better no more trains

march 8, 2003.

Mp3.com's belt tightening is giving rise to a series of annoying of policy changes. 'Basic' (meaning: non paying) artists as of the beginning of this year have seen the number of tracks displayable on their artist page being reduced from virtually unlimited to only three. However, there wasn't any limit set on the number of uploadable tracks, and neither on the number of tracks available for inclusion on 'stations'.
Now of course this is bizarre. A basic artist - if she wishes so - would simply make his entire playlist available in the form of a station.
I don't know whether this kind of a paradox was the reason, but recently, without warning, the policy changed again, and the only basic artist tracks available for stations now are the three displayed on the artist's page. This sudden change of heart has virtually swept clean hundreds, maybe thousands of playlists, by removing much of its content. (A poster on the messageboards estimated the number of tracks that thus became 'invisible' to be some 300.000 ... right or wrong, a lot has become difficult to access.)

So that's what happened to morrei's Better More Trains. From the fourteen available tracks, harvested over the period of almost year, only four were left ... Many of the most interesting ones disappeared. We shut down the station. We'll have to re-think the concept.
The songs are still there, though, and one can access the individual song pages -- if one is able to dig up the URL's somehow, somewhere ... Better enjoy them now. They will not last forever...

MacNoise

february 25, 2003.

I have a Macintosh G4 sitting up here on my desk, continuously humming away right in front of me.
It's an 'older' model (bought it almost three years ago, but well, in computerland of course that is old... I use it for pretty much all of my sound work, and all the other 'pro'-things.)
It is up on my desk because there isn't an easily accessible spot for it under it, or elsewhere on the floor. Which in turn is because my office over time has grown into this crowded, stuffed and badly organized place. And it simply never seems to be the right time to do something about that ... Despite the many reasonable reasons.

For one: the machine's noise would probably get on my nerves far less somewhere down there than it does now up here.
Fortunately these days I ever so often just can shut it down, and continue to work on the portable version that I got myself a couple of months ago.

The newest 'desktop' models, though, apparently, truly are the top.
Noise-wise that is. MacNoiseWise ....
I came across a site dedicated to just that: the noise of G4's -- www.g4noise.com ...

Best of all, there's a page containing eight mp3-files with recordings to witness...

Now how about that for an addition to your collection of samples & sounds? Me, I downloaded all 8 of them ...

[ "What do you mean: 'Malicious Entry'? Me? But of course I love my Macs, I do! Wouldn't dream working with anything else ..." ]

[ added dec. 29th 2003 : Time passes, and now there's already the G5 ... the G4Noise site moved on, accordingly. The above page mentioned page with mac-noise recordings apparently has become a tutorial on audio recording of fan noise. ]

out of the blue

february 19, 2003.

Another fascinating 'year-long' concept. This one as dreamed up by Chris Cutler, it's realization made possible by ResonanceFM, London's first radio art station, run by the LMC, the London Musicians' Collective (a charity and membership organisation promoting improvised and experimental music). ResonanceFM started its broadcasting on may 1st 2002, on 104.4fm from the heart of London, and is simultaneously streamed on the web.

Since july 1st of last year CC has been running a program for ResonanceFM called Out of the Blue, broadcasted every day between 23.30-00.00 GMT. His idea was to have each of these daily half hours consist of an unedited real-time recording of that same half hour - as heard through somebody's ears somewhere in the world.

"A daily hole in space and time," CC writes on the pages of his web site dedicated to Out of the Blue. Have a look at the archives, browse through the long list of daily half hour 'open windows' featured on OotB since last july.

I only discovered ResonanceFM and Chris's program a couple of weeks ago, and thought it pretty unfortunate to have to read, soon after, that, partly because of the rate of flow of incoming pieces there appeared to be insufficient recordings to maintain the program daily over the coming weeks, and that therefore ResonanceFM has decided to cut the program, starting this february to three days a week: friday, saturday and sunday.
Sort of spoils the concept.

I did some MD recording - with OotB in mind - this past week, and will send some of that in for the program: half an hour inside the local postoffice.. I like that recording a lot, but it's in the morning, so not the targetted thirty minutes (which here in Paris run from half past midnight till one); and half an hour - the right one - out in the street where I live: traffic passing in waves (lights!) and the late night (relative) calm give that piece almost a 'sea'-like character, an impression (illusion) really interrupted (disturbed) only once (at about 5 minutes to 1), by a group of talking & laughing passers-by.

[ Other one year projects: 365Days, My2k ]