As you know, here at Passy World we love photography, (as much as we love the band Kiss), and so this week we decided to take a look at some funny and amazing compilations of photographs. So let's get straight into it.
Here is our first Funny pictures compilation directly from You Tube.
Here is another random compilation of some funny pictures, with a bit of an animal theme this time:
The following pictures are more in the amazing category, rather than the outright funny category:
Okay, to finish off here is a bizarre set of video clips and pictures that are a bit out there, but might be funny.
Finally, a photoshopped masterpiece featuring a Baby Shrek who is one of our favorites:
Image Source: http://babyphoto360.com
So that's it for this week, smile and say "cheese", and we hope you've had a good one.
Steve Vai is certainly a master supremo of Guitar Solos, but how does he produce such fretboard magic?
Playing guitar solos is a matter of using a scale (or set of specific notes) that matches up with the chords being played at the time. These scales are often called "Blues Scales" or "Pentatonic Scales".
Certain groups of notes from the scale sound good together, and these little groups are often called "Licks" or "Riffs". To make the solo expressive, there also needs to be plenty of string bends, as well as Pull Offs and Hammer Ons.
The following web page gives a great overview of Lead Guitar Soloing, and also has some great links to other sites that complement this information. This Guitar Guide by Dan Cross at About.com is excellent, and we really recommend that people use it:
First up a quick overview of the five positions of the A minor Pentatonic Scale. (We will cover the pentatonic scale in an upcoming post, and probably should have done it before this post (oops). Research it yourself on Google and YouTube, because there are endless videos and guitar tabs about it that will show you exactly what to do).
Here is a great little 5 minute guitar lesson that shows how to do three basic licks in the A minor blues scale, and then link them together to form part of a solo.
Here is a great video from Marty from Next Level Guitar, who is a favourite online guitar teacher of ours here at Passy World.
And here is Part 2 of Marty's great intro to playing Lead Guitar. Part 1 is the previous video we watched just above this one in the post.
The next few videos are not great picture quality, but are of Korean girls punching out some pretty amazing solos on Lead Guitar.
This first one is very jazzy, and has a great setup for the sound on the guitar.(Obviously classic Larry Carlton music, and played brilliantly).
This next one might be the same Korean girl, (it is hard to tell, but we do know her name is "Su", and guys on YouTube have proposed marriage to her), but the funk playing and soloing is nothing short of perfect. Again, just love the tone of the guitar sound, classic strat funk style).
And here is that same girl Su playing a Dame's Mind 700 guitar in a classic Blues style, that personifies laid back blues guitar soloing to a T.
Finally here is an awesome video that has had over 1 million views on YouTube where Brodie Cumming links together 100 famous guitar riffs. This is great to see how versatile and endless the world of guitar playing is. He has chosen each riff so well, and how he can remember them all and play them so fluently in the correct order without any mistakes is utterly amazing.
If you want to see a song list of these 100 Riffs then go to this page on Brodie's website:
(So if you want the neighbours to think that you are a regular guitar virtuoso then open up your window and play Brodie's YouTube video as loud as you can. That will amaze the socks off them! Too bad when they ask you to come up with the real goods later on!).
Hope the information in this post starts leading you towards some great lead guitar soloing.
We are finishing off the week here at Passy World by becoming extremely animated. Not so much by jiggling around and being filled with excitement, but more in terms of sharing some very interesting animations that we discovered on You Tube recently.
Here are a couple of very clever animated videos from the same guy, who is a Mathematics lecturer in the USA.
Now and then he plays these practical jokes on his class, and the filmed results end up on YouTube.
First up we have a trick video he made for Halloween:
This next trick video was for April Fool's Day and has some very clever shadow animating in it:
Brian Reagan Animations
This guy does great basic cartoon animated stand up comedy type routines. He is a definite favorite here at Passy World.
Here is one about the terror of Spelling Bees.
