John Tooker

The Sixty One (A new music website)

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 07:44:15 -0800

So in July of last year I presented an idea I had for a "Fuzz.com game" that I thought would help draw new ears and eyes to the site.

For the most part someone else seems to have made a site just like it!

http://www.thesixtyone.com

Go take a look at it.

Here is my old post:

"As I was exploring fuzz today I started to ponder why fuzz is not growing as fast as I would've thought it would by this point. My first thought is that at the moment MySpace might be benefiting from being "the devil you know" and people might be sticking with it for the same reason some people stay in abusive relationships. ("Deep down Newcorps really loves me...", "I'd lose all my friends if I left now...", "I can't start over in a new relationship after investing this much time...")

So as I see it the problem could be a lack of distinction from other sites like myspace, virb or purevolume leads people to not "pull the trigger" and set up an account on a new site. So I think it's a case where Fuzz needs to immediately offer something different to the users to hook them in.

(I'm not worried about hooking musicians because I think that normal market forces will handle that fairly well. What Fuzz needs is customers to put it simply. If they are buying or browsing doesn't matter since interaction is what feeds a site like fuzz anyway and that requires lots of virtual bodies.)

My suggestion is a game.

Backstory:

A few weeks ago my girlfriend stopped playing World of Warcraft. She had been playing everyday for two years. Really. She didn't play when we had no power in South Florida for two weeks after Hurricane Wilma and when the internet connection broke for two days. Other than that every day for four to eight hours she played that game. As with most people her addiction didn't go away she transfered it to other things. Her Myspace page suddenly came back to life and she signed up to Digg and Facebook and started reading every web page devoted to dogs since she wants to get to replace her World Of Warcrack "doll" that she used to play with with one that barks.

The other day she showed me a flash game that uses gravity properties to alter a bullet fired at an object. CLICK HERE to see the game. So things like these flash games and all the add-ons/customizing for Facebook are replacing the exploratory nature and puzzle solving of her former Warcrack. The iLike game on Facebook immediately snagged her with it's time limited guessing of artist or song.

She has also become very active on Digg rating stories and discussing things in the comments section of each story. This interaction is replacing the interaction that World of Warcraft uses to hook it's users. (Anyone leaving the game is leaving a group of friends they only have because of the game and won't otherwise have any real reason to speak with.)

When it comes to music she mostly sticks to music she already knows but will occasionally ask me to show her some new music that she might like. When she came to Fuzz she found a few things she liked but hasn't really been back much because it lacked a way for her to passively explore music and still have a rewarding sense of discovery.

The game:

Imagine a tab on Fuzz labeled Game or Explorer.

You click on the tab and a song begins to play without any sort of identity to it. No song title. No band name. No picture. Just a song playing with maybe a slider to fast forward into a later part of the song.

Below the song is a list of options to choose from:
I love it! Save it for me.
I like it.

It's okay and it might grown on me.
Not bad but not for me.
I don't like it and I don't think other people will.
Hell no never again!
Pause game.

Based on the players selection the following could happen:
I love it! Rates the song 5 stars and adds it to a "5 Star Playlist" on the users account. Each song in the list could have a "write review" button as well. A user option on their profile could be set to include the artist into the players favorites list.

I like it. Rates the song 4 stars and adds it to a "4 Star Playlist" on the users account. Each song in the list could have a "write review" button as well.

It's okay and it might grow on me. Rated 3 stars and added to 3 star playlist.

Not bad but not for me. Rated 3 stars.

I don't like it and I don't think other people will. Rated 2 stars.

Hell No never again! Rated 1 star.

Pause game pauses the song until the player returns and restarts the song when clicked again.

Once the player makes a choice the next song is chosen at random based on the tastes of other players and the weight each song has from their votes. So a song that has been rated 1 star in the game more times the rated 5 stars it's "gravity" would pull it's chances down for appearing unless the user shows a trend towards enjoying that kind of music based on other players who share similar tastes. As the player votes he should start leaning towards other players who vote similarly so that he could find more music he might enjoy without having any preconceived notions about what he was hearing. However the player should still get a degree of random unrelated songs at regular intervals so that he has a chance to further explore even an artist he previously hated. (Maybe add a Randomness slider so that the player could weight down the likly hood of a new discovery but not eliminate randomness entirely.) Songs could also go through cycles of increasing/decreasing chance of play based on there orbits so that an older song could be new again and new songs don't gain or lose any advantage for being new.

The idea could be thought of as a blind taste test for music with the choices being determined by something similar to gravity in the universe. Large (well loved) songs would have neighboring planets or moons of other songs from that artist but would also have their gravity affected by other planets and suns to create a solar system that might have a pull on other objects in space further away. The player could be thought of as an asteroid flying through a system sometimes getting pulled by a large single body or collection of smaller bodies to affect it's path.

Every musician on Fuzz could be at an equal footing for finding their particular audience without having to cater to anything other than the songs that they choose to enter into the game.

It wouldn't be a popularity contest because it would be blind and a weighted version of random selection that each player would drive instead of any one taste maker.

You could also create a weekly podcast (or playlist) of the "Best of the Fuzz game" from that week. The songs could be selecte based on the same gravity idea."

