Melodyne’s Direct Note Access system changes absolutely everything about music production. No, really, it changes everything.

The greatest upside is that transformative use just became completely unstoppable. Of course, this will leads to bold new worlds in copyright litigation as artists go to court to claim that a minor-chord variation of, say, “Hot In Herrre” by Nellt isn’t transformative use. But take mashup technology and multiply it by one thousand, and that’s what Celemony have done here: created the ability to create new music out of the shards of shattered old music, completely unrecognizable and distinctive from the original.

Not, of course, that this will stop lawsuits from flying, which is why most countries desperately need to add a transformative use clause to the fair dealing exemptions of their copyright law, and have for some time. (Of course, Canada still doesn’t have legislative protection for parody, time shifting and format shifting, so I suppose we have to manage one thing at a time.)

The big downside of the Melodyne system which I think has gone mostly unnoticed is that it removes the requirement for actual musical skill from, say, an attractive-looking young band. Granted, this requirement was mostly gone anyway, as audio engineers and producers can turn a bunch of untalented shits into the next U2 given enough time and the opportunity to maybe play a few of the band’s instruments in the studio for them – but Melodyne makes it even easier and simpler.

The world’s largest music collection is for sale. Over three million 45s and LPs, plus three hundred thousand CDs, a hundred grand’s worth of musical memorabilia, proprietary ownership of eight independent record labels and a patented vinyl LP cleaning system.

Only three million dollars opening bid! (Keep in mind that if you apply for an eBay Mastercard, you qualify for ten dollars off your first purchase, so it would in fact only be two million nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety dollars.)

Youtube music videos made with World of Warcraft animation.

God, just stop, people. There is no possible way to improve the experience of any song by making a World of Warcraft video about it. None. Zero. Zilch. De nada. No, not even that one Jonathan Coulton song you really, really like – you know, the one that’s part funny, part unpleasantly creepy, and was obviously written to appeal to a sci-fi/fantasy dork. [1] Yeah, that one.

Honestly, if you really want to ruin a song, I can think of no better way to do it then to animate a hokey, stupid video using the hokey, stupid World of Warcraft characters and their hokey, stupid animations. Did you really listen to the song and think “hey, you know what this song really needs? A forest troll. And maybe a couple of naked halflings…”?

(There are always naked halflings.)

Seriously, log off of WoW right now. I mean it. Yes, I appreciate the many seconds’ worth of effort it took to message your entire guild and then synchronize a dance routine – and by “dance routine” I of course mean “everybody pressing Emote Menu -> Dance Option 4” in exact unison. Maybe it even took you two or three tries, but you’re apparently the cyber-Paula Abdul now, and no amount of (virtual) sweat will deter you from illustrating the seventh line of the song with a bad, unfunnily obvious visual pun.

Yes, I know you thought “The Internet Is For Porn” was funny, but guess what, Avenue Q has been around for quite a while now. So has “Peanut Butter Jelly Time.” And the theme from The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. And all the other songs you just discovered last week that have been around forever, but you missed them, presumably because you were busy trying to level to 60 and get your epic mount and epic warhammer and epic codpiece and whatever other thing they have now that’s epic.

(How can a mount be “epic,” anyway? Epic is something you use to describe a work of art, and usually only refers to length – an epic composition, an epic poem, et cetera. When used to describe greatness, it’s meant to describe an experience – “Stalingrad was an epic battle,” “I took an epic shit,” and so forth. None of this is really that appropriate to describe your magical Pegasus turtle, unless they are suggesting that the amount of time you sat your ass in front of your fucking computer is supposed to be somehow monumental, which come to think is probably the idea. Fucking Blizzard.)

