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fycarmensandiego · 4 years

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1995 Animation Magazine article

After months of trying to find a library to supply this over interlibrary loan, I’ve finally managed to get a copy of the cover story from February 1995′s Animation Magazine, about Where on Earth. Aside from the truly cringetastic headline on the cover, the article itself is poorly written and just as poorly researched (for example, saying that Carmine appears on the cartoon), but it does have snippets from interviews with several execs at both Brøderbund and Dic.

A scanned copy of the article (featuring some concept art of Carmen, Ivy, Zack, and a nameless goon in regrettably low quality) is available in my online archive, or read the text (with some spelling and punctuation corrections) below the cut.

Lady in Red by Morrie Gelman, special to Animation Magazine

The commercial television version of Carmen Sandiego, the lady in the stylish red hat and shoes who steals national treasures such as all of the sushi in Japan is, surprisingly, the most successful program ever produced by DIC Entertainment. Maybe not so surprising, since with more than 4 million units sold since 1985, Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?, currently out in a junior version on CD-ROM, is computer software’s best-selling history and geography title ever.

Carmen is the first software character ever to make the leap to television. In addition to the DIC-produced Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego? educational/entertainment series for Fox, Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?, a game show, is in its fourth season on PBS.

It was four years from the time Andy Heyward, president and C.E.O. of DIC, spotted Carmen as a computer game designed by Brøderbund Software to provide young people with exposure to world geography and cultures before it ever got on commercial television.

Heyward read a story about Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? in the business section of the Los Angeles Times. He went to the Northern California community of Novato, where Brøderbund Software is based, and met with company officials. He said at the time, “I would like to option the property,” and then took it over to CBS.

DIC had the property in development at CBS for three consecutive years. It was still in the running when Heyward had lunch with Margaret Loesch, president of Fox Children’s Network at the Big Boy restaurant in Burbank.

“CBS developed it and at the final bell decided that educational programming was too risky,” Heyward recalls.

At a NATPE in the early ’90s, Barbara Kriesman, the FCC attorney in charge of the Video Services Division, was the main speaker at a children’s seminar. The seminar was focused on compliance with the recently enacted Children’s Television Act requiring broadcasters to air programming that meets the educational and informational needs of children. Stations were told, in effect, they would lose their licenses if they did not comply.

It was clear that Fox had to protect itself. Margaret Loesch is a very competitive person. She was ready to take a chance.

Heyward told her of DIC’s developing Carmen Sandiego with CBS. She asked if it was picked up yet and he said, “No, it wasn’t.”

Loesch said Fox would pick up the series if it could have an exclusive.

According to Heyward, Loesch made “a big pitch” on why Fox would be a more competitive environment for Carmen Sandiego. Heyward listened and agreed, finally saying, “OK, let’s go.” The show made its debut on Fox’s Saturday morning line-up from 11:30 to noon last February as Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego?

By Heyward’s evaluation, Carmen has been more successful than any “educational” show, ever, especially because “kids don’t think of it as an educational show.”

That it be highly entertaining was DIC’s hope and aspiration from the start.

“We work very hard to get a lot of stuff in there that kids learn from,” Heyward says. “The production has not only cel animation but computer graphics, source footage and live action.”

Heyward confirms that “Carmen Sandiego is far and away the most successful program we’ve ever produced.”

For Robby London, senior vice president, creative affairs at DIC, Carmen Sandiego is the company’s “flagship” program and one of his “favorite, favorite topics to talk about.”

While London admits that everybody always says that some show or another is “unique,” that label is totally valid for Carmen.

Some of the things that make Carmen unique are the many disparate production elements not often seen on Saturday morning television.

Carmen includes regular cel animation to carry the narrative forward. Silicon Graphics Inc.’s computer animation takes characters from place to place throughout the world, allowing viewers to learn about the places. Within the SGI platform, still photos are used, such as source footage of Franklin Delano Roosevelt making a speech, along all sorts of other visuals, including graphs.

Another component is “limited animation,” which is quick, little, perhaps 5-second, images of a rather silly animation that is in a completely different style from the regular cel animation. Live action appears throughout the episodes in terms of the players playing at home on the computer against Carmen Sandiego. This is the whole basis by which DIC tells the story.

Michael Maliani was executive producer and producer of Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego? the first season of the show. With DIC currently working on the third season, Joe Barruso, who previously directed the show, is now producer.

Maliani, who was in at the earliest stages of development, remembers that “What we were trying to do was make something entertaining and educational. We wanted to be different. We really wanted to make it interesting to watch. That’s why we wanted to have so many elements.”

Kids like variety, Maliani contends. With that in mind, DIC decided to produce Carmen with different media, including standard cel animation, other computer graphics and some live-action added in. “We thought we could show the educational stuff without being boring,” Maliani explains. “We didn’t want to make the show a lecture. We wanted to weave the education into the plot.”

Like the computer game, the DIC series is full of visual and spoken clues about the mysteries Carmen Sandiego, her cunning cat Carmine and her gang of goofball thieves stealing such ambitious treasures as the roof off the Taj Mahal and statues from Easter Island. Viewers (players in the computer game) get help in trying to stop Carmen and her henchmen form the ACME Detective Agency. The DIC series (and now Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? Junior Detective Edition on CD-ROM as well) features the young characters Zack and Ivy who report to The Chief. The plot of each episode (and the objective of the computer game) is to follow geography-based clues and “bag the bad guys, recover the stolen loot and put Carmen Sandiego and Carmine in the clink.”

Along the way, viewers learn such facts as the height and location of Mt. Everest, and that the Sphinx in Egypt has the body of a lion with the head and breast of a man.

“We knew we were going to fit right in the 6 to 11 age demographic,” explains Maliani, “but we wanted to make Carmen a little more sophisticated so we could get the older kids.”

A major difference between Carmen the computer game and the commercial TV series is in visualizing the capers. The computer game offers as a premise that the Eiffel Tower or the Taj Mahal is stolen. DIC’s production team had to estimate the weight of the Taj Mahal and then figure out what it would take to lift it.

DIC’s researchers established that four Russian helicopters could hoist the estimated weight of the Taj Mahal roof.

The next problem was how to accomplish the feat. DIC’s solution? Use a laser to cut off the roof. Add hooks to it and lift it off.

“We had to figure this stuff out,” Maliani notes. “It’s kind of fake but almost real.”

London explains that many shows on Saturday morning have had a degree of pro-social values. One of the things that is different about Carmen from all these other shows, according to London, is that Fox and DIC took the “conservative high road” that pro-social is not sufficient to fulfill the mandate of the Children’s Television Act.

“Carmen can’t just show good moral values and teach little lessons in living,” he points out. “It must have a measurable curriculum that actually teaches information, not just lessons in living.”

Among the consultants on Carmen is Dr. Peter Kovaric, a professor at UCLA in the Graduate School of Education, who is also director of the school’s educational technology unit. Kovaric is an acknowledged expert on using technology, such as television, to teach kids.

He reviews all Carmen scripts and helps DIC’s production team conceptualize shows. “It’s an exemplary relationship,” affirms Kovaric.

“One of the very good things about Carmen is that it is a commercial venture and is reasonably successful. That may help lower the reluctance of broadcasters to try something new and different,” he observes.

DIC also employs Barbara Wong, a teacher and principal of Baldwin Middle School in the Alhambra (Calif.) school district. Wong credits the DIC production team with being “very concerned” about having quality programming for kids. “They’re very in tune with people like myself and very open.”

Carmen, she points out, “has a lot of elements in it that readily apply to a teaching situation.”

Wong explains that while Carmen is not a “surrogate teacher,” the show does quality as “a nice addendum – a nice resource to have.”

Wong gets screen credit as Curriculum Consultant. Kovaric is Educational Consultant.

According to London, Carmen, in addition to gaining an educational seal of approval, invariably wins its time period. In the Sept. 1993 to July 1994 Nielsen data, Fox’s Saturday morning line-up, which includes Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers, X-Men, Bobby’s World, Tiny Toons, Taz-Mania, Eek the Cat and Carmen demonstrates the last is one of the top shows not only with kids 2 to 11 but with persons 6 to 17.

It averaged a 6.0 rating with kids 2 to 11 and 5.1 with the older demo, suggesting that as an educational program it’s holding its own handily against traditional animated entertainment, including action/adventure.

Another measure of Carmen’s appeal is that in the same Nielsen measured time-span, “the lady in the red hat” has more viewers than Beekman’s World and Bill Nye combined – not only with kids 2 to 11 but with persons 2 and over.

“It’s by no means a loss leader,” emphasizes London. “It’s not even number one by default. It really holds up Fox’s ratings.”

Maliani, who is senior vice president in charge of development, knows he risks sounding hokey but points out that in his 10 years with DIC he has wanted to try “to make a difference.” In Carmen Sandiego, he says, “we have a property where you could actually learn.”

In large measure, Maliani speaks for everyone connected with the Carmen Sandiego property when he comments: “This is the one show that really meant a lot to me and I gave it my all. I gave it everything I had and everything I could think of creatively. I wanted it to be special.”

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Carmen Sandiego began life as a computer game – a history, geography, educational title – by way of Brøderbund Software Inc., Novato, Calif., a diversified consumer software company. Founded by Douglas Carlston, Brøderbund is one of the hottest names in educational software publishing.

For the recent holiday season Brøderbund published Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? Junior Detective Edition, an icon- and dialog-based CD-ROM product designated for 5- to 8-year-olds.

But Carmen Sandiego isn’t just a game. The software series inspired two TV shows for kids: DIC Entertainment’s animated adventure Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego? On the Fox Kids Network, and the PBS game show, Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? produced by WGBH Boston and WQED Pittsburgh.

Brøderbund constantly works at new ways to update the original product. Software titles include Where in the USA Is Carmen Sandiego?, Where in Space Is Carmen Sandiego?, Where in Time Is Carmen Sandiego? and Where in America’s Past Is Carmen Sandiego? in addition to the signature Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?

Brøderbund has creative input on every Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego? script, but not necessarily every storyboard.

Ken Goldstein, publisher of Brøderbund’s Education and Entertainment Products Group, describes his company relationship with DIC Entertainment as “very healthy.”

He was deeply involved in the first season of the DIC/Fox series, establishing the working relationship and the new ground rules. Since then he’s passed on regular contact to his staff, yet still signs off on every set of script notes (drafts of every script are read by Brøderbund staff and every storyboard reviewed).

For the most part, the DIC series scripts are different from those used by Brøderbund, but there’s some synergy. Brøderbund has introduced a new character into its most recent software, Stretch the Crime Dog, described as “a lovable, clue-sniffing, crime-busting canine” who works for the ACME Detective Agency.

Reciprocally, the software is now using agents Zack and Ivy and The Chief from the DIC animated TV series.

“Carmen is a perennial for us,” notes Goldstein. “It really is an evergreen product, a premier intellectual property. I’m delighted to manage its existence.” According to Goldstein, Carmen Jr. will probably go Gold in the software business, which is 100,000 pieces, within a couple of months.

Brøderbund, Goldstein also reports, does a lot of licensing, including T-shirts, mouse pads and backpacks, among other items. Carmen is also very much an international product. Goldstein says Carmen software is “very big” in Spain and Mexico, and also especially popular in Israel.

There’s a Japanese version of Carmen, plus a cartridge version on Nintendo and Sega, which has not done as well as Brøderbund would like. “I don’t think it’s the right venue for that product,” Goldstein remarks.

Brøderbund is stepping up to a new level of international distribution on March 1, opening its own Brøderbund Europe office and publishing localized versions of new Carmen products from that time forward.

By Brøderbund’s design and demand, there are no guns or other weapons in the Carmen Sandiego TV show or software. The Carmen character does have henchmen, but, points out Goldstein, “it’s very much ‘Three Stooges.’ They botch things and they use such things as big suction cups, funny gadgets and outlandish vehicles, but there are never any guns, no bombs, no grenades, no violence. They never threaten the detectives. It’s all a game of wits.”

