More music I found lying around on my hard disk.
Sounds like it should be a Ukrainian folk tune.
Simple classical piano thing. Sounds like a piece from one of those piano-for-beginners books, so it might be a cheap knock-off of something I’ve heard somewhere else.
This is a Logic Expression version of an elevator muzak/Gershwin-esque MIDI I wrote about 10 years ago. I’ve stripped back the instrumentation to just a piano.
Here’s the tab for Bach’s “Minuet in G”, arranged for bass guitar in E:
It’s written based on hazy memory, but I think it’s mainly right. And, as tabs only include 50% of the information needed to play a song, here’s an MP3 of what it should sound like (more or less):
I’m always surprised when I hear that another tab site has been closed down by threats from the music industry, because tab sites actually work in favour of the industry. Music essentially consists of two pieces of information: pitch and duration. Standard notation supplies both of these. The vertical position of a note on the stave represents its pitch, whilst the note glyph itself (ie. the picture used; I forget the technical term) gives the duration. Guitar tabs give pitch but cannot communicate duration, so it is essential that you have the original recording in order to make sense of a tab (unless you know the original recording really, really well). You could argue that, given the notes, you could eventually work out a timing that sounded reasonable. However, this is easily countered by pointing out that most tabs available on the internet are almost always slightly incorrect, frequently contain obvious mistakes, and occasionally include such massive, showstopping blunders that they become little more than vague starting points for the guitarist’s own tab.
In summary:
In order to read the Sweet Child o’ Mine tab, you need to own a copy of Sweet Child o’ Mine.
Thus, guitar tab websites not only encourage musicians to learn their craft (where would the music industry be without musicians? Perhaps that’s a stupid question…), they encourage music sales too.
Anyway, I don’t play the bass very much, mainly because it buzzes like crazy whenever I try to do anything with it. The bass I currently have is an ancient (up to 21 years old, I discovered today, with at least two previous owners) Aria Pro II SLB-2, which Aria themselves disavow virtually all knowledge of ever producing. Aside from being listed on their “we made these in the dark ages” product archive page, it doesn’t exist.
Fortunately, I’ve got a Fender Jazz Bass on order. I’m giving this one away to a pal as soon as the new one turns up.
My current favourite homebrew application on my newly hacked iPod Touch is “Guitarist”. It turns the iPod into a tiny 6-string acoustic guitar with four frets visible at once. It can be a bit clunky at times, and there’s no way to strum it at the moment, but it’s a fun little toy.
I’ve been trying to come up with some some interesting-sounding fingerpicking tunes to play on it. It’s not easy to fingerpick on a touchscreen that offers no tactile feedback, is annoyingly vague about where one string stops and the next begins, and when you’re actually playing with two thumbs instead of fingers, but I think I’ve got there:
Even better, here’s the tab.
A D
|-------|-----------------|-----------------|-----2---0-------|
|-----0-|-2---2-----2-1-2-|-------------0-1-|-3-----------3---|
|---2---|-----------------|-2---2-----2-----|---2---2---2---2-|
|-2-----|---2---2---2-1-2-|---2---2---------|-0---0---0---0---|
|-------|-0---0---0-------|-0---0---0-------|-----------------|
|-------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
A D A
|-----------------------|-----2-------2---2-0---|-----------------------|
|-2-------2-------2-0-2-|-3-------3-----------3-|-2-------2-----------0-|
|-----2-------2---------|---2-------2-----2-0---|-----2-------2-----2---|
|---2-------2-----2-0-2-|-0-----0-------0-------|---2-------2-----2---2-|
|-0-----0-------0-------|-----------------------|-0-----0-------0---0---|
|-----------------------|-----------------------|-----------------------|
A E A
|-----------------|-----------------|
|-2-2---2-0-0---0-|-----2---2-------|
|-----------------|-2-----------2---|
|---2---2---------|---2-------2-----|
|-0---0-----2---2-|-0-----0-------0-|
|---------0---0---|-----------------|
I had an idea for an iPod-style Woopsi Youtube video that shows off some of Woopsi’s features. I’d need to write some more demos and get some more functionality in before I could do it, but the idea was basically to have a screencap movie of Woopsi running in an emulator, possibly interspersed with text, with a cheesy audio track running over the top. The audio needed to be something related to the windowing theme, so I figured that an upbeat remix of George Formby’s “When I’m Cleaning Windows” would do the job.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have an upbeat remix of that tune.
