Music on Sine Qua Non

Gameboy and music

Sun, 09 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

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/

More space-rock, please.

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

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/

Piano song, Movement 1

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000

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).

Berklee music project

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000

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…

Muse in concert

Mon, 23 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Tiesto who?

Sat, 03 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000

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:

Some kewl new music

Thu, 19 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Ultrafest!?!?

Sat, 26 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Black Holes and Revelations

Sat, 24 Jun 2006 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Santos Renuentes v2.0

Sat, 24 Jun 2006 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Some Ultrafest 2006 Pictures

Mon, 03 Apr 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Prodigy

are now online here. I don’t know what I’m going to do about the movies yet. I’d like to post them but having a sort-of permanent hosting site for them is difficult. Well, perhaps I could try Google video or something.

Anyways, Ultrafest was awesome. I actually had to take my shoes off at one point because my feet hurt from jumping around so much.

New guitar

Thu, 30 Mar 2006 00:00:00 +0000

PK can rock out now.

Coldplay and Fiona Apple

Wed, 08 Mar 2006 00:00:00 +0000

On the weekend I got to see Coldplay and Fiona Apple play in Orlando. Actually, ha, let me correct that. I got to see a bit of one Fiona Apple song - “Fast as you can” - and you can bet I was running as fast as I could to get to my seat when I arrived at the venue.

It turns out we had a bit of bad luck with the traffic that night. What should have been a 15 minute drive to the venue turned out being over an hour drive. Whilst sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic we had to get to exit 83B on the I-4. Fiona would have already started her set, and being support act, would only be playing for 45 mins or so. Anyway, we came up to exit 82A… 5 mins passed … exit 82B … another 5 mins gone … exit 82C… at which point I stated “ha, wouldn’t it be funny if there was an 82D exit!” Nobody in the car really appreciated the humour.

CD release party photos and geeks

Thu, 09 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000

There are online here. I kind of stuffed up the gamma in Photoshop… things were a bit iffy there for a while. Also the pictures were taken from the same perspective the whole night. There were lots of people in the club and some stupidly placed VIP tables. It was the best spot I could get.

Hey has anyone seen “The IT crowd”, a British take on geekism? I’ve just watched 5 minutes of the second episode before posting this. It’s not that bad! It reaches out to the geek lust buried deep within my tricuspid valve.

The Muse, it is good.

Mon, 06 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I have just rediscovered a group that I first listened to 5 years ago. Ah, I remember fondly the days blasting out some ‘Muse’ in one of the project labs at my university, trying to figure out how to warp pictures into spherical coordinates so I could form a panorama. Those were the days *sigh*.

Fast forward to today and I have rediscovered them. Recently I played Muse’s first album and thought “damn those guys are good”. They have since released two more albums and both are effin fantastic. Definitely some good listening, definitely one of my favourite bands.

Santos Renuentes' CD release party

Wed, 01 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Woohoo! This is one thing I’ve been looking forward to for a while: the CD release party for Santos Renuentes. Awesome. To those in Australia reading this, you have approximately 5 hours to get down to South Beach. Sorry for the late notice…

Debut album out

Wed, 25 Jan 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Santos Renuentes have finally released their self titled debut album! It’s in stores now all around the US, but in short supply as there were only 5000 initial albums pressed. Here is a link that contains their first single and music video, “Marcha”. This video is on rotation on local latin MTV-like station “Mun2” alongside Coldplay and the Darkness to name a few. For me the great thing is that the CD sleeve contains all the words to the songs which will help in my learning of Spanish. I can’t wait until the CD release party next Wednesday night at Macarenas in SoBe. Awesome.

oZomatli pics

Wed, 16 Nov 2005 00:00:00 +0000

First off, BIG PROPS to Johanna, who was visiting from Puerto Rico, for taking these pictures at the Ozomatli concert in South Beach recently. BIG PROPS to Arlene for passing them on to me. BIG PROPS to me for posting other people’s pictures!! But I know there are a couple of Ozomatli fans out there who read this little site-o-mine so I had to share them.

