Tag: music
0 Adam’s Weekly Video Picks – Vol. 4
Volume 4 comes a bit later in the week than I would like (very busy week, no time to post until now), but it’s certainly worth the wait! This week, we’ll hear a fairy tale re-told in Shakespearean language, learn about what the internet is doing to our brains, find out what lengths people will go to for free gas, see a modern-day samurai cut through a speeding bullet and iron, and hear a great song Dan picked out for you. Onward!
1. The Three Little Pigs – John Branyan
I love this – I’m especially astounded by the numbers he gives in the beginning about our current average working vocabulary. I certainly hope I have a working vocabulary higher than 3000!
2. What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains – Epipheo.tv
Eye-opening, isn’t it? Dan found a browser extension that coincides nicely with this theme of de-cluttering and minimizing distractions; you can find it here: http://clea.nr/
3. Pumpcast News – The Tonight Show with Jay Leno
I’m not a huge Jay Leno fan and this video has a few more hits than those I like to post, but this is too great not too share.
4. Modern Samurai – Isao Machii
So it’s a BB, but that’s still super impressive – especially to a guy who has tried to block Nerf darts with a lightsaber. Quite the impressive weapon and wielder.
5. Flat Random Noise – Hurricane Dean
This is Dan’s song pick for you this week. Pretty catchy!
That’s it for now! Thanks for checking out this week’s video picks! More to come next week.
0 Adam’s Weekly Video Picks – Vol. 2
Hello again, friends! Adam here, back with another set of videos handpicked for your viewing pleasure. This week, we’re gonna run all over the place. We’ll see a dramatic death, a brain-scrambling music video, the natural beauty of Yosemite, the forging of a Lannister sword by a master smith, a bit of comedy, and I’m also including one humorous video on behalf of Producer Caity. Here we go!
1. Worst Movie Death Scene of all Time
…Or is it the best movie death scene of all time? I can tell you this for certin – the best comment on this video: “Legend has it, that to this day he is still being shot and dying.”
2. Melt Yourself Down – Fix My Life
WARNING: If you’re prone to seizures, don’t watch this. If you aren’t, set this to full screen, stare in the middle, and have a seizure anyway! I also really dig the song.
3. Yosemite Range of Light
Absolutely gorgeous footage shot at Yosemite National Park. Figured you’d need a brain-cleanser after that last one. Watch in full-screen on HD to get the full effect.
4. Man at Arms – Forging Game of Thrones Sword (Jaime Lannister)
This is an excellent new series I’ve just discovered. I was having a lot of trouble deciding which one I would post, so I went with the first one I saw. It’s informative and just plain cool to see how this is done. Check out the channel to view the other weapons he’s made!
5. Russians are Scary – Dan Soder Stand-up, 1/7/2013
A little comedy for you. He’s onto something, here!
6. Kobayashi vs. Giant Bear (A Hot Dog Eating Contest)
This is Producer Caity’s video pick for you this week, in all its hot dog-devouring glory.
That’s all for this week. See you next week for more!
0 Adam’s Weekly Video Picks – Vol. 1
With Dan’s recent admission that there is quality content with great production value readily available on YouTube that deserves our attention, it seems only right to commence a new weekly series featuring choice picks from the YouTube-verse and similar sites for your viewing and listening enjoyment. Part of my objective in this venture is to bring you content you haven’t seen before, which means skipping over the super-viral videos that everyone’s already seen and doesn’t care about anymore (I’m looking at you, Harlem Shake) in favor of the diamonds in the rough. This week, I’ll be featuring 3 fantastic music tracks with great visual accompaniment, a super cool new gadget from Japan, and an inspiring message from Ze Frank. Here we go:
1. Can’t Hold Us – Macklemore & Ryan Lewis
Your Podcast hosts love Macklemore, so of course this is a great place to start. Fantastic song, amusing video. Listen to this first thing in the morning to get your day started right. This video was shot using RED cameras, the film industry’s favored camera.
2. Samuel Truth – Let Me Breathe
This is a Japanese animation from 1929 set to music by Troy Samuela, AKA Samuel Truth. He’s an experimental hip-hop artist who hails from Auckland, New Zealand. If you like this, you should hear his other tracks on soundcloud! Watch for the little pop ‘n’ lock move the man does when he gets out of the tree.
3. Bonobo – Cirrus
This one’s just trippy.
4. Spherical Flying Machine
Cooooooooooooool! How soon until I can buy one at Brookstone?
5. An Invocation for Beginnings – Ze Frank
Speaks for itself. Ze Frank has been creating funny, inspiring works for years and years.
That’s all for now! I hope you enjoyed the first installment.
