Tom 7 Radar:
all comments
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7616. Mike Kenny (pool-70-22-134-200.bos.east.verizon.net) –
15 Sep 2008 20:23:29
[ DDFW ]
this was a real shock. i have read very little by him, but tried to get into him because i liked pynchon and nabokov and heard him linked to them. i liked him from npr and charlie rose interviews. it seemed like he did 'i want to really, really understand' better than anyone.
it's bothersome he couldn't use his smarts to survive and be happy--i don't mean to say this in a judgmental way, simply as an observation that sometimes smart people have trouble their smarts seem unable to deal with. with intelligence like his, i suppose i thought naively, any problem would crumble. i find it deeply bothersome this might not always be the case. |
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7613. Tom 7 (h-67-100-130-149.phlapafg.dynamic.covad.net) –
14 Sep 2008 10:00:33
[ Drink and Draw ]
Chris: Well, the iPod touch is 32gb, which is actually bigger than my music collection on the computer (but that's because I still use CDs for most albums). Flash memory is crazy cheap these days. I think you'll get your wish soon.
A: Hah, yeah, except for the fact that then it still returns overeager results. Personally I don't think it would be insane trouble to highlight all of the artists I know make instrumental music (mainly the electronic artists, but also say Dirty Three) and tag instrumental. This would be super useful for me when I'm working and I don't want words distracting me, I could randomize from the instrumental tag, or from highly-rated instrumental songs I haven't heard recently, etc. I think iTunes wants you to do this with playlists, which almost makes sense, except that you can't do (say) playlist intersections, and worst, you can't synchronize a playlist to your phone without getting all its contents, which means I'd have to have all of my instrumental music on my phone. |
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7612. Adhesion (92.50.74.144) –
14 Sep 2008 08:33:56
[ Drink and Draw ]
Re: tags and queries: you could actually do something similar in foobar, since one of the components has a search/filter box that is total overkill in the results it returns - apparently it searches all tag fields as well as properties of the file. Eg, if I search for 'loss' looking for Theme from Loss I get... everything in my music collection, I guess because everything's either lossy or lossless, and I get totally unrelated songs when I search for certain words in song titles because some random mp3s I have have the whole lyrics in the tags. I think one album even had a whole Amazon review in it, so that one comes up a lot. So if you went to the insane trouble of tagging everything with every genre/category it fit into, you could have something semi-smart. |
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7609. Chris (c-76-99-55-118.hsd1.pa.comcast.net) –
13 Sep 2008 18:48:09
[ Drink and Draw ]
Tom: understandable. Amarok does have support for lots of media devices, including ipods, but I think not iphones (at least, not yet). I use it with my little Samsung YP-U3, and it's convenient enough. I used to have a nice big 60GB ipod, but the disk was always getting fucked up and I had to have it repaired constantly. I can't wait for giant flash drives, because figuring out what 2GB of music I want to have with me all the time is a disaster. If apple is the first to bring out nice big solid state players, I might go back.
I totally agree on itunes retarded model for what music is playing. Though, I do appreciate its library organization and browsing features. When it came out for windows back in 2003 (I think?) it was the first or nearly the first to do that kind of stuff. Amarok does better with allowing you to browse the library while still viewing and manipulating the currently active playlist, and double clicking adds songs to the current playlist, as it should be. |
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Like a solo Sonic Youth, huh? It's a super pain in the ass to haul around and prepare (e.g. tune) gear, to be honest. This is why I've been restricting myself to standard tuning as much as possible. I agree it would be sweet, though. On my old shitty Fender I have restrung it in an interesting way, the fruits of which I hope to share on an upcoming album. (Quite contrary to what I just said about restricting myself to standard tuning, ahhh..) |
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7607. Tom 7 (h-67-100-47-227.phlapafg.dynamic.covad.net) –
13 Sep 2008 17:33:50
[ Drink and Draw ]
Nels: My favorite karaoke so far is Bowleoke at Arsenal, because you can bowl when the karaoke is bad and it's lower pressure for the karaokeists. Brillobox post-eoke sounds pretty fun. Is that place no-smokey now that supposedly Pittsburgh has banned smoking except in exceptions? Because it was really smokey. |
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7606. Tom 7 (h-67-100-47-227.phlapafg.dynamic.covad.net) –
13 Sep 2008 17:28:29
[ Drink and Draw ]
Other Chris: Well, thing is, I really need my music player to be able to synchronize with my phone, which is now one of the major ways I listen to music. Otherwise, I would still be using winamp. iTunes is really crummy, IMO, one of the worst Apple apps. (Specifically, I think its model for how it has some hidden internal notion of what song is going to be played next, rather than how winamp and other players work, where there is a single main playlist that authoritatively determines the song that'll be next, is really annoying. And actually confusing, even to people who know how computers work. Particularly, when I'm listening to a song and didn't have the foresight to use On-The-Go playlist or party shuffle, then there's no way for me to queue up stuff to play next. I have to interrupt the music. How many times have I been at a party and someone accidentally double-clicks a song and there goes the dance party? Interrupting the music should never be the default behavior.) It's especially painfully slow on Windows. But working with my phone is important enough that I've basically switched over now.