While we’re talking about your taste in music – most nerdcore rap is shit. Most filk is shit. It’s just shit that panders shamelessly to you rather than to the masses, which is why most of it is free rather than costing money, and why nobody wants to make an actual music video of it for real. I get that you worship MC Frontalot. I mean, look at his name! It is a funny name! I’m sure that if only it came along with a reasonable amount of musical skill, he would be famous now! But he is not very good and your dancing orcs will, amazingly enough, just make the entire experience worse: a horrible vortex of everything about the Internet that sucks all at once. (The shit comments your shit Youtube video will inevitably generate are, of course, the shit icing on the shit cake.)

And god forbid you’re doing this in a game other than WoW. I mean, WoW is bad enough, but at least they went overboard in that game with an immense number of pathetically unsubtle emotes, giving its players the ability to render nearly any stock phrase in visual terms. Most other MMORPGs have only a small fraction of the emotes that WoW does, sad but true, and halfway through your “music video” you’ll have used the three different “dance routines” five times apiece already, and all you will create is pity, and there is already enough pity in the world.

If you’re using Star Wars: Galaxies – look, I’m only saying this for your own good, but for god’s sake turn off the computer and go out into the sunlight. It may burn at first, but you need to get away from the computer now if you think, even for a second, that the hip-hop Jedi treatment is whatever any given song you like really needed. “But it’s a song about Star Wars -” NO. FUCKING NO. Just STOP. You’re JUST MAKING IT WORSE FOR YOURSELF. (People may argue that I am dropping into cliche here to support my argument. I would counter with “it is fucking Star Wars: Galaxies, and the only people playing it at this point are the ones who need intervention worse than anybody else – the origin of cliche, if you will.”)

You’re already wasting hours of every day and paying other people for the privilege of playing a game you already bought [2]; quit clogging Youtube with the evidence.

[1] Which would of course be every Jonathan Coulton song.

[2] If you’re using Second Life – which, if you’re making a video for the aforementioned creepy Jonathan Coulton song you like, is at least appropriately creepy in the same kind of way – you have my congratulations for choosing a free online RPG. And also my horrified fascination for actually spending time voluntarily in Second Life. Christ: just get a first one.

Remember to keep your holidays dope.

One of two in a series.

Many things in 2007 were good. These are some of the most good bits.

Ratatouille

As has been said elsewhere, it’s really nice that once a year, Pixar puts out a movie, and the best case scenario is that it’s a timeless classic and the worst case scenario is that it’s just a really good, fun little movie. Ratatouille is firmly in the middle ground of Pixar releases – better than Cars or A Bug’s Life, but not as fully realized as The Incredibles or Toy Story 2. (Which makes it only about ten times as good as most movies at a bare minimum.) Brad Bird – a likely candidate for the best animation director alive, and yes, I’m counting Hayao Miyazaki when I say that – brings a relatively simple story of a rat-turned-chef to life with a minimum of fuss, a wonderful turn from Peter O’Toole and a sweet, widely applicable moral.

Civilization IV: Beyond The Sword

The deepest computer strategy game there is – period – gets its second extension, and god, what more can they pack in if they decide to create a third expansion pack as rumoured? A ton of clever new mods, new units, the addition of corporations and advanced espionage rules, a crapload of new civilizations (including the Dutch, Sumerians, Byzantines and the Holy Roman Empire – but, sadly, no Canada), and of course the chance to play as Abraham fucking Lincoln. The game just keeps getting deeper and more complex with every expansion, and the best bit is that the learning curve can be as slight or as tough as you want. And it’s so deeply moddable a game – if I were inclined to mod games, this would be it. Civ IV as applied to the Wheel of Time world? As applied to Tolkien? Heck, even Eddings. (Eddings wouldn’t be hard, you’d just take the appropriate equivalent existing civilizations and change the names.)