0 From The Basement: Polished, Honest, Intimate Music Performance
Not long ago, I stumbled upon a video of Gnarls Barkley singing a down-tempo, mellowed-out version of Crazy. It was so heartfelt and intimate – the version showed me a side of the song I hadn’t seen before. That was when From the Basement first got my attention. When I discovered the long, impressive list of artists who have already been on the show (Radiohead, The White Stripes, Foster the People, The Raconteurs, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Feist, The Shins, Andrew Bird, Fleet Foxes – I would love to go on), I became a believer.
For music lovers who enjoy live or acoustic versions of songs, there are several different sources producing great versions of our favorite tracks. NPR has their studio sessions, Big Ugly Yellow Couch provides performances by up-and-coming bands, and so on. From the Basement started as a podcast, but grew up quickly into a TV show streaming on Crackle and DirecTV’s 3-D channel 3net.
Nigel Godrich, the visionary music producer most famous for his work with Radiohead, takes the helm in this endeavor. Since its humble beginnings in 2006, transition into a UK Television show in 2007, and on into the present where season 3 is being broadcast in HD in 2-D and 3-D, Godrich’s intent has been to “authentically document the pulse of music being made today.” In a recent interview with Entertainment weekly, Godrich says, “I think what happened was MTV came along in the ’80s and destroyed the way that people film music on television. The performance ended up in the edit, and it wasn’t very direct. It’s a selfish thing, really—as a music fan, I really wanted to see people performing on television, so we went ahead and did it. Musicians hate doing TV because it’s such a different world and a horrible environment for them, so wouldn’t it be cool for me as a music person to do a TV show? Then I could get something out of them that TV shows wouldn’t get.” To that end, Godrich uses an intimate basement setting with no audience (except a few HD cameras), making the artists as comfortable as possible to get the best, purest performance possible.
It’s like PBS’s Austin City Limits, but better.
The thing I appreciate most about From the Basement is that it displays the great musicianship of the artists in a way that hyper-produced studio recordings and blasting live performances cannot. You get to hear and see in stunning detail just how soulful a singer Cee-Lo is, or how beautifully blended Fleet Foxes’ harmonies really are. There’s no Auto-Tune, no backup tracks, and absolutely no lip-syncing – just pure performance chops at work. From the Basement is quality proof that there are wonderfully talented artists making great music today.
0 Soundtrack your life with Songza
Originally, the article was going to include a sub-title: “Why don’t you have Songza yet?”, because, really, why don’t you have Songza yet?
During a conversation in Episode 62, Matt Walstead mentioned that he was using Songza (www.songza.com) as one of his recent primary streaming services, and based on his description, I decided to investigate.
I had mentioned Songza on the show before, from a news story long past (most likely a launch story, or something of the like), but I had never played around with the iPhone app or the web site.
It’s AMAZING. It’s what a song discovery service SHOULD be. It’s the contextualizing of music into the rest of your life, based on “Playlists by Music Experts”, as the site claims, and, honestly, they are not giving the playlist generators enough credit.
For example, there are SEVEN different ways you access these playlists, including lists based on Genre, Activities, Moods, Decades, and Culture. After messing around with this app, I’ve determined my favorite playlist group is aptly named Record-Store Clerk, as its suggestions of playlist sub-groups include “Dance Music That’s Not Assaultive”, “Indie Music That’s Not Too Weird”, “Mustache Music (Or: Cool In The ’70s)”, and “This Will Piss Your Parents Off”. It really is that organization of music that you expect to find in the hipper realms of metropolitan areas, in the mostly deserted record shop where the staff knows exactly what you’re looking for, based on the two notes stuck in your head.
ON TOP OF THAT, there’s MORE. I know what you’re thinking: “But Dan, there are TOO many features already. This is too good to be true.” And you would be wrong, generic infomercial seeded audience member. For there’s the Concierge service. Based on time of day, with a dash of societal paradigms, the Concierge service will suggest genres FOR you. For example, I am writing this on a Friday night, and the Concierge is offering me the following options: “Bedtime”, “A Sweaty Dance Party”, “Pre-Gaming with Friends”, “Putting on Your Party Dress”, “Creating a Cool Atmosphere”, and “Unwinding”. Seeing as I already have my Party Dress on, in a manner of speaking, I went with the Cool Atmosphere one, and, as a result, it is narrowing down the tunes I should listen to into ANOTHER six categories, this time based on genre.
I spent the work day today bombing through the multitudes of dubstep available, to give it an honest chance, and I was really impressed by the volumes of music available in these playlists. But that’s the catch that I’ve mentioned a number of times: it’s a pre-set collection of playlists. You don’t experience the flexibility of Pandora’s lists, or the “control EXACTLY what you want to hear” of Spotify, but when used properly, it fits comfortably into most situations.
