Possibly one of the coolest instruments in a long time!

I started looking elsewhere, and decided to forego a surround speaker set. Having surround sound was nice, but not a necessity. All my music is stereo, so anything else is done in hardware to make it pseudo-surround. Granted, some CDs do seem to utilise some sort of Pro-Logic encoding, but for the most part, it’s best to have things in ‘proper’ stereo. The only things I ever have in stereo are DVDs, and I watch those on the TV or projector with the decent surround system, so surround speakers on the PC seemed a bit redundant. Also, I no longer have a high-end sound card in the PC. I’m using the onboard card, so it wasn’t like I’d be losing anything there.

So for a while I briefly courted the notion of something like the Bose surround speakers, but the price put me off. Creative also did a similar set, but they used USB for the connection (i.e. the speakers are the sound card). Plus they had a silly-massive subwoofer, which didn’t seem great to me. I don’t really like subwoofers much as they send all their sound through the floor, thus annoying others. What I needed was a set of speakers which were able to produce their own bass. The speakers on my TV are a Sony set I got with a Hi-Fi system I bought some years ago. I have no sub there, but the speakers are very big, and produce plenty of bass on their own. I figured if I could get something similar for the PC I’d be onto a winner, as it would mean no sub, less cabling, and better sound.

So I managed to find these:

These are the GigaWorks T40 Series II. I found them in PCWorld, and the first thing that struck me was a) how big the box was, and b) how much it weighed. I’ve found that light, small speakers often produce a sound that is, well, light and small. But these had some bulk to them. They are of a big size, and so I settled on them.

I’ve been using them about a week now, and I’m really quite happy with them. The sound is quite well defined and very broad – I certainly felt like I was hearing everything. They’re not too bassy, and the highs don’t seem lost. The mids sometimes seem to go walkabout, but that’s something that can be tweaked. I’ve turned down the bass a little bit, and they sound pretty good now. They look and feel like proper, decent speakers, and to be honest I think they are. PC speakers have always been something of an also ran, so if you listen to a lot of music on your PC (like I do) then you can often find them somewhat lacking. These tick all the right boxes for me, so I’m quite impressed with them.

Yet I like this…

YouTube – Kutiman-Thru-you – 01 – Mother of All Funk Chords.

Honestly, I can’t say I’m overly surprised. I always expected something like this to happen eventually. I could analyse the hell out of this, or go all Chris Crocker over it, but I’m not going to be doing that in a rush.

Instead, I’d like to say I think it marks a new beginning. The band’s sound has always been a mish-mash of all the band-members’ own musical likes and dislikes, and that produced the unique sound they had. It meant they often drifted around between genres, and that made it great.

Steve reckoned he had a more folky background, so I’ll be intrigued to see what sort of direction they take in future. I’d noticed Kevin Hearn moving more to the front with songs, and Jim was submitting more which made for some great songs. Plus all the guys can sing, so they’ll definitely cope on that front. Be intrigueing to hear how (or even if) they handle ‘Steve’ songs.

As for Steve, he reckons he has a load of new projects up and coming. The Art & Time Ensemble work he did a while ago was pretty good, and I imagine a studio recording of something similar would be absolutely wonderful. The Vanity Project looks likely (to me) to turn into a ‘real’ band, and Steve says he has a second album on the way, so I look forward to that – the eponymous debut was a great album.

So it all looks promising to me. To quote a Kevin Hearn song – This is a beginning, not the end!

Really is awesome!

Some turn up twice due to the fact there might be a live, and album version of a song.

According to Last.fm, however:

Not sure what it proves…

I looked for methods to reset the play counts, but couldn’t find anything. Within iTunes it’s possible to edit pretty much every aspect of a track, except for how many times you played it, and when that last as.

I dug around and found one method which involved hacking about with iTunes library file, which is a gargantuan XML file. I had a go at substituting the play count from one song to another, to see if it’d work, but iTunes decided it would rather helpfully remove it. A bit more digging and I found some Applescript scripts to do it, but they are of little use to me, being on Windows.

Then I found this site:

Windows iTunes Scripts Downloads- liquid parallax’s Blog.