The Immortal Iron Fist

Unlike, for example, Chris Sims, I have no particular fetish for the curious remnants of 1970s Marvel comics, and I had no expectations of an Iron Fist series. The man wore slippers for god’s sake, little yellow kung-fu booties. He kicked people, which in and of itself is not really that amazing or impressive. (I mean, Karate Kid kicks people, and just look at Countdown.) In short: a third-tier superhero with a small, dwindling fanbase is, generally speaking, not something about which I really look forward to reading. But then Matt Fraction and Ed Brubaker decided they wanted to write a complete kung fu epic, only really tangentially related to the Marvel Universe, and they got superb art from David Aja and a host of others, and thankfully they got rid of the booties. The result is quite simply the best superhero comic available at present: a non-angst-ridden story-driven work, stuffed to the buns with top-quality action, a wealth of backstory applied smartly, and whip-smart dialogue. And again: it’s Iron Fist. Who woulda thunk?

Don’t Mess With The Dragon by Ozomatli

Their best album so far, and when you’re dealing with a band with a discography like Ozomatli’s that is no small thing to say. Some music critics dismissed the album as “admirable, but unfocused.” This is Music Critic for “not all of the songs sound the same so I have trouble writing up the album in one paragraph. Please make all of your songs sound kind of alike.” Ozomatli cannot do this, though, partially because they are a nine-piece band, but mostly because they are simply too damned awesome, with their melange of funk, hip-hop, salsa, rock and jazz fusing together into an improbable, wondrous whole. And as a bonus, this is far and away their most danceable album yet.

“30 Rock”

Quite possibly the funniest television show of the new millennium – all the sharp, venomous wit of Arrested Development combined with the quotability of the best seasons of The Simpsons and a surprising amount of heart to boot, and topped off with performances that any other show would kill simply to have one of. In most shows, Judah Friedlander’s fat nerd writer would be the go-to joke character; in 30 Rock, he’s not even in the top three, not when you have Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin and – I can’t believe I’m typing this – Tracy Morgan, who prior to this was my second-least-favourite SNLer of all time (beaten out only by the truly talentless Horatio Sanz). But especially Alec Baldwin, who finally gets to display the savage comic ability that was only hinted at by his numerous guest appearances on SNL, and who should be on this show for the rest of his natural life if they can manage it.

Air Guitar Nation

Everybody making best-of movie lists this year gives the nerd-doc props to The King Of Kong (and understandably), but by god do not overlook Air Guitar Nation, which like that other doc works the “competition” storyline by having one rock-steady hero (the incomparable C-Diddy) and one egomaniacal ass (the deeply strangleworthy Bjorn Turoque), who are both extremely good at what they do. The fact that what they do is cavort around on stage rocking an imaginary guitar is at first hilarious, but then eventually becomes life-affirming and wonderful (and hilarious), and when the film progresses to the World Championships of Air Guitar, somewhere in rural Finland (no, really), and the crowds cheer for the devoted air guitarists – well, it is entirely possible that a small portion of Heaven is like this. A fairly weird portion. But a portion.

Team Fortress 2

When it comes to the Orange Box, Portal understandably gets all the hype, because it’s clever and original and funny. But Portal only lasts a few hours. The real meat of the Orange Box comes with the involving, easy-to-learn-but-hard-to-master online gameplay of Team Fortress 2, a game with animation and visual design reminiscent of The Incredibles and a sense of humour from, well, pretty much the same place (the Heavy Weapons Guy’s pseudo-Slavic commentary alone is worth the price of admission, but don’t discount the Scout’s Bronx taunts, the high-pitched German screaming of the Medic, or the muffled yells of the Pyro – because the Pyro wears a mask, you see). The gameplay is simple and elegant, and always extremely easy to follow: “snapshots” freeze-framing the guy who killed you not only help you identify who killed you but help newcomes get an idea of how. Plus, they helpfully label the pieces of your dead body when you get gibbed.

“Kings of New York: A Year Among the Geeks, Oddballs, and Geniuses Who Make Up America’s Top High School Chess Team” by Michael Weinreb

Recommended particularly for nerds, and I estimate my readers are, oh, ninety-eight percent or so nerds. (Wave your freak flag high.) Even if you aren’t a chess fiend particularly (and I, personally, am at best an average player – although if we’re talking speed doubles chess, that’s different strokes right there), this book will resonate, because – come on – it’s about nerds surviving high school by doing their own thing. It’s just that in this case, “their own thing” wins them big-ass trophies.

