Sky Saxon, lead singer of The Seeds (one of the best garage bands of all time), died in Austin today. All the national attention is on a pop singer who also died today, so I had to speak up about the band that Muddy Waters called “America’s own Rolling Stones”. This punk/blues/psychedelic group were blazing trails; RIP, Sky, you will be missed. I couldn’t find a live video version of Up In Her Room, so their hit will have to stand in for it…
I tend to assume everyone who drops by this website is also already a frequent visitor to The Deuce Project, one of the best places to hear science fiction related music. Even if you are a frequent visitor, you might have missed their silliest episode yet: Splitting Infinitives While Exploring The infinite. That particular link will pull up and play such songs as William Shatner’s – Rocket Man, Nichelle Nichol’s – Uhura’s Theme, and Leonard Nimoy’s – Music to Watch Space Girls Go By. And many other silly songs…
Miku Hatsune is the name of a Virtual Idoru, or Idol. She sings whatever you program her for, because she is software that takes your input and generates custom made anime music from it.
Miku was sampled from anime vocal artist and singer Saki Fujita, who brought to life characters in Bleach, Speed Grapher, Shuffle, and many others. Including Zoku Sayonara ZetsubÅ Sensei, the show where she actually played the character Hatsune Miku. The software she (and a number of others) was sampled for is Yamaha’s Vocaloid2, a program that lets you enter the lyrics and notes for a song, select the singers, and generate the music. Or you can input the lyrics and play the computer keyboard in realtime to generate the notes. Unlike most software (OK, pretty much all software) I mention here, this program isn’t free by any means, and the crippleware version you can download to try is limited to 5 words and very truncated song length.
But I had to post about it, because very few news reports out of Japan make it to the US. There are Widgets for Miku, multiple CDs released, large user communities, dedicated music players to embed on web pages like the one below, entire anime’s built around the Miku songs generated, other anime voice artists who have since been sampled and call her Big Sister; and for the entire month her sample set was released it was the number one best selling item on Amazon Japan in any category. Pretty impressive for someone who doesn’t actually exist, isn’t it? Rumor has it there is a newer version of the software as well. You might also want to download the MikuMiku Dance animation software to make your own dance videos to go with the songs you create (that one is Freeware, and you probably want the multi-model English version).
Watch Hatsune Miku 3D Bleach Ending Song Remix PV in Animation | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com
Yesterday I embedded a song by MC Lars; today I got word that it (meaning that very song) is up on the list of this years Hottest 100 Songs of All Time over at TripleJ. You should take a look at all the nominees, and put in a vote for your favorites; there are so many great ones on the list! On the Who front, IO9 has a quality spoiler for the next Dr Who Special, specifically about the guest stars expected. DVD Times has a review of the first special released to disk (basically saying save your money for the box set). And the Gallifreyan Embassy has posted details about their Second Life virtual meetings, including the data you need to find your way there. If you make the meeting, don’t forget to put on your Tardis Hud.
This had to be shared. Weird Al is singing about the internet again, although the music style doesn’t count as Nerdcore. Or maybe it does, since I got the heads up on this one from MC Lars. I also used to know the keyboard player, another reason to add this tune. Then, just to keep it balanced, a parody song by a fem about the glories of geek (but also not actual Nerdcore). Sometimes silly trumps all other choices, just because you need your daily laugh quota. OK, screw it, one actual Nerdcore song (third one down) from MC Lars.
I couldn’t resist; this is too silly to avoid! Just to keep it balanced, the original version is after the updated-for-destruction version, for comparison.