Brøderbund also has been very careful not to portray stereotypes, to make sure with the software that all different types of international cultures are reflected positively. DIC is equally sensitive about portraying stereotypes and respecting different cultures.

“Computers have revolutionized the teaching world, and now classrooms will never be the same,” suggests one reviewer of Carmen software.

“Programs like Carmen let students explore their own paths of learning,” points out another.

Morrie Gelman is the president of Ventures in Media, a market research, information packaging and television development firm.

#carmen sandiego #woeics #articles

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character-scrolls · 4 years

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Miscellaneous Headcanons: Jinx - TSM (Soften Edition)

Enjoy some cute headcanons of some of my Jinx beans <3

Social Media:

What kind of Youtube channel would they run? - No doubt about it, Jinx would have a book review channel and it would be as cute as heck.

- An incredibly fluffy and sweet vibe, she'd have a large bookcase in her background with cute fairy lights draped over it, maybe some miniture cactus plants sat on some of the shelves.

- Probably uses some soft music box as the background music or something that relates to the book she's reviewing that week.

- Jinx would mostly be a solo reviewer but she might occasionally bring on someone for a collab

- She has gotten some god awful book suggestions, some she does reviews and some she'll outright refuse to do

- Her channel would probably be something like Bookworm or The BookWorm

- One of her videos showcases a mini tour of all the books she's gotten over the years, she's slowly running out of floor space.

What kinda blog would they run? - PASTEL.COLOURS.FOR.DAAAAYS.

- Jinx's blog is dedicated to all things literature from fiction to non-fiction

- She could talk for hours and hours about her favourite authors and the books she's read that week

- Jinx takes photos of her reading space which is normally a comfy chair with a little side table with her current book and a cup of fancy tea steaming next to it and her reading glasses resting on top of her book.

- Though in reality it probably ends up with her sitting up in bed until god knows what time whilst spouting the false promise of 'yes this is the last chapter I'm going to read I swear' wheather that's a book or a really good fanfiction on her ipad that's upto you.

- Jinx's posting shedule would be at least twice a week, depending

- Would for sure have a side blog for fanfiction

Dressing Up:

What would they be for Halloween? - Jinx would be a cute little ghostie for Halloween

- She's not one for being scary so cute is the next best thing

- Jinx would do her best to hand make the costume, it wouldn't be the neatest but hey ghost aren't meant to be

- The costume consists of a white robe with oversized sleeves covering her hands with a lacy hood over the top and short chains would be attached around her ankles

Who would they cosplay as?

- Jinx would for sure cosplay someone like Yuna from Final Fantasy X or Howl from Howls Moving Castle

- She would try and get a high quality costume, trying to get the most accurate looking one

Food:

What type of biscuit would they be? - A gooey chocolate chip cookie, because she's a soft that is all

What type of tea would they be? -A cinnamon blend tea

What type of alcohol would they be? - A sweet red wine

Games:

What kind of Yu-Gi-Oh! Deck do you they have? - For sure, a spellcaster deck probably based around the Silent Magician

- Not just for the obvious reason...also by how it's played

- Not seeing her with any other type

What kind of Pokemon Team do they have? - Possibly Fairy? I'm not entirely sure because they're a number of pokemon I see her having in her team, I have considered like psychic for another option?

What Animal Crossing animal would they be?

- Maybe a sheep? a cute little purple sheep

- Has the cutest cottage aesthetic going on

- Will gift you many, many, many books

Aesthetic: leather bound books, ink stained parchment, burning candle light, dark blues, pastel pinks and purples, empty potion vials, soft touches, sweet smelling purfumes, crytals, the glittering particles of magic, grubby bandages

Extra headcanon:

- The fiction she read throughout her years helped her discover her bisexuality, she had read so many books with different heros and their romantic endevours that it had a profound a effect on her. At first she didn't understand why she liked boys but also girls??? fiction helped her to finally understand that it was perfectly normal to feel like this.

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Ruben - Jinx: TSM

Social Media:

What kind of Youtube channel would they run? - This boy. THIS BOY. His channel would be a disaster , but a wonderful one..he's trying

- Ruben would do a lot of dumb but harmless challenges, but it would radiate pure chaotic energy

- He's a gremlin with too much time on their hands lets be real here

- Ruben would do a lot of collabs, which are even more diasterous than his solo videos depending which poor soul he asked

- he edits like it's going out of fashion, jumpcuts galore and dumbass sounds effects for days.

- He has a sizable following

- He would for sure drag his boyfriend in for a video...for a price

What kinda blog would they run? - Like this Youtube channel, it's chaotic but is slightly more structured

- Being a avid comic reader, his blog is centred around comic books

- Will have full-on arguements with other people about which character is strongest/best/weakest etc

- "Now you listen here you litle shit, YOU DON'T-"

- His blog is fairly simple in terms of colour scheme, possibly using themes available to him

- Has an inconsistant posting shedule

Dressing Up:

What would they be for Halloween? - Probably a skeleton, surprisingly good at face painting

- He'd use face/body paint for his neck area and hands

- Contacts maybe?

Who would they cosplay as?

- Would for sure cosplay as Beast Boy from Teen Titans, feel like that would be the type of character he'd go for

- Maybe with full-on body paint too?

Food:

What type of biscuit would they be? - Ruben would be like one of those giant biscuits with the chunks of m&ms baked into it

What type of tea would they be? - Iced lemon tea

What type of alcohol would they be? - Apple Cider

Games:

What kind of Yu-Gi-Oh! Deck do you they have? -Elemental Hero deck maybe?

- His love of super heros would play a part in why he chose it

What kind of Pokemon Team do they have? - Possibly flying?

- Has for sure named one of his pokemon Jeremy

What Animal Crossing animal would they be?

-Possibly a squrriel

-Has a mis-matched house because who hell is interior decorating

Aesthetic: Fireworks lighting up the nights sky, scrapped knees, wide grins,bare feet,messy hair constantly running fingers through it,dark greens, off white,loud laughter, dumb jokes.

Extra headcanon:

- Ruben is known for being the town menace, however, when he was younger especially, the elder folk would leave out baked goodies for him to pick up during his escapes. Sometimes they'd even let him hide out near their house if it was safe enough to do so. Now that he's older, they don't let him get away so much anymore but will occasionally leave out a place of treats.

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Lamina - Jinx: TSM

Social Media:

What kind of Youtube channel would they run? - Lamina's channel would be dedicated to fitness and her vast collection of swords

- She'll do exercise challenges and inbetween she'd show off her latest custom order swords

- Lamina has an intense energy on screen but will give legitmate advice on health and exercise

- She'll only really soften up if she talks about her girlfriend or her swords, getting equally giddy over both

- Her shedule is regular and she has quite a big following

- Swords will always be present in her backgrounds

What kinda blog would they run? - Her blog would focus on her swords and she'd go into detail about their history and origin

- She takes beautiful pictures of them from every angle imaginable

- Lighting is everything, it's gotta hit the blade juuust right

- She poses them with occassionally, doesn't admit it but she enjoys it

- Her colour scheme would be muted and her theme would be minimal

- Lamina tends to post whenever she has a new sword delievered

Dressing Up:

What would they be for Halloween? - Lamina is not usually one to get dressed up, would probably take some persausion

- She'd want it to be low effect, nothing too complicated

- If she had to pick, possibly an apocolyptic survior, no it's not an excuse to show off her cool swords shUT Up

Who would they cosplay as?

- Possibly Erza Scarlet from Fairy Tail

-Because did I mention swords? because she likes s

-Not sure which armor she'd go for

-Possibly would commission someone to make it

Food:

What type of biscuit would they be? - A simple shortbread biscuit

What type of tea would they be? - Green macha tea

What type of alcohol would they be? - Straight whisky

Games:

What kind of Yu-Gi-Oh! Deck do you they have? - Warrior deck or Amazoness deck?

What kind of Pokemon Team do they have? - Fighting type, feel like it fits her

What Animal Crossing animal would they be?

- Wolf possibly? or a bear

- Home filled with work-out equipment

- Grumpy personality?

Aesthetic: Early mornings, sore knuckles, stern looks, hidden softness, sword clashes, the smell of burning, loyal bonds, dark purples and blues,brusied skin and busted lips, quiet nights beneath the stars.

Extra headcanon:

- (tiny spoilers??) After Solus left most of her men dead, Lamina felt geniuely hurt. Her loyalty and trust in Solus was strong. She wouldn't admit but she did shed a few tears when she was alone before completely shutting herself off from her remaining men. They weren't like him, in fact, they were among the ones who mocked her and they only trusted her out of fear. She felt she'd lost her only real connection. Thankfully, she was able to open up again and she couldn't be happier. -------------------------------------------

Katia-Jinx:TSM

Social Media:

What kind of Youtube channel would they run? - Katia would have a fashion channel, she'd showcase the unsual dresses she'd buy and possibly make

- There's always a WIP of a dress on a manniquien in the background of her videos

- She'll sometimes do time lapses of dress

- Katia will occasionally post tutorials on the dresses she makes and leaves materials and such in the description

- She'd talk about the best materials to use to sew with

- Her sewing machine is covered in cute stickers and has become staple in her background

- She keeps a list of themes to explore in a notebook

- Her following is large but not overwhelming

What kinda blog would they run? - A fashion blog

- She'd post lookbooks each with a different theme

- Her colour scheme would be soft galaxy, maybe blue and purple

- Katia loves to talk about the history of fashion and tries to re-create the clothing from different points in history

- Her blog is clean and orginaised to a T. Everything is put into categories

- Katia posts weekly and does at least one lookbook per week

Dressing Up:

What would they be for Halloween? - Katia would be a wailing victorian bride

- With her skills in dress making her costume would be sublime

- She'd go ham on her costume, adding every single detail she can think of to make it look better

- Kinda erie how accurate it would be

Who would they cosplay as? - BOTW!Zelda or Twlight Princess!Zelda

- Again, costume making is her jam! the entire thing would be made from scratch minus a few things like the wig

- She loves the outfits Zelda wears in the games and would study the hell out of them to get the design right

Food:

What type of biscuit would they be? - Simple lemon biscuit

What type of tea would they be? - Earl Grey

What type of alcohol would they be? - Vodka

Games:

What kind of Yu-Gi-Oh! Deck do you they have? - Harpy Lady deck

- She just thinks they're neat

- And she enjoys the play style

What kind of Pokemon Team do they have? - Ghost type

What Animal Crossing animal would they be? - Rabbit

- Her house would be cosy and hidden away within the trees

- Shy personality type

Aesthetic: Silver necklaces, heavy veils, masquerade masks, silk dresses, corset ties, anxious thoughts, strained smiles, secret encounters, fights for freedom, golds, silver, sparkling jewels, touch starved.

Extra headcanon:

- Katia was not always an anxious mess, that only occurred later in life due to the pressure her parents placed on her. As a child, she was playful and witty, she was rebellous and would always find ways to esape her escorting guards. These days the only way she can 'escape' are when she's in her own quaters.