Asdru shouting it out to the crowd. Take particular note of the shirt he is wearing…
Yes, it says ‘Womadelaide’. I get bagged for harping on about Australia and in particular Adelaide all the time, but anyone who bags me hasn’t been to Australia yet and just doesn’t understand…
Wil-dog on the bass.
Jabu - awesome vocals…

Shef with DJ Spinobi in the background…
Raul and Jabu…
This part was awesome: after the set had finished oZo came into the crowd and continued to play, battling with the DJ’s at the nightclub who were trying to spin some musak…

Ende!

Coldplay in Adelaide?

Fri, 14 Oct 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Nah, just messing with ya. I think it unlikely that Coldplay would visit the fine city of Adelaide for one of their tours in the near future. I thought there was hope though when I received a Coldplay newsletter stating more shows in Australia, only to find that they were scheduling more shows in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.

Bugger.

At any rate, I’m not in Adelaide and I got to see Coldplay a month ago. They were pretty damn awesome of course and I don’t know why I didn’t mention that fact on my blog. Perhaps I did… I dunno. Here are some shoddy pictures from the concert taken with my phone camera:

Ultrafest 2005

Thu, 14 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0000

You wouldn’t believe it, but I finally got the movies from Ultrafest from my friend. You need Apple Quicktime to view these files. The files are of a Drum and Bass tent, Moby, Oakenfold (I think it was anyway) and a quick location shot. Click on this link to get to the files. If you don’t feel like waiting to download them (who would?), you can log in using the username “iwannalook” and the password “letmein” (without the quotes). Someday I’ll find a hosting site that’s a bit more friendly. Someday.

Ooh the Coldplay is good

Thu, 02 Jun 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I have been listening to BBC’s Radio One today, like I do every other day when I’m at work now, and god damn the new Coldplay album sounds good. It’s so good that I when I preordered the album on Amazon I got the fastest delivery method I could (in hindsight, I probably could have just gone to a CD store. It seems I’m so addicted to Amazon it’s not funny). Tickets go on sale here this Friday and there is a growing group of people I’m going with. Hopefully we’ll all be able to get tickets to the concert. That’d be just friggin’ awesome, know what I mean?

New compilation album to get...

Thu, 26 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Just heard it on Annie Mac’s Radio 1 session - Liquid V club sessions, for all good things DnB.

Dang, I gotta go. Got Santos Renuentes to see *yet again* tonight at Tobacco Road. I wish they’d play in like, New York or something like that. I need an excuse to fly up there*. Plus, tomoz I have to go to… New Orleans! Oh I’m bored already. hehe.

* WTF am I talking about, like I need an excuse???

Tobacco Road, 28th April

Tue, 03 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I especially went to Tobacco Road on Thursday night to get some pictures of Santos Renuentes playing an acoustic set, something that I hadn’t heard them do before. There was going to be a delay with starting their set so my friend and I decided to get some food downstairs. I had just about finished my meal when I thought “hold on… they should have started by now”. I raced upstairs and they were nearly finished. Sophia gave me a greeting saying something like “I’m glad you finally came to watch our show, Kristian.” I found out later that while I was downstairs stuffing my face she did a shout out for me two songs prior because I always went to their gigs…. and I was nowhere to be seen at that time. Bloody hell.

A song about Bambi

Fri, 25 Mar 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I think my flight back to the US was the worst ever for jet-lag and annoyance factor. American Airlines has yet to prove to me they can get me somewhere without being over an hour late. Well, here’s hoping for the future!

