LAX Immigration and Customs, first time:
“Have a nice stay, enjoy California!”
Second time:
“Are you on vacation here? Allright”
Third time:
“What are you doing here? Where’s the plane ticket to get back to your country? What are you doing here? Why staying for so long? Let me see your card. So why are you coming here?”
Immigration. It seems fair until you’re on the other side.
It was the french president Sarkozy talking to suburbs and saying that about France.
Well I’d rather do both.
I’m stupid: I started working with this idea that it always seems to be greener there while it seems shit where you actually are, but that is on average (well in the western world) the same wherever you go. There’s down and upside. So I believed France and Europe would be a good playground to do stuff, no need to go away in Canada or CA. There is plenty of good things in here and a cultural melting-pot quite unmatched on Earth. Paris is amazing for that (and weird, I’d talk about it). I was thinking about the challenges and the potentials. There are still here.
But nothing big happened. Or it’s so slow it’s invisible.
No real good signs of society improvements just some willing to move forward but nothing happens really. France is lagging. In so many ways it even goes backward (wtf is this religious vivacity these days?? or Hadopi or this amazing rampant bigotry..).
People don’t give a shit. Globally, French don’t give a shit. Progress is difficult in this context.
Wherever I am, since I’ve been living outside a bit, I can’t believe how France don’t care from the airport to sidewalks to services, whatever. It’s not that it’s bad behaviors, it’s more like it’s dull and selfish ones (boss kidnapping I mean, come on!). It’s even more irritating when people apologize. Sometimes I want to stab the dude in the eye and say “SORRY I DIDNT KNOW IT COULD HURT I MEAN I HAVE THE RIGHT TO PLAY WITH A KNIFE RIGHT?”.
I love the independence state of mind of France, questioning everything, all the time. I think it’s good to be not sure of anything, because that’s what life is. I hate the careless rude, rough, mean side of it.
We don’t have to have them both. We could have the positive one and ditch the stupid side but no, that would be totally not french to do so.
I guess.
Anyway, I feel angry against myself for giving up, against french people for having all the pain in the ass to believe, adapt, build and finish stuff instead of always talk and criticize it (because if they are not like this, they usually are not in France anymore) against California for being so awesome despite its own downside.
I hate waste in every way and I can’t stop thinking about it when I remind myself of these last years or when I listen to my friends or public transports conversations. Social, society opportunities falling and failing.
And then I just have to see some smart witty funny french people and..
Man I feel weird. But I’m doing it. Both.
Après un mois et des poussières sans nuages, ça fait bizarre quand même. Juste après le Groenland, mer de nuage. A 10 km c’est magnifique, j’ai même vu un château dans le ciel. A 3 km sur Paris, on plonge doucement dedans. C’est doux, c’est gris.
C’est du moisi.
N’empêche le lever du soleil sur la planète blue en altitude, c’est le pied.
“For 2009, sales are expected to jump to 35 million, rising to an estimated 139 million in 2013.”
About netbooks. I think it could be the case.
For me the netbook is the beginning of the computer becoming something like a fridge, really useful, really efficient, cheap, with the brand that says nothing except that it is totally useless and irrelevant to know it (almost).
What is interesting is that its development around the world is matching the beginning of services like OnLive or Gaikai. David Perry said in some interview:
“You don’t need to have full screen HD to play a game, you just don’t. It needs to be good, but each game has a set size it’ll work at, and we suggest that they go as small as they can while still having a great experience – because the audience will be exponential. The smaller you go, the bigger the audience.”
Playing on screens like the DS/iPhone or the low res of the Wii which are currently the best selling game devices proves the point. People don’t give as much about overall technical graphical achievement that they do for innovation and gameplay and fantasy (which I will discuss later). So if the server side game service is working as in this demo (and this is where Prism or others are gonna be useful):
Well people running little computers with gigabit ethernet or wifi n are gonna be happy. They are legion.
The Dust Brothers.
I was reading this interview of brother E.Z. Mike in Waxpoetic and couldn’t stop but think that Funk is so central and yet so not understood.
E.Z. Mike did with King Gizmo the insanely funky and acclaimed Beastie Boys Paul’s Boutique, Beck’s Odelay and Fight Club soundtrack among others.
