Vijith A. // Blog

In a dark cave in southwest Germany, Tubingen University archaeologist Nicholas Conard has discovered what are now being called the oldest musical instruments in the world, a pair of flutes made from vulture bones and mammoth tusks that date back 35,000 years to the last ice age.

Conard has since expressed surprise at the revelation that the prehistoric humans who made the instruments would do so using mammoth tusks, which are harder to work with and not already hollow like the bird bones, and also that they had enough leisure time for music in the first place what with all the hunting, gathering, and Smilodon-dodging.

Indiana Jonesing aside, though, it's also interesting to consider what this means for musical history. Or, prehistory, rather, since the oldest sheet music in the world was discovered in Syria in the 50's. Any well-schooled improviser can prove that sophisticated music can exist without notation, recordings or any other fixed medium. In the absence of instruments, how far back could it go? Can chanting and tree-stump drumming alone can account for the preceding epoch?

Without a doubt, musictheory.net is one of the most remarkable online musical tools I've ever encountered. It packages simple sight reading and relative-pitch ear training exercises inside little Flash drills which load in your browser and track your performance as you work through them. I did these every day for years, logging my scores along the way in order to track my progress, during which time my ability to think through and improvise over non-diatonic harmonic figures increased dramatically. Unlike some of the other such training tools out there, these drills are sufficiently randomized such that you'll never have to worry about subconsciously memorizing the sequence of correct answers. They run the gamut from simple single-note exercises to complex jazz chords so almost anybody can reap the benefits -- and if you're confused by even the easiest of 'em, you can take a spin through the lessons first to bring yourself up to speed.

Long ago and far away I was a college music major, and to this day I remain an incomparable dork, so I was quite pleased when I stumbled across a post by the online audio production consultants at Fix Your Mix which examined one of my favorite new rock bands through those academia-colored glasses.

Battles are a hyper-complex Brooklyn prog-rock band whose debut album Mirrored is perfect for armchair music theorizing. As a music writer who frequently suppresses similar nerdy analytical urges, I'm always intrigued by the ways in which rock writing can evolve intellectually, and as a fan of the band, I'm glad I'm not the only one paying attention to the more confusing elements of their record.

I do, however, think there are better places to focus this energy than discussing the melodic mode that comes into play after the singer swallows all the helium. For example, the live version of Tonto which was included as a bonus track when that song was released as a single last year subtly alters the arrangement to highlight the parallel structure of the various riffs, and I also remember reading somewhere that one song on the album is an retrograde inversion of another. I don't quite hear it that way myself, so I'm not sold yet, but the very thought takes me back to my greenhorn collegiate attempts at writing almost-certainly-awful crab canons in elementary four-part harmony.

Maybe, as was often the case with my coursework, I just need to listen again with a score in hand. That, unfortunately, means I'll need a score; I'm not holding my breath, but man, wouldn't that be cool?

The stodgy old musicians of the world, a group with which I am increasingly comfortable sympathizing as this all unfolds, have all been busy perfecting the art of the long-form conniption fit ever since Guitar Hero was released in 2005. Rightfully so: as if we weren't already losing enough would-be competent citizens to the allure of virtual pastimes -- gamers being a group with which, thankfully, I can no longer identify -- the various Harmonix hellspawn are undoubtedly responsible for sucking the enthusiasm of many aspiring musicians (possibly even double-digit percentages?) down a path that leaves even its most dedicated disciples with nothing but sore thumbs and HI SCORES. Food for thought: the price of the Rock Band bundle with all the various instrument controllers is roughly commensurate with a Squier starter kit, which is where I cut my own pubescent teeth years ago.

As much as I love grumbling across generational gaps, though, I also quite enjoy watching said conniption fits, so let's take a moment to look at the latest developments in the pretend-music world:

