Dot Matrix with Stereo Sound » Music

Internet Carols (and a resolution)

mario — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 00:02:20 +0000

Happy New Year, The Internet!

Sorry it’s been so long since my last post. And sorry for an apology that followers of my works hear all too often. A lot’s been happening in my life lately, but I hope to make up for my varied absences with my New Year’s resolution of MORE BLOG POSTS OMG

What will this result in? Hopefully more frequent updates on this blog (and other projects)! When I decided on this resolution, my first thought was to post something daily, but I have a feeling that would get rambly-cluttered and also insane, so my current goal is one blog post per week. I may not always have major projects to discuss, but at the very least I’ll keep all my faithful readers appraised of goings-on like a good blogger should.

Which brings us to my first blog post of 2011, wherein I discuss: Internet Christmas carols!

For the holiday season, Blue decided to make video Christmas carols for her favorite websites. Seeing that this was an awesome idea, I humbly offered my assistance at sprucing up the videos with vocal accompaniment and jingly bells, with iMovie providing the picture-in-picture magic. Here are our collaborative results!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Oh Lobster Tree
(for Tree Lobsters)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Oh Little Antisoshell Tortoise
(for Antisoshell)

Click here to view the embedded video.

God Rest You, I’m Aaron J
(for Aaron J (he’s Aaron J!))

Click here to view the embedded video.

Oh Stupid and Insane
(for Stupid and Insane Defenders Against Chaos)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Merry Christmas, Orange Belt!
(for The Orange Belt)

Go check out Hello, The Future! for the solo carols she did (plus all her other stuff of course). If you don’t feel like you’re sufficiently in the Christmas spirit at the start of a new year, you can just pretend these are 2011 carols. You’ll find that they work just as well for that Christmas probably!

See you next week! And you can take that to the bank the blood bank.

[discuss]

More or less a given thing

mario — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 20:09:53 +0000

For Week 27 of her weekly song project, Blue performed I’m A Believer by The Monkees. And so did I! In Scott Pilgrim and Ramona Flowers attire!

Click here to view the embedded video.

I even remembered most of the words! I’ll copy her credits blurb wholesale now:

Also for full credits: the image at the beginning was from Edgar Wright’s film Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, which is on sale in DVD/Blu-ray on Tuesday. The music was from Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past. The comic itself is the AWESOMETASTIC Scott Pilgrim series by Bryan Lee O’Malley, and the pixel skull shirt was designed by Diesel Sweeties creator R. Stevens!

Also as a reminder, I made the artwork for her album, Infinity Right Now, which is totally out now!

Go buy some!

[discuss]

Infinity Right Now

mario — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 16:34:48 +0000

Remember Blue? Of course you do! She played the webconcert live at my apartment back in September, and it was made of pure awesome. Well for the past few months, she’s been working hard on not-so-secret projects, and now all that work has come to fruition in the form of a brand new album!

In addition to having excellent songs about stuff like webcomics (including Dinosaur Comics, Questionable Content and Girly!) and Mathnet and people named John(/Jon), this album features special artwork by yours truly. The musician has been faithfully rendered in a Chrono Trigger-style sprite, which can only further enhance the already-intense levels of awesomeness this album already emanates. Here’s the cover:

(when you buy the album, you get the cover in EVEN HIGHER RESOLUTION. If that’s EVEN POSSIBLE)

Infinity Right Now is available RIGHT NOW from Blue’s Bandcamp page! In addition to the twelve official songs, there are two actually-secret bonus tracks, and if you buy during the brief pre-release period, you get a not-secret extra-bonus even-bonusier track!

Go pick it up already! And tell all your friends about it, so that they’ll pick it up and tell all their friends about it and so on! They might end up retelling you about it too. Don’t feel too bad about that, it’s statistically likely that you’ll appear more than once on the Friend Continuum.

[discuss]

Webcomics Webconcert LIVE! at Mario’s Apartment

mario — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 18:25:30 +0000

Have I told you about Blue? I probably should have mentioned Blue sooner. Blue is the guitarist that plays over at HELLO, THE FUTURE! She sits on her dining room table and plays songs about webcomics and Mathnet and feelings into her webcam for all her fans to enjoy from the comfort of their homes. Last month she did a Webcomics Webconcert via Ustream and played live OVER THE INTERNET, and it was made of amazing!

Why am I talking about this obviously awesome Internet musicianista? Because I’ll be hosting her next Webcomics Webconcert at my apartment!

She’ll be flying to California in September to attend w00tstock (oh geez, have I not blogged about w00tstock either? I’m rapidly losing my blog cred), and while she’s in town she’ll be doing another live performance from my apartment!