#soft headcanons #headcanon #ocs #fantasy #mage #dark elf #drow

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fluidsf · 5 years

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Sonic Picks 35 雨田光平 (Kōhei Amada), SUGAI KEN: 京極流箏曲「新春譜」Kyogokuryu - sōkyoku “Shinshunfu" (2019) Reviewed format: CD edition of single released on EM Records Welcome back after quite some time to the Sonic Picks series on this blog. Today I have for you a short release that got suggested to me through a kind Facebook message from SUGAI KEN (I’ve reviewed his tape 岩石考 -yOrUkOrU- on Yerevan Tapes rather positively before too). It’s a reissue of a composition by Japanese koto composer 雨田光平 (Kōhei Amada) titled Shinshunfu backed with a new rework by SUGAI KEN. So indeed after several albums, we are back at the format of the single with this review and the version I chose to review is the CD version of the single which comes with a 20 page booklet with liner notes by Takuya Kitamura. The music of the original composition Shinshunfu is in the sōkyoku style of traditional Japanese folk music which goes back several centuries and the booklet describes the style, its history and especially Kōhei Amada’s take on it in great detail which is especially welcome since there’s not a lot of information on this style of Japanese music available online and it’s good to have background info on the music compiled and described in the neat booklet that comes with the release. Indeed the booklet does invite further exploration into the style, composers and musicians through reading and listening, thereby forming a great introduction to this music which was also a style that was unknown to me before I read the booklet and listened to the CD. But besides the extensive information included this single also follows EM Records series of releases that aim to release or reissue obscure music (often from Asia) on single format accompanied by a contemporary rework by an Asian or European / American artist from the underground of experimental music. EM Records’ releases do indeed often cross into underground and experimental music especially nowadays with their multi-genre approach to release a very varied selection of obscure music in various genres, going from Thai Molam music to Japanese “Industrial Folk Techno”, which is also a great way to discover all kinds of curious oddities from around the world through their archival releases. And indeed this CD single is also a great example of a release that features both historical value through its presentation and great value for music collectors and explorers to dig into obscure music that’s rarely released or recorded anymore. Before I move onto my thoughts and impressions on the two tracks on this single I’ll mention the contents of this release on CD. The CD single comes in a standard jewel case with obi strip featuring promotional info designed in colours matching the design of the artwork. Inside the jewel case you can find the CD (in Japanese high quality fashion, it’s quite a thick CD too) as well as the aforementioned booklet featuring liner notes as well as various rare photos from Kōhei Amada and various musicians including himself performing sōkyoku, the release is designed by Ginji Kimura who used a stylish gradient of a light blue and soft brownish colour to depict the combination of original composition with the SUGAI KEN rework on this single as becoming more than the sum of elements. Now onto the music on this CD single. The original piece Shinshunfu recorded in 1970 is a rather nice composition in two parts, the first part being instrumental and the second part featuring Kōhei Amada’s as well as the other members of the Kōhei Amada Group’s vocals. These are Yoshiko Amada and Miyo Imanari on kotos, Kōhei Amada and Kōji Amada on harp, Shihō Fujioka on shō and Kenshi Ōtaki on taiko drum. The first instrumental part of the piece follows various repeated melodic patterns in which the tones of the combined string instruments give off a quite peaceful warm glow and the tuning of the instruments does sound almost microtonal at some points with some audible fluctuations in the tones. I like how right from the start the piece gives off a very comfortable tranquil feeling, with the recording sounding pretty close and the ambience of the music really feels like spring through the twinkling tones of the combined instruments and interlocking melodies from the composition. The second part featuring the vocals features lyrics in Japanese (which are also translated in the booklet) which are about the coming of the New Year and the joy that the beauty of nature brings people. Indeed the Kōhei Amada Group do their best to give off a nice calm ambience with their singing but they’re admittedly better musicians than singers. In this part you can also hear the shō and taiko drum being played, with the shō giving a great organ like droning glow to the music that sounds a bit like you’re “hearing sunlight” and the taiko drum adds some rhythmic accents to the music. Overall it’s a really nice listening experience and while the music moves quite subtly, the composition and performance is definitely great and the music definitely gives off a pleasant feeling of the coming of spring and the beauty of nature. Additionally I found the sound quality of this and the SUGAI KEN rework very good, so Takuto Kuratani (Ruv Bytes) did a great job on the mastering of this release. The second track, the SUGAI KEN rework of Shinshunfu is probably my favourite track on this release however. The rework is very different from the original recording, with parts of the original only being recognisable after you’re already some time into this rework. In true SUGAI KEN style the music feels a lot more like a dadaist radio play than sōkyoku as it’s filled with nature sounds like water and birds and plenty of sound effects and sonic manipulations. The rework moves from a strange artificial landscape filled with water, bird sounds (both real and created through synth effects), crackling modulated voice, wild synth effects, scratches and vocal samples to a middle part featuring a low pitched beat various layered instruments, sound and synth effects to the last part of the rework which moves to the end with repeated sampled notes at two pitches looping as the background of an intense sonic landscape of intensely vocoded vocals, water sounds and synth effects. As I mentioned, a true SUGAI KEN kind of rework, the music / radio play is a very densely packed composition of sound and music that moves forward in a quite abstract and at times quite hilarious direction but which definitely does encompass the same peaceful Spring feeling as the original composition Shinshunfu. Indeed, elements from the original are quite hard to discern from the mixture of sounds within but when you catch them, they do feel like a great reference back to the original. The rework is clearly a new composition based on the atmosphere from the original as well as short elements from the music itself and its style is completely different from the sōkyoku style rather than keeping the pace of the original but it’s a really great accompaniment to the original piece and brings the elements from traditional Folk music to the contemporary music world through SUGAI KEN’s wildly varied dadaist sound collage style. 京極流箏曲「新春譜」Kyogokuryu - sōkyoku “Shinshunfu” by 雨田光平 (Kōhei Amada), SUGAI KEN is a great single release and its extensive liner notes offer a lot of interesting information on the music of the original composition. I like EM Records’ daring and open minded approach to releasing obscure music through this single and also their other releases as it offers plenty of interesting musical material and liner notes for both music listeners with a deep interest in historical recordings of Folk and related music around the world as well as great listening for music collectors and fans of obscure and underground music as it matches the curatorial talent from historical world music reissue labels with great choices in remixers, compilers and other figures from the underground experimental music scene contributing to their releases. This single is definitely a great document of Japanese tradition folk music and a great fun oddity kind of release of two pieces of music that feel like totally different genres of music but work so well together. Recommended. Go check this out. Digital, 10" version and CD version of the single are available on the EM Records Bandcamp page here: https://emrecords.bandcamp.com/album/kyogokuryu-s-kyoku-shinshunfu

#cd #single #underground music #independent music #雨田光平 (Kōhei Amada)#sugai ken #2019 #sōkyoku #japanese traditional folk music #sound collage #radio play #glitch #nature recordings #em records #京極流箏曲「新春譜」Kyogokuryu - sōkyoku “Shinshunfu"#sonic picks #experimental music

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attract-mode-collective · 6 years

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Nothing Sez “Student Game” More Than The Dinosaur Evening News (that’s a good thing, btw)

The above is Mediazoic, which takes place in an alternate reality in which dinosaurs have come back to rule the earth and they've hired you, puny human, to make sure their televised broadcasts are dino family safe.

You moderate comments left on message boards, censor full frontal dino nudity, and so on. It's a student game alright, and one of my top picks from the NYU Game Center Student Showcase2018!

I was also fond of Dreams For Your Computer because CRTs, magnets, and cats...

... Here's what it looks like in action, btw.

Though the one game that I liked the most, and which would actually fare well on the marketplace, would have to be Static...

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And honorable mention goes to an updated take on Flight Simulator, which recreates a 6 hour long commercial flight as a passenger...

... The best part was the look on Stephen Totilo's face, who kinda didn't get it.

When was the NYU thing btw? Over two weeks ago, and it’s been even longer since the last update. Sorry about that. You know the deal: a million, billion things going on. As usual.

Hence why it’ll take not just one, but two bursting at the seams posts, to cover the second half of May! So onto part one…

Please, please, PLEASE let these Game Center CX Blu-rays have an English language option (via miki800.com)...

Not a day goes by in which I don’t wonder how that guy who appears in the instruction manual for Bomberman B-Daman is doing these days (via videogameartarchive & videogameartarchive)...

I really love the “are you for real?” vibe that Samus gives off in the instructions for the original Famicom Disk System release of Metroid (via nintendometro)...

If you’ve ever wondered what a pair of bosses from Mega Man 9 & 10 would look like with 8’s 32-bit sheen, well here ya go (via mendelpalace)...

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A print ad for the Famicom adaptation of Akira that wasn't all that hot (via videogameads)...

Though whenever anyone hears the words “Akira video game”, this is basically what immediately comes to mind. Anything else is a disappointment, no matter what (via aaronkraten)...

Welcome to the rabbit hole that is the Memorex VIS (via @ColinWilliamson)...

Is the soundtrack to some ultra-obscure home banking software for the Mega Drive worth a listen? You goddamn right it is (via mendelpalace)...

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… The accompanying article is also totally worth a read.

It’s the Battletoads X Blue Swede mashup that you can’t believe hasn’t been done yet (via SiIvaGunner)...

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Replace Link with myself & Navi with my iPhone, which I use as an alarm clock, and you have earlier this morning in a nutshell (via nintendometro)...

“So where you going?”

“Down a road. A low poly road…”

“Where you headed towards?”

“Whatever’s at the end of this street. This low poly street...”

“If you look up, what do you see?”

“Low poly buildings, under a low poly sky. Who knows, maybe there’s some low poly birds up there, behind those low poly clouds…” (via pmpkn)

From looking at low poly skies to soaring high above them, but what a difference an arcade board makes huh (via kazucrash)...

This is what Metal Max 2: ReLoaded on the DS looks like, at its normal resolution...

And this is what it looks with the resolution bumped up (via gaucheartist)...

Is this sprite of a BMX biker animated unusually well or am I just out of touch when it comes to 2600 software? Granted, it does come from a game made in 1989 (via segagenesisevangelion)…

According to the law: “NO JUMPING” (via vgadvisor)

“Hi guys.” (via beowulf-ultra)

Such a heartwarming scene (via @PicturesFoIder)...

This is what VR looked like many years ago, which is basically how it still looks today as well (via peazy86)...

It’s Yuji Horii, from way back in the day, presumably before he had created Dragon Quest (via videogamesdensetsu)...

Why yes, I have heard of the Ocelot Arcade System, by virtue of it being Quality Simon Carless content...

... BTW, “Quality content” is in reference to this. Moving on: yes, I've also heard of VecFever. It plays games that you might be familiar with, since it emulates old vector MAME titles...

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Meanwhile, am only just learning that Tiger released their handhelds in Japan under the Game Vision label (via segacity)...

The Sega Dreamcast: it's thinking... about you, cuz it cares about you (via posthumanwanderings)...

"Wait… was he always there?" asks the official Sonic the Hedgehog Tumblr (via sonicthehedgehog)...

And the final nail in the coffin for this gag came courtesy of the official Sonic Tumblr as well (via sonicthehedgehog)...

"Good news everyone skyrim has been ported to the Bethesda offices carpet"

"Who the fuck designed support pillars to obstruct a quarter of the hallway?"

"Bethesda" (via mysteriouslypeculiar)

Yet another "it's funny cuz it's true" (via highlandvalley)...

So annoyed that I only find out about this Games Glorious shirt on the very last day of kylefewell‘s Japanese extrusion (via miki800.com)...

Not a fan of the game (don’t hate, I just don’t find it very enthralling), yet for whatever reason, I REALLY want this vintage Mappy sweatshirt (via namcomuseum)...

When video game attire looks plausible IRL (via @cvxfreak)...

Much like with regular attire, with cosplay, sometimes it’s all about the accessories (via frankiebalboa)...

Don’t think I’ve ever seen this piece of Marvel Super Heroes vs Street Fighter art before (via segacity)...

For those who dig POC, as well those who dig VF, and also those who dig FV... that last one's Fighting Vipers, BTW (via fightersmegamix)...

It’s a crying shame that Fighting Vipers is such an unknown commodity these days (via kazucrash)...

Virtua Fighter vs Virtua Fighter… Kid (via segacity)...

It’s a crying shame that Fighters Megamix is such an unknown commodity these days (via segacity)...

So hyped for RPG Time, based solely upon the headline image used for this 10 ten list of BitSummit games (via @indiegameweb)...

Please enjoy yet another thing that I originally posted on a Saturday late at night, whatever time it might on your end right this second (via contac)...

