I’ve heard a bit about Pandora.com, but I haven’t tried it out until today, spurred on by Richard Friedman’s post about his interesting results from a Kyle Gann station there.  I’m a pretty big fan of Gann’s music, but I was only two songs in to this station before I could no longer resist creating a Sun City Girls station.  Maybe it’s the alure of the forbidden – SCG is banned in my house by my wife.  Too bad there’s no Caroliner station in their database.  But then, Caroliner never really could be digitized…

I am really excited about the new version of Lilypond that was released last month.  On Leopard you still have to go through some hoops, but I’ve gotten pretty comfortable with that – I’ll try to post my process shortly.

The most exciting thing for me, though, is not the updated code.  It’s the massively updated documentation, which I’ve been reading through the last few days.  It answers a lot of questions I’ve had and opens up some interesting compostitional ideas for me.

Now it’s time to go back to my well worn copy of Gardner Read and brush up on my notation skills…

My stretched out remix of Radiohead’s “Reckoner” is now available on the Radiohead Remix site.  I have called it “Reckon Head Stretch” and dedicated it to Leif Inge.  I also wanted to give special thanks to Paul for making extreme sound stretching available to the masses.

The Radiohead site has a 5MB limit on the files being uploaded, so I had to compress the 7 and a half minute piece to get it to fit.  I am hoping to post a 256 kb/s mp3 on this site shortly.  I’ll let you know.

So go listen to it and vote.

Radiohead has released their song “Reckoner” as individual tracks for people to remix, much like they did earlier this year for the song Nude.  This time I am taking up the gauntlet.  I downloaded the tracks, and I have already started using Paul’s Extreme Sound Stretch to get all Leif Inge on it.

I have owned 3 pianos.  All of them have been cheap or free.  The one I own now cost me $150, plus $200 to have it moved.  Some keys stick, and it’s pretty out of tune.  That’s how I roll.

I got my first piano for $25 at a thrift store in Orlando, and I recorded virtually nothing with it before I moved and had to have an army of helpers through it in a dumpster.  My second piano was free, and I kept it in my garage when I lived in Union Beach.  In December of 2006, as my family and I were getting ready to move, I vowed that I would record an improvisation on its wonderful out of tune-ness before I had to leave it.

So I am posting here, in its runmastered raw-ness, that 11 minute improvisation.  Enjoy.

Detuned Piano Improvisation – Dec. 9, 2006

A lot of people today are claiming that the cost of recorded music is approaching zero. I tend to agree. That’s one of the reasons that I make my own music available for free. Although I am not really a fan of P2P file sharing and pirating music over the internet, I have found that there are a lot of places to find interesting music for free online, legally. I thought I would share some of my personal favorites here.

• The Ibiblio Library: Here you will find a huge amount of recorded material from around the world. My personal favorites are the Puzzling Music Archive, Pandora, and Gamelan Nyai Saraswati (I really can’t resist a good gamelan ensemble…)
• Steve Layton’s “Click Picks”: Music picked out by Steve Layton, a composer with a keen eye for interesting talent.
• ccMixter – The Open Source Alternative: I have actually spent a lot of time here lately. While a lot of the music uploaded here is kind of pop/electronica oriented, there are definitely some interesting artists here. It seems like it is still a relatively small community, all mixing each other’s music and sounds. If you are interested in free samples (smaller snippets of recordings, as opposed to songs), you could also try their sister site, Freesound.
• The Avant Garde Project: This interesting project digitizes out of print albums of 20th century music, and includes composers such as Morton Subotnik, Ben Johnston, John Cage, Harry Partch, Toru Takemitsu, Luciano Berio, Pauline Oliveros, and many others. I have not yet had a chance to sample the music here, but I am looking forward to it. Be warned – the native format here is FLAC, so if you don’t know about it you might want to read their technical information page.

Hopefully some of this information will help you find some new and interesting music. Let me know if there is anything out there I have missed.

I visited last.fm today for some reason and found out there was already a page set up for me there.  I figured if I am there anyway, I might as well upload some music.  So now you can download Softshoeballet and tones(a)tones on my last.fm page.  The rest will be going up in a few days, then hopefully the cover art.

So… anyone know who my music might be similar to?  And while I’m asking, anybody want to write an artist description for me? 

Yesterday, Napster began selling DRM-free mp3 recordings individually and by album.  They claim to have over 6 million songs, comparable to the DRM-laden iTunes Store.

I figured I would check it out.  Following my usual routine to judge a music retailer, I searched for Morton Feldman.   One of the first things I noticed was that they carried the Flux Quartet recording of his String Quartet 2.  If you’re not familiar, this is a six hour long work in one continuous movement, and a notoriously difficult piece to play.  I have this piece on DVD-Audio, but I have never been able to listen to it on a portable music player.

iTunes carries the entire Flux recording, and sells it for $45, which is less than the 6 CD set, I believe.  But when I viewed this album on Napster, I saw that each of the 29 tracks was available for $0.99 each, but that you could buy the entire 6 hour album for only $9.95!

I am not sure if this is a mistake, or if Napster has some kind of different agreement with Mode that allows them to sell for this price.  Regardless, I bought the album.

As of this morning, the price is the same.  If you have ever thought of buying this recording, I would say now is the time.

I am brewing another batch of beer tonight.  This one, according to The Brewer’s Apprentice, is supposed to be similar to Old Speckled Hen, one of my favorite English beers (and available, I may add, at the Cincinnati Airport).I am finding that, while cooking up the beer, I have started to listen consistently to a Jethro Tull playlist.   There seems to be something fitting there for me.  The woodsy flute-induced classic rock mixes well with the act of brewing an old English ale. To contrast that, I have gravitated to listening to Gary Numan while mowing the lawn.  I can’t quite rationalize that one, but it’s the truth.  And the soundtrack to writing functional specifications for complex software systems (my bread and butter)?  Morton Feldman, of course.  Or possibly Lief Inge or some other extremely slowed down piece of music.

Long time contributor and friend of the Journal Matt R. has pointed out a free download from the inestimable record store Other Music. The artist, a Finnish singer who goes by the name of Lau Nau, has a pretty interesting sound.  I haven’t heard of her until now, but I’m intrigued.  Is it just me, or does the instrumentation sound reminiscent of one of my pieces?  I guess there are just no new ideas under the sun…