Smalls is your typical mediam sized rock club, kinda dingy but not gross, built into an old church.  The weird part is that it is literally in the middle of a very residential neighborhood in Millvale, but I guess they have good soundproofing.  It is extremely rare that a band I like plays there, so I doubt I’ll be back any time soon.  Interesting experience anyway.

Dragon Age

Torchlight

He felt they were nothing alike, many games use this relatively common interface.  The only thing I could think of was listening to a techno fan from the 90′s try to explain the various permutations of Drum’n'Bass to me, someone who’d only heard “the good stuff” in passing, or even a Phish fan explaining why this part in this individual performance stood out from the hundreds of concert recordings he’d listened to.  There is a whole language you learn as you become familiar with media, and on the outside it can all seem incredibly similar.  My take has usually been that the minutiae of any musical culture were likely not as important as what “floated to the top,” but in retrospect I’ve probably missed out just in not being able to examine the entire breadth of such things.  Not the case with Phish, I guarantee.

Looking back, I think I spent a lot of time obscuring my lack of talent by using an effects pedals (although not nearly as many as most people, I do have some sense of pride in squeezing as much as I could out of my crappy delay).  We were able to get some pretty sweet sounds going, but I think I should have had some more fundamentals.  Back in the day we’d argue till morning about the value of traditional musical education versus “pure” expression of creativity and I still believe that each has its place, however in retrospect a lot of those types of music look more to me like youthful exuberance and naivete both on behalf of the listener and the performer.  Again, they have their place too.  The bottom line is when I pick up an acoustic guitar I really wish I could do more with it.  Maybe when I get some time I can do something about it, but probably not.

Corey Layman, the songwriter behind the project Developer, has been active in Pittsburgh since the 90′s and he’s always been one of my favorites.  Early on he fronted the band Hovland, who were one of the few local acts I really followed out of not just a sense of kinship and community but because I thought their talent could reach far beyond Pittsburgh.  Like so many acts with a lot of potential, they made a big push and then things seemed to slowly fall away.  But Corey has been plugging along since, writing and performing as Developer (both as a full band and solo) as well as playing in the legendary local act the Karl Hendriks Trio and myriad other projects.

He started Project 52 in September and it is awe inspiring.  The plan is one song a week for an entire year and so far he’s made good on it: Week 18 just went up.  He’s also managed to compile the first 13 weeks into an album, appropriately titled Project 52: Volume 1 and put it up in all the usual places.

The music itself is definitely of a mid-90′s indie rock vintage; guitar driven and emotional with vocals that are almost plain spoken until he invokes some melody and puts a soaring harmony on top of it that strike right in the heart . His best songs are nostalgic and almost mournful, with a really solitary vibe and there are no shortage of his best on Project 52: Volume 1.

Check it out and buy it, and make sure you read his blog posts about each song- each entry runs down not only how you might go about creating a song a week but the tools he uses and the limits he’s constantly got to push against.  Signs the world has changed: The majority of recording is being done on his iPhone!

Well done, sir.

The stfun00b submission for the February 2008 54 Hour Movie Project.   The third in a series investigating the ecstacy of repetition.

Music by Manuel Gottsching

youz a trick, originally uploaded by hetty_bembler.

]]> http://avec.teamforce.org/music/youz-a-trick/feed/ 0 http://avec.teamforce.org/music/end-of-line-for-drm/ http://avec.teamforce.org/music/end-of-line-for-drm/#comments Mon, 02 Apr 2007 13:20:36 +0000 Luke http://avec.teamforce.org/music/end-of-line-for-drm/ EMI is dropping DRM.  It is now only a matter of time before the rest of the music industry follows suit.  Hopefully Apple’s deal with them will also allow indies to sell their content without DRM.

Working out became a far different experience as well, as suddenly I was forced to hear the dance-pop on the gym stereo but also the assorted grunts and other sounds made by the other weightlifters.  All typically events really, but again I’ve been so accustomed to my own internal soundtrack it was absolutely alien.

Is it a good idea to constantly stream information into my head?  At high volumes?  All these times when I’m exercising or walking to work I could be thinking, instead of consuming.  It seems I consume so much information I may not have time to process it.  And of course there’s the issue of my hearing loss, which Dawn will tell you is very real indeed.