Been a while since I’ve seen the handiwork of Joe Bleeps, largely since it’s been a while since I’ve been collecting Game Culture Snapshots; the man has certainly stepped up his game (boy mods) since way back when (via kotaku.com)...

Am also very much impressed by the Game Boy Macro, though once again, am super irritated that GBA games do not rest flush with the DS Lite’s body...

An example of function over form I guess (@gamesyouloved)...

Familiar with Line Wobbler? Ever wished you could play it on the go? Are you into demakes? For the Game Boy Advance? (via @diskmem)

Today’s corrupted GBA boot up sequence is (via corruptionasart)...

Can anyone tell what Famicom game we’re seeing that’s all glitched out? (via mendelpalace)...

My fave part of this NES 2 print ad is how, in order to truly drive the message of “EVOLVE OR BECOME EXTINCT” home, whomever felt it necessary to include a little picture of a dinosaur (via nintendometro)...

Was this an ad for the SNES? I ask because it’s considerably more sophisticated when compared to what you usually encountered in gaming rags at the time (via nintendometro)...

This ad for the GoldStar version of the 3DO, hailing from Korea, makes me so proud to be (half) Korean, you have no idea (via notablegamebox)...

This Space Invaders tribute piece is like the cover art to some 80s heavy metal record (via shmups)...

Meanwhile, the album art for the Metal Black soundtrack feels more Pink Floyd-ish than anything else (via reportal)...

As amazing as it would have been to attend a ZUNTATA concert 20 years ago, I desperately wanted to see them perform various Darius cuts live just the other week (via miki800.com)...

This cover art for a tribute album celebrating 25 years of Mega Man is still quite good, 31 years after the fact (via rnn-draws)...

My recommended reading this time is a comparison of all the various Mega Man sprites that have been, including a few that you may not be familiar with (via retrovania-vgjunk.blogspot.com)...

Apparently there was a Mega Man boss that was part arcade machine, but he only appeared in some mobile game, for f's sake Capcom (via mendelpalace)...

Guess now’s a good time to share another random game canter pic (via gogopri)...

Pathos at the game center, even among Sailor Scouts (via funnysailorm00n)...

A pride & joy of my personal collection is both the original retail Japanese release of Jet Set Radio & the available via Sega Direct only edition: De La Jet Set Radio (via videogameartarchive & videogameartarchive)...

Here's an alternate take on it’s alternate cover star (via @Drooling_Demon)…

Putting together the necessary gear to properly grind the streets of Tokyo-to (via kiroziki-cosplay)...

JSR tales place in a fictionalized, idealized interpretation of Japan, whereas this gif is a very realistic take, yup (via dehtyar)...

Meanwhile and elsewhere, somewhere in the United States of America it would seem (via behexagusthegreat)...

There's still dinner time in the future (via kirokazepixel)...

My contribution to #WorldGothDay (via it8bit)…

From dark & dreary, to warm & fuzzy, yet still black & white (via this old post from a few years back)...

Old photos of a Japanese school kid obsessing over the Famicom are somewhat dime a dozen, but the PC Engine? A very rare treat (via gamingremembrance)...

From black & white photographs of Japanese 80s kids playing consoles, to a full color animated gif of US 80s kids at the arcade (via tvneon)...

Time to wrap things up by touching upon something that kept me awfully busy over the past few: Death By Audio Arcade X Dreamhouse II. Here's a rather mysterious image that appeared on the FB event page, and which was utilized in my promotional push...

... Did it work? You’ll have to find out in my part 2 of my Attract Mode X Tumblr: May 2018 recap! Due tomorrow. Maybe.

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gundampilot · 6 years

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Inspired by @dialup2002 to post some more old stuff. :) This is a desktop screenshot I posted on my DevART account January 2005. Kicking it with Windows XP, but I loved/preferred the classic style that I was accustom to (95-98-ME). I made the wallpaper used, but I’m having trouble finding a copy of it. I’ll prob try to remake it in non-1024x768 resolution lmao. Not sure if this is from 2005. It might have been from 2004, but I hadn’t posted it yet. I did that a lot. Some fun notes about some of the software icons pictured (lots of info):

Firefox - THE FIRST BROWSER TO DO TABS OMG. I was a huge advocate for Firefox, especially in its initial releases. They were doing things on the internet nobody had really seen up to that point, and made it popular! Since I had so many issues (as most people do) with Internet Explorer, I was shopping around for a new browser at the time of this shot. Google Chrome didn’t exist yet. (Can you imagine??)

IE - As stated above, I disliked IE. It was kept for various reasons, however. Such as testing website layouts, since the mass-majority of people used it and things looked different in browsers when you were coding.

Opera - While giving Firefox a try, I also managed to snag a very, very early copy of Opera. I’ve always been the type of person that loved to try out new stuff as early as possible, and this was a very special piece of software that I wanted to give a go. The reason that it was special? You had to send away for a CD for it. That’s right, kids. They snail-mail’ed me a CD because it was considered “commercial software.” I paid to get that browser lmfao. I was super super hyped later in 2005, because it became “freeware” and I was able to more-easily push my friends to try it out. The devs were (and still are) seriously awesome. This is why I still use Opera as my main browser today! Ya’ll should try it if you aren’t already! You can even use your most-beloved Chrome extensions on it. :)

Soulseek & WinMX - Holy crap, you guys! lmao Is anyone here old enough to remember these programs?? XD This was basically where most people went after Napster bit the dust. This was when we were all scrambling, trying to find a new P2P sharing program. This was right in-between the eMule/Donkey phase and before the Limewire/KaZaA fiascos where people’s computers were being overloaded with viruses from companies trying to stop pirating. Ahh, the wild, wild west... Days were so exciting when you spent hours downloading something that could potentially ruin your computer lmao

WS_FTP - Still one of my favorite FTP programs for Windows! Works like a charm! These days I use Transmit 5 for Mac, but this was my first program ever for file transfer protocol. It’s basically a tool for uploading files to my website’s server, because back when I first registered it, there was no web uploader for that kinda stuff. Now I stick with that because it’s easier and I’m used to it lol

Veo Digital Studio - Used to use this for my webcam back before webcams were built into laptops, and before they were common enough to have amazing freeware available for them. (Also this is hilarious.) The quality was horrible, but I was hella excited to take pictures and share them with friends and on my blog at the time. From what I remember, there was something I used after this that was some type of South Korean selca software. Haduri? Something like that. It was really cute and even let you do little animations. :)

Animation Shop - Okay. So... from what I remember, this might have been owned by the people that made Paint Shop Pro? I think it was Corel. I honestly don’t remember where I got this from, but this is what I used to use to make animated gifs (because Photoshop just....didn’t for some reason? I had to use PSP at some point, I remember that. I just don’t remember why lmao. It might have been my copy didn’t allow it, or my computer was just too shit to run it good enough, or just stopped working because....Windows).

Adobe Photoshop 5.0 - I originally got this rip from a friend of mine, whose dad got a CD from his company that he worked at. It was an official/real license, which was really awesome! I think this was the first version of Photoshop I ever owned (!!), which is pretty amazing to think about about! I had that CD copy for a few years. I initially was gifted a copy of the CD around 2001-2002 or so. I know for a fact I had newer versions (7.0 was legend before CS suite came around), so I’m not sure why I was using this one at this point lmao. My guess is, like mentioned above, something happened with my computer and I didn’t want to format it and reinstall everything lol or because it was the fastest version I had installed to boot up and do a quick photo edit.

Adobe Photoshop 7.0 - I do remember this took a long time to start up. I can only imagine this was like a bad pirated copy or something, or was so bloated with new stuff in it, and that’s why I kept 5.0 for a quick boot. I know I used this majority of the time, though. Most of my backups for brushes and fonts are from backups that include 7.0 as a zip. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ My computer wasn’t the most powerful at the time, despite what I pushed it to do, so this is prob why. But hell yeah! Photoshop represent! lol I still use it today, and its still one of the first things I install on a fresh OS install. Enjoying CC 2017 these days.

Nero Start Smart - I was so excited to make mix CDs and share them! Back in the day before you had stuff like playlists that were sharable on YouTube/Spotify, etc, you had this to share music. Or play in your car. Or CD walkman. Nero was a software you could burn your CD-Rs and make your own laser-etched album art! I begged for years to get a CD burner lmao. Back when casette tapes were still around enough that my parents were like “but why???” lmao. They were not common back in the day like they became over time, just, like, included on your computer. Back then you had to buy one and install it into your computer tower yourself! I got mine I believe.....in 2001? It was the year after the Playstation 2 was released. The first one I got was just a very standard burner. Did a very specific type of CD burning at a low (slow af) speed. It was $700 lmfao. Let that sink in for a minute because my parents didn’t let me forget about it for the next four years lmfao. I saved up birthday and Christmas money and went halves on it. Then I upgraded to the one that this one was! c: Which did the laser etching, and DVD burning! (And you better believe I was burning DVDs of stuff I was downloading online lmfao this was the golden age of the internet where everything was just available everywhere as long as you had the patience to download that shit, because it took forever to download)

Volume Control - My dad and I messed with the wires on all of these random computer speakers and stereo speakers that we had collected over the years and hotwired our own version of a 5.0 surround sound in the room, which was mounted to the ceiling corners and above the computer station. It was lit. I needed Volume Control easily accessible because sometimes the speakers needed redirecting, or I needed to turn the beats down because my mother was tired of my fifth time playing the Gundam Wing OSTs and Miyavi. (It was metal, okay???)

Windows Media Player - I did not use this to listen to media. Let me reiterate that. I did not use it to listen to media on. lol this was specifically used to rip tracks from CDs that friends lent me, because it was the easiest software I was able to use to change the KBPs for quality control and the ID3 tags so I could save it and organize it for use in Winamp and know wtf I was listening to lol. Nobody used WMP for listening to music.... xD

Winamp - The best music player. Period. Still. Nothing beats it. Pls, pls, Nullsoft! Come back and make a native version for MacOS. :’(((( I would buy it! Doesn’t even have to have new features or look different. Classic look, pls pls!

Media Player Classic - Do people still use it??? This player was amazing! Paired with k-lite codec pack, it played everything. It was like VLC before VLC. And it looked good. Clean. Small. Could be installed anywhere which was nice. And the codec packs just made everything look and run fantastic!

Recycle Bin - .... Trash XD

Magnifier - This was for my dad because he had bad eyes and couldn’t remember CTRL +/-/0 to increase the text on pages that he wanted to read.

My Documents - Where I saved all the stuff I downloaded. Not the real My Docs. Just a folder that I named as such, with a custom icon. I don’t know why I wanted it there lol. I think to just have a uniform square on my desktop haha

Journal - I renamed this. I forget the original name of the client, but it was the official client of LJ. It was basically a program that let you write up posts for Livejournal and you could format things, draft them, etc, and post without uploading to your journal/blog. I liked it because sometimes I couldn’t post right away, and it made making drafts a lot easier for me to go back and edit. It also let you edit past posts, which was really convenient instead of looking for it on the web version one post at a time.

AIM+ - I loved AOL Instant Messenger, but over time the ads became too much. I invested a lot of time in 3rd party clients. I was constantly switching between AIM+, Adium, DeadAIM, Pigeon, Trillion, etc. Depended on what I wanted to do that day. Want to clone a SN? Want to skin the colors of the chats? Need transparency? Want to customize your lists? Want to log into more than one msg system at once? They all had their strengths. This was my msg service of choice. Back in the day you were either on this, MSN, or Yahoo!. Some people rocked ICQ and there were a few others, but these were the most common from who I knew/hung out with. I miss those days. <3

You can see WinMX running in the taskbar lmfao so I was prob downloading something at the time of snagging this quick shot. I also had DevART open (prob because I was gonna share this on there). I really wish I had more programs open at the time of this! XD It’s wild to look back at some of the software changes over the years!

Anyway, that’s one of my oldest screenshots that I can find that I’m able to share right now. :) I’m going to be posting a remake of that wallpaper that I did later today for those of you that want that, too.