By the way, I have to take back my "absolutely fucking worthless" comment about Genius. I think that when I first started using this morning it I had some transient network issues or otherwise today it has been learning more zeitgeist from all the people trying it, because now it at least knows about GBV and a couple other bands that it was giving me bingo results on before, so at least it is not useless. The results are now what I'd call mediocre; it seems to know the difference between my two major threads of music in my collection (being the electronic music and the indie-rock) although it gives Iron & Wine results for Aphex Twin songs, which is fine by me but hard to explain in terms of relative feel. I wish I could just tag my shit "instrumental" "electronica" "chill" and then make ad hoc queries, like it's 2004.
Why am I so bitter today? Must be the humidity. |
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7605. jcreed (ahost.einetwork.net) –
13 Sep 2008 17:10:48
[ Drink and Draw ]
I think a drawing party that involved, e.g., D's levels of reasonable drinkin' would be pretty okay |
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If you want to be a totally unique singer-songwriter you should go completely prepared-guitar and carry like 20 of them around to shows, that would be sweet. |
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7603. Nels (c-71-236-67-163.hsd1.pa.comcast.net) –
13 Sep 2008 14:38:44
[ Drink and Draw ]
Despite the fact that I can no draw, I like the idea of Crafts+Booze parties and events. Like remember that sock puppet party? That ruled.
In other news, ever been to Brillobox karaoke on Wednesday nights? It is totally fun and post-everything. I have a feeling that if you liked any karaoke, it would be their's. |
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7602. Tom 7 (h-67-100-47-227.phlapafg.dynamic.covad.net) –
13 Sep 2008 14:36:38
[ Drink and Draw ]
Well invite me to the next drawing party, but I think you should allow drinkin'! |
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7601. chrisamaphone (cmu-295510.wv.cc.cmu.edu) –
13 Sep 2008 13:08:30
[ Drink and Draw ]
also being near jcreed is useful for making spontaneous drawing parties happen on placemats and things |
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7600. chrisamaphone (cmu-295510.wv.cc.cmu.edu) –
13 Sep 2008 13:06:55
[ Drink and Draw ]
i have hosted a Drawing Party before (of the make-marks-on-paper variety), but never in conjunction with drinking... it was still great fun and probably better that there were not 20 drunk people in my house with access to my art supplies. |
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7599. Chris (c-76-99-55-118.hsd1.pa.comcast.net) –
13 Sep 2008 12:11:14
[ Drink and Draw ]
OK I checked again and it looks like the beta of the new version is also on mac and PC? I will stop posting now. |
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7598. Chris (c-76-99-55-118.hsd1.pa.comcast.net) –
13 Sep 2008 12:10:17
[ Drink and Draw ]
Oh, I just checked and I guess amarok is linux-only. I guess my excellent advice is useless to you. |
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7597. Chris (c-76-99-55-118.hsd1.pa.comcast.net) –
13 Sep 2008 12:07:59
[ Drink and Draw ]
Now I feel bad because I'm going to ignore the art stuff which I do not understand and am vaguely intimidated by and comment only on the music stuff which is more in line with things I know about.
Anyway, you should check out amarok - it is way better than itunes. It has lots of nifty features in this thing called the "context tab" where it will automatically fetch lyrics, information about related songs/artists, the band's wikipedia page, etc, for convenient looking at while you are listening to music.
