Web 3.1 interface

One day all menu pages will look like this…

Are synthesisers “real” music instruments?

Yes. If flutes are musical instruments, so are most other things.

Penny whistles are OK though.

CD prices cut

We’ve reduced the prices of all our CDs. Those that cost £7.50 are now available (until further notice) for £5 (that’s under US$10 or a little over €6). The release that got Earthrid started, Vestigial Digital by Carya Amara, is available for just £3!

Postage and packing is £1 ($2), to any destination, for any number of CDs.

Here’s a list of all the new prices, with links to album information and audio.

Canon scanner software: FAIL

Oh, OK! Sorry to have troubled you! Thanks for your help!

(Never forget: the user is there for the software. Don’t give them an inch. It is a privilege for them to be allowed to use your products - if they work, it’s just a bonus!).

Hi, I’m a Mac

I’m a Mac but I’m too busy to listen to the likes of you.

Talk to the spinning wheel, because the keyboard and mouse aren’t listening.

beachballbeachballbeachballbeachball

Please hold. Your typing is important to me.

beachballbeachballbeachballbeachballbeachballbeachball

(It’s probably the showiness of this damned thing that makes it so annoying. A box saying “Wait” would be no more rude, and less ostentatious).

Now we have missed RSS Awareness Day

It was yesterday. We weren’t aware.

You can search for it - they don’t deserve a link, for being (a) not getting the word out on time and (b) not hosting much other than a badly made video about something called “the Inner-Ned”.

We like RSS a lot, actually. It’s a very fast way of accessing information. Whether or not it will put you in touch with your “inner Ned” is another question.

No doubt today is also a special day of great significance, and no doubt a Web site with 2 or maybe even 3 pages has been created to celebrate it. Clearly we are not the people to advise you.

Tapir Day? Just missed it!

We just missed another global event: Tapir Day! Tapirs are very pleasant creatures to be around - very calming. Some wildlife parks and zoos keep them; sadly the way things are going, they will only exist in captivity.

Videos and photos don’t tend to do them justice but this one is not too bad.

R.I.P: Bebe Barron, Tristram Cary

Bebe Barron died on 20th April, at the age of (most sources say) 82. With her then husband Louis, she created the still stunningly unique electronic soundtrack to the classic science fiction film Forbidden Planet. This news item from Variety is refreshingly to the point. Refer to the usual sources for a selection of facts and hype - but the Barrons were genuine pioneers in electronic music, and their legacy of work remains in a class of its own.

Not so widely reported is the fact that just a few days later, on the 24th April, Tristram Cary died, also at the age of 82. He created music using tape, electronics and scores for conventional acoustic instruments, and coincidentally we were enjoying his soundtrack to the original appearance of the Daleks in an episode of vintage Dr Who from 1963 just last week. This posting seems informative although it concerns itself particularly with Tristram Cary’s cartoon soundtracks. Other posts mention his role in the British synthesiser manufacturer EMS, whereas the BBC describes him as “the Murray Gold of his day”, predictably missing the salient points entirely. More helpfully the Music Thing site links to an old but relevant documentary called What the Future Sounded Like. Let’s watch it now. And then we should watch Forbidden Planet yet again, to remind ourselves of what the future used to look like too, back in the days when at least some of the time people looked forward to it!

R.I.P.

Information wants to be fixed

It would be nice if the leeches who run lyrics sites could spare some time from copying content from each other to run a spell-checker occasionally. And does Google need to index all of them, since they are practically mirrors of each other?

Maybe we are being unfair. Maybe songs do contain words such as “watchibg” and the people who work on lyrics sites are the only ones with hearing acute enough to realise, so naturally they all end up with identically strange accounts of lyrics. Surely they wouldn’t just copy other sites’ content in order to attract revenue from advertising? Surely not.

Perhaps they have the same kind of ear wax build-up, or arthritis of a very unusual kind that contorts fingers into mistyping in quite predictable ways.

We should not jump to conclusions and instead think the best of people. However, we will keep watchibg for clues.

The economics of “true fans”

The Technium gets ambient musician Robert Rich’s thoughts on “The Reality of Depending on True Fans”. He raises some interesting points.

The following is mentioned in passing:

Companies can use demographic models and track people’s search patterns to pander to their initial tastes and to strengthen those tastes, rather than broaden their horizons.

We are definitely more interested in new horizons and get puzzled by otherwise reviews (of our releases or anyone else’s) that say that a recording is perhaps “not for everyone” - as if anything other than air can be (that’s “air” with a small “a”, not “Air” the (French) band of course). Well, anyway, Robert Rich is a “big name” from where we’re standing but apparently even he won’t always get more than 30 people to turn out to his gigs. Bear that in mind the next time someone starts ranting that musicians should (sic) survive on T-shirt sales and playing live…
Another quote:

I feel in retrospect like I snuck in under the collapsing framework of independent distribution, at a time where small companies could cast a medium-sized fishing net, to catch the interest of listeners who would otherwise never have known they liked this type of music.

So, the Robert Riches of tomorrow should not give up the day job, since they will need it to support their musical activities.. but for those who can find the time outside work, there is unprecedented musical freedom since pandering to an audience is no longer a requirement. Of course, having basic consideration for some sort of audience (real or potential or hypothetical) is polite and a precaution against total self-indulgence. Well, read that article if you haven’t yet - it’s more interesting than this!