TWIMMWAKUMM

Previously on This Week In Martin's Music Week At KUMM:
Nothing, because this is the first post.

This week I got some sweet CDs. First would be Tom Morello's alter ego The Nightwatchman and his new CD The Fabled City. It's quite like his last CD so if you were a fan then, you'll like this one, although I don't know if there are as many acoustic guitar amazingities as the last one, although it's been awhile.
Next is Terry Lynn's album Kingstonlogic 2.0. This isn't going to be a fovorite for everyone because of the music style, but I dug it enough to listen and then the lyrics got me. She is a girl from jamacia (if I remember right) and she is rapping about the messed up shit that is going on there. She starts it off with a very daft punk-esque song that is the title track. It's sometimes hard to hear what she is saying but that's where the lyricc sheet comes in hand. Her singing reminds me of te rapping style of what I think sean paul sounded like. The jamacian pronounciation of words. All in all, it's an interesting listen.

Deerhoof's new album offend maggie was also an interesting experience. I have a few friends that love deerhoof and so I always though of them as some generic indie band. But then I heard this album and wow, they are bizarre. The singer/bassist is japanese so she has an almost annoying high voice and will often sing japanese. This confused me as I followed the lyrics and got lost almost instantly. The band work is great and always keeps me listening, when I get weirded out by the singing.

NCM is a band I had never heard of before, but the cover of Escape From Myopia caught my eye and went into my metal pile of CDs for my housemate to listen to. Then he gave it back saying it was more rock than metal. So I gave it a listen to. It covered a few band classifications that I couldn't choose one specific one to refer to, so the RIYLs (recommended if you like) are Dead kennedys, Fugazi and the Pixies. I took pixies off because it was more a stretch than the others. But they do almost excatly what fugazi does in some songs. The slow barre slide down the neck, the repeated vocals. i dunno, everytime I go into it thinking of fugazi, they do something different, but it's still there.

The new TV on the Radio album, Dear Science, is a keeper. It is slightly different from the otehr CD I have, Return to Cookie Mountain. I'd say its vocals are less all over the place and more focused. I guess their sound is overall more defined and cleaner. But that doesn't detract form their style, which is good. They still have great vocal melodies that I wish I could sing/keep up with.

We finally got the new Doomtree album in from the gang. It's great cause it's a clean version, which makes my job so much easier. Anyways, the CD is great. It's definatley a collaboration album, with each song using a different style beat and different vocals. It's great at points when you get POS and mictlan together and then sims and dessa. There are some songs that I skip, but their just not my taste in Doomtree hip hop. All in all, it is a great album and well worth the time they put into it.

Well, I guess that's it this week. I'm going to go back a week or two and tell you about some of my past favorites.

Noah and the Whale - Peaceful, the world lays me down. I was so happy when i heard the intro to the first song, it hooked me instantly. The vocals are great and the choruses are catchy, but not too poppy. The singer doesn't have the cleanest voice, but the beautiful guitar work makes up for it. It reminds me of neutral milk hotel with the way they use some horns and otehr instruments. It's great, upbeat and is a catch.

Blitzen Trapper - Furr. The band has a great overall sound and I was a big fan. I don't remember too many specifics, but that it was a good album.

Jeremy Messersmith - The Silver City. The latest CD from the local singer songwriter didn't disappoint me after hearing his debut album over the summer. It is a concept album about the twin cities. It is very much Messersmith's style of writing. He is never too upbeat or happy, but his voice is. So even when he is singing about not following something he wants, you don't get too depresed. The guitar and vocals are great.


I guess that's it. Wow, that was fun, let's do it again sometime. How's next week for you? Sounds good, see ya there.

Been a bit

I don't really feel like updating what I've been doing. I dunno, just don't want to. So here something completely different:

Inspired by this guy I have decided to start two weekly postings.
The first is an art update. I've started working with illustrator and did some decent work and would like to keep that going. I also have been sketching and drawing more. I got graphite and charcoal pencils that I'm going to start using in a sketch book. So I'll try and find a scanner or just use my phone to take pics of sketches.

The second is a "This week in music". I will let you all know if there are any must have CDs released and what ever else I learn or hear because of my job and my constant search for new music.

I was thinking of doing the art one on thursdays or fridays because that is after the school week where I do most of my sketches and I'm guessing I'll be using my computer more consistently. And probably monday or tuesday for the music update because monday is the day i get 10-15 CDs and tuesday is the day I update CMJ with the past weeks top played music.

