Idiot Banter » Music

Listen To Heartsounds

Matt — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 11:58:57 +0000

While browsing through PunkNews.org about a month ago I came across a Heartsounds and I’ve been hooked ever since. I listened to the full album stream (still up) PunkNews so graciously offered until the album officially came out. Heartsounds are a punk rock band from San Francisco, California and their sounds brings me back to high school in the best way. I would describe them as old Satanic Surfers meets old MXPX matching both bands in tempo and positive (and sometimes political) lyrics.

If you like punk rock I recommend you give Heartsounds a listen at the links below.

Heartsounds full album streaming on Punknews: http://www.punknews.org/bands/heartsounds

Heartsounds MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/heartsoundsband

A Regular August Weekend….

Matt — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 02:26:37 +0000

I wanted to tell you about my weekend. I could have Tweeted but I wanted to add pictures and videos and write more than a series of 140 characters. I could have written a note and added a photo gallery to Facebook but I wanted the note and the photos to be together and I didn’t want you to have to have an account to see them. So here they are, on my blog, like we used to do back in 2007.

This weekend I went to a concert, saw three movies, bought a Nikon D60 digital SLR camera and visited my parents. Here’s a bit about each event:

The Movies

On Friday night Alison and I watched I Heart Huckabees. Alison owns it and has seen it many times before but this was my first time seeing it and I loved it. Jason Schwartzman has reportedly been in Toronto for months hanging out and I keep hoping I’ll run into him on my way to lunch one day.

On Saturday night we went over to Scott’s condo and watched Forgetting Sarah Marshall which I thought might suck but turned out to be one of the funniest movies I’ve seen in a long time.

On Sunday afternoon Alison and I went to see District 9 with my Dad. It wasn’t anything special but going to the movies on Sunday morning is always the best, there’s hardly anyone there and you pay the matinee price!

The Concert

On Friday night Alison and I went to an art gallery opening on Bloor near Lansdowne because my friend Matt’s band/solo project was performing. Matt used to play drums in a punk rock band in high school and bass when I played drums with Ryan Masters. He has been doing his solo stuff under the name of MANT for a few years and I was really pleased with his live performance. Check out his music.

The Camera

Alison and I have been thinking about getting a DSLR camera for a while now. We both kinda like taking pictures and we thought photography might be a fun hobby that would give us a reason to go places we’ve never been. After much encouragement from my Dad who just bought his first DSLR we bought a Nikon D60, the same camera my Dad just bought. Here are some pictures I took while trying the camera out. It’s a little overwhelming to try to figure out everything the camera can do so these are just point and shoot and even then I think they look amazing. I will be reading the manual and lots of tutorials in the near future.

Alison

Hummingbird

Dad

Mom

View From My Apartment Window

Oh Yeah….

I’ve also been practicing bass like crazy for a show I’m playing with The Good Soldiers this Thursday, my finger tips are raw and blistered. Thanks for reading… just like 2007 right?

CR Rollyson Used My Drum Beats

Matt — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 12:11:29 +0000

I got an email last night from CR Rollyson, he recorded guitar and vocals over one of the drum beats I had posted and wanted me to hear it. He’s the first person to ever send me anything that’s been created with the drum beats I give away for free. I think it’s awesome.

Check out his MySpace for more good stuff: http://www.myspace.com/crrollyson

The Song

[See post to listen to audio]

The Original Drum Beat – 118bpm – 2 Verses 2 Chorus – Rock

[See post to listen to audio]

There’s talk of getting some better recording done and sharing more drum beats so stay tuned.

New Song: Smokey Clav Bass

Matt — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 02:32:02 +0000

Look at that title, so descriptive right? I was messing around in GarageBand using the Smokey Clav sound for a bass line and it sounded good so I went with it. I suppose I could come up with better titles, something like “Remember when all the bees were dying and everyone was worried?” or “Nine foot nine year olds”… now you see why I called it “Smokey Clav Bass”. Enough reading, now comes the listening part. It’s long so imagine someone singing over top. If you want to be the one singing over top email me. Enjoy….

[See post to listen to audio]

Old School Dance Party

Matt — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 02:50:28 +0000

Back before I ever had a Mac or GarageBand I had the best beat sequencer ever, Fruity Loops (now called FL Studio). If Fruity Loops worked on a Mac I’d buy it right away. When Alison and I first started dating over 700 years ago we needed some music for a dance party we were having in my bedroom at my parent’s house so we made some. I think it’s awesome, what do you think?

[See post to listen to audio]

More Free GarageBand Drum Loops – Rock and HipHop

Matt — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 18:37:06 +0000

Over 325 people have downloaded my first set of free GarageBand drum loops so I decided to make more. This time I made the loops longer to give you the option to cut out whatever you want to use or keep the whole thing as is. There are 2 Rock drum loops and one HipHop drum loop. These free GarageBand drum loops are made using electronic drums in my apartment. I play to a metronome and the loops are not quantized in order to keep the feel. They are free so go ahead and use them. If you get rich using them I might call you begging for a cut but if you ask me to drum for you when you tour we might call it even.