A Thanksgiving Prayer

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 18:41:41 -0800

I'm posting this one again for old friends and new ones alike...

Gig Math Part Two - Sound instead of picture

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 14:12:37 -0700

The last few weeks I've been thinking a lot about the process of making music recordings and why I am finding it less satisfying now then I did when I was a teenager with a 8-track cassette recorder and a few guitar effects pedals.

I think I have may have an answer to not only my dissatisfaction with my own recordings development but also the general state of the music industry.

Part 1:
Why music is boring when it stays in it's safe little holes:

When you first hear a new song on the radio or a podcast you have no frame of reference, you have no idea what will happen next in any given song and that can be very exciting for a listener. But the minute you listen to music with no surprises your mind is bored. It gets nothing new to experience and no joy of discovery.

I know that many forms of music rely heavily on strict formulas and structures to fit into a mold set by the music that came before it. In classical music ideas about harmony and theme and variation don't allow for a sudden pop chorus to appear. In hip-hop a song must be in 4/4 at all costs even if the snare doesn't hit on the 2 and 4 the kick must boom loudest on the one. Blues must feature either a guitar or piano to express the songs mood in an instrumental fashion. Trace must have a drop in the middle so that a 16th note snare can build it back up. Pop music must have a chorus part that is bigger then the verses of the song and most likely will repeat the chorus twice at the end of the song. With a few notable exceptions Jazz requires someone playing a horn or someone playing an instrument as if it where a horn to play lead lines. (Why not a cello being played like a cello instead?)

Now think of the artists who's names outlive the genre they are associated with.

Johnny Cash sang gospel songs as if he learned them from the devil not from Jesus. When he sings "I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die" you believe the character in the song did just that. But even more so the recordings themselves have a character of danger. The band clearly fuck up on some of the early recordings but it doesn't matter because the band self corrects and the nervous energy goes up and therefore the listener has even less certainty about where the song is going.

When a person first hears the early Public Enemy records they have no moment of rest and comfort. Horns squeak and squeal with out regard to meter, key or tempo. You are under assault from the first hit. You cling for dear life to those drum beats because without them you will be lost on that first listen. Now compare that to the more recent music in the hip-hop world. Do you every have that discomfort past the first listen? Or do you know the song so well the first time you hear it that you can sing the chorus by the time it ends?

Think of The Clash. They never let the audience determine what the next record sounded like. They always elected to be unpredictable. Now compare them to a more recent successful band like Linkin Park. Every song from them seems to have the singing chorus of earnestness no matter what album it is.

In the world of pop, a band like Maroon 5 does well because they make singles that sound like they where written by Lionel Richie and Hall and Oats in the 1980s. Again both very strong artists to emulate but why not mix it together with something different?

In the pop rock world we seem to be flooded by bands that what to be whiney versions of 80s hair metal. (In fact most of them seem to want to be the singer from Ratt at least in appearance.) And all of them are drowning in the same overuse of auto-tune that has already killed all the life in the newer country music songs.

Part 2
Auto-Tune

It's an idea and a product, like how any tissue is also a Kleenex regardless of the brand. Auto-tune is a product made by a software company called Antares. It's the way to make someone who is not a good singer sound like they are a good singer at least as far as pitch is concerned. You can really hear it over used here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oy-nqyfR_w4

That should give you an idea of what it does but now here's a secret, it gets used by most pop and country stars today and more then a few hip-hop and emo rock guys as well. They just don't way over do it most of the time. Auto-tune is like salt, use only as much as needed because using to much and things will taste bad.

Part 3
Cut and Paste music

In bluegrass, blues, rock and a few other forms of music musicians learn songs by hearing other musicians play them. In classical music, older pop songs and jazz the musicians are likely to learn the songs from standard music notation and then adapt their performance of that music to fit the direction that is requested of them. In both these instances the musician is asked to interpret the song as they play it and the songs structure can undergo radical restructuring between each performance. Songs can be sped up and slowed down as needed. Note and whole key changes can be made by saying a few words to the musicians. In addition to that each of the musicians will adapt to what they hear from the other musicians for each performance. So it becomes very unlikely the song will be the same each time a band or orchestra performs it even with the same players.

When Sugar Hill Records achieved it's early successes with Rappers Delight and The Message it had a major advantage over the P-Diddys of the world. Sugar Hill had a house band. They used samples from records but usually the foundation of a song was played or programmed by musicians.

In current Hip-Hop, dance and pop music things are very different from that. Today one person who may or may not be a musician programs most of the music alone or with one or two others. When they write tracks they usually are working from one single musical idea repeating constantly for the 3-6 minutes of the songs length. They will drop things in and out and introduce new themes but you can fast forward most pop songs and not notice a difference musically from one verse to the next. The song may be great but it is almost never alive and dangerous to the listener. Their will not be an extra bar added to a verse for no reason. You can count on each chorus being almost exactly the same, only slightly bigger, as the song goes on.

Part 4
Seeing is not hearing

Okay so that gives you an idea of where I think the problems lie but what do I think is the root cause of all of these problems with newer music?

