Category Archives: Music

My Top 10 Visited Sites of 2011

December 26, 2011 – 11:30 am

Since we’re running a few Top 10 lists at FaithVillage this week, I’m following suit and posting a week of my own randomly chosen end-of-the-year Top 10 lists. Today, it’s the Top 10 sites I likely visited in 2011. There are no statistics to back up this list, just inclinations.

10. Grantland / ESPN

Ever since the Mavs won the championship (which I predicted), I’ve become an ardent NBA fan. Sadly, the lockout and the loss of many of the key Mavs from last year have left me with a bitter taste, thinking that the Mavs getting through the playoffs this year would be even more miraculous than last year’s epic run. If you’ve never visited Grantland and you appreciate good writing, Bill Simmons, pop culture, or Chuck Klosterman, you’re missing out on some of the best stuff on the Internet.

9. PostSecret

If you’re easily offended, this isn’t the site for you. If you’re awed by the incredible diversity of the human race—our hidden thoughts, unspoken hopes, and worst sins—this site is fascinating. People send their secrets via postcard to Frank Warren. The often simple words combine with just-as-simple art to produce compact yet compelling studies in humanity. It’s updated every Sunday, but not archived. In other words, the secrets are only up for a week at a time. However, these postcards have been collected into many different books.

8. GoodReads

I used Shelfari for ages. After using that site to catalog my library, then not finding an easy way to export that list, I jumped ship to GoodReads, a similar social network for book lovers. I’ve been happy ever since, especially with GoodReads’ iPhone app that allows me to scan book bar codes in order to add them to my digital shelf. It also helps me keep track of what I’ve read and how much work I still have left to do.

7. 101books.net

I don’t recall how I stumbled onto this humble blog with grand ambitions, but I’m glad I did. It’s fascinating reading for book lovers and English majors. Robert Bruce, unhappy with his lack of reading fiction as an adult, decided to read Time Magazine‘s Top 100 books since 1923 (the year Time was founded). He added Ulysses to the list, since it is widely considered a literary masterpiece, but was published in 1922. Bruce blogs about interesting trivia behind the books, then provides an easy-to-read and honest assessment of the time he spent in the book. I once spent a weekend poring over every post until I caught up to “real-time.”

6. Christian Nightmares / JesusNeedsNewPR / Huffington Post Religion

Both Christian Nightmares and Jesus Needs New PR are blogs that detail the rather weird side of Christianity. Sometimes funny, sometimes scary, but, to me, always interesting. Be warned: These sites are not for the faint of faith. HuffPo Religion is where I find news of note in the Christian world that is making waves beyond the church’s walls. read more »

Tags 2011, 2012, New Year, Top 10 | Permalink | Comment (0)

Funny Music The Church

That Tone-Deaf Guy Behind You at Church

December 21, 2011 – 9:00 am

You’ve read the title and I know you already have someone in mind. Maybe it’s a regular at your church. Maybe it’s a friend or family member that goes with you every now and then. Or, as in my case, maybe it’s someone that was directly behind you at the last church service you attended.

They can’t find a pitch even in the middle of a baseball game. *
They think singing louder compensates for their lack of musical ability.
They have terrible parents, because good parents would tell their tone-deaf children that they can’t sing. We have American Idol to thank for a generation of hopeful yet hopelessly tone-deaf teens who think they’re the next big thing when their whale sounds shouldn’t even be dignified with the term “music.” (HT: Matt Chandler)

According to the venerable Wikipedia, tone-deafness, also known as “amusia,” is a “hearing impairment [that] appears to be genetically influenced, though it can also result from brain damage.” So, those that suffer (though the argument could be made that we all suffer) from tone-deafness are either hosed by genetics or hosed by circumstance. Then again, aren’t we all hosed by the same two things?

Listed among the notable tone-deaf on Wikipedia are such luminaries as:

I’ve never heard any of them sing, and it’s difficult to imagine any of these men doing so anyways.