Here is another excellent Brian Reagan clip about the trauma of going through Educational processes:
And another classic Brian Regan clip all about the trauma of kid's Party Games:
Epic Fail
Epic Fails are a very popular search item on the web at the moment. Another type of animation we love here at Passy World are Lego stop frames. Here is a short Lego stop frame animation about someone having a bit of a failure kind of day:
Hope your week was free of any epic fails, and let's all start getting a bit over-animated in readiness for another great weekend!
This update takes a red hot look at the History of the World, as seen through the beauty of Sand Sculptures.
Each summer they have a Sand Sculptures Exhibit next to the beach at Frankston, which is a coastal town about an hour out of Melbourne.
This year's exhibit is about "Great Moments in the History of the World", as per this sign at the start of the exhibit.
The sand used is a square uniform size grained brickies sand, and is not clay. It is heavier than beach sand which has rounded uneven grains and does not stick together nearly as well as the Brickie's sand. You can even get your hands dirty at the exhibit and have a professional sculptor show you how to create your first artistic piece of sand castle magic.
Twenty one sculptors from around the world were involved with this year's sculpting, and it took them three weeks to complete the exhibit. It contains over 3000 tonnes of sand, and so the site had to be specially engineered for the creek banks behind the exhibit to support such a heavy mass.
The following Wondershare Slideshow contains 40 photos taken at the Sand Sculptures Exhibit at Frankston.
When you get through the whole show, the last picture should be of the US President Barach Obahma. If you missed any pictures then click on the arrow when the slideshow ends.
Note that we can click on the bottom of the slideshow on the "Manual Play" option at any time. We can then advance through the photos one by one at our own pace. This allows us to stop for longer on the photos that we really like, and quickly bypass the ones that we are not interested in.
(Push the Play button arrow below if the slideshow is not already running).
We were fortunate enough to be able to interview one of the actual sculptors, who was running some free classes on the basics of sculpting. Her name is Natasha, and she is Russian but lives locally in Frankston. She travels around the world doing sculpting, and is going to be in Germany for a big exhibit later this year.
The interview is in two parts. Since she could tell I was a complete novice, (and it was getting close to morning tea break), our project was a simple one involving making a couple of donuts.
Here is the first part of the interview with Natasha:
(It may take a minute or two to load in and start playing. Mouse on and off the clip to get video and volume controls available).
And here is the continuation of the above interview with Natasha:
(It may take a minute or two to load in and start playing. Mouse on and off the clip to get video and volume controls available).
Here is a picture of the nearly finished donuts, (before we added the icing and cinnamon sugar :)
This is the United Kingdom (England) sculpture that Natasha made for the exhibit. The detail in the wall mural is amazing, and the Double-Decker Bus, Big Ben, and Lion are fantastic also.
The second sculpture which Natasha worked on for the exhibit is the following Modern Day Inventions piece. (Both sculptures took around 10 long days each to complete).
It shows the Singer sewing machine, through to the electric guitar, and handheld computing devices.
So that's it for sand sculpting for this year, and we will definitely cover future exhibits at Frankston on the Passy World website.
If there is any sculpting on in your part of the world, be sure to get along and visit because it is amazing what the artists can produce from one of our most basic earthly materials.
This week we've decided to go all out geeky and look at some mathematics and puzzles that will really sharpen your wits up.
All right for starters, here is a little warm up exercise in the form of a very tricky little riddle:
Now let's get into a bit of good old mathematics. Here is a golden oldie from the early days of Television. But it is still an absolute winner today. Here it is, compliments of Abbot and Costello:
Here are a couple of consecutive kiddy-safe Maths Jokes:
Q: Why couldn't the blonde write the number ELEVEN ? A: She didn't know what ONE came first...
And moving right along from the number 11, here is the number 12 along with its story:
The number twelve walks into a bar and asks the barman for a pint of beer.
"Sorry I can't serve you," states the barman.
"Why not?!" asks the number twelve, getting agitated, with some loud anger in his voice.
"Because You're under 18," replies the barman.
Time to add a bit of music into the mix.
What you Know about Math ?
Well this hip rapster minute and a half video will fill in all the gaps in your current knowledge.
