Recently in Music Category
I have an office/recording studio at home. There's a RECORDING light on the wall outside the door to tell people to leave me alone because I'm busy. There's a switch on the wall inside the room, to turn this light on and off.
It works great, but I want be able to easily toggle the light without getting up. So I replaced the switch with an X10 switch, which I can toggle with my server using heyu. I could install heyu in lots of places, but it's simple enough to just run a command with ssh.
That works great, but I want to be able to toggle it quickly, and running a command in the terminal is a bit slow. So I wrapped the command in an AppleScript.
That works great, but it still requires me to stop what I am doing and use the mouse to select the AppleScript from a menu. So I made it into a Service that I can run with a keyboard command (a Cocoa AppleScript applet that registers itself as a Service and saves the toggle state in its plist file).
That works great, but if I am playing guitar, even a keyboard command can be a bit cumbersome. So I have this MOTU 828mkII FireWire audio device with a configurable pedal feature, and a BOSS FS-5U pedal connected to it, and I configure it to execute the keyboard command the Service uses.
That works great, but even though the light switch has an audible "click" when it toggles, I can't necessarily see from where I am sitting whether it toggled on, or off. So I have the AppleScript also send a Growl notification to tell me whether the light just switched on, or off.
So now I just tap the pedal, and the light turns on or off, and I get a notification to tell me which it did, so I don't have to turn my head or use my hands.
That's a lot of work just to turn a light on and off, with the switch four feet away from me. But you probably wish you did it. I just wish I could've done it in a sane language like Perl, but the startup costs were just a little high compared to running a compiled AppleScript, and considering all the other costs (pedal -> device -> key command -> launch app -> ssh to server, which then sends a signal over USB to a serial device that sends a radio signal to a receiver that sends a signal over the power lines to my switch), I decided to just keep it simple.
"Spring Vacation" by The Beach Boys (from their new album, "That's Why God Made the Radio")
"Outdoor Elvis" by The Swirling Eddies (both for the song, and band, names)
"Wonder of Your World" by Rich Mullins (awesome song)
"Lord, You're Beautiful" by Margaret Becker (excellent rendition of the classic)
"Montana Sky" by White Heart (duh)
It's been awhile since I posted a new song. Here it is. Shiny and happy and harmony-y, called "Best of You." You can read the lyrics and watch the video I recorded a year ago, or just listen to the song.
I can't keep track of what songs I have for Guitar Hero and Rock Band, so I made a web page to keep track of which songs I have for which games. The script that generates the page has a MySQL backend.
I enjoy Christmas music from the Monday following Thanksgiving up to New Year's Eve. Last year I did twelve Christmas songs. Here they are. I will be doing more this year. I especially recommend "Christmas at Ground Zero" (done as a chipmunk), "First Toymaker to the King," and "No More Toymakers to the King."
My new song, Eat American, is now available. The idea hit me a couple of weeks ago. It's pretty self-explanatory.
Lyrics:
Verse 1:
Some people like all kinds of cheese
Some people like Italian
Some even like Chinese
Well I'm not here to tell you what kind of food to prefer
But if you are American
It's your duty, spread the word:Chorus:
Eat American
Fried chicken, cream of corn
Eat American
From the day that you are born
So our farmers can compete
You are what you eat
Eat AmericanVerse 2:
Chicago deep dish pizza
Sweet corn bread and beans
Baked or smashed potatoes
And all potatoes in between
Potato chips, potato puffs
Pass the freedom fries
With lots of ketchup to symbolize
The blood of the men who diedBridge:
To all the pregnant women
Eat until you're filled
To make your kids Americans
I say, grill, grill baby grillVerse 3:
Some people mix their foods
Each dish is a buffet
Sweet and sour, bitter, hot
It's not the American way
Well I don't want any spicy food
Mr. Waiter, please
'Cause I've got to cherish the memories
Of the men who gave that food to meSome pepole like all kinds of cheese
Some people like Italian
Some even like Chinese
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.
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!
The first two songs are in the playlist: Good King Wenceslas and Christmas at Denny's.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
(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.)
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.
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/</</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
}
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 https://pudge.net/tunes for more music.
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.
[ 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 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.)
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.
Under the Sea from The Little Mermaid, re-imagined as the darker song I always thought it was. See https://pudge.net/tunes for more music.
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.
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."
"It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt."
