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September 27, 2008
Here's the latest MP3 by Midnight production-
Orgy of Hate.mp3
Orgy of Hate.ogg
This was mostly written yesterday on my way to work, and then I had a session last night so I couldn't work on it. I think
this is probably all that needs done with it...
Somewhat inspired by Loud Obbs, who I was unfortunate enough to watch yesterday...
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Sometime ago I was involved in this thing. Our band was Kimberlake, not Timber Lake,
but who could possibly understand a name like that? I just found this and a couple of lists. List #1,
titled Done is-
1. Blood of the Sun
2. Beck's Bolero
3. Smoke on the Water
4. Southern Man
5. Stairway to Heaven
6. All Your Love
7. Over the Hills and Far Away
8. Turtle Blues
9. Why Does Love Got to be So Sad?
10. Space Truckin'
11. Badge
12. Communication Breakdown
13. Move Over
14. Saturday Night at the Bar
15. Jeff's Song
16. Needle and the Damage Done
17. Heart of Gold
List #2, titled Not Done Yet-
1. Eat Starch Mom?
2. All Along the Watchtower?
3. Dreams of Milk and Honey
4. Roll Over Beethoven
5. Statesboro Blues
6. Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out
7. Bell Bottom Blues
8. Little Wing
9. Third Degree
10. White Room
11. Deserted Cities of the Heart
12. One Last Cold Kiss
13. Street Corner Talkin' ?
14. Flowers of Evil
15. Crossroads
16. Kosmic Blues
17. Ball and Chain
(One that I remember well that isn't on this list was Black Ju-Ju. We had a
black light that we turned on for that song...)
I feel lucky to have started out with this band. It was a challenging bunch of
songs to play at the time, but we had good players (better than me, certainly!). Some
of these are still among my favorite songs...
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September 23, 2008
You know what I always say when the stock market heads for the basement?
Slough It Off!
(new featured song)
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September 19, 2008
I may have the greatest job in the world. When I come to work in the morning, sometimes
the town smells like chocolate! Sometimes, it smells like fresh pie! (And sometimes
it smells like cow poo, but we tend to gloss over the negatives)
When I get to work I'm never sure what to expect. Sometimes it's a huge bell like this
one! A very well-known bell, maybe as famous as the Liberty Bell!
Well, maybe.
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September 18, 2008
It's another MP3 By Midnight production!
I had started working on a song
back when first I got Vera, the
blue bass. I had a drum, a tamborine, a low bass, and a high bass melody
recorded, and at the time it just reminded me of things I had done before, so I
wasn't really very excited about it. It was woodshedding, just running through
the notes to keep limber. With Vera it was fun to do.
Tonight I stumbled upon that one when I wanted something play along with on my new synth. I
recorded enough bits to fill up the rest of the tracks and mixed 'er on down.
The result is my hommage to Hearts of Space and
Echoes, two radio programs that I enjoy.
I'll admit it, my musical life has been a constant battle
between the organic and the cerebral. I don't actually know what that means, but
it's like the Beatles or Stones thing...
There's also some Magazine in here, and all the 3rd world stuff that Namaste
turned me on to... I'm not adding anything to the genre here, just repeating what I've
heard. But... I'm John Diliberto and you're hearing Echoes...
Q1.mp3
Q1.ogg
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September 17, 2008
This was fun... years ago, around the turn of the century, in fact... Robert Bobby and
I were astounded when we learned that it was possible to record, mix, and upload a
song to the internet in one evening. He coined the term MP3 by Midnight to describe
our production team. We recorded the first song in his basement- I think it was (appropriately enough)
King of the Internet- using his little Roland 8 track recorder. We did not, in fact, get that
particular song uploaded by midnight of the first night. Due to technical glitches, it took a couple of days, but it got there.
