record labels and the "real" music biz...

This is a very good article that describes the some of the mechanics that are involved in a record contract.

The interesting thing about this article, which I came across from a mention here, is that it made it easy to see what a record label does and how a label can actually make money if it is successful.

There are thousands of CDs in a mainstream-type music store from hundreds of artists that you will never buy. If you take a moment to consider it from the store's point of view, it is often the case that the slots on the shelf contain product that does not move. But it gets rotated out to somewhere and it is not like it physically spoils, so as long as enough of it sells it's ok.

From the record label's point of view, there are two kinds of musical artists: those that are 'recouped', and those that are not. That is, those whose output has more than paid for the cost of the promoting and publishing work that the label does, and those whose output has not.

There are two kinds of problems for the record label: 1) the kinds of problems when they don't have enough recouped output, and 2) when they have too much.

The first problem is the one we think that most labels currently have: too much cost and not enough hits. Solution, concentrate on established acts.

The second problem doesn't seem like a problem, all the artists are recouped by big hits. But it can be a problem because when your investment is small but your return is huge, you end up owing a lot of taxes. So you introduce some additional overhead into the mix, and you pay less taxes.

So, from the label perspective, the artists like the one who posted this article are really just "ballast". That they get upset when they get cut loose is irritating to the label.

last.fm has gone wonky on ol' Utenzil

So Last FM is a pretty nice music site for independent artists. You can stream whole tracks, picking and choosing from tracks from an artist's catalog. When you enter "Utenzil" into the search widget on the first page, before you even press enter it pops up all of the albums as suggested results.

But, if you do press enter, you get nothing. Then, if you go to the third album, "Dog's Dinner", you get some compilation of bands ?? They have made a mistake. Poor Utenzil has been misrepresented, as well as the groups on the compilation. Waaah. And they were doing so well.

back to a more musical vein

There are so many things that you can do with Ableton Live. It is truly engrossing. Drum Racks, their virtual drumkit framework, for example, and slicing loops to midi.

If you have a beat that you like and you can tap it out on a table or a coffee can or congas or tupperware or what have you, record it to a clip in Live.

Then apply the 'slice to midi' function to the clip (look this up in the manual if you want details, just describing the process here).

It slices out the transients and plugs the samples into a drum rack, quantizing the transients to midi notes and plugging those into a midi clip.

Then, the bomp you did in the middle of the tupperware for the kick, you can replace with a real kick, wherever it appears in the rack. The 'slap' you did for the snare replace with a real snare, and the 'tap' for the hi hat with a real hi hat, etc.

To add a bassline, route the midi from the drum clip into an adjacent midi track and drop in a bass instrument plug. Transpose it down if you need with a pitch plug. Drop in a scale plug and turn off the notes you don't want to hear. If you want to vary the length of the notes, drop in a note length plug, and use an envelope in a dummy clip to mix up the note lengths.

For some rhythm/harmony type overlay, duplicate the bass track, replace the bass with a pad or keys type plug, transpose up an octave or two or three, adjust the note length clip to play longer notes, and then drop in a chords plug in there somewhere, maybe in front of the scale plug.

Finally, drop a rack that mixes up the rhythm of the drums a little, it might contain Live Cut or dblue Glitch or Beat Repeat or something similar.

Then sit back and listen to it play, adjust here and there.

Pain, being in

I have some level of constant pain, and have had for about half of my life so far. It has been worse lately-- now, I am not complaining about so much as noting its effect, because I think most people are in the same situation.

Since I broke my leg, it hurts off and on throughout the day. My back is messed up because I have some extruded lumbar discs, and also am prone to lower back muscle tears and spasms, so it is rare that I don't have some sort of pain from my back.

The soles of my feet tend to hurt. This is because I was near a lightning strike, and it ran up through the ground and up my legs. It was a very unusual, highly unpleasant experience. It wasn't particularly scary, because it was impossible to know what was going on as it was going on, but it was very disturbing afterwards. I may have posted about here somewhere in this blog but i can't find it.

