Happy Birthday, Antonio Vivaldi! Celebrating the Timeless Genius of a Musical Legend

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💊Whiz Pill Podcast Episode 11 |

💊Whiz Pill number 11 covers @thecrunchybeat and their thoughts on music, algorithms, curation and compensation for artists. |

💊Subscribe to @whizpill on @substackinc for VIP content access |

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Lo-Fi Blow Fly (No Fly Zone) - Title - New Release from THISISGRAEME Music

Revamping the old with a fresh, energetic twist! 🎶 I've been revisiting my early tracks, armed with a deeper understanding of mixing. Excited about the enhancements, especially the #DrumAndBass vibes! Check out my #RemixPlaylist to get a taste of what's

Lo-Fi Blow Fly (No Fly Zone) Get ready to groove to the rhythm of Lo-Fi Blow Fly (No Fly Zone), my latest musical creation! This instrumental is a remix and upgrade of the original that I initially wrote as a more chilled out lo-fi track. If you’re a fan of my music, I’d love it if you could help me get more exposure by doing any of the following: FOLLOW my artist profile on Spotify,…

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Unveiling New Horizons: A Deep Dive into Modern Music Production

Innovations in Music Technology, Future of Music Production, Exploring Modern Music Tools In the dynamic sphere of music production, the revolutionary advent of stem separation technologies has opened up unprecedented avenues for creative expression. These innovations enable musicians, producers, and DJs to dissect and manipulate tracks into their elemental components like never before. Our…

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Matthew Wolf Capital Group: A Symphony of Swiss Traditions and Innovation

Dive into the world of Matthew Wolf Capital Group, where music and the majestic landscapes of Switzerland converge. Discover the unique sound born from the fusion of Swiss traditions and the innovative spirit of the Capital Group, captivating audiences worldwide. Join us on a journey through the Alps, where cultural heritage shapes our music. Visit: http://www.matthewwolf.co.uk

Harmonious Depth: Exploring the Evolution and Versatility of Five-String Bass Guitars"

Dive into the harmonious depth of five-string bass guitars, exploring their evolution, design nuances, and profound impact on contemporary music. From jazz to metal, discover the sonic versatility and creative expression these instruments bring to the mus

Introduction: The world of bass guitars has undergone a transformative evolution over the years, with musicians seeking to push the boundaries of sonic exploration and musical expression. Among the various innovations that have emerged, the five-string bass guitar has taken center stage, offering an additional dimension to the traditional four-string configuration. In this article, we delve into…

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ABACUSYNTH by ELIAS JARZOMBEK [2022]

Abacusynth is a synthesizer inspired by an abacus, the ancient counting tool used all around the world. Just like an abacus is used to learn the fundamentals of math, the Abacusynth can be used to explore the building blocks of audio synthesis.

Ey! Music side of tumblr! Can yall try playing something with a C Lydian add#11 scale? Couldn't find anything about this sort of scale online (partially cuz it has 8 notes) and I think it has an interesting vibe!

For reference, the notes are:

C, D, D# E, F#, G, A, B

Taylor will be accepting the Innovator Award at tonight’s iHeartRadio Music Awards for her impact on global pop culture throughout her career!!! What a mind. 🥺♥️

Tune in with us at 8/7c on FOX!

HES SUCH A LITTLE QUEER WHATS WRONG WITH HIM

The Murmurs: A Favourite 90s Alt-Pop Memory

Do you remember The Murmurs? Having asked around a bit, it seems many people my age don’t! I was a little sad to realise this… BUT… not to worry! This blog post us here to help remind you, or introduce you to their music… and provide a little context from 30 years on from their 1994 debut album. The Murmurs were an alternative pop duo comprising the talented singers/songwriters Leisha Hailey and…

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Iconic Songs in Unusual Time Signatures: Unique Beats Unleashed

Explore 'Unique Beats Unleashed': a playlist of iconic songs defying standard rhythms. Featuring Pink Floyd, Radiohead, and more, it's a must for music lovers and theory buffs. Discover the magic beyond 4/4 time.