A script to set the play count! I tried it, and it worked. What’s more, it stays after you close and re-open iTunes, and it increments quite happily.

It does raise the fact that iTunes obviously has some sort of API for manipulating it from Javascript (and other things no doubt). I’ll probably look into that more and see what can be done. Still, my play counts are back where they were, so I’m happy for now!

Last night was no exception. He had two support acts – one a local guy, and other an up and coming act by the name of Dan Michaelson and the Coastguards. They weren’t too bad, and passed the time whilst we waited. After they’d finished, we waited for what seemed like an eternity. One of the roadies appeared with setlists, then about 15 minutes later picked them all up and replaced them with others, so I can’t help but feel the delay was possibly due to some last-minute changes.

After much staring at the stage doors, the Duke suddenly emerged from the wings onto the stage, much to everybody’s surprise. The whole place fell silent whilst he began to play. The Temperance Society’s Chip Bailey appeared after a couple of songs and joined in on drums and percussion. The banter with the crowd was good. Some songs employ records being played as intros to the songs (well, I think some come from recordings off the mixing desk, but I digress), but it seemed the record the Duke wanted wasn’t where he thought, so a singalong ending to one song was drawn out longer whilst he ran around trying to find the record he wanted. It gave a few laughs anyway!

Chip appeared to have added some more percussion instruments to his already odd arsenal of Stumpf Fiddle and cheese grater and whisk. The new additions were attached to a large stand, and included a broken cymbal with bolts through it, a saucepan, and some small sheets of metal on a hook, among other things.

Mid-show, the Duke mentioned that at the previous gig they had done in Portsmouth, he’d been able to wheel his piano out into the middle of the crowd, and play some songs acoustically. Unfortunately, that wasn’t possible due to there not being an easy way to get the piano down. He actually seemed genuinely dismayed that this was the case, but apologised and carried on anyway. The show came to an end, and a final encore took place. He said a few thankyous, then announced that it was the end of the show, but they’d managed to set up another piano downstairs. Everybody was welcome to come downstairs and enjoy the little ‘after show’. He then said himself and Chip would crowdsurf to the back. Everybody laughed good naturedly.

He meant it.

So one short crowd surf to the back (very rock and roll!), Chip hanging onto his Stumpf Fiddle whilst doing so, everybody piled downstairs. The Academy staff were running around trying to open up doors and get people down safely. My hat off to them, as I think it really was an off-the-cuff thing, and pretty much everybody transferred downstairs.

The downstairs room is much bigger, but obviously hadn’t been opened up for use, as the only lights on were the main lights. Sitting in the middle was a piano, and everybody just crowded around. The Duke was still running around (I think he was actually looking for his pint), and eventually joined everybody. Chip was busily entertaining everybody by playing his Stumpf Fiddle some more. The Duke started up playing some songs – a weird mish-mash of his own songs, some modern songs, and some old drinking songs (The Old Bull and Bush being one).

The whole thing was played out by candle light as somebody lit the little candles on his piano, and the main lights were turned off. It turned into just a fun sing-song. OK, he did forget the words to some of the songs – including his own – but nobody cared. It was great fun. The show-stealer being a little boy who managed to stand down next to the piano and held up the words during one song, then sang a few parts with the Duke, then alone. Naturally, he got massive cheers for singing along (he wasn’t bad either).

Eventually the show ended properly, and we all filed out. It was gone 11:30 at this point, so we’d probably gotten another 45 minutes out of that extra bit of show!

I can’t help but feel that with Duke Special, he’s a musician’s musician. He really does LOVE music. He loves to play it, and play it for and with other people. If he can get the audience involved, he will. Suddenly, as an audience, you don’t feel that you’re being played to, but that you’re somehow involved. I’ve seen other bands who barely acknowledge the audience (Editors did that), or they have a laugh, but more with each other on stage, so you feel that you’re watching somebody else having fun. Duke is more about involving the audience. Chip Bailey is a great accompaniment to that, as he does the same thing.

It’s just damn good fun. Exactly what a live gig should be.

YouTube – Barenaked Ladies – Sound of Your Voice

Had to try posting a video…. as good a choice as any!