Tag: music
So, this is a hella catchy song that I really love—
—but it also super-duper creeps me out, because it sorta seems like
- the speaker is a sociopath who
- is confessing to a crime in song. Like, I think the narrator of this song is maybe that realtor who had that woman chained up “like a dog” in a shipping container on his property in North Carolina. And finally, I’m a little worried that
- maybe this is Rick Springfield confessing in song—has anyone heard from Jessie’s girl lately? I mean, shit, do any of us even know her name‽
Anyway, still a catchy tune—apart from the weird little record-skip repeat at around 1:30, prior to diving into the B-section. I love the B-section and breakdown—especially because it then leads into, like, a “C” section(?) with a weird momentary Truck Driver’s Gear Shift and serviceable guitar solo—but that repeated bar near 1:30 has always sorta driven me nuts.
Anyway, enjoy!
#FACT: When sound and silence happen in a discernably orderly manner, they are musical
This is a fun little mechanical musical sequencer.
Keep watching and then look around you!
Shout-out to this tacky Canadian rapper with his NSFW music video about doing sex with ladies on his hoverboard…
…you and I don’t appear to really have much anything in common, m’man—apart for our mutual love for whatever the hell it is we each individually think of when we think of “Freedom”—but you are a human untroubled by any insecurities of any sort, and I applaud that.
The “Millennial Whoop” and the Formula for Comfort Formulae
I’m interested in artistic formulea of all stripes, so my ears perked up when I stumbled across this blog post exploring why it is that every pop song I hear as of late seems to feel the same, even when they sound totally different. The key: A little earwormy melodic alternation embedded into the hook. Here’s the article’s kick-out—although the whole thing (which is rife with video examples) is well worth your time:
[T]he Millennial Whoop evokes a kind of primordial sense that everything will be alright. You know these notes. You’ve heard this before. There’s nothing out of the ordinary or scary here. You don’t need to learn the words or know a particular language or think deeply about meaning. You’re safe. In the age of climate change and economic injustice and racial violence, you can take a few moments to forget everything and shout with exuberance at the top of your lungs. Just dance and feel how awesome it is to be alive right now. Wa-oh-wa-oh.
Having read this, I wondered how persuasive such a simply piece of patterning might be. So, in five minutes I sketched out this little tune and, whaddya know, it sounds like the outro of basically anything I’ve stumbled across while tuning across the dial during the last several long summer car trips:
For the curious, there’s literally nothing going on in this song: The left hand is just a straight C Major chord alternating with whatever you call that lazy F Major where, instead of actually moving your hand up, you just skooch your thumb and index fingers up one white key each, so that you pick up F Major’s F and B while keeping C anchored as the bottom note (maybe that’s an “inversion” of F Major?) The right hand, as per the “Millennial Whoop” formula, is alternating between the G and E two octaves up—i.e., the V and III in a progression where C is the root (i.e., I). The lyrics (which, depending on your speakers, might be hard to hear without headphones; I’m shit at mastering) are just whatever popped into my head, and the whole thing was recorded using my cellphone. The only “studio magic” (done in Garageband, and largely without any digital pixie dust) is “doubling the vocals” (see below—which is an excerpt form my book Junkyard Jam Band )—especially important in this instance because 1) I can’t sing for shit (which double-tracking tends to obscure) and 2) the mic on my cellphone didn’t pick up my voice particularly clearly, on account it was sitting on top of my keyboard’s speaker. Even if it had caught my singing, I likely would have doubled the vocals anyway (which are actually quadrupled by the end—listen with headphones, and you’ll hear two extra voices, slathered in “chorus” effect, that come in on the second round of Oh-ee-oh-ee-oh-ohs), since that sorta lush studio overkill is baked into this running-’til-the-break-of-dawn! summer-hit genre.
Continue reading “The “Millennial Whoop” and the Formula for Comfort Formulae”
Project: The “Non-Violins” Synthamajig
Here’s a little something I cooked up while special-guesting at Motor City Steam Con, July 22–24, 2016:
The “Non-Violins” Synthamajig:
Here’s a static view, front and back:
So what’s going here? Some of it is standard steampunk greebles (e.g., that faux wind-up key, the old vacuum tube being lit with a modern LED mounted behind it, some obtuse knob and mounting hardware choices), but the guts are a combination of totally legit early prototype circuits from my book (e.g., a four-
step version of the Bleepbox Sequencer, of which only three of the steps can be pitch-controlled) and simple versions of a few others I hacked together on the spot (the voice is a stripped-down Single Chip Space Invader Synth driving a simplified Dirty-Cheap Amp).
Why did I do this? ’cause Emmy Jackson asked me to. Emmy is a really swe
ll guy, and did me huge solids at both Motor City Steam and Penguicon (where he both handled book sales for me and the other authors on hand, and offered a safe space for my son if he should lose track of himself or get freaked out). He showed up at Motor City Steam with four rejected violin bodies, on 
the condition that I rework at least one to fit in with his Dieselpunk aesthetic. I gladly gave it my damndest (another instrument from this same weekend, the Diddley Fiddle, is still in development—as is, it’s a fine lil diddley bow, but damned if I don’t want it to be at least a tad more electromechanically rad-as-hell).
