Music

I recently got my music bug again, and with my recent trip to Australia was able to bring back my original Gameboy. Combining the two, I thought I’d check out what music-making capabilities the Gameboy had. The most popular software was “Little sound DJ” (https://www.littlesounddj.com/). I purchased the full version of that, and while I could run that on an emulator, I wanted to run it on the real deal. To do this, I purchased a Gameboy flashing cartridge, “Flash BOY” ( https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/223590080458). This came with few instructions however. I was able to plug it into my laptop’s USB and see that it displayed as a FTDI device, but would need drivers. I installed some from here: https://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/VCP.htm but after more googling for flashing software, found that this also provided some drivers: https://sourceforge.net/projects/gbcf/ ...

I love me some space-rock. Muse is my favourite band by bloody far, and anyone who knows me just … knows that. I discovered today an unsigned band from New Zealand called “Battle Circus”, and they sound so much like Muse that I love them too. Here is one of their videos. They have an EP out which is quite good, and are working on an album which is scheduled to be released later this year. Check out their website for links to facebook, twitter, whatever: http://www.battlecircus.com/

I posted this to my facebook profile a few days ago. Here is the info: Originally composed on a Kawai ES3 (I love that Piano), pumped via USB-MIDI into my computer running Cubase Studio 4, re-converted to piano choones using Synthogy’s Ivory Grand Piano, normalised and converted to MP3 using Audacity. Still can’t think of a proper name for it. Sorry if it auto-plays, I don’t know how to stop that with this app (actually, I’ve disabled it for now until I get a better solution).

For my latest online Berklee music course, we had to create background music and effects for a movie scene out of a video game. I did mine for a scene from Aeon Flux. Here ’tis, with the music track only…

I am in a pretty damn good mood right now, having just come back from my first Muse concert. How can I say they were fucking awesome without swearing? Even from as far back as I was sitting I could see Matt Bellamy strutting around on stage and working that guitar like nothing else. It was awe-inspiring. “Supermassive black hole”, “Knights of Cydonia”, “Hysteria”, “Stockholm Syndrome” were just some of the songs they played and I was lapping up every damn second of it. ...

Heard a funny story at a work luncheon yesterday. I’m going to paraphrase this one, I can’t remember all the details due to me laughing so much while the story was being told. One of my friends who lives down in South Beach was invited to dinner by a friend. “We’re going to have dinner with Tiesto!” For anyone who listens to dance music, that would be quite a dinner to attend. Except, she hadn’t really heard of him. Anyway, they’re out at dinner, she asked him questions like: ...

I used to follow a band called Zephyr Timbre, out of Brisvegas. They had some pretty cool tunes. Relaxed, funky, soulful… those are some words I’d use to describe them. Eventually they went their separate ways, much to my dismay. However. For a while now I’ve been following a new group formed by a couple of the ex-members of Zephyr Timbre. The group is called “My Ninja Lover”, and a few weeks ago now they released their first EP “Silk and Daggers”. It’s awesome, and I love it. Go buy their EP from any of the stores (physical and online) listed on their website: http://myninjalover.com/. Preview their music at their myspace page.

It’s amazing what one can accomplish when one chooses to not sleep. Here are some videos from Ultrafest 2006. I’ve been meaning to put these up for months and months. You’ll just love how the little microphone on my camera has no clue what to do with all the bass that’s hitting it. I can’t remember the name of this band, but the lead singer kept saying that one of their songs was on iTunes’ top 100. Apart from that, he sang a lot about how weed would solve all the world’s problems. ...

So, my favourite music group just has to be Muse. I think it used to be Coldplay or Hybrid, but that sort of changed when I rediscovered them during hurricane Wilma last year. I’ve got a copy of their latest album, “Black Holes and Revelations”. My pre-order using iTunes doesn’t come through until next month . . . I couldn’t wait that long but when it is able to be downloaded I also get some bonues videos. Cool. ...

This past Wednesday I took photographs for my favourite Spanish-rock band “Santos Renuentes”. I’ve written about this group a lot before. They underwent a change recently where the drummer, lead guitarist and singer were replaced. Yeah, that’s a pretty major sort of change. It was only a practice warm-up friends-invited-only session, but what’s resulted from all the changes is a band with very different group dynamics and, in my opinion, a much better sound. It was just amazing to hear and see the difference in the band. ...