If you read this far, thank you!! Hope you had fun reading about old stuff!

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uniquedazefan · 4 years

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Spotify Equalizer Mac 2014

Spotify Equalizer Desktop

Spotify Equalizer Download

Spotify Equalizer Mac

EQ, or equalizer, settings are a very overlooked feature of the iPhone. If you’re not happy with the sound being delivered out of your built-in speakers or even through headphones or a third-party speaker, you can alter it using EQ settings.

Spotify is a digital music service that gives you access to millions of songs. Spotify is all the music you’ll ever need. Skip to content. Spotify Click the install file to finish up. If your download didn't start, try again. Bring your music to mobile and tablet, too.

Step 1: Open Spotify on either your Android or iOS devices. Step 2: Visit settings on your Spotify app and tap on “Playback.”. Step 3: Proceed to tap on “Equalizer” to open the Spotify.

I'm using AirPods on a daily basis combined with Spotify, which features a built-in equalizer on mobile so I can change the sound the way I want. My only regret was the absence of this feature on Mac, I just discovered this app called «EqMac». This is life changing if you're using high quality headphones for example.

There’s no true way to have the perfect EQ settings because everyone’s taste is different, but you can use the settings for either Apple Music or Spotify to customize sound to your liking. The presets adjust frequencies in sound that affect properties like treble and bass, and optimize them for your listening preferences and environment. So yes, adjusting EQ might be able to improve the sound coming out of your inexpensive or low-end speakers.

Adjusting EQ for Apple Music

Since Apple Music is baked into iOS, the settings to change EQ for your Apple Music playback (or just standard iTunes playback) is found in the Settings app.

So that was how you can get the equalizer for Spotify on Windows, and on iOS and Android. Though it’d have been better if it was available natively, this tool worked quite well in my tests. If Spotify admins are listening it would be nice to include a link to the mac app mentioned above in the March update post notifying the user community that this feature is.

Tap Settings and scroll down to select Music. Scroll once more to select EQ under Playback.

Free spotify 2018 premium. We hope you like the article on Spotify premium accounts free 2018, On behalf of my search related to Spotify, I can say that it is best songs and video streaming app. It has two types of accounts. First one is free and second one is premium. Free accounts have limited features. Spotify is a digital music service that gives you access to millions of songs. Spotify is all the music you’ll ever need. Listening is everything - Spotify.

Apple doesn’t let you fine-tune EQ settings for music playback in the same way Spotify does, so instead you’ll have to choose from one of the presets. (Though on your desktop, you can also customize EQ for each individual iTunes song.) The presets are crafted based on the genre of music best suited for that particular sound arrangement. EQ is off by default, but your choices are:

Acoustic

Bass Booster (makes the booming lows more prominent)

Bass Reducer (makes the booming lows less prominent)

Classical

Dance

Deep

Electronic

Flat (overrides any preset iTunes setting in favor of flat frequencies)

Hip Hop

Jazz

Late Night (turns down typically loud sounds and boosts quiet parts; ideal if you’re at a distance)

Latin

Loudness

Lounge

Piano

Pop

R&B

Rock

Small Speakers

Spoken Word

Treble Booster (makes the highs more prominent)

Treble Reducer (makes the highs less prominent)

Vocal Booster

Tip: Before settling on one that seems most appealing, play one of your favorite songs — something you think largely represents your music collection. Then while the song is playing, start switching through the different EQ settings to get a feel for which one complements the song sound best.

Adjusting EQ for Spotify

To adjust the EQ settings in your Spotify app, tap the Menu icon on the top left. Then tap the small Settings icon next to your name. Choose Playback and finally choose Equalizer.

Spotify features all of the same EQ presets as the iOS Settings except for Late Night. (See above for those options and some explanations.) But unlike Apple’s options, Spotify also includes a visual equalizer that you can drag to your liking.

Spotify Equalizer Desktop

A word on frequencies: all you really need to know about them is that the lower the frequency, the lower the sound that knob will control. For instance, the 60Hz and 150Hz controls on the left will primarily work the bass, so dragging up will increase the bass sounds and dragging down will decrease. On the other side, the 2.4KHz and 15KHz frequencies surround the treble, or highs.

If you aren’t happy with any of the presets but still want to turn on EQ, once again I recommend playing one of your favorite songs. While it’s playing, start dragging the different frequencies up or down to see what you like best.

READ ALSO:How to Experience Hi-Fi Audio on Your Mobile Device

The above article may contain affiliate links which help support Guiding Tech. However, it does not affect our editorial integrity. The content remains unbiased and authentic.Also See#Apple Music #iphone

Did You Know

Oppo used to make portable media players before they ventured into the field of mobile phones.

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technologyreviewsgadgets · 5 years

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New Post iQOO 3 Review - An Affordable Powerful Monster! has been published on https://www.reviewcenter.in/10042/iqoo-3-review-an-affordable-powerful-monster/

iQOO 3 Review - An Affordable Powerful Monster!

iQOO 3, the first 5G smartphone in India which gave other brands a hard time to keep up in the race for launching a future-ready device with the highest level specs possible at very competitive pricing. Why I called iQOO 3 the first 5G smartphone because it was in my hand before any other brand could even demonstrate their 5G devices. Now since the race of launching the first 5G phone is irrelevant, let’s talk about the device-in-hand itself.

iQOO 3 is the most powerful smartphone in India at the time of writing this review with an Antutu score of 6.1L. This phone offers everything top-end, whether its the processor, RAM, Storage, display, or the camera. It’s a gamer’s paradise for the kind of features it offers for the gaming enthusiasts. Here’s a detailed review on iQOO 3:

The Fastest, The Most Powerful!

All thanks to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 along with Adreno 650 GPU and the optimizations done by the iQOO in the OS for making it the fastest & most powerful phone in India. For the last few days, I’ve tried my best to slow down this phone as a challenge but couldn’t get any success. I opened so many apps, didn’t used the back button ever, kept on switching apps, but no, the phone never slowed down. And that’s not it, thanks to 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM, all the apps remained in the memory ready to resume at any time. I once resumed a video editing project after 12 hours on the phone in the same state where I left.

The LPDDR5 RAM is known for increasing the r/w speed to 5500Mbps, that is why the apps retrieval on this phone is quite fast, and multitasking is quite smooth. Not to forget the UFS 3.1 Flash Storage, which at present is only available in iQOO 3 while writing this review. Why highlighting UFS 3.1 is important because the kind of speed it offers is considered equal to an NVMe drive. The difference of speed you’ll get to see when the camera process images & videos or when you’re doing data transfer, it happens in a blink!

iQOO 3 – The Gamer’s Paradise

If you want to buy a true gaming phone, this is the one! I tried games like PUBG Mobile, Asphalt 9, and was able to play at the highest settings without even a glitch. The most prominent features users get on iQOO 3 are the pressure-sensitive touch buttons & 180Hz response touch for playing games.

iQOO 3 Monster Touch Buttons

These buttons let users use quick multi-finger operations in the game. The US-Ergo board-certified iQOO 3 that iQOO 3 offers 50% more comfort, better grip, and the overall experience is better than other gaming phones. Indeed the gaming experience does get better when you use these buttons, and it also works with the phone cover ON, although I liked it better without the cover while gaming.

Probably because of the Carbon Fiber VC Liquid cooling technology, the phone didn’t warm even during long gaming sessions. The cooling setup, which they’re using inside, seems like doing the work at its best. This phone is so far the most comfortable device for mobile gaming in my experience.

There is a separate Ultra Game Mode which acts upon opening any game and does following optimizations automatically:

CPU/GPU OPtimization

RAM Optimization

180Hz Touch acceleration

Network Optimization

Thermal Management Optimization

It also gives further options to choose from as follows:

Blocking/Allowing Background calls

Blocking Notifications

Eagle Eye View Enhancement

Auto-reject Calls

Enabling/disabling Pressure-sensitive buttons

Brightness Lock

Off-screen Autoplay (so that the game doesn’t get killed when the screen is OFF)

Instant messengers PIP

Screen Recording

Taking Screenshots

There is 4D Game Vibration as well, which simulates the recoil when shooting and the vibration of the steering wheel when driving.

Also, to launch the apps & games faster, except the hardware part, the OS also does its optimizations like via Multi-Turbo feature, it accelerates CPU/GPU, AI predictions, Networking, Game performance, and Heat Dissipation. Most of the time, these features go unnoticed, but for the core gamers, these are like essentials features which their smartphone must have!

Battery – Lasts Easily Whole Day

Battery backup is the last thing you may ever need to worry about when using iQOO 3. With the battery capacity of 4440 mAh, it lasts a day easily, even with heavy usage. I was able to get a screen-on-time (SOT) of around 8 hours on Wi-Fi and up to 7 hours on 4G when I am outdoors. My heavy usage includes clicking lots of images, staying most of the time on social media and playing games & listening to music.

But the major USP here is the fast charging 55W Super FlashCharge technology, which claims to charge the phone up to 50% in 15 minutes. In my experience, the phone charged the battery from 0 to 50% in b/w 15-20 minutes, and to 100% in around 50 minutes.

Also, the charging connector is uniquely designed in the form of a capsule to give gamers an easy way to keep playing their games while charging the phone.

Here’s an update on battery backup:

Impressive Quad Camera Setup!

While a quad-camera setup is now quite common in the smartphones, the implementation done by iQOO is somewhat better, and the iQOO 3’s camera setup is not just gimmicky. Here are the details of the lenses of quad-camera setup:

Primary camera — 48MP (f/1.79) (Sony IMX582)

Secondary camera — 13MP (f/2.46) Telephoto with 20X Digital Zoom

Third camera — 13MP (f/2.2) Super wide-angle with 120° & Macro camera

Fourth camera — 2MP (f/2.4) Bokeh camera

For the quad-camera setup, we see a different kind of implementation like for wide-angle shots, we have got a 13-megapixel lens, finally, rather than an 8-megapixel one, found on most phones.

In terms of performance, the rear camera captures quite beautiful shots in broad daylight. The photos taken using the primary camera under plenty of lighting have excellent details. The images have natural-looking colors and the right amount of sharpness. The dynamic range is excellent, and under broad daylight, I didn’t find any issue in the shots taken with the primary camera.

In low lighting conditions, the primary 48-megapixel sensor performed quite well & the results were decent. The low-light shots were quite sharp, with an adequate level of detail. When switched to night mode, the phone captured even better photos with sharpening images correctly. Thankfully the Night-Mode is not very aggressive and keeps the images natural.

iQOO 3 Camera Samples

The Telephoto lens is good as well, producing sharp images when like zooming 2X or 5X; however, while using 10X or 20X zoom, we can see some distortion. The 13-megapixel wide-angle lens, which has a 120-degree field of view, provides shots that will look good enough for social media, but the images are quite softened pretty often. However, in terms of preserving details and sharpness, the wide-angle lens does a good job.

iQOO did an impressive job with videos here. The phone is capable of shooting videos up to 4K at 60fps. The 4K footage looked sharp without any noise, and the dynamic range was also excellent with better color accuracy. However, the main USP in video recording is the support of Super Anti Shake, which also uses the ultra-wide-angle lens, stabilizes the video via the EIS algorithm.

Super Anti Shake uses an EIS algorithm & performs image stabilization processing in realtime while recording a video by cutting and processing the edges of the screen. In terms of video quality, the dynamic range is good, colors are accurate, and the stabilization is effective while shooting with the phone held in hand. This is very useful for those who are looking for doing stable videography.

The 16MP front camera is quite good at clicking selfies. Whether it may be normal or bokeh, the output is excellent as the dynamic range is impressive, colors look natural & are not over-exposed. There is a bit of softening in the selfies, which is fine as it doesn’t over-do it and keep it natural.

Also, the iQOO 3 has Camera2 API enabled, so you can expect the Gcam supported for this device in the future soon. I tried the available version at present from here, and that worked fine. I used GCam_7.2.010_Urnyx05-v2.3.apk, which needs some tuning for the device, but overall it works great.

