How To Listen

Marie

Marie by Randy Newman

Everyone should know this song. Period. This is a good old-fashioned love song. Take note, little Bieber.

Addendum

For those who do not work in audio like I do, I am here to tell you that the above image is NOT what music actually looks like.¹

I blame car stereos.

And The Grateful Dead.

The Swinger

I frequently find myself saying, “Yeah, this track is good, but it would be better if it swung.” What can I say? When it’s in your blood, it’s in you.¹ Like many saxophonists I was hooked on jazz at an early age and although I don’t play a lot of it now, I still have that sound in my ear. Like my high school band teacher said, “If it don’t swing, hang it from a rope.”²

Enter: The Swinger. The Swinger is a python script written by Dr. Tristan Jehan from MIT’s Hyperinstruments Group at their Media Laboratory.³ The code magically deduces the beats within any audio file, stretches the first part of each beat, and then shrinks the second.

So what? Let me tell you, dear reader, you have not lived until you listen to Guns ‘n Roses’s Sweet Child O’ Mine with a glorious backbeat.

Sweet Child O’ Mine (Swing Version) by plamere

Another favorite is Metallica’s Enter Sandman.⁴Enter Sandman- the Swing Version by plamere

I am not going to even try to tell you how to do this with your gear. Go here and here and if any of that makes any sense to you, email me at timothyrosenberg at the gmail with your awesome swinging songs. I’ll post them.

Music Notation with HTML5 Canvas

Mohit Muthanna is making some beautiful examples of javascript-only generated musical notation using the canvas attribute. This has the potential to be huge for big publishers and self-publishers a like.

2212 Whalen

That’s my new office.

Well, not yet.

And it’s not really mine.

But come next August, that’s where I’ll be.

Teaching.

I am honored to accept the position offered to me by my Alma Mater, Ithaca College, to serve as the interim replacement for Dr. Steven Mauk beginning next fall. It is much sooner than I had previously expected. It will be sad to leave East Lansing so suddenly, not because I love East Lansing (I don’t) but because of all of my wonderful, talented mentors, friends, and colleagues without whom I would not have had the opportunities I have been given. I will miss them all dearly.

On the other hand, a new beginning in a familiar place is a dream come true for me. I am looking forward to returning to Ithaca. I am looking forward to seeing my family more often, reconnecting with old friends in the area, and forming new relationships with colleagues and students. For me, this is the opportunity of a lifetime, and I intend to live it. Hard.

To answer the question: So, are you done at MSU? No. I expect to finish the final requirements for the Doctorate in Music Degree in the Fall semester. Sounds crazy, but it’s going to be fine. I need to finish the dissertation, present one solo recital, and one lecture recital before I can finish. With strong headway being made on the writing front, and recital plans already underway, I expect this to be a challenging, but exciting seven months. I say this now wearing the rose-colored glasses of new beginnings. By November, I could be whistling a different tune.

So there’s my personal post. I don’t do them very often here. Oh yeah, that reminds me. I started a different blog for funny pictures, You Tube videos, and other pieces of internet ephemera that do not fit into the style of this place. It’s on the Tumblr network and it’s called Slings and Arrows and it’s more about… me. So if you are the stalker-type (and let’s face it, you are) slap that into your RSS reader, or follow along on Tumblr. While we’re on the subject, if you’re stalking me and you don’t know yet, my twitter handle is, timrosenberg. I’m creative like that.

Well, that’s the news. I might as well conclude this LiveJournalesque screed with a giggle. So here’s kittens in Autotune. Enjoy.

Listen to this: Albéniz vs. The Fly

Albéniz vs. The Fly

A fly dive-bombed the hanging pair of microphones during a piano recital. We kept the tape rolling.

Galactic

Looking for great Pandora seeds?  Try this one.

30 minutes of great Funk and counting.

Git ya groove on.

Lossless Music Downloads

As I briefly mentioned earlier I will be converting everything in my iTunes library (some 7155 tracks, but I’m not bragging) to lossless content. I’m doing this because iTunes now automatically converts your large files into smaller ones which are served to your iPod and/or iPhone without creating duplicates in your library. Super sweet, huh?

“But, Tim,” you say, “I really hate CDs. They take up all kinds of space, are easily lost or scratched and take a long time to rip to my iTunes.”

First-off: Buck-up, Nancypants. You want to be an audiophile? You gotta work for it sometimes. HOWEVEA, there is a burgeoning marketplace of distributors ready to fulfill your desire for convenience as well as meet your taste for high quality.

Enter: Lossless Downloads. Yes, what was once a dream among audiophiles is quickly become a reality. Numerous labels and distributors are offering affordable downloads of lossless quality music DRM-free (because not everyone is a criminal). Your humble curator has taken the time to compile a convenient list from which you are mere index-finger movements away from satiating your desires. Clearly the list is biased towards classical music, because quite frankly most “commercial” music is so over compressed that the data lost actually improves the track.

So no more excuses. Now you are responsible to hear everything on the track, because it’s all there. Hear the airiness of the violin strings? Hear the sleeves of the conductor as he over-beats the quiet section? Now you can and now I think you should. iTunes is great for organization, but until the music store catches up with the needs for serious listeners its lossless audio for me.