Killer of Sheep

I first saw Killer of Sheep when I was 20, taking an American Cinema course. The prof had a bootleg copy, which is how I got the rare chance to see a movie that, though made in 1977, only got released this year due to conflicts over the music rights. Killer of Sheep is amazing – a lot of people liken it to Italian neorealist cinema like The Bicycle Thief, but I always thought of it as having a more Cassavetes sort of a feel, despite the film’s essential lack of continuous narrative – it’s bleak and honest but doesn’t lack heart, and indeed I would argue it almost has more because of that bleakness. It’s on DVD along with Burnett’s second feature and a number of his shorts, which are likewise brilliant. Rent or buy, either way.

The video for “1234” by Feist

The song alone would qualify for this list, but the video is the sort of thing that births superstars – delightful low-fi wonderment, relying on showmanship and pure filmmaking skill to pull off (trust me when I say that I can tell the focus pulling for the shoot was nightmarishly difficult just by looking at it), and effortlessly communicating sheer joy in a way that isn’t entirely common, to say the least. A thousand thousand high school girls just got their first girl-on-girl musician crush this year because of this video. (Tori Amos would be proud.)

The Spirit

Step 1: Get Darwyn Cooke to write and draw something.
Step 2: Fuck yeah.

Bioshock

A perfectly excellent first-person shooter, notable for both the character improvement system imported from the old (and fantastic) System Shock games, and the gorgeous, completely immersive 1940s Art Deco-ish visual design, brought to life with graphics both gorgeous and surprisingly interactive. (The opening, where your plane crashes in the middle of the ocean, and you get to swim around as you watch it sink – amazing.) Oh, and of course there’s the fact that the main plot boils down to “Atlas Shrugged, except it all goes wrong and people become zombies.” I am honest enough to admit that the game’s hearty “fuck you, Ayn Rand” ethos tickles me greatly.

Yau Man on Survivor: Fiji

Yau Man was easily the coolest player to come along in quite a while on Survivor – a canny late-fifties math teacher with a knack for practical survival and for playing the game to a brilliant inch. Plus, he was funny. Unfortunately, Yau Man made the critical mistake of thinking that somebody named “Dreamz” was intelligent enough to realize when he had precisely zero shot at winning the game outright, or that giving “Dreamz” a car would be incentive enough for the jackass to walk away happy rather than compromise his much-vaunted integrity in the hopes of winning a million dollars he would never actually win. On the bright side, the next season of Survivor, starting in February, is a “hardcore fans versus top Survivors” show, and you have to bet that Yau Man qualifies as a top Survivor – if he wants to go for a second round, that is. Yau Man might not, because he’s just that cool.

Upcoming: The stuff that did suck.

THE MUSIC CRITICISM DIET

Go through any newspaper’s “top (X) albums of the year.” Count how many of them are hip-hop. Do not count Kanye West’s most recent album (it’s too obvious a selection). Then compare to the number of records to which the phrase “indie rock” could be applied. If there’s anything other than the occasional major act (after having looked through about a dozen fairly major and comprehensive lists so far, the only albums I’ve seen mentioned are Kanye and Jay-Z), eat a triple-caramel-fudge ice cream sundae for each album mentioned.

You will lose weight, I promise you.

You know what? Hip-hop critics don’t do the same in reverse. You don’t see a hip-hop critic do their top whatever albums of the year then throw on a Fall Out Boy album just to show that they really do listen to other genres of music. (This is not to accuse “regular” music critics of tokenism. Well, actually, come to think, it is.)

And given the output of 2007 – which featured outstanding new albums from Common, M.i.A., Ghostface Killah, Ozomatli, and Underground Kingz in addition to the aforementioned Kanye and Jay-Z discs – it’s either shortsighted or just stupid. I don’t even listen to that much hip-hop, but I was at least aware of the existence and significance of these albums, and nobody’s paying me to talk about music.

