1. Find a source file

• I typically start from an existing MP3 file. It might be a CD I have ripped to MP3, or a soundtrack from DVDs or other sound bites. I also have a collection of accapella samples that are a nice source.

2. Create the 15 – 30 sec tone in MP3 format

• You don’t need a 5 min ringtone, just 15 to 30 seconds will be enough
• I use Audacity (with the LAME MP3 encoder add-on) to load the full source MP3 file, trim out the piece I want and then add a fade-in and fade-out.

3. Export to MP3

• I then export the file to an MP3 file of 128kbps. You don’t need better quality than that anyway. If you want, you can convert the file to mono here, or it can happen in the next step
• Result: ringtone.mp3

4. Convert with ffmpeg to MPEG4 ringtone

• I prefer using the command-line ffmpeg for transcoding of audio and video.
• The simple way of doing it: ffmpeg -i ringtone.mp3 -y ringtone.m4a (.m4a stands for MPEG4 audio, ffmpeg will see this extension and use default settings for the conversion.) Afterwards you then have to change the extension to .m4r (MPEG4 ringtone).
• The detailed one-step-only way to do this: ffmpeg.exe -i ringtone.mp3 -ac 1 -ab 128000 -f mp4 -acodec libfaac -y ringtone.m4r

5. Open file with iTunes

• Just double-click the file, that should do it.

The lazy way:

let’s make a batch file that will automatically convert the first 30 seconds of any MP3 file into an iPhone ringtone:
SET INPUT=%1
SET NAME=%INPUT:.mp3=%
SET OUTPUT=%NAME%.m4r
echo CONVERT %INPUT% to %OUTPUT% ...
ffmpeg.exe -i %INPUT% -t 30 -ac 1 -ab 128000 -f mp4 -acodec libfaac -genre Ringtone -y %OUTPUT%

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• “Turn the beat around – the secret history of disco” by Peter Shapiro
• “Last night a DJ saved my life – the history of the disc jockey” by Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton

Both speak about a phenomenon of the 60’s-70’s: Northern Soul. It is the unlikely emergence of a subculture of English white working-class youths that only danced to American upbeat soul music. It started in Manchester, the Twisted Wheel club and spread from there.

The original northern soul scene lasted from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, and is considered a retrogressive or revivalist movement based on a style of music created years earlier. At the height of its popularity in the 1970s, African American artists had moved on to newer genres such as funk, jazz funk and disco, so the northern soul scene relied on a finite supply of 1960s recordings.

This happened around the time I was born, and I was back here in Belgium so the whole movement kind of escaped my attention. Now why is this important? Because the northern soul was an essential part of the birth of the DJ culture, and contributed to genres like acid jazz, and after that deep house, all of which are near to my heart. Some more influences:

DJ Fatboy Slim from Brighton, England has used a number of samples from northern soul recordings in his music e.g. the use of the guitar riff from “Sliced Tomatoes” by The Just Brothers for his “Rockefeller Skank” single

The British pop and rock artist Paul Weller is an aficionado of black-American music and a keen collector of northern soul 45s. Many of his songs have been musically influenced by northern soul, such as “Beat Surrender”, “Town Called Malice”, “Trans-Global Express” and “The Gift” (by The Jam) and “Solid Bond In Your Heart” (by The Style Council).

Sharleen Spiteri, singer/songwriter and member of the British act Texas is a fan of northern soul music. The Texas song “Black-Eyed Boy” uses a classic driving northern soul backbeat and brass sound.

For the promotional video accompanying their single “Familiar Feeling”, British band Moloko featured a highly authentic recreation of Wigan Casino complete with dancers in period fashion. Lead singer Roisin Murphy is also shown attempting northern soul dancing manouvres.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Edwyn Collins (”A Girl Like You”), Simply Red and Scottish group Belle And Sebastian are amongst many other recording artists who have utilised elements of the northern soul sound in their recordings

Duffy’s single Mercy features dancers performing the spins and flips that are commonly associated with northern soul in the video. The song also has a very northern soul sounding feel to it.

Click here to view the embedded video.

 To hear some Northern Soul music, check the jukebox at www.northernsoul.net.

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Fleshmap via Infosthetics

If you ever wanted proof that hip-hop & rap are a disruptive music genre, take a look at this study/art work by Fernanda Viegas, Martin Wattenberg & the crowdsourcing specialists at Dolores Labs: Fleshlabs.

They’ve take the lyrics of a lot of songs and figured out which body parts are most mentioned.

Based on a compilation of more than 10,000 songs, the piece visualizes the use of words representing body parts in popular culture. Each musical genre exhibits its own characteristic set of words, with more frequently used terms showing up as bigger images. The entrance image shows how many times different body parts are mentioned; the charts for each genre go into more detail, showing the usage of different synonyms for each part.

