Songs You May Have Missed #530

14 May 2015 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in Songs You May Have Missed Tags: ,

mac

Kirsty MacColl: “The Butcher Boy” (1995)

Such was Kirsty MacColl’s gift that even when she tried her hand at traditional folk balladry–a form in which she had no real background–the results were transcendent.

This gem of a B-side, sparsely arranged and featuring the haunting penny whistle of The Pogues’ Spider Stacey, puts MacColl’s voice to the forefront to achingly beautiful effect, perhaps made sadder still in light of her own premature and tragic demise.

See also: https://edcyphers.com/2013/07/27/songs-you-may-have-missed-452/

Rare Robert Johnson Record Turns up at Jerry’s Records

13 May 2015 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in General Posts Tags: , ,

jerry

(via the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette online)

by Scott Mervis

You never know what you’ll find in a stack of old records, which is part of what has driven Jerry Weber for four decades.

Last week, the owner of the world-famous Jerry’s Records in Squirrel Hill gave a man he didn’t know $50 for several boxes of old albums found while cleaning out an attic. They sat in a hallway at Jerry’s for a couple days before anyone looked at them. Among a collection of mostly junky, water-damaged, stuck-together discs, he found what he calls “the holy grail of 78s.”

It’s a 78 rpm copy of “I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom” (on Vocalion), the second song ever recorded by late Mississippi blues legend Robert Johnson, in 1936…

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/ae/music/2012/11/16/Rare-Robert-Johnson-record-turns-up-at-Jerry-s-Records/stories/201211160170

The Loudness War: Good and Bad News from the Front

09 May 2015 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in General Posts, Toward Better Sounding Music Tags:

swift

(via msn entertainment)

by Matt Medved

In honor of last month’s Dynamic Range Day, mastering engineer Ian Shepherd made an infographic comparing the loudness of popular albums — and the results may surprise you.

Take Taylor Swift‘s 1989, which clocked in at a fairly compressed DR6 rating. While Shepherd says that’s pretty standard for modern pop music, it’s still much louder than classic heavy metal LPs like AC/DC‘s Back in Black (DR12) and Metallica‘s The Black Album (DR11). Metallica’s more recent Death Magnetic reached a blistering DR3 level, while Skrillex‘s Recess charts at DR4…

…There may be hope on the horizon. As YouTube joins platforms like Spotify and iTunes Radio in employing loudness normalization to even out track volumes, Shepherd believes artists and engineers will realize the audio arms race is “pointless.”

Read more: http://www.msn.com/en-us/music/news/taylor-swifts-1989-is-louder-than-ac-dcs-back-in-black-heres-why/ar-AAbEi07

Adobe Photoshop PDF

Pop Sonnets: Creating Shakespearean Sonnets from Top 40 Tunes

06 May 2015 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in Recommended Sites Tags:

sonnetts

http://www.popsonnet.com/

Dear David Guetta…You Suck.

04 May 2015 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in General Posts Tags: ,

guetta

(Reprinted from Melkor)

by Scott Melkor

Dear Dave (can I call you Dave?),

How are you? It has been a really long time! I hope that you are doing great.

Anyway, I was writing to let you know that you are the worst and represent everything that is wrong with DJ and EDM culture. I recently had the displeasure of reading your interview with Beatport. Riveting stuff, really. I particularly enjoyed the following excerpt.

“Not everything went smoothly behind-the-scenes, though.. Something crazy happened to me on the [first weekend],” he says. “I’m using Rekordbox and Pioneer to play, and before I saved my playlist to my SD card, my computer crashed. So I just had to put all my music in a random order on USB sticks at the last minute, doing it really old school, scrolling to look for the records I wanted to play next.”

There are so many things wrong with you, and with this paragraph, that I felt compelled to write you this heartfelt letter…

Read more: http://themelkerproject.com/

A Pop (Music) Quiz

03 May 2015 12 Comments

by Ed Cyphers in Quizzes

quiz

1. Name three popular 80’s songs that mention eyewear in their titles.

2. Name three classic 70’s pop rock tunes that are about fictitious bands.

3. Name three 70’s top 5 hits whose titles begin with the words “The Night…”

4. Name at least:

Two bands who are named after major American cities

Two bands named after states

One band named after a border between two states

Two bands named after continents

_________________________________

Post your guesses in the comment section.

Answers will appear in comment section later this week.

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