Recently in Music Category

The noon bell rings in Catholic churches to this day because on this date, 552 years ago, Janos Hunyadi led his men to defeat the Ottomans, who had besieged the Hungarian city of Nandorfejervar (which means "Nandor's White Castle").

And today also marks the release of my album, Nandor's White Castle.

It is currently available for purchase and shipping on my web site, and for purchase and digital download on Amazon.com.

So working on a song can be a pain. Sometimes it goes smoothly from start to finish. Sometimes portions of it go smoothly. But if there is a part that does take awhile, for me, it's usually the mixing.

I've spent significant parts of two days working on the mix for this song. I did not listen to it at all today, and tried to not even think about it (with a high degree of success). I'll come back to it tomorrow or the next day. I've listened to it at least 100 times this week, and my ears needed a break. When I come back, hopefully things will pick up a bit.

I got a message via YouTube last week from a friend of mine from high school. He apparently saw a video of mine up there and dropped me a note. I Googled him and it turns out he was the 2006 U.S. Air Guitar champion: Craig "Hot Lixx Hulahan" Billmeier.

So on Friday night I went out to play Rock Band (for Xbox 360) for the first time, and since it is similar to air guitar I mention it to him, and he lets me know he also worked on Rock Band. He did motion capture (I am guessing he got the gig as a result of winning the Air Guitar championship).

He has a great picture someone took of us for the school paper, when we played together during lunch one time. We were playing a song, and I was singing, and me, Craig, and our friend Bryan Gray (from The Blamed) are each playing a different chord at the same time. From such inauspicious beginnings, we've all gone on to do music in various capacities (all of them inauspicious in their own right). He said he'll try to get me a copy of the picture.

Added to Longest Concert Evar: 12 Songs of Christmas are: Blue Christmas, O Holy Night, Mary's Song (by Petra), The First Toymaker to the King, No More Toymakers to the King.

The latter two are, of course, from Santa Claus is Comin' to Town. I think I really nailed the voices on the last one, especially Burgermeister Meisterburger.

If you know about the Nerdfighter Power "Project for Awesome" meme that sprung up yesterday, I made the first one part of that project, as a setup to the joke that the second one is part of the "Project for Evil." Muahahahaha. No toys for you!

My Longest Concert Evar has reached its first Christmas. What do you want for Christmas? Send in your requests to concertrequest@pudge.net.

The first two songs are in the playlist: Good King Wenceslas and Christmas at Denny's.

A couple of weeks ago I got an e-mail from Steve Grove, who works on the News & Politics section on YouTube. He's the face of "Citizen Tube."

I had submitted some questions to the GOP candidates for the upcoming YouTube/CNN/GOP debate, and he liked them, and also liked some of the songs I'd put up on my YouTube channel. Out of the blue, he asked me about writing a song about the GOP candidates and the debate. That night I jotted down some lyrics and had a tune in my head, and the next night I recorded it.

Well, he liked it, and said he'd feature it on YouTube. Then he invited me to actually come to the debate, and do videos from there. I said yes, so YouTube is flying me out to St. Petersburg, Florida, for the debate.

I'll be posting junk on my YouTube page.

I also set up a playlist for the videos I'm making related to the debate.

I don't know if I will be on TV. But regardless, the debate will be on CNN at 8 p.m. Eastern / 5 p.m. Pacific, on Wednesday, November 28, and the aftermath will be posted on YouTube.

Many people accused me of leaving Ron Paul out of my "GOP Debate Song" (which has over 325K views this week ... yeesh!).

Except, I didn't leave him out. He was in there just like all the rest. You can even see his picture in the second version of the video that I did.

This, along with other similar experience of Ron Paul fans complaining about Paul being excluded (sometimes with merit, sometimes without) led me to write "You Forgot Ron Paul."

You may also wish to check out the outtakes from the Ron Paul Song recording session.

While writing a song about Ron Paul, I had several aborted attempts. For the final version see http:www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfPbEMGtAQMOh , and those are Homer Simpson slippers.

I've put up two versions of a relatively untitled song I wrote and recorded last weekend. The first is the original live version, and the second puts other video images to the same music.

