Reason 1,243 why I’m an Apple fan…
Apple Garageband Lessons. Learn from Sting and Nora Jones
Microsoft Songsmith. So you too can make music that rivals Wesley Willis. Be sure to save up for a good microphone though.
(Note: the “laptop” in the Songsmith video is a MacBook Pro. Have they no shame?)
Xylos : Bedrooms
Excellent (free) tunes from a band you’ve never heard before. Grab and enjoy.
tuneage : everyone deserves good music
Tuneage is my friend with the best musical taste…
Enviably gorgeous photo series by Brooks Reynolds with music by Everlea.
I think there’s a common thread that pulls at the heartstrings of everyone who has spent countless “summer nights” as a teenager wandering, dreaming, making out. Mine were spent riding shotgun in my best friend’s RX-7, with a little making out thrown in toward the end of high school.
Regardless, I find these photos evocative and lush. (thanks BC)
In Memory - 10 years (via type3secretion)
Every time I pick up my guitar — pluck a note, play a chord — I think of Michael Hedges.
Acoustic guitar has always been my favorite instrument, but he redefined it for me in a way that made it more than one instrument and one voice. He turned his guitar into a window that gave the audience/listener a candid look inside his being.
I was lucky enough to see Michael perform 5 times before his passing. The last time was in Seattle just months before he died. My luckiest moment was when my friend Dennis and I saw him at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco, and running late we happened upon Michael on the sidewalk outside the building. Seizing the moment I did my best to look him in the eye and connect with this amazing person even if only for 10 seconds.
He could tell I was a fan. He didn’t break eye contact. He was walking alone, probably just having dined and getting in the headspace for his performance. He held my eye contact, and with a giant smile and a genuine hello we had a lifetime of conversations in the span of seconds.
Maybe this is just want I wanted and created for the moment, but I can say with 41 years of living that I’ve yet to experience that profound of a connection with anyone else in a moment’s passing.
I think it was his way of being. And I’m lucky for having witnessed it.
(As an aside, YouTube has quite a few videos of guitarists replicating the Hedges style. Some even technically better, but non imbued with the same sense of self exposure.)
This to me sums up the best of modern “down-tempo electronica”. Still sounds amazing after 5 consecutive listens. (thx tuneage)
Centercourse - “Looks Like It Sounds Good”
…
Centercourse is an LA duo putting together just the kind of down-tempo electronica that I love. “Looks Like It Sounds Good” has a great night-time feel and a mood that reminds me of the Matrix movies. Also, in the middle of all this “chill” is something else I love in electronic music: glitches. If you need to take a few minutes this afternoon and relax a little, I don’t know that I can recommend a better song to help you do that.
Source: tuneage
Andy Mckee - “Rylynn”
Good feeling tunes for a late Friday night.
Pleasantly reminded of my all-time favorite hyperkinetic acoustic guitarist: Michael Hedges
(No wonder I’m reminded of MH… This (tribute) song would’ve put a huge smile on his face.)
happy happy. joy joy.
The Ting Tings - “That’s Not My Name”
The Ting Tings are absolutely huge in the UK right now. Despite being a resident of the UK, I completely missed this, probably because I go to great lengths to ignore British media. And so by the time I discovered them, their album, We Started Nothing, was already at the top of the album chart, and this track, their first single from the album, was at the top of the singles chart.
Anyway, The Tings Tings are fairly standard pop fare, with a double-coating of sugary sass…
Source: tuneage
Self-promo: The Music method
Heard of The Music?
If you haven’t, and you like your Rock to have a noticeable Rush influence then you should check them out. Period. But even if Rock-a-la-Rush ain’t your thang, I’ve gotta hand it to them for this promotional idea:
Strength in Numbers (links to the band’s promo streaming site)
They release more songs off their forthcoming “Strength in Numbers” album as more people offer up email addresses.
Sidebar: “album” has become an antiquated term hasn’t it. It will always mean vinyl to me as I still have records and a record player, but my Dictionary widget defines it as LP record, cassette or CD. iTunes uses calls ‘em albums, but it’s definitely a folder of files or tracks when it hits my hard drive.
I know, I know… it’s a silly bit of semantics, but I find it fascinating to watch language evolve. And to mix metaphors.
(via Big Dan)