So, let me know of any comments, compliments, complaints, or communist communications with commercial commons that convey constraining conditions....ok I'm done.

I'm a spaz

So I've been really busy today, it sucks. Woke up to a txt at 8, which is early when you goto bed at 2. So I'm awake and moping around, do my english homework and kinda relax. Goto classes until 2 and then the real fun starts. KUMM is great, there is nothing I would rather be more involved in on campus, but it gets hard on wednesdays. Wednesdays are the days when I'm gaurenteed to be in the station for four hours. Starting at 2:30 are my office hours, but I'm usually in there earlier if I can. I do what I gotta do. Today I reviewed Cd's. Which sounds fun and easy, but this is the hard part of reviewing. Listening to each song at least for a minute trying to find ones that are good and that represent the band's album as a whole. This can be fun, like with deerhoof or TV on the Radio, where I enjoy the music. But I also review music that might not be my favorite. So, I listen to each song, and if I'm lucky, the band tells me what songs have swear words in them. If I'm unlucky, they don't say, but have a lyrics sheet. If I'm really unlucky, they have nothing and I have to listen to each song straight through and listen for bad words. That is painful because I can't really enjoy the music if I'm focusing on it too much. But then I get past those two tasks and I have to write what bands they sound like, or Recommened If You Like's. This can be easy, like for somebands that fit a generic sound. But that is at most half the bands. I get really long stretches where I go, well, this one song kinda sounds like bob dylan, but the others don't really. It's even harder when you get music from other countries or really unique bands. I love unique bands, it's just they make life hard for me.
It is a great job, I know, but I was up till two listening to music and focusing on it at a level that takes alot of the fun and enjoyment out of it. I do have rewards, like when I find good bands out of a pile of crap. And when I get tickets to shows. And when I hear new music on the radio and recognize it and can tell you who it is. That is strangely rewarding. And I get paid, which is cool.

Oh, back to my day.

So I review music until 4, which is my radio show, "The Local Brew". It's a local music only show, Today was cool because Ben and KT sat in the station and we chatted about local music and KUM stuff. It was nice.
So after my show I kinda ran away from the station. I biked home and determined that it was too hot in my house/room. So I went to the common cup to relax and ask if I could put a poster for homeKUMMing up. This is actually where the post title comes from. I walk in and two girls get up and walk behind the counter to ask me what I want. I turn into a blundering idiot who has no idea what he wants. So I get the poster up and then I have to decide what I want to drink. I ask what she recommends for a cold drink, and she says something like almond mocha or latte. So I go "Almond?" and she goes "No, ." Since I don't know what she said I don't want to try and repeat it and make a fool out of myself. So I order the almond mocha thing with out saying the name of the drink, smooth right? Not at all, all I get is a blank stare. Then she gets it and I get a cookie to make it over $5 so I can use my card. Then I get the cookie from the one who took my order (the nice one) and the coffee from the other one (the one who I think thinks Im an idiot and a spaz) and guess what? The coffee is hot. So I can't go and complain because I guess I wasn't truely specific, but I think she just hates me. Also, probably because I didn't use the credit card tip bs, I'm going to tip in change, but they don't know it yet. So I want to tip the nice one like 75c, and the other one like a nickel. But I can't so, I'll just awkwardly walk past them and drop in 80c. I think it's sad that this is what I can blab on about easier than other things. I think I am a spaz, or maybe girls just act too cool and I make an idiot about myself. When I was a barista, I was cool and nice, and didn't make people feel awkward. At least I'm a spaz with a cool music collection.

Mix Cds

Listening to new music makes me happy. And one goal I try to follow in life is to spread happiness. I try to do this with the music I get, giving Cds to friends who I think would like the band or sitting with someone while I review. This is always fun and makes my job easier by giving me another perspective on music. So, instead of having my (drunken) roommate and his girlfriend reviewing metal Cd's and then putting them in the station, I want to spread the music on those Cd's to people not in a close proximity to me. Example: I got the new deerhoof album, which isn't released until October something. So I could share it with my friends that love deerhoof (Jacob). but that's a large task to rip/burn/mail any Cd that I think someone will want. So I came up with the idea of a sort of new music mix Cd that could take the best or most defining song from a new Cd and let people have a sample of it. This could be accomplished if everyone listened to their local modern radio station (the current, KUMM) because there are rules in place to make sure new music gets played. But that isn't always reliable and the new music can be spread out and maybe isn't the best example of an album.
The more I think about this, the more I think this will be illegal.
But anyways, the next limitation is sending my friends Cd's isn't cheap. So I was thinking about some sort of digital distribution, like make a playlist that links to last.fm or myspace pages. I dunno, we'll see.

