Category: Music

Planning a Halloween party for the weekend, or want something to listen to while distributing candy to the little extortionists next week? Here are some tunes for you.

Laika and the Cosmonauts, “Psyko”

Fredösphere, “Abraham Lincoln Was an Invader from Space”

Yuki Kajiura, “Sis Puella Magica”

The Pretty Things, “Baron Saturday”

Hedningarna, “Räven (Fox Woman)”

Gjallarhorn, “Hjaðningaríma”

Raymond Scott, “New Year’s Eve in a Haunted House”

Oingo Boingo, “Pictures of You”

Don Ross, “Dracula and Friends, Part One”

The Klezmatics, “Beggar’s Dance”

Brave Combo, “People Are Strange”

Procol Harum, “Juicy John Pink”

Split Lip Rayfield, “The High Price of Necromancy”

Tonio K, “How Come I Can’t See You in My Mirror?”

Van Der Graaf Generator, “Killer”

Steeleye Span, “Elf Call”

Haystacks Balboa, “The Children of Heaven”

Denki Groove, “Mononoke Dance” (The full-length version is here, but I think it’s better shortened unless you’re dancing.)

Oingo Boingo, “Little Guns”

Onmyouza, “Onikosae no Uta”

Procol Harum “The Devil Came from Kansas”

William Bolcom, “Poltergeist Rag”

Mayumi Kojima, “Poltergeist”

Tom Smith, “I Had a Shuggoth”

Don Ross, “Robot Monster”

Hedningarna, “Tina Vieri”

For more suggestions, see Eve Tushnet, here and here.

The golden age of progressive rock began on this day in 1969 with the release of two classic albums, Frank Zappa’s Hot Rats and King Crimson’s In the Court of the Crimson King.¹

Also released on that day was the Kinks’ Arthur. It doesn’t quite qualify as “prog rock,” though it was a “concept album.”

I suppose I ought to comment about the historical significance of these works, with analysis of the musical techniques employed and explication of lyrics², plus some personal notes…. Nah. The music speaks for itself.

Charles Hill recently posted a video that purports to list fifteen albums that are in the collections of everyone who bought records back in the age of vinyl. Surprisingly, I have four — but only four, and Thriller is not among them.

I thought it might be fun to do the opposite: compile a list of LPs in my collection that almost no one else has. I’m including only albums on vinyl; if I were to include CDs and digital files, I could easily list hundreds, maybe thousands, of obscure recordings. Here are ten records, all worth hearing, that I’ve never seen in anyone else’s music library.

Rare Air, Hard to Beat

Continue reading “Not thrilled”

Miku may finally have competition.

The Yamaha Vocaloids, particularly Hatsune Miku and her colleagues at Crypton, have been the gold standard in synthesized vocals for over a decade. None of the alternatives I’ve looked at combine musicality and intelligibility as well. ⁵

That may change soon. I just stumbled across the Emvoice One beta and gave it a try. Its capabilities are limited — it doesn’t receive MIDI data yet, all note entry and editing must be done by clicking on a piano-roll, and the one available voice, “Lucy,” is not particularly melodious — but it already sounds more musical and enunciates more clearly than Plogue’s Alter/Ego. Here’s a quick five bars of Lucy with a bit of compression and reverb.

This might be worth keeping track of.

By the way, if you use Alter/Ego, the “NATA” voicebank is now free for the downloading.

Today is Tartan Day in North America. (In Australia, it’s July 1.) Here’s a medley of melodies that were once Scottish: “The Piper’s Weird,” “Bonnie Thackit Hoosie,” “Marnock’s Strathspey” and “Mackenzie Highlanders.” I don’t have a good set of bagpipes on my computer, so I had to make do with other virtual instruments. That may or may not disappoint you. The first two tunes are from James Scott Skinner’s collection The Harp and Claymore. Skinner uses “weird” here in the sense of “destiny” or “fate,” though the more common meaning may also apply.

Dick Dale, the king of the surf guitar, died Saturday at the age of 81. I discovered his music late, when I listened to his comeback CD Tribal Thunder out of curiosity. Ever since then his spring reverb-infused twang has featured regularly in the various playlists I put together.

Dale never hit the top 40. His biggest hit, “Let’s Go Trippin’,” only went as high as #60 on the charts fifty-eight years ago. So what? Quality is at best weakly correlated with popularity.⁶

His signature tune was the eastern Mediterranean tune “Miserlou.”

Dale often did covers of other people’s music. When he performed them, they became Dick Dale songs, no matter who wrote them. The following were once Link Wray and Johnny Cash tunes.

I’ve been playing around with an old fiddle tune dating back to the interrupted presidency of James Garfield, “Democratic Rage.” Except for the piano and percussion, all the sounds are the u-he Diva.¹⁰

(Wonder what it sounds like on a fiddle? Here’s Dave Swarbrick. (I don’t have a good violin on my computer, though I’m looking at this one, or perhaps this one if I can budget it.))

Fiddler Roger Netherton, whom I’ve mentioned before, got a strongly positive review in Bluegrass Unlimited. You can find his CD here.

Here’s another batch of quickie tune arrangements using the Arturia V Collection synths. As before, every sound in each is made with the named synthesizer emulation, though there may be some occasional manipulation with equalization, compression and delay. “Captain Sudley” is a Carolan tune; the others are traditional.

“The Dashing White Sergeant,” Matrix 12

“Captain Sudley,” Solina

“Tulloch Castle,” Fairlight CMI

“Lai,” ARP 2600

Bonus: “Captain Sudley” on the B3 emulation.

Trivia: the ARP 2600 was the voice of R2-D2.

Along with the earlier batch, I’ve now made inexpert use of half of the Arturia collection. With a few exceptions, the remaining keyboards are of less interest to me. While I can always use a good, accurate grand piano, electric pianos have never appealed to me, and transistor organs sound cheap.

Working with these new toys confirmed a couple of observations.

1. After a while, all subtractive synths start to sound the same. Someone with a good ear might be able to tell a hardware ARP from a Moog on a recording, but once you’re using computer emulations, with all the electronic and mechanical quirks cleaned up, one sawtooth wave sounds much like another.

2. The more novel the sound, the harder it is to use. In a piece with many voices, the plainest patches work best. The Buchla Easel is an amazing noisemaker, but I doubt that I’ll ever use it much.