Saturday, January 31, 2004

what's in a name We recently started watching Monk, a TV series about a detective with obsessive-compulsive disorder. It's quite funny, and occasionally touching. The episode we just watched has a scene where Monk, on the way into a burning house to save his agoraphobic brother, encounters a slightly askew stack of books, and can't help but take a second to adjust it. The only problem I have with the show is that it's ostensibly set in San Francisco, but doesn't even try for verisimilitude. For example, the aforementioned episode is supposedly set in the San Francisco suburb of "Tewkesbury". "Tewkesbury, CA"? That would be like setting an East Coast show in "San Jacinto, NH". Or "Manteca, RI". Bonus points if you can name a city in CA that ends in "-bury". (Off the top of your head, please--no consulting atlases. That would make you a TERRORIST!) [nj] Since I live on Ashbury St., I would have guessed Ashbury, CA. Yeah, that scene in Monk was a bit campy. It shows them getting off the Bay bridge at Treasure Island, then shows a house on a lot size you'd find in the suburbs of the Peninsula or South Bay. I really enjoyed the show when it premiered, but I have kept up with it. 9:53:22 PM    trackback []

Studying Song Structure: Powder Cruise Back in 2001, I wrote a few songs in Reason, and posted it on mp3.com. Since that site is no longer available, I thought I should find my old songs and re-post them somewhere. I was able to recover one called Powder Cruise. My focus in music over the last few years has been increasingly on song structure. Reason has a great interface for building songs out of blocks of sound or midi. Here's the song map for Powder Cruise: As you may notice, I was building the song with the intention of adding lyrics, but alas Reason has no audio support. Here's the mp3 playing in QuickTime. I know there are a few musicians reading this, and I'd very much like to hear your thoughts on how you approach song structure (send me email). Also, now that I'm working with GarageBand, I'm eager to find a way to bring the core blocks of Powder Cruise in, and then work on some lyrics and vocal hooks. ...of course, this means lots of grunt work exporting loops as AIFF files and converting them into AppleLoops. 4:24:13 PM    trackback []