Friday night, part duex....yay!

So I wrote that horribly depressing blog post and then went bike riding. It's always a weird thing biking on the weekends during the night here in Morris. There are a lot more people and bikers on every street. Anyways, I biked for 45 minutes all around town and campus. I got back and watched brotherhood of the wolf, or as bob later called it, sisterhood of the traveling wolf. After I watched the movie, bob and ryan showed up and were dicking around so I joined them in that. Had some late night food and chatted. Then I played guitar until Elise finally called me at 1:40. So I went there and hung out for about a half hour or so. Ina made meatloaf and it was delicious. There was also this beer their roommate bought that was Budweiser, and the flavor was clamato. In English this means really nothing, in Spanish it apparently means clams and tomato flavored. It was the single most disgusting beer I've ever tasted. Then there were some troubles and I left and got home.

Oh and in biking around, I took a massive fall and broke my bikes gear shifter. So now I have a one gear bike. Guess what gear? The highest possible gear ever. It sucks. So I have to use it till I can take it to the cities one week end. But damn it was so unfortunate. But now my legs will grow like 3 times as big for going around as much as I do. Maybe I'll see if Ryan has an extra bike. Eh. Anyways, just thought I'd let whoever reads this know that I don't lead the saddest life ever.

Friday night....yay!

To think, this time last week I was driving to the cities for the night. And next week I'll be there again for a Building Better Bombs show. I guess last week doesn't count as I drove and came right back after hanging out for an hour or two. But here I am, Morris MN. Listening to KUMM, which I do a lot more than I used to. Infact, I think I made a post about how I don't listen to the radio. But now I do. I got a small 2gb mp3 player and it has a radio in it. It's a small feature, but something apple never added for some reason. I really don't get that. Zune has it, wouldn't they want to add it for the lineup? That bothers me somewhat.
Anyways, I listen to the radio a huge ammount now, like, from 2-now I've been listening to KUMM. It's pretty good radio too. Like, I did listen to 2 hours of house and trance music by my friend will, but that was even good. I feel so much more attached to the station than last year. It's awesome.
But it isn't what I thought I'd be doing tonight. I was supposed to be at some friends house, but I guess that fell through. Hmph. But here I am anyways. I've already watched the magnificent seven, a great western. I also have the brotherhood of the wolf rented from the library, a great french film. I watched it with my brother a long time ago and wanted to enjoy it again. Man, I'm depressing myself just writing all this. I'm off to go bike and find something to do.
Blarg.

New shirt/stencil idea

So I was sketching in class and trying to find a cool stencil idea and I found that leaves can be done with stencils if you take the vein and make it negative space. I did a few leaves and liked it, Then started doing stems and vines. I dunno if I could do a flower too well, So a vine would be cool. Then I drew a vine and added thorns. I liked it, but it's not doable with stencils i think. Anyways, time to do a cleaner sketch and some photoshopping (or editing I should say so adobe doesn't kill me.) But yeah.
We got an amazing mac in the KUMM station and I can't wait to mess with CS3 on it. It's so shiny.

Ultimate Keychain, redux

So I've had this idea brewing in the back of my mind since last year. I want to make the ultimate keychain. I usually keep my keys in my pocket, but especcially now that I ride my bike and use my pockets more and even use my keys more (kumm and library card) I want to get back to the planning of this thing.
Essentials:
KUMM key
House Key (morris)
House key (st. paul)
Car Key
Library card thing

That sums up what I "need". But this ain't no bare essentials keychain.

Additives:
4 or 8 GB flash drive
2 or 4 GB flash with bootable linux
bottle opener
carabiner for attaching to belt loops
Mp3 player (small)

i know what your thinking. how fucking sweet is that. but in all seriousness, i don't need a mp3 player, and might be able to consolidate the two flash drives into one 8gB that can be bootable or just storage, I mean it's 8 goddamn gigabytes, it should be able to do that.

Starting process is to get a carabiner, since I lack one. then I can start using it on my belt loops and look super trendy. I hate when practical things become trendy and hip so I feel like a dick when I do it out of convenience. I'm a motive anti conformist.

