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The Technology of They Might Be Giants
Brian Heater writes "I recently did a two-part interview with John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants. It might be of interest, as we discussed the role of technology both in terms of their recording and distribution, from Dial-a-Song, to podcasts, to Myspace. Says John: 'All the song writing we do, we'll be working with a computer, just as a recording device, and maybe we'll be working with a program as a music-generating device. That's just the sound-making devices that are there. A lot of times it's good enough, but when you hear it played on a real instrument, it's much more persuasive and exciting. Or conversely, you've have some lumpy, homemade loop that has oodles of charm that you forget to leave on the final version of the song, because it seemed amateurish. Finding the balance is really the key for us. I'm very excited by the time we live in, but I feel like any time in the post-mechanical era would be good for me.'"
How do you forget to leave (a loop/track) on the final version of (a) song, because it seemed amateurish? Sounds more like you purposefully remove it.
Video Production Support
I can imagine there's huge overlap (okay fine, relatively large overlap) between Slashdot readers and fans of TMBG, with their clever lyrics and unusual song topics, such as Mesopotamians, past presidents, or even Linux users.
So when is Slashdot going to pay They Might Be Giants to do a theme song? Fatboy Slim already did one, but there probably aren't as many fans on this board.
Continuing the them of TMBG using technology, I heard that their song Spider was originally created on a Macintosh just moments after they unboxed it. This was back when Apple first introduced 16-bit stereo (as opposed to 8-bit mono) recording capabilities in the early 1990s. I had heard TMBG used the box of said computer to also do some of the percussion for the song.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
They built this whole neighborhood out of wood, out of wood
I guess I'll still be around when they burn, burn it down
I will be standing around when they burn it down
Here in the Museum of Idiots
...
If you and I had any brains, we wouldn't be in this place
Chop me up into pieces, if it pleases, if it pleases
And when the chopping is through, every piece will say "I love you"
Every piece of me will say "I love you"
Here in the Museum of Idiots
Fun with Anagarams! LADS HOST, SHALT DOS. HAS DOLTS. AD SLOTHS, HATS SOLD. ASS HO, LTD.
Part 2 Continued here:
h t_be_giants_1.php/
http://www.gearlog.com/2007/08/interview_they_mig
http://www.theymightbegiants.com/album-venue.htm
FLAC - Free Lossless Audio Codec
You can't make me go out and commission a theme song.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Back when the technology was new... drum machines, synthesizers and no one knew how to interface them. Here's a link to a fantastic interview from the drummer of Ultravox! who details the issues involved in syncing these devices - live - and long before even the Apple II showed up on the scene. http://www.discog.info/ultravox-interview.html/
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You missed the best tracks then.
Spend more time with it.
zork% mv *.asp
283 files eaten by a grue
Back in 1995 a local ISP had a call in contest on a radio show where they'd give $250 to somebody that could convince them that there was a job that would not benefit from the internet. I won the contest by telling them that I drove an ice cream truck and all of my customers were little kids. This was hypothetical and I told the host the truth. I was actually a programmer at the time. I am still not qualified to drive an ice cream truck.
I took $100 in cash and the rest in free internet access for several months. I stuck with that ISP until 2006 when I moved to an area that they do not service.
What, no mention of John Linnell's computer-controlled robot orchestra?
See:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EL9_IK8YNV8 (Rehearsal)
And:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4RZpKJ1x6o (Live)
Alternatively, you could visit the TMBG website, where you can purchase their music free of DRM, as well as sample free tunes and video clips.
That's odd. I can think of ways that driving an ice cream truck would benefit from the Internet.
... ice cream trucks tend to find their way to those events anyway but I'm sure there's some non-obvious events where the possibility of mutually beneficial business relationships exist).
...
Thanks to map tools like google maps you could plan better routes. I suppose you don't *need* the Internet to do that but it adds a level of convenience.