Throughout the evolution of music you can see several stages that are defined by a piece of music technology and it's adaption into various musical forms. The possibilities of the piano over the harpsichord moved classical musics into more dynamics. The electric guitar takes the blues into rock n' roll. Cheap horns in New Orleans give ragtime the push into Jazz. The multitrack tape recorder and mixing boards give us records fill with a "wall of sound" in the 60s. The cheaper drum machines give techno it's rhythm. The digital sampler and turntable give hip-hop it's foundation. Synthesizers give us the romantic sweep of songs called New Wave.

The latest technological innovation to alter music is the timeline that is available in most recording software. A timeline is a graphical representation of the music as waveforms or blocks that represent the sounds recorded. With this timeline you can edit sound like you can with a word processor, you can copy and paste like you could words and sentences, rearranging the structure of a piece of music and correcting problems much like you can with a spell checker. Both timing and pitch can be altered and whole sections of music can be repeated endlessly with no additional musical effort.

At no other stage in the evolution of music could one minute earlier also be then, now and a few seconds in the future. When a musician plays a song with a band or reading from sheet music his mind is usually in the moment or thinking of the future. He or she will not be thinking of a moment that has happened in the past as happening again in the future. They might think how they'd like to play that part better or differently but they are not thinking about how to bring the past into the present. When I record myself or others today that is exactly what I am thinking about. I wonder if I can copy that part to the next section if I screw it up. I am not locked into the immediacy of the moment. I am thinking of the timeline that stretches left to right on my computer screen showing me every perfect and imperfect part and how I can improve them with a few clicks of a mouse.

Editing audio like you can edit text can be a very creative endeavor. You can create things that are physically impossible and strikingly beautiful or disturbing. You can pretend you can play an instrument that you really can't. But the more I think about it the more I think that the beauty of some songs are the flaws and unintended moments of musical inspiration.

Watching Pink Floyd record Dark Side of The Moon on DVD recently served as a reminder to me that these guys had no idea what the waveform of the keyboard part looked like they just wanted it to sound good. I have recording equipment at my disposal that rivals in quality anything available then yet I still don't have an album that comes near that level of musical expression. Now admittedly I am not writing and playing music just to make a record like Dark Side but it is certainly one of many motivations for me as a person. I don't think that seeing musical performances is solely to blame for my falling short of my goal but I think it contributes a fair bit to it. Instead of listening to the notes that are played I'm watching to see if the waveforms line up. Instead of playing it ten times I'll play it five and make a combination out of those parts that I find satisfying even though that might take as much time as playing it another five times. I don't have to put my whole self into a performance since I can always just fix any mistakes out of existence.

I think that the solution to this problem is for musicians to use the timeline in software as little as possible and only to accomplish a very specific goal. They shouldn't live there. Instead keep the mixer window upfront since that is where more musical changes can be made. Instead of overusing auto-tune spend the time to track a great performance and then leave it alone. Try not to use copy and paste as a way to save time and effort. Put your fingers on your instrument and play instead. That goes for engineers as well. Faders are more musical then mouse clicks so use your ears and not your eyes.

...or not.
-Tooker
Marqui Adora

Radiohead.com has LP 7 In Raindows for pre-order for Oct 10th.

Sun, 30 Sep 2007 19:05:15 -0700

Discbox with CD and Vinyl and an extra CD of songs and also as a download

Or as a download only

http://www.radiohead.com

Fuzz.com and the barriers to buying on the internet...

Sat, 15 Sep 2007 16:58:13 -0700

When I made a recent request to the Fuzzies to create a player/store for embedding into other sites I also made the suggestion that it use PayPal as a means of checkout. They seemed to like the idea but wondered why I suggested Paypal. So here's my reasons why.

I buy stuff online a few times a year and have had mostly good experiences so far. But I do hesitate before trusting any new vendor online with my credit card information. Sometime it becomes a deal breaker and something like a piece of software I might've bought will go unpurchased if I have to spend the time and trust to enter my CC information.

The bizarre exception for me has been when a site offers a way to purchase using PayPal. One reason is that I don't have to enter as much information which means the transaction is quicker and can be more of an impulse buy then it is when I have to sign up for or enter a ton of information.

I think it is a function of sales that isn't often considered in online purchases but if I need to go get my wallet, find the Credit Card I will use, enter all the information required to register with a site and then make the purchase I have several steps to possibly abort my purchase. If I stood in line at a grocery store and had to enter all of the same information I would likely not return to shop at that location. In the real world credit cards are easier to use then cash which is why the USA has so many people in deep credit card debit. If you take something that is usually easy then start making it hard you will always lose customers.

Now when you compare the experience using paypal to buy something online the experience can become easy again.

Click yes.

Enter your PayPal info.

You are finished.

I think this is very important in the entertainment field. Since it's disposable income that is being spent you don't want the costomer to consider the money they are spending. You want them to have the fewest steps to go from thinking of buying to bought in the shortest time possible.

I think that Apple has really driven this point home with the iTunes music store in several important ways. When you download the software for iTunes you enter your information and can choose to always "buy now" or use a shopping cart. People who choose buy now never do more then click one button and the song, album, movie or TV show is downloaded to their machine and added to their library. They don't get confronted with the money they are spending so the money doesn't register it. People like me who use the shopping cart still have it very easy because we can buy a song with only one additional mouse click per file or buy everything in our carts with one click of the buy all now button.