A Gorgeous Display with HDR 10+ & 180Hz Touch Response

As mentioned earlier, iQOO 3 has a massive 6.44-inch display on the front. It’s a full HD+ Super AMOLED 2.5D panel with HDR 10+ certification and a tall aspect ratio of 20:9. There is a cut out on the front near the top left corner, which houses the front-facing camera. There is Schott Xensation UP protection on the front, while the back of the phone is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 6.

The display is gorgeous. Color reproduction is excellent with deep blacks, saturation levels are quite adequate, and viewing angles are good. With 800 nits of brightness and a peak brightness of 1200 nits, the display has perfect sunlight legibility, and outdoor use is never an issue. The display also has a touch sampling rate of 180Hz, which is quite higher when compared to the standard 120Hz sampling rate on most phones; I’m quite sure gamers will surely enjoy this privilege.

There is an in-display fingerprint scanner, and it’s fast, I mean, it’s one of the fastest in-display fingerprint scanners I have seen in a while, or maybe it’s the best, I’m not sure because it’s hard to measure unlocking time. However, the brand claims that it unlocks in 0.3 seconds when the display is both ON or OFF. Also, the fingerprint scanner is very consistent and doesn’t miss out pretty often.

Excellent Build Quality

The first impression of iQOO 3, which might impress you, would the premium build quality. It has a minimalistic design overall, which looks pretty interesting. At the front, the 6.44inch display is protected by Schott Xensation glass with a tiny punch hole for the camera on the right-hand corner.

The display is gorgeous. Color reproduction is excellent & produces deep blacks, saturation levels are quite adequate, and viewing angles are good. With 800 nits of brightness and a peak brightness of 1200 nits, the display has perfect sunlight legibility, and outdoor use is never an issue. The display also has a touch sampling rate of 180Hz, which is quite higher when compared to the standard 120Hz sampling rate on most phones, and I’m quite sure gamers will surely enjoy this privilege.

While on the back, things get more interesting as the back of the phone is protected by Gorilla Glass 6. Since it has glass at the back, it is prone to smudges, which luckily were not much visible because of the color (Tornado Black) of the device. The glass barely hides a patterned design underneath that has a subtle purple hue when a sliver of light shines on it.

The seamless transition at the edges to the metal frame and the rounded corners gives an excellent handling experience. The phone weighs 214 gms with proper weight distribution overall so that it won’t feel heavy from any particular edge.

And yes, it has the 3.5mm jack at the top of the phone. Type-C port and loudspeaker grille are at the bottom, the power button & volume rocker are on the right side, and a dedicated AI button is on the left side of the phone.

Mesmerizing Audio Experience

The iQOO 3 has a bottom-firing speaker, which is quite good for media consumption. For audio enthusiasts, iQOO 3 offers the AK4377A Hi-Fi independent chip, which provides the users stereo 32VELVET high-quality audio DAC. Also, the phone has a Hi-Res audio certification, which improves the audio experience by giving a feel of listening to music in a live ambient.

The audio experience gets better with headphones, and the tracks sound as if they were meant to, so it would be the right choice for audiophiles out there. Because of Hi-Res audio onboard, the phone can deliver high volume levels with flawless output and top-notch accuracy.

iQOO UI – A Refreshing UI

The iQOO 3 runs Android 10 out of the box, with iQOO UI 1.0 on top. The iQOO UI comes with a clean and minimal interface and is packed with numerous features and customization options.

It has an app drawer, and quick settings can be accessed by swiping down from the top. Accessing quick settings from the top is something that many users wanted, as it is more consistent with the typical Android user experience. There are options to change and tweak every visual element. There is dark mode, which can be applied system-wide and can even be forced on to third party apps – I must admit here that it looks quite sick on most apps, like Facebook and a few others.

iQOO UI includes some unique options for gamers like Monster Mode, which allocates all the resources of the phone to boost the gaming experience. There is a gaming assistant which optimizes your game experience and record your activity to keep track.

iQOO 3 Pricing and Availability

The iQOO 3 has two variants, i.e., 4G & 5G. Here’s a price chart to summarize the price of different models of this phone:

ColorPriceiQOO 3 – 4G (8 GB + 128 GB)Tornado Black, Quantum SilverRs 36,999iQOO 3 – 4G (8 GB + 256 GB) Tornado Black, Quantum Silver, Volcano OrangeRs 39,999iQOO 3 – 5G (12 GB + 256 GB)Tornado BlackRs 44,990

The phone is available to buy from Flipkart and iQOO e-Store.

My favorite color here from all is Volcano orange.

iQOO, being a premium smartphone brand, offers the consumers pick and drop service for any repair issues across the country covering more than 15000+ pin codes. For any on-call assistance, consumers can call iQOO service experts who are available 24*7 over the toll-free number 1800-572-4700.

Final Conclusion

iQOO 3 is a future-ready phone. It has all the capabilities the future may require in a phone to have like 5G SA/NSA and Wi-Fi 6 802.11 ax. iQOO 3 also supports Wi-Fi calling from both Airtel and Jio at present, and if by chance you use Jio & Airtel dual-SIM pair in your phone, you’ll be able to use Wi-Fi calling on both networks. iQOO 3 is the best option available at present for multimedia consumption and gaming purposes in this price segment. It has the best hardware possible one could get at very competitive pricing and is also the fastest phone in India at present.

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arthurbooth-blog · 5 years

Video

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Viewtiful Vegan meal preparation video

26/05/2019

The Viewtiful Vegan Meal Preparation video discussed in this post is attached to this blog post, and a sound clip follows allowing listeners to hear a louder version of the music without dialogue. As the final video has the soundtrack’s music part turned down to place emphasis on information provided by the presenter. The sound clip is directly above this post.

Tom Anderson sent me visual material without voice-over dialogue so I could begin work on accompanying music sketches. I had already researched online meal preparation videos and started to breakdown their soundtracks into their various facets to deduce what makes them effective, and identify music trends used by this medium. I collated my observations into a table using the method I applied to Aperol Spritz, noting information on genre, tempo - Beats Per Minute (BPM), time signature, rhythm, atmosphere, and instruments used. I then considered similarities and differences. The table is below, and underneath a description of analysis outcomes:

Screenshot of table

The “Genre & Tempo (BPM)” column shows a similarity between three videos which feature a form of Hip-hop with a range from 85-95 BPM. The other video’s music was not Hip-hop but did share some Hip-hop beat rhythm and structure qualities, suggesting Hip-hop music trends for meal preparation videos. The “Time Signature & Rhythm, Atmosphere” column shows that although time signatures are 4/4 in all videos researched, the rhythm and atmosphere varies from chilled and smooth, to motivational, upbeat and energetic, suggesting the use of a 4/4 time signature as a trend - nothing too complicated that would take listeners’ attention away from cooking instructions. The “Instruments” column shows instruments used, mostly using guitar, piano, and with additional instruments like synthesiser, violin, or beatboxing. There were no vocals, which makes sense as they could conflict with presenter’s dialogue, which would occupy the same frequency range. All soundtracks blend acoustic and electronic sounds featuring effects like reverb, delay, and filtering, which inspired me to create a piece that sounds both acoustic and electronic.

First I created a Hip-hop beat at 90 BPM consisting of a kick and snare drum with cymbals and a processed amen break. Careful sample selection was required – I chose sounds with a rough and heavy old drum kit feel to add character and applied Native Instruments Transient Master to change each sound’s attack and sustain to accentuate these characteristics. I added samples of acoustic instruments like piano in the Ableton Live Sampler and plugged-in my Akai MPK Mini MIDI Keyboard, allowing me to play piano notes in my own rhythm. I also edited a saxophone sample and placed it in a higher octave, before adding reverb and delay. Akai MPK screenshot below:

Akai MPK Mini MIDI Keyboard

Next, I created intro and outro music for video clips. My initial meeting notes (displayed proposal Appendix A) show Tom Anderson agreed to intro and outro options which could be used in different YouTube videos. When we discussed this a few months later, Tom’s vision had slightly changed as he now plans to use the same introduction and conclusion visual material and sound in every video to build branding consistency. He said he no longer saw a use for a 15 and 20 second introduction or ending as he wanted his videos short and snappy and favoured two different 5-10 second pieces, one for the introduction and one for the ending, and a new 10-15 second part to play during the closing scene, accompanied by a photo montage. I agreed to replicate the client’s vision as closely as possible.

I created a simple 5.6-second introduction piece with a welcoming atmosphere to help draw people into the video, using instruments like horn, trumpet, piano, and thumb piano. The use of an impact sound effect layered with the final note helped signify the ident end and create a flow through into the main video. Care was taken to create an ident that could be used for all the right purposes in Viewtiful Vegan videos. Haine describes considerations taken by the Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema which needed ident music that could be used for every different genre of film the school released, “The trickiest part is that an ident sound also needs to be somewhat neutral. While a super rocking vibe might work in front of some movies, it won't play well in front of a tense family drama, so a sound to be found that introduces all movies without flavoring them” (Haine, 2018). To create an ident appropriate for meal preparation, exercise, and future diet tips it had to be neutral, and by keeping it short and simple with instruments that were easy on the ear, I managed to retain the required neutrality. Reverb increased depth and gave elements like the thumb piano warm reverb tails, adding to the welcoming atmosphere I was aiming for.

I tackled the 10-second picture montage piece by creating a basic Hip-hop beat at 90 BPM with a kick and snare drum with various hi-hat cymbals, and used similar instrument parts to the introduction ident with a modified arrangement, and a new piano melody.

Finally, I produced a 5.4-second ending ident. For this aspect I felt able to take a more detailed approach and include more layers than the intro ident as the simplistic welcoming atmosphere was not required, and the client preferred a definitive slightly dramatic conclusion to his videos. The screenshot below shows different sound groups used to create the ident:

Ending ident - groups

The first group “Drums” (right side of the screenshot) contains a conclusive sounding drum fill with crash cymbals. The “Trumpet” group holds simultaneous trumpet parts playing in different octaves, using octave doubling (discussed in the previous blog entry) to create a more dramatic ending. The third group “Sub” holds the sub-bass which occupies the lower end of the frequency range and adds weight to the ident. The fourth group “Melody” contains horns playing together in different octaves, again with octave doubling, accompanying the trumpet parts. High reverb levels were used on these horns to help them stand-out as an iconic ident element. “DRUM ROLL” holds different drum roll samples. The idea was that fading-in different versions of drum rolls becoming faster and faster, generated a sense of increasing tension and drama until the final impact sound where the drum roll cuts off. The next group “Rise” consists of two tracks holding Native Instruments Massive patches where the attack on the global envelope (“Envelope 4”) was increased to create a rising sound, I faded these in with the same fade setting as the “Drum Roll” tracks so that they were a force working together and the “Rise” group added to the heightening sense of tension. Finally, the “IMPACT” group holds impact sound effects where a slightly different technique of duplicating and reversing the impact sound and placing it before the final definitive impact hit was used, so which would add to the building intensity of the elements in the “DRUM ROLL” and “Rise” groups.

When I sent these parts to Tom Anderson asking for feedback, his response was positive and enthusiastic and he sent me the introduction, ending, and picture montage video. I edited them together in iMovie and selected transitions suitable for the video’s atmosphere. Tom confirmed he really liked the transitions, so I formulated the first draft by importing the video and all parts into Logic Pro X and arranged them accordingly. I also used volume automation to ensure the music was not too loud while dialogue was present.

When working on the first draft I wanted to make the dialogue sound as clear as possible, so I researched effects and processing chains applied to improve dialogue. The advice in the ProTools is Awesome website recommends to EQ dialogue by placing a high-pass filter on the low-frequency range under 100Hz, and a low-pass on the high-frequency range starting in the region of 10-12kHz. The site also suggests removing “honky” unwanted mid-range timbres by reducing gain around 400Hz and tiny increases in gain around 4kHz which helps with consonant clarity (ProTools is Awesome, 2011). I used this advice as a starting point, then made experimental adjustments to find the best sound.

