Bill Drummond‘s memoir “45” is a great read (Amazon UK, US). It’s about his time with the KLF, producing, music and art and reaching the age of 45. He’s one of the more interesting artists around today. When he was with the KLF they wrote The Manual “HOW TO HAVE A NUMBER ONE – THE EASY WAY”. It has been out of print for a long time but is now available for free on the web.

Two charity songs have recently appeared on YouTube. First we have the youngsters and a collaborative project called ChartJackers with a song called I’ve Got Nothing for Children in Need.

Have you noticed your new CDs are louder than your old CDs (or even albums)? That’s because the volume has been turned up in the mastering process. This results in a loss of dynamics (less difference between quiet and loud) and hence a worse sounding record. Now there’s an industry organisation called Turn Me Up campaigning for a return to dynamics. They’ve made a demo video (embedded below from YouTube) which demonstrates the effects. Music Machinery has an excellent entry (complete with graphs) on this subject and here’s the Wikipedia article. Quiet is the new…

The below with apologies to Paul Simon…

Brilliant a cappella rendition of You’re Gonna Miss Me with only hand claps and empty soup pots as accompaniment. Embbed from YouTube below.

Apple just released version 9.0.1 of the steaming pile we like to call iTunes. Still crashes. Crashity-crash-crash-crash. Crap.

Nudge is a virtual instrument (descended from ToneMatrix) that is great fun. Here’s a link to my composition

Is iTunes the worst piece of software in the world today? Yes!

At the World Science Festival 2009 Bobby McFerrin demonstrated that the pentatonic scale is embedded in our brains. See below (embedded from Vimeo). Worth a look.