I’ve been looking for a good 88 note MIDI keyboard controller. It’s a surprisingly challenging task given how many new choices have sprung up recently. For me, the main thing is the feel of the keys. Beyond that it’s icing.
Continue reading ‘Researching 88 Key MIDI Controllers’
Archive for the 'Music' Category
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Amon Tobin is one of my favorite electronic music artists. Everything he does is very evocative, almost cinematic, if only action movies were this good. He has his own unmistakable style, yet it is more a planet than a palette, which is very hard to pull off as an artist. Which is why it is odd that it took me so long to grab his last full-length album, especially considering it is high definition surround mix on DVD-Audio. I suppose the fact that it was a game soundtrack (“Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell 3″) was a stumbling block for me. How good could incidental music loops for yet another first person shooter be? I needn’t have been so cautious. It’s a great album. Maybe not his best, but it’s up there. Moody and atmospheric, yet driving and adrenaline-pumping all at once. Vintage Amon Tobin. Also, this time there are credits to actual performing musicians, including an orchestra. Now I understand — writing for a game was just a way to get someone to front the money for even more grand sound sculpting options. The surround mix is very well done, allowing the spatial placement of sounds to become almost another instrument.
I had assumed I’d have to borrow a friend’s CD version of this album in order to rip the tracks and import them into iTunes. To my surprise, when you put the disk in your computer there is a directory full of sound files. Both surround AAC (which iTunes doesn’t yet support) and high resolution stereo versions were included. That’s what won me over and inspired this post. Kudos to Ninja Tunes and Amon Tobin for this forward thinking, and for not treating their customer like a criminal. In a perfect world, this would be the future of music distribution.
Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), along with Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) have introduced a bill dubbed the PERFORM (Platform Equality and Remedies for Rights Holders in Music Act of 2006
) Act (the conjurer of acronyms really earned their pay on that one). It is designed to protect we the people from inadvertently wandering away from our consumer feeding tubes, thus depriving the Matrix of its power source.
I listen to quite a bit of internet radio, all of it using streaming mp3 technology. In fact this is my main source of new music — NPR is the only broadcast radio I can stand. This bill would make that technology essentially illegal, since it doesn’t have built in restrictions preventing “music theft.” Actually, this bit may be an out for independent streaming services:
The bill would require cable, Internet and satellite providers to use reasonably available technology to protect the music, IF they want to enjoy the benefit of a government license. If, however, a company wants to use new technologies beyond the scope of a government license then they must go to the record companies directly to negotiate a licensing agreement through the market.
I’m not clear whether stations like SomaFM would want to enjoy the benefit of a government license or not. I’m guessing that the benefit of doing so would be that they would otherwise have to negotiate agreements with every single label (and artist?) they play.
Independent music is already marginalized. The PERFORM Act seems to protect the economic interests of the mainstream at the expense of musical diversity. Time to write a letter to my representative.
Further reading:
Ars Technica article
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Edit:Fixed the link to Senator Feinstein’s site.
