Star Trek barbershop quartet. Words I had never seen in the same sentence, until now.
Category Archives: Music
Pickin' and a-Grinnin'
Physics, guitars and pitch harmonics at Skulls in the Stars
1magine
via Cap’n Refsmmat’s Blog of Doom
Yes, I’ve been up to no good again. Together with my band, now named The Quirk Side of the Moon, I’ve created yet another parody song, this time of John Lennon’s Imagine.
Imagine you were in a world with no math…
Pegging the Geekmeter
Someone with a little time on their hands, feeds some AC/DC into their laser (OK, technically the waveform of the music), and watches the trapped atoms “dance”
The low-pass filtering means it responds more to the bass and drums.
Songs Not About Buildings and Food
Top Nine Songs About Self Love
Jackson Browne’s Rosie isn’t on the list? WTF? Pictures of Lily by The Who? Longview by Green Day? Sheesh.
via Kottke
Music Confessional
Several weeks back, I was lamenting bad advertising music. There seem to be lots of companies who have the ad-music decisions being made by a 45-55 year-old who chooses a favorite tune from their youth but didn’t have great taste in music, (or a 20-something staffer who can Google on what was high on the charts when the ad exec was in his or her 20s.) A recent incarnation was the Honda ad to the tune of ELO’s “Hold on Tight.” Contrast that with Apple ads often using something very recent (“Shut Up and Let Me Go” by The Ting Tings was running at that time)
I don’t think they quite understand the backlash of choosing the wrong tune. Is your automobile target audience really that old? To me, it’s one of those songs that I liked back in the day, but that was partly because if you hear something over ad over again, you begin to like it, or at least tolerate it. But 25+ years later, I’m content to hear it every couple of months, but if I’m bombarded with it all over again I’m really going to start to loathe it, and whatever product is being associated with it.
That discussion morphed from songs you only need to hear every so often, to songs you never need to hear again, which provoked the response, “Muskrat Love” by the Captain and Tennille. So I got to thinking, what bad songs do I listen to that I would be reluctant to admit to having on a playlist on my iPod or computer?
Lo and behold, I find myself beaten to the punch. And I find it funny that the first two songs on Janet’s list are two to which I listen, and were not available on iTunes for some time — I kept checking for them, and they are on my workout rotation.
The trashiest (IMO) stuff on my five-star playlist is the bubble-gum-type music from the 60s.
“Little Bit of Soul” by Music Explosion
“Jelly Jungle (of Orange Marmalade)” by the Lemon Pipers
“Dizzy” and “Sweet Pea” by Tommy Roe
“I Saw Linda Yesterday” Dickey Lee
All get significant playing time.
Put Your Hand Up My Back and I'll Sing Along
Rockin’ with the Muppets on Sesame Street
Feist, counting to four
R.E.M. singing “Furry Happy Monsters”
via Madam Lamb
A Relatively Good Concert
Musical Relativity at the ArXiv blog
From the paper:
It is known that certain triads sound “happy”, while others sound “sad”.
Why this is so has been a question on minds of many musicologists, composers, musicians and
music lovers for a very long time and theories have been put forward. References to some works in
this area can be found in the recent book by Loy. But the question of “Why?” is beyond the scope
of this work. In this paper, we simply show that under specific physical conditions, a chord sounds
happy or sad depending not only on the observer’s subjective interpretation, but also on his frame
of reference. In other words, the musical “mood” depends on the observer’s state of motion.
In other words, “that note sounds flat!” becomes “you’re moving at the wrong speed!”
Introducing the Xylo
Elements of Music
Name that tune in three elements
Best song of the 80s? Gold by Spandau Ballet. But it seems that the frilly-collared Spandau boys were far from original in their lyrical choice. According to a survey undertaken by Santiago Alvarez, in the department of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Barcelona, the most popular elements referred to in music are, from the top; silver, gold, tin and oxygen.
What surprises me isn’t that someone did this. No, what surprises me is that the survey appears in a chemistry journal and it’s paywalled. There is a press release that mentions some of the songs.
But . . . Gold is the best song of the 80’s? File that under ‘Things that make you go buuhhhhh!’