Category: Audio, Music and Hi-Fi

De La ChimpWithCans

To those of you who don’t know, I’m a chimp who likes to listen to music while I write. The Bantam civilisation implanted a chip into my brain when they invaded Old Earth. The chip allows us animals to understand human language. While I still can’t talk with the humans (as some of the other animals are able to do) I can understand what they say. This means I have to listen to people as they quibble and argue all over the place. It also means that a huge back catalogue of human music is now accessible to me. A regular old chimp with modifications, I am now a blogger and a music junkie.

On the cans this morning is the De La Soul album from 2016. This is a wonderful sound. Beats to jump up and down to, guest appearances all over the place to make me screech and grin my wide chimpanzee grin. I love a good album and the fact that this was funded in part by a Kickstarter campaign makes it even more satisfying for some reason.

Variety of voices from Usher to David Byrne keeps this album interesting. Lyrics and rhymes mixed with audio scenery give it depth.

A most pleasant listening experience for this chimp. Now it’s time for me to find some bananas for breakfast.

 

 

Fun Friday – Podcasts

One of my goals is to set up my own podcast. To me the podcast as an art form is the perfect mix of audio and the written word. A well produced episode can transport the listener wherever the creator wants to take them.

I recently bit the bullet and paid for pocketcast on the laptop. I already had the free app on my phone, and now i can listen to my favourite episodes on the laptop too. Getting my podcast fix on this app rather than on iTunes is a deliberate strategy. I do not want to get too tied down to the Apple ecosystem. I use Google, I use MSOFFICE, and I use other similar products that are device agnostic. That way I can bounce between iOS and Android, OSX, Windows or Chrome. Anyways, I digress.

My passions for music and audio and writing are distilled in the podcast as an art form. My favourite show from the last few weeks of immersion in pocketcasts app is Lore: http://www.lorepodcast.com/ . This show is so focussed, stylized and deliberate in its execution, I would aim for something similar when I get around to producing a show. Lore is also a valuable asset as a website that sells merchandise and sponsorship. Impressive stuff.

What are your favourite podcasts? Do you have any secrets for finding time to produce a podcast on the side?

 

Thursday Reblog

How did Bernie Madoff do it? How did he steal twenty billion dollars from people who should have known better? It doesn’t matter if you went to university or not–you can still be played as a chump. To pull off a significant deception, you generally need two things: A deceiver and a crowd of people open…

via Chump (Don’t get played) — Seth Godin’s Blog on marketing, tribes and respect

This applies as much to politics as it does to high end audio.

Don’t fall for gimmicks – don’t be a chump.

Google enhancements

One of my favourite things to do is to combine 2 x Google services to enhance my music listening experiences. I like to work my way through this book: 1001 albums to hear before you die. I have the book open to read in my browser in Google Play Books. As I read I listen to the albums on Google Play Music. A Google double whammy.

If you read about a piece of music while you listen to it, the experience is more enjoyable than just listening. Our brains respond to trusted recommendations and descriptive writing in interesting ways – the music seems to open up as you read about it. It is really fun identifying all the features of an album with headphones on, at the same time as it is described in words in front of you.

Google may not have the highest bitrate in its streaming service, but its flexibility and complementary nature of its other offerings mean that it has become a staple in my listening habits.