And that was so good, we can't bear NOT to see the Part 2 Sequel, and so here it is:
Here is a challenging mathematical problem and its fascinating solution:
An Indian chief had three wives, each of whom was pregnant. The first gave birth to a boy. The chief was so elated he built her a teepee made of deer hide. A few days later, the second gave birth, also to a boy. The chief was very happy. He built her a teepee made of antelope hide. The third wife gave birth a few days later, but the chief kept the details a secret. He built this one a two story teepee, made out of a hippopotamus hide. The chief then challenged the tribe to guess what had occurred.
Many tried, unsuccessfully. Finally, one young brave declared that the third wife had given birth to twin boys.
"Correct," said the chief. "How did you figure it out?"
The warrior answered, "It's elementary. The value of the squaw of the hippopotamus is equal to the sons of the squaws of the other two hides."
Did you know that in Education Institutions they have "Special Maths" for Actors ? Here is a basic three minute video about the current syllabus:
Now some people on TV are not actors, but merely everyday people trying to do some relative sizes maths.
Some people fail miserably at making such mathematical comparisons, as per this unfortunate contestant:
Image Source: http://i43.tinypic.com
Here is some real interesting Business Math that you would not have learned at High School:
Forget about Probability Theory, here is the real gin on the chances of a man ever winning an argument:
And finally, one more magical "Millionaire Moment" :
Image Source: http://i.ytimg.com
Hope your week has not been too puzzling and added up to a good final result!
In the previous blog post "Making an iframe Webpage" we learned how to set up a web page that contained a scrollable window into another web page.
We now want to extend this single iframe into a series of iframe pages that all link to each other through the use of a "Next Page" button. This involves making a standard template page. From the template we then make pages for each site we want to iframe into. We also create a "Next Page" button, and then set this up to link the series of pages together.
Here is a set of detailed instructions on how to make a next Page button and then link together several iframe webpages to appear one after each other.
If you would like to have your own full size copy of this PDF, then simply click the save disk icon button on the PDF viewer, and you should be able to save it to your own hard disk.
Alternatively, you can view or save the full size PDF by clicking the link below:
Using iframes is a great way to connect somebody else's webpage into your own one through a scrollable viewing window. We can do this on a Blog by adding the following HTML code:
And as you can see, this produces a window on our Blog post here, where we can view the foreign website without having to leave our current page.
Now let's suppose we want to do this on a normal HTML web page, rather than on a blog post.
For example on our "Passy World" site, that we have been developing step by step, we now want to make a page that iframes into our "Passy's World of ICT Blog".
Here is a set of detailed instructions on how to make an iframe within an existing HTML webpage. This is a great way of bringing other web pages into our site.
(This PDF document is actually inside an iframe right here on this Blog Post).
If you would like to have your own full size copy of this PDF, then simply click the save disk icon button on the PDF viewer, and you should be able to save it to your own hard disk.
Alternatively, you can view or save the full size PDF by clicking the link below:
Alright then. The next step is to extend the iframe into a series of iframe pages that all link to each other through the use of a "Next Page" button. This will be covered in our very next Blog Post.
The multimedia students who introduced me to this original Makeover site, have now moved on to a more powerful makeover application called "Taaz". The opening before and after pictures shown above were made by Emily using Taaz.
The Taaz makeover application is free to use and is located at: http://www.taaz.com/
Here is a good overview of "Taaz" from the "About Us" section of their website:
"TAAZ.com is a fun, easy-to-use website that gives women the opportunity to "try on" the hottest makeup and hairstyle looks from the convenience of their homes. From creating the perfect smoky eye to painting on a dramatic ruby-red lip for a night out on the town, TAAZ.com allows women to become their very own makeup artist and create the perfect look for any occasion.
Users start by uploading their own digital photo, (or using a photo from the site), and then experiment with a palette of thousands of colors and shades in products ranging from foundation and concealer to multi-tone eye shadow and lip gloss ... even colored contact lenses! With the addition of a hairstyle or change of hair color, the look is complete. The effects are immediate, simple to use and so life-like that the saved result looks like a real photograph. In order to help viewers bring these looks to life, taaz.com's experts offer engaging beauty, fashion and style trends, tricks and advice.
