Sockpuppet.

A new ambient experiment fixation

Convolution reverbs are pretty neat. Basically you take a recording of a space’s acoustics and then the reverb characteristics of that space can then be applied to any audio signal. I usually use convolution reverbs for most of my music, since it’s a lot easier for me to use someone’s recorded impulse response of, say, the Ulm chapel than to fly to Germany to record there in person.

You can also use recordings of things other than acoustic spaces for interesting effects; Logic’s Space Designer comes with a whole bunch of impulse responses that are used for various effects, including drum transformers, ghost rhythms, and other such things. A lot of my more sound designy stuff makes heavy use of this.

But what if you use whole songs as an impulse response?

Minimal listens for January 11-17

Gosh, I almost forgot to post this, but that’s because I haven’t actually listened to much music this week. Dunno why. But here’s some things I heard:

• The We ♥ Katamari soundtrack; specifically I have an old gamerip that unfortunately has the full per-level runtime tracks which get kind of old after a while, but it was surprisingly fun to listen to while driving for some errands
• Psychic Realty (Revisited): An amazing remix album of one of Jeremy Blake’s already-amazing albums
• … and that’s it, that’s everything I listened to this week

Sometimes I just gotta give my ears a break, I guess.

Music listens for January 4-10

I didn’t listen to much music this week, but here’s some stuff I enjoyed:

• Benny Benassi - Electroman: I bought this because “Good Girl” was on Lumines Electric Symphony for the PS Vita, pretty much the only game that I spent any significant amount of time playing on that doomed system. The album as a whole seems like it’s a lighthearted parody/homage of all of the dance music styles that were popular in 2011. Or at least I found a lot of humor in it.
• Disappear by Revengeday
• The Rainbow Disconnection by Sad Kermit: I absolutely cannot believe that this album is allowed to continue to exist. I could have sworn it was DMCAed at one point. Also back when I got it, it was a free download from the artist’s website, I think. There’s more tracks that have been added since my acquisition.
• The Weekend EP by This Mess is Mine
• A Certain Distance by Lusine: some amazingly lush electronica that makes my ears very happy

Some more music listens

Hey, it’s a new year! I’m going to try to keep these posts going for a while, I think. As always, these are just highlights; if you want to see my full listening history you can check out my last.fm profile.

What I’m listening to

I feel like doing these approximately once a week is a pretty nice cadence. So I think I’ll start scheduling these to go up every, say, Saturday. Yes, that sounds good.

Here’s some musical-listening highlights since the last one:

• two months of moments by glaciaere: some really nice heartfelt FM synthy stuff that spans a bunch of different genres
• Six Foot Moon by Distractor: 80s nu-wave for the modern era
• Full Of It by Summer Cannibals: Some great female-led power punk rock, I’m totally here for it
• Black Box of Jazz: This is an amazing compilation of some of the best music that jazz has had to offer. I happened upon this collection when I was visiting Hong Kong back in 2000, and it’s an essential for anyone who has any interest in the genre.
• The Great Concert of Charles Mingus: Speaking of jazz, this one is also particularly amazing, although it probably helps to be familiar with a bunch of jazz already to fully appreciate some of the musical humor in it. Mingus is one of the jazz greats.
• Pivot by Amoeba (one of the many projects of Robert Rich): I’m not sure how to describe this as anything other than “experimental rock.” There’s some great grooves in this accompanying some great noises. I’m not sure how I ended up with this in my collection (way back in 2019 if my file timestamps are to be believed) but I’m glad I did.
• Duo de Bois: Six Sonatas for Flute and Violin: It’s a shame Magnatune has ceased operations because they had some really excellent classical music on offer. This is an excellent recording of a great classical work. I can only seem to find it for sale on Apple Music these days but it’s licensed CC by-nc-sa so it should be possible to obtain freely. If only there were a way.
• Drum Machine Dreams by Stevia Sphere: Nice lush ambient music to fill your ears to
• Expert in a Dying Field by The Beths: This album was the big hotness when it first came out a couple years ago, and it’s well-deserved.
• FREQUENCY gift by glitched puppet: Really awesome lo-fi abstract ambient chillwave groove things.

Music (re)discoveries

It’s been a week since the last one of these, and I figure I should post some more albums that I’ve listened to recently.

• little fires by miscellaneous owl: Lots of great earnest indie music in various genres
• Heartbreak on Vinyl by Blake Lewis: The sophmore album of my favorite American Idol finalist, with some pretty nice lush electropop/dance vibes on this one
• Fly! by The Flashbulb
• Rock!!!!! by The Violent Femmes
• Verve//Unmixed vol. 3: Some really great jazz classics on this one (and on the whole Verve//Remixed and Verve//Unmixed series, for that matter)
• Song Fight!: Her: This is one of those fights from the era when a lot of folks were bringing their A-game, and there’s some great songs in this one

Concert time polling

Hey y'all, I’m trying to figure out when I should schedule my next VRChat concert for. If you’d be so kind, please head over to this poll and click on the times which work well for you. (Remember to set your timezone as well!)

Thanks!

Independent music on the independent web

As an independent musician who is also a (former-ish) software engineer who is keenly all-too-aware of technology and the development of the web, I would personally love to see a much better ecosystem of independent music distribution and discovery that isn’t reliant on any one company or platform, or even a handful of them.

When discussing some of the alternate paths that people can take, it’s important to know what’s out there and what their strengths and weaknesses are.

Music (re)discoveries

So hey, I’ve been working on improving the tag browser in the releases section, and have it to a point where the browser itself is, I think, really good? All that’s left to do is to tag all of the songs. I have, uh, a lot of tagging left to do. I built some tools to make it a bit easier, at least, but it’s still going to take me quite some time.

Anyway, while tagging music, I’ve been spending some quality time just listening to other peoples' music. Here’s a few things that I’ve enjoyed recently.