Hip-Hop Statistics

In an ever changing world of social vernacular, one is often perplexed with understanding hip-hop lyrics. I've come across an amazing set of graphs and pie charts that are quite educational. For example, the above bubble chart helps one comprehend the fact that bitches ain't shit but hoes and tricks.

World's Largest Subwoofer?

A few years ago, Royal Device, a self-proclaimed esoteric audio/video company built: "The Biggest SUBWOOFER of the WORLD, for the most esoteric Audio and AUDIO-VIDEO Room of the World. The Highest efficiency ever obtained with NO distortion using NO feedback tube low power amplifiers and NO crossover on the speakers"

The subwoofer has dual 9.5 meter horns driven by eight 18" drivers each. Yes, that's right, eight 18" drivers in each horn for a total of 16 woofers. It has a claimed frequency response of 10Hz at full power - below the level of human hearing. With an efficiency of more than 110 dB at 1W/1meter the system operates at 6400 Wrms total.

The subwoofer horns are built underneath a solid concrete floor, one meter deep.

The acoustic level at listening position(about 6 meters from frontal speakers) are 100 dB with 1 Watt.

Damn.

Fall Music

Looking for some good fall/wintry music to get you through the shorter days? Forget all the new Pop music coming out - fall is a darker time; the cold slowly approaches and the once familiar landscape begins to take on a skeletal appearance. Yeah! Nothing is more perfect than Morton Feldman's meditation, Rothka Chapel. Best described as minimal choral music, its worth checking out and best listened to alone with headphones on. I advise downloading track one, titled Rothka Chapel 1 from either iTunes or Amazon.


Not quite in the pensive mood for Feldman? Then check out Yagya, a minimal techno producer from Iceland. Don't let the album cover throw you off - this album is anything but the sharp, cold feelings the art suggests. This album is soft, sweet and full of great rhythmic beats. Rhythm of Snow is perfect for long cold nights. This album remains one of my all time favorite ambient albums as it conjures all the good feelings associate with snow(laying in a thick down comforter while watching snow fall peacefully outside) rather than the bad ones(frostbitten toes). Check out track eight, appropriately titled "Snowflake 8".

Fabric 36 - Ricardo Villalobos

The 36th volume for the popular Fabric mix series is by Ricardo Villalobos. It's a bit unique in that every track is produced by him and then mixed into an album. Similar to Richie Hawtin's minimal DE9 and Transitions, this album is sparse, multi-layered and takes quite a bit of patience. The Chilean/German DJ had a few interesting comments to say about his influences and love for percussion:

“I started to play conga and bongos; I was listening to percussive and South American music at the time. In a way, the electronic music we listen to when we dance is very similar to African and South American percussion music. On one hand, you have the percussion, like Samba, where people are dancing for hours and days – it’s the same rules and ideas behind techno: to make people go crazy, lose their realities, let go. This is happening with percussive music. It was a clear path, or it was a normal consequence, to go from acoustic percussive music to electronic percussive music. All my knowledge I have about percussion, I put into electronic music of course. When I was a kid, I was very often in situations with percussion sessions, for hours, the whole night. My parents had friends that owned concert agencies so we heard so many Southern American musicians and sessions. I was just a little kid, always looking on and recognising something that was making people dance. This has always really fascinated me. As a musician, you are searching for that your whole life. I’m constantly on a search for the truth about the dance floor - why do people dance, what’s the secret behind it.” – Ricardo Villalobos

There Will Be...Strings?

Jonny Greenwood composed the score for Paul Thomas Anderson's latest film There Will Be Blood. Based on Upton's Sinclair novel Oil!, this is a story about family, greed, religion and of course, oil.

Jonny is most commonly known as the guitarist for Radiohead and it seems odd he'd compose an entire film score, especially for a major Hollywood movie. However, he's no neophyte to orchestration as he's done the score for a documentary called Bodysong as well as being commissioned by the BBC to compose a piece call "Popcorn Superheart Receiver".

There Will Be Blood is a brutal, inspiring movie as well as the year's best so far. Jonny's score keeps the film's tone as an abrasive and in-your-face melody, the kind that demands to be heard. Sound is 50% of a movie and you'll no doubt pay attention to the music - whether you like it or not. There will be strings, lots and lots of very loud strings that create a foreboding, haunting presence from beginning to end.

When interviewed together for EW about the score, they replied:

JONNY GREENWOOD: Sometimes Paul would describe the thing as kind of close to the horror-film genre. And we talked about how The Shining had lots of Penderecki and stuff in it. So yeah. I think it was about not necessarily just making period music, which very traditionally you would do. But because they were traditional orchestral sounds, I suppose that's what we hoped was a little unsettling, even though you know all the sounds you're hearing are coming from very old technology. You can just do things with the classical orchestra that do unsettle you, that are sort of slightly wrong, that have some kind of undercurrent that's slightly sinister. Which is what's happening with this film sometimes. Part of what I picked up on and got excited about is that it's the end of the 19th Century. A lot of [things are] just implied, so it's not a horror film in that sense, because people are sort of being polite, but there's a sense of darkness going on at the same time. I love that kind of stuff, when things are unspoken.

PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON: I guess when you have a title like that, the music better be a little bit scary.

Gimme some FLAC!

FLAC is a file format for audio compression. Since it is a lossless audio format, it doesn't remove information from the audio data stream and diminish the sound like all MP3s do. FLAC is the closest you can come to CD quality and is the format of choice for those wishing to preserve their audio collections. It can handle PCM bit resolution from 4 to 32 bits per sample and go as far down as 1Hz(oh yeah) to 1,048,570Hz with up to eight unique channels. Stereo or 7.1 surround sound if you'd like.

So why don't more people use FLAC files instead of MP3s? Well don't expect FLAC to play easily in mainstream players like iTunes or Windows Media Player. The format itself is DRM free, unencumbered by patents, has an open-source reference implementation and even includes an API. Sounds a lot like Linux, eh?

With the rise of digital music downloads, the increase in personal storage space and the demand for better audio...expect to see more FLAC in the near future.