talent. They make sure music creators are rewarded for their creativity in the same way any other person would be in their work.

Fair Play for Creators believes that fans should have access to the music they love, and that the work of music creators should be paid for by the online businesses who benefit from its use.

If you’re not happy for us to use your comments on this site, please uncheck the first box underneath the comments box.

Let’s help the creators keep on creating.

When I was asked to DJ Exotica music on a boat recently I had to burn some vinyl of mine to CD. So I could see the sound waves and made two screenshots of the perfectly mastered Arthur Lyman album Bahia.

The reason I chose this one was that the loudest and first track I ripped peaked at 0dB without the limiter catching it. I just left the dials to their own devices and hoped I can capture the entire album with this “magic” setting. It was just plain luck. So I ripped this particular vinyl record without any additional limiting or compression, peaking at 0dB and all the music of that album perfectly relative to that peak.

When you see the soundwaves you will recogn that each one has got its own shape. This means that the creativity of the musicians is reflected in the volume at any given point in time, allowing for drama, surprises and expression. Sure there was some kind of processing going on even in those days, but it was to get a good, hi-fi sound at the end-consumer, with the goal being a natural room impression – heavy compression doesn’t allow that. See that one very quiet track – it’s meant to be that way. How they made it? They played their instruments softer. You have to be quiet yourself to clearly hear it, you start interacting with the music.

It all made me realize on a new level, what beautiful works of art music masters can be.

Here are two Heavy Metal soundfiles for comparison. It’s the same track, the upper, more dynamic one was given to a game company, the lower one is from the CD album. Wether this was a mistake or the less dynamic sound was considered more desireable I don’t know.

related posts:
Turn Me Up! | Bringing Dynamics Back To Music
Loudness Wars Explained
Article on Metallica‘s new album at Wired.

Video On Demand from Amazon

…the first two minutes of videos automatically play at no charge to customers when they visit the product detail page. At any time during this 2-minute viewing period, customers can choose to purchase or rent the title to watch it in its entirety…

The Bruce Brown movies prior to The Endless Summer are now available for download from Amazon. Personally speaking: You got to have them all.

For reasons unknown to me Barefoot Adventure is not available.

Brian Chidester, co-author of Dumb Angel Magazine 4 and the upcoming Pop Surf Culture book (among other things) has a short film about the Waikiki Beachboys on YouTube currently.

Quote from Tiki central:

It’s a short documentary that I directed four years ago, as a teaser to a larger project about the Waikiki Beachboys… native Hawaiian surf instructors and nightclub entertainers from the jazz age up through the ’60s. There were two great generations of Beachboys, and even though there are still beachboy concessions on Waikiki Beach today, the music and scene is nowhere near what it was back in the day.
I hope you enjoy the clip. I have tons of interview footage ‘in the can.’

These quotes are from a recent interview Evolution of Media made with Chico Hamilton, who happens to be one of my favorite drummers.

…I hear many drummers today, who have amazing chops, but who ultimately leave me cold because they never settle down long enough to get a pocket going, to keep some time. Some consider it old fashioned, but for my own listening pleasure, I enjoy hearing a band that swings. I think you will enjoy it too.

I’m told that people still dance to my music in nightclubs. There’s no greater compliment than that!

…But I can tell you one thing that I do know, which is that if this ‘so called’ industry becomes more about the format, than it is about the music, then it’s a dead end industry.

Chico Hamilton on iTunes and MySpace

A new page with goodies you can put anywhere on the web, or on your MySpace profile, or comments, bulletins – whatever. This took the place of the Merchandise page, the merch widget is among the supporter goodies there. So you’re welcome to help yourself. Feel free to ask if something is unclear – there are little links to pages with the widget/player codes. Often there are special MySpace editions, you will want to use there. The players can be editied with different skins and measurements.