The first video is now up on the front page of YouTube as the top "featured video."

Enjoy!

This is a more elaborate video to go along with the previous GOP Debate Song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7Dz0jc1mUs

Lyrics:

The Grand Old Party's looking for
Somebody who can lead
Someone who is electable
And adheres to our creed
Some say the group is not diverse
They're white, they're men, but wait
The Dems have just one candidate
Republicans have eight

Rudy's leading all the polls
But can he win the base?
Mitt changed on abortion
Hist'ry he can't erase
Ron Paul would end the FDA
And that is just a start
Fred has just begun to run
But sure does look the part

Hunter tells us what to do
In foreign policy debates
Huckabee's compassionate
And lost a lot of weight
Tancredo says let's build a fence
Across the whole southwest
McCain is loved by many
And hated by the rest

We don't know who we're voting for
We dont know who will win
That's why we use YouTube to ask
Our questions of these men
Time is short, we're voting soon
And I just thought I'd mention
If we don't reach consensus, then
We'll decide at convention

I've posted my cover of "Still Alive" by Jonathan Coulton, from the video game Portal, on the Longest Concert Evar.

Please feel free to enjoy my new song, "Tim McCarver Blues."

See http://www.shutuptimmccarver.com/ and http://www.firejoemorgan.com/search/label/tim%20mccarver for more information about the evil that is Tim McCarver, Color Commentator.

I really dislike listening to Tim McCarver, and as a Red Sox fan, I am excited about the ALCS, but also dreading it. AND THAT IS NOT HOW IT SHOULD BE. TIM.

For more information, see http://www.shutuptimmccarver.com and http://www.firejoemorgan.com/search?label=tim%20mccarver

This is the Longest Concert Evar, starring Pudge. Send requests to concertrequest@pudge.net, or post them here.

I've added my song "Lines and Squares" as a video in the Longest Concert Evar.

It is dedicated to Stephen Colbert for all he's done for bear and wrist awareness.

Now that I have a beefy MacBook Pro I can record audio into Logic while doing video, so for this song, I did just that, and the music in the video is mixed in Logic, and then dropped into iMovie and mixed with the video.

I won the Schrammie today. You can read or watch Ken Schram's opinion of me, and see or hear the object of his outrage, the song I wrote called "Osama Bin Laden, You Ruined My Birthday."

Tonight I posted my acceptance speech on YouTube.

The speech is primarily in the form of a song I wrote a year or so ago. However, I wrote the second verse today.

So Ken, bend over and take your bow, because the second and last verses are for you.

Pretty much the whole first hour and much of the second hour of The Commentators, a talk show on Seattle's biggest talk radio station, was directed at me and my song, Osama Bin Laden, You Ruined My Birthday.

Feel free to listen to the whole thing. (Link fixed!)

The liberal host, Ken Schram, was exceedingly unkind. The conservative host, John Carlson, was not kind either, but he at least almost got it. Both of them thought the song was serious. That I was actually saying what the protagonist of the song is saying, seriously, for myself.

They had lots of people call in, some saying my song was "disgsting," some saying it was "funny." One insightful guy correctly said it was a parody of other people, not seriously stating what I think myself.

The whole thing was awesome.

Don't forget to enjoy your September 11th with my smash hit song, "Osama Bin Laden, You Ruined My Birthday," either in video or audio form!

New updates to the Longest Concert Evar: Sam Hall by Johnny Cash, and Osama Bin Laden, You Ruined My Birthday.

I've also added a new podcast feed for the videos (also on iTMS). This is for those who may wish to download the videos instead of going through YouTube.

I'll be performing selections of my Greatest Hits at OSCON. On Thursday's Lightning Talks session (4:30 - 6 p.m.) I'll be doing "Perl, in a Nutshell" and on Tuesday night, during breaks for the evening's festivities (Open Source Awards etc.), I'll play that, and maybe some other tunes.

After about three months of hiatus, I am back to doing some PudgeTunes. This time it's a song called Lines and Squares. Most of the lyrics are by A.A. Milne, but I wrote the chorus.

The song is dedicated to Stephen Colbert for his fine work over the years in Bear Safety.

Thanks to the friends and family who helped out on vocals and claps.