• The Beatles: Rock Band is on the way. Like the other band-specific special edition games we've already seen (Metallica, Aerosmith, etc), this will slosh the music of the Fab Four atop the usual button-mashing and living room windmills. The stunning thing about this to me, though, is that the video game might come before the music is available for online purchase; at best, they'll be concurrent. Then again, maybe the first is an adequate substitute for the second, depending how this remastering project works out. At the very least, I'm glad Sir Paul was able to smack the franchise back into secondary billing -- we're looking at The Beatles: Rock Band as opposed to, say, Guitar Hero: Metallica.
• DJ Hero, due this fall, is gearing up to bring the, um, magic, to the hip hop market, er, fanbase. Now, I'm not personally among the rockist cadre that discounts outright the musical merits of DJ's, but remember, I'm trying to instigate a few seizures and hyperventilation episodes here, and as far as the aforementioned stodgy traditionalists are concerned, a pretend-music video game about pretending to be allegedly-pretend-musicians should be just the ticket. Personally, I'm more interested in the thought that since there's a reasonable amount of compatibility between the titles and accompanying equipment, we may be barreling toward a point in 2011 where all available game controllers will converge on Rock Band: Late 90's Nu-Metal.
• As of version 3.00, upstart DAW Reaper now accepts a variety of game controllers as MIDI controls, including -- you guessed it -- Guitar Hero axes. This is actually considerably less ridiculous than it sounds, at least on a technical level, since they're fairly simple USB devices. It's also a good idea since tactile input devices are so much more expressive and entertaining than pencil-draw mode. Still, there's a certain undeniable perversion here.

There's hope, though; maybe the latter will turn into a transitional device which can move gamer geeks from Activision to the DAW. Until that happens, though, please get off my lawn.

Sick of the cutthroat grind of the music world? Recession hitting your pocketbook a little harder than you had expected? Well, it's your lucky day -- leading hip hop magazine XXL is looking to hire a sales gangsta who can help them get that cash money.

From: [redacted]
Subject: Referral Help – Hip-Hop Magazine Sr. Account Executive
Referral Community,

We're in search of a sales "gangsta" for an Advertising Director position at a leading Hip-Hop and Rap Culture Publication

Location: New York, NY
Compensation: $60–70K Base, $130–200K OTE
Experience Level: 4 years
Job Description

A heavy hitting, large and in charge, Hip-Hip and Rap Culture Magazine needs a Advertising Director. They need YOU to be charismatic and hungry enough to sell print campaigns to national business accounts. They want YOU to know the language and Culture of Hip-Hop, be innovative and creative enough to make the tough sell, and smart enough to sell urban and youth culture to companies that might not see it's [sic] value.

YOU must come with prior sales experience (i.e. They want you to bring in the cash money,) an active account list and strong relationships (i.e. know the right people who will give you dollars.) You will be selling a combination of traditional paging and must be able to pitch/concept "Big Idea" integrated programs (They need you to "bring it" and "shut it down.")

Our clients' work environment is cool, calm, and collected. Build your empire and the world is yours.

QUALIFICATIONS

• 4+ years of Online/Print Sales
• Hip-Hop Knowledge
• Be a sales solider
• Bachelor's degree
• Excellent written and verbal skills
• Aggressive follow-up and closing skills

"Cash Rules Everything Around Me, C.R.E.A.M. Get the money, Dollar, dollar bill y'all" - Wu-Tang Clan
As always, generous bonus rewarded for referrals.
It's 100% OKAY to repost this ad anywhere.

I, for one, am looking forward to finally having a job interview in which I'm not the only one awkwardly spouting off Wu-Tang lyrics.

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Last week, ten years after The Chronic: 2001 (which, it should be noted, actually came out in 1999) and a good five years after the original release date for Detox, Dr. Dre finally unveiled a small chunk of his wildly anticipated third album, finally giving us a tangible handle on the elusive vaporware-thus-far record.

Problem is, it was in a Dr. Pepper ad. Dre's entry in the soft drink's "I'm A Doctor" campaign, which opened with spots by Dr. J and Frasier Crane, has him booting a scrappy young techno DJ from the booth at a rooftop party and setting an icy cold can down on the turntables, at which point a few heretofore unreleased bars of his trademark G-funk wobble out from the speakers and all the revelers cheer.

This borders on unfathomable; Dre's artistic perfectionism in the studio is the stuff of legend, and commercial licensing has always been shrewd as a business move, but not so much as an artistic one. So why on earth would he unveil his next opus, rumored to be his last, with a corporate logo attached? Dude doesn't need the money. This can't possibly be building his fan base in any meaningful way, and the hype surrounding this album has fully been at fever pitch for about five years and shows no signs of abating. He has at least a few more years before we can start chalking up these sorts of shenanigans to senility.

Lord only knows. I suppose in the meantime we should all just milk whatever enjoyment we can from the stupidity of the whole situation, which is admittedly quite awe-inspiring -- it feels a little Snakes On A Plane, right?  Remember, this is the same company that so brazenly taunted Axl Rose just before he finally came through with Chinese Democracy. Both are extremely significant milestones; Dr. Pepper, it seems, may soon be a serious force in the music world.

Hey, at least it's not Starbucks.

