At Tucows, a few of us were discussing that this is the 'Year of the E-card'.  This year I got more e-cards than ever before for my birthday and they were great!  I actually really enjoyed watching them.  My sister said the same thing to me, that she really enjoyed picking out christmas e-cards for her friends. 

This Christmas Eve, the T. and I are spending a few hours on YouTube and so I bring you our christma - Tube holiday greeting.  Enjoy.

Sorry fisher friends, this is not a post about bass (rhymes with lass)
but bass (rhymes with face).

The T. and I went walking last Sunday and found the Kensington Bass.  I first read about it this bass in the Spacing Magazine. 

The Kensington Bass is a public art installation for bass players.  A bass was built on a street light pole.  Its completely in tune and operational.  There is no external amplification but if you put your head to the pole, you get a great sound as it reverberates inside.




The encounter with the Kensington Bass inspired me to upload my first YouTube video (will I be at a party some day saying, "I totally remember my first YouTube video, it was ...")  Its a very close up shot of the T. playing so that my circa 1999 digital camera could get some sound. 

Any other bass playing Trawana readers?  Go to the Kensington Bass, play it, record it, upload it.  And tag it baby, tag it.

Check out this excellent music blog : Benn loxo du taccu  is  about African music.  The best part of the blog is that the author posts songs from different artists.  It is a great blog to read if you would like to expand your African music knowledge.

He posts on some of my favourites :

Salif Keita
Cheikh Lo

Lately, the new music service Pandora has come up amongst a few people I know.

For those who haven't tried it, Pandora is an on-line streaming music service that allows you to create a 'station' based on entering an artist or a song.  Pandora creates a playlist of songs it thinks you would like based on their similar sound and style to what you have entered.

The songs in the Pandora library have been classified by musicians and music lovers based on over 100 attributes for a song.

I really recommend trying this out to see what you think.  Its certainly an interesting idea.  The goal of Pandora is to help you find more music that you would like by putting in artists you may not know who have a similar style to an artist you do know.  In theory, this replaces your "music friend" who says, 'Hey have you heard <band name here>?  I think you would like them'.

So Pandora can create a nice playlist for you at work that is less distracting than listening to a radio stream.  Personally, I find I miss the human element.  A good dj should surprise you and Pandora never surprises you by say putting Li Ma Wesu by Youssou N'Dour after 'In Your Eyes' by Peter Gabriel.  First, because Pandora has a non-existent world music collection and second, I doubt these tracks would be considered a 'match'.

Also, I enjoy getting recommendations and playlists from friends.  It is a social activity to share music.  To have it done by a program has far less value to me.

Oh and business model : weak.  I would never pay a subscription for this service.  Would you?  There are the obvious advertising and buying click through to Amazon etc for revenue.  I'm sure Pandora is getting a piece of that.  But how many people will buy a CD or track because Pandora recommended it.  Why do I need to own it when I can just fire up Pandora?

The advent of digital music libraries has introduced a Music Collector's Dilemma (MCD).  MCD:

The argument for ripping all the tracks is that your music library will be an exact reflection of your physical CD collection.  Also, I have heard some people imply that a true music collection must have every track by an artist, even if the track is clearly a
'hey wait - the recording console was getting that last jam. okay we have our ninth track!'

The T. and I have gone back and forth on the MCD.  But finally we have decided that we will only keep good tracks on the music library.  We have found, over the years, that we never ever listen to the B tracks.  And though hard drive space is cheap, my time is not.  I don't want to have to search through a list of tracks trying to find the Rolling Stones songs I actually like.

An advantage of TouchAmp is that it has a 'Dump' button.  Don't like a track, hit Dump.  It gets moved to a folder on our music drive called TA_Dump.  We can review it and then permanently delete it via PC.

My goal right now is to go through my growing World Music collection.  I love World Music but I am not a collector.  Just because a track is a great example of a regional Thai singing style, doesn't mean I will listen to it.  I'd like to get it to the point where I can just add folders of tracks that are regionally similar and have a few hours of great listening. 

On Friday we dumped over a Gig of bad music! 

The T. just posted one of his current projects.  Its called TouchAmp and it has brought great joy to our livingroom. 

We can now play music from our music library using an (almost) free touch screen interface.  We have a left over PalmPilot on our bookshelf connected to a mini-ITX PC that has our music library on its hard drive.

With the TouchAmp app, I can create and control a playlist.  For example, I create a workout playlist from our library that I use for my workout in the morning.  If I've picked a song that's too slow then I can move forward to the next one.  I can also add songs at the end if my playlist ran short. 

I love it because:
1. No PC monitor in our livingroom.  I look at a PC all day.  I don't want to see one when I'm listening to Arcade Fire.
2. I can control the playlist without leaving the room.

To me, a good playlist is the key to a good time.  In fact, the T. and I now compete on who can create the best playlist.  We take turns on picking tracks and trying to find great song combinations.