Base-Art - Musichttps://base-art.net/2005-10-19T19:40:43+02:00Last.FM : social-ism for audiophiles2005-10-19T19:39:21+02:002005-10-19T19:40:43+02:00Philippe Normandtag:base-art.net,2005-10-19:/Articles/59/<p>(I must be ill or something, 3 posts the same day :)</p>
<p>I discovered few weeks ago <a class="reference external" href="http://last.fm/">last.fm</a>, it’s a great shot! it simply
keeps track of what music you listen, make some stats and trove some
neighbours for you, having similar music tastes. This process help me
to …</p><p>(I must be ill or something, 3 posts the same day :)</p>
<p>I discovered few weeks ago <a class="reference external" href="http://last.fm/">last.fm</a>, it’s a great shot! it simply
keeps track of what music you listen, make some stats and trove some
neighbours for you, having similar music tastes. This process help me
to discover new music. And all of this for free, even though you can
upgrade your account and pay few bucks to have some more goodies.</p>
<p>From the developer point of view, it’s really well designed with its
<a class="reference external" href="http://www.audioscrobbler.net/data/webservices/"><span class="caps">WS</span> <span class="caps">API</span></a>, writting an AudioScrobbler plugin for ResPyre was quite
easy :-) So, if you have a look on the left side of this blog, you’ll
see the last tracks i’ve listened to.</p>
Vieilles Charrues 20052005-07-25T18:15:29+02:002005-09-17T22:46:12+02:00Philippe Normandtag:base-art.net,2005-07-25:/Articles/52/<p>De retour des <a class="reference external" href="http://vieillescharrues.asso.fr/festival/index.php">labours</a>, un peu humides cette année :) Malgré un
programme un peu moins intéressant que d’habitude, l’ambiance était au
rendez-vous (et la boue aussi!). J’ai essayé d’assister à un maximum
de concerts dont voici quelques impressions.</p>
<div class="section" id="vendredi">
<h2>Vendredi</h2>
<ul class="simple">
<li><a class="reference external" href="http://www.hollywoodpornstars.be/">Hollywood Porn Stars</a>, un …</li></ul></div><p>De retour des <a class="reference external" href="http://vieillescharrues.asso.fr/festival/index.php">labours</a>, un peu humides cette année :) Malgré un
programme un peu moins intéressant que d’habitude, l’ambiance était au
rendez-vous (et la boue aussi!). J’ai essayé d’assister à un maximum
de concerts dont voici quelques impressions.</p>
<div class="section" id="vendredi">
<h2>Vendredi</h2>
<ul class="simple">
<li><a class="reference external" href="http://www.hollywoodpornstars.be/">Hollywood Porn Stars</a>, un groupe de rock belge bien sympa, Ã surveiller :)</li>
<li>An Pierle, je n’ai assisté qu’à la fin du concert, mais ca m’a bien décontracté le dos</li>
<li>New Order, la première chanson m’a suffit</li>
<li><a class="reference external" href="http://www.ghinzu.com/">Ghinzu</a>, des guitares et une voix comme je les aime, une ambiance terrible. Bien quoi !</li>
<li>Luke, impressionnant. Contrairement à certains je ne pense pas que ce n’est que de la musique pour ado. Les textes riches d’idées sont agrémentés de mélodies entrainantes, ca dépotte</li>
<li>Deep Purple, la légende du rock, mieux en vrai que dans le Live in Japan!</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="section" id="samedi">
<h2>Samedi</h2>
<ul class="simple">
<li>Amadou et Mariam, des textes simples et bien rythmés, très sympa. Amadou est impressionnant à la guitare !</li>
<li>Mickey 3D, bonne prestation scénique, mais j’ai préféré leur précédent passage aux charrues en 2003</li>
<li>Louis Bertignac, je n’ai assisté qu’à la fin du concert, j’ai un peu regretté d’en avoir raté le début</li>
<li>Iggy pop et les Stooges, l’Iguane égal à lui-même. Je plains son cadreur car un iguane c’est pas évident à filmer ;)</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="section" id="dimanche">
<h2>Dimanche</h2>
<ul class="simple">
<li>le spectacle de Annibal et ses éléphants, hilarant, j’avais mal au ventre et j’en pleurait de rire. Coup de chapeau au fantastique acteur qu’est Jean-Louis, qui a réussi à détroner l’impitoyable Mr Cabot!- Nosfell, alors lui c’est un phénomène. Il commence chaque chanson par s’enregistrer un sample, et le repasse ensuite en boucle en ajoutant de nouveaux sons. De plus, il chante avec une langue bizarre venant de son enfance .. très original, ma foi ! (merci Guillaume pour les explications ;)</li>
<li>Franz Ferdinand, top bon. J’attend leur prochain album avec impatience car ils ont joué pas mal de nouveaux morceaux bien sympathiques.</li>
<li>Kool Shen, bof bof pas mon genre, mais c’etait mieux avant avec <span class="caps">NTM</span> ;)</li>
</ul>
<p>Plus globalement, merci aux bénévoles et à l’équipe d’organisation
(sympa les copeaux de bois, pour combler un peu la boue). Ambiance de
fou au camping la nuit, j’ai pas dormi des masses, mais ma tente a
survécu !</p>
<p>A l’année prochaine :)</p>
</div>
Remixes2005-03-18T16:14:28+01:002005-05-30T22:04:38+02:00Philippe Normandtag:base-art.net,2005-03-18:/Articles/43/<p>Yesterday i watched <a class="reference external" href="http://www.arte-tv.com/fr/art-musique/tracks/104524.html">Tracks</a>, a really good frecnh/dutch tv show about underground (music, techies, whatever) .. Yes, there still are some good shows on <span class="caps">TV</span>. TrashTV sucks !!</p>
<p>Anyway the show was about remixes. Some bands do all their business with that (they are probably paying lot of royalties for that …</p><p>Yesterday i watched <a class="reference external" href="http://www.arte-tv.com/fr/art-musique/tracks/104524.html">Tracks</a>, a really good frecnh/dutch tv show about underground (music, techies, whatever) .. Yes, there still are some good shows on <span class="caps">TV</span>. TrashTV sucks !!</p>