The uses for these makeovers are endless: They can be saved, printed and brought to your makeup artist or hair stylist to convey the precise look you crave; emailed to friends; put on greeting cards; or used as online profile pictures on Facebook or MySpace. TAAZ.com's Social Network allows users to share images and makeovers with friends who can rate the look, provide comments and suggestions, and even add their own touch to the makeover, making TAAZ.com a social experience akin to going shopping with friends".
To start a makeover we go to the Taaz site, and then get into the Makeover application, and choose a model to start with (or upload our own photo):
First we apply lipstick, lip gloss, and lip liner from the supplied color pallettes. We can then reshape the lips using dragging and stretching tools:
We can then move onto foundation, and here the effects are very subtle, and very adjustable:
The hairstyles in Taaz are amazing. First we can pick a style such as Miley Cyrus, and then get a series of adjusters to reshape the hairstyle:
We can also apply makeup to the eyes, and add colored contact lenses to create quite powerful changes.
Here is Big Passy's completed makeover:
Allright, it's probably a reasonable makeover considering I am just a normal guy, and know nothing about female cosmetics or hairstyles. The lips don't look quite right, but the transformation caused by applying colored contact lenses to the eyes was pretty amazing.
Here is the exact same makeover, but this time with different hair:
Finally, here is a small selection of the makeovers that have been done by my multimedia students:
From what I've seen of my own students using this application, I'm sure Taaz makeovers can provide hours of fun for ladies of all ages.
We started the week off at a Cowboy Rodeo and Ute Show, and have decided to finish it off in the same vain, with a bit of good old Cowboy Country and Western funny times.
Sure plenty of guys would like to be a Cowboy. Back in the 1980's they even wrote big hit songs about this.
Boys Don't Cry from 1986 - I wanna be a Cowboy song
Hope you liked that there little tune, and had a good old Country style sing along with the choruses.
Now some folks have told us that not all Cowboys are good friendly guys, in fact some can be real animals. Surely this can't be true !
Image Source: http://www.funnyfidos.com
And if you thought that was a bit out there, well check out these two Rodeo giants from the funny farm:
Image Source: http://s3.amazonaws.com
Now what happens if you're unhappy being a Cowboy. Like what if you end up being a sad Emo Cowboy ?
Keeping with the Cowboy sing song theme, here is a little clip we should really have saved for a Christmas 2010 Friday Funny. But heck, Christmas is a long way away, and we just can't wait that long!
Rodney Carrington has some hilarious Country and Western songs, and we just couldn't pass up including his 12 Redneck Days of Christmas:
Recently we have been accused at Passy World of featuring far too many attractive females on the Blog. So to redress this gaping imbalance, here is a picture just for the ladies of a famous New York Serenading Romeo (Cowboy style). Oh yeah, and he is wearing underpants and not actually naked.
Image Source: http://weblogs.wpix.com
Cowboy / Country Jokes
Country Folks Magic Elevator
A country family are visiting the big city for the first time. The father and son are in the hotel lobby when they spot an elevator. "What's that Dad?" The boy asked. "I ain't never did see nothin' like that in my life" Replied the father.
Seconds later an old frail woman walks in the hotel door and hobbles to the elevator. She presses the button with her cain, waits for the doors to open and gets in.
The father and son, still amazed by this contraption, continue to watch. They hear a ping noise and the doors open again. Out steps a beautiful 20 year old buxom blonde.
The father looks at his son and says "Go get your Mother !"
Cowboy Wannabe
More than anything, Bill wanted to be a cowbow. Taking pity on him, a rancher decided to hire the lad and give him a chance. "This," he said, showing him a rope, "is a lariat. We use it to catch cows." "I see," said Bill, trying to seem knowledgeable as he examined the lariat. "And what do you use for bait?"
Where are you from ?
