Earth Hour: You can make a difference tonight (Saturday)

Okay, so this has nothing to do with music. But this is an issue that's bigger than just music and affects us all as human beings, not just musicians.

Tonight from 8pm to 9pm is Earth Hour. All across the globe people will be turning off their lights to conserve power and show their support for the planet and green living. The idea is simple and easy, but as it scales upward can have a truly tremendous impact. The Earth Hour initiative was started by the World Wildlife Fund, but has quickly grown into a much larger movement. Join in tonight!

P.S. – If you're unhappy about this post, I'll gladly refund your money for this issue. 

P.P.S. – I jumped the gun just a bit yesterday. Hey, what can I say? I'm an eager beaver. Earth Hour is tonight (Saturday, March 29) from 8 to 9 PM.

Dying Weird Isn't Easy

One of the things I'm always amazed by is the crazy ways many musicians meet their demise. Drinking, drugs, plane crashes, etc. So you'd think (at least I did) that there would be more musicians on Neatorama's list of the 30 Strangest Deaths In History. But no, only two musicians made the list. I won't spoil the surprise for you. Go read the article and find out for yourself.

Busking The Day Away

Someone on the HCFX forums posted this awesome video of two guys busking outside a Japanese train stop. I miss the city.

Fun For Friday

It's been linked to many times in many places, but for Musical Machines readers, I present the Gigwise gallery of Worst Album Covers. Enjoy.

Music Gear Spotlight: Korg pitchblack

Okay, okay . . . I can hear the head scratching already, "How does something as mundane as a tuner deserve a spotlight?" The answer? When it's as flat-out cool as the Korg pitchblack. If you've never used a nice tuner (and by nice, I mean something rackmount or that costs more than $100), you don't know what you're missing out on. And no, this is not one of those audiophile geek things where they plug in two different cables and swear that the one hand-wound by virgins on a super-secret Japanese island using pure copper in a de-oxygenated environment sounds like liquid gold.

Tuning is a purely functional thing. When you tune, you want it to be fast, easy, and accurate. The pitchblack is the stone that kills all three of those birds with one throw. Cheap tuners are not usually fast (jumpy needles and slow note attack recognition), they are not easy (dim displays, flimsy cases, and crappy buttons), and they are not accurate (poor fundamental tone recognition). The pitchblack does all of these things very, very well. It recognizes notes super fast, its display is ridiculously easy to read, the case is solid cast aluminum, and it has a heavy-duty metal footswitch. These are the facts, not flights of fancy. I've got the tuner and it works like a champ.

You can pre-order the pitchblack right now on Musician's Friend, Music123, or GuitarCenter for $89.99. Throw a cable or some picks or strings in the cart and you're over the $99 free shipping limit, and you don't even have to leave your house to get the coolest pedal tuner around.

Happy Easter, Suckaz!

Technically, this is not musical or machine like (although there is a soundtrack), but it's just so damn funny I had to post it.

I Want My Link TV

Here's a couple of music links to check out.

Reuters/Billboard story about music e-commerce, indie style, with a spotlight on Merge Records.

The new NIN album Ghosts I-IV is doing well. In just over a week, it's already cleared 1.6 (cue Dr. Evil voice) million dollars. Proof of new distribution concept?

The Take-Away Shows has passed 6 million views on the web. In light of this success, I'm extremely interested to see how the newly announced Pitchfork.tv performs.

Listen To Sharin Foo

Daytrotter has a page up where you can listen to Sharin Foo of The Raveonettes read a Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale, "The Little Girl With The Sulphursticks." She's pretty good at it, considering this is probably her first time narrating a story. Plus, it's Hans Christian Anderson. You really can't go wrong here.

Music Gear Spotlight: New Boss SL-20 Slicer Twin Pedal

Ooo, kewl. Boss just announced a new pedal over at Musikmesse in Frankfurt, Germany called the SL-20 Slicer. This pedal combines several of my favorite things: synthesis, arpeggiation, tremolo, and general sonic mayhem. I love it already. The audio "slicing" is handled by 50 different onboard patterns. It's also got looping, tap tempo, stereo panning, and filter-type effects controllable by expression pedal. Cool stuff abounds.

Music Gear Spotlight: Ernie Ball Titanium-Coated Slinky Acoustic Guitar Strings

Yeah, that's right. Ernie Ball is releasing guitar strings coated with titanium. These strings for acoustic guitars are made by taking EB's popular Slinky acoustic guitar strings and putting an ultra-thin coating of titanium around each one.

Titanium-coated guitar strings? Are you serious? In a completely geeky way, I think that is one of the coolest things I've ever heard. If Superman played guitar, these are the strings he'd wail on. Mostly because they're probably the only strings that could stand up to his super-powerful picking.

Ernie Ball is calling this patented process Titanium RPS Technology. EB claims it makes the strings more resistant to rust and dirt so they sound better, longer. They also claim these titanium Slinky Acoustic strings are stronger and longer-lasting than other coated and uncoated strings on the market.

By the way, this "Music Gear Spotlight" is something I've been meaning to do around here for a while and simply haven't had the time to start, but NO MORE! From now one whenever I see a cool—or at least eyebrow-raising—piece of music gear, I'm going to share it. Cause that's what friends do; they share. And we're all friends around here, right?

Epic Audiophile Pwnage

This link has been making the rounds at Engadget and The Consumerist, but it's just so funny I had to share it.

Read and chuckle, my friends. Read and chuckle.

Ha-YUGE News From Pitchfork

Pitchfork is starting a 24-hour, internet TV music channel for independent music! Launching April 7, Pitchfork.tv will be an on-demand, high-resolution video channel dedicated to covering indie musicians in news-documentary style through Pitchfork-original segments. According to the press release they've got really cool stuff cued up like video of basement gigs and jams, full concerts, interviews, and the tried-and-true music video. In addition to the original content, they're also going to show full-length feature music films. Obviously, you can read the press release for all the details, but as a fan of independent music and musicians, I'm really, really excited. I hope this is as cool as it sounds.