The other day I ordered an M-Audio Kestation 61ES, a MIDI keyboard thing that will let me play the piano into my computer for when I’m making music. I figured that purchasing this would help me save time writing MIDI (on ‘Unlucky For Some’ I ended up playing my computer keyboard in some songs…), and I’ve always wanted to play the piano properly; I just never had one at home to learn on. So I splashed out and spent £150 on a keyboard. However, I saw that I could get the same keyboard with a sustain pedal added on for the same price on Amazon and bought that instead. The only problem is that the Keyboard is still on it’s way to me, despite the sustain pedal arriving tomorrow. Here’s my review of the pedal.

Well, as you can tell from the picture above, it came in a box. The box is grey and red, with a picture of the pedal on it and some writing about the features of the pedal. While this isn’t the best design (look at Apple’s boxes, for example – they don’t need to tell you what the product does, even though they do a heck of a lot more), it’s far from the worst (I bought some RAM from Crucial once and it came in a brown cardboard box. Lame.)

Like a lot of other packaging on the market, this box was sealed with two pieces of sellotape. This certainly isn’t the most durable way of sealing a package, but it’s worked well over the years and you can’t fault it. After all, I wouldn’t want it to be wrapped in duct tape… that would just be hard to open.

After peeling the first piece of sellotape off, disaster struck. Unfortunately, the second piece of sellotape wouldn’t come off the package and I had to resort to using scissors to cut off the remaining piece. I don’t see why, as surely both the pieces of sellotape came from the same roll, and should have the same stickiness? I don’t know what happened here, but it’s shabby. Shame on you, M-Audio.

Finally I got the box open. Inside was the prize. I have to say, having seen the size of the pedal and the size of the box, I give M-Audio points for saving packaging. Some companies ship massive cardboard boxes for stuff like this (my Logitech MX Revolution came in quite a ridiculously over the top box, with a flap that let you see the mouse in the packaging and so on) so M-Audio did a good job on this. Since I share my name with a tree -admittedly not a tree that is used for cardboard-, I say “thank you”.

Once I took the pedal out, though, I tossed the box on the floor. Despite it’s good points, it just has no function other than storing the pedal and thus I do not care for it any longer. Goodbye box, I hardly knew ye.

So there I was, left with the pedal in a weird plasticky coating. Naturally, I took this off and…

…threw it on the floor with the box. See you in hell.

Now I had to take the weird plastic thing off the pedal. It was weird so…

…I took it off…

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… And put it with the rest of the trash. Hasta la vista, baby!

Anyway, now I had my pedal almost ready to go. So I took the cord out (which was quite a struggle, since it was firmly lodged under the pedal) and untied it all.

Now I had my pedal all ready to go, except for another weird plasticky bit on the end. It was like they’d dipped it in cling film or something. Removing this proved to be a challenge…

… so I removed the rest of it with tweezers. There were still a few bits left on, despite my rigorous pulling, so that was bad. Plus points to M-Audio there. You should have used less clingy cling-film.

Once finished, I put the pedal on the floor, in it’s new home. There, it rested like a warrior who’d just come back from war; like a mouse that had just been chased by cats; like a sloth. It gave off a sense of peace and tranquility, as if everything in the world was suddenly alright. Suddenly, a strong urge came over me; something I couldn’t resist at all. It was like a true calling, echoing through space and time right to this point where I stood before the this pedal. I quickly rushed over to the other side of my room to grab an object which would help me reach fulfilment…

I plugged the pedal into my guitar. As expected, nothing happened. I shrugged. This is why you don’t listen to the thoughts you have when you’re on a hallucinogens, kids.

I just searched “special” with Google. Here you go. Have a good week!

The people who are hailing the Rage Against The Machine thing as if it’s the second coming of Jesus are people who probably would have bought the X Factor single anyway. They only bought the single because they were told to, rather than because they like the band (hence why I didn’t buy it).

As much as I love the fact that real musicians had a Christmas number one again, it’s easy to forget that most people only bought it because they were following their friends on Facebook and following an idea which seemed “funny”, just like they’d follow the TV and buy a song which they were manipulated into buying through a reality talent show. If Rage Against The Machine had released a Christmas single and had won because people liked the track more than the X Factor track, it would be a different story. The sad fact of the matter is that bands like Rage Against The Machine don’t release Christmas songs, or even release songs near Christmas at all. All this activity exercised is the influence of Social Networking and proved that people downloading singles does actually make a difference in the charts… which, uh, would make sense.

Despite popular belief, the record industry doesn’t make up the charts; they need them more than the public does. For the industry, it shows them what songs are popular amongst the public and what sort of music to keep pumping out. Without it, the labels would have to guess at what people “like” in order to release stuff, which, as we probably all know, isn’t as effective as knowing. For example, I could guess that my girlfriend has cheated on me. It means nothing unless I know. On top of this fact, there is no necessary reason for the different labels to exchange information on which of their artists are doing well. The charts act as a way for not only the public to know what’s popular, but the record labels to know what’s popular on other labels.