I suppose this post would have been more timely a couple weeks back, before the new Star Trek movie had decided to set its phasers to "perform moderately well and still basically bend over for Pixar," but I hadn't seen it until just now. Late or not, I was surprised to learn that it features, among other things:

• Captain Kirk portrayed by James Van Der Beek
• Spock as a sex machine
• Uhura doing a striptease
• Lost producer J.J. Abrams driving the boat on a plot about (what else?) time travel
• An alternate reality premise that allows the storyline to ignore some fairly fundamental aspects of the series
• A Vulcan genocide (see above)
• An appearance by Leonard Nimoy, looking so wrinkled and decrepit these days that he could probably take over portraying Emperor Palpatine in that other franchise.

In all, however, it's merely ridiculous, not actually as god-awful as it might have been -- remember Superman Returns? Still, there are those few hardened Trekkies who are currently hard at work writing huge blog posts about how the use of non-canonical stardates besmirches Gene Roddenberry's legacy.

This, as you have probably guessed by now, is not one of those blog posts.

Those guys need to set their, um, phasers to "get a girlfriend already," and in the interest of furthering that process, let's all revel for a moment in the warm YouTube glow of a couple of the franchise's most absurd musical moments.

First, we have William Shatner's cover of the spectacular 1995 Pulp bourgeoisie seduction anthem "Common People." The only thing more amusing than hearing Jarvis Cocker's crown jewel rendered with the iconic Priceline-shilling stutter that ol' Johnny Blue Eyes Chris Pine so incomprehensibly failed to tip his hat to would be picturing Shatner's slumming socialite object-of-affections not as a high-class bird from Notting Hill, but rather as a sentient cloud of glowing dust from Beta Centauri.

OK, I lied. There is at least one thing that's more amusing, and that's Leonard Nimoy singing about Hobbits.

The most distressing part of the latter, I think, is that Spock comes to us from science fiction and Bilbo is from the related but indisputably distinct world of dungeon/dragon fantasy. Stardates were purposely designed to be wishy-washy and hard to place, so it's possible that the two worlds did exist in parallel and the Shire was just, like, developmentally retarded by a few hundred thousand years. Still, it makes for a striking contrast when you ask a Starfleet commander for commentary on happenings in a world where one has to poop in the bushes whilst adventuring. (Strangely, Tolkien never really expands on the specifics there.) But hey, I guess that's what time travel is for.

I trust that you are, per the linguistic norms of the internet, rendering that title as though it's a thumbs-down from the "comic book guy" on The Simpsons. (Whoa -- as it turns out, he actually has a name: Jeff Albertson. Who knew?)

And while I'd happily throw that depraved tiara at the Baha Men, or the recently-reunited Limp Bizkit (sweet Jesus, no!), or Hannah Montana's broken-hearted dad, apparently I'm wrong.

In the mid-90's, Russian artists Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid worked together on a fartsy-garde art-by-committee project in which people all over the world were polled about their likes and dislikes, and the leading elements in each category were combined to create what would theoretically amount to the statistically best and statistically worst paintings ever. Shortly thereafter, experimental musician David Soldier signed on to extend the project into audio, and after landing a couple hundred participants, composed two pieces accordingly.

:)
:(

I find the second much more interesting. Could it BE any more obnoxious? (I trust that you are, per the linguistic norms of the internet, delivering that one via your best Chandler impression.) Too many cooks in the kitchen, perhaps, but then again, they're in there actively trying to make you puke.

So far, my favorite summations include Soldier's hilariously cold statistics:

Assuming that the preference for each factor follows a Gaussian (i.e. bell-curve) distribution, the combination of these qualities, even to the point of sensory overload and stylistic discohesion, will result in a musical work that will be unavoidably and uncontrollably "liked" by 72 plus or minus 12% (standard deviation; Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistic) of listeners.

...certain excerpts from the Amazon reviews:

The lyrics of the Most Wanted Song are not totally atypical of anything off a Bon Jovi album

This is the song to exact revenge upon noisy neighbors with. Set it on your stereo at 4AM, crank the volume to 10, and then leave the house. This is the nuclear option of stereo wars.

...and a couple great blog comments:

Uncle! UNCLE!!

Both the most wanted and unwanted tracks kind of remind me of "Bran Van 3000".

Got any more to add, folks? Unfortunately, I don't plan to render an opinion of my own until we know what Pitchfork thinks.