Here’s some video of me presenting the Non-Violins Synth to EmmyJ at Motor City Steam Con:
Drawing with Sound on an Oscilloscope
No CGI, no digital effects, no computer even; just some electrical testing equipment and an audio recording. Pretty neat and a lot of fun to watch—so neat and fun that I was, in fact, pretty dubious at first. So I borrowed an oscilloscope from my local public library and tried it out—AND IT WORKED!
Here’s Jerobeam Fenderson’s explanation of the effect, and another article with several neat videos.
Here’s Fenderson’s older “Drawing Mushrooms” video, which is the one I tested myself:
Metal-on-Metal: Convert an Old Shovel into a DIY Electric Guitar
I love watching Rob Scallon rock out on a shovel guitar. FYI, this is a totally doable afternoon DIY project for any of you (yes, even you!) or the bored teen in your life. You can build something just like this (or a hockey-stick bass, an electric broomstick banjo, an axe ax—you get the gag) using the methods laid out in the “$10 Electric Guitar” project in my first book (click here now to get a FREE copy of that project—and, if you’re near Metro Detroit in July, you can come to Motor City Steam Con where I’ll be running a workshop on electric-guitarifying stuff).
Wnat more DIY musical shenanigans? I’ve got a whole new book of crazy music projects.
Josh Burker’s Scratchbox Turntable
Josh Burker—an early reviewer of my latest DIY book, Junkyard Jam Band—didn’t just build a sweet-ass Scratchbox (although he did do that)
Josh went one better and adapted it to a hella rad turntable interface.
Oh.
My.
Daaaaaaaamn!
I love this sooooo much! Check it out:
Wanna build your own Scratchbox (or Scratchbox-inspired awesomeness)? Check out my full illustrated Scratchbox build instructions on the MAKE magazine website.
For a brief history of the credit card magstripe that makes this all possible, check out the first bit of this Planet Money podcast: Episode 695: Put A Chip On It : Planet Money : NPR:
(thx Josh!)
Dirt-Cheap Amplifier Aesthetics and Tweaks: Grills & Fabric, New & Used, Weird-Spec Speakers
One of my goals with the projects in Snip, Burn, Solder, Shred was to present designs that–both in terms of the functional guts and the finish aesthetics–could be adapted to suit both your own tastes and the supplies you could easily get. For example, the grill on the Dirt-Cheap Amp is an old computer power supply fan cover–which just happened to be the perfect size to secure my 8 ohm speaker (itself torn out of a broken Barbie boom box). I’ve also had good luck pulling grills off of old/broken small appliances I’ve gotten for free as resale shop rejects or garage sale leftovers. As far as new sources, check out your local hardware store, where there are many neat vent, drain, and recessed-lighting covers (the plumbing, electrical, and HVAC aisles are always profitable places to search for neat fittings, in my experience).
Upholstering Your Amp
Failing all else, you can cover the front of the amp in fabric (as is standard in the old school Fender guitar amps). When doing a fabric cover, I like to start with a double-layer of nylon window-screen mesh, which protects the paper cone of the speaker from getting dinged. Double up the mesh, then cut a square at least a few inches bigger than your speaker hole and staple it in place around the perimeter of the screen (you can, of course, cover the entire front of your speaker cabinet in screen, which will make your amp look a bit more pro. I sort of like the look of the doubled mesh, but if it doesn’t work for you aesthetically, you can recover it with basically any single layer of fabric (going the Fender Tweed Amp road, for example). In terms of finish, you can pull the fabric all the way around the lid and staple it from behind (thin fabric won’t usually cause you much grief in terms of getting the cigar box to close once you finish). A few brass-headed furniture tacks added to the edging of the front of the fabric cover, or framing it out in thin strips of wood or brass, will give the amp really slick look.
Using Weird Speakers
Folks occasionally ask me if this design–which calls for an 8 ohm speaker–will work with lower impedance speakers. I’ve tested this out, and had the amp work perfectly with 3 and 4 ohm speakers I’ve scrounged out of old boom boxes. I’ve also had decent results with speakers as high as 16 ohms. So, if you’re salvaging parts, feel free to grab those 3, 4, and 6 ohm speakers as well as the 8s. If you find your non-standard speaker distorting, you might wanna monkey around with the pin 1 to pin 8 jumper: some amps built around “non-8” speakers work better with pin 1 and pin 8 connect with plain old wire (as in the base design shown in the book), others work better with that connection omitted altogether, and some need the gain-boost that comes with connecting pins 1 and 8 using an electrolytic capacitor (as described in the “Tweaking the Amp” section of that project).
DIY Music Freebies
UPDATE: You can now get a free “Jam Pack” of musical projects from my first two books!