61 posts tagged “music”

I have been playing with iTunes new Genius feature. If you have not heard of this yet, it basically creates a playlist from a single song using information from other music fans all over the world.

I tried a few songs here and there and experimented a bit, however yesterday I told it to build a list off of Tim Armstrong's "Into Action. This in turn created a decent song list, but I needed to refine it.

Genius picks the songs from all of your music, even the stuff you only kind of like. This is a problem for me personally as my iPod can only hold so much and my music library is vast. Lately I have been only putting songs that I rated 4 and 5 stars on to it.

This left me with a problem that I had a solution for.

To better refine your Genius playlist you are really going to need to play with "Smart Playlists".

This is what I did to enhance my Genius playlist.

• Create a new "Smart Playlist"
• Set the Limit to 100 songs as many would be filtered out soon.
  
• Set the first rule to "Playlist is X" where X is the name of your Genius Playlist
• Set the next rule to "Rating is greater than" and I chose 3 stars
• Finally I set the playlist to "Shuffle"

I suddenly had the most unbelievable song list I had ever had, 51 songs strong. As I love music, I will spend many hours tweeking a song list. This did it for me in minutes and in a much better fashion, a list I never once skipped through a song on.

There are so many rules in the "Smart Playlist" that you can really tweek and see the power of the Genius system.

My new playlist had The Pogues, The Clash, Flogging Molly, The Violent Femmes, Southern Culture on the Skids, Operation Ivy, The Specials, The Dropkick Murphys, Rancid, Teddybears, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Social Distortion, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds and so many more.

I hear the good and bad regarding Genius, but I suspect that many people do not know how to tweek it to get the most out of their song lists.

I just discovered this German group Gregorian.

Can't stop.... listening....

Let's start with some Metallica

Move on to REM

And now... Another True Life IM Conversation...

Co-worker [9:41 AM]: ever listen to Harvey Danger?

Me [9:56 AM]: No I have not

Co-worker [9:56 AM]: get over here then

Me [9:56 AM]: I will after lunch... I am listening to this group Co-worker 2 hooked me up
with... Earth

Co-worker [9:57 AM]: When did he ditch Wind and fire and go on a solo career?

Me [9:58 AM]: Well it all happened back in 92 when Earth caught Wind and Fire doing LSD before a show with some groupies. It was all down hill from there.

Co-worker [9:58 AM]: now that's a damn shame

Me [9:59 AM]: Yeah, Earth lost all rights to the music and the band name because of a shady South Detroit Lawyer, so he had no other choice but to go solo. He can use his stage name, but cannot perform any of the old tunes.

Co-worker [10:02 AM]: Well I know Earth rocks but i don't know if he would be as passionate without Fire. Wind pretty much blew so that is no loss.

Me [10:03 AM]: I heard he might hook up with Water... but he is very finicky... can't
decide to stay or go out, he's a bit wishy-washy.

I was addicted to video games, beyond the point of simple enjoyment and delved deep into obsession.

I will normally play a console game, beat it, move on with my life and no harm done. If it is multi-player, especially co-op mode then I can really get in some fun time with the family and after an hour it is put down and I move on with my life.

However I have had a long time addiction to MMORPGS, games that are massive multi-player, such as Asherons Call, EverQuest, Star Wars Galaxies, Ultima Online and World of Warcraft. Those games were all incredibly fun at one point or another, however I have a very addictive personality and I had no self control over my time with these electronic toys. I did not play all of these at one time, these were consecutive over time, when a new one came out I moved to the new game.

If I could have played for an hour and walked away, then I would not have had a problem, however 1 hour always turned into 6. I gained weight as all my free time was spent in front of the computer and I barely had sleep as the weekends were a big party.

I quit the games cold, sold the World of Warcraft account and I would like to say I do not look back however I find myself really wanting and itching to get into World of Warcraft these days.

Quitting it was incredibly easy to do once I took the steps and even in the consecutive weeks later I was fine. However this weekend I found myself with some free time and really finding myself longing to play. It was maddening and I even considered very briefly of installing the 10 Day free trial. Yeah, temptation and I conquered it. I got up and began to iron my shirts for the week. I hate ironing so much that I will even just wear clothing wrinkled in the past. I got up though, picked out my pants and my shirts for the week and I spent time ironing them while listening to music.

I spend my weekends playing games with the kids these days, not video games either but board games such as Heroscape. I do more laundry and I am not snacking much anymore while not a lot of it was being done before, but couple it with my sitting in front of the computer for endless hours and you have a bad combination.