The cowboy lay sprawled across three entire seats in the posh Amarillo theatre. When the usher came by and noticed this he whispered to the cowboy, "Sorry, sir, but you're only allowed one seat." The cowboy groaned but didn't budge. The usher became more impatient. "Sir, if you don't get up from there, I'm going to have to call the manager. The cowboy just groaned. The usher marched briskly back up the aisle. In a moment he returned with the manager. Together the two of them tried repeatedly to move the cowboy, but with no success. Finally, they summoned the police. The cop surveyed the situation briefly then asked, "All right buddy, what's you're name?"
"Sam," the cowboy moaned. "Where ya from, Sam?" With great pain in his voice Sam replied.... "The balcony."
The Cowboy and the Preacher
One Sunday, a cowboy went to church. When he entered, he saw that he and the preacher were the only ones present. The preacher asked the cowboy if he wanted him to go ahead and preach. The cowboy said, "I'm not too smart, but if I went to feed my cattle and only one showed up, I'd feed him."
So the minister began his sermon. One hour passed, then two hours, then two-and-a-half hours. The preacher finally finished and came down to ask the cowboy how he had liked the sermon.
The cowboy answered slowly, "Well, I'm not very smart, but if I went to feed my cattle and only one showed up, I sure wouldn't feed him all the hay."
Jokes Source: http://www.basicjokes.com
Every Cowboy needs his Bacon for breakfast, and especially in these modern times, life's no good without your bacon:
Apart from his bacon and beans, every good Cowboy needs to get himself a nice gun. Of course modern technology has brought the modern Cowboy's gun a long way from the pocket sized six shooter of yester-year:
Image Source: http://i71.photobucket.com
Finally, we would be very remiss not to feature the Cowboy's core business, which is of course riding horses.
The Top 10 Signs You're Not a Real Cowboy
10. "Your saddle is Versace" 9. "Instead of 'Home On The Range', you sing 'It's Raining Men'" 8. "You enjoy ridin', ropin', and redecoratin'" 7. "You sold your livestock to buy front row tickets to 'Mamma Mia'" 6. "After watching the Cowboy in the 'Village People', you have to take a cold shower" 5. "Native Americans refer to you as 'Dances With Men'" 4. "You've been lassoed more times than most steers" 3. "You're wearing chaps, yet your 'ranch' is an apartment in San Francisco" 2. "Instead of a saloon you prefer a salon" 1. "You love riding, but only on mechanical bulls"
Friday Funny Ute Show
Wow, this is a "2 for 1" bonus Friday Funny, because we're gonna do Utes as well!
Visiting the Lang Lang Ute Show earlier this week has really aroused our curiosity about what types of modifications people might make to farm utes in other countries.
Here are some highly modified American Utes, (that they call "pick-ups") :
Now if you've got yourself a big farming country family, then this is the rig for you.
Image Source: http://farm3.static.flickr.com
But if you're just a young single fella, then you might be wanting someting a little more sporty:
Image Source: http://static.squidoo.com
Of course these fancy ute modifications don't come cheap. Now there ain't a lot of dollars around when the crops been failing, and so sometimes corners are cut in the interests of such economical considerations:
Image Source: http://www.biker-bash.com
And after a long hot day working in the fields, what could be better than to cool down in the luxury of your very own mobile backyard jacuzzi.
Image Source: http://carphotos.cardomain.com
Now here's an honest hard working "super Sized" American Ute. You sure can fit a lot more travelling equipment in the back of that rig than you can on your bike.
Image Source: http://farm4.static.flickr.com
This picture of "Utezilla", the bush Kangaroo, kind of takes us back to our Robots Friday Funny from earlier this year:
Image Source: http://www.condobolinargus.com.au
Of course having your own special customised pick up is a true love affair for any good old country boy. But would you ever consider getting married to your pick up truck?
Well this has been a Friday Funny that turned out "Bigger than Texas". Hopefully you found some good honest homespun fun, and we'll be back on our horse to bring you something smiley again next week.
Hey everyone, we've been out Rodeoing again. This time we went to "Lang Lang" which is a small country town about an hour and a half out of Melbourne.
