charliehiphop's blog

Not that I watched the Oscars, but I saw something on the news. I was very happy to see that George Clooney continues to take his fashion cues from me. He looked pretty dapper with his newly shaggy hair. Brad Pitt looks good as a very rich hippy too.

And it's all-you-can-eat? Get out!

All-you-can-eat sushi made from fresh, high-quality fish by excellent sushi chefs? Pinch me. This can't be real.

But it is. If you're in Flushing, Whitestone, or Bayside, Queens, you gotta check this out!

(This is a rough draft. The post will evolve. I'll add some illustrations and maybe even a video, but for right now it's just the basics.)

JARGON ALERT: If you don't understand the jargon used in this blog entry, refer to this glossary of sound engineering terms.
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As everyone who knows me knows, I hate commercial music these days. OK, I've pretty much hated it for a long time, but nowadays it's just pukeworthy. A whole generation of kids have come up without a clue about stickin' it to the Man, without a hint of danger or subversion in their music. A whole generation wasted on sappy shit, a whole generation that doesn't know what it means to rock. A whole generation raised on lip-synched bullshit, fancy dance moves, cutesy-putesy crooners, sensitive dudes with carefully tousled hair, and the ever-profitable flavor-of-the-week teenaged virgin.

I just got an e-mail from MySpace saying I've been banned for violating the TOS. That's funny. I didn't even know that I had an account there. I wonder what somebody else did in my good name, not because I care -- just curious.

The Internet is a funny place.

How to use Seq24 to build a 32-bar song.

Seq24's song editor makes midi sequencing a snap. Sequence your loops into a song. This video shows you how to make a 32-bar song using an example song tentatively called "Credit."

Break 32 bars into parts. Each part is some multiple of 4 bars long. The song "Credit" being created in the tutorial breaks down like this:

8-bar Intro
12-bar verse
8-bar chorus
4-bar bridge

This is about songwriting as much as about slathering on effects. With midi instruments, I like to add the effects before structuring the song for reasons that I explain in the video. Seq24 makes it easy to isolate the sounds for adjustment in Hydrogen and ZynAddSubFX

You might already know that I'm interested in the connection between music and mathematics. The Golden Ratio is sort of the key to everything in the universe, including music.

I don't have much to add, but I totally love the fact that so many things are connected like this, everything from the rings of Saturn to the Parthenon to the musical scale -- amazing. God is nature is math is music.

Vote for Your Favorite Hairstyle

When you're too busy to think about your hair...

I don't even drink now, and I still love this place. It's my favorite bar in New York.