Friday 31 October 2014

Igor Khudoley - Pictures from an exhibition, Boris Godunov




01 - Pictures from an exhibition
composed by Modest Mussorgsky

02 - Boris Godunov
suite after M. Mussorgsky opera


(p) 1989



The Beatles' Second Album




01 - Roll Over Beethoven
02 - Thank You Girl
03 - You Really Got A Hold On Me
04 - Devil In Her Heart
05 - Money (That's What I Want)
06 - You Can't Do That

07 - Long Tall Sally
08 - I Call Your Name
09 - Please Mister Postman
10 - I'll Get You
11 - She Loves You


(p) 1964


The title of this review for this musical artwork is just that "essential" and "must" why do you ask! I will tell you why! When Capitol records (EMI America) was receiving some of the early mixes from Parlophone (EMI U.K.) they were remixed and sometimes were added more echo on the backtracks for radio playing among other various remixing techniques, which distinguished the sound of vocals, bass, guitars and mono effects and so on. What makes this album worth having is of course the mix of all these songs together! And they are dam good! Everyone of these songs have a different sound on the English versions!

The Beatles - Please please me




01 - I Saw Her Standing There
02 - Misery
03 - Anna (Go To Him)
04 - Chains
05 - Boys
06 - Ask Me Why
07 - Please Please Me

08 - Love Me Do
09 - P.S. I Love You
10 - Baby It's You
11 - Do You Want To Know A Secret
12 - A Taste Of Honey
13 - There's A Place
14 - Twist And Shout


(p) 1963


Almost every time that a band releases their first record, the enthusiasm and the excitement can be felt around it the first times you hear it. With "Please Please Me", though, that youthful spirit of non-expert, energetic and absolutely talented musicians has survived through the years, transforming the first album ever recorded by The Beatles into a piece of joyful and cheering music that can be heard by any generation, extracting the same warmth and sense of quality that the people in the 60's saw in the talents of this band.

How to adjust motor to rotate at proper speed



How to adjust motor to rotate at proper speed


Vinyl records are designed to be played at 33,3 rotations per minute (rpm). It is plate's duty to rotate at that speed in order to reproduce the music within the correct pitch and tonality. However the motor, connected to the plate with rubber band, does not always come from the factory with a perfect 33,3 rotation speed. It often requires a bit of adjustment to make it perfect.

To find out how fast turntable actually rotates one can apply various measurements. In our first measurement we decided to compare song length of a vinyl ripped example with a correct version of a song.


Measurement and adjustment


In first rough measurement we notice that compared to various dubiously correct song versions, our turntable is often a little too fast.We estimate that it rotates at 33,71 rpm.


(right click picture and click View to enlarge it)


Now we turn the turntable upside down...








 


... and adjust the speed with the screwdriver.

With much trial and error, the LP should now play at desired 33,3 rpm.











Another way to measure the result


Another way to compare a song from our turntable to correct song is by comparing two notes of each song, say a piano note that you know is correct, or in this case an accord from guitar for example.

The way do do this is by first reading out the frequency or the pitch of mentioned note.










The note in question in this case is 370 Hz.

For example, the note "A" on a violin string vibrates at 440 Hz. It is a modern convention that notes on most instruments are tuned in to such frequencies.








To compare how off is our note from a desired note we enter both observations into table.
This shows that the motor is rotating at 33,03 rpm.




The final measurement


The results of above adjustments have calibrated our turntable closer to the desired speed, still we had to assume that either the fine tuning was fine enough, that we have done it with a precise screwdriver and a steady hand, or that instruments were perfectly tuned, so that what we heard sounded alright. In final measurement we are not going to rely on our hand and ear, we are going to use our eye.

To see how many rotations per minute LP makes now, we film it and watch it in slow motion, count how many times it rotates in exact minute. It should be 33 times and a third.


And it is.

Examining the hardware


In next couple of tutorials we are going to examine our audio hardware and see how to adjust some parameters and fix some issues.

The gramophone


The model in question is TTUSB05B KL. It's $90 worth of light plastic semi-automatic quality hardware. The name TTUSB represents a turntable (a gramophone, or phonograph) that can be connected to a computer through universal serial bus (USB) port.



