Category: Music

Syncing ratings from iPod back to iTunes

It doesn’t do this, by default, unless you’re syncing your whole music collection automatically. Which is a bit rubbish if, like me, you have an 8Gb iPod Touch and a 60Gb music library. See, what I tend to do, to make sure I actually rotate my music and listen to more than one album (:-))

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Synergy WIN!

Despite loving music and loving reading, I very rarely do both at the same time. For some reason, though, while sitting on the sofa reading “Wizard and Glass” this morning, I felt an urge to put on “Greetings from Asbury Park N.J.” by the inimitable Mr Springsteen. I wonder if Stephen King was listening to

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Tuba Toothpaste (will the bad jokes never end?)

Well, that’s an odd thing! Getting a bit better now – the repeated scales and slurring exercises have enabled me to at least wrest a tune from its brassy bowels. Or something. But the odd thing is, since exercising in earnest, I can actually get a reasonable sound of a Mrs Gubbins tenor horn and

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Tuba Smartie Pt. II

Slurring. That’s what I need to do. Low G/A -> F is flawless. G -> B Fine. High(er) C->F fine. Low G/A -> High(er) F not as smooth as it could be – mostly because of the changes in embouchure at C, G and C. So back to C->G->C->G->C slurring. Over and over again. Until

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Untitled

We’re very pleased with ourselves. Last night was the Livingston and Broxburn Brass Band’s christmas concert and the whole lot of us were playing! And we weren’t awful! So, nerves shot to hell, the panic is just starting to subside (panic, I might add, caused by hearing just how amazing the senior band are) and

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The Crash Test Dummies Save Christmas

Just when the jingly-jangly boyband-poptastic misery of Christmas was getting into it’s sticky-sweet candied frenzy, an amazing discovery has been made! The Crash Test Dummies made an album of Christmas Carols and I never knew! It’s a collection of all the traditional christmas standards and it’s completely awesome! From now on, my Christmas listening habits

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Ubuntu + mpd + Jinzora + Hi-Fi == ACE

Ok, so here’s the problem: I have a decrepit old PC that I need to find a job for or it’s destined to sit on a scrapheap biodegrading over the next 10,000 years. We don’t have room to have all our CDs anywhere near handy so have to listen to our music on the computer

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Nina Simone was round at ours last night.

Or that’s how it seemed. After what seems like an eternity of listening to music on mp3 players and laptops, we finally got our nice shiny hifi set up last night. Between the big chunky toroid transformers and the fairy-dust powered magical crossover in Linn speakers, we dragged Nina off the surface of the disc

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Rhapsody – Live in Canada

I don’t, as a rule, blog about music because I listen to so much of it that I’d never get anything else done. This album, though, warrants an entry for its sheer ACENESS. I find that I get so used to bands being unable to match their over-produced studio efforts on the stage that I

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