(Which is probably for the best, considering that I’d waste valuable common inches on how awesome a song “Thunderstruck” is. Every week. I mean it.)

In summary: hipsters now ruining music criticism, just as they manage to ruin everything else. DAMN YOU, HIPSTERS.

I frequently extol the virtues of Christmas Remixed, a great series of albums where DJs warp and weave Christmas classics straight from the original 45s to create totally new tracks that have a wonderfully modern feel to them, yet, at their best, remain respectful to the original. But it’s a pain to not be able to explain easily and simply through demonstration why the music is good. So I’m horribly glad for the invention of Seeqpod, which is easy to use and lets one display music that is awesome without making it too easy to pirate. Hoorah for Seeqpod!

The Dan the Automator remix of Dean Martin’s “Jingle Bells” is the only track from Christmas Remixed that I could find, but luckily it’s one of the better ones. (The best is arguably the awesome mixjob done on Louis Armstrong’s “Baby It’s Cold Outside.”)

I hate it when I get an idea, look around on the Internet, and find out that somebody else beat me to it and only very recently at that.

Courtesy of Justin Mohareb (mo’ hareb, mo’ problems, that’s what I always say), I found Sun Media’s wonderful expose on the world of ILLEGAL INTERNET DOWNLOADING. And who gets quoted more than anybody else in this series of articles? Why, Graham Henderson, of course, the head of the CRIA, which is like a Canadian version of the RIAA except it’s focused primarily on American record companies and their presence in Canada. (Go figure.) The Sun pieces do their best to portray Henderson as an aw-shucks simple guy who just wonders why we all can’t just get along. He’s of course actually a tool (in all senses of the word).

I particularly love this bit where he addresses the complaint about the cost of CDs.

Henderson counters that they also don’t cost nearly what they should. “We have always been beaten up over CD prices. The fact is that in 1963, you could buy a single for 50c. It had two songs and a plain white wrapper. These days, a CD single has three to four tracks, enhanced stuff, a jewel case, lyrics and on and on. That 50c in today’s dollars, with inflation, is $4.50. But that CD single costs $2 or $3. The price of music has never kept pace with inflation.”

My god, this argument is so disingenous I’m not sure where to begin…

Has anybody who reads this blog ever bought a CD single? The only time I’ve ever seen one for sale is when I was in the States on vacation and that was over a decade ago. They had a small shelf in the middle of a Strawberry’s that was ignored, because single sales on CD are a tiny percentage of the market compared to, you know, actual albums. Which, in 1963, cost about $3.50, or in 2007 dollars, about twenty-four bucks. Now, admittedly, a CD by a big-name artist has a list price nowadays costs about fourteen bucks, but that price adjustment has only come within the last year and a half. Remember twenty-dollar CDs? I sure as hell do. That’s one of the reasons I stopped buying them.

But what’s really making his argument reek of bullshit is that the griping about the cost of music has never been “it’s too expensive.” It’s always been “the profit margin is too high.” That fifty-cent vinyl single he mentions was made in the United States by well-paid labourers. CDs, on the other hand, are made by chain-ganged toddlers in China (or similar). They used to be expensive, which is why CDs used to cost twenty dollars a pop, because the cost to produce them was twelve to fifteen dollars. Then blank media costs plummeted and suddenly it cost a couple of bucks to make the CD, including all the artist’s costs and record company salaries and all that. But prices didn’t drop accordingly, and they still haven’t done so, and that’s why nobody gives a shit about record companies.

I mean, let’s be honest: the age of the record company, as we know it, is in its last days. All they can offer is promotion, which is not an inconsequential thing to artists, but they do so at exorbitant prices and with the frequent demand for unreasonable control. Nobody particularly cares about what happens to these vainglorious, parasitic middlemen. Which leads me to another bit of the article, where Henderson “debunks” the excuse of “well, your music sucks” that people use to justify downloading (or so he claims):

Those stories don’t stand up to scrutiny, claims Henderson. “We’ve asked Canadians: What was the last record you bought? Was it good? And people say that 75%-80% of the tracks on the record were good … So then you ask: Who is it that has the crappy records? And they say, ‘Oh, well, it’s people like Britney Spears.’ And when you ask if they bought those records, they say no. So what’s the problem then?”

