hi again, it's me...still sick, still bored, and having more to rant about. Today's - *ahem* - this afternoon's topic is that of musicians that have been influential to my music-making (coming soon to a blog near you). I haven't met any of these in person but I listen to them all the time and they've rubbed off on my music making in various ways.
Oh and I should warn you in advance - if you just read these for comic relief, skip this one. I promise I'll be back with more witty banter on nothing in particular tomorrow.
Anyway, first up is probably my fav artist of all time, Rich Mullins.
Rich was born in 1955 to a farming family in Indiana; he spent his adult life on the road writing music, performing, and serving on a Navajo reservation. His most well-known song by far is Awesome God, but his other stuff is great too. His lyrics are clever and faith-filled, and he is an excellent musician as well. Here are two of my fav songs by him:
Next up is Vangelis. He was a pioneer of synthesizer music back in the 70's and 80's and still comes out with a new soundtrack occasionally. He is probably best known for his song Chariots of Fire, from the movie of the same title, which has since been (seemingly) universally associated with slow motion running. Actually, there is no slow motion running accompanying that song in the movie, so I'm not sure where the connection came from.
Vangelis was the one who inspired me to start moving towards electronic music as a means of making the songs I'd been trying (and only sometimes succeeding) to make using acoustic instruments. The results of this will be on here soon.
Anyway here's another song of his from the movie 1492 titled Conquest of Paradise.
Thirdly I'd have to say I'm addicted to a certain little something called Owl City. Owl City, a pseudonym of musician Adam Young, is an electronic music project with whimsical vocals and a variety of electronic styles. Though Young has produced acoustic singer/songwriter music under the name Sky Sailing and a pretty great collection of ambient instrumental music under the name Port Blue, Owl City is by far his most well-known project, especially songs such as Fireflies and Good Time. Here are three more of his songs from the album All Things Bright and Beautiful which came between the two above-mentioned singles and is, in my opinion, his finest work.
Fourthly (do you say Fourthly? or Fourth? or something else?), Mike Oldfield has been influential in the music I make. Oldfield was a young adult living in Britain when his hit record, Tubular Bells, came out in 1973. This album made history; it was incredibly popular in its time for an instrumental rock record, and sparked a more widespread interest in the fledgeling genre of New Age music. The album's overture was later used in the movie The Exorcist.
Though he has ventured into pop, rock, and even EDM some, his best work in my opinion has been on his instrumental albums. Most of his music consists of guitar-driven new age/soundtrack songs, which I've endeavored to imitate (though without the guitar, as I still haven't learned to play that).
Below are two of his songs; the former conveys the feeling of slowly drifting through space, the latter breaks Oldfield's usual ethereal/mysterious style and instead features a happy "curtain call" for the instruments used in Tubular Bells II.
Finally, there's Avicii...though the (relatively) young Swedish DJ is well-known for his songs Wake Me Up, Hey Brother, Levels, and The Days, I think his finest work was his collaboration with Coldplay in A Sky Full of Stars. Though this song has, like Wake Me Up, been played a lot since its release, it is nevertheless a great example of what Electronic Dance Music could be if producers really put the time, energy, thought, and skill into it.
So...those are kind of my top five influential musicians that I listen to; however, there are some artists I haven't mentioned here whom I listen to a ton too, but I've been blogging for awhile and I still need to mess with the spotify embed stuff so...more ranting about random stuff tomorrow!
hey if you liked this feel free to enter your e-mail in the box at the bottom to receive automatic notifications whenever I post something! Sorry, just a bit of self-promotion :P
Saturday, February 28, 2015
The Title Explained
hey what's up Caleb here...sick in bed and trying to combat boredom by learning how to use this blogspot thing. I'm still not entirely sure what I'm doing, but I'm learning...anyway, to clear up confusion, I'm going to explain my title once and for all, so that if anyone comes to me and asks "Yo, dude, what's with this weird title?" I can tell them to read this.
Anyway, first off, what is MIDI? Well, you can read about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIDI, but if you're one of those people who doesn't want to read the whole article, or if you're one of those people who finds it hard to trust wikipedia on anything (not naming any names), I'll explain it if I can.
Basically MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is just a standard for connecting electronic keyboards to digital synthesizers and computer so that they can control virtually anything that's compatible with them. This is more practical than, say, buying an individual keyboard each time you want a new set of sounds (which can get very expensive VERY quickly).
