I rediscovered this just recently, and I can’t get enough of it. It’s so fantastically raw, pure, simple, and emotive. And it sounds like someone’s just set fire to Lennon’s trousers.
I tried singing this today in the shower. It’s a great example of something that is technically simple, but near-impossible to get right because of the tone and attitude of the original*.
What I found most interesting was the real psychological difficulty I had in just letting go and really yelling properly at full volume. It’s so difficult to lift the veil of inhibitions, even when alone in an empty house.
*For a given meaning of “original”, of course. The Beatles’ “Twist and Shout” was a cover of a cover.
Map Of Metal is an amusing site that maps through the years the progress of heavy metal in all its incarnations.
Manufactoria is a little flash puzzle game that involves building logic machines. Great music too.
There appears to be a TV series called Inside The Actors Studio, and I’ve been watching it on YouTube. It’s a series of interviews conducted with various actors. So far I’ve watched it with Hugh Laurie, Robert Downey Jr, Johnny Depp, and Angelina Jolie. Here’s a snippet with Kevin Spacey:
Tried singing again today for the first time in ages. Went remarkably well. Several times today I managed to siren all the way up and down my range without any breaks or cracks. This is real progress, and it seems to be taking place partly through having a generally better control over my muscles and partly through learning to relax rather than push. Actually, those are pretty much the same thing.
Excerpt concerning Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden:
“I have nothing but admiration for this singer. Listen how he starts off with a soft growl, then moves seamlessly into a well-supported, sustained high full-voice sound that then evolves into an effortless long scream! His diction is easily intelligible, regardless of the range he’s singing in or the effect he’s going for. He achieves an intensely rhythmic delivery of the lyrics without losing legato and musical momentum, something a lot of classical singers struggle with, especially when interpreting the many staccato and accent markings that crowd scores by Bellini, Donizetti, etc.”
It’s an M Audio Keystation Pro 88, apparently. It costs €500 and weighs 20kg.
It’s a lovely combination of things. On the one hand, it’s extremely simple; it has no real intelligence inside, no processing - it just sends a load of MIDI signals to a computer via USB. The computer can then convert these signals into whatever - with the right software, it can sound like a Steinway or some otherworldly synth.
But what’s nice about it, and what makes it so heavy, is that the keys have a proper piano action - it’s weighted to feel indistinguishable to a real piano.
But what’s really nice about it is all the knobs and sliders on it. You can programme these to operate any MIDI parameters you like, so for example, if I were mixing a song I could assign a vocal track to one slider, guitar to another, bass to a third, drums, piano, etc, and use the keyboard as a mixing desk. I could also assign various effects - reverb, echo and so on - to the knobs, and have easy control over those too.
Of course, you can do all this with a mouse on a screen, but there’s a lot to be said for the tactile feeling of playing with real knobs and sliders.
What’s especially neat about the whole thing is that despite seeming very big, heavy and complex, it all runs through a single USB cable - there is a 9VDC power jack on the back, but it’s optional - the whole thing can actually be powered just through USB, since again, it’s not really doing anything except shooting MIDI signals to the computer.