Stryper (for my friend who was born on 7/7/7), Schoolhouse Rock ("Fireworks", a few days late for July 4th).

I added two new songs to the Longest Concert Evar: Perl, in a Nutshell and KLB.

"Perl, in a Nutshell" is a parody of a Barenaked Ladies song called "Life, in a Nutshell." Not much more needs to be said about that.

"KLB" is a song I wrote years ago, with ideas from nocarrier and Schwern and others, about #perl on EFNet.

I am performing the longest concert evar, on YouTube. Two songs are up so far, and requests are accepted!

(Note to pedants: if you must try to bring up some example of some longer concert, note that the concert I am performing is potentially infinite, because others could keep it going long after I am gone, and of course nothing is longer than infinity, so HA.)

What do Pudge and Emotional Freedom Techniques have to do with each other? Not much!

But a podcast for small business networking out of the UK, 4Cast, played a snippet from my song Osama Bin Laden, You Ruined My Birthday, and then proceeded to extol the virtues of EFT.

I don't journal all the podcasts that play my song (there have been about a dozen, and I've put them all in PudgeFeed), but this one was odd enough to be worthy of a special mention. Hm, maybe the Survivor Fans Podcast devoting "You're Clueless" to some of the TV show's contestants deserves mention too.

So I saw some Yojimbo scripts over at DF and I remembered I have a Yojimbo script I use quite a bit, to create a setlist in which I keep song lyrics and chords and so on.

The setup required is to change the $htmlfile variable for your location of the created setlist; create a "Music: Setlist" group in Yojimbo (which contains note items with titles for song names, tags for artist names, and the contents in the note [with an optional __BR__ text to force a column break, such as you can see in several of the songs).

And of course, you need Mac::Glue installed, and glues for Safari and Yojimbo created.

And you need a stylesheet, which you can get from the source in the finished file.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
 
use File::Spec::Functions;
use Mac::Glue;
use URI::file;
 
our($header, $mid, $footer);
init();
 
my(%setlist);
my $artists = $setlist{ARTIST} = {};
my $songs   = $setlist{SONG}   = {};
 
my $yojimbo = new Mac::Glue 'Yojimbo';
my $browser = new Mac::Glue 'Safari';
 
my $set = $yojimbo->obj(collection => 'Music: Setlist');
my $count = my @items = $set->obj('items')->get;
for my $item (@items) {
    my $song    = $item->prop('name')->get;
    my $text    = $item->prop('contents')->get;
    my($artist) = $item->prop(name => of => 'tag')->get;
 
    $text =~ s/(\015\012|\015|\012)/\n/g;
    my $key;
    $key = $1 if $text =~ s/^(\[.+\])\s+//s;
    (my $songlink   = $song)   =~ s/\W/_/g;
    (my $artistlink = $artist) =~ s/\W/_/g;
 
    push @{$artists->{$artist}}, $song;
    $songs->{$song}{artist} = $artist;
    $songs->{$song}{alink}  = $artistlink;
    $songs->{$song}{text}   = $text;
    $songs->{$song}{key}    = $key if $key;
    $songs->{$song}{link}   = $songlink;
}
 
$count += scalar(keys %$artists) * 2;
 
##########################
 
my $htmlfile = catfile(
    '/Users/pudge/MacOS/pudge/work/songs/music',
    'setlist.html'
);
my $uri = URI::file->new($htmlfile);
open my $fh, '>', $htmlfile;
 
##########################
 
print $fh $header;
 
my $c = 0;
my $d = 1;
for my $artist (sort keys %$artists) {
    my $artistr = $artists->{$artist};
    print $fh qq[\t<li><a name="$songs->{$artistr->[0]}{alink}">$artist</a>] ;
    print $fh qq[<ul class="setlist_inner">\n];
 
    for my $song (sort @$artistr) {
        my $songr = $songs->{$song};
        print $fh qq[\t\t<li class="setlist_inner"><a href="#$songr->{link}">$song</a>];
        print $fh " <i><small>$songr->{key}</small></i>" if $songr->{key};
        print $fh "</li>\n";
        $c++;
    }
    print $fh "\t</ul></li>\n";
    $c += 2;
 
