I'm glad he never got rid of the iconic 'stache. I'm still dissapointed in John Oates for getting rid of his. (He looks weird with a goatee!)
"Simple, real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time." -Mustrum Ridcully in Terry Pratchett's Hogfather p. 142 (HarperPrism 1996)
+2
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BlackDragon480Bluster KerfuffleMaster of Windy ImportRegistered Userregular
edited January 2023
Elizabeth has advanced to geeking out over instrumental virtuosity (in this case SRV when he was coked out of his mind at the El Mocambo), she is such a treasure:
So I know the melody for the Morrowind theme more or less in the open position on a few strings.
I'm trying to transpose it into power chords further up the neck and it sounds cool when I can get the notes in order but it's hard because I keep having to remember where each note is but it's good practice to be like... Okay a and g is here d is here on this string compared to these other places
I was only a young impressionable design student with a zune 2nd revision at the time but I don’t thing anything to date can stand up to the desktop Zune software still. The device ui I think was as inspiration for us moving to touchscreen devices.
Not sure if the best place for this comment is here, but it's the best place I could think of. Lin Brehmer, the radio host for WXRT died of cancer today. Yes, ha ha, radio station, but the guy was a longtime icon of the station and the music scene in Chicago in general, so the death is hitting me pretty hard today.
You know what? Nanowrimo's cancelled on account of the world is stupid.
Not sure if the best place for this comment is here, but it's the best place I could think of. Lin Brehmer, the radio host for WXRT died of cancer today. Yes, ha ha, radio station, but the guy was a longtime icon of the station and the music scene in Chicago in general, so the death is hitting me pretty hard today.
my condolences.
+1
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
Really about Ticketmaster/Livenation I really question why now are they being looked into. As there are incidents from the 80's and 90's about the crap they pulled and how Bands refused to deal with them anymore. But it took Taylor Swift selling out in nanoseconds for a congress to look into it?
Yes? that's what happens, lots of people are upset, then a massive event causes so much pushback that enough people are loud enough that their congresspeople think they'll get traction by taking action. Like I don't know what you're arguing, here? That there's a conspiracy about why this is happening? It's literally all public. It's a public shitstorm and it's been long enough and bad enough that something might happen.
minor incidentexpert in a dying fieldnjRegistered Userregular
edited January 2023
Okay, bit of a long post that’s going to get into music wonkery a bit. Specifically the collecting, encoding, streaming, and organization side of things. Feel free to skip over if that stuff bores you.
So, because of a general sense of unease with streaming services in general I decided to finally bite the bullet and get my local music library up and running again. It’s been in a state of disarray since I basically dropped local digital in favor of streaming services, so I had my work cut out for me.
I also hadn’t ripped a lot of my physical media at the best settings. My dumb ass has a lot of stuff ripped at 128 and below(!) from like 20 years ago, including a good handful of fairly irreplaceable recordings. So I also decided to re-rip everything that wasn’t already FLAC or high res MP3. Hard drives are cheap enough now, so it was time to just go all the way. Luckily I’ve kept up buying vinyl and Band Camp releases even while I used Spotify for listening to everything, so my collection doesn’t have a glaring 7 year gap.
All told, after culling the shitty quality digital files (anything below 256 or v0), I was left with:
708 releases in FLAC or high-res mp3 (home rips, Band Camp purchases, etc)
962 releases on vinyl
724 releases on CD
49 releases on cassette
9 releases on reel to reel
I’ve been working on ripping everything to FLAC that isn’t already digitized and holy shit is this a tiresome process. I pulled everything off my old failing Drobo and picked up a pair of 8TB drives to attach to my Mac Mini server, so everything is going to live on there. As of now I have about 2/3rds of everything ripped and on my server.
While I gradually work my way through that, I had to decide what to use to manage and serve my music, because I didn’t want to lose the functionality of Spotify. I’ve gotten really used to jumping between extremely random albums on a whim, and I could never fit all this on any portable player (it’s well over 1TB so far, with a lot more to come), so I needed a solution.
It seems like the best options in this category are Navidrome (which is free, so that’s a plus), Emby, and Plex. I gave each one a test run and came away most impressed with Plex. It had the management system that made the most sense to me, allowed much easier access outside of my own network, and even though their PlexAmp mobile app requires PlexPass, it’s incredibly good. I like it more than Spotify. It’s also gorgeous looking, and has nice visualizers. And lots of ways to browse music. Do I want to listen to “moody” songs? Do I want to dive into stuff released on K Records? How about just an evening of Ska? The PlexAmp app lets you drill down on all sorts of weird attributes of your music. Absolutely worth the few bucks a month. Also, just in general, everything has a Plex app. So I’ll have some reassurance that I’ll be able to play my music on just about any device I could want to.