With the first draft of the video completed, I met Tom Anderson and discussed it at length. He was very happy with the project. I pointed out some mistakes in the voice-over soundtrack he had made, suggesting re-recording these parts (showing him the timings) explaining it would be simple to replace them, but he rejected this suggestion saying he would “rather sound real than grammatically correct for a YouTube video audience”.

I presented the video attached to this post at the next production showcase seeking feedback on the balance between the volume levels of the music in comparison to the dialogue, as I had been testing different volumes and proceeded to follow these tips and techniques in an attempt to improve professionalism and quality in the final product. The feedback is shown in the picture below:

References

Haine, C. (2018) How Do You Create the Perfect Motion Ident for Your Production Company? [Online]. No Film School. Available at: https://nofilmschool.com/2018/05/creating-motion-ident (Accessed 12 April 2019).

Protoolsisawesome.com (2011) The Dialog Chain: what, why, how? (Part 1) – Pro Tools is Awesome! [Online]. Available at: https://www.protoolsisawesome.com/?p=145 (Accessed 19 April 2019).

Filmography

Weeknight Meals | Basics with Babish (2018) YouTube video, added by Binging with Babish [Online]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQm9Bk2bA_Q&fbclid=IwAR0KeE-Fjl__yjZBG3fHbGzdVjlR-sRrH57Ew0l4KEmSgKpKqvj1SVRLHzg (Accessed 27 March 2019).

5 HEALTHY LUNCH IDEAS FOR WORK & SCHOOL (2018) YouTube video, added by Stephi Nguyen [Online]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8f79vwzWVQ&fbclid=IwAR1mnW1U3uafx8UPGGuf5v6enHnWzfmyLFmaJYTBIO2HNEhQgr6z3nl7tT0 (Accessed 26 March 2019).

The Only Meal Prep Guide You Need To Follow • Tasty (2019) YouTube video, added by Tasty [Online]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17Bagme20IM (Accessed 26 March 2019).

Meal Prep For Weight Loss - Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, and Snacks - 1600-1700 Calories (2018) YouTube video, added by Water Jug Fitness [Online]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cM6z_XkPn_g&fbclid=IwAR3eOjNDHgyWretcbNYAqepNlIwGpBroVDbCylSvjtoqWwmwVPVNs4a-Bj8 (Accessed 27 March 2019).

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bluewatsons · 5 years

Text

Maria Bustillos, Lester Bangs: Truth-teller, The New Yorker (August 21, 2012)

Every reader, starting from childhood, draws his own map of the world of letters. There is liable to be some outside guidance here and there, naturally. Certain landmarks are supplied to us, say in English class. But teachers aren’t found only in school. As a kid, my chief literary mentor was the rock critic Lester Bangs, who wrote for Creem magazine and The Village Voice in the seventies and early eighties. He shaped my nascent taste, and taught me to read much the way I still read now. And as much as I relied on his irresistible humor and wisdom for advice on how best to blow my birthday money at the Licorice Pizza record store, I sought him out still more to learn about books, in particular the forbidden and arcane books no conventional teacher would ever mention.

Lester Bangs was a wreck of a man, right up until his death in April of 1982, at the age of thirty-three. He was fat, sweaty, unkempt—an out-of-control alcoholic in torn jeans and a too-small black leather jacket; crocked to the gills on the Romilar cough syrup he swigged down by the bottle. He also had the most advanced and exquisite taste of any American writer of his generation, uneven and erratic as it was.

Bangs, who was born in 1948 and grew up in El Cajon, California, had been driven out into the wider world by a complicated, shambolic family: his mother, Norma, was a devout Jehovah’s Witness, and his father, Conway, was an incorrigible drunk. Many imaginative kids who feel trapped in oppressive surroundings find solace, pleasure, excitement, and every other kind of relief in music and literature: in Bangs’s case this tendency was exceptionally pronounced. The community of Witnesses Bangs’s family belonged to believed in an end-is-nigh ideology, and they disapproved of Christmas presents, birthday parties, and education beyond reading the Bible. Here is the root, perhaps, of the seductive ease and fluidity with which Bangs riffed on culture high and low. As the Witnesses equally rejected Coltrane, Miles Davis, Superman comics, and science fiction, so did this rebellious son love and accept them all equally and on the same plane. Bangs’s biographer, Jim DeRogatis (“Let It Blurt”), described Bangs’s nascent rebellion—and his growing sense of the untrustworthiness, incompetence, and hypocrisy of authority.

“The drawer where I kept my Classics Illustrated collection was subject to stringent, arbitrary and rather sudden swoops of censorship,” Les wrote at age twenty. “Things like ‘The War of the Worlds’ by H.G. Wells and ‘From the Earth to the Moon’ by Jules Verne, my literary mentor of the third grade, would suddenly appear in ripped piles atop the ashes when I’d go out to empty the trash into the incinerator on a winter morning. My mother thought science fiction was demented nonsense; all the Witnesses do. They hold that since the Bible never mentions life on other planets, there must not be any, and no one can sway them from their conclusions.”

And yet Norma indulged Lester enough that he seems to have managed a childhood of nonstop reading, listening, writing. “Days home from school faking flu I would put Trane on loud … and stand up on a hassock reading Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl,’” he wrote. But there are indications, too, that mother and son were very close. When Bangs found himself broke and washed up, his mother and sister would enclose sawbucks along with the Watchtower tracts they sent him. They had all shared Conway’s disgrace and death: they loved him, it seems, but he died in a fire, drunk and alone, having fled the family in shame.

The adult world outside Bangs’s childhood home bore unmistakable evidence of the same weaknesses he’d discovered inside it. The false Donna Reed visions of a happy, healthy, snow-white America of the postwar years, the disillusionment of the Vietnam war, and Nixon’s downfall; everywhere, the rebellion that had begun to precipitate in the Summer of Love now saturated the air and fermented. Bangs developed a pure hatred of the lies and whitewashings of religion and government, his mutiny balanced against a bone-deep love of the truth—no matter how messy or unpretty it might turn out to be—which he equated with the refuge he’d found in literature and music. In fact, the messier, the more “real” art could be, the better. He talked about this in what might be his most famous review, of Van Morrison’s “Astral Weeks”:

[T]he fall of 1968 was such a terrible time: I was a physical and mental wreck, nerves shredded and ghosts and spiders looming and squatting across the mind. My social contacts had dwindled almost to none; the presence of other people made me nervous and paranoid … [“Astral Weeks”] assumed at the time the quality of a beacon, a light on the far shores of the murk; what’s more, it was proof that there was something left to express artistically besides nihilism and destruction. It sounded like the man who made “Astral Weeks “was in terrible pain, pain most of Van Morrison’s previous works had only suggested; but … there was a redemptive element in the blackness, ultimate compassion for the suffering of others, and a swath of pure beauty and mystical awe that cut right through the heart of the work.

Along with many of his contemporaries, Bangs concluded that if “authority” was not to be trusted—and clearly, it wasn’t—then whatever “authority” detested must be O.K., or probably great. Hence the reactionary excesses of the nineteen-seventies, the chancy legacy of “don’t trust anyone over thirty.” Cocaine: a pure plant-derived substance that wouldn’t hurt you. Government: barely worth ignoring. If the squares were in favor of monogamy, then monogamy must be avoided at all costs, whether it appealed to you or not.

As for Bangs’s audience, the children of those years were far more sheltered from adult culture than they are now. While the rock stars whom we so admired were getting high and indulging their vast sexual appetites, the adults who were in charge of children were hell-bent on terrifying us with tall tales about sex and drugs and rock and roll: take acid and you might throw yourself out a window, certain you could fly, or become permanently convinced that you were a glass of orange juice. The cruel fates of these mythical victims were transparently bogus even to ten and twelve year olds, particularly those whose older siblings were already getting us stoned. Growing up at that time felt something like “The Truman Show”: the young intuited that they might break through the papier-mâché walls at any moment and into the “real world,” which probably really was scary but at least would be real. We sought reliable guides who wouldn’t lie to us, infantilize us, or sugar-coat anything, however flabby and wild-eyed they might be.

Sure there were other magazines and there were other writers. But for a certain cohort of bookishly-inclined kids, there was only one magazine and only one writer. I wasn’t the least bit surprised to learn that my contemporary, the late David Foster Wallace, had dedicated his first co-written book, “Signifying Rappers,” to Lester Bangs.

Bangs, then, was a moralist. He understood that what young people wanted was something still more than to break free of parental bonds. We wanted to know exactly what was being hidden from us. Bangs’s great gift to the kids who formed his most passionate following was the news that this information was available to us; it could be found in books.

It would be difficult to say where the expression of Bangs’s moral universe was clearest, because he’d habitually compress a sublime insight into any old photo caption or throwaway remark, in whatever throwaway piece about whatever throwaway band. But a lot of fans, I suspect, would nominate the aforementioned review of “Astral Weeks” for the honors.

“Astral Weeks,” insofar as it can be pinned down, is a record about people stunned by life, completely overwhelmed, stalled in their skins, their ages and selves, paralyzed by the enormity of what in one moment of vision they can comprehend. It is a precious and terrible gift, born of a terrible truth, because what they see is both infinitely beautiful and terminally horrifying: the unlimited human ability to create or destroy, according to whim. It’s no Eastern mystic or psychedelic vision of the emerald beyond, nor is it some Baudelairean perception of the beauty of sleaze and grotesquerie. Maybe what it boils down to is one moment’s knowledge of the miracle of life, with its inevitable concomitant, a vertiginous glimpse of the capacity to be hurt, and the capacity to inflict that hurt.

All this would send the questing reader straight to “Les Fleurs du Mal.” There was scarcely a book mentioned during Bangs’s tenure at Creem that I didn’t eventually hunt down (including a new edition of Borges’s “The Aleph”; I couldn’t make head or tail of that.)

In this way, a whole generation of kids was led to see “subversive” or countercultural literature through the lens of rock and roll—and also to become attuned to a new kind of critical voice, a voice far more intellectually honest than that of the academic critics. Susan Sontag’s “Notes on Camp” holds itself at a lofty, self-regarding remove from its determinedly hip subject matter, but Bangs never held anything at arm’s length in his life; he was rushing headlong into the sea of the world, arms thrown wide open, to embrace it, to drown in it.

Let’s take “Of Pop and Pies and Fun: A Program for Mass Liberation in the Form of a Stooges Review, or, Who’s the Fool?,” published in Creem in 1970. I was too young to have read this when it came out; I would have read it in one of the thick bound volumes I used to spend summer afternoons with at the library, some years later. This is just to give an idea of the fun that Bangs could provide in such an afternoon, if you were a young teen-age fan fiendishly devoted to the Stooges and their “crazed quaking uncertainty.” Because Bangs had already won you over with his uncannily exact description of your own love of the Stooges: “an errant foolishness that effectively mirrors the absurdity and desperation of the times, but … they also carry a strong element of cure, a post-derangement sanity.”

The perfection of this assessment led you breathlessly through the rest of the piece, which mentioned: Malcolm Muggeridge, the Panthers, the Yips, Holden Caulfield, “I took acid four days ago and since then everything is smooth with no hangups like it always is for about a week after a trip?” (ugh, speak for yourself, Lester); “fantasies of a puissant ‘youth culture,’” “Jimmy Page’s arch scowl of supermusician ennui,” Mountain, Cream, Creedence, “imagine throwing a pie in the face of Eldridge Cleaver! Joan Baez!” “the onetime atropine-eyed Byronic S&M Lizard King,” an MBE returned, “a giant pie stuffed with the complete works of Manly P. Hall,” “that infernal snob McCartney and those radical dilettante capitalist pigs the Jefferson Airplane,” Marxists, A. A. Milne, Mick Jagger (“a spastic flap-lipped tornado writhing from here to a million steaming snatches and beyond in one undifferentiated erogenous mass, a mess and a spectacle all at the same time”), “the bastion (Bastille) stage,” “the oppressor is fat and weak, brothers!”