“How,” you ask, “how can I ever hope to attend this epic event when I am nowhere near Mario’s apartment?!” Well it just so happens that this Webconcert will be streamed OVER THE INTERNET JUST LIKE THE OTHER ONE from my house to all of yourses!

All you need to do is jump on the Webcomics Webconcert Ustream page on Saturday, September 18th at 6pm Pacific Daylight Time. I will also have an open invitation to any of my friends that live sufficiently locally to attend, and we’ll all go get dinner after the show!

While you’re waiting for the big event, go watch Blue’s past performances and get sufficiently pumped!

[discuss]

Ganbare Goemon soundtrack coming to iTunes! Maybe some other stuff too

mario — Tue, 15 May 2007 22:43:00 +0000

Konami has signed a deal with Sony BMG Music Entertainment to bring their entire back catalog of video game tunes to all major online music stores. This is awesome! Of course everyone will shout out their usual squeals of “Ooh, Castlevania on my iPod!” and “OMG METAL GEAR SOLID”, but I’ll take my Legend of The Mystical Ninja any day over those other chump games. Ooh, and Tiny Toon Adventures 2: Trouble In Wackyland had some fine tunes as well.

Which Konami songs would you buy up at $0.99 a pop? That’s right, I’m soliciting comments! Like some kind of blog comment whore. Here’s a list of the games they’ve made over the years. I’d certainly enjoy the occasional ORION.78 (AMeuro-MIX) when shuffling through my library. Your turn.

(courtesy of Playlist)

[Comment]

Cylinders Make The World Go 'Round!

mario — Sun, 20 Nov 2005 21:08:00 +0000

Whether you’re a fan of cylinders, or just casually acquainted with the notion, check out the UCSB‘s Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project. They’ve got over 5,000 recordings ranging from the 1890′s to 1920′s transferred from Edison cylinders, all available for download in MP3 (cleaned up) and WAV (uncompressed, but also not touched up, so they’re pretty staticy) format. Pretty hot stuff, considering it’s all free to download (from what I understand, Edison cylinder recordings are all in the public domain). Get going!

"He does it, he says, to raise awareness of suffering children."

mario — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 21:52:00 +0000

My boss came in a few minutes ago to ask a question, and overheard the music a-comin’ out of my iTunes. The song was “Corsair” by Boards of Canada. She told me it sounded awful.

I’ve never made any disparaging remarks regarding the choir music or Christian standards she plays in her iPod! Her musical preference is her own, and I would never apply some kind of higher-than-thou stance if I didn’t care for her tunes.

I don’t know, that just bugs me. I like ambient music! It makes for nice music to play in the background as I get work done. I guess I’ll just have to respect her opinion, but there are nicer ways of saying you don’t care for something.

にてもにつかない / ふたごのきみ / どうしたんだい / くつひもさえ / もどけっぱなしのまま / うわのそら

mario — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 07:01:00 +0000

My latest project is playing through my collection of songs which are either unplayed or unrated, and in doing so rate or play them as the situation dictates. I have 3,223 out of 8,372 songs which meet one or both of these conditions, so my work is cut out for me. But so as to keep it more like idle music-listening and less like hard labor, I throw random gems into the Party Shuffle.

I think it’s definitely bedtime when I start regaling you with anecdotes about my very boring music-listening habits. Peace out, world.

Stef, hope you’re enjoying life on the open road. Miss you.

"Oxygen don't grow on trees, ya know!"

mario — Fri, 22 Jul 2005 15:44:00 +0000

I’m making an entry in my blog!

Google has added NASA imagery to the Google Maps technology to create Google Moon. Zoom in all the way. Satellite photos don’t lie, people!

My current listening-to music isn’t even music, it’s a podcast! Look at me, using crazy meme-phraseology like “blog” and “podcast” like some sort of l33t mememaster*!

I’m hungry for breakfast. Can I have some breakfast now?

OMG HAWAII HAX

mario — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 22:44:00 +0000

Sorry guys, I seem to have become an expert at not telling people about my vacation plans in advance. I’m headed to the airport in about 20 minutes for a trip to Oahu! And a week after that, I’m going to Connecticut for the ever-awesome ConnectiCon! As my friend Ryan just informed me, I’m “pulling a Jason”. Cool people that aren’t lame know exactly what I’m talking about.

I’ll keep in touch maybe! See you guys at CTCon ’05! And maybe Dave Matthews too, you never know what that amazing fellow will do next. He’s just that awesome.