Question:
Waxpoetic: “I’ve run into a lot of different people from a lot of different backgrounds who really dig the Fight Club soundtrack. Along with the movie, it’s really become a cult classic as an instrumental record. Do you feel that record now?”
E.Z. Mike: […] To me, the funk is the core of everything I do. To me, the thing I focus on is the bass and the beat. To me, that’s the driving force of music at least [the music] I want to hear. So I always start there; that’s the foundation. The cool thing is, with funk as the foundation I mean, it’s incredible how versatile the funk is: you can throw anything on top of it and it works. […]
That’s why as a music producer from the 2000s I did start to dig funk in its original flavor from the 70s to 80s instead of wanting to buy the exact same sample machine of some famous hip-hop producer or stuff like that.
People may think that I appreciate and love funk and soul music just for the black side of it but that’s not my first argument. The argument is musical: funk is the foundation of almost all the music of the last decades. It evolved to hip-hop – like it or not, it’s the most international music ever, it’s everywhere-, it gave soundtracks that funkyness, it is the base of house music, JPop etc. It almost gave birth to reggae too (the US RnB and jazz were the biggest influences on Jamaïca well-known music).
The versatility of production on funk records is seriously quite unmatched. There is no music with that wide choice of how the record sounds, from heavy bass to heavy horns to heavy guitar saturated or not, heavy keyboards, synthetizers, to heavy beats with all the gradient between them all together. It’s truly amazing.
Picture of the funk. Keywords: Sun, urban, dirty, searching, exciting, cool.
So when listening to Paul’s Boutique or whatever in the 90s sample music I was always really frustrated to only have a fragment, a loop, two bars of it. I wanted all the funk and nothing but the root, the original. I was always thinking “there must be a lot more that this breakbeat which is brilliant but I want to listen to more. Btw who the fuck is Bob James???”.
There is so much to learn about music and its effectiveness with funk:
“Funk utilized the same extended chords found in bebop jazz, such as minor chords with added sevenths and elevenths, or dominant seventh chords with altered ninths. However, unlike bebop jazz, with its complex, rapid-fire chord changes, funk virtually abandoned chord changes, creating static single chord vamps with little harmonic movement, but with a complex and driving rhythmic feel.
The chords used in funk songs typically imply a dorian or mixolydian mode, as opposed to the major or natural minor tonalities of most popular music. Melodic content was derived by mixing these modes with the blues scale.”
I mean funk is simply a lighter and rhythm based jazz music. It’s like it tends to be the most efficient way to make you wanna move physically or “active in your head” using music knowledge from bebop which is one of the most expressive and complex music ever created. That’s why it works so well, body and soul at the same time. It comes from there.
And yet funk is either consider as gimmicky, soul-less (compared to rock like U2 maybe, but it’s less boring) or meaning dancefloor and bottom bell pants.
It’s way more than that. You should dig more my friend.
What to say?
That I have never been that happy in life? That it’s the best summer ever? Or that it’s gonna be the best autumn of the galaxy at least for me?
I don’t want to make you more jealous that you already are.
Seriously though, there is still some unsolved and important stuff to deal with but at the same time it’s always the case whatever you do so..
I don’t know which subject to talk about living here, on Sunset blvd. I’m pretty sure it’s gonna be about food and diet though :) I’m still in the process of assimilation of cultural differences. I miss nothing in the everyday life compared to France, at least for now. At the opposite getting back to Paris scared me and made me regret L.A. Not only for Her.
I have unleashed the archives to december 2005 and re-reading some stuff I can’t say I’m not having what I wanted. It’s all happening. It’s scary fabulous. I’m suspicious about the scary part.
Maybe I miss to speak/hear french. That’s why I’m finding myself listening to “Libre comme l’air” from Reciprok french hiphop band (la hontassse). I feel so constricted in english, checking so many times my grammar and all. Eventually it’s gonna be automatic.
But man, this weather.. I breath better with roads everywhere and an ocean breeze than in Paris with woods but no breeze at all, just a big annoying wind. And fucking rain.
It’s awkward to listen to the music I know in a completely different environment like one song was reminding how much I wanted some change, looking at the moon, freezing in my appartment while playing before having some soup.
Paris, I’m not missing your cloudy mood. At all. I need an amp though.