So the distance to go from finding something to buying it in the iTunes store is at most two mouse clicks of confirmation. Not something that could be beaten so it must at least be matched.

I think this is one of the major things that seperates iTunes from the rest of the online music stores. Most of the others use a web interface that can also direct you to anywhere on the planet. The iTunes Store sticks to the store so you remain single task oriented. (In fact if fuzz created something similar to the iLike sidebar for iTunes that might help bring them into that fold. Wow that would be really cool. Me want!)

When I shop using eMusic my experience is not as nice. Buying an album opens a separate application that then downloads the songs to your hard drive. Once they are downloaded you must then move them into your library. (Sorry PC folks but that shit reminds me of Windows! It reminds me that I'm using a computer which I don't get from Mac applications like iTunes.)

So again why PayPal... It's all about the number of clicks and what I have to type to spend my money. Don't make me work for it or I will lose the burning desire to Rock and/or Roll!

Thanks,
-Tooker
Marqui Adora

P.S. The Fuzz store is easy and simple but I think you could get a few more degrees of comfynesstitude by adding paypal as an option for payment.

And now for something completly different....

Sat, 15 Sep 2007 15:57:42 -0700

Go give The Two Man Gentleman Band A listen. I bet you'll like it.

If you don't at least smile from their songs then you are dead to me...

A few suggestion for Fuzz.com in the form of an evening out...

Sat, 15 Sep 2007 14:37:28 -0700

This post is slightly long and rambling but I think it's fairly short considering the topics I cover: Gig Trading, Event Sharing, "fan Photos", RSS reading blogs, live show ratings,"The buzz" localized, Profiles for clubs promoters and DJs

To begin with, one of the functions I really enjoy about fuzz.com is the browse function and it's integration with google maps.

If you haven't chcecked it out yet then go here for browsing music

http://www.fuzz.com/music/map

And here for browsing people:

http://www.fuzz.com/people/map

You can check out bands in your local area or somewhere you might soon visit very quickly and easily.

One thing that is very obviously missing is a way to view events and show in a given area on a given date. Some sort of spreadsheet/calander pulled from the gigs listed in one area. Several clubs in Miami are still open when the sun is coming up and you might visit several clubs in any given night so having a way to see all the events of one night would be very useful. But the implementation could be handled way better then it is on a site like MySpace.

So let me give you a look into a night out as I think it could be.

Let's say that this guy named Joe decides to head to Miami one night to meet up with his friend Danny. Before heading out, Danny checks Fuzz.com for an overview of the entertainment choices for the night. He sees that Modernage is playing at Studio A near the design district so they decide to start the night by going to that show.

The opening band is an excellent. They play live dub reggae and go by the name Grimy Styles. Joe uses his iPhone to find them on Fuzz and add them to his favorites and gives the show that night a five star rating so that others will know this band really impressed him with their performance. While he's at it he e-mails some of the photos he took of the band to his @fuzz.com photo email address with his iPhone. He adds the tags Fan Photos, Grimy Styles, Live and the date to the title of the e-mail so that they will show up under his "fan photos" and will also appear on the Grimy Styles fuzz page after the band gives the photos a quick approval. (Flickr has a way to auto e-mail a photo to your account like this at the moment)

When Modernage take the stage they play three songs Joe and Danny haven't heard before that really show the band growing and exploring new sounds. Joe makes a quick blog post on his blogger page with his iPhone. The next time someone looks at his homepage on fuzz.com his blog entry from blogger has been automatically added as a new entry to his fuzz homepage. (Marqui Adora already uses this RSS feed reader idea on our homepage and our VIRB profile. We post once to blogger and it appears at the other places without having to do anything else.)

As Joe and Danny watch the rest of the set from Modernage the Buzz page shows Joe's latest blog entry. When you browse the Modernage gig for that night you also see the photos tagged with the name of the club taken that night or any that list Grimy Styles or Modernage and the current date. A fuzz friend of the guys decides to head to the show before it's over and try to catch the rest of the set because of Joe's blog and the pictures showing a dancing crowd.

When the show is over the guys head over to another part of town to catch a DJ set by a drum n' bass DJ named Mendez. The promoter for the event had entered all the details into the profile he created for the weekly party he books. His promoter profile also sent a request to the profile Mendez had set up as a DJ to add the event to his fuzz page. Once Mendez accepted the request the event was added to the events listed on Mendez's page.

The club that the event was held at also authorized the promoter to auto add the events he listed on those days of the week that the promoter held events at their club. So when you went to the clubs page you would see the information that the promoter entered for that night.

(This type of system would cut back on the problem other sites have of multiple listings for a single event. Also having DJs and promoters have a distinct kind of profile would help another problem where every club has a page that never gets updated but they want you as a friend and every DJ is trying to shout over the noise of the crowd by posting 20 bulletins.)