Unusual Time Signatures Rock! Embark on a sonic journey with ‘Unique Beats Unleashed’, a meticulously curated playlist featuring some of the most iconic songs that break the mold of traditional music structure. Each track is a masterpiece in its own right, showcasing the genius of using unusual time signatures. From the legendary complexity of Pink Floyd’s ‘Money’ in 7/4 time to the rhythmic…

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Power Metal reddit currently has a discussion about Nuclear Blast, about what has changed with them and why, and man I have learned a lot of disturbing facts about what has happened there in the past 5 years. Someone posted an in-depth investigative article about it (from November 2021), which you should read if you speak German and are interested, otherwise or if it's too long here are the main points...

If you're into Nightwish, Sabaton, Blind Guardian etc., this is relevant information.

In 2018, the French Believe Music, which is a large corporation that mainly specializes in digital distribution, became majority owner of NB

Believe is not really interested in physical media like CDs and vinyls even though the people who worked at NB told their new corporate overlords that metal fans like physical media, both because many fans of especially the oldest and most successful bands are 50+ and because it's more ingrained in the subculture. Believe doesn't care and doesn't listen. They have their experiences from pop and hip-hop, where phone-based streaming subscriptions are the norm, and that's all they want to know. They are also ignoring printed magazines and don't advertise there much anymore.

Less focus on physical media means that bands now earn less, that they rank less highly in album charts, which in turn means that they lose negotiation power when they try to plan tours and negotiate with venues etc., because they "look" less successful

Believe has been dealing with this by signing mainly bands that are easy to market digitally and ending co-operations with bands that aren't, even ones that had been with NB for decades (like Rage and Nile, who went to Napalm)

The personal cooperation between bands and NB has really suffered, everything is more profit-oriented and impersonal, a lot of budgets have been decreased and the real decisions are made by Believe in Paris, not by any specific NB team

Believe has been stock market traded since 2021. Their stock value went down at first, was at about the price it had started out at when the article was written - I looked it up and in March 23 it's down 40% from its original value. Ouch.

The original founder of NB started a new label, Atomic Fire, and took "Amorphis, Helloween, Opeth, Sonata Arctica, Meshuggah, Primal Fear, Agnostic Front, Rise Of The Northstar, Silver Lake, White Stones and Michael Schenker Group" with him, also because Believe didn't really do much to keep many of these bands

It's certainly interesting to learn about, also because I had already wondered if NB, and some of their bands, had intentionally taken a more "commercial" approach in recent years, but I didn't know about the Believe thing. I thought it maybe had something to do with losses from the pandemic or something. Turns out they have a new owner.

I am by far your superior, but my notorious modesty prevents me from saying so.

- Erik Satie

To his contemporaries and peers Erik Satie was something of an enigma. Just a few of his quirks included claiming he only ate white foods, carrying a hammer wherever he went, founding his own religion, eating 150 oysters in one sitting, and writing a piece with the instruction to repeat 840 times! As a composer, Satie paved the way for the avant-garde in music and became a very influential figure in the classical music of the 20th century whose works still sound fresh today.

Born into a poor and difficult childhood in the Normandy harbour town of Honfleur on 17 May 1866, Satie would always be an outsider. The Paris Conservatoire to which he was enrolled by his stepmother, herself a pianist, became for him “a sort of local penitentiary” during his teens; he left with no qualifications and a reputation for being lazy. He signed up for military service in 1886 and dropped out within the same year. Immersing himself in the bohemian life of Montmartre, he became linked with the popular music scene and eked out a living as an accompanist, playing at the Chat Noir cabaret. Always on the periphery, and forever out of money, he later downgraded from the cramped room in which he lived to the less fashionable Parisian suburb of Arcueil, where he holed up in isolation and squalor – no visitors set foot in the room during the near-30 years he lived there.

Much has been made of the eccentricities of this flâneur, who was always seen in a grey velvet suit, and yet underlying Satie’s music is his serious desire to create something new. You can hear it in his popular piano pieces: the haunting scales and rhythms of the Trois Gnossiennes written under the spell of Romanian folk music, and the meditative world of Gymnopédies, where, as in a cubist painting, motifs are “seen” from all sides. At a time when French composers were looking to escape the shadows of Wagner’s epic Romanticism, the French composer’s stripped-back mechanical sound, inspired by the humble barrel organ, offered a radically simple approach.