But, most importantly, it has a "dynamic playlist" called suggested songs where you populate a playlist with some stuff and then it automatically fetches other stuff from your collection that last.fm says is related, which sounds like approximately what you want. I have found it to be good but not great. Definitely convenient for when you are lazy. |
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I dunno. I feel some kind of acceleration in anticipation of talking or some other kind of performance but I wouldn't call it nervousness. It's one of the reasons I tend to go fast at the beginning of a talk, until I catch the right pace. |
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i'm envious of your ease in front of an audience. i'm a blathering nervous wreck when i do it. when i was a kid i liked it though--funny how things change! you don't get nerves at all? |
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7593. Scott/Graue (ip70-179-119-114.dc.dc.cox.net) –
11 Sep 2008 09:27:18
[ OLD: Spastic Moose ]
I agree with all three of those two reasons, especially #2. Also, this reminds me of a poem I wrote about my poem-writing process. Hopefully line breaks work on here...
Some people edit;
I simply write a new poem
from scratch in a different way
and repeat until I get something
I like.
There's probably more
to be said about this
but I'll have to try again later.
Also, I want to hear your procedural noise. Seriously. |
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I really appreciate the positive comments everyone! And thanks for watching.
MK: Yeah, the kicking is funny, isn't it? I think when I'm standing and playing I have a tendency to jump and move a bit, but I was trying to make sure I stayed in front of the mic. The dance was subconscious. Like I said I do enjoy being in front of an audience generally speaking (I think that's pretty much always been true); I'm glad that comes across as stage presence!
C (&A): Hah. Those are moderately compressed with XVID, too; the originals are nicer still. I got a Canon Vixia HF100. I have been planning on getting a nice ENG-style HD camera like the XH-A1, so I can put a depth-of-field converter on it and shoot some really nice shit, but that thing is so old tech and I have been waiting for the next model to come out for all summer now, so I decided it would also be nice to have a tiny cheap handheld camera too anyway, and that makes me less annoyed and anxious waiting for this camera I believe will come out any month now. The HF100 is a great deal just this moment because it's only 8 months old, but Canon released an update to it a few months ago, and now just announced another update, but these updates are essentially only utterly pointless upgrades to the internal flash memory. A 16GB flash card is only like $40, but to get that internally it costs several hundred dollars. Why would you want to do that? Recommended.
S: Thanks! I'm sure I'll do it again (this is like a project for me now) and if I get a chance to record it I'll post them. If an obsessed fan (really you internet guys are the only fans, sorry) spills beans, I will censor it!
A: Lots of my songs these days are partial-capoed, or even double partial-capoed like Theme from Loss. The only special skill really is playing on or beneath the capo, the difficulty of which doesn't really increase with the number of capos. But I'm glad it looks notable because I want to not just be a regular ol' singer-songwriter. All three songs were pretty sped-up; IMO "Based On Your Mario Kart..." actually the least of all, or at least relative to how I usually play it these days. Your impression may vary. The secret project is indeed audio-related and is a many-month (or maybe even many-year, depending on how you look at it) ordeal, but it's not totally done so don't start holding your breath!
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7589. Tom 7 (h-67-100-47-111.phlapafg.dynamic.covad.net) –
10 Sep 2008 19:42:12
[ OLD: Spastic Moose ]
Yeah, I think it's pretty clear that I'm an idea/concept sort of guy. I hardly ever refine and refine something. I think the two reasons are: (1) I feel sort of stymied without working inside some kind of conceptual boundaries. The paralysis of a wide open canvas. (2) If I keep working on something after I get sick of it, I think that sickness or tiredness manifests itself in the work and it's a major cost to bear, a cost that often does not outstrip the benefits of continued work. (3) Lots of stuff sucks from the get-go and there's no point in wasting more time on it, but something that's pretty good from the get-go is, well, pretty good even without polish. |
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That was pretty awesome, especially Theme from Loss (wow, those capos make it look hard to play, heh...), although Mario Kart Skills... was a bit on the "doubled tempo" side.
Could that secret project mean a Tom 7 audio-related thing that took more than a day to make?! Inconceivable... I don't know if I can possibly contain my anticipation, you know.
Also, what kind of camera did you get? |
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Cool, you actually did it! That's awesome. Post-Glacial Identity is the only one of those songs I'm really familiar with (read: have listened to over a dozen times) but they're all fabulous live.
Thank you for sharing the performance with those of us who couldn't make it to the open mic in question.
Also, yay for secret project. Can't believe an obsessed fan hasn't spilled the beans already... |
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I, too, enjoyed the cool poses and faces you made while playing your cool songs. |
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Those were fun, thanks for posting them. I also liked the leg kick, particularly where you almost knock over the guitar behind you.
Although, I hate to say the thing I was most struck by was the quality of your camera, but holy crap those avis I downloaded look nice. |
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