Browsing the fuzz music map from his iPhone after the DJ set Joe notices that The Nerd Parade is playing just a few blocks over that night. Before they head over to the club Joe makes another quick blog entry telling people to head over to this new place to watch The Nerd Parade. His post shows up on the buzz page for that area so anyone looking at the map sees he said he'd be there. When they walk the few blocks to reach the club they find a few Miami friend already there and grab a few beers.

While they sit waiting for the band Joe checks out the fuzz.com page for the Nerd Parade and sees that they have booked a show for the following night at a place called the Poor House in Ft. Lauderddale. He notices that they also need a second band for the show since the band they intended to play with cancelled. The details of the post say the second band would need to have it's own PA since The Nerd Parade can't stay late. Joe finds one of the guys in the band and offers for his band, Marqui Adora, to play the Ft. Lauderdale gig with them. They accept and one of the Nerd Parade updates the post on fuzz.com to list Marqui Adora and send a request to the Marqui Adora fuzz page to add the event.

(The idea is that a band playing a show in it's own town or even out of town could list a show that they need another band to play and could pick who they'd like to add based on the offers and the details they'd receive.)

Okay that's enough typing for today.

-Tooker
Marqui Adora

Power is the bane of live music!

Sun, 02 Sep 2007 09:58:05 -0700

Working as a live sound engineer for a number of years I experienced one constant truth. No matter how much power they say a venue will have they always lie!

Watch Trent Reznor enjoy this fact while touring in Europe....

Man that shit sucks.

-Tooker

A suggestion for the Fuzz. Player/store that we could embed on other sites.

Thu, 30 Aug 2007 20:42:28 -0700

A player/store that we and our fans could put on other sites, they get our tunes on there page and we get them selling our tunes. At the moment we are using a service called Payloadz to sell on our website but as soon as you make a player that we can embed we'll switch over.

If you could it would also be great to be able to use PayPal and allow even none Fuzz members to buy our stuff without having to jump though more hoops to get our songs. Maybe something even cooler like they could have a player based on a playlist they create of their favorite Fuzz artists or other criteria. (Maybe with some kickback money paid to them by the artists when ever a song sells from that player.)

More stuff later when I am better able to think.

-Tooker
Marqui Adora

I think my head just exploded.

Sat, 11 Aug 2007 21:41:32 -0700

Six reasons to BUY the music that you've "downloaded".

Thu, 09 Aug 2007 06:27:44 -0700

Six reasons to BUY music that you like but have "downloaded for free".

1-Regardless of your initial intention to "try out" a piece of music, you've moved on from trying something to regularly consuming it. (Like going to a market offering free samples of food items on toothpicks and liking the free sample enough to deciding to eat several meals a week based on a trip to the free sample table.)

2-If you like only one song out of the ten on an album you now have a chance to vote for that direction with your wallet in a way you couldn't 5 years ago. Musician are very interested to know which of the songs people like and the surest measure is where they will show that support with 99 cents. (If you really like it when the blues band did a 10 minute prog rock epic you should let them know so that they don't just move on to just writing more standard blues.)

3-With bands that aren't on major labels it is no longer true that the band won't see most of the money from a record. Today when you buy 2 or three songs from any site like Fuzz or iTunes the band is making the same amount as they made when the entire CD was sold on a major for $15. So yes, your 99 cents makes a difference for them. (Just think of it as buying the band a 6 pack of beer when you buy a whole album of ten songs. Who wouldn't want to buy a band they like a few beerz.)

4-Don't pretend you're doing anything but stealing. You're taking something unearned and enjoying the benefits of it without paying the cost. (Just because it's a file on a computer doesn't mean it doesn't have an owner. If a hacker stole your bank card information by making a copy of a file on your computer I don't think you'd argue that he had a right to do so since you've still got that file on your machine and all he did was made a copy of it when he's emptied your bank account.)

5-It's 99 cents.

Really.

Just 99 cents.

In Miami you'll spend $10 to buy one beer at a bar on South Beach. And that's after you've paid $15 to get in and $15 to park. (I think 99 cents for a song you love is a true bargain in every way.)

6-Don't be a dick. If the music collection you love so much hasn't been paid for you are a dick. Or possibly an asshole. Is that what you want to be? (Make it uncool for your friends to be thieves.)

-Tooker
Marqui Adora

A blog/review suggestion for the Fuzz folks.

Sun, 05 Aug 2007 13:12:14 -0700

Having just posted a long review of The Nightwatchman I noticed that blogs and reviews are treated separately on the public profile. It would be nice if these two tabs could just be merged into one so that anyone visiting could see all of your recent activity even if they haven't become your friend. It would also elevate the status of reviews which I think would be a very good thing that might help create a Fuzz culture based around the idea of reviews being as important as blogging.

This would make the "energizing" that TheCapitalClinic mentions much easier as well since you get a better idea of a persons interests right away.

Or not...

Thanks.

Questions for fans of the Nightwatchman on the message of the music... My review (Reposted)

Sun, 05 Aug 2007 13:03:20 -0700

This is my opinion.

Please remember that like assholes everyone has one so you don't have to take mine personally it's just mine and doesn't have to be yours.