It was less crowded than the last Rodeo we went to, and was a perfect sunny day combined with a country ute show as well.
Anyway we all know that pictures are worth far more than words, and so here are some photos that we crawled around in the dirt under rodeo fences to get for you guys.
The following Wondershare Slideshow contains around 45 photos taken at the Lang Lang Rodeo on April 5th 2010.
When you get through the whole show, the last picture should be of a Rodeo Clown going to pick up a Cowboy's hat off the ground. If you missed any pictures then click on the arrow when the slideshow ends.
Note that we can click on the bottom of the slideshow on the "Manual Play" option at any time. We can then advance through the photos one by one at our own pace. This allows us to stop for longer on the photos that we really like, and quickly bypass the ones that we are not interested in.
(Push the Play button arrow below if the slideshow is not already running).
The Rodeo was a great day out, and we met some wonderful friendly country people and saw some really awesome Cowboys and Cowgirls in action.
One of the big winners on the day was a Cowboy competitor called Peter, and we did this quick interview with him.
(It may take a minute or two to load in and start playing. Mouse on and off the clip to get video and volume controls available).
We also interviewed Miss Lang Lang Rodeo, who was also a competitor in the barrel racing, and certainly knows how to handle her "Barbie Horse".
(It may take a minute or two to load in and start playing. Mouse on and off the clip to get video and volume controls available).
And as it turned out, Miss Warragul Rodeo happened to be close by, and so we also had a quick chat with her as well. She is also a very competent horse lady and competitor, and like the other cowgirls travels all around Australia competing in Rodeos.
(It may take a minute or two to load in and start playing. Mouse on and off the clip to get video and volume controls available).
So here at Passy World we have been very much enjoyed getting in touch with some right good country folk, and recommend the Rodeo as a great day out that everyone should try at least once as soon as they get the chance.
This week over the Easter Break, Passy's World visited the Lang Lang Rodeo. ("Lang Lang" is a country town about an hour inland from on the coast where Big Passy lives). There will be an upcoming post all about the Rodeo competition in the next few days.
Today's post is all about the Lang Lang Ute Show that was part of the Easter Monday Rodeo activities.
The following Wondershare Slideshow contains 40 photos taken at the Lang Lang Ute Show.
When you get through the whole show, the last picture should be of a group of people standing around under a big blue sky which is facing into the sun. If you missed any pictures then click on the arrow when the slideshow ends.
Note that we can click on the bottom of the slideshow on the "Manual Play" option at any time. We can then advance through the photos one by one at our own pace. This allows us to stop for longer on the photos that we really like, and quickly bypass the ones that we are not interested in.
(Push the Play button arrow below if the slideshow is not already running).
The "Ute Show" had Prizes on Offer to entrants as follows:
Best Chick’s Ute (Proof Required), Best Rural Ute,
Best BnS Ute Pre ’89, Best BnS Ute Post ’89 – ‘99
Best BnS Post ’99, Best 4X4 Ute, Best Holden Ute
Best Ford Ute, Best Feral Ute, Best Town Ute
Best Work/Trade Ute
UTE OF THE SHOW
The Prize Winners
We went to the presentations, but we did not know the owners or the numbers of their vehicles, and so we are not sure who officially won which category.
So here at Passy World we have come up with our own winners.
First place in the chick utes has to be the Playboy Ute:
The attention to detail and the amount of Playboy paraphenalia packed into this boudoir on wheels was absolutely phoneomenal. Possibly even the best turned out ute of the day.
Passy's World award for best sense of humor friendliest country guy with his Bundy ute goes to this bloke, who told us quite a few interesting stories about the legend of the Bundy Polar Bear. (For overseas visitors, Bundy is a famous Australian rum, and the logo features a Polar Bear. Very nice mixed with ice cold coca cola).
Actually there were plenty of Bundy drinking "salt of the earth" friendly people at the ute show who were more than willing to tell us a few tales or two.