It’s weird because I didn’t believe that I would find something or someone in the US. I was just fed up with Paris and parisians. I even wondered if I would not return in the french countryside, making music and growing vegetables. Even if I know that I’m too urban for that, it was tempting. Living cheaply, independantly, no bullshit, just jokes weed&wine. I was thinking about it so hard when back in my less than 300 people village.
And then a few weeks later, I’m starting a life in a 11 million people city. It makes me wonder what is next? Well for now some funk legends live. It’s like that my friend!
Interesting Masaya Matsuura point of view about the state of music games.
"In Musika, [NanaOn-Sha’s first iPod game] we tried generating game data from ID3 metadata, while, in our most recent game, Major Minor’s Majestic March, we allowed the player to play with the tempo of music, as well as its rhythm. These are just some of the early steps we’ve been taking in trying to expand music gaming beyond ‘Rhythm Action’."
And we sure can do a lot more. Guitar Hero/Rock Band even if they generate millions of dollars are basically always playing the same Rhythm Action card. It’s really fun no doubt about it, but it’s starting to get old as we can see a drop on sales for those two games (-49% overall and a staggering –67% for Rock Band).
I think it’s not really the Rhythm gameplay’s fault. It is very efficient and addictive, I think it’s about music genre and Matsuura-san nails it very well:
"I would be so happy to see a game based around traditional Japanese music, or one featuring Buddhist prayers or chanting," he said.
"Rock Band: The Beatles will fulfill the dreams of many rock fans. But what about fans of other musical styles? Why not give players the chance to conduct the London Philharmonic, for example?"
I think more about Funk and RnB. These are in the real world –and believe me or not, I played a lot of genres with my 4 strings- the funniest music patterns you can musically play: with a strong emphasis on poly-rhythm especially on bass/guitar/drums, killer breakbeats where people need to be sync’d as shit, improvisation where they need to be creative, vocals challenge where they need to go further, a constant call/response design inside songs pushing the band spirit higher, Funk & RnB have everything you need to have fun with. Don’t even get me started on dance moves.
Parappa the music game that every gamer addicted to this sub-genre in games love, is about Hip-Hop and Hip-Hop comes from…Funk and RnB which are the Mothership of all the community dance pop driven music of today, especially with electro music from House to Jungle or whatever, Santogold or Datarock (a “rock” band, I only can hear FUNK in it) or even this Genesis:
You can’t resist this phat bass and the boogie flow, I know. It’s the funk man.
Why not doing games around these genres or more widely, around these patterns? Why not make games about these playful musical roots? It would make non-player people dance around the living room while the plastic band would be playing this funky, complex, heavy fun music. From the 60s to now there’s a gazillion songs ready to make people happy, to challenge them in a way Rock music can’t. Plus from a sad but true opportunity business perspective, a lot of the musicians of these old bands are dead or don’t have the rights of their own music, at all. It would be easy to licence it I guess.
Anyway I don’t really know anybody not loving some groove, at some point. Even the most Sweden metal hardcore fan ever can dance to some Abba disco music sometimes. Maybe not. But the point is that there is not a lot of music capable of making people dance, having fun and be happy, men and women, all across the diversity of this world.
It sounds cheesy but still, the world needs more of that. Fun.
Think about it, simply look at how much MJ has generated funky revenues since he passed away. Music demand since his death surpassed those of Elvis Presley or John Lennon after their suddens death. You can’t look at it and say Funk/RnB music is a niche market targetting a specific public. There’s room. Even for the non-dead non-king ones.
Look at the last.fm statistics of one of the most listened “rock” band in the world:
Red Hot Chili Peppers: 108,435,122 plays (1,944,790 listeners)
It’s better than Metallica, Muse, U2, Queen, Pink Floyd or even the Beatles. This band always had a foot in the Funk. They got produced by George Clinton himself, they have some incredible powerful funk tunes (Sir Psycho!!) and they have the GROOVE. People tend to forget it pretending RHCP is a rock band because culturally speaking the groove is not a “marketable white” thing. Meh.
After observing that the 2000’s music successes were always having some funky parts in them, I think it’s time to get down for real, and use these plastic instruments for other stuffs that power trios, no offense.