Parts and characteristics



USB port
Analog to digital converter (ADC) will send digital signal through this port. The characteristic of this signal is 44,1 kHz and 16-bit resolution.

RCA Audio output cables
These cables can be plugged to a CD or auxiliary LINE input. This audio output signal can be connected to your receiver, home stereo, other speaker system, or sound card of your computer.

Tonearm
This tonearm with cartridge and needle can be raised or lowered by pushing the button. It is used to start spinning the motor.

Platter
Motor will rotate the platter with two possible speeds, 33,3 rpm (rotations per minute) used for long play records (LPs) or 45 rpm used for singles.

Wednesday 29 October 2014

Subsonic noise filtering



When recording a song, your software will record low frequencies as well, frequencies that are, being 20 Hz or lower, beyond the range of human hearing.

That part of the spectrum is not intended to be there in the original recording, it comes as a result of the resonance. Ground shakes and the gramophone rumbles. LP is not perfectly flat and the needle picks up the subsonic sound.






In this tutorial we are gong to see how to remove the unnecessary part of sound that is eating up the file and eating up electricity when sending the low frequency signal to the speakers.


Filtering out the resonance and rumble


To analyze the spectrum we compare the recording of an ordinary song (light green) with recording of a supposed silence (space between songs pictured violet).

Our recording has picked up loud signal around 20 Hz and below.






















Supposing there's no instrument playing at 35 Hz, we filter that out.

Sunday 26 October 2014

King Crimson - Lizard






01 - Cirkus
02 - Indoor Games
03 - Happy Family
04 - Lady Of The Dancing Water

05 - Prince Rupert Awakes
06 - Bolero - The Peacock's Tale
07 - The Battle Of Glass Tears
08 - Big Top


(p) 1970


Always an amazing mix of progressive rock and jazz, "Lizard" arguably stands out among the best King Crimson accomplishments. Noted for a variety of distortions/effects of different vocals, the band manages to extract them and balance them so they stand out clearly and crisply. King Crimson's third studio album, is probably the most strange, surreal (musically and lyrically) and jazziest out of Crimson's 1970's period. It's also very fantasy-laden, manic, quirky and idiosyncratic. The biggest contributing factor to this, besides the trippy and surreal jazz-rock, is the underrated and understated contributions of Gordon Haskell's vocals. His dark, brooding and raspy vocals fit perfectly with the dark and regal music found on here. 

King Crimson - In the wake of Poseidon






01 - Peace - A Beginning
02 - Pictures Of A City (Including 42nd At Treadmill)
03 - Cadence And Cascade
04 - In The Wake Of Poseidon (Including Libra's Theme)

05 - Peace - A Theme
06 - Cat Food
07 - The Devil's Triangle (Total)
08 - Peace - An End


(p) 1970


Apart from the fact of being closely related to the debut album, this album is just perfect in every way; the composition is very original and well thought, the instruments are played in an incredibly sophisticated way, and the moods that dominate the album are improvisational, pure, mature, soft, calm, just beautiful. It's also a principal source of musical evaluation when it comes to comparing it with other King Crimson albums like the heavy and mature compositions in the debut album, the jazzy style and soft debilities later shown in Lizard, the much more shown inclination to improvisation shown in every other album with much more devotion and the soft and calm moods that I compare a lot with Islands. King Crimson was definitively making themselves a way of cultural following and complex understanding.

Jani Golob - Skladatelj




01 - Kresna
02 - Zarika in Sončica
03 - Vora bije sunce mi zahaja
04 - Sv. Sintilawdič
05 - Urška in Povodni Mož

06 - Sonata za violino in klavir
07 - Dve skladbi za violončelo in klavir


(p) 1988


This album features contemporary classical compositions. The music here is awful. It is played badly, recorded badly, the sound of it is very annoying. To listen to this ugly music is a torture. 


