devvyn

This one isn’t new, but it’s still fun. Remember the music that plays in Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of time when you ride into the Gerudo Valley, where the bandit village lies? Ever wanted to hear it pumped up with a bit more energy?

Gerudo Wall Thumper (Ocarina of Time)

Made in Reason.  I found a MIDI file online and used it to get the raw notes and timing.  I re-arranged the instrument sections, completely replaced the percussion, and changed the rhythm of the bass line in some portions.  And of course the finishing touches in the engineering/mixing end of things.

(Again, this is podcast safe, and re-distribution is fine by me.)

Gerudo Wall Thumper by Devvyn Murphy is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Originally published at Devvyn.com. You can comment here or there.

Well, I'd like to admit that I'm the type of person who tries to be creative and do music and draw and so forth but gets discouraged and makes excuses for not keeping up with it. The news now is I've done my best to eliminate those reasons for excuses and I'll soon know if I was feeding myself total BS or if I was right (to a certain degree of lameness) in thinking what I believed would be the answer. So, to elaborate, I blamed the tools I had. I stopped making music for ages now, and I blamed the fact that I didn't have a music keyboard like I used to be able to improvise and experiment on before composing a song. I also blamed my frustration about drawing on the fact that I hate drawing on paper because it's harder to correct my mistakes and complicated to add finishing touches to, not to mention that I'd then have to scan the finished work and I don't have a scanner.

So when I was in Saskatoon a couple weeks ago I bought M-Audio's KeyStudio, and yesterday I ordered one of the most extravagant digital artist tools on the market: Wacom's Cintiq 12WX. Long have I been frustrated about the trouble I have coordinating tablet movements into on-screen actions. The Cintiq has a WXGA display built into the digitizer board, so I can draw on the screen! It's a bit on the pricey end but I've been thinking about this thing day after day for over a month. I think it will accomplish one of two things: either it will make my dreams come true and give me the freedom to go full-blown creative in a digital world with all the magic of a software canvas but with the intuitive interface of pen and paper, or it will make me feel like a foolish ass for spending a thousand dollars to alleviate my sense of inadequacy.

M-Audio KeyStudio




Wacom Cintiq 12WX

Here's something kind of cool. Last.fm now has "widgets" for embedding my recent play stats. I think it updates live, too. Last.fm has been down for a while, so there were over 400 songs cached in my plugin, waiting to go into my chart. I continue to subscribe to eMusic with 90 downloads a month. It's finally starting to get hard to use them all up. Last month I accidentally let 7 downloads go unused, so they vanished like mobile phone airtime minutes. Makes me sad. What it all boils down to is I need to get online more so coniferous_you can recommend more music for me.

Some of you may remember my epic playlist, which contained every song I owned in March 2006 and to which I added songs I purchased along the way.  I played the list whenever I was at my computer, and every night, I cropped off the played songs and saved the list again.

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Devvyn the sleeping kitty says:
I finally exhausted my playlist yesterday.
The epic journey that began in March has come to an end.
Virginia Valentine says:
Awww.
Do you have post-partum depression?
*consoles*
Devvyn the sleeping kitty says:
A bit of denial.
I have some long tracks at the end of the list I've been shuffling around, periodically telling myself that if I haven't played it all the way through, it doesn't count.
I keep having to pause them, or I fall asleep or whatnot.
But I think I have to admit that I really did listen to them.
Virginia Valentine says:
Haha, well I believe you.
Devvyn the sleeping kitty says:
So, I keep morosely repeating the last few tracks on the list, unable to cope properly and not knowing what the next step is.
*frowny face*
Virginia Valentine says:
That's truly sad.
):

I've discovered I'm a sucker for male/female indie-pop duets. Example: "Nothing Better" by the Postal Service.

I'm browsing through electro-pop albums on eMusic and every time I hear a sample for a male/female duet, I can't resist downloading it. Must find more!

*returns to browsing*

Well, I'm still trying to play my music collection all the way through in one go. I've been re-playing a few songs I really like (such as this one), so I've been slowing myself down a bit, but not too significantly I feel. Here's what my playlist is at presently:

2962 items; 205:10:10 (which works out to roughly eight and a half days)

Now, I just noticed my eMusic downloads renewed for this month today, so I spent an hour or so selecting the 90 songs I get, plus I found an album I wanted even though I didn't have enough downloads left by then, so I bought a booster pack for an extra 10 downloads to finish it. I'm adding these new tracks to my collection.

110 items [8:39:06]

Making my new play time 212:56:13, which sets me back by over 7 hours of solid listening. Am I going to make it at this rate before the end of the year?

Okay, it's time for another update on my music collection. Now, I may have mentioned to a lot of people that I've got a little experiment going on. The idea is to put my entire music collection into a single playlist and shuffle it, then play only that playlist while I'm at my computer. I actually began this on March 23, if I remember correctly. So far, I've made a lot of progress. Now, keep in mind I can't listen to music 24 hours a day, so when I quote the playtime, it might sound easier than it is, but, here goes:


Total music library, according to Winamp:
5249 items [15 days+6:50:50] [24.09 GB]

Currently remaining playlist:
3995 items [11 days+13:27:41]

This works out to about 76% of the playtime I started out with, so, at this rate I should be done in another six months, give or take a few days.

I have also been cheating a bit. Every time a song comes up which I've been meaning to delete for a long time but never got around to, I just erase it instead of playing it. Fortunately, this accounts for less than 10% of the library, so I don't believe the results will be skewed by more than a week. I think this is more than made up for by the fact that I never really stop adding to the library. I have a music subscription which affords me 90 downloads per month, and I still buy the occasional CD when I have to, which gets ripped into the library and promptly put on a shelf to collect dust.

I'm not sure how many of you out there are familiar with Kraftwerk. They were a German electro-rock band that basically defined electronic music at the time. Had a pretty solid following in Europe in the 80s and 90s, mostly with the dance scene. They stand as the most well-known electronic band in the 80s.

I'm sure everyone is familiar with Coldplay. They are one of the most well-known rock bands in Europe.

So, I have to ask, what's going on here? Listen to the two clips below and share your thoughts.

Kraftwerk's "Computer Love", originally performed 1981
Coldplay's "Talk", appears first in 2005

I noticed the similarity immediately when I heard "Talk" playing on the radio in the background a few days ago. At first, I thought it was just vaguely similar, but when I played the two songs side-by-side, it was undeniable.

This morning, as I awoke, I listened to some music I'm fond of and put into words why I enjoy listening to music so much:

Every once in a while, as I explore listening to artists with new techniques, new aesthetic formulas, new standards of normalcy, I come upon a song that catches me off-guard. Usually, this results in acquiring a strong taste for whatever that artist has to dish out for me. It can be odd at first--to listen to many tracks that don't fit with what I'm used to--but before long I become very comfortable with it, which presents me with a great satisfaction. Even more satisfying is knowing that as comfortable as I have now become with this peculiar new sound, it still stands apart from the others, and there I am, following it in a novel direction, like some kind of rogue sheep.

I never was one to hide in the middle of the flock.

This is what iTunes says about my music library:

5429 items
16:03:23:10 total time
25.92 GB

(yes, 16 refers to days)


That is all.