We took along an Irish friend of ours for a bit of cultural indoctrination, and he was definitely feeling like a local by the end of it all:
The judges were also really good guys. When they were checking the utes, they would talk to the owner about what modifications had been made. They also had plenty of good advice to owners about being careful about things like voltage drops when mounting batteries up the rear of the vehicle. (You really need some beefed up battery power to run those big spotlights on top of those utes).
Which brings us to Passy World's award for best modifications and smartest looking motor. This one goes to this proud General Motors donk:
So country Ute Shows are a great friendly Australian event to get along to. So if there is ever a show on near you, then put some serious rubber to the road and get yourself onto it !
Big Passy only discovered this band recently when he saw the following song on a big screen through a big sound system in a Night Club. The song that was played was this one: "Resistance". This soundscape has a real Depeche Mode meets U2 feel, and also reminds us of the musical style of English band: "Keane".
Here is the official music video of "Resistance" by MUSE
If you want to see some really high tech lighting and sound remixing of "Resistance" then check out this clip. It is a bit slow to get started, but once we get past the 2 minute mark it starts to pick up dramatically.
What I like about this remix is that they have modified the pre chorus interlude, which has a very disjointed sound wise in the original official video. This is in my mind the perfect remix. It has everything we would expect there to be, with some quite brilliant percussion and keyboard overdubs.
These guys are very talented musicians who can play brilliantly live as in this song "New Born" which showcases there instrumental virtuosity: New Born if from Muse's album Origin of Symmetry".
Muse are the following three guys:
Matthew James Bellamy D.O.B June 9th, 1978 Vocals, Guitar, Piano.
Dominic James Howard D.O.B: July 12th, 1977 Drums, Percussion.
Christopher Tony Wolstenholme D.O.B: Dec 2 1978 Bass Guitar, Backing Vocals.
Here is a clip of a great tune called "Uprising":
Clip of "Undisclosed Desires"
This song has a nice sparse arrangement, and the hammering slappy bass is definitely a feature. It sounds really good played extra loud.
OKay here is "Supermassive Black Hole" which has had an amazing 21 million views on YouTube ! It's kind of grunge rock meets Prince meets dance club music. A nice job. but would have liked some of the lead guitar breaks to be much harder and edgy.. like some really high screaming bends thrown in here and there, and the whole mix made a bit sharper and metallic around the edges. Otherwise a very nice job.
This song has Muse getting back to their Grunge Roots. Love the Bass Guitar work and drums in this song, perfect driving and rythms, complimented by brilliant guitar work.
Here is a song called "Invincible" with a great innovative filmclip :
A song called "Starlight" which is the second single from the hit album 'Black Holes and Revelations'. This clip is of them playing it live at "Abbey Road" (The world's most famous recording studio).
Here is another Live song called "Sing for Absolution"
This site has band history as well as concert and album reviews. Check it out, it is great.
Finally, here is a discography of MUSE albums. We have several of these here at Passy World.
(Information obtained from From Wikipedia. Albums obtained cheap from JB Hi Fi.)
The discography of Muse, an English alternative rock band, consists of five studio albums, one live album, one compilation album, three extended plays (EPs), three demos and twenty-three singles.
The band released their debut album, Showbiz, in 1999. The album managed to break into the top 30 in the UK and Australia and went on to be certified gold in both countries. Five singles were released from Showbiz, with "Unintended" peaking the highest at Number 20.
Muse's second album was Origin of Symmetry, released in 2001. Much more successful than its predecessor, the album reached Number 3 in the UK, where it was certified platinum. "Plug In Baby", the first single, reached Number 11 in the UK and was almost equalled by the band's next single, "New Born", which peaked a position lower. A year later Muse released their first compilation album, Hullabaloo Soundtrack, which comprised one disc of B-sides and another of live performances recorded at Le Zénith in October 2001. It peaked at Number 10 in the UK. In 2003 the band released Absolution, which became their first Number 1 album when it topped the UK Albums Chart. The follow-up to Absolution was the band's most successful album so far; Black Holes & Revelations reached Number 1 in four countries and became their first album to break into the top 100 of the Billboard 200, where it peaked at Number 9. "Supermassive Black Hole" was the first single and it became the band's highest-charting single to date when it reached Number 4.
