Monday, March 03, 2008

the sixth mix

The sixth mix in this six mix series is done. Now I'd like to rest, maybe watch a movie or read a book and generally take it easy. Well, that is until this weekend when I will be at Langerado!


Click here for the sixth mix as a zip file.

Here's the playlist:

1 - Eels - Mr. E's Beautiful Blues
2 - The Fiery Furnaces - My Egyptian Grammar
3 - The Conchords - Foux Da Fafa
4 - Mark Ronson featuring Lily Allen - Oh My God
5 - "I'm not really a horse."
6 - "I am truly surprised."
7 - Eggstone - Good Morning
8 - Oren Lavie - Her Morning Elegance
9 - "Friday night. Always a good night for some Sabbath."
10 - Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
11 - Filter - Take A Picture
12 - Hooverphonic - 50 Watt
13 - Supreme Beings of Leisure - This World
14 - Erlend Øye - Every Party Has A Winner And A Loser
15 - "The chicken catastrophe and the eggs overwhelming."
16 - Fleetwood Mac - World Turning
17 - Revolvo - Too Cool For School
18 - Maserati - Synchronicity IV
19 - Herbie Hancock - I Thought It Was You


Notes:
  • The album art has a picture of me with my new guitar. A group of very good friends, from all around the country, collaborated and conspired to get me a gift that I really wanted. I took home my new guitar yesterday and practiced until my fingers were sore. It's about time I learn an instrument.
  • Track #3 cracks me up to no end.
  • I read a really interesting interview with Mark Ronson, so I decided to seek out his music. Turns out it's really good.
  • Tracks # 5 & 6 are taken from an episode of Family Guy called "15 Seconds of Shame."
  • Track #8 is an Israeli singing in English.
  • Track #10 is on this mix because I read an article about Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel in Slate. Turns out he wrote this album after reading Anne Frank's diary. Now I have to listen to the whole album straight through a few times. This topic may find its way into a lesson plan of mine.
  • Track #11: I've had this 90s ditty kicking around the old noggin for a while. I even asked my resident 90s expert for the artist and title twice before it sunk in.
  • Tracks #12 & 13: Yes, Hooverphonic and Supreme Beings of Leisure are making music again.
  • Track #14: I was going to take it out because I already have so many tracks by Erlend Øye on my mixes. I was going to delete it from the playlist when I got home, but I kept on humming the tune for the song as I thought of deleting it. Feel free to delete it yourself.
  • Track #16: On the cab ride home from the Jet Set photo shoot, I the classic rock DJ introduced this song from the first Stevie Nicks/Lindsey Buckingham infused Fleetwood Mac album. The voice sounded like Carol Miller, a favorite DJ of mine from my youth. This track is awesome. Takes a while to build, but worth the patience.
  • Track #19 is taken from a live recording of Herbie Hancock in Tokyo in 1978. A friend at work gave me that concert (and a couple other very choice concerts). I listened to the recording about 4-5 times in one day. Although I selected this track, all the rest of the tracks were equally incredible.

Technical Notes:

I'm relieved to present the final installment of my birthday fest series. I can tell that it's time for me to put an end to this project. When I arrived home and turned on my computer, I almost started my FTP program before opening a browser. That's geek talk for, "I was ready for this project to be done already." I've been playing a shell game with my various drives and computers. First, I should introduce the various players in the mix making process:

Computers:
  • The Heap: A desktop computer that doesn't have any office software, but does have the GIMP image editing program. I seem to have managed to uninstall Internet Explorer, which isn't all that easy to do, and produces lots of other side effects. The Heap is unable to locate it's optical drives: so I can't really install any new software if it comes on a disc, and I can't burn or rip CDs with it. I tried attaching an external burner, but it can't seem to figure those out either. It has no problem working with the scanner or the USB turntable.
  • The Blue Meanie: A five year old laptop that wheezes like a chain smoker whenever its on for more that 2.5 seconds. This computer has the mixmeister software, which I use to make the mixes. Mixmeister now has a number of other versions of the software, which I have tested, but call me old fashioned, I like version 5 (Pro). Anyhow, the computer's headphone jack is all facocked, so it doesn't take to external speakers too well. So when I have long periods of mixing to do, I plug in an external sound card, and jack the speakers into there. This computer has no problem using external CD/DVD drives, so long as they are not internal.
Drives:

"my little blue book"
500 gigs. Nearly full. Primary music library.

"the backup drive"
500 gigs. Supposed to have the exact same data as my little blue book, but doesn't.
Doubles as the travel library.

"slartibartfast"
2 gigs. It's also my mp3 player. As a flash drive, it's very slow.

"only one gig"
1 gig. (der!) Very speedy transfer rate, but limited storage capacity.

"old stick"
256 megabytes. Very small capacity, but sometimes the other drives are full or in use. Comes in handy from time to time.

So when I say I've been playing a shell game, I mean that sometimes information is on one drive and not another, and I'm not always sure what's where. So, for reasons I won't go into now, the sixth mix, will not be available as a wma file, and the songs will not be mixed. This may present some kind of problem since many of the songs build up slowly. Some of my fans/critics might welcome this change, since they don't like the way I impose samples on other tracks, or move the beginning or end of a track to make it mix better.

One last thing:
Thank you for listening!
For all my complaining above, I really enjoyed working on this project.
I hope you enjoy listening to the music.
Maybe, just maybe, these songs will accompany you in your own life.
Through the good times, and the bad.
When you're surrounded by loved ones, or when you're all alone.
Through your youth, and into your old age.

"The memories of a man in his old age
Are the deeds of a man in his prime."

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