Anyways, I looked at salvation army and they didn't have any I could find, but I'm going there again tomorrow to get shirts for 1.50 and to try and find shelving for kumm. So I'll look again. Quick side note about the shirts: they're usually $3 but on weds its half off things above $1 so they're #1.5. I'm going to get a few and test stencils on them, I want to try out multiple stencils to make one cool design. And add the gangster penguin and hello blacksmith logo as well,just cause they're so awesome. But I've had some ideas for simple stencils.

choo! choo! Back on track.
If anyone reading this has any more amazing ideas for a key chain, let me know. I'm trying to keep it compact and practical, whilst being an outstanding achievement of human engineering, so work with that in mind.

While my guitar gentley weeps (acid)

Today I was writing lyrics in class, I came up with one "good" set of lines:
Our freedom, our privacy, we don't want to feel watched when we goto sleep.
Our vote, our right to see, our voice counts in this police state of need.

And I realized, that's a rap line. At least the way I say it in my head. I think I have been listening to so much doomtree that I write for hip hop beats and spoken word feel. I like that, but that's not me. I like catchy guitar riffs and cheesy alliteration. I like puns and fist pumping. I like quick sudden silence, followed by a release of anticipated tension. But how do I write for that?
That's my goal. It's like no music week, but for a genre. I'm not going to listen to hip hop. I have enough new music that I will be alright, and I realize that I don't listen to TPC enough. Like, crusades is amazing and I need to hear that like once a day. That alone might cure me.

But that's lyrics. I do love P.O.S.'s bass lines and guitar riffs. I would love to write stuff like that, and so I plan on it. I've talked with cdub about it and he would totally do spoken word over some sweet bass lines. So, I plan on doing that too. Cause this summer we will do some acoustic things around and I would lay the line and he could do his stuff. That would be so cool.
Main goal for guitar/bass is to get better. i ordered a new set of strings, three actually, and as soon as they get here, I'm planning on pracicing an hour a day. I think that if I practice scales twice for 15 minutes a day and do some writing/jamming the rest of the time, I'll see improvement in at least a month. And then I can feel good when I get a telecaster and take lessons again.

Just a place for notes

Aside from being a blog, this is also a place for my mental notes, so this will mostly be ideas and shit about music directing. My dad always writes things down, he does is in sloppy handwriting, and I asked him once why he doesn't write neater. He replied that it doesn't matter if he can read it or not, the simple fact that he wrote it down will help commit it to memory and if he sees it, he can remember the memory of writing it and all that it was about.

Anyways:
So today I got over 10 cds in the mail, yay for weekend build up. But I need to start pumping these reviews out or something, it is my job. So I need a way to do it, so far I have a 5 cd changer that I was swapping cds out every once in a while. that way I could get 5 cds in a row without getting up. But that means that it;s the whole cd playing and I'm probably not paying attention. I can also take the boatload of cds to a place with my lappy and listen to one, review it, and do it like that. Or I could try and rip every cd and listen where ever i am with my laptop. I dunno which I want to do. But since Im in greta's room with a pile of cds next to me i guess i'll start ripping them. That way I'll get about 15 cds a week. if each cd takes 7 minutes to copy, thats 105min, an hour and 45 minutes of straight copying Cds. Holy fishsticks. If each Cd is 60 Mb, then thats 900Mbs a week. A gig of music a week.

Tabber

Okay, so, I've had this idea for a long time and never really put full effort into it. But now that I'm in a class re-learning Java, I feel like I might be able to tackle it. The idea is to create a program that can download guitar tabs off the internet, from sites like ultimate-guitar, and store them in an easy to read format on your computer. The inspiration came origanlly from wanting a crapton of tabs on a flash drive so you can always have songs if you forget chords or words. More inspiration came from wanting a way to display tabs on my iPod using the notes function. The recent inspiration has been the lack of internet at my house. So, that's the basic idea. I started planning the project, but I kind of just wanted to get programming, so I figured I would write this and get some ideas down.

I want to get a way to get tabs downloaded off the internet, which come as htm files, to a plain text file with just the tabs. I've looked at this before and have found that there are lines of html code that indicate the beginning and end of the author's text. Basically run the method with the .htm file's name and it outputs a .txt of just the tab.
I was trying to figure out ultimate-guitar's method for saving tabs and found that their basically like this: http://...guitar.com/tabs/f/fugazi/blueprint_tab.htm. In theory, I could download all of Fugazi's tabs in one go if I could read the tab names from the tabs/fugazi_tabs.htm file. But this lead me to thinking that I might be able to create a search method for finding tabs through the program and not manually copying web addresses.