The problem is that people don’t understand how the singles chart works. The singles chart only applies to singles, hence it’s called the singles charts. The reason bands like Rage Against The Machine don’t make it into the charts is because the people who listen to them are dedicated fans and buy their albums, which are, y’know, albums… not singles. Since they’re quite established, most of their fans buy their older albums from places like CEX or Ebay which sell the album second hand, with no contribution to the charts. When they release a new album, chances are they buy it from Amazon or a party that doesn’t necessarily contribute to the chart’s statistics.

Now, as far as the album chart goes, yes, they could get a number one album… but only when they release a new album. Muse, for example, had a number one platinum album this year with the release of “The Resistance”, despite their single making it to number nine in the UK singles chart. The reason for this is because Muse is an established band that people recognise have better albums than singles (in theory), so their Wembley Stadium-filling fans just buy the album, rather than single. Same with Green Day and all of the other established bands that released albums this, and every other year.
The reason X Factor makes it’s way to Christmas number one is because it’s the mindless sheep who buy singles that put it there. Well, “mindless sheep” is a bit harsh. The fact is that people without that much interest in music buy singles, and those are the people that watch X Factor. That’s the reason X Factor makes it so high in the charts at Christmas. It’s not necessarily popular overall, but it’s popular amongst the people who buy singles.

Short story long, what I’m trying to say is that the people who buy singles are a completely different type of listener to those who buy albums. The people who buy albums are the people who like real music with real talent. The people who buy singles are the people who are just contempt with listening to whatever music they hear played on the radio or telly. The only true way you can change this is to get rid of all the people who don’t really care about music, but unfortunately genocide is illegal.

Here’s a cool video by a lady called Katie Paterson. She made vinyl records out, well, ice (making them ice records, not vinyl). Pretty impressive video! This is how I’m thinking of releasing my next album… [Gizmodo]

Ok, I admit it, it’s taken me a while to write this, but at least it’s here now! My fourth studio album “Unlucky For Some” is now available for purchase, on both CD and iTunes (Amazon MP3 should be selling it soon, too, but I haven’t seen any evidence of this yet). As this album was always intended to be released on multiple platforms, I’ve done something a bit different with this album and released a bonus track that’s only available via either of the methods. On the CD, you get the bonus track “Unrequited“, which is a rocky love song that wasn’t included officially on the album due to similarities of it to a song belonging to Jimmi (Who voiced his displeasure at this). The other track, which is available with the iTunes download, is a remix of “Prepare for the Attack” by the Fall of Industry (check out Industry’s Myspace for more details – they’re really good!). Personally, I love it and I’m rather jealous I couldn’t do something like it on the actual album.

Like most music, there’s not much I can do to testify this album through words. I could always try writing it through the use of “DUN DUN DUN”s but you might not get the right idea. I mean, “DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN, DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN, DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN, DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN” is meant to be “Just Because You Can, It Doesn’t Mean You Should“, but I bet you don’t know what it sounds like. So here’s the “Making Of” video with the song “Red Letter Day” as it’s soundtrack. I didn’t actually record any of this while making the album, but it just about shows what happened; lots of lonely nights in my room spent pretending I’m a rock star.

Unlike my last albums, this album was created on my shiny new iMac. One of the big differences between the two processes was that, with the computer, I could do a lot more in terms of sounds, editing and automation. Whereas before I was limited to using the instruments in my possession, on this album I could conduct a whole orchestra without lifting much more than a finger. For me, I feel this helped me experiment and create a much more gratifying sound. In many ways, if you’re not a fan of this album, you’ll probably be a fan of the next as the novelty of MIDI instruments will have worn off by then. I think the only track on the album without any MIDI instruments is “Getting Over You“.

Out of all the tracks on the album, though, my favourite has to be “Red Letter Day“. I think this is because I believed for so long that this song was going to cut from the album, yet has actually turned out pretty impressive by my standards. The only time I felt truly happy about it was about a week before the album’s finalisation, where I added the lead guitar part to it (the main one you hear when the song kicks in). So I think I’m just relieved that I got it to sound great in the end. That, and my voice sounds sexy when I woman-ify it (Yes, you weren’t imagining that).

The last real thing I can say about this album, I guess, is that it’s the first album I’ve really tried to push out there. Maybe it’s the first album I’m truly proud of. Maybe it’s because I’ve gigged since I worked on my last albums. Maybe I just feel more inspired by my older age, knowing that I’ve not got much youth left. Who knows? But all I know is that I want anyone and everyone to get their mitts on it, even if I have to pry into their cold, dead hands.