    if ($c > $d*int($count/3)) {
        print $fh qq[</ul></div>\n<div class="wrapper"><ul class="col">\n];
        $d++;
        $c--;
    }
}
 
print $fh $mid;
 
for my $artist (sort keys %$artists) {
    my $artistr = $artists->{$artist};
    #print $fh "\t<h2>$artist</h2>\n";
 
    for my $song (sort @$artistr) {
        my $songr = $songs->{$song};
        my $text = $songr->{text};
        $text =~ s/</&lt;/g;
        $text =~ s|__BR__\s+|</pre><pre>|gs;
 
        print $fh qq[\t\t<h3><a name="$songr->{link}">$song</a>];
        print $fh qq[ <i>$songr->{key}</i>] if $songr->{key};
        print $fh qq[</h3>\n\t\t<a href="#top">Top</a>];
        print $fh qq[ | <a href="#$songr->{alink}">$artist</a>];
        print $fh qq[\n\n<pre>$text</pre>\n\n\n<hr>\n\n];
    }
}
 
print $fh $footer;
 
##########################
 
close $fh;
$browser->activate;
$browser->open_location ($uri->as_string);
 
##########################
   
sub init {
    $header = <<EOT;
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
        "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html lang="en">
<head>
    <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
    <title>Pudge Setlist</title>
    <link href="../style.css" rel="stylesheet">
</head>
<body style="font-size: 11px">
 
<h1><a name="top">Pudge Setlist</a></h1>
 
<div class="wrapper"><ul class="col">
EOT
 
    $mid = <<EOT;
</ul></div>
 
<div class="body">
 
EOT
 
    $footer = <<EOT;
<pre>__END__</pre>
</div>
</body>
</htm l>
EOT
 
}

I posted a music video for my song "George Bush is Hitler." This version contains an all-new exclusive verse: "Bush is Bin Laden"!

Everybody knows George Bush is Hitler. And Big Brother. And Bin Laden. If only we had any freedoms left, we could complain about how bad he is! See http://pudge.net/tunes for more music.

I was in a band many moons ago called Disciple. I've put up some music and videos circa 1990.

Good times.

The band started in '87 (oh my ... that was 20 years ago). I did lead vocals and guitars, Hobbes did lead guitar and lead vocals. Robbie was on drums. Ian came on to play bass a little later, freeing me up to do guitar.

The videos and songs are all live, except for "Actions Speak Louder Than Words," which was recorded in the studio (without me!).

I am working on recording some of the songs again, with Hobbes and Ian, all over the Internet. Using GarageBand, probably.

Disciple, Pleasanton, 1991.

Song is a cover of The Altar Boys cover of Donna Summer.

We blew the circuits in this song. Twice. And you can still hear Pudge singing without amplification, through the drums and guitars.

Disciple, Pleasanton, 1991.

Disciple, Pleasanton, 1991.

Disciple, Pleasanton, 1991.

Disciple, Pleasanton, 1991.

Disciple, Pleasanton, 1991.

Disciple, Pleasanton, 1991.

Disciple, Pleasanton, 1991.

I just add ratings to PudgeTunes. You can rate the songs from 1-5 based on how much you hate them. Er, like them. I think I will later use the ratings to decide what to put on an album.

[ Your rating is stored in your cookie for your benefit when you come back to the site, but also stored on the server based on IP. Which means you need multiple IPs to spam, and multiple people in your house probably can't vote. C'est la vie. ]

I've heard a lot of people compare George Bush to Hitler and Big Brother and say that the U.S. is one of the least free countries in the world. If that were true, you'd think people would be afraid to, you know, say so. Or that if they did say so, something bad would happen to them. George Bush is Hitler is a gentle reminder that people who talk about Bushitler are totally bay.

I wrote and recorded this song within just a couple of hours last night, after watching Marilyn Manson tell Henry Rollins that we are getting ever-closer to 1984.