During my earliest days as a fledgling guitarist, my instructor, who also held a stake in the music store I shopped at and thus had a vested interest in getting me hooked on gear, coached me through my first few effects pedal purchases. He tried to tell me that after a solid bread-and-butter distortion sound, the second most important effect I'd need was a delay or echo effect. I didn't listen to him at the time -- I think I bought a Crybaby first and then a flanger and, um, a few more distortion pedals -- but I kept thinking about his advice over the next few years, and before I knew it, I was nursing a pretty healthy addiction.

So who's up for a highlight reel?

I haven't actually heard the Danelectro Dan-Echo in years, and I never did actually scrape together the allowance money to buy one, but it'll forever have a place in my hall of fame anyway because it was the first delay pedal I remember freaking out over. It was a "tape echo," not a delay, though I have to put that term in quotes because it was simulated.

See, way back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, guitar pedal manufacturers didn't yet have digital chips to use when processing the sounds. Early echo effects instead actually recorded a quick sample of the signal to be echoed on a strip of audio tape and then pulled it back over playback heads to generate the repeats. This tended to progressively attenuate the treble in the signal with each pass as the tape was physically worn.

Of course, by the time I got around to buying guitar pedals, the technology had progressed and they were just faking it, but I still found that sound a lot more natural and compelling than the pristine digital repeats of the Boss DD-whatevers that were all the rage at the time, and I've paid a tremendous amount of attention to the ways in which filters and EQ curves interact with delay signals ever since. (Also a blow against the latter: tap tempo required purchasing additional non-latching footswitches at least up through the DD-6, and $50 qualified as a fortune for me back then.)

There's an interesting quirk to the older Boss boxes, though. Most effects stop making their funny noises when you hit the footswitch to turn them off. I can't vouch for this with the DD-6 and above, but some of the earlier Boss standalones as well as the delay that was embedded in my old ME-30 multi-effects unit would continue to play the repeats until the effect was switched on again; turning it off just stopped any new signals from going to the delay line.

This had the unique effect of transforming the delay into a primitive loop sampler -- as long as you nailed the riff on your first attempt, you'd be able to turn off the delay and play along with it as it repeated ad nauseum. Of course, there are more sophisticated devices for doing this kind of thing -- Echoplexes, Boomerangs, Loop Stations, and even the ubiquitous Line6 DL-4 (that's the green blob that inhabits about 40% of the pedalboards in the world) -- but I didn't know about them at the time, so I improvised. In high school I had scripted out a pretty convincing "solo" arrangement of the intro to "Baba O'Riley" using this trick, largely made possible by the realization that by plugging a dead-end 1/4" cable into the second stereo output and setting the delay to "ping-pong" mode, I could effectively double my delay times and get twice as much as the unit's memory was supposed to allow.

That brings me right to the next object of my affections: the Akai Headrush. I bought mine after seeing a killer looping performance and was hoping it would sort of be a hybrid between a Boomerang and a tape-echo simulation. It does, at best, a mediocre job of the first and was more expensive than I'd have wanted to spend on just the second, but I've kept it in in my stable because of its unique twist on my dead-end cable trick: it has four outputs. If simple stereo delays are ping-pong, then rigging this thing up is somewhat akin to hurling a rubber bouncy-ball with all your might into a janitor's closet. I've only gone all the way with that setup a handful of times because you need four amps, but it's pretty hypnotic.

In purely quantifiable terms, the Yamaha MagicStomp is twice as engrossing. I couldn't believe the specs when I first read them: its delay patches can have up to eight taps, or individually programmable repeats, each of which get the full gamut of parameters and options -- delay time, volume, phase, two filters, and even pan position. The patches are based on a larger processor called the UD-Stomp, which is largely the same thing as far as I can tell except for some more extensive routing options and a tap tempo footswitch. The latter is fairly crucial, but unfortunately I've only ever seen one that was actually for sale and it was selling for more than its original retail price, apparently because the seller had figured out what a beast it was. In contrast, I picked up my MagicStomp for about $70 during a big Musician's Friend blowout a few years back. A word to the wise: these can still be had very cheap sometimes because many people don't realize how cool the delay features are, and any version of the MagicStomp can be updated with the newest version of the software; you'll want to do that because it unlocks new editing parameters which can't otherwise be controlled without a computer.

If you noticed that I rendered the preceding paragraph using past tense verbs, you get a gold star. That'd be because Apple recently pulled into the lead in this arms race with Delay Designer, the new sister plugin to the Space Designer convolution reverb which was added to Logic as of version 8. It can do up to to 26 taps (that's not a typo) and also includes other per-tap goodies like pitch transposition, adjustable filter resonance, and eighth-note swing. Most importantly, it has a significantly less infuriating interface from which to program them -- programming sixteen parameters across eight delay taps using the three knobs on the MagicStomp is not for the faint of heart.