Firstly, I’ve never heard anybody actually use this as an excuse, but never mind that.

Secondly, when people say “all the music sucks” and then say “Britney Spears,” when asked for an example, despite not owning any Britney Spears albums, you have to understand they’re not talking about Britney in the literal sense. They’re using her as a figurehead to describe the music business as a whole: the vapid marketing of manufactured teen-pop and Creed and rock bands that look good rather than sound good and Creed and gangsta rappers screaming about bitches and hos and Creed and “American Idol” and Creed and the immense, unspoken under-the-table financing that leads to robotized radio stations and Creed and the gradual stifling of original, independent musical talent and Creed and the rise of “child star” musicians with no discernible talent other than being cute and Creed and the co-option of every interesting new thing to come along by promoting lesser imitators of said interesting new thing and, most importantly, Creed.

They’re talking about the vast, banal landscape of modern music promotion. They just call it “Britney Spears” because she encompasses the worst of it all in one vapid, trashy little package. And you know that, Mr. Graham I Am A Big Shot Henderson, so kindly spare us the naivete.

I note, incidentally that Radiohead’s download-only, pay-what-you-want album – despite being of poorer quality than the eventual CD release, which everybody knew in advance – has racked up about $40 million in gross profit thus far with no end in sight, with an average price point of about five to six dollars. Now, admittedly, not every band is Radiohead, but then again not every band can be Radiohead. (And we should be thankful, because honestly, one Radiohead is enough. I’m looking at you, Coldplay!)

With costs of production dropping like everything else, let’s say I form a band with three other guys and build a bit of a local reputation with my fantastic bongo solos. Let’s then say that my band spends $10K on production for an Interwebs album release. (This is probably high.) We promote it, and go with pay-what-you-want… let’s say we get 100,000 downloads, and our average price point is seventy-five cents. After costs are knocked off, that’s $65,000 in profit split four ways, for $16,250 per band member. Now, this is not living the high life, to be sure, but nobody said art was inherently lucrative and that’s before you factor in other profit areas like performances.

Oh, and me and the band would actually own and control the rights to our own work. And that’s why record companies are headed the way of the dodo, and we’re seeing it happen right now, in real time, and I couldn’t be happier to see the fuckers on their way out.

Having been ably helped by my readers over the weekend in identifying a Rammstein song which apparently everybody but me already knew about, I am giving back. If you were not previously aware of the Magic Numbers, here now are two of my favorite songs of theirs. It’s driving power-pop, fast and melodic and just plain good.

But wait! I am nothing if not one who likes being introduced to new things, and the last time I did this sort of thing I learned about DJ Format, Kinky and the Greenskeepers, all of which now lurk upon my iPod. And I can always use new tunes, and I am sure all of you can use new tunes as well. So link to songs you think people will like in the comments.

When they get around to making a Scott Pilgrim movie, they should use “Happy Boys and Girls” by Aqua for the trailer music.

You know I’m not wrong about this.

(It would also work for a live-action Ranma 1/2 movie.)

Normally when I hear a bit of a song and I want to download it, I do a lyrics search on Google and get the song title in seconds.

But here’s the problem: the song I want to download is by Rammstein. So the lyrics are in German. So I can’t really Google it accurately. All I can really say about the song is that it’s got more of a rock flavour to it than I traditionally associate with Rammstein’s techno/black-metal sound, and that it’s probably something they released as a single.

Help?

EDIT TO ADD: “Tier,” suggested by an able reader in email who, upon being told that the song was “operatic in tone but with a driving beat and a deedly-thingy going “ah-ah-ah” in the chorus”, named four possibilities. Although it turns out I rather like “Engel,” too. God, I love the Internet!