To start with I am not a fan of Rage Against the Machine. I liked some of Tom's guitar parts but I always felt like the music they wrote never made the transition from riffs to songs. Like a meal with a lot of good sauce but little of the stuff the sauce is suppose to come with.

Audioslave was okay by me because I was an early/middle Soundgarden fan and Audioslave was closer to that energy then later Soundgarden was in my opinion. I wasn't moved to buy the music but I didn't turn it off if I heard it on the radio or TV so I can say I grew to appreciate him as a guitar player more.

His Nightwatchman stuff doesn't appeal to me. I appreciate the effort to write striped down acoustic blues protest music in the age of electronics and Pro Tools but I can also say it falls well short of moving me like Johnny Cash or older blues guys like Muddy Waters or even the Robert Johnson recordings.

If I'm right, he's going for an extreme message to make a point much like Chuck D of Public Enemy does in songs like By The Time I Get To Arizona or Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos.

The message feels less then authentic to me for a few reasons.

-He's writing the whole song in the first person as a character speaking to the listener. (to make them more intimate maybe)
-He's performing them in the first person as if he is the man himself who has written the songs. For comparison Chuck D will use first person and tell other parts of the story as a witness or uninvolved reporter. (For my money this helps make the message more firm and can pull the listener in more.)
-He's performing the songs in a "style" of a protest singer instead of letting each song be itself.(Listen to Tom Waits to see that you don't need to use just one character and style to use characters.)
-We the listener know that this is really a guy who's played in a really big rock band more than once so it's hard to believe he is a murderous revolutionary seeking out those who committed the wrongs for the "little guy" when we know he's been to Harvard. For me the affect is similar to the Chris Gaines thing that Garth Brooks did a few years ago in that an attempt to make something seem authentic actually makes it loose some of it's credibility since it's core message is dishonest to the circumstance it's being told in. Even if the song is good the gimmick might turn off the listener from giving it a listen.

My questions for the fans of his music:

1-He's a socialist (or maybe communist) right?

2-His Nightwatchman persona is focused on expressing his far left social and political ideas right?

3-As I understand it he wants to add a voice of rebellion and protest for the current age is this correct?

4-If his politics and revolution message are the point of the Nightwatchman, why doesn't he have any songs that are downloadable for free here on Fuzz or elsewhere? And why doesn't this make you feel, as I do, that the message is not somehow cheated? (Please explain this as fully as you can.)

5-If it's because he released the album under contract with a label that won't allow it then why hasn't he posted any recordings of the open mic shows he's played then? Or more to the point if the message of social revolution is his the motive why didn't he release them for free under a creative commons license?

My reason for asking these question has to do with the fact that I am a libertarian and disagree with most of his message but I'm okay with him saying whatever he wants, whenever he wants, to whomever whats to hear it but the central theme of his Nightwatchman work seems to be focused on the messages of the communist revolutionaries throughout mans history and I can't help but wonder it's truly authentic on his part. And if it is then I will be slightly worried since I think those revolutions might have been inspired by the ideas of equality but there ultimate results were misery, pain and death without regard to who fell victim to the fight.

To me his character of The Nightwatchman is a villain. Not a hero to himself or anyone he claims to be fighting for since how can being unjust fix any injustice?

Prince John was a tyrant.

Robin Hood was a thief.

One does not justify the other regardless of which side you are on.

Two wrongs are just that, wrong.

Robin Hood didn't stand up to the Sheriff of Nottingham and stop him until much later. Instead he provided the justification for more misery to the people he was trying to help. Robin Hood re-enforced the system of oppression and became a key part of it. So be sure to ask yourself was good Robin Hood's goal? Was it justice? Or did he fight a wrong by encouraging more wrongs?

The character of The Nightwatchman idolizes murderers and seeks to commit the same.

He wants the chaos of a revolution. (like Iraq maybe)

Does that sound like a hero to you?

Questions for fans of the Nightwatchman on the message of the music

Sun, 05 Aug 2007 12:24:07 -0700

Fuzz "the game" a suggestion for Fuzz.com

Tue, 24 Jul 2007 09:36:02 -0700

As I was exploring fuzz today I started to ponder why fuzz is not growing as fast as I would've thought it would by this point. My first thought is that at the moment MySpace might be benefiting from being "the devil you know" and people might be sticking with it for the same reason some people stay in abusive relationships. ("Deep down Newcorps really loves me...", "I'd lose all my friends if I left now...", "I can't start over in a new relationship after investing this much time...")

So as I see it the problem could be a lack of distinction from other sites like myspace, virb or purevolume leads people to not "pull the trigger" and set up an account on a new site. So I think it's a case where Fuzz needs to immediately offer something different to the users to hook them in.

(I'm not worried about hooking musicians because I think that normal market forces will handle that fairly well. What Fuzz needs is customers to put it simply. If they are buying or browsing doesn't matter since interaction is what feeds a site like fuzz anyway and that requires lots of virtual bodies.)

My suggestion is a game.

Backstory:

A few weeks ago my girlfriend stopped playing World of Warcraft. She had been playing everyday for two years. Really. She didn't play when we had no power in South Florida for two weeks after Hurricane Wilma and when the internet connection broke for two days. Other than that every day for four to eight hours she played that game. As with most people her addiction didn't go away she transfered it to other things. Her Myspace page suddenly came back to life and she signed up to Digg and Facebook and started reading every web page devoted to dogs since she wants to get to replace her World Of Warcrack "doll" that she used to play with with one that barks.

