The Delicate Sound

I am certainly not the first to espouse this idea but I am a really big fan nonetheless. Music is really just a bunch of numbers - a sequence - with meta data attached to those numbers. Not unlike HTML. Many people have written about this for years, but Stephen Wolfram has taken it one step further: WolframTones . His 2002 book A New Kind of Science broke new ground in scientific thinking and this site does the same for...ringtones. Yes, ringtones. Not everyone agrees with Wolfram - he does have a tendency to "toot his own horn." WolframTones is a site that allows users to create their own - potentially unique - ringtones based on instrumentation, tempo, scales and other parameters. These parameters are then mapped to an equation or numerical value which generates the sequence of data - and the ringtone. You can hear the one I created here . PLEASE NOTE: you will need to have a polyphonic-capable phone that can receive email and has web access. Any camera phone these days sh...

I live in suburban NY - which means I have little or no access to radio stations. I get WNYC which gives me NPR and there is a year-old station called The Peak 107.1 which plays 50% good music in my opinion. They play a decent mix of music aimed at my demographic. i will leave it at that. Classic rock drives me crazy in two ways: it is so predictable that you can almost pick the next three songs and it is occasionally so enticing because it can catch you in the perfect mood. Most of the time, the three classic rock stations in my area play the standards: Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, the Who, Allman Brothers you get the idea. The problem is that most of the time they play the exact same songs: "Wish You Were Here," "Another Brick In the Wall," "Rock & Roll," "Stairway to Heaven," "Kashmir," "Jessica," "Melissa" etc. When they throw a random song at you like "Going Mobile" or "That's the Way" i...

OK - so I bought an iPod. To be totally honest, I cannot understand how I lived without it. I don't commute anymore so I don't have a great deal of time to listen to it - but I find a way. I work out with it religiously. I fall asleep to it - a habit my wife really hates. I turned off the backlight because it is so freaking bright that it would wake her up every time I changed the song or album. I still use iTunes the same way - like a maniacal data junkie. Now I download podcasts in addition to ripping my own CDs. I find that I am tired of what is on my iPod after about a week. I create new playlists every time I take a roadtrip but they too get boring very quickly. Too much music and not enough time. I figure I listen to music - actively listen to music - about two hours a day - an hour in the car and an hour at work while writing documents/reports etc. I listen at home with my wife and kids (more with my kids) on occasion, but usually in a passive type of setting. My son, wh...

Those who know me understand, or at least acknowledge my belief that the first Stone Roses record (The Stone Roses, 1989) is the finest pop album ever made. Many records are good, a few are spectacular, none reigns supreme like The Stone Roses. Let me qualify this statement by saying that I am referring to the work, not the artist. As a band, the Stone Roses left much to be desired - they were together in their most significant form for several years prior to getting signed and did their best to irk nearly everyone who came within fifty yards. Ian Brown, the singer, has had a respectable if not admirable solo career in the years since. Truncated by the occasional arrest and jail term, Ian has put out three records and a handful of decent singles. He is currently touring in support of the third. This brings me to the blog check . Let me know what you think of this...

In the old days, i.e. when cassettes were still a viable medium, I used to make mixes all the time. Everybody did it. You made mixes for road trips, a mix for the party Saturday night, a mix for your hangover Sunday morning, a mix for that new girl. I spent lots of time working on the things, mostly because I honestly enjoyed the effort and the creativity required. References to High Fidelity notwithstanding, a good mix tape is a work of art and needs to have a theme and a significant song. This song didn't have to be a big hit or even be a known song - it just had to be significant to the theme. It may even be the inspiration for the the theme and the tape. Think of it as the anchor tenant in the mix tape mall. The order had to be right and unfortunately, each side had to be just under 45 minutes. That is if you were using a 90 minute cassette and who used anything but? Side note: I used to use the Maxell XL-II 46 minute tapes because I liked the whole "A side/B side" or...

I may be the only person in my age group and industry that does not yet own an iPod. This does not preclude me from being an ardent fan of iTunes. If there were a perfect job for me it would probably be product manager for iTunes. I use it continuously and I use it well in my opinion. I bought a used Powerbook on eBay last fall and it came with a ton of music in an iTunes library. I threw away half of it right off the bat because I knew I would never ever listen to it - not even in an alcohol induced search for "that song." Britney, Christina, Justin and all the other mouseketeers went into the trash. It was very liberating. The rest of the music I decided to keep for personal use. The problem with it was the previous owner wasn't as "meticulous" as I am: songs were mislabeled as to title, artist, genre you name it. The music itself was fine, it just wasn't very well organized. I chucked the entire iTunes library and started at the file level. After I cleane...