I hope you like them and I want to make them better so please leave feedback and I’ll keep at it.

Download the loops here: MM-Loops-9apr2009 (636)

Listen to them below:

100bpm – 2 Verse 2 Chorus – HipHop

[See post to listen to audio]

174bpm – 2 Verse 2 Chorus – Rock

[See post to listen to audio]

118bpm – 2 Verses 2 Chorus – Rock

[See post to listen to audio]

How To Use The Loops

Download and unzip the file above.
Import the MP3 files into Garageband.
Make loops (track > add to loop library) if that’s your thing.
Make music.

Monday Night Dance Party

Matt — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 03:22:43 +0000

I’m on vacation this week but Alison still has to go to work so I felt bad and figured nothing would cheer her up more than a dance party. Of course you can’t have a dance party without dance music so I made some. It’s short and annoying, just the way dance music should be, enjoy.

[See post to listen to audio]

Sick Ship – Songwriting – December 22 2008

Matt — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 04:11:04 +0000

We posted two new demos on the Sick Ship website; check them out.

Anticipation – The Way I Hear Music

Matt — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 02:33:58 +0000

You’ve had that song stuck in your head all day; you can’t wait to get home and listen to it as loud as you can; you need to hear it, you can’t breathe until you hear it. You finally get home; you kick off your shoes and lock the door. You press play and time stands still in the split second before the music kicks in.

You hear the opening notes of the song that you’ve been dying to hear all day but the intro is just the beginning, you’re dying to hear the first verse. The first verse hits and all you can think about is the giant release that is the chorus. The chorus hits and you sing along at the top of your lungs, nothing feels better. Now you can’t wait to hear the second verse because it’s the one with the lyrics that are the exact lyrics you’d write if you wrote songs, they’re perfect and they sum up every emotion you’ve experienced that day, that week, that month, that year. You need to hear the bridge with that perfectly timed guitar riff or that breathtaking bass line; the part where everything drops out except the drums and group vocals, the part all of your friends would sing along to in the car on the way to the show on Friday night.

Now you focus on the drums; the split seconds between the bass drum and snare drum; the bass on 1 and 3 and the snare on 2 and 4. Everything is perfectly in time but the snare drum is one tiny nano second behind the beat; not enough to hear but enough to feel and it feels good. It’s as though you can feel the anticipation the drummer felt and the power behind the beat; you can feel every emotion released when that drum was hit. The song is dripping with groove and it feels more right than anything you’ve ever felt before.

Music is tension and the anticipation of the release. There’s tension and release within the song structure, within each note played and within each drum beat that makes you move. There’s also tension and release in the anticipation of hearing your favourite song, discovering new music and seeing a band perform live. Music touches everyone in different ways and I find it very hard to write about the way it makes me feel; this is my attempt. How do you hear music?

Why Vinyl?

Matt — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 17:55:42 +0000

I didn’t grow up listening to music on vinyl records; I had a few kids albums when I was really young but by the time I was old enough to buy my own music cassette tapes were the mainstream. My Dad had lots of records and listened to them on a regular basis, loud, with headphones on. When CDs became the mainstream and all of my Dad’s favourite albums were purchased on CD the cassette player was removed from the home stereo system, a CD player was added, the record player stayed, and my Dad still listened to records turned up loud with headphones on. Now CDs are basically dead; new music is consumed in the form of MP3s whether obtained legally or not. I have a huge collection of CDs that I never touch, they mean nothing to me, I have no connection to the physical CD, the music was ripped from the CD to my computer long ago and I haven’t interacted with the CD in years. Listening to music has become passive, there’s no physical interaction anymore.

I recently received a record player as a gift from Alison and I instantly fell in love with vinyl. Music has become interactive again! I carefully remove the record from it’s sleeve, you can’t throw it around, it’s not indestructible; I put the record on the player, make sure the size and speed are set properly; I clean the record, lift the needle cover and lower the needle. It’s a ritual, it takes time, I’m doing something more than listening, I’m involved and how good the record sounds depends on me. Half way through the album I have to get up and flip it, clean it and play it, like stoking a fire. The packaging is bigger than a CD or cassette, the pictures are bigger, the liner notes and lyrics are easier to read. I feel like I’ve bought something real, something permanent.

I think a lot more thought was put into the entire structure of the album when vinyl was the mainstream. There’s no skip button so skipping a track is a real chore; you have to get up, stop the record, lift the needle, turn on a light, find the tiny line that separates tracks and try to place the needle in the exact right spot. Bands made albums that you’d want to listen to all the way through, no one wanted a bad track right in the middle of an album side so the bad tracks were left off. If you just liked one song you could buy a single and the single usually came with a bonus song on the other side. Music was better because it had to be.

The trend now is to offer free MP3 downloads of an album when you buy it on vinyl, it’s perfect; you get the vinyl for home listening and the MP3 for you iPod, the best of both worlds; the interaction and ritual of vinyl with the portability and convenience of an MP3. I wouldn’t be surprised if bands just stopped producing CDs in the future.

I’m hooked on vinyl; the ritual, the interaction, the permanence and the sound quality; it’s all too perfect and it’s how music should be enjoyed.