Above all else, Mura Masa’s latest album demon time demonstrates a mastery of groove. The album is short and sweet and every track is a treat for the ears. This is what I think about the album after one listen. The album is inspiring in terms of its production and flow. Mura Masa is sparse when appropriate, and dense, layered, and loud when called for. His collaborators and features are terrific (especially Shygirl).
Rina Sawayama’s Hold the Girl shows off an updated sound and introduces a number of exciting new tracks that will certainly delight anyone who enjoyed Rina’s first album. After my first listen of the album, here are my thoughts. Hold the Girl is a slight departure from Rina Sawayama’s previous sound. Her first album, SAWAYAMA, is first and foremost a pop album, but it also uses a considerable number of elements from metal music, including in the guitars, drums, and overall arrangement.
Under the Shade of Green by The Happy Fits is a solid next entry that especially shines when it explores sounds and ideas that are new to the band. These are my thoughts after my first listen. Overall, Under the Shade of Green delivers something that I’m sure fans of the Happy Fits will be excited about. The band brings energy, catchy melodies, and lyrics that I can easily imagine the crowd belting out at a live show.
I just finished running the 2022 Wharf to Wharf race in Santa Cruz, CA. Despite not training for the race, I managed to run the race faster than when I ran it last in 2019. This time around, the race organizers placed me in the “elite” corral, which meant that I didn’t struggle too much with crowding at the beginning of the race. I got to my corral with plenty of time to spare, so I was able to warm up a little bit before the race.
This post presents three simple math/art visualizations having to do with music and sound. All three were made for Bob Bosch’s Math Art class at Oberlin College in Spring 2022, and inspired by material covered in Chris Marx’s Spring 2022 Harmonic Analysis class.
These three visualizations are meant to be fascinating even if you do not understand the underlying math and music. But I will explain the concepts behind each of them and justify why I think they are interesting.
Around two months ago, I created my own twist on the game Wordle. Zerodle is a variant of Wordle, inspired by the likes of Quordle and Sedecordle. Each of these games presents a certain number of Wordle puzzles which must be solved simultaneously with the same guesses. Zerodle takes this concept to the extreme, with a grand total of zero different Wordle puzzles, all of which must be solved at once.
This past Sunday, May 22, I ran in the Cleveland Marathon. And it went very well! When I ran in the 2019 Cleveland Marathon, I struggled due to poor pacing and heat, but this time neither of these were an issue.
So The New York Times just bought Wordle. This is not surprising, but it’s definitely disappointing. Wordle is an uncommonly successful small project in a Web dominated by large corporate platforms, and its acquisition only leads us further in that direction.
I’ve posted two mashups on my YouTube channel. The first, in 2018, was a combination of “Feel It Still” by Portugal. The Man. and “Genghis Khan” by Miike Snow. The second, last week, is a mix of “good 4 u” by Olivia Rodrigo and “gec 2 Ü” by 100 gecs. It received a comment asking how I make a mashup, so here we are. This one’s for you, Antonioio What’s a mashup?
This utter nonsense has been bouncing around in my head since Friday.