And the rest is history! As in, forgotten or ignored by most people on earth. Still, we do
have a tradition, Mr. Bobby and I, and so tonight we continue in that vein. We've recorded,
mixed, and uploaded this song before midnight. Here it is-
Lipstick On A Pig.mp3
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September 16, 2008
Wow. I knew this habit would pay off one day. Now the Official Ale of Steam
Powered Studio has an official drinking glass. And it was FREE!
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September 13, 2008
Introducing... The Granulator.
This thing is a software tool that does real-time granular synthesis. Granular
synthesis isn't scary with The Granulator.
I've heard about this stuff for a while. It used to be that you'd have to write a
program and let it run overnight in order to synthesize a sound. That's a little
too long a time to get a feel of it. The Granulator lets you mess with the signal
in real time. All due to faster computers, I guess.
So what's it do? Well, it can take one sound and turn it into something completely
different. You might remember a song demo I posted last month called Finish Line?
Here's what can happen to an ordinary song when it's granulated.
Finish Line Granulated.mp3
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September 10, 2008
I've finally updated the sponsors' song catalog- There are now working links there to
the latest songs by Craig Wise, Jason Mundok, Olds Sleeper and me.
Looking for something new? Try D&D's Whats new page.
Big Ride is new this month and its got some intriguing vocals and guitar work on it.
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September 09, 2008
Even more keyboardz. This one is an old-school sampling machine- 16 bit, for thoze who
know about these things, that isn't so very powerful, but it was way cheap and it does
very nice Hammond sounds, and that's what I was looking for.
A Kurzweil K2661 synthesizer. Tonight I learned how loops and samples were created in 1996.
It's a big step forward for me...
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September 07, 2008
Back in the day somebody I knew got some "speedknobs" on their Les Paul and thought it was
a big deal. I didn't know- maybe it was a big deal. I was playing keyboards at the time-
keyboards and harp. No speedknobs required.
But recently I got this here keyboard, a Yamaha PSR E413, and it has some user-adjustable parameters.
That is to say the sound can be modified while it's being played. And now I understand why
a person would want "speedknobs". Rather than grasping the knob twixt the thumb and forefinger,
and turning the entire wrist, a speedknob allows the user to simply run the side of his/her finger (or even the meaty
portion of the palm) along the edge of the knob, effecting a change in the selected parameter,
be it volume, resonance, cutoff, or whatnot. It really is much faster- hence, speedknob.
So I hacked this unit and added some larger-diameter knobs that I found in an old peanut brittle can. Speedknobs.
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September 05, 2008
It may be hard to detect it, but the spons-o-meter has taken another tick upwards.
(sometimes it helps to tap on the glass) Thanks, Joe!
Coming up this fall- I'll be posting some cool, classic recordings by Lancaster's
Ralph Toro ("restored" from old cassette tapes), working on new music for
Craig Wise, whose song The Rest of My Days is getting downloaded like
crazy from both here and from MySpace, and maybe, just maybe, tackling some
ambience recording...
(more)
As you may know, I contribute sound samples to a place called Freesound.
It's just for fun- it's kinda cool to hear street sounds from Europe and Africa, as
well as the more mundane stuff (such as thunder- everyone seems to think that thunder is
unique to their part of the world or something).
I've uploaded goofy stuff like the fire company Christmas program, where they drive
around the neighborhood in a firetruck playing carols. If you never heard that, it's
pretty weird, and I guess, uniquely American. Now someone has developed a sort of
sample player (he calls it a radio)
where you can find samples and link them together to make songs and loops. This is lots of
fun- you get a bonus if you can figure out how to make it work!
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September 03, 2008
September. The best month, right? Happy birthday and a big V sign to all my
Virgo friends. What a great place the world will be when we finally take over!
Here's a remixed, new and improved version of my long-suffering, many times remixed
song, Come What May, as a present to us all...
mp3
or
ogg
Stokers Fred Amendola, Gil Smart and Trance help me out on this one- with thanks
due to Doug for all his work.
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