I broke my toe a while back, also, and it is stiff.

So these are the more prominent discomforts, they are a little more noticable in the colder weather. But I've had these for a long time now.

All these things cause one to make nearly unconscious accounting for them. You hesitate a little more before moving, plan your steps a little more, you think ahead when you are walking through a store because if a cart comes out from an aisle, it hurts if you have to turn to avoid it. I think about how this sort of discomfort has to affect professional athletes, because these mental allowances as well as the sensation of pain itself is draining.

And no way am I in as much pain as a lot of people are, so again I'm not complaining but I'm noting that if you think that most people are in pain, then it helps to cut them some consideration when they are not seeming to act or move they way you'd like.

because of the Pain drain.

wondering about things I know nothing about...

Neutrinos. They started out supposedly massless, but then it was decided they have mass. What if sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't? Also, if they didn't have mass, they would travel at the speed of light. What if sometimes they did, and sometimes they didn't?

It is important to wonder about things you know nothing about, because it allows you to believe you may be clever while you are finding out about them.

yowee, just when the cosmos seemed all safe..

...something like this happens.

Now, it is kind of interesting how little we heard about this. This waggish headline follows up a little more.

But, in short, a 30 foot or so meteor entered Earth's atmosphere over Indonesia and exploded with the force of a little more than two Nagasaki bombs some thousands of feet up. What's more, "...assuming an estimated size of 5-10 meters, we would expect a fireball event of this magnitude every 2 to 12 years on average...".

REeeaally? More or less random detonations of nuclear weapon proportions every 2-12 years or so? This the first we've heard of this. Maybe a little more interesting is that meteors of this size would not connect with the ground unless they are 25 meters(80 feet or so) across or bigger. And, in that case, some major damage could occur.

Now, even more interestinger, there was no advance indication that this was going to happen. While it is the case that many objects of relatively small diameters are catalogued and more are being discovered all the time, this is no means all of them. And 'relatively small' meaning less than one kilometer estimated diameter, but the majority of those being discovered are larger than the one that blew up over Indonesia, which makes sense because they are bigger, and therefore easier to see.

Many more have been discovered recently, the most ever, and this is because they are looking harder, with better technology-- it is true.

But even so, they missed that one over Indonesia. They would need more telescopes, more money to build them, to catch more.

One 80 footer could wreak havoc.

The speed of light is constant, right?

I read this article and found it interesting. I do not understand all of it, but I get the gist of it.

The gist of it is, a new paper has been written that proposes that gravity seems to have worked differently 8-10 billion years ago.

Gravity from a mass is known to affect space and time around it, to "pull" on it, and this is demonstrated by the effect of "gravity lensing". The larger the mass, the more its gravity might affect light passing near it, this is called gravity lensing. Non-visible objects with great mass are sometimes discovered through the observation of this lensing effect.

This effect is defined in the Relativistic framework as an effect on space and time. The effect was regarded as being equally 'active' on both: each would be 'molded' by gravity in equal measure.

But this new study indicates that, for at least a small portion of deep space, that gravity seems to have had a greater distortive effect on time than space 8-10 billion years ago, three times as strong an effect on time compared to its effect on space.

This would seem to mean that light traveling through a gravitational field that is 8-10 billion light years away would be travelling at a different distance/t than 'local light' does, because "t" would be different-- significantly different-- and distance would be different but not proportionally different when compared to local light.

Light is supposed to travel 186,000 miles per second, per second. But if gravity is messing about with the base values of 'miles' and 'seconds' with different 'pressures' applied to each, then that is very interesting.

Now, it seems like if light gets bent, and slowed down, but it shouldn't, then there is where it should of gone however fast in the absence of gravity as well as where it actually did go. And stuff moves around, so the light may be affected or not.

So what is 'there' where it should have gone if it wasn't affected? Well, dark-- light cannot go there, because while there is space for it there is no time for it.

Gravity distorting time at a different rate than it bends space is a really interesting thing to think about.