The other day she showed me a flash game that uses gravity properties to alter a bullet fired at an object. CLICK HERE to see the game. So things like these flash games and all the add-ons/customizing for Facebook are replacing the exploratory nature and puzzle solving of her former Warcrack. The iLike game on Facebook immediately snagged her with it's time limited guessing of artist or song.

She has also become very active on Digg rating stories and discussing things in the comments section of each story. This interaction is replacing the interaction that World of Warcraft uses to hook it's users. (Anyone leaving the game is leaving a group of friends they only have because of the game and won't otherwise have any real reason to speak with.)

When it comes to music she mostly sticks to music she already knows but will occasionally ask me to show her some new music that she might like. When she came to Fuzz she found a few things she liked but hasn't really been back much because it lacked a way for her to passively explore music and still have a rewarding sense of discovery.

The game:

Imagine a tab on Fuzz labeled Game or Explorer.

You click on the tab and a song begins to play without any sort of identity to it. No song title. No band name. No picture. Just a song playing with maybe a slider to fast forward into a later part of the song.

Below the song is a list of options to choose from:
I love it! Save it for me.
I like it.
It's okay and it might grown on me.
Not bad but not for me.
I don't like it and I don't think other people will.
Hell no never again!
Pause game.

Based on the players selection the following could happen:
I love it! Rates the song 5 stars and adds it to a "5 Star Playlist" on the users account. Each song in the list could have a "write review" button as well. A user option on their profile could be set to include the artist into the players favorites list.

I like it. Rates the song 4 stars and adds it to a "4 Star Playlist" on the users account. Each song in the list could have a "write review" button as well.

It's okay and it might grow on me. Rated 3 stars and added to 3 star playlist.

Not bad but not for me. Rated 3 stars.

I don't like it and I don't think other people will. Rated 2 stars.

Hell No never again! Rated 1 star.

Pause game pauses the song until the player returns and restarts the song when clicked again.

Once the player makes a choice the next song is chosen at random based on the tastes of other players and the weight each song has from their votes. So a song that has been rated 1 star in the game more times the rated 5 stars it's "gravity" would pull it's chances down for appearing unless the user shows a trend towards enjoying that kind of music based on other players who share similar tastes. As the player votes he should start leaning towards other players who vote similarly so that he could find more music he might enjoy without having any preconceived notions about what he was hearing. However the player should still get a degree of random unrelated songs at regular intervals so that he has a chance to further explore even an artist he previously hated. (Maybe add a Randomness slider so that the player could weight down the likly hood of a new discovery but not eliminate randomness entirely.) Songs could also go through cycles of increasing/decreasing chance of play based on there orbits so that an older song could be new again and new songs don't gain or lose any advantage for being new.

The idea could be thought of as a blind taste test for music with the choices being determined by something similar to gravity in the universe. Large (well loved) songs would have neighboring planets or moons of other songs from that artist but would also have their gravity affected by other planets and suns to create a solar system that might have a pull on other objects in space further away. The player could be thought of as an asteroid flying through a system sometimes getting pulled by a large single body or collection of smaller bodies to affect it's path.

Every musician on Fuzz could be at an equal footing for finding their particular audience without having to cater to anything other than the songs that they choose to enter into the game.

It wouldn't be a popularity contest because it would be blind and a weighted version of random selection that each player would drive instead of any one taste maker.

You could also create a weekly podcast (or playlist) of the "Best of the Fuzz game" from that week. The songs could be selecte based on the same gravity idea.

Mac or PC... Hard(Apple)core rap?

Wed, 11 Jul 2007 12:41:24 -0700

Unrelated Shameless Self Promotion:
P.S. Marqui Adora has some new songs on fuzz. Get 'em!

New Marqui Adora EP is up on Fuzz.

Sun, 08 Jul 2007 19:52:15 -0700

Go visit our fuzz.com page to check out the songs then go ahead and buy 'em if you like what you hear.

The new tunes are:

Don't Panic
Songbird
Empty (Hollow Version)

Fuzz rulz by the way! (if you love music that is)

http://marquiadora.fuzz.com/ (look for the Don't Panic EP)

-Tooker
Marqui Adora

P.S. Why not pick up the White Buildings record while you're at it!

Thank you fuzz!

Thu, 05 Jul 2007 08:15:11 -0700

I'm glad you've added the download function and I hope you add some more ways for people to find the free music on here. Maybe a FREE tab at the top with the same format as the buzz tab with the newest on top? Or a Freebies Chart maybe?

I'd love to know who downloaded the song or if you're not comfortable with that idea maybe a google map of locations that downloaded them or both.

The number of downloads per song would also be useful to know.

Do you have that on Wax Cylinder? Part 2 fuzzy formats...

Sat, 30 Jun 2007 22:23:09 -0700

In response to Arin AKA phatduckk. (See my other blog post for more info.)

I dig it.

