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It’s raining here in Berkeley, and as I like to do when it’s raining, I sit down at the piano and improvise some rainy day music. I used my iRiver to make this quick little recording of about 10 minutes (9:57 to be exact) of that, and considering I’ve got all the space and bandwidth in the world now, I thought I’d share it with you.

Note that the recording is decent, but not that good. I basically took an old pair of headphones, plugged them into the stereo mic jack, and placed them inside the piano. It sounds pretty cool. Very ambient.

“Rainy Day Music” by Tristan Harward
30-second mp3 Sample - 352 KB
mp3 - 4.6 MB - 64kbps
Ogg Vorbis - 5.3 MB - Quality 2 (~70 kbps) *

*(The Ogg Vorbis file is about twice the quality of the mp3 version)

Before I heard about the iRiver H320 (hereafter “the iRiver”, also available in a 40GB version, the H340), I wanted an iPod. I didn’t really want one that badly, though, and I thought I got along just find with my CD player and my newly found affinity for little plastic discs. Fortunately for me, I was given an iRiver for Christmas, and I’m sure glad I didn’t get an iPod first.

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I love how on American Idiot you get little snippets of melodies and lyrics from other songs in some tracks. It’s a really interesting way of interconnecting the songs, and it works well. I’m starting to really like this album. Not my favorite kind of music in general, but like I always say, good music transcends genre. Check it out.

and I don’t feel any different… (Death Cab for Cutie, New Year, something I’ll be playing at midnight).

So, everyone else has been making lists of 2004 things, but I decided to wait until it was actually the end of the year. Unfortunately the only thing I got for waiting was Cal losing the holiday bowl and the largest natural disaster in recent memory (please help). Made for an unfortunate end to an otherwise perfectly good turn ?round the sun.

I decided to just do one list this year, and I think it’s a good one. Here is my “Soundtrack for 2004,” which fits on one 80-minute CD, and pretty much expresses my musical taste for the year, if not a little bit of what the world felt like during this time. Most of these songs are new from 2004, or at least recent.

So I guess I’m trying to start a meme. I don’t really care if you follow it, but the rules are simple: 80 minutes or less.

Soundtrack for 2004

1. Death Cab for Cutie - Steadier Footing (1:47)
2. Ben Folds - Still Fighting It (4:25)
3. Pilate - Into Your Hideout (3:56)
4. Coldplay - Shiver (4:59)
5. Franz Ferdinand - 03 Take Me Out (3:57)
6. Jimmy Eat World - Polaris (4:51)
7. mae - Sun (5:08)
8. Modest Mouse - I’ve Got it All (Most) (3:08)
9. Yann Tiersen - La valse d’Amelie (version piano) (2:38)
10. Something Corporate - Me And The Moon (4:07)
11. Snow Patrol - How To Be Dead (3:23)
12. The Postal Service - Brand New Colony (4:12)
13. Alexi Murdoch - Orange Sky (6:17)
14. Iron And Wine - Passing Afternoon (4:00)
15. Josh Rouse - Women and Men (5:06)
16. James Taylor - Like Everyone She Knows (4:56)
17. Shawn Colvin - If I Were Brave (3:12)
18. Hedwig and the Angry Inch - Wicked Little Town (Tommy Gnosis Version) (3:51)
19. Death Cab for Cutie - Debate Exposes Doubt (4:36)

This is a rather fun meme that I thought I’d take the time to spread. Parent is Joen Asmussen.

The rules for the playlist meme are simple:

1. Open up the music player on your computer.
2. Set it to play your entire music collection.
3. Hit the “shuffle” button.
4. Tell us the title of the next ten songs that show up (with their musicians), no matter how embarrassing. That’s right, no skipping that Carpenters tune that will totally destroy your hip credibility. It’s time for total musical honesty. Write it up in your blog or journal and link back to at least a couple of the other sites where you saw this.
5. If you get the same artist twice, you may skip the second (or third, etc.) occurances. You don’t have to, but since randomness could mean you end up with a list of ten song with five artists, you can if you’d like.

So, without anxiety or pretense, here are my ten (Title - Artist - Album):

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Death Cab for Cutie was a band I thought I wouldn’t like, judging the book from its cover. I mean, the name makes them sound like a death metal band, which is of course not even close to my kind of music.

The lead singer Ben Gibbard happens also to be the man behind The Postal Service album “Give Up”, which I loved instantly. The story behind that album is very interesting — it was just a side project for the duo, and I think it was ahead of its time when it was released in February of last year. Only now has it begun to gain widespread recognition.

When I heard Ben Gibbard was in Death Cab for Cutie, I thought I’d give their newest (though still over a year old) album “Transatlanticism” a shot.

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In general, would you say that free downloading on the Internet has helped your career as a musician, hurt your career, or not really made any difference? Based on musicians/songwriters [N=2,755]

(%)
35 Free downloading has helped my career
5 Free downloading has hurt my career
37 Free downloading has not really made any difference in my career
8 Free downloading has both helped and hurt my career
15 Don?t know

From the PEW Internet Life survey of Musicians and Songwriters [Big PDF], December 2003

My comment: Musicians say it doesn’t hurt their career, it actually helps it… gee, I wonder why the Recording Industry hates downloaders…

My other comment: I’ve spent more money on music over the last year than I ever have in my life, and it was all because I could download albums and listen to different related artists and genres without buying a bunch of CDs that I wouldn’t even know if I like. If the recording industry wants me to stop downloading music, then they’ll have to deal with the side effect — I won’t buy any more music.

First, here are three albums released in the last year which have quickly (like, over the last week) become favorites.

Snow Patrol - Final Straw
The Postal Service - Give Up
Jimmy Eat World - Futures (which I have reviewed previously)

Before coming to college, I didn’t have a taste for popular music. I think that was a good thing. I got my basis in music from real music– jazz (lots of jazz) and folk and classical. Whatever my parents listened to, I listened to, and I still share some taste with them. I still listen to everything I used to. Music never leaves you; if you like something once you’ll like it for all time, and it will only continue to be more nostalgic, weighted by the memoies of the circumstances of each time you listened to it.

Only recently have I become interested in “new” music.

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