But even the most complex DAW tools have nothing on Moog Music's entirely analog, deliciously hardware MF-104Z Moogerfooger. Well, actually it's not the MF-104Z so much as the fact that it has an effects loop for the delayed signal, which allows you to run the echoes through a totally different processing chain. Their product description specifically advocates using the MuRF filter, which is one of the most breathtaking audio effects I've ever heard. Sadly, the Fooger pedals are pretty expensive and a little off the beaten path, so I've never actually been able to get my hands on both at the same time. Hopefully all this sloppy saliva will suffice for our needs here.

Through all this, honorable mention goes to the Roland RE-201 Space Echo, a hulking beast which looks like an amp head and captured my fascination after I noticed that Portishead main brain Adrian Utley kept his front and center during the performance documented on the Roseland NYC Live DVD. I've worked in studios that have these things but haven't yet worked up the guts to do more than a little cursory fiddling -- they're pretty intimidating. I'm still determined to own one someday, but I think I already have enough for the time being.

Alright, now that we have the gadgets, let's go do something useful with them. A few years ago, presumably-raging U2 uber-fan Tim Darling completed an exhaustive study of the Edge's delay programming across a wide range of songs and albums. I've personally never had the patience to try to duplicate any of the song-specific patches as precisely as Darling's exhaustive details would probably allow, but I can personally testify that his key finding is spot on -- the most important element is straight quarter notes played into a 3/16 note delay.

That setting is considerably easier to accomplish if you use a delay that allows you to input the note value, because the syncopation is key and most people will tend to slow down and treat the 3/16 as quarter notes when working with regular tap tempo or (God forbid) a little manual millisecond dial. I've actually developed quite a taste for playing a 3/16 note delay in one channel against quarter notes in the other.

Of course, if that doesn't do it for you, you can always just try switching to another device. Just, you know, don't let that get out of hand.

It's already too late for me.  Save yourselves.

We're about a week late with this, but Wilco's swift maneuvering last week deserves a look, and possibly also a round of applause.

A few weeks back, the coolest alt-country act of all time announced that their seventh record would be über-eponymously titled Wilco (The Album) and was due at the end of June. This, of course, won them tremendous applause across the sarcasmosphere -- and that's to say nothing of the fact that a little ditty called "Wilco (The Song)" will be the opening track.

Just a hair over two weeks later, "Wilco (The Leak)" jokes were coming out of the woodwork. Poor dears.

Leaks are par for the course among bigger acts of course; even Eminem's ultra-high profile Relapse wasn't really much of a surprise when it showed up a week and a half early. That said, when Islands head doofus Nick Thorburn left his new album on the C line of the New York City subway system last month, it smacked of desperation a little, Fred Durst sex tape style. (The manager's response? "At least it wasn't the L." Apologies to non-New Yorkers for the inside joke.)

My personal favorite, however, has to be the demos for U2's No Line On The Horizon which leaked last summer because Bono was jamming out a little too hard in his mansion made of dreams and some guy driving by on the highway outside recognized the voice blaring across the Irish countryside. No, seriously. That actually happened.

I never get tired of making fun of Bono, but let's move right along, because Wilco's response really made things interesting. They immediately made the album available as a stream on their web site, thus turning a fair number of would-be downloaders into traffic on their web site -- better than nothing, right? They also announced to their mailing list (much to some suited bigwig's chagrin, I'm sure) that the enthusiasm would be, well, forgiven seems like a pretty harsh way to put it...

We also have our usual guilt abatement plan for downloaders. If you have downloaded the record, we suggest you make a donation to one of the band's favorite charities, the Inspiration Corporation- an organization we've supported in the past & who are doing great work in the city of Chicago.

Nonesuch, the band's record label, also wisely started taking pre-orders right away.

As the dust was starting to settle the following day, Billboard noted that the Inspiration Corporation had indeed seen a spike in donations -- good for them -- and also that the band's blog and Twitter stats had likewise jumped. (The numbers in that article may seem small, but remember, we're talking about the entire freaking internet here).

I'm pretty pleased with "Bull Black Nova", but I've held off on the rest thus far, in part because I have yet to get around to digesting 2007's Sky Blue Sky. With a little luck, I'll be able to catch up before the June 30 release. I expect they'll start strong, because this was handled incredibly well -- remember, even though Radiohead sold digital copies of In Rainbows for several months beforehand, the hard-copy discs still debuted at #1.