I would suggest something like this:

1)Band uploads 16bit 44.1khz wav or aiff.

2)Make the 92kbps for streaming. (I did notice your 92kbps sounds better than myspace does. I'm guessing the larger original file sizes you allow for is making the transcoding less heinous. Good on ya!)

3)Create 3 versions from the original file only if you start with a real wav fiile transcoding compressed formats to other compressed formats creates nasty stuff real quick.

I'd suggest the standard "good/better/best" model with maybe the addition of "Yer fuckin' nuts"

Good-You've already got covered with 192kbps files. I wouldn't go lower than that and like said it works okay for most music and music listeners.

Better-320kbps AAC or MP3 would work for nearly everything. Making it available would help the public to learn that music should sound better than they are use to it sounding.

Best-The full 16bit 44.1khz wav file or a lossless compressed version like Flac of Applelossless. This is what crazy people like me might want for some music like really good acoustic or live music or DJs who burn CDs to play at clubs. (Bad MP3s on a great club sound system is one of my personal hells.)

Yer fockin nuts-Something I haven't really seen yet is a place selling surround sound mixes online. I'm not sure what the format would be best since no one is really doing this yet but I suspect AC3 would make for the most likely choice however WAV multichannel could work as well. I only suggest this because it would be something cool that fuzz.com could be a pioneer in selling and because a lot of studios and record companies have invested in surround mixing without having a way to convince an audience to make that jump. But the idea is simply that you should let the artist choose other more unique ways of reaching creative places and letting there audience vote for those ideas with the all mighty dollar. Others might be higher than CD sample and bit rate versions like a 2 channel jazz concert recorded at 192khz with a 24bit sample rate. The audiophiles would cream for that kind of thing.

4)Leaving out my last bit of crazy talk you could implement a preference for the user to set like this.

-Download always using 192kbps MP3 (smallest filesize/average sound quality)
-Download using 320kbps MP3 when available or highest available MP3 when not. (Large file size/Better sound quality)
-Download WAV (or other lossless) when available or highest bitrate available MP3 version. (Giant file size/Full CD quality audio.)
-Show me all available formats available and I will choose at checkout time.

You could add some way of denoting a surround mix or ultra high quality versions availability.

Do you have that on wax cylinder? Bands upload your stuff for sale at 320kbps please!

Fri, 29 Jun 2007 14:43:56 -0700

Fuzz won me over in no small part because of the ability of the artist to sell music at a higher than normal bitrate.

Here's why:

Growing up in the late 70s and 80's I remember watching a single version of Immigrant Song from Led Zepplin spin on a very large console style record player and "Convoy" on an 8-track tape at my cousins house. I've bought Dark Side of the Moon as a "real" record once, several times on cassette, and on CD at least 3 times now including the SCCD version. (I own a Toshiba DVD-Audio player how many of you even know what that is?) But I gladly give up the big album art work of The Wall, the linear notes of some of the jazz/blues re-issues, and the idea of the "album" as a artistic statement for the ease of use and convenience of the iPod. But I still like things to sound as good as they can.

My method breaks down to this:

Music I still buy as a CD to encode at 320Kbps either AAC or MP3 includes the following.
-Dark Side of the Moon (and any Pink Floyd after that album)
-All of Radiohead
-Nine Inch Nails
-Thelonious Monk and other jazz masters
-Any classical
-Scores for American Beauty or any John Williams type soundtrack.

I buy CDs so that I have a backup incase of harddrive failures or for future re-encoding at the full bitrate when iPods hold a terabyte. Other cds I've bought I'll usual ripe at a more modest 192Kpbs AAC or MP3 file. (AAC now/MP3 before it had a foothold.) They don't sound like the CD but I deal with the trade off for the chance to have more music on my iPod. (I would use Apple's lossless codec for my favorite music if it didn't drain an iPods battery at an alarming rate.)

When it comes to new music I like to buy first from the artist directly when they have a high bitrate version. For example r_garcia has his labels PhiTunes store that I've very happy to buy from. If the artist doesn't have a store I'll use iTunes because the AAC files even at 128 sound better than MP3s at the same rate. I also use eMusic for any artists they might be on there. (But I can't recommend the service for most people since I don't think the user experience and music selection equals iTunes.)

Since iTunes has started to offer the new higher bitrates for some of it's catalog I'm even less inclined to buy CDs but where I think Fuzz.com can top them all is with the simple fact that an artist can finish a song today and upload it the same day for sale to any interested fan at a higher-than-the-rest bitrate of 320kbps. And they can do it without paying an upfront fee and without paying the lions share to a record label.

The only improvement that the Fuzz.com crew could make for me and the rest of the audio nerds out there is this:

When I go to archive.org and upload a 16bit 44.1khz version of one of our songs it is translated into many different formats and bitrates for the person downloading to choose from. Here's our song Do Anything as an exmample. CLICK ME! (It is free as in beer by the way...) If I could do that here I would just start yelling at people to buy music at fuzz.com while walking around in a clown costume covered in blood.

Or maybe not...

I do like CDs still and Marqui Adora is still making them but I don't know how much longer we will bother doing so.

What are your thoughts on downloading vs. buying a CD?