The other neat thing that Plex does is “sonic analysis”, which sounds like a dumb gimmick, but it’s actually shockingly good. It basically scans your music and uses its analysis to figure out what else sounds similar so it can do “radio” playlists and it’s kind of mind blowing. It’s every bit as good as Spotify’s artist radio stuff, but actually way better because unlike Spotify, it doesn’t tend to stick to a small handful of songs form each artist. It’ll really scrape the back wall to put together a cool playlist, and not just throw the same popular song on from each band. It’s wild and I’m surprised how much I like it.
I found the Last.fm integration, so now Plex also scrobbles for me. One more obstacle down. It does have its own decent analytics built in, too, which is cool. I’d like to figure out how to import my Spotify playlists to Plex, because I have like…nearly 200?
Aside from a few little speed bumps, it’s going pretty well, and I’ve listened to more music in the last couple of months than I did the rest of last year. But anyway, still in the middle of the process, and the only thing more tedious than ripping vinyl and cassettes to digital is file naming and folder structuring. But it is oddly satisfying, in a way. And at the end of the day I have full control over my own library of music, but retain all the benefits of Spotify, being able to stream it anywhere. Oh, PlexAmp even has a very slick CarPlay app!
minor incident on
Ah, it stinks, it sucks, it's anthropologically unjust
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minor incidentexpert in a dying fieldnjRegistered Userregular
edited January 2023
Also, like, why the fuck do I have 32 releases from Weezer?
Am I going to delete some of them? Of course not, are you crazy?
But just… what’s wrong with me, ya know?
minor incident on
Ah, it stinks, it sucks, it's anthropologically unjust
I messed around with Plexamp a bit a couple of weeks ago and it does seem really cool in a lot ways.
But the android app wouldn't let me download files to the SD card in my phone and I couldn't find a fix anywhere. So it ended up being more or less useless to me.
I'd not heard of Navidrome before, I might give that a shot.
plexamp sounds really cool; I'll have to look into that. I just keep most of my mp3 collection on my phone anyways these days, but it couldn't hurt to back it up to my plex server and mess around with this.
I messed around with Plexamp a bit a couple of weeks ago and it does seem really cool in a lot ways.
But the android app wouldn't let me download files to the SD card in my phone and I couldn't find a fix anywhere. So it ended up being more or less useless to me.
I'd not heard of Navidrome before, I might give that a shot.
Yeah, Navidrome seems cool. I played with it for a bit. It uses an open API so anyone can make a client app, so there are a few different iOS and android music player, a couple of which are super slick. Overall, Plex just felt like a better fit for me, but Navidrome is fantastic and if it was the only option available I wouldn’t really be left wanting.
Ah, it stinks, it sucks, it's anthropologically unjust
+1
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KoopahTroopahThe koopas, the troopas.Philadelphia, PARegistered Userregular
Thrice's post-Vheissu discography mostly hasn't hit quite the same for me as their early stuff, but both times I saw them live were really fun shows.
Same boat. Beggars was an outlier for me, I thought it was a great album, but outside of that I've just really enjoyed seeing them live. My wife hadn't even really listened to them and wanted to wait out back for a signature after the first show we went to together.
minor incidentexpert in a dying fieldnjRegistered Userregular
edited January 2023
Been giving a lot of playtime to this new version of "Thumbs" by Lucy Dacus. The full band (but still sparse) instrumentation hews a lot closer to the way she's been playing it on tour lately.
In any case, it's an amazing, brutal non-traditional love song, and that's kind of wonderful.
minor incidentexpert in a dying fieldnjRegistered Userregular
edited February 2023
I totally missed JER's debut album last year. They’re the mad genius behind the Ska Tune Network youtube channel, and they’ve put out a couple of fantastic singles leading up to this album. But it's out now and it rules. Such a fucking cool blend of ska, indie rock, punk, and hip hop.
Posts
I'm glad he never got rid of the iconic 'stache. I'm still dissapointed in John Oates for getting rid of his. (He looks weird with a goatee!)
~ Buckaroo Banzai
I'm trying to transpose it into power chords further up the neck and it sounds cool when I can get the notes in order but it's hard because I keep having to remember where each note is but it's good practice to be like... Okay a and g is here d is here on this string compared to these other places
This looks like it's pricey but man, I'm nostalgic for the era of the Zune so I kinda want this
That's probably going to be around $700-800.
There's a less pricey walkman that's only around 350-400.
https://www.sony.ie/walkman/products/nw-a306
I was only a young impressionable design student with a zune 2nd revision at the time but I don’t thing anything to date can stand up to the desktop Zune software still. The device ui I think was as inspiration for us moving to touchscreen devices.
But man, no one wanted Microsoft hardware then
my condolences.
