Category Archives: music

buying music in high-resolution audio formats

Posted on 2023-03-05 by skierpage

Joni Mitchell’s Blue on vinyl has a distortion at times behind her voice and piano. Time to buy a digital track and see if it’s still there. What the heck, go big and get the 192 kHZ 24-bit FLAC high-res … Continue reading →

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music: Crosby not Stills, Nash, and Young

Posted on 2023-01-28 by skierpage

Jeff Beck died, now David Crosby. So I listened to If Only I Could Remember My Name, his solo album. It’s beyond star-studded, Wikipedia: “Guest musicians on the album include Graham Nash, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, and members of Jefferson … Continue reading →

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music: Tuesday Heartbreak attempts

Posted on 2023-01-26 by skierpage

One of the pure joys of going through Stevie Wonder’s incredible 6 album run was rediscovering the perfect rainy-day funk of “Tuesday Breakup.” I was in a store and heard the song, but wait! it’s Macy Gray. It turns out … Continue reading →

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music: Havona is a penthouse on the Mount Olympus of bass

Posted on 2022-12-20 by skierpage

Dirty Loops’ Henrik Linder (best Justin Bieber cover evar!), Vulfpeck’s Joe Dart, and YouTuber Charles Berthoud are all bass monsters in a golden age of musicianship. But “Havona” by Weather Report is a different level. In my memory Jaco Pastorius … Continue reading →

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AIs making images of music!?!! 🤯

Posted on 2022-12-19 by skierpage

Hi music fans. OpenAI’s Jukebox was generating music waveforms from scratch way back in 2020 (as I wrote). Since then, silence from OpenAI. I suspect half the music in Spotify’s “contemplative acoustic music for yoga/Pilates” and “mid-tempo EDM for hip … Continue reading →

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music: a chorus of Blackbirds

Posted on 2022-09-10 by skierpage

Did Paul McCartney know he wrote the greatest jazz standard since the golden age of the American songbook? The supremely confident moving bass line, the single note “Blackbird singing in the”, the early “dead of” leap in the melody, the … Continue reading →

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music: so much great instrumental guitar

Posted on 2022-08-16 by skierpage

All the tired old people complaining about “the music today” just aren’t trying. With nearly all recorded music a click away, today’s musicians are building on the best in every genre. My journey through modern instrumental guitar from Vulfpeck to … Continue reading →

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music: tracing samples and beats

Posted on 2022-05-25 by skierpage

I knew the Beastie Boy’s Paul’s Boutique is the apotheosis of sampling; now https://www.whosampled.com/Beastie-Boys/B-Boy-Bouillabaisse/samples/ lays out all 26 samples. You can also explore J Dilla’s dense samples on the site. It still feels strange to me that artists hear a … Continue reading →

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music: a return for Spinal Tap!

Posted on 2022-05-20 by skierpage

zOMG there will be a sequel to This is Spinal Tap. After 38 years, it can only be even sadder than the band’s first tour film; the original was another product of 1984, the high point of Western civilization. This … Continue reading →

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music: the B-52’s loss

Posted on 2022-05-02 by skierpage

I forgot how great the B-52’s briefly were and what an excellent album Cosmic Thing is. Beyond the smash “Love Shack” (produced by Don Was) with Cindy Wilson’s immortal “Tin roof, rusted!” are several more great songs, including the eco-optimistic … Continue reading →

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