Like most streaming music sites these days, there is a social media aspect included, where everyone on Facebook knows you’re listening to the “Cry Yourself to Sleep” playlist, unless you disable the feature. It isn’t as invasive as Spotify’s “POST EVERY TRACK” setting, but it’s also not a feature I’d actively seek out.
There are also a few extra clock-related features, where you can set a specific playlist to start playing as an alarm at a certain time, and the ability to play music while displaying the app’s built in clock, but they aren’t anything to write home about. I imagine you could go through the Concierge service (which you can also set different days of the weeks, and times of day, kind of like looking at future traffic on Google Maps) and set certain appropriate playlists to pop up when you expect to be commuting to work, or doing housework, or what have you.
Right. So it’s great, right? Now let’s get down to brass tack. It’s available for iPhone, Android, Kindle, and computers for free (with clickable, but not audible, ads). So far, I’ve played with the iPhone app and the web site, and the user interface is nice. Not too complicated to navigate; not to noisy to sift through. “Nice” is really the most appropriate word for it. It also has the Pandora “You’ve Skipped Too Many Tracks For Now, But If You Switch Over To Another Playlist, You Can Keep Skipping” license restrictions, but with the number of playlists available, this shouldn’t hold you back.
I don’t think it’ll replace my iCloud use, or the occasional Spotify use, but I do think this may replace Pandora in my eyes, at least until I exhaust the playlists I am actually interested in hearing. I say it’s worth checking out to see how well the Concierge matches your moods, and to laugh at some of the playlists and categories. It’s not like it’ll cost you anything. I’m with the folks on the Apple App Store: 5 Stars for this one.
0 Episode 59 – We don’t discuss the election … mostly
Happy Thursday, folks! It’s time for this week’s Mic Check!
We had a fun time this week, especially since it was Election Day! Actually … we were all somewhat nervous, as many of the ballot initiatives and politicians we supported had reported “neck & neck” right up to election day. We knew it would be hard to stay away from it, so we do actually discuss the code we developed to convey results without bringing the election into it.
Otherwise, we’ve effectively (though not officially) done away with the Mic Check theme topic and/or question. We’ve worked our way to this nice even plane where we can just start riffing with our guests, and then we’re through the Mic Check without even thinking about it.
We bounce all over the place for this Mic Check, including, but not limited to, the following: “Avatar”, The Quadratic Equation, Star Wars, “Wreck it Ralph”, our Polling Places, Cheat Codes, and Family TV watching experiences (but not necessarily in that order).
Alright. You’ve read enough. Time to take a listen. CLICK HERE. ENJOY!
0 Greetings, Future Listeners!
It’s official. The topic/genre/whatever you want to call it has been selected, the host positions have been cast, the mixer has been ordered, and the domain name has been registered. All that’s left is to create a Twitter feed that’ll lay pretty dormant until we get underway.
Adam and I are working to set a standard record/release schedule for episodes (my vote is for Tuesday/Friday) and we’re hopefully going to at least get a dry run (or Episode # 1/2) under our belts next week, so make sure to stay tuned for that.
For now, we have a few things for you:
1) We would like a sponsor. Even for one episode. You’ll get a negotiated number of live reads throughout your sponsored episode(s), or, if you already have a voice for your company, we can work with that too. Obviously, working out of my living room doesn’t cost much to start, so get in now while the gettin’s good.
2) I’m willing to sell naming rights for our studio (aka my living room). As it stands, I am leaning toward The Frank Oz Memorial studio (yes, I know he’s not dead, nor do I wish him ill fate. It’s a catchy sounding inside joke), but I’m up for suggestions/offers of the monetary sort.
3) We are trying to craft an end of show game revolving around Internet media. Something like the Leonard Maltin game, but less of a rip off. We’re going to cycle through a few ideas we’ve had so far, plus the occasional Len Maltin game, but if you have a great idea for a game, and love to hear someone else say your name on a weekly-ish podcast, then I have a deal for you! If you’re interested, or even have a semi-complete idea and are willing to co-author, shoot us a message.
4) We are regularly going to feature guests on the show, but we need guests to feature guests. If you feel you are Internet savvy, conversational, occasionally funny, and have a face for radio, contact us! We will also take pretty people. There is a lot of time on this, since we still need to publish Episode # 1, or, at least, Episode # 1/2, but the opportunity is out there. Grab it … or, instead, clasp it gingerly with a hint of hilarity.
I guess that’s all I have for now, but I’ll update you as stuff changes.
SPREAD THE WORD!
Dan
The Buffering Podcast 