If it's a franchise of ice cream trucks we're talking about then they can use the Internet to communicate with all of their drives more efficiently (offering access to schedules from home, allowing drivers to IM each other etc.).
You can use the Internet to advertise. Not directly to your customers since they're little kids, of course, but to event organizers who's attendees would benefit from having concessions and such at the event (mini league baseball games and stuff
If you're a franchise you can use the Internet to help you find new drivers. If you're an individual you can use the Internet to find additional help that can lead into developing your business into a larger one.
You could set up a web page for your ice cream service and advertise it on the packaging of each sale and in big letters on your truck. You could offer activities / games and such to keep the customers (kids) coming back to the site. At the very least you can use the site to get customer feedback (probably mostly from parents yet still helpful) but surely there would be other ways to convert the traffic to profit as well.
This is just off the top of my head
Almost no digital watches are computers. A few, not many, older cellphones are not computers. Older car computers aren't, IIRC. (Some of them aren't anything except recording devices!)
A computer is a general purpose computing device, and must be Turing-complete. It has to be able to execute arbitrary code. (Even if there's no way to easily get the code in there.) There are plenty of electronic devices that are not computers, that are simply a few specific ICs thrown together.
General rule of thumb: If it has no ROM, it isn't a computer, because it has nowhere to store instructions, and hence can't be executing instructions. (That doesn't mean if it does have ROM, it is one...it might be storing something besides CPU instructions there.)
Many things that are computer aren't computers in the place it counts. Like cellphones...they don't actually use their CPU for anything to do with actually talking on the phone...the CPU is running the UI and phonebook and stuff like that, but hardwired ICs are running the compression and radio. Likewise with MP3 players...the very cheap ones have no computer, the cheap ones use a computer to pick a song and stuff, and only the expensive ones with excess CPU actually use the CPU to decode the MP3. The rest use cheap little MP3-decoding chips that get fed a compressed stream and output an uncompressed one, and that's all they can do.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
It's because hookers pronounce it I-suck-you.
TMBG has been my favorite band for a long time, and I liked them even before I knew who they were thanks to Paticle Man and Istanbul both being on Tiny Toon Adventures.
It's really great, however, knowing that they have set up their own website where you can buy mp3s of their albums at reasonable prices (99 cents a track or $10 an album last I checked). If you buy the album, you even get all the artwork in pdf form!
Music unencumbered with DRM is always great, only kind I'll buy. That it's run by the artists and (presumably, never actually checked into it) they get all the profits is just gravy.
TMBG truly is the future of music.
You mean computers aren't the people who do my math computations for me anymore?
Woodworking
Cabinet Making
Carpentry
Carpet Laying
Boiler Making
Most manual labour jobs make no use (or next to no use) of computers and trust me, tradesmen are not friends of the mobile phone.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
We're almost there, but the problem is that modern cars use computers to self-diagnose problems. Unless the labourers use really old cars, they still rely on computers.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
You will find 9 times out of 10 a tradie (tradesmen) will drive a 10 yr old econovan (especially the older tradies). At least thats the case in Australia. Other than that yes but my point was that manual trades aren't exactly the first to innovate. If you took away all their computers (back to manual systems in cars so on and so forth) 99% of tradies wouldn't notice. My dad (who is a cabinet maker) complains about the number of system in his 2003 model car.
That being said, there are a fair few computer driven tools such as large scale cutting tools that reduce the labour to simply loading the machine with raw materials (wood, sheet metal) and letting a computer do the work. These are prevalent in the metal working trades (which is why I focused on the wood trades as metal workers are quiet innovative in comparison) but we are yet to build a computer controlled robot that can (economically) construct a couch or lay a carpet let alone renovate a kitchen, in these fields computers are rarely used by the actual tradesmen and direct use is normally two degrees removed from the actual work (as in the car, which has manual control and is only used for transport).
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
http://www.tvguide.com/
Scorta futuere amo!