George Bush is Hitler
George Bush is Hitler
He killed six million Jews
George Bush is Hitler
He wants to kill me and you
George Bush is Hitler
Hey gypsies, you are next
Everybody knows
George Bush is Hitler

Bush is Big Brother
He watches you all day
Bush is Big Brother
He hears everything you say
Bush is Big Brother
He changed the words to this song
Everybody knows
Bush is Big Brother

Bush stole our freedom
We can't protest his ways
Bush stole our freedom
Armed guards make us obey
Bush stole our freedom
I live in an internment camp
And everybody knows
Bush stole our freedom

Listen to more PudgeTunes!

(Oh, and Mr. Colbert, I still don't accept your apology. This song proves that Hungarians can play guitar, and you have offended me and should be fired. I was working on another song to dedicate to you, but now ... I just don't know.)

On the Podsafe Comedy Countdown.

My songs have been featured on two podcasts recently. I put some tracks on the Podsafe Music Network, and X-Pat Radio picked up Just Getting Started for Episode 90, while Daily Pod out of Germany played Osama Bin Laden, You Ruined My Birthday for Episode 125.

The latter is in German, so I can't quite tell what he's saying, but a friend of mine tells me he is saying, "I have a song for you that I find very funny. It's by Peewge ... reminds me a bit of Tom Cruise ... really a song of genius off the Podsafe Music Network." I think the Tom Cruise reference is probably because of the actor's role in "Born on the Fourth of July," having ruined that birthday for many people, and not because of our physical resemblance.

Totally rawks. Made the video Sunday night. The audio I made in January.

Under the Sea from The Little Mermaid, re-imagined as the darker song I always thought it was. See http://pudge.net/tunes for more music.

Following on the heels of Just Getting Started, I've now put up a new song on PudgeTunes, a cover of the Disney song Under the Sea.

I also did a cover of the Disney song "Small World" a bunch of years ago. I don't know why, but I think these songs are a lot more depressing than the original music portrays, and my versions attempt to reflect that.

This song borrows heavily in style from Thom Yorke of Radiohead. It's just one vocal, acoustic guitar, and a Rhodes Suitcase MkI emulator.

This was part of a contest I did with some friends of mine, where each of us did our own covers of the same song. Hobbes did a punk version a la Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, and Porthos did a sort of evil William Shatner.

I just rented The Weird Al Show on DVD. It was a Saturday morning kids show in the 90s.

Episode 1 of this show is where I first saw/heard/heard of Barenaked Ladies. Except when Weird Al introduced them, I thought he said "Breakfast With Laertes." They played "Shoebox," and I instantly dug their music.

I don't know why I heard that. I couldn't rewind (no TiVo back then), and watching the DVD now, it seems obvious to me what he actually said. Google shows no other people who mention "Breakfast With Laertes." Maybe I will use it as an album title.

Also, I am the only person Google knows of who used "The December 1sts" to refer to "The Decemberists."

One morning I woke up and this song, "Just Getting Started," was in my head. At least the main vocal hook was. The first verse came shortly after, in the shower. I'm think the song's pretty good, and the recording ain't bad.

The song is a bit of an homage to Tom Petty, but probably sounds most like his cover of The Byrds' "I'll Feel A Whole Lot Better When You're Gone," right down to the Rickenbacker 12-string through a Vox. Even the guitar solo is meant to be an homage to Petty's Heartbreakers guitarist, Mike Campbell.

Just head on over to PudgeTunes to listen to it. I also updated the site so now you can click on the speaker icon to play the song inline on the web page, or click the song title to download the song.

Enjoy. Merry Christmas!

Last year I bought a PODxt Live, made by Line 6. It is a guitar processor: it has many built-in amps, cabinets, and effects in it. Mostly they take real physical products and emulate ("model") them in software.

I've used the PODxt for a few of my songs before, most notably for "Osama Bin Laden, You Ruined My Birthday," where I had it model an old Fender Bassman amp to get a nice '50s rockabilly feel, a perfect complement to my Epistrat with Fender Fat '50s pickups.

So a few years back Line 6 came out with the Variax. It does for guitars what the POD did for amps and effects: it takes real guitars, and models them in software.

And it really works well. So I bought a used Variax 500 a few weeks ago, and I just put up the first recording I made with it, a song I first recorded a little while ago called Wasting Time. I held off on putting it up when I first recorded it because I could not get the guitar sound the way I wanted it, mostly because the music is just a vocal and electric guitar, and I just couldn't get rid of the hum (even when using humbuckers).

