Brian Ortiz

If you love music like I do, then you should have a Last.fm account. Go, right now.

When I first found Last.fm I was listening to a lot of classic rock. Mostly Santana, Hendrix, and Led Zeppelin. Then it introduced me to Massive Attack. I’m not sure how I found Last.fm or how I ended up listening to Massive Attack, but I loved it. “Trip-hop” was very different from anything I had listened to. Well, not exactly, because my first impression was that it sounded like the kind of music that plays during movie credits. It kind of gives you that “time to stumble into the lobby and take a leak” feeling. (You know, that vulnerable time after having sat in a dark room for 2 hours matching a suspenseful movie staring at a bright wall and you feel like someone could steal your pants and you wouldn’t notice. Anyway…)

Massive Attack – Butterfly Caught

Well trip-hop then got me into hip-hop, which I had been exposed to a lot in high-school but never got into. I’m not talking about 50 Cent or Ludacris, I’m talking about what I would consider “real” hip-hop. Like The Herbaliser.

The Herbaliser – The Hard Stuff

So then I was introduced to turntablism. You know, scratching and all that. Starting with DJ Shadow’s album Endtroducing. The entire album is 100% samples from old vinyl records.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54_7m-CVTMY
DJ Shadow – Midnight In A Perfect World

He completely changed my perception of hip-hop.

Then I started to get into other electronica genres. Right now I’m listening to downtempo, though electronica genres tend to blend together a little. Basically, right now I’m listening to Bent and Air.

I could listen to this song forever:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr4fP9A3Oi0
Air- Surfing On a Rocket

This one too:

Bent – Private Road

So that’s the condensed version, I guess. This may be old news to you but finding new and different music to listen to is very exciting.

You can look at what else I listen to or add me as a friend here:

http://www.last.fm/user/ortzinator

You can also check out this awesome graph(pdf) made by Lastgraph.

EDIT: Embed-disallowed videos fixed.

Here are some songs I wrote, both works-in-progress. I made them in FL Studio:

High Orbit

Unlevel

I’m working on another that is really more my style, but I can’t work on it until I get my hard drive back. And about that…

I had to send it back, I think my PSU killed it. So I need another one of those too.

PS: Does the top of this look reflective to you?

Okay, I sort of like the idea of podcast. It’s a little more personal than a blog post and maybe a little easier to make (you don’t have to “grammar nazi”-proof your post.) I guess the biggest downsize is that people tend to go off on tangents, plus the chance that someone will say something (not so) funny and you have to listen to 30 seconds of nothing but mind-numbing laughter.

The problem I have with the Natural Selection 2 podcast is the background music. I’m not trying to get my groove on, I’m just trying to listen to them talk, I don’t need them to set the mood. It makes it hard to hear what they’re saying on top of it. If I need background music I have my own music player.

http://www.orb.com/winamp/

Winamp Remote is a program that site in the system tray of your home PC and allows you to access your music collection from any computer with Internet access. I can’t tell if it’s built on Orb technology or it’s just the same software with Winamp’s logo on it

You used to be able to choose between Windows Media Player and a built-in Flash player (and one other, I think), but I think that option was removed. The interface is a bit slow and it’s annoying to have to wait fof buffering in-between every song, but the quality (from my experience) was as if I had the song on an mp3 player.

It’s still in beta so maybe these will improve. Here’s what the web interface looks like:

http://www.wearyourmusic.org/

They’re bracelets made out of guitar strings donated by guitarists. They’re all $100+ and some of the the bracelets from strings donated by big guitarists like Carlos Santana are $200. Which is pretty steep considering they paid about $5 for them. I guess you’re paying for their finger grease.

If you don’t want to spend a fortune, you can make one yourself. If you don’t play, then get some old strings from someone who does, or you can get a cheap set for 2 or 3 dollars at a music store. (Make sure you’re using silver solder. Lead is poisonous, you know.)