Werkbund - Skagerrak




01 - Aviso
02 - Zweiter Stahlgeist
03 - Dritter Stahlgeist
04 - In Kiellinie

05 - Skagerrak 1
06 - Skagerrak 2
07 - Laboe


(p) 1987



This is a piece of industrial electronic music. It's ambient sounds are trying to describe a submarine entering North Seas or something, it's a music that perhaps one could hear in a movie. It's quite boring.

The Beatles - White album






01 - Back in the USSR
02 - Dear Prudence
03 - Glass onion
04 - Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da
05 - Wild Honey Pie
06 - The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill
07 - While My Guitar Gently Weeps
08 - Happiness Is A Warm Gun

09 - Martha, My Dear
10 - I'm So Tired
11 - Blackbird
12 - Piggies
13 - Rocky Raccoon
14 - Don't Pass Me By
15 - Why Dont We Do It In The Road
16 - I Will
17 - Julia

18 - Birthday
19 - Yer Blues
20 - Mother Nature's Son
21 - Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey
22 - Sexy Sadie
23 - Helter Skelter
24 - Long, Long, Long

25 - Revolution 1
26 - Honey Pie
27 - Savoy Truffle
28 - Cry, Baby, Cry
29 - Revolution 9
30 - Good Night


(p) 1968


The Beatles left very deep footprints, and, love them or hate them, they are a cultural force to be reckoned with. The White Album represents both the peak of their art and the nadir of their personal relationships within the group (only to be surpassed by the gruesome Let It Be sessions...). Less of a group effort, each of Fabs here showcase their individual songwriting and singing talents, using the others as session players. They decisively destroy the image of the four happy pop clones of 1964. It was a liberating move for the musicians, but it can also be a jarring experience for the listener. It is a massive, sprawling masterwork that occasionally verges on complete collapse. The Beatles were never afraid to push the envelope to breaking point and beyond: The White Album is a case-in-point.



Saturday 25 October 2014

Out of phase stereo audio effect

Audio effects

Out of phase stereo


An effect known as OOPS (Out Of Phase Stereo) can be used to remove the "center" channel to hear details off to the sides. By taking the left and right signals from a stereo source and adding them, you get an ordinary mono signal.













However, if you invert the polarity of one channel, and then add the channels back together, you have an OOPS'd signal. It means that any material in the center of the stereo image will cancel out, and any material that has been panned left and right will still be present.













The example



This video clip has been done using OOPS in order to enhance the backing group vocals. The remix was made combining OOPS mono tracks with left panned original track.

Friday 24 October 2014

Greece Is... The Songs Of Mikis Theodorakis




01 - Make Your Bed For Two
02 - Taking My Trouble From Rock To Rock
03 - Boat By The Sea-Shore
04 - In This Neighborhood
05 - Thanks Be To God
06 - The Smiling Child
07 - At The Hidden Beach

08 - A Boy In Sorrow
09 - Pain
10 - Margarita
11 - Go To Sleep, Young Man
12 - My April
13 - To The North Wind
14 - Road By Road


(p) 1975




Theodorakis named this song-cycle THE POPULAR SONGS in order to emphasize their deeper quality as well as to differentiate them from the cluster of songs he was composing at the same period such the MYTHISTOREMA (Yiorgos Seferis) or, the ROMANCERO GITANO (Lorca-Elytis). The writer of Popular songs Manos Eleftheriou was practicing a traditional path in his verse and Theodorakis understood this immediately, his melodies were spare and simple, diverging only slightly from folk models. He appeared content to express himself again in such a direct manner - like a genuine folk composer. These cycles were more personal in character because that they aimed at faithfully interpreting sophisticated poetry by recognized poets. The first performance of the two song-cycles took place in Italy in 1970; they were interpreted by Maria Farantouri, Andonis Kalogiannis and Maria Dimitriadi. A year later, the same singers recorded these song-cycle for the first time in Paris.