From a patterns point of view a lot of Funk/RnB artists old and new could perform well or even insanely well in regards of some infectious songs architectures. The 4 C’s of gamedesign (ppt) are intrinsically embedded in this music.
So Harmonix, if you need (and I guess you do) to extend your games for example to the funkiness, if you need an expertise on this vast music fun fest, we totally should do business together. I’m the funkiest game developer, game audio designer on earth, here’s my playlist and here’s some of my bass playing if you think I’m faking the funk.
Also, follow Bootzilla and Dr Funkenstein on Twitter. They may have something to say like “Harmonix you need to get on the 0ne..”
Trent Reznor did write a post on what to do to sell music today with the net, the clouds and all.
“Forget thinking you are going to make any real money from record sales. Make your record cheaply (but great) and GIVE IT AWAY. As an artist you want as many people as possible to hear your work. Word of mouth is the only true marketing that matters.”
I’m glad I realized that years ago. That’s why I have always been giving my music on high quality compressed files with a rss feed (the so called podcast system). If I search my music on the net, a lot of Chinese websites appear and are giving my music away too. Maybe they get some money from ads but I’m happy to see dozens, hundreds of download of MY stuff.
He continues and this is where it gets interesting:
“Then, offer a variety of premium packages for sale and make them limited editions / scarce goods. Base the price and amount available on what you think you can sell. Make the packages special – make them by hand, sign them, make them unique, make them something YOU would want to have as a fan.”
Beastie Boys do that with the help of Topspin. Vinyls, digipack CDs, t-shirts you name it.
But I always find that it lacks something, from a consumer and technology point of view: multichannel. Listening to music when it blasts from the four corner of your room is amazing, no question about that. I’m doing it since years now and everytime I get back to plain old school stereo, it’s just sad. I know I do sound and music and for a lot o people it’s not worth it, as HD video is not really impressive for me. But still very enjoyable. Same thing!
So why bands and music producers around the world are not playing this high-end card, releasing multichannel remixed albums (not on physical support of course, because it’s really expensive whether it’s DVD-A or SACD)? Why not trying to break through with innovation and technology? A lot of artists in history did just that, technology has made some albums timeless: Pink Floyd, MJ, The Beatles, Genesis, Herbie Hancock etc all used that to go further and make money. Better sound, sounds you have never heard before, not just more convenient or gimmicky stuff like we do today (mp3s, ringtones, autotune).
I’m only listening to stereo files converted to 6 channels dolby digital on-the-fly (thanks Auzentech) and yet it’s way better than 2 channels. So immersive. So 3D. So not FLAT.
Opportunities to go further in sound and audio experience are tremendous! While the video industry pushes hard to have consumers going HD or even UHD, in the audio industry it’s simply a mess, thanks to patents (yeah Dolby/DTS I’m looking at you) and music labels totally deaf to what is going on. They can’t learn: the biggest success ever in the AudioVideo industry is the DVD Video, when everybody was behind ONE format. DVD Audio vs SACD? Everybody lose. HD-DVD vs BR? Everybody lose. The DVD Video is the less DRM’ed of them all and guess what? It’s the most successful physical support ever. I don’t expect those industries to understand the value of multichannel sound files, offering some real standards (speakers connection, file format) and how it’s the future of music.
I know, the AudioVideo hardware industry doesn’t want to go physical support-less because it would kill a big eco-system of retailers, players sellers, distribution deals etc. As a consumer/producer, I totally don’t care, I want what is possible today. Now.
Today you have some devices letting you to stream music around your house, we experience multichannel audio since Fantasia in 1940 (!!), we have cheap multichannel sound cards and speakers systems, why bands are still selling digital download of 2channels MP3s saying it’s top-notch and complaining about piracy? Get consumers something really better that what you find on p2p, push them to get legal by using innovation! In the digital format there’s more than just mp3s or FLACs files.
People doing music should think about getting noticed and expand their future. As respectful as I am for Vinyl junkies, it’s not going anywhere in this massive digital world and it’s not affordable for artists beginning their career when multichannel audio is possible with a little budget, even if it’s a lot of work (3 times more speakers). We only need more standards and less bullshit. In the audio world it’s a curse. A very slow one.
Suuuurrrrrrouuuuuund
“Happy birthzzzzZZZ”
Thirty years old ala old school with family. I had this idea of throwing a party at my place letting everybody write on the walls but I was too busy falling in love 10K kms away. Sorry.