I also finished the final draft of the Prologue and Chapter 1 of my book I am writing. I fine tuned it, changed the things I needed to change and I got a ton done. I begin tweaking Chapters 2-4 tonight and then I have entire chapters to rewrite since I came up with a new outline and I am excited.

Oh back to eating, Sunday I had a very large breakfast and I was not hungry at all until around 2 p.m. at that time the wife made me a smoothie out of low fat yogurt, bananas and strawberries and some milk. This gave me all the energy until later on when I was absolutely famished and had dinner.

So many positive things are going on in my life right now.

I intend to kick up exercise, but I have 3 things to knock out first.

1. I need to shop around for a gym, I may go Y however the parking lot always looks jam packed and I need to make sure I can get on a treadmill.
2. I need some pants to work out in.
3. I need to make sure that the cost is not too high.

A song made me think about writing all of this... Helloween's 'The Game is On'.

I am a music fool, however I refuse to do anything to support the RIAA. I refuse to.

So I spend lots of time looking for alternatives.

A few months ago I did not really care one way or the other. Long ago I pirated music and I did not think of it as stealing, but then I realized that yes it was and so I went forward and purchased my music for the years since. Be it through iTunes or through a normal CD shop and I would take my physical disc home and rip it to my iPod and life was good.

However this all changed when the RIAA came out in December and said that ripping CDs for personal use (Putting on an iPod for instance) is illegal. Article here

Suddenly, I, who paid for CDs and digital music was considered a thief.

This has infuriated me ever since and now I have to make decisions. I could do any combination of these tactics, however one of these is illegal for sure.

1. Free Music - I can stick with free music, freely given by artists and there is plenty on the net. The downside to this of course is the lack of most major music I enjoy or the quality is very poor. But this option is obviously legal, however I need to make sure that free does not mean that someone else paid the price so they could offer it to me for free. I need fully free to make sure none of the money went to the RIAA.

2. Independent Artists / Direct Purchasing - Buying CDs directly from an artists looks like one of the best ways to do this. Does the RIAA get any of the money? Even through some other channels? What independent labels can guarantee that not a dime of my money... not one single penny will go to the RIAA? I need to find out.

3. Piracy - This is an easy one and there are still many many many ways to get your music for free without paying for it. For instance, friends... if you have friends with a nice music collection you could always rip their CDs. There are also plenty of online channels still available to grab music for free. Some sites allow you to download the music from MySpace, there are ways to search file sharing sites... very little risk to you for this route. However you do have the problem that this is illegal. I have thought about piracy and perhaps absolving my own guilt by sending $10 in the mail directly to the artist.

4. CD Shops - Used CDs have the added benefit of the RIAA not getting any money. At least I believe this to be the case. If anyone knows for sure, please correct me here. However, this way you could buy up as much music as you wish for a fraction of the shelf cost and you have your CD in hand, however the RIAA thinks this to be illegal.

I refuse to be called a thief, for as hard as I work and keep my nose clean and do a damned fine job of taking care of my wife and kids... no company will call me a thief and expect me to support it.

My music is personally used on my own iPod and I listen in the privacy of my home, car or while I work.

So now, I refuse to do anything that puts my money into the hands of the RIAA and it will be hard to do, however I am sure it can be done and I still get the music I enjoy the most.

Am I out of my mind? Did I miss other ideas? Let me know what you think.

Darkest Hour is coming to Nashville February 3rd... which is frikkin awesome. I am however conflicted... the show is at Rocketown.

You see Rocketown was a club started up by Christian recording artist Michael W Smith many years ago and time and time again it has gone through revamps. It used to be a strictly Christian club time and time again up until it's more recent incarnation years ago.

Now it is just a club, skate park and coffee bar focused on providing teenagers with a "Safe" place to hang out. Which don't get me wrong, is a really great idea.

But Social Distortion played there a few years ago and my friends while having a good time thought the show could have been better had it not been an "All Ages Show".

That is Rocketown now... "All Ages Shows".

Which means everything is rather kiddiefied.

So Darkest Hour is coming February 3rd...

I don't know if I want to go or not.

Audio: Share a song with powerful lyrics.

Danzig's 'Come to Silver' has been with me a lot lately.

Video: Show us a video that makes you want to dance.

Audio: Share your karaoke song.

I really cannot answer this one for myself. However, I can speak with authority for Mr Potty Mouth's Karaoke jam. It was scary how much he got into it. He is very much the diva...

Show us your favorite album cover.

I want to say that at some point in Vox's existance, in ye olde early days, this was a question posed.... and my answer is simply Iron Maiden's 'Somewhere in Time' and Iron Maiden's 'Powerslave'.

I have seen both posters freaking wall sized and there is a TON of hidden stuff in those images.

Edit: And I was right.. here was the original QotD