<p>Anyway the show was about remixes. Some bands do all their business with that (they are probably paying lot of royalties for that). I particularly liked two of them :</p>
<ul class="simple">
<li><a class="reference external" href="http://www.thebosshoss.de/enter.html">Boss Hoss</a> : they do country with everything, even Britney !</li>
<li><a class="reference external" href="http://www.scalachor.de/">Scala <span class="amp">&</span> Colacny Brothers</a>: they do classic chorus with 90’s (hard)rock. They made a very intersting <a class="reference external" href="http://www.scalachor.de/scala_respire.html">album</a> remixing french various artists. I need that one !</li>
</ul>
<p>Besides, Realplayer format simply sucks, Boss Hoss provides some <span class="caps">MP3</span>, thanks guys !</p>
<p><strong>2005/05/08 update</strong>: i bought Scala <span class="amp">&</span> Colacny brothers <strong>ResPyre</strong> album few weeks ago. It’s wonderful !</p>
it’s all about music2004-10-04T09:16:08+02:002005-05-30T22:09:11+02:00Philippe Normandtag:base-art.net,2004-10-04:/Articles/19/<p>Once upon something else than a time, there was a guy listening some music
(u2, an old one, the new one is not the u2 i like to hear) and thinking
about the thing behind this … People (‘pirates’ comme on dit chez
tipiak(tm)) use to have lots, lots of …</p><p>Once upon something else than a time, there was a guy listening some music
(u2, an old one, the new one is not the u2 i like to hear) and thinking
about the thing behind this … People (‘pirates’ comme on dit chez
tipiak(tm)) use to have lots, lots of music, usually in a big hdd … so
what you want to listen is not as easy as saying ‘i want a quarter pound w/
cheese’ if you have hundreds of songs :) That’s why some people design
software jukeboxes capable of handling all that stuff (partly) instead of
you. There are so many of these things just poking around (apt-cache says):</p>
<ul class="simple">
<li>juk : music organizer and player for <span class="caps">KDE</span></li>
<li>juke : A curses-based jukebox program</li>
<li>madman : An advanced music manager application</li>
<li>moosic : Daemon/client combo to easily queue music files for playing</li>
<li>netjuke : Web-Based Audio Streaming Jukebox</li>
<li>noatun : Media player (for video and audio)</li>
<li>pytone : Music jukebox with advanced features for DJs and a text-mode user interface</li>
<li>rhythmbox : music player and organizer for <span class="caps">GNOME</span></li>
<li>vux : A rating-based, random ogg and mp3 player</li>
<li>zinf : Extensible, cross-platform audio player</li>
</ul>
<p>And some others that seem to be popular like amaroK. I think the first one
was mp3sb written in p3rl (around 1998, jkx ?) and <a class="reference external" href="http://respyre.org">resPyre</a> is its successor
(<span class="caps">CORBA</span>, Python). Despite the website is dead, there is some software and at
least one person using it. Pretty well for more than one year (excepted
during blind tests with friends :) Indeed there are some issues, buglets and
other goodies and/or features which makes it fun to use. i have one computer
(mostly) dedicated to music, running the server and few clients (<span class="caps">LIRC</span>, web)
making it easy to control by network or <span class="caps">TV</span> remote.</p>
<p>The thing starts playing, using statistical calculations to find the
music i listen more, and sometimes trying to show me artists i don’t
know / listen much. That’s how i like to proceed most of the time, i’m
guided by resPyre music flow. When a song is played all along, its
score is incremented, when a song is being played to much times, it’s
pushed away for a while. So i’m not always listening the same music i
love, and the system learn my tastes :) I guess other jukeboxes behave
in a similar way (if not, they should ;) The second must-have is
crossfading, i can’t imagine a jukebox without this. And guess what
there must have some Python in the music-monster !!</p>
<p>Though jukeboxes seem well integrated in the desktop, i’m not using
any (Gnome, <span class="caps">KDE</span>, …) so this is useless for me. I want only something
easy to access and control (xbindkeys for shortcuts and <span class="caps">OSD</span> for status
display are perfect for example).</p>
<p>Well i’ve tried many jukeboxes and most of them use <span class="caps">OGG</span> and <span class="caps">MP3</span> tags
to organize the music. In my opinion, that sucks. Essential infos
(artist, album, song nb, song title) can easily be guessed if people
use a schema (BandName/Album/01 - Song.mp3) to store their music. Song
duration is guessable if you have the file (and using a good audio
lib), so why store it in the tag ? I believe ‘Genre’ tags suck
too. Music is a kind of art, and people can have different opinions
and labels to put on music. For instance Metallica (yeah the four
horsemen) are a ‘hard-rock’ band for many people. But they play
‘slows’ too. So, what’s the balance ? And if a band can be categorized
under two different labels, that sucks too :) Nothing can be black and
white together.</p>
The revolver rocks2004-05-24T20:16:40+02:002005-05-30T22:11:21+02:00Philippe Normandtag:base-art.net,2004-05-24:/Articles/10/<p>Who said Guns N’ Roses were dead ? Well in fact the group is dead, but
Slash and Duff Mc Kagan created a new band called <a class="reference external" href="http://velvetrevolver.net">Velvet
Revolver</a>. And … as we say in France “Ca déchire sa grand-mère” !!</p>