Satie preferred originality to the mundane. The composer of the famous Gymnopedies, could never be accused of having an uninteresting personality. For one, his outgoing fashion statements always caused a stir. During his Montmartre years, he had 12 identical velvet corduroy suits hanging in his wardrobe, which earned him the nickname ‘The Velvet Gentleman’, and in his socialist years, he donned a bowler hat and carried an umbrella.

Debussy helped to draw public attention to Satie, orchestrating two of his Gymnopédies, yet Satie had to wait until much later in life to attain celebrity status. While still earning a living writing salon dances and popular cabaret songs, and after suffering a creative crisis, he enrolled himself at the Schola Cantorum in Paris at the age of 39. Rather than finding him validation, his studies seem to have fuelled his hatred of convention - it’s with more than a hint of bitterness that he claims to put “everything I know about Boredom” into the Bach chorale of his masterful Sports et Divertissements piano pieces. But notoriety led to a succès de scandale and when it came it came with a bang in Parade, his surreal, one-act circus ballet for Diaghilev. Into the orchestral score, which featured jazz and cabaret tunes, were thrown typewriters, sirens and a pistol - just the kind of noises a wartime audience would normally pay not to hear. With its rigid cubist costumes by Picasso - which restricted Massine’s choreography - and a promotional push from Cocteau, it was provocative enough to secure Satie’s position at the vanguard of modernism.

Yet Satie was continually frustrated in his attempts to be accepted as an artist in high society France - his failure to establish himself at the prestigious Académie des Beaux-Arts, to which Debussy had won a scholarship, only compounded his resentment. Was this treatment by the cultural elite fair? Certainly his determination to antagonise his audience in his late ballets did little to endear him to the critics, but the fierce criticism he received in Paris was also a sign of things to come. Pierre Boulez would later poke fun at Satie’s lack of craft, while composer Jean Barraqué - another proponent of 12-tone music - would deride Satie as “an accomplished musical illiterate … who found that his friendship with Debussy was an unhoped-for opportunity to loiter in the corridors of history”.

Satie is perhaps, to this day, the most audacious and original composer when it comes to naming his works e.g. Gnossiennes and Gymnopédies. With Satie you will not see symphonies, concertos or opus numbers. Satie possessed a wicked sense of humour and his mockery, both of himself and others, became an inspiration for many of his irony-tinged works. His Sonatine bureaucratique is a spoof of Muzio Clementi’s Sonatina Op. 36 and contained many witticisms in the score. For example, he writes Vivache (vache being French for cow) instead of the original Italian tempo marking Vivace.

Whether in the collage-like miniature piano parodies he wrote during the World War I, his creation of a theatre format that has endured over the years, or in his collaboration with Jean Cocteau, Pablo Picasso y Sergei Diaghilev, there is a liveliness of imagination and a hunger for innovation that made Erik Satie In the torch bearer of the vanguard in his work. Satie would influence so many so strongly that years later some of his closest friends became radical artists, for example. ManRay, the sculptor Constantin Brâncusi, and Marcel Duchamp, or a much younger group of Paris-based composers like Les Six.

Satie, a known drinker of absinthe, and apparently every other alcohol available, died of cirrhosis at the age of 59 in Arcueil, France in July 1925. But his compositions, especially those deceptively simple-sounding solo piano works, find life today through recitals, concerts, and great movie scores. Although he died in poverty with little success to his name, today Erik Satie is acknowledged as a founder of 20th-century modernism, who changed the face of music.

Personally I do find Satie's music enriching, But I also find that his calculated wackiness is culturally apt. Pieces like ‘3 Pieces in the Shape of a Pear’, ‘Flabby Preludes for a Dog’ and ‘Desiccated Embryos’ rewardingly deflate Wagnerism's excesses in a characteristically French way.

Cliff Cooper: The Visionary Founder of Orange Amplifiers In the annals of musical instrument amplification, the emergence of Orange Amplifiers stands as a testament to innovation, artistic vision, and the relentless pursuit of sonic excellence. To truly appreciate the significance of Orange Amplifiers in the music industry, one must embark on a journey through the life and achievements of its…

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