CC Image • 2-Dog-Farm

But, God bless ‘em, the tone-deaf sing. At least the ones at my church do. Maybe they know they’re terrible. Maybe they don’t have a clue. But they sing. They sing their bleating hearts out. Why?

Because they don’t care. They don’t care about the sound of their voice as it physically assaults the eardrums of every bystander. They don’t care that they don’t sound like everyone else. They don’t care that they may or may not be committing the eighth deadly sin—screechery.

They sing because the One who’s listening hears hearts more than tones, beliefs more than words, and sincerity more than posturing.

May we all remember this when offering our worship to a gracious God, whatever form that worship takes.

But.

The next time that tone-deaf guy sits behind you at church, make pained faces in his direction to see if he reacts negatively or stops singing completely. You’ll have won a small and meaningless victory while saving the rest of us from yet another bad American Idol audition.

On second thought, don’t do that. My favorite episodes of Idol all happen in the first three weeks.

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Drums Life Music Photos Videos

VIDEO: Aryn Michelle and Band Perform Nomad Live

July 11, 2011 – 9:55 pm

Aryn Michelle and Band – Nomad – Filmed at Java Me Up on Friday, July 8.

Blake Atwood Drumming : Aryn Michelle Band

Look at the pretty drums, not the pasty white legs.

The Band, with The Mysterious Invisible Bassist

In the comments, leave a caption for what each band member is thinking in the above photo…

Tags Aryn Michelle Band, drumming, music, pictures, Video, Youtube | Permalink | Comment (1)

Drums Life Music

I’m in a Band

June 9, 2011 – 4:39 pm

This is not the band I joined, but I just wanted to make sure they were present.

I recently joined a band to back Aryn Michelle, an established independent artist who crowd-funded her forthcoming album.

My route to trying out for her band started on Facebook after seeing a request for drummers, and also noticing that she knows at least a dozen of some of the best people I know, all from Southwestern University. She and her husband are both SU alumni.

She’s a pop/rock singer songwriter, but those vague and general terms don’t do justice to the album she’ll likely be releasing sometime in the fall. It’s engaging, intriguing, enveloping music.

We’ll be practicing throughout the summer with an eye toward playing shows starting this fall. She had a great drummer record the album, so I have a lot of work to do before that happens, but I’m looking forward to the opportunity.

Like Aryn Michelle on Facebook to keep up with news regarding the band.

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Books Music

Has The Publishing Industry Learned Anything from the Music Industry?

May 19, 2011 – 5:46 pm

One of the headlines that caught my attention today is that Amazon has reported their e-books are outselling their print books, and it took less than four years for that shift to occur. This timeline is shorter than most had predicted.

This isn’t surprising, but it lends further credence to the fact that the music revolution of the 2000s is now occurring in the publishing world. After the iPod became ubiquitous with digital music sales, the music industry had to redefine itself. The music industry is still adapting to that seismic shift in customer consumption of content, especially with the nearing announcement of Apple’s “iCloud” to match Amazon’s Cloud Drive and Google’s Music Beta cloud service. (Are there really people that will use these services?)

However, even with the model that the music industry (failed to) give to the publishing industry, is the publishing industry ready for their own seismic shift? I was recently made aware of the so-called Kindle millionaire, Amanda Hocking, and I’ve been reading posts here and there (E-books vs. P-books and What Would You Pay for an E-book?) regarding how the pricing structure of Kindle books, and e-books in general, has affected our consumption of these particular formats of books.

It would appear that the Kindle is playing the role of the iPod, and that the current price points of ebooks are akin to the price points of their musical counterparts, i.e. most songs are 99 cents and most books hover around the $9.99 price point. However, many independent authors have experienced success in allowing their electronic books to be sold for 99 cents.

Will their success drive down prices across the digital board, or will their success be the loss leaders for their own other works?
Ten years from now, will books still be mass-produced or simply made on-demand?
At what point does the ease of access and appealing price point of an e-book overwhelm traditional publishing?
Has it already happened, or are there a few decades left?
Will we soon become a society in which the digerati fight the literati?

If so, which side will you be on?

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