More on this later. I want to write some code.

I lost my calc sylabus and I already bought the coffee here

I am a primary source of my own life, right? We were talking about blogs in my seminar class today and we covered if blogs are usually secondary sources or what. If it's a true log of your life, then yes, it is a primary source. It has it's limits because there is usually bias in everyone's view of their own life. I want things to go one way so my opinion on the matter is going to favor that.
For me, I feel detached enough from everything that sometimes I feel like I am dreaming and don't believe what's happening or has happened. Good times can seem too good to be true and so I have to remind myself that they actually happened. I also have a hard time remembering things. It's like there is a limit on my memory and it is keeping me from achiveing something. It is like my own personal barrier from being better or smarter. I find it doesn't bother me as long as I don't spend too much time on the subject. I wish I had a better memory, but I don't and that's that. I can't tell if I'm ignorant or just actually proud of accepting myself for who I am. What's the difference. It can be easy to see your own limits and hard to have the strength to expand them and make yourself better. I find that it might take too much time and dedication. My Dad is a huge fan of neuro linguistic programming, or NLP. Tony Robbins is a guy who took NLP to a mass market to help people and make some money. I don't doubt that he can help people with their goals and motivations and behavioral changes, but I don't think that sitting in a room listening to him talk is what will do it. My Dad has helped me see just how much power the mind has over the body, but it takes patience, dedication, and faith. I don't think at this point in my life I could change anything too much. And what would I change. In role playing games I have a hard time choosing what skills to level up in. It's like I'm choosing my future and if I mess up, I'm screwed.
If someone gave you the chance to level up one "skill", what would you choose. You could devote it to your memory, your pain tolerance, your focusing skills, your speed, your knowledge of one area, or even how you present yourself. That is no easy choice, and I don't think I've found my largest weakness yet. I know I have weaknesses, at least I think I know what some of them are. I feel detached from things, I have a poor memory, I don't know exactly what I want to do with my life, and I am almost too content. What bothers me most? I dunno. They all have downsides, but none are too bad in my opinion.

Alls I knows is that I'm happy. I am really happy right now. And that's what matters for me. : )

Electronics projects

So I might start a different blog for my projects, but I needed to get a list down somewhere, so:
Bike with battery, LED lights, odometer, and speedometer.
Shower radio with MP3 player in it that is waterproofed
Cd changer stereo with LED deisplay to show artist, album name and track name and other info
Wireless speakers for my room.

edit:
killswitch in c-dubs axe

To the one guy that reads this blog

So, what do I do as a Music Director? My main job is to choose the music that goes into the studio for DJs to play. This is in 3 stages. The first is getting the music, which I get lots of regularly in the mail from distributors. I can also request music from bands or labels if there is belief that it would do well on KUMM and would get airtime. The second step is reviewing the music. This is the most tedious task, I listen to 'almost' every CD that I get. I try out different parts of songs and sample most songs to get a feel of what style/genre the band is and if it is any good. If it's no good, then it goes into a bin that we sell for like a quarter a CD. If I like the sound and think it will do well, I listen to each track and write down recommended tracks, what songs have swear words in them, and what some similar bands are. Then the final step is it going into the studio with the other CD's from that week. Usually it's about 10-15 new CDs a week.
Another main responsibility of mine is to track the plays of the Cd's, I do this by having each track played recorded in a excel spreadsheet, each show has it's own spreadsheet. i combine all these files and then sort and count how many plays each Cd gets. I then sort by number of plays and report the weeks activity on the College Music Journal, CMJ. These charts show distributors what kind of music we play and so they can judge what music to send us in the future.
All in all, it is a sweet job. I get to hear a lot of music, some of which is really good.

Radio scoundrel

So I was driving with my brother-in-law and he has a sattelite radio that he listens to when he drives around. It is pretty sweet to use, it gets a bunch of stations that are all genre specific: punk, rock, rap, and even trance. You caan also save songs and programs to the device to have them on demand. The problem is, I don't listen to the radio. I have an iPod. Blamo i can use it for most everything, in the car, on a walk, in my room. It has all my music and I update it even month or so. But it limits me from having the newest music avaliable to me whereever. I work for a radio station, but I don't even listen to it, it's something I need to change this year.