In 2008 the band released their first fully live (Hullabaloo Soundtrack contained one disc of live material) album; CD/DVD set HAARP documents the band's two famous performances at Wembley Stadium on 16 and 17 June 2007. The album reached Number 2 in the UK and New Zealand and was certified silver by the BPI. The band began recording material for their fifth studio album in 2009; The Resistance was released on 14 September. The first single from the fifth album, "Uprising", was released a week before the album, on 7 September.
Recently young A.J. and I did a bit of a road trip to see a good musician pal of ours who lives around the other side of the bay. Bill Canty is the best keyboard player we know, and he is an absolute whiz with computers as well.
He has combined these two skills superbly, and is currently working on a new type of hybrid piano music which he calls "Shades of Ivory". Here is a bit about how he uses computers in making this unique type of music.
First of all he uses a Piano emulation product from Native Intruments called: "Akoustic Piano":
The piano sounds from this computer software are superb, and they transpose perfectly across the full octaves range of the instrument. (And I thought N.I. only made brilliant guitar amp emulation software like "Guitar Rig"). This software runs on his Apple Mac and he plays the samples on a connected Yamaha KX88 midi keyboard controller.
He also has some samples for other instrument sounds, as well as some synthesizers in a very compact rack. This set of electronic boxes holds the equivalent of a symphony orchestra, combined with just about every kind of drum beat you could ever imagine:
All of these sounds are played on the midi keyboard and then fed into some other software called "Logic Pro". LP is like Sibelius notator and Pro Tools all combined into one beautifully integrated unit:
There are a few other programs that do the same kind of thing: Cubase(Mac & PC), Samplitude (PC) and Digital Performer (Mac).
Musical notes can be edited directly on the screen, and cut and paste repeated as background decaying echoes to add fantasia style ambience and accents to various notes and phrases. These type of play and record in real time, and then edit and enhance the score methods, are what Bill is using extensively for his current project "Shades of Ivory".
SHADES OF IVORY is a unique piano album that explores beyond what's possible with two hands on an 88-note piano keyboard.
It has been recorded and edited in a computer and every sound is made by a digital piano. Its imaginative arrangements are composed of :
normal piano playing
playing that has been transformed by the computer
notes generated by the computer
piano sounds that have been edited - subtly, moderately or beyond recognition
audio effects such as reverb, echoes, etc.
Being part of Bill's "Inner Resting Music" series Shades of Ivory is rich, fascinating and beautifully relaxing.
Click on the webpage link below for more information about the S.O.I. project on Bill's website. (We can also listen to samples of tracks from the album on this page):
Bill's most popular album to date has been "Elysian Peace" which is pretty much ultimate relaxation/meditation disc.
It contains twelve 5-minute tracks of celestial harps, angelic choirs, layers of orchestral and synthesized sounds, all flowing seamlessly together, in a world of heavenly, elysian peace.
To listen to this album online click the play button next to the tracks below: (They each take a few seconds to load in).
My favorite yet to be released album by Bill is "January in Windsor" where he brilliantly emulates the sound and structure of chamber string music a la Vivaldi, JS Bach etc.
Click the player below to listen to this fabulous music that was made using the bare minimum of equipment as shown in the photo below:
(Eg. No keyboard was used, the notes were entered directly into the computer and then played through the sampler).
For further information about "January in Windsor", click on the link below:
Finally here is a dodgy quality 1 minute interview with Bill. I put him on the spot and asked for him to make a big Saxophone sound for us. Young A.J. also features adding his own unique blend of improv to the video.
Note how Bill uses a breath piece plugged into the keyboard to actually blow the notes as the fingers of his right hand plays them. He can also be seen using the pitch bend wheel with his left hand to add the required nuances.
Bill Canty certainly is the master of musical emulation.
We will have to do a more detailed interview with him sometime later on in 2010. We need to show you his guitar shredding improvisations, all done with keyboard and computer, without a fretboard in site. It has to be seen to be believed !