This picture makes me smile and sad at the same time. Smile because I remember my grandfather getting grumpy while we would make him go to his bed for the afternoon nap seeing that the wine and the champagne had some effect on him. It’s sunday of course he can have all the alcohol he wants, one of the last funny stuff he can appreciate these days.
Sad because this picture –and pictures in general- are sure not enough to describe someone. Here’s my grandfather so silent, so sleepy so like nothing special. I remember him as always having some joke or some funny thing to say. Like I would make fun of him and he would just look casually at my grandmother and say “punch your little son on the head please” so that it would always crack me up.
it’s like pictures are not enough. Videos are silly. I’d love to only have the sound of him during some dinner or something when he was not at 10pills/day (Parkinson’s). I have some ninja recording from 10 years ago, it’s quite amazing. It makes you feel the past like nothing else. No filters, no photoshop. No pretending in front of a camera. Just naked people minds communicating. Raw Past.
Anyway at my birthday Raymond asked me to come to see him in his bedroom. “I want to ask you something son”. I was thinking about getting him something, like some cakes from the north of France from where he comes from or some diapers because uh, it’s part of his life now.
He asked me with his sweet and soft tone voice “Could you write me on a paper the name of your girlfriend please?”
“Aww sure, I’m gonna do it right now!”
So I wrote it on a post-it with my best handwrite style possible.
v e r d e l l w i l s o n.
I think he couldn’t understand when I was talking about her (you). He may not meet her (you) but he knows what is going on. All stooped as he is, he heard the smile in my voice saying those two words.
Music games might not need consoles in the future says Harmonix creative director Josh Randall:
"Your instrument can have all these songs and you just plug it into your TV. I’m sure it [the genre] is going to start to move in weird ways that no-one’s even thought of yet."
Well maybe hooked to a PC? Or -sorry- to a media streaming center web interface that could do games and download content too? I totally see that happening without the hassle for the consumer that is to choose one console and stick to it. Bill Gates thinks the same for Project Natal. It’s so expensive from the complete Wii set (4 remotes 4 nunchucks power station SDs Wiiboard Wiimotionplus) to the full PS3 one ( 4 gamepads HD all the way). Long life to the generic, refrigerator-like computer. No brand, just plain usefulness. When are we gonna hit this stage in the geeky world?
About brands and iphone dev, fifteen games from the top twenty are selling at the 99 cents price point. Pretty hard to earn something now that the number of games did go from 6,000 to 13,000 in a couple of months, especially with the same problem we encounter in brick and mortar business model. While the 3GS expands the market, it also fragments it a bit especially for little developers: it’s something to do an app for one device. When it’s three or four different it’s not the same. I have some audio fxs for our upcoming game in 32KHz and the ipod Touch don’t do that (don’t ask me why the iphone can) for example. Or how it’s difficult to manage dev over OS updates with the ones you have to pay for on ipod Touch.
i think I want one.
During this time HTC and co are full speed on Android. The last attempt the HTC Hero would let me say that it’s becoming damn mature on the Google side. Ok I already have say so a few months ago but this time it’s real!
The only bad thing about it is that the heavy java based dev environment makes a lot of coders run from this platform for more C++/.NET/Objective C.
“Researchers at North Carolina State University and the Georgia Institute of Technology have received a $1.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation to study whether and how video games can boost memory and thinking skills in the elderly – and then to use their findings to develop a prototype video game to do just that.”
Full story. Elderly is the new black. It’s a multi-billion market untapped here! I feel concerned about this because like Will Wright said recently:
"If you look at what people are doing with this technology it is, or has been, mostly directed at 12-year-old boys. But it has the potential to do a whole lot more."
Word.
”I want to be a ninja!” #1stdraftgamelines
Like the artist who did this portrait of Mr Threepwood I don’t really dig the Disney/Dreamworks cartoon-ish style of the “HD” version (and can’t stand the 3D version but it’s selling well and I’m fine with that).
Lucas Arts is re-releasing all of his old adventure games on Steam. Now a game that would really benefit from HD (because already in 3D) is one of the best game ever: Grim Fandango. PLEASE LUCAS DOIT.