This is an example of a MIDI keyboard. I have one of these little things and I'm having a lot of fun with it but I haven't fully tested its capabilities yet:
With MIDI you can enter a score into a recording software (such as Garageband or Logic) then edit the notes to make them adhere more to the rhythm, sound different then before, or even play in a different key than you originally recorded them in. This way when your friends listen to your music in the end you end up sounding a lot better than you really are :P
MIDI score editing process in Garageband looks like this:
the little white bars in the bottom box are the notes, and the piano keyboard shows where they are on the scale.
okay that's basically gotten MIDI taken care of (for now, I'll be ranting more about this later). Now onto moofish.
It started in the fall of 2012 when I was planning on starting up my 20 gallon fish tank (more ranting about that coming soon too!). I'd just gone to the library to get a bunch of books on fish care. One of them was this:
this is a very good book by the way and I'd recommend it for any newbie fish people.
anyway if you look below the letters A and Q you will see a strange looking little fish. On closer inspection, it looks something like this:
Anyway, first off, what is MIDI? Well, you can read about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIDI, but if you're one of those people who doesn't want to read the whole article, or if you're one of those people who finds it hard to trust wikipedia on anything (not naming any names), I'll explain it if I can.
Basically MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is just a standard for connecting electronic keyboards to digital synthesizers and computer so that they can control virtually anything that's compatible with them. This is more practical than, say, buying an individual keyboard each time you want a new set of sounds (which can get very expensive VERY quickly).
This is an example of a MIDI keyboard. I have one of these little things and I'm having a lot of fun with it but I haven't fully tested its capabilities yet:
The nice thing about MIDI is that if you prefer pressing little squares instead of piano keys, they have that too:
(both of these can be found here: www.novation.com.)
With MIDI you can enter a score into a recording software (such as Garageband or Logic) then edit the notes to make them adhere more to the rhythm, sound different then before, or even play in a different key than you originally recorded them in. This way when your friends listen to your music in the end you end up sounding a lot better than you really are :P
MIDI score editing process in Garageband looks like this:
the little white bars in the bottom box are the notes, and the piano keyboard shows where they are on the scale.
okay that's basically gotten MIDI taken care of (for now, I'll be ranting more about this later). Now onto moofish.
It started in the fall of 2012 when I was planning on starting up my 20 gallon fish tank (more ranting about that coming soon too!). I'd just gone to the library to get a bunch of books on fish care. One of them was this:
this is a very good book by the way and I'd recommend it for any newbie fish people.
anyway if you look below the letters A and Q you will see a strange looking little fish. On closer inspection, it looks something like this:
Okay okay I added that caption. but still, the fish's mouth is in such a shape that I decided to nickname it the Moofish, since it looked like it was saying moo somehow.
Turns out the fish's name is the Picasso Triggerfish, it lives in the Pacific ocean, and you can read more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagoon_triggerfish
I began to randomly say "moofish" around the house, making up songs about it, and even using it as an internet username. By now the name's been around for over two years and I've learned some handy uses for it:
- Usernames - I'm nearly always Moofishman on internet forums
- Entertaining babies and small children - saying "MOO-FISH!" while making funny faces often makes them giggle. Yesterday I did this to Penelope, my gymnastics teacher's granddaughter who is about one year old, it went over something like this:
me: MOO-FISH!
Penelope: Moofish? (well it sounded like this anyway but it wasn't quite clear what she was saying).
me: Yes, moofish.
Penelope: *dismissively* eh.
- Making up songs (lyrics coming soon)
- Answering just about any question. (What's the meaning of life? Moofish! Or maybe it's bacon if you're a certain person I know who I will not mention).
or
?
That is the question...
- Writing random stories. As part of the One Year Adventure Novel curriculum I had to write a story about something in exactly one minute...mine ended up being about some poor little moofish who lost his raincoat. Don't know quite where that came from but whatev. Also, a couple of summers ago as part of a family camping trip, we all told a story by taking turns saying one sentence. I of course brought an army of moofish into the story; they ended up having to reverse time after my grandmother (www.susanmcgeebritton.com) killed one of the main characters :P
- My future license plate...in my state it's legal to put "moofish" on a vanity plate. Whenever I finally get to work getting my permit and I pass my road test, I just might do that...hopefully to make up for the fact that I'll probably be driving a boring sedan (albiet with a voice-controlled rasperry pi entertainment system).
A google search revealed that moofish is also slang for a manatee, the name of a meat packaging plant in Australia, a random EDM tune nobody has ever heard of, and the name of a band from NZ.
Also the Picasso Triggerfish is the state fish of Hawaii. Why they would bother to actually choose a state fish is beyond me. Maybe the politicians got bored.
What's ironic is that the original Hawaiian name for the moofish - humuhumunukunukuāpuaʻa - literally translates, according to Wikipedia, "Triggerfish with a snout like a pig." So should they really be Oinkfish??? Who knows...
That's about all for now, I've been on the computer for about two hours writing this. More random weirdness coming sometime or other.
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