The Signal Music Weblog

The Signal: EP040 - And just like that, our little series moves into what would be middle age, if our series were a human being. Which it most definitely is not. It is an undying creature with a black heart. No... wait, that's not right. It's an mp3. Which is similar, but different.

Our image is taken from César Astudillo. His photography is amazing.

Why is there another mix, so soon after the last one, you may be asking.

The answer is simple: Shut up.

The file will be up for a limited amount of time, which I don't know anything about. Track listing is in the id3 tag. Sounds are molecules jostling your ear like people crowded around the luggage carousel at an airport. After the MORE tag there may be notes.

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Have you heard of this site, Amie Street? It's an interesting experiment, another testing ground to see if they can get people to pay for mp3s by adding:

a) a social element
b) variable pricing
c) kickbacks for recommendations

What happens is this: You have to purchase a bundle from their site which consists of your money and RECS, which are opportunities to recommend music you've downloaded and write a review if you like.

Now, when music first goes up on Amie Street, it's free. First come first serve. The more people buy, though, the more the price goes up. And if you recommend a single when it's cheap and people don't know it, you're given credit for any additional value the single earns as people realize you're on to something.

You may ask, "Do they have anyone decent on the site?"

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The Signal: EP039 - A music mix where all the music follows sequentially, one after the other. First comes one song, then another. We have the usual eclectic, international mix this time out. Perhaps more cover versions than we've had for awhile.

The file is up on SharePoint and will stay there for awhile. Tracklisting is in the id3 tags. Notes are after the MORE cut.

What else did you need to know? Oh, the image above is from a horrible Italian sex fumetti and that guy really is meant to look like Snake Pliskin. *shudder* It's awful.

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A whole new world of music post-production editing has opened up thanks to a German programmer who created Direct Note Access, a software tool that will allow audio producers to pick apart polyphonic sounds and edit them.

We all know that with a computer, if you have a single note, you can bend its pitch, change its timing, etc. But if someone played a chord, all you could do was affect the whole chord at once.

This new software can pull apart chords and lets you rearrange the basic building blocks of recorded music. It's exciting to think of what audio engineers might be able to do by going back and tinkering with old songs. Could this lead to exciting new plunderphonics?

Maybe this means nothing to you. Maybe you should watch the demo, which explains things much better than I could.