Mikis Theodorakis - Concert De Mikis Theodorakis




01 - Ένα Δειλινό
02 - Σε Τούτα ΄δώ Τα Μάρμαρα
03 - Απρίλη Μου
04 - Δυο Γιους
05 - Είμαι Άγγλος Νιος (Ο Όμηρος)
06 - Τρία Ποτάμια
07 - Το Τριζόνι
08 - Μαρίνα
09 - Κρητικός Χορός - Ζορμπάς


(p) 1976


A quote from encyclopedia about Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis:
Mikis Theodorakis was born on the Greek island of Chios and spent his childhood years in different provincial Greek cities. His father, a lawyer and a civil servant, was from the small village of Kato Galatas, in Crete and his mother, Aspasia Poulakis, was from an ethnically Greek family. He was raised with Greek folk music and was influenced by Byzantine liturgy. As a child he had already talked about becoming a composer. Theodorakis's fascination with music began in early childhood; he taught himself to write his first songs without access to musical instruments. In Patras and Pyrgos he took his first music lessons, and in Tripoli, Peloponnese, he gave his first concert at the age of seventeen. He went to Athens in 1943, and became a member of a Reserve Unit of ELAS, and led a troop in the fight against the British and the Greek right in the Dekemvriana. During the Greek civil war he was arrested, sent into exile on the island of Icaria and then deported to the island of Makroniosos, where he was tortured and twice buried alive.

Tutti Camarata - Tutijeve trube




01 - I can't get started with you
02 - Boy meets horn
03 - What's new
04 - Trumpet soliloquy
05 - Trumpet tango

06 - Bugle blues
07 - Tenderly
08 - Trumpeter's prayer
09 - Southland

(p) 1957


Tutti Camarata, american instrumentalist, orchestrator, arranger, composer, producer, Born 11 May 1913, Glen Ridge, New Jersey; died 20 April 2005, Burbank, California. He began his career as a trumpet player for bands such as Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman and others, eventually becoming the lead trumpet and arranger for Jimmy Dorsey. In 1956 Walt Disney hired him to form Disneyland Records and to be music director and producer for the label. Camarata had suggested Disney build his own recording studio, but Disney declined and instead encouraged Camarata to build his own. In 1958 Camarata purchased the first building, an old auto repair shop on in Hollywood, California, that would become the location of Sunset Sound Recorders. He produced over three-hundred albums there during his 16-year association with Disney. He scored several albums at Disney to help children gain a knowledge of, and love for, classical music.

Thursday 23 October 2014

Zbigniew Namyslowski - Winobranie




01 - Winobranie
02 - Jak Nie Masz Szmalu To Jest Laz
03 - Nie Mniej Niz 5
04 - Gogoszary

05 - Pierwsza Pielgrzymka 
06 - Ballada Na Grzedzie 
07 - Misie
08 - Taj Mahal



This is the best example of fusing jazz and world music. The album is essentially a quasi-suite that confidently juggles a wide variety of styles: bop, free, Polish and Balkan folk, Hindu, and jazz-rock. As often with the best Polish jazz albums, of particular strength are numerous duos, including a great one between bass and electric cello. Namyslowski is a master saxophonist, but here he also convincingly plays cello, piano, and flute; the latter's smooth tone perfectly calms the music down after the periods of intense jamming. Szukalski is spectacular on tenor, which he intersperses with bass clarinet phrases.  All of this adds to an impressive stylistic and instrumental variety of the music.  The most astonishing is the last track, where the ability of the musicians to emulate Hindu-influenced sound textures with traditional jazz instruments is uncanny. A true masterpiece that displays Namyslowski's rhythmic genius and openness to the world music.

Jackdaw With Crowbar - Monarchy Mayhem And Fishpaste




01 - The Night Albania Fell On Alabama
02 - Siren

03 - Crow
04 - Fourth World



The band's musical style was described by musician and writer as a combination of "spiky and dark guitar-driven blues and guitar-punk disco-filth". Discussing debut EP Monarchy, Mayhem, and Fishpaste, writer John Corbett described the music: "a song sung through a bull horn ("Crow"), an accordion reggae-dub ("Fourth World"), a two-step featuring slide guitar reminiscent of Zoot Horn Rollo in Captain Beefheart's Magic Band ("The Night Albania Fell on Alabama")." In Corbett's view, "the brief appearance of Jackdaw's records exemplifies the local-mode commodity at both its most appealing and its most politically volatile".