Artaud, Tinkertoys, épater la bourgeoisie, Ed Ward, the “I Ching,” sock hops, “A.B. Spellman’s moving book ‘Four Lives in the Bebop Business,’” “Trout Mask Replica,” “the essence of both American life and American rock ‘n’ roll.”

“Mark my words.”

“Some peglegged Golem hobbling toward carny Bethlehem,” Porky Pig, “beautiful Pauline Kael.”

It ends like this:

Some of the most powerful esthetic experiences of our time, from “Naked Lunch” to Bonnie and Clyde, set their audiences up just this way, externalizing and magnifying their secret core of sickness which is reflected in the geeks they mock and the lurid fantasies they consume, just as our deepest fears and prejudices script the jokes we tell each other. This is where the Stooges work. They mean to put you on that stage, which is why they are super-modern, though nothing near to Art. In Desolation Row and Woodstock-Altamont Nation the switchblade is mightier and speaks more eloquently than the penknife. But this threat is cathartic, a real cool time is had by all, and the end is liberation.

Don’t even doubt that I looked up every single book, every musical reference, hell every single word I didn’t understand. You bet your sweet bippy, I did.

Bangs openly lamented having been born too late to hang with the Beats, but he loved William Burroughs and wrote about him constantly. Suburban librarians generally hadn’t the faintest clue what was in any of these books (or maybe, just pretended not to) and any curious teen-ager could borrow them freely at the public library, or buy them at a bookshop, head shop, or thrift shop. “Naked Lunch” certainly made a striking contrast with, say, “The Catcher in the Rye,” a book you might be reading at school. I was surprised to find, returning to “Naked Lunch” just a few years ago, how full of sap and hilarity it still is. The funniest thing is that “Naked Lunch” turns out to be a moralistic book, making a better, truer, scarier case against becoming a junkie than whatever nonsense you were liable to be hearing in health ed.

The literature of mysticism and the occult, representing as it did the anti-religious, was also of interest during this time; parents were still attending church regularly. Hence the popularity of unreadable Satanist tracts, astrology, Aleister Crowley, and assorted metaphysicians of all nations. What did the anti-religions have to say? I can still remember the pseudo-mystical mantra-recommendation sung by Todd Rundgren on the album, “Initiation”: “Steiner, Gurdjieff, Blavatsky, and Boooo-dah.” I went dutifully along to the library to investigate and was soon bored out of my tree. By golly, that Madame Blavatsky is a pill. In general, you were liable to get some crackpot literary recommendations from your favorite rock stars. But Bangs could draw the marrow forth even from the metaphysicians. In the essay, “James Taylor Marked for Death,” he wrote:

Number one, everybody should realize that all this “art” and “bop” and “rock-’n’-roll” and whatever is all just a joke and a mistake, just a hunka foolishness so stop treating it with any seriousness or respect at all and just recognize the fact that it’s nothing but a Wham-O toy to bash around as you please in the nursery, it’s nothing but a goddam Bonusburger so just gobble the stupid thing and burp and go for the next one tomorrow; and don’t worry about the fact that it’s a joke and a mistake and a bunch of foolishness as if that’s gonna cause people to disregard it and do it in or let it dry up and die, because it’s the strongest, most resilient, most invincible Superjoke in history, nothing could possibly destroy it ever, and the reason for that is precisely that it is a joke, mistake, foolishness. The first mistake of Art is to assume that it’s serious. I could even be an asshole here and say that “Nothing is true; everything is permitted,” which is true as a matter of fact, but people might get the wrong idea. What’s truest is that you cannot enslave a fool.

Here was one of Crowley’s favorite notions (“Nothing is true; everything is permitted,”), by way of Nietzsche, but Bangs brought it out of occult Thelemist incomprehensibility and into the question of discovering a practical intellectual justification for the satisfaction of every appetite. This was the way the twenty-somethings we admired were living. Why these strictures? What good were they? What if we simply chose to live real life in the U.S.A. entirely unhampered by any of them at all? It took some time, but eventually one inevitably blundered into Nietzsche himself, and asked the old question from a philosophical or logical, rhetorical or moralistic perspective. Was nothing true? Was everything permitted? What was spiritual freedom? Was Kerouac free? Was Burroughs? Was Bangs?

What he was really leading us to was the one true church of intellectual curiosity and open-mindedness. There was subtlety and elegance in his reasoning, generosity, and the best kind of skepticism: the skepticism that turns back on the author himself. This last aspect of Bangs’s writing was the most revelatory to me. It was the virtue I sought most to emulate, then and now.

Indeed no other writer gave me this feeling again so purely until I ran across David Foster Wallace, so many years later, and found he’d learned the very same thing; I suspect he learned it from the same doomed, messed-up, wounded, alcoholic genius of a teacher.

In 1977, Bangs accompanied the Clash on tour, which resulted in an immense three-part interview published in the NME.

Finally [Mick Jones] looked me right in the eye and said, “Hey Lester: why are you asking me all these fucking questions?”

In a flash I realized he was right. Here was I, a grown man … motoring up into the provinces of England, just to ask a goddamn rock ‘n’ roll band for the meaning of life! Some people never learn. I certainly didn’t, because I immediately started in on him with my standard cultural-genocide rap: “Blah blah blah depersonalization blab blab blab solipsism blah blah yip yap etc. …”

“What in the fuck are you talking about?”

“Blah blab no one wants to have any emotions anymore blab blip human heart an endangered species blah blare cultural fascism blab blurb etc. etc. etc. …”

And even though this was meant for kids to read, note that there’s not a particle of condescension in it. That, too, made young people love and trust Lester Bangs with unswerving devotion. Indeed I’ve never swerved once in all these years.

#lester bangs #music #greats #music criticism #nostalgia #inspiration #art #art criticism

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evnoweb · 5 years

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9 Good Collections of Videos for Education

When I started teaching, videos were a rarity. Common practice was to assign a chapter to read in a textbook and then a worksheet to assess student knowledge. This placed the responsibility for learning on the students, using teacher-prescribed methods, even though decades of research screamed that lots of kids perform better with images than pages filled with black-and-white text. But the excuse I used, as did most of my colleagues, was: It takes too much time to find the right videos to support so many different personal demands.

Back then, that was true. It’s not anymore.

Now there are dozens of online free educational videos that address most every academic topic imaginable. And they’re put out by recognized names in education — Khan Academy, BBC, Microsoft, Teacher Tube, as well as textbook providers like Origo. Here are ten of my favorite virtual places to find clear, effective educational videos that not only support teaching but can be used to enrich lessons for students who want more and/or backfill for those who might need a bit more help:

BBC Bitesize

Bitsize is the BBC’s collection of free short videos and lessons (they’re all bite-sized) on over fifty subjects taught in Primary or Secondary education. Topics include languages, music, technology, social studies, science, engineering, maths, journalism, and more. They are sortable by grade level and/or subject and can be adapted to four different UK languages. Most include class ideas for usage and an assessment to determine if students got what you put out there. No sign-in is required but registration allows you to collect a list of videos to watch in the future, track those already completed, and return to videos not quite finished.

These videos are well-suited to international learners but if you’re outside the British Isles, you will find videos listed as “not available in your location”.

Bright Science

Bright Science is a free YouTube channel of over 1300 study videos for high schoolers (or precocious middle schoolers). Most are about five minutes (some longer, some shorter) and cover topics like chemistry, physics, calculus, geometry, biology, Algebra, trigonometry, grammar, ACT prep, and SAT prep. They are professionally recorded and presented by expert teachers with a class screen or whiteboard. The presenters may talk fast — after all, they’re trying to get it within the tight timeframe — but all information is cogent and pithy.

There is a paid version that is ad-free and offers more than triple the number of available videos.

Check123

Check123 describes itself as a video encyclopedia filled with engaging, professionally-produced movies that run between one and three minutes. They are produced by expert educators in the fields including some prominent names like National Geographic. Topics include earth sciences, nature, science, technology, history, space, the human body, sports, politics, philosophy, and more. The delivery platform is YouTube making them available from desktops or mobile devices and embeddable into LMSs, websites, or anywhere that takes embeds.

Each video includes a rating by viewers to give an idea of how effective they are to those who watch them.

Critical Past

Critical Past is one of the largest collections in the world of royalty-free original videos (and stock photo images) on amazing events in world history from the mid-1800s through the 1990s. All are available for viewing and/or immediate download. Specialties include World War I, World War II, Korean War, Vietnam War, The Cold War, political figures, industrialization, culture, Civil Rights, transportation, aviation, and space. The website also offers featured collections that focus on one topic such as the Cold War or the Great Depression.

Videos can be searched by topic or decade. Videos are free when low-resolution and are watermarked. A user who requires a professional quality without the watermark (such as journalists) will pay a fee.

C-Span video library

C-Span is one of the best-known apolitical purveyors of commercial-free political videos, podcasts, streaming content, and more. Their videos cover Congress in action, the Executive Branch, the Supreme Court, prominent speeches, Commission hearings, and a wide variety of other topics (not all in realtime) that address American politics. All are provided at no cost to viewers. What is exciting to teachers is what they call C-Span Classroom, where free video-based lesson plans and bell ringers are provided on topical and historical subjects such as AP US Government, civil rights, comparative government, financial literacy, environmental policy, federalism, foreign policy, and more. C-Span Classroom is free but requires registration to access materials.

Explore.org

Explore.org is the world’s leading philanthropic live nature cam network and documentary film channel. It is a massive collection of Live Cams, nature films, documentaries, more than 250 original films, and over 30,000 photographs from around the world. The website showcases work at film festivals and on over 100 public broadcast and cable channels. They also have a YouTube channel that provides videos that explore nature topics such as Africa, bears, dogs, and farm life.

Their mission is to “champion the selfless acts of others, create a portal into the soul of humanity and inspire lifelong learning.” Kudos to their ability to achieve that goal.

Futures Channel

The Futures Channel is a subscription service enabling teachers to access four-ten-minute videos on a wide variety of educational topics such as animals, earth science, the environment, space science, math topics, and more. It was founded in 1999 with the goal of using new media technologies to create a channel between the scientists, engineers, explorers, and visionaries shaping the future and today’s students who will one day succeed them. It has become the largest STEM video library of its kind.

History Channel

History Channel is one of the most popular and well-known providers of free (and in some cases fee) history videos for education. It includes not only original movies but TV series, military history, in-depth topical explorations, biographies, and the ever-popular “This Day in History”. It is in Spanish or English, and on desktop computers or mobile devices. History Education includes collections on historical topics, study guides, the Citizenship Quiz, and Take a Vet to School Day ideas.

Education.com Songs

Education.com offers a free collection of preschool-fifth grade educational materials — printable worksheets, online games, lesson plans, and more — but what caught my attention was the educational songs. Nothing sticks in your head like a singable times tables or vocabulary! For students who struggle with counting, vowels, ABCs, math, shapes, place value or another of the forty-five songs, this is a great website to visit.

Songs are sortable by subject or grade, rated by viewers, aligned with a wide variety of international standards (such as Common Core), include a guided lesson and in some cases related resources, and can be listened to on a desktop or mobile device. If teachers create an account (with Education.com), they can assign songs to students as homework, classwork, bell ringers, or warmups.

Here are ten more online video purveyors you will like:

King of Math

National Geographic Video

PBS Video

Reuters Video Index

School Tube

Teacher Tube

TED Talks

Untamed Science

USGS Multimedia Gallery

Wired Science

***

It’s impossible to keep up with available online video resources. What have I missed that you can’t do without?

— published first on TeachHUB

@check123com

@CriticalPast

@cspan

@exploreorg

@history

@education_com