Super Scratch Sunday 11

 

so heres what i was doing in rye this weekend while you were all being really cool in london

Extreme crate-digging

This is really something. Patrick Feaster from the Media Preservation Initiative at the University of Indiana, has recreated the sound of one of the earliest known vinyl records, from a picture of the record. Here’s how it works:

“First, I take a high-resolution scan of the print and convert it from a spiral into a set of parallel lines through a polar-to-rectangular-coordinates transform. Next, I “cut” the individual lines and “paste” them end-to-end to create several long, narrow strips. After repairing any breaks in the line, I use a “paintbucket” tool to create two separate bands of varying width—one with the area below the line filled in white, the other with the area above the line filled in white.  Next, I run these images through ImageToSound, a program that converts them into WAV files as though they were variable-area optical film sound tracks.  Finally, I combine the paired WAV into stereo files, stitch the successive pieces together, sum to mono, and voilà—we have sound!”

As I Write My S-A: The Morality of Free Music

Now for something a bit different. Because someone is wrong on the internet.

This article about the ethics of not paying for music has been doing the rounds on The Internets for a few days, and I thought it was pretty interesting but pretty wrong. I ended up having an interesting conversation (okay, argument) with a friend from uni over on facebook, and I thought I’d bring the argument over here and see what people think. Even if, as I suspect, you just think “I don’t really give a shit”.

Basically the whole business started when Emily White, a 21 year-old intern at a national radio station in the US, wrote a piece on their blog about how she has 11,000 songs in her iTunes but she’s only ever bought 15 CDs. On the whole it’s pretty impressive; she’s frank about the way her generation look at this stuff (“I honestly don’t think my peers and I will ever pay for albums”) and as a music lover she’s obviously struggling with the idea that she’s never really ‘given anything back’ to the artists.

But then David Lowery, who apparently was in a few alt-rock bands in the 80s and now teaches in a university (as well as owning a studio, a record label and a publishing company) decided to go to town and challenge her on the ethical implications of her actions, asking her to take responsibility for screwing the artists that she claims to be a fan of.

So what exactly is wrong with it, I hear you ask? Good question, my friend:

Digital Vertigo Scratch Battle 5

Good riddance to bad rubbish!

Today is Si’s last day in Edinburgh.

Not his last day officially, because he has to come back at some point and help me pack up the flat but certainly his last day working here.

Personally, I think the citizens of Edinburgh should rejoice at finally being rid of this scumbag, the likes of which they’ve never seen.

Anyway, with his new job as a production geek he’ll start to look like this soon:

So farewell, or as they’d say here in Edinburgh, “Git tae fuck!”

Phantom of the Floppera

Just Sh@ my pants

So it turns out that the Red Bull Music Academy doesn’t just put on overblown beat battles where you get to see a bunch of pradoothers waving their arms about while they play a cd of one of their beats and turn some knobs on the mixer so you know they’re ‘doing it live’.

In fact, they have this archive of lectures by EVERYONE from madlib to arabian prince to dbridge. if you want to learn some interesting (and admittedly some not so interesting) stuff about all that ‘music’ you kids are listening to, there are literally hours of footage. i just keep it on in the background while im doing stuff and you hear some cool shit.

It’s like TED for beat heads.

 

Calling all Scratch DJ’s…

The generous crew at Beat4Battle have arranged an international Scratch battle which ends on the 26th, with some pretty dope prizes up for grabs, including a Vestax Mixer with buttons to control Digital Vinyl programs like the one they are also giving away, MixVibes. Also a Pro X Fade crossfader, which i have and they are sweeeet.

You have to Scratch freestyle for 1min30 over their specified beat, which is a kinda boring beat,  but hey that’s the challenge i guess.

Here’s mine….

It’s “Cold Outside”