For most genres the #1 bodypart is the eyes, for some others it’s the hands. There’s only one exception: for hip-hop, it’s all about the booty. Their vocabulary is like no other genre. They even have the male reproductive organ as #6, whereas -this might surprise you- it is *never* mentioned in gospel or jazz music. If you add the numbers for the same organ in a slightly more enthusiastic state, and those for the nearby dual reproductive production units, the total is on the same level as ‘face’.

We might think this is a recent MTV-ish development, but may I recall you the lyrics of Rapper’s Delight (1979) – one of the first hip-hop hits:

he may be able to fly all through the night
but can he rock a party til the early light
he cant satisfy you with his little worm
but i can bust you out with my super sperm
i go do it, i go do it, i go do it, do it , do it

 Which was Big Bank Hank talking to Lois Lane about Superman. 1979, folks, and they did censor one thing: the ‘damn’ in ‘I didn’t even bite and not a god d–m word ‘.

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“Afternoon Delight” is a hit song by the Starland Vocal Band, written by Bill Danoff, featuring close harmony and sexually suggestive lyrics. It became a number-one U.S. Billboard Hot 100 single on July 10, 1976.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afternoon_Delight_(song)

Some of the lyrics:

Thinkin’ of you’s workin’ up my appetite
looking forward to a little afternoon delight.
Rubbin’ sticks and stones together makes the sparks ignite
and the thought of rubbin’ you is getting so exciting.

Sky rockets in flight. Afternoon delight. Afternoon delight.

Started out this morning feeling so polite
I always though a fish could not be caught who wouldn’t bite
But you’ve got some bait a waitin’ and I think I might try nibbling
a little afternoon delight.

Where the sexual innuendo isn’t really that hard to discover. According to the author:

Danoff acknowledged that audiences might find hidden meanings in the song. “I didn’t want to write an all-out sex song, I just wanted to write something that was fun and hinted at sex. It was one of those songs that you could really have a good time writing.”

There’s also a cover by Will Ferell /Anchorman:

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• Feb 4, 2008: “What it’s all about” – The Sylvers (1973)
• Dec 24, 2007: “I know all the bitches” – Mr Beatnick feat. Ahu (2007)
• Feb 12, 2007: “Drive me Crazy” – Secret Stealth (2007)

Expect to encounter a lot of artists/groups that you’ve never heard of. Some of it you won’t like, some you will adore. Because I wanted a better tool to search the 5+ years of archive, I built a little search engine on

http://tools.forret.com/basicsoul/

that allows me to search for artists, titles and labels. Per found occurrence it allows me to view the full playlist (reformatted from the original page) and if the podcast MP3 is still online, to listen to it (with a SMIL playlist, a M3U playlist or a Flash based MP3 player). I enjoy using it, to see when a track was first played, what other tracks that artist made etc …

Check it out!

PS: Every podcast episode starts with: “Today is the shadow of tomorrow. Today is the present future of yesterday. Yesterday is the shadow of today. The darkness of the past is yesterday. And the light of the past is yesterday“, a piece of lyric from “Shadows of Tomorrow” – Madvillain & Quasimoto.

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Brudio Stussel: ‘t Hof van Commerce

Brudio Stussel: Belgian Asociality

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I play out my role
Why I’ve even been out walking
They tell me that it helps
But I know when I’m beaten
All those lonely films
And all those lonely parties
But now the feeling is off-screen
An the tears for real not acted, anymore

“Long Hot Summer” (1983) – Style Council (with Paul Weller on Bass)

I keep forgettin we’re not in love anymore
I keep forgettin things will never be the same again
I keep forgettin how you made that so clear
I keep forgettin every time that you are near

“I keep forgetting” (1982) – Michael McDonald

Click here to view the embedded video.

Those were days of roses,
Poetry and prose and Martha
All I had was you and all you had was me.
There was no tomorrows,
Wed packed away our sorrows
And we saved them for a rainy day.

“Martha” (1973) – Tom Waits (no original on Youtube, so I give you a cover by ‘Malvasio’)

This last song I only discovered in the 90s (on the excellent “Closing Time” album), but I remember the other two from when they came out, both around 1983. I guess the memories from when you’re 14 are really strong.

So what songs come out of your stereo on sad days?

 UPDATE: I forgot one: “It’s too late” by Carole King

It used to be so easy living here with you
You were light and breezy and I knew just what to do
Now you look so unhappy and I feel like a fool

And it’s too late, baby, now it’s too late
Though we really did try to make it
Something inside has died
And I can’t hide and I just can’t fake it

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I got reminded of this song by a newsletter of the Beursschouwburg, they’re doing a “Porque Te Vas” contest where people can bring new versions of this classic. Inscription before Oct 10th, and the event is held on Oct 24th, with hosts STIJN and Pieter De Buysser, the jury consists of Maria Tarantino and Stijn Meuris.