I have to disagree and agree with you there. I recieved the album about a week and a half ago. My initial impressions were not good. I left it a week and came back to it. And loved it. Give it another go, perhaps concentrate on 'I'm Impressed', 'Upside down frown', 'the cap'm' and the totally excellent 'The Mesopotamians'. I was completely addicted to it last week, I listened to it constantly for about 4 days!
Sorry for posting something totally pointless but I just had to, being a long-term slashdot reader and MASSIVE TMBG fan. TMBG are my favourite band ever, I've adored them since the very first time I heard Ana NG with that awesome guitar riff throughout. Brilliant. I've followed them ever since, going to see them whenever I can (which is rare in the UK) and buying all their albums. Okay, I wasn't overly impressed with 'The Spine' (though some great tracks - Wearing a Raincoat for example) but I reckoned they've returned to form with 'The Else' - I love that album and just hope they play a couple of dates in the UK.
I just also have to mention that I actually got to speak to them a few years ago backstage (Thanks to Jonothan Ross for giving me and my mates the passes - another big TMBG fan) and they are totally cool and really pleasant people.
Anyway, long live TMBG!
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www.lessermatters.co.uk
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No. "Nerd" or "geek" is generally the moniker for anyone you threaten to beat up if they don't do your homework for you.
So we keep buying/downloading the newer material, hoping to recapture the feelings we had from the earlier work. But you aren't the same person you were then, neither are the artists. Such is the nature of bands that last. If you get into a band right away eventually, they will stop doing what got you into them. You will change, they will change. The divergence increases over time. i just to be obsessed with The Cure and Depeche Mode. But i'm not a hyperemotional/hormonal teenager anymore. Robert Smith and Martin Gore aren't in their 20s anymore. They can only write so many versions of Plainsong and People are People. i don't dislike their new stuff in the same way that i dislike country, but i don't care for it. We've grown apart. But that's ok, because VNV Nation and nerd core rap fills that void now for me. If a band repeats themselves, that too gets old. Most artists want to try different things over time. Instead of begrudging them their evolution or downfall, i just move on.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
I actually don't know. I know there's a way to upgrade some of the more powerful ones to player other types of media that they were not designed to do, like FLAC. And FLAC actually takes more CPU than MP3. So if the CPU is there, I can't imagine them putting another chip in to do it. Yeah, it'd increase battery life, probably, but still.
Some stuff, like DRM WMAs, has only recently had chips comes out that can do it. (It and MP3 in the same chip.), so previous players had to have real CPUs in them that did that.
There are a few low-powered CPUs that have no problem decoding MP3s and aren't much more expensive than the CPUs needed to drive the GUI.
In fact, my category of 'cheap ones' might be almost completely empty at this point in time..there might only be 'very cheap ones' MP3 players with no UI, or rather a hardware one (Like all MP3 CD players, that are just normal CD players that have two extra chips, one to read a ISO9660 filesystem and maybe read IDv3, and one to decode MP3 streams.), and 'expensive ones' that do everything in a CPU.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
"VNV Nation ... fills that void now for me."
"If a band repeats themselves, that too gets old."
I foresee Ronan Harris, et al, joining Misters Gore and Smith quite soon. You can only request "Chrome" so many times at the club. He can only sing that G to F monotone voice so many times before it gets on me.
Then again, Gary Numan is a bit guilty of that too, but I'm not admitting to the same paradigm, although his new stuff is a far cry from "The Pleasure Principle" and Tubeway Army (ramble ramble...)
I can completely empathize with the ease of writing without a drummer but the pain of performing without one....double edged sword! Seems similar in some respects to Trent writing all the NIN material and having to gear up with a live crew for the tours....
Music for coding. Genetic algorithm driven visuals. http://www
ICQ allows users to send messages directly to one another, whereas AOL's IM relays every message through AOL's servers.
That's why I used ICQ, back when I was with Al Qu...err, the Boy Scouts.
"In a 32-bit world, you're a 2-bit user. You've got your own newsgroup, alt.total.loser." -Weird Al