Video is NSFW, just FYI
He and his sister Grace are incredibly talented, I really like their band
Twitch: KoopahTroopah - Steam: Koopah
There had been for years people upset about the fees they got charged for tickets as a $30 ballooned into 200+ in some cases
Our Mirage was one of my favorites from last year and this is just an exceptionally well-crafted bop with the full weight of a German pop bounce.
So, because of a general sense of unease with streaming services in general I decided to finally bite the bullet and get my local music library up and running again. It’s been in a state of disarray since I basically dropped local digital in favor of streaming services, so I had my work cut out for me.
I also hadn’t ripped a lot of my physical media at the best settings. My dumb ass has a lot of stuff ripped at 128 and below(!) from like 20 years ago, including a good handful of fairly irreplaceable recordings. So I also decided to re-rip everything that wasn’t already FLAC or high res MP3. Hard drives are cheap enough now, so it was time to just go all the way. Luckily I’ve kept up buying vinyl and Band Camp releases even while I used Spotify for listening to everything, so my collection doesn’t have a glaring 7 year gap.
All told, after culling the shitty quality digital files (anything below 256 or v0), I was left with:
708 releases in FLAC or high-res mp3 (home rips, Band Camp purchases, etc)
962 releases on vinyl
724 releases on CD
49 releases on cassette
9 releases on reel to reel
I’ve been working on ripping everything to FLAC that isn’t already digitized and holy shit is this a tiresome process. I pulled everything off my old failing Drobo and picked up a pair of 8TB drives to attach to my Mac Mini server, so everything is going to live on there. As of now I have about 2/3rds of everything ripped and on my server.
While I gradually work my way through that, I had to decide what to use to manage and serve my music, because I didn’t want to lose the functionality of Spotify. I’ve gotten really used to jumping between extremely random albums on a whim, and I could never fit all this on any portable player (it’s well over 1TB so far, with a lot more to come), so I needed a solution.
It seems like the best options in this category are Navidrome (which is free, so that’s a plus), Emby, and Plex. I gave each one a test run and came away most impressed with Plex. It had the management system that made the most sense to me, allowed much easier access outside of my own network, and even though their PlexAmp mobile app requires PlexPass, it’s incredibly good. I like it more than Spotify. It’s also gorgeous looking, and has nice visualizers. And lots of ways to browse music. Do I want to listen to “moody” songs? Do I want to dive into stuff released on K Records? How about just an evening of Ska? The PlexAmp app lets you drill down on all sorts of weird attributes of your music. Absolutely worth the few bucks a month. Also, just in general, everything has a Plex app. So I’ll have some reassurance that I’ll be able to play my music on just about any device I could want to.
The other neat thing that Plex does is “sonic analysis”, which sounds like a dumb gimmick, but it’s actually shockingly good. It basically scans your music and uses its analysis to figure out what else sounds similar so it can do “radio” playlists and it’s kind of mind blowing. It’s every bit as good as Spotify’s artist radio stuff, but actually way better because unlike Spotify, it doesn’t tend to stick to a small handful of songs form each artist. It’ll really scrape the back wall to put together a cool playlist, and not just throw the same popular song on from each band. It’s wild and I’m surprised how much I like it.
I found the Last.fm integration, so now Plex also scrobbles for me. One more obstacle down. It does have its own decent analytics built in, too, which is cool. I’d like to figure out how to import my Spotify playlists to Plex, because I have like…nearly 200?
Aside from a few little speed bumps, it’s going pretty well, and I’ve listened to more music in the last couple of months than I did the rest of last year. But anyway, still in the middle of the process, and the only thing more tedious than ripping vinyl and cassettes to digital is file naming and folder structuring. But it is oddly satisfying, in a way. And at the end of the day I have full control over my own library of music, but retain all the benefits of Spotify, being able to stream it anywhere. Oh, PlexAmp even has a very slick CarPlay app!
Am I going to delete some of them? Of course not, are you crazy?
But just… what’s wrong with me, ya know?
But the android app wouldn't let me download files to the SD card in my phone and I couldn't find a fix anywhere. So it ended up being more or less useless to me.
I'd not heard of Navidrome before, I might give that a shot.
It really does make a big difference
When I don't do them it's hard to even get my index and ring finger to do a power chord near the headstock properly.
Yeah, Navidrome seems cool. I played with it for a bit. It uses an open API so anyone can make a client app, so there are a few different iOS and android music player, a couple of which are super slick. Overall, Plex just felt like a better fit for me, but Navidrome is fantastic and if it was the only option available I wouldn’t really be left wanting.
No, I can't play like Tim Henson... but this looks really nice.
Twitch: KoopahTroopah - Steam: Koopah
Same boat. Beggars was an outlier for me, I thought it was a great album, but outside of that I've just really enjoyed seeing them live. My wife hadn't even really listened to them and wanted to wait out back for a signature after the first show we went to together.
In any case, it's an amazing, brutal non-traditional love song, and that's kind of wonderful.