Hoy en mi ventana brilla el sol
Y el corazon
Se pone triste contemplando la ciudad
Porque te vas

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ID3.exe can do several things, of which I will just cite the things I actually used:

• it can obviously set ID3 tags in MP3 files (that is, ID3v1 and v2). The first time it adds ID3v2 tags which are stored in the beginning of the file (necessary when you need the info right when you start reading the file, like with streaming), the whole file has to be rewritten, but subsequent modifications are really fast.
  id3.exe -1 -2 -g [genre] -c "[Copyright notice]" -l "[Album name]" "%OUTPUT%"
• set the ID3 tags of one file to those of another. I needed this when I transcoded MP3 files to a lower bitrate with LAME. LAME does not copy the existing ID3 tags to the new file. So I used ID3.exe to just copy those from the source file.
  id3.exe -D %INPUT% -1 -2 "%OUTPUT%"
• Rename the file according to the MP3 tags. I had a big collection of MP3 files called “01 Track01″ without any MP3 tags. I first set the ID3 tags based upon the folder structure (the folder name was the Album name), and then renamed them to “[Artist name] – [Album name] - [Track N°].mp3″.
  id3.exe -2 -f "%%a - %%l - %%t.rbs" "%OUTPUT%"
• Id3 can also deduct album names, artist, song titles and track number from the complete filename + path.

This is the complete usage of the version I used:

id3 0.78 (2006080)
usage: id3 [-1 -2 -3] [OPTIONS] filespec ...
 -v             give verbose output
 -d             clear existing tag
 -t <title>     set tag fields
 -a <artist>
 -l <album>             (i'th matched `*' wildcard  = %1-%9,%0
 -n <tracknr>            path/file name/counters    = %p %f %x %X
 -y <year>               value of tag field in file = %t %a %l %n %y %g %c)
 -g <genre>
 -c <comment>
 -D <filename   duplicate tags read from filename
 -f <template>  rename files according to template
 -q <format>    print formatted string on standard output
 -m             match variables in filespec
 -R             search recursively
 -M             preserve modification time of files
 -V             print version info
Only on last selected tag type:
 -s <size>      set tag size
 -E             only write if tag already exists
 -u             update all standard fields
 -rTYPE         erase all `TYPE' frames
 -wTYPE <data>  write a `TYPE' frameReport bugs to <squell@alumina.nl>.

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The pictures that came out rather well are in my Flickr Bajofondo Tango Club album.

I did have some fun with a guy in front of me with a ‘point-and-shoot’ camera, it might have been a Canon Ixus or something. He added a twist to the common ‘people-using-a-camera-flash-from-a-distance’ error. He would see a beautiful image in his viewer, push the button and a totally awful grayish picture would show up as a result. For his sake and that of other P&S’ers, here’s two rules for using it in a concert where you’re in the audience.

Rule #1: do not use your camera flash

You have a simple small flash in your camera that might reach as far as 5m maybe, but it is of no use for a podium 20m away. Your camera will think that the subject of your photo will receive a bunch of light from it and choose a faster shutter. The light of your flash will never reach those musicians, but chances are some will fall on members of the audience that are standing nearby, so the only thing that will light up is some bald heads, a fake blonde and a lot of dandruff.

Switch the flash to ‘off’ or use the ‘landscape’ setting! If your camera permits it, set the ISO-setting to as high as 800ISO (if you own a 1000€-plus camera, 1600ISO is safe too, but you shouldn’t be reading this then). This will make the image grainier, but will make the shutter time shorter. If the scene is still too dark and your camera uses shutter times of more than 1/20 sec, try to include more light in the composition. Don’t zoom in too much, it will only make things worse. You can always crop the picture when you’re home.

Remember: when you’re using a small flash at a concert, or even worse, a mobile phone with the built-in flash from 30m away, you look like an utter amateur.

Rule #2: do not hold your finger in front of the flash

This one cracked me up: the guy in front of me held his left index finger right in front of his flash. So most of his pictures were extremely dark, with the odd one that included a completely white fragment of his finger. The only times that this wasn’t the case, was when he took pictures in portrait, turning his camera 90 degrees to the left, which brought his flash even lower and added quite some very bright shoulders to the composition.

So, if your flash photos are way too dark, and your finger feels very warm whenever you take a picture, check where the flash sits on your compact camera and make sure you put no bodily parts in front of it.

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“Je suis ouvert comme une vielle pute… Tu vois le bazar !?”
“Je ne pense pas, ce sont les soeurs catholiques qui pensent”

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