But the Variax doesn't have that problem, because it doesn't use magnetic pickups. It uses piezo pickups, one for each string, in the saddles of the bridge, that register the vibrations directly. Then it takes that sound and runs it through algorithms to model what that string would sound like if it were on the particular guitar, with the particular pickups, that you selected. And all with no interference.

(Since each string is picked up and modeled separately, that also means the Variax is capable of modeling 12-string guitars, and it's got three of them: Martin and Guild acoustics, and a Rickenbacker electric.)

So for this song, I dialed in the '58 Les Paul Standard sound, with both pickups active. I set the tone control to max. The vocals were a bit low, so I bumped the key up a half step. And instead of physically retuning the guitar or using a capo, I created an alternate tuning in software and uploaded that to the guitar.

Oh, did I mention that the Variax connects via Ethernet cable to my PODxt Live? The PODxt connects to the computer via USB. The PODxt thus supplies power and program changes to the Variax, and receives the audio signal and program changes from the Variax. And allows my computer to upload new firmware and presets. (The Variax can also be powered via a stereo audio cable from a special footswitch, or by onboard batteries.)

So when I record this song in Logic, I tell Logic to set the PODxt to program 25A, which is a preset for this song, and the PODxt sets itself up with a '68 Marshall 100 watt Super Lead (overdriven to 140V AC) through a Marshall 4x12 cabinet, classic MXR Dynacomp and Phase 90 pedals for compression and phaser, a basic stereo delay, and some vintage plate reverb. All with my chosen settings, and all of it modeled in the PODxt. And at the same time, the PODxt tells the Variax to set itself to the uptuned '58 Les Paul with both pickups active and the tone cranked.

So when I am ready to record, regardless of whatever guitar or amp or effect settings I am using, I just hit "record" in Logic, and it configures everything for me on the fly. It even sets the tempo for the delay and flanger to match the tempo of the song in Logic.

And it sounds just great. Maybe for someone with better ears than me, they could tell you that it doesn't sound exactly like a Marshall Variac or a '58 Les Paul. But it sounds very good. And I don't know if I'll be recording with any other electric guitar any time soon. Even if the tone weren't as good as it is, the complete lack of hum is worth it.

I think my next recording needs to include a banjo (the Variax includes an electric sitar and banjo too) just to show Nat that it sounds a little better than the sample on the web site.

BOSS has some nice guitar processor products too. They offer more for more. Less than $100 more, and you get two amps at the same time, lots more effects (and lots more simultaneous effects), and more goodies. But I really liked the integration with the Variax, and the software integration, and I was happy with the sound it produced, and people I knew and trusted used and liked it, and I tend to not need (or want, or like) a lot of effects (or multiple amps) anyway.

Now that I have the Variax, I am convinced I made the right decision. Neither the PODxt or Variax is perfect. But they are very cool and loads of fun and sound awesome.

Randy Newman was on Colbert tonight. He played the song of his that I covered awhile back, "Political Science." Said a "friend" in response to my recording of it: "It always works well when the singer can identify with the song."

Don't forget to play my new song on September 11!

I sold out. I am on MySpace.

If you're also on MySpace, you should be my friend, and also click "Add" next to my song "Osama Bin Laden, You Ruined My Birthday," to force other people to listen to it!

To commemorate the day-after-the-terror-arrests-in-London-and-one-month-before-the five-year-anniversary-of-September-11, I offer a new, original, song: Osama Bin Laden, You Ruined My Birthday.

It's a song about, well, Osama Bin Laden ruining someone's birthday. It was a good birthday. Nothing wrong with it. A little close to Labor Day maybe, but other than that, a good day to have a birthday. But no more, thanks to Osama Bin Laden. [Insert fist-shaking.]

I think it's a great song. Maybe not the best song I've written, but among the best I've recorded (I still think "Through the Glass Darkly" is a better recording). I hope you enjoy it as much as I have. Spread it far and wide ... enjoy!

Also see my music page, and the song lyrics and cover art (compare, if you wish, to the cover of American IV by Johnny Cash).