I knew things were going to be bad when I arrived in the US because I had a connecting flight through Dallas, TX to Fort Lauderdale. Of course the flight from LA to Dallas was an hour late, so as I touched down in Dallas I was supposed to be boarding my next plane. I ran out of the arrival gate (A24 for future reference) and across the travelators to the adjacent terminal to get to gate C4. Just as I arrived I heard an announcement that the gate had changed to C11. After moving to that gate and waiting for about 15 minutes (yes, not surprisingly the outgoing flight was going to be late departing) we had another gate change to C2. On the way over to that gate there was a guy strumming a guitar with a girl tagging along with him. I said to him “you should sing us a song about all these gate changes!” So he did! It was pretty funny. His name was Ryan and when I asked him what he did he said “Dude! I surf, dude!” (I kid you not). I think he was actually a construction worker by day but lived right on the beachfront in California and surfed at night mostly. The girl he had with him, Krista, was also from California. He was your typical cliche surfer. Blonde hair, even a beard and the most surfie sounding voice I’ve ever heard. If you’ve watched Finding Nemo just think about all those turtles Nemo meets. Exactly the same sort of voice. It was freaking hilarious!

Ultra Music Festival 2005

Fri, 25 Mar 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I’m pretty stoked at the moment. I just received my ticket for Ultra Music Festival 2005. This is supposed to be America’s biggest electronic music event, which is saying something in terms of size. Although I’m expecting it to be multiple times as large as Enchanted (approx. 50,000 people are expected to attend) I doubt it’ll have the same charm as Enchanted as none of my Aussie Enchanted friends will be there! Ah well.

DnB Fort Lauderdale

Mon, 21 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0000

It was a bit weird to hear that Traffic, the premier place for Drum and Bass in Adelaide, had closed its doors recently. The big memory I have from there is when I saw DJ Marky and Stamina MC play and that was simply *awesome*. However, that and maybe a couple of other performances aside, one thing I had against the place was that there was way, way too much cigarette smoke inside. I was constantly in search of some nice clean air or some decent ventilation. It sort of sucked like that.

Hello Santos Renuentes!

Thu, 10 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Heh, this is pretty funny. My friend Omar from work informed me that one (or some) of his other band members had found a site that gave excellent reviews for all the Santos Renuentes gigs that the person had been too. They told him “see, you never know who comes to see our shows”. Well, yes that’s true… but if it weren’t for Omar I doubt that I’d ever had heard of Tobacco Road or Santos Renuentes or whatever. Maybe I would have gone along to see some live music one time and seen their band. If I did take that path, I’d probably have given them a good review anyway ;-)

Australian Music - pushing the boundaries

Wed, 01 Dec 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Don’t ask me how the hell I found this site… today hasn’t been the most productive work day. Anyway, here is the link to the site: http://www.convictcreations.com/culture/music.htm.
It only really gets interesting about half way down, but this is the part that really made me laugh:

“Australian men are renowned for having the dancing rhythm of Frankenstein…their lack of rhythm and stiff knees has many of them resembling a chicken or jack in the box bouncing from side to side.”

I've still no guitar

Wed, 18 Aug 2004 00:00:00 +0000

and none of my music, and no computer, and 1/2 of my clothes. It was actually a blind, dumb-arse mistake of mine to put my music CDs in the wrong suitcase, but oh well. Originally though my air shipment was supposed to arrive a few days after I did (it is an air shipment after all) so I wasn’t really that worried. However, that isn’t the case as I’ve been here for nearly 2 1/2 weeks and I ain’t seen anything yet. Yeah, whinge whinge whinge, I know :-) Supposedly it’s in customs at Miami airport still… those buggers are playing my guitar (good luck it’s left-handed), wearing my clothes (good luck that’s mostly my winter stuff) and listening to my CDs (yeah, um, good luck).

Tobacco Road review

Fri, 13 Aug 2004 00:00:00 +0000

I am absolutely blown away by this place (and I ain’t only talking about Tobacco Road). It’s true when they say that everything is bigger in America. I was driving to Miami last night with a pretty good set of directions, thank God, and I was amazed by the sheer amount of concrete used in the construction of the highways. As an engineer (or just a generally inquisitive person), I am in awe at how all of this stuff is designed and built. I start thinking about it and then give up because it hurts my head.

Tobacco Road

Thu, 12 Aug 2004 00:00:00 +0000

yeah, I’m still at work (7pm here) but I’ve been studying the directions for making it to Tobacco Road to see Santos Renuentes play (plus the other bands there!). I think I’ll be able to find the place… expect a review tomorrow!