Michael Koby

While I was in Austin, TX for CodeCamp 2008, I made a stop by Waterloo Records (6th & Lamar) which is probably my favorite record store.  I randomly browsed for a bit before getting the definitive item I went to the store for.  That item was Vallejo’s latest album, “Thicker Than Water” and it was the only think I managed to walk out the store with.

Now, I’ve been listening to Vallejo since I saw them open for Pushmonkey here in Houston like 8 years ago.  This would be around the time they released the album “Beautiful Life” (which I consider their best effort to date).  I’m proud to announce that with “Thicker Than Water” Vallejo has found their muse again.  No more hard rock sounds with a little latin tinge.  The latin groove is constant through out all of “Thicker Than Water” and I couldn’t be happier.  This album really brings them back to the “Beautiful Life” sound and feel, which is good news for folks like me.  If I had one complaint about the album it is that all the songs are short.  Almost all of them clock in at around 3 minutes on average.  I understand that we live in the age of the radio single, but come one guys, give me a nice little jam that lasts a little longer than a radio single.

Overall the album is good, short, but good.  I’m glad to see the band return to the sound that made them unique.

Below is the video for the first single from the album, “Move On” so enjoy

Last week, Nine Inch Nails released a new album.  This album was released digitally and all you had to do to be able to download it was goto http://theslip.nin.com/ and enter your email address.  Doing this, will result in a download link arriving in your email box.  Click the link takes you to a page where you can chose high quality Mp3 files, FLAC flies, Apple Lossless, and even the original WAV files.  All for free.  I have yet to listen to this latest offering from Nine Inch Nails, known as The Slip but I was sick most of last week and will get around to it this week.

This is the second album that Nine Inch Nails has released in 2 months (the first Ghosts costs $5 for a digital download).  Sure, you have to give them your email address which no doubt puts you on some kind of mailing list.  But for free music, I really don’t mind. 

What does any of this have to do with the title of this post? I’m glad you asked.  You see, I don’t really like Nine Inch Nails musically.  Why?  I’ve never really been the “mad at the world” type.  Stuff happens, I deal, and move on as best as possible.  I’m not saying that Trent Reznor is not talented, in fact I think quite the contrary and find him to be an incredibly talented musician.  I just don’t like his music.  And a person does not have to like everything.  Also, there are a couple of NIN songs that I do like but most of them are the singles (”Hand that Feeds” and “Head Like a Hole” for example).

Did I sign up and download this latest effort though?  You betcha.  I’ll listen to almost anything once.  And I will especially listen to anything at least once that didn’t cost me any money to hear it in the first place.  Sure, I could have probably found the album via BitTorrent sites and not had to sign up for the mailing list, but I’d rather get the free music directly from the person providing it.  So Nine Inch Nails got one more person (someone who doesn’t normally listen to their music) to download and listen to their new album.  All because it was free.

For the record, I also bought Ghosts I-IV because it was five dollars for full lossless files.  That’s a hard deal to turn down.  Also, I did it because I want to prove that distribution methods like that can work.  Also to help prove that if you offer cheap or free music, there will be people to download and promote it.  But think about these facts:

• I don’t really care too much for Nine Inch Nails musically (even though I think Mr. Reznor has talent).
• I paid $5 dollars for a NIN album because it was $5 dollars which is darn cheap for 36 tracks in complete lossless format.
• Finally, I downloaded a free album provided by Nine Inch Nails
• Nine Inch Nails made a sale off of someone not really into their music too much and got another another set of ears to listen to 2 of their albums because they offered cheap and free music.

Back in late 1999-2001 I was in a band that went through several name changes.  The names were Refuge, Diadem 4, Diadem, and finally H.O. Easy.  We wrote probably around 8 songs and some of them even ended up with lyrics (not all of them though).  This song, along with a Beekin song entitled “Traditional Thorn” are probably the only surviving tunes to make it out of H.O. Easy.  So for your viewing pleasure, I give you “Nightmare” (complete with the not-so-complete lyrics).

The phrase “best practices” gets thrown around a lot in IT (Information Technology).  You have best practices for programming, server configuration, SOA, and even software installation.  There are best practices for other things like cooking, organizing, and cleaning.  So today we are going to take a look at some of the best practices that I use when tagging and organizing my digital music.  Some of these go against other “best practices” for tagging that you might find on the internet, but everyone has their preferences and you are not stuck to listening to just me.

Album Artist & Artist Tags

This is a topic that gets confusing to some people, but I wrote a nice article on this a while back that I feel really covers the basis for the differences between the “Album Artist” and “Artist” tags in a mp3 file.  Essentially, the artist tag is for the artist of that particular song while the “Album Artist” tag is for the overall album artist.  This works really great on multiple artists compilations.  Make sure you understand the difference between these two tags and how to utilize them correctly.  The article referenced is: Artists Versus Album Artist.

Follow Proper Title Casing

For some people this is not a big deal, personally though I hate with “A” and “The” are capitalized incorrectly in the titles.  Drives me bonkers, this is probably why my wife calls me “anal” but who knows.

Proper title casing means the first letter of the first and last word are capitalized.  All other words with a character count of 4 or more are capitalized as well.  Exceptions include pronouns.  Examples:

• Incorrect: “Shoot Me In The Smile”
• Right: “Shoot Me in the Smile”

Disc & Track Numbers

Some people will tell you to only use the Disc Number tag when the album has more than one disc.  I disagree with this approach.  Mainly because if you’re going to do it for some, why would you not do it for others.  It just doesn’t make sense.

Also, make sure you fill in both parts of the numbers so an album that has 3 discs will be “1/3″, “2/3″ and “3/3″ and likewise for track numbering as well “1/1″, 2/10″, and so on.  This makes it really easy to get an idea of how tracks and albums connect together when you are looking at them in a spreadsheet or in your music organization application.

The exception to this rule are miscellaneous tracks, things like 1 off tracks that you may have downloaded or what not.  You can strip these tracks of their track and disc numbers since they do not associate with an album.

Album Art

Everyone likes album art.  Album art really makes iTunes shine in coverflow mode.  However album art that has dimensions of less than 500 pixels detracts in a big way.  If you can not find the album art online and you own the album, scan your copy in.  You will be much happier with a minimum of 500×500 image that you made yourself than some 250×186 copy you find off of Google Images.

Some people get crazy and want to add images for the CD, the internal art, and rear artwork.  This is entirely up to you.  There are ID3 tag designations for each of these artwork types, so if you want to be completely archival, then go nuts.

Genres

I don’t feel that one should get overly specific with their genres, but getting kind of specific can help you when creating playlists (especially smart playlists in iTunes).  For example, I have Christian Rock and Christian Hard Rock genres in my collection because I want that level of granularity when making playlists.  However, the genres are not so overly specific that it’s overkill, especially since I have a lot of music under both genres.

Your Best Practices

Do you have any best practices that you follow when you organize your digital music?  If so, leave a comment or two.  I’d love to see how other people handle different things with their music collections.