Fortunately, it’s out of copyright. At least, it is in England; in America, with their hopelessly mangled copyright laws (thanks in part to Sonny Bono and, ironically, Disney, who built a business out of appropriating public domain works and feeding them back to the public in nice packaging with a price tag), Formby will probably never go out of copyright.
Anyway, armed with a shiny new copy of Logic Express, an MP3 of the original tune and some loops I decided to have a go at remixing the tune into a 1-minute long snatch of music. Here’s the result:
When I’m Cleaning Windows Remix
It’s nowhere near perfect, but it does the job. It might turn up on a Woopsi promo video at some point.
The reason why Universal Music is current litigating itself to death instead of leveraging the internet as a delivery platform, according to Doug Morris, CEO:
We didn’t know who to hire. I wouldn’t be able to recognise a good technology person - anyone with a good bullshit story would have gotten past me.
Taken from John Naughton’s latest column.
So, here’s a free-of-charge clue for the music industry (not that I imagine any of the executives are smart enough to be able to use a computer or, y’know, read, or anything):
If this guy knocks on your door offering to sell your products for you, you need to say yes. This is what a “good technology person” looks like.
You shouldn’t decide to sue your own customers, nor should you try to bully the aforementioned good technology person, who is doing your job better than you are, into changing his pricing structure, business model or delivery system.
You should listen to the good technology person’s advice, and not take your toys home to play with them on your own if you don’t get your own way. It’s important to note that you are trying to sell those toys, not keep them to yourself, and if you don’t provide a way for people to buy them you aren’t going to make any money.
Naughton attributes the industry’s impending demise to “wilful cluelessness”. However, I think that it can be summed up more accurately as “greedy stupidity”.
Morris continues:
They just didn’t know what to do. It’s like if you were suddenly asked to operate on your dog to remove his kidney. What would you do?
Mr Morris, I would hire a vet. I certainly wouldn’t try to sue the dog for being ill, which is what you appear to have done.
Yesterday’s tune that might become something more substantial has indeed become something more substantial:
Folk by numbers:
There are a multitude of mistakes and fumbles in the recording because my stupid fingers haven’t quite got the hang of the tune yet. The tab represents what I should be playing.
Here’s another Renoise tune written ages ago and never really finished; I got so used to hearing it loop in Renoise that I decided to leave it like that. That decision doesn’t work quite as well when it’s a non-looping MP3, but never mind.
I thought I’d have a play with the GP2x this evening, so looked into setting up the dev environment. I’ve cloned my DS development installation of Windows into a new virtual machine, and got it set up as a GP2x dev environment. Nearly, anyway. Thanks to a pre-configured installation of Code::Blocks available on GP32x.com, getting the IDE and compiler set up was easy. However, the Windows builds of the “Hello world” test app won’t run because of missing SDL libraries (the libraries don’t exist in the standard SDL distro, so I don’t know where they should come from), and the GP2x version quits straight back to the menu, even after I coded in a button-checking while loop. I think either the dev environment is just knackered, or it’s having problems with the F200.
And now for something completely different. When I’m not tinkering with homebrew and have nothing better to do, I write the occasional tune. As I’m never going to use these for anything else, I figure I may as well upload them on here. At least I’ll have backups should my hard drive die…
This first one is a Renoise tune that I finished off today. I was browsing the web one day absently-mindedly whistling this, when I realised I’d inadvertently come up with a new melody.
Just after finishing this I found another version of the same tune, recorded back in March on the guitar. I’ve got the tab, too:
Here’s a snippet of something else I came up with today, that might turn into something more substantial:
Here’s another Renoise track from a while ago:
This track uses a Creative Commons sound from here, one from here, and another from here. (Hopefully that’s enough detail to comply with the licence.)
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