Tag Archive for 'music'

Favourite podcasts: Basic Soul Radio Show

Published by Peter on April 28, 2008 in music and podcast. 4 Comments

I subscribe to less and less podcasts (not enough time to listen), but there is one I always install on every newly installed iTunes. It’s called the Basic Soul Radio Show, it’s presented by Simon Harrison. Every week Simon selects two hours of old and new funk, soul and electronic music, which makes for a 200MB MP3 every time (upgrade that hard disk!). I have discovered lots of little pearls thanks to it. Some examples from the top of my head:

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 …

Basic Soul Radio podcast Search
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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Music for sad days

Published by Peter on November 27, 2007 in music. 1 Comment

Not that I’m particularly sad today, but I was recently thinking about the music I play over and over again on less happy days. For some reason, it’s still the same songs I play as 10-15 years ago. So now that we have Youtube:

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)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLrmbcpQhhk

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Moldover: Live mashup DJ

Published by Peter on September 7, 2006 in music. 2 Comments

Moldover: live mashup DJI wrote a post last year “REQ: Live mashup performance tool” on how much fun it would be to be able to do live mashups: mix basslines, drums, guiter riffs and vocals from different songs in real-time. I just found out via beatmixed that there is a New-York DJ that has figured out the nuts and bolts: Toto a.k.a. Moldover.

MOLDOVER SETUP

  • HARDWARE: He uses a PC laptop with Ableton Live (for loop control) and Native Instruments Reaktor (for sound FX). As MIDI-controller, he uses a Novation ReMOTE 25 (2 octaves). For audio output he uses an Echo Audio Indigo ยป io CardBus interface.
  • SOFTWARE: he has organized an extensive collection of loops in Live into 8 columns or channels - I think “DJ1″, “DJ2″, “Beats”, “Percussion”, “Melody”, “Bass”, “Ambient” and “Vocals”. Loops are color-coded for the key they’re in (if any). Each channel has 1 FX configured which is the Reaktor plugin. There are also some effects on the master output (limiter, compressor, …)
  • CONTROL: he uses the 8 white keys at the right to trigger each channel. The 8 sliders, which are nicely lined up right above the keys, control the volume of each channel. The 2 x 8 knobs control 2 FX settings per channel. On some channels these are equalizer settings (cut-off frequency), on others delay/reverb settings (depends on the type of ‘content’ of each channel, and what FX go best with that).

See him at work on this Youtube video:
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I remember house before it was techno

Published by Peter on September 26, 2004 in music. 5 Comments

I remember house before it was techno
I remember house before it had an afro
I remember house before it was deep
I remember house before it was hard
I remember house when house had tempos
I remember house before mpc 60’s
I remember house before house had loops
I remember house before the whole world knew
“Do You Remember House” - Blaze

If, like me, you every often have to explain why you’re into house music, but not techno, and what exactly the difference is between acid jazz, downbeat, deep house and lounge music, you should know about the Ishkur’s guide to electronic music. It gives an overview of styles, genres and sub-genres of house, trance, techno, breakbeat, ambient, jungle, hardcore and downtempo, all defined and annotated by a Canadian guy who compensates his lack of enthusiasm for some genres by a fair amount of sarcasm.

Hardcore is the musical genre with bi-polar disorder: one half is blistering, sadistic anger, a seething uncontrollable rage that seekd to ruin and wreck everything that exists, including everyone else’s fun time. (…) The other half of hardcore is way too silly and stupid to take such anger seriously anymore.
Ishkur’s Guide to Electronic Music

It even includes multiple sound samples with each definition, so put on those headphones and experience the delights of Nu Style Gabber, Gloomcore and New Beat (yes, we Belgians are still quite proud of that)!

Another, more serious way, of discovering house music is the excellent Jahsonic’s House Music History (some sound bites and really well cross-referenced), and if you really want to graduate from House University, check out House Music 101 (by Appollo). Wanna hear some? Browse through DeepHousePage or just use Smoothouse’s Smooth-o-Matic.

Disclaimer: If Chic don’t make you snap your fingers, if George Clinton can’t incite you to move that booty and Bob Marley cannot make you wave that spliff above them dreadlocks, then you will not get it. Go back to your R.E.M. albums (or Metallica, whatever) and forget about it. You’re a lost case.