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Wednesday, September 19, 2012 12:30 AM

Ben Folds Five Album

Earlier this year, I heard that Ben Folds Five was reuniting to make a new album. They decided not to go through a record label and instead used a site called PledgeMusic.com which is a lot like Kickstarter but just for music. People can give you different...
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Monday, June 25, 2012 12:30 AM

Pentatonix

I’ve always semi-secretly enjoyed various types of acapella music, but somehow I missed The Sing Off on NBC until last season. Acapella groups from around the country compete in an American Idol style show. That’s good enough on it’s...
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Monday, June 18, 2012 12:30 AM

Organ Music

Our congregation is blessed to have some wonderful musicians. One of the best is Dave Kriewall who has arms and legs that turn into a blur as he plays the organ. If you were at our wedding, you heard him play. I recently wrote him an email asking "You...
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Thursday, December 15, 2011 12:30 AM

Streaming Audio

Services like Spotify, Mog and Rdio are making a big splash. They let you stream just about any song for free on your computer or for a small monthly fee on your mobile devices. You can even download songs to your device for playing while you’re...
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Tuesday, December 06, 2011 12:30 AM

Church Music

I’m sort of the self-appointed social media guy at church, so whenever the choir sings, there is a holiday sermon, or Dave has fancy preservice music, I try to make sure I take some video. For Thanksgiving, Dave brought his microphones and digital recorder...
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Tuesday, August 23, 2011 12:30 AM

Turntable.fm

There’s a new music website rocketing through college campuses and it’s called turntable.fm . The basic idea is that you have five DJs picking out music and then a crowd of people listening. When people like the song, the DJ who picked it gets points...
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Wednesday, July 13, 2011 12:30 AM

Ben Folds 14,000 Person Choir

For the past few months, I’ve seen Ben Folds tweeting about recording audiences at various concerts singing bits of a song. He did that seven times, edited it all together, and the end result is a 14,000 person choir spread across seven cities ! I can...
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Thursday, April 21, 2011 12:30 AM

How Musicians Make Money

I’m starting to think that having local copies of my music is unnecessary. It’s already possible to subscribe to services like Zune, Rdio, and MOG and have almost every song ever made right at your fingertips. Movies are headed there too. How long are...
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Wednesday, March 30, 2011 12:30 AM

Musical Alphabet

Here’s a little game for you: Pick a letter of the alphabet. You only get to listen to music from artists with names that start with that letter for the next year. Who would you pick? Maybe that sounds a bit contrived, but when I scroll through my collection...
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Monday, February 21, 2011 12:30 AM

Glee Beats Elvis And The Beatles

Tyla loves Glee. I enjoy a cappella music but the high school drama is too much for me. I do respect the show for using real Broadway talent instead of hiring actors and lip syncing the music. The show has been breaking a lot of musical records, but last...
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Wednesday, January 12, 2011 12:30 AM

Christmas Recordings from Church

I’ve tried doing some recordings of the choir at pre/post-service music at church in the past, but without the proper equipment, it never comes out quite right. DaveK stepped in and offered the use of his brand new MAudio MicroTrack II and two microphones...
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Thursday, November 04, 2010 12:30 AM

Lady Antebellum’s Seattle Concert Review

Earlier this year, Tyla and I bought tickets to two concerts: Jim Gaffigan and Lady Antebellum. Mt. Hot Pocket was hilarious and we thoroughly enjoyed that. But if you asked Tyla which one she was more excited for, I think she would have said Lady Antebellum...
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Tuesday, April 13, 2010 12:30 AM

Bells and Bowties

I’m part of the choir at church, and for Easter we had a song with bells. I volunteered to play them even though I’ve never done it before. It turned out to be much harder than I thought. I’m apparently not great at percussion. Thankfully the song turned...
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Friday, February 19, 2010 10:28 AM

A Pickle More Popular Than NickelBack

A group was added on Facebook just 17 days ago to see if a pickle could get more fans than NickelBack. They just succeeded. I have a screenshot below but it’s kind of small. You can check out the page on Facebook . 1.7 million people are fans of that...
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Friday, October 23, 2009 12:30 AM

Ben Folds with the Seattle Symphony

I’m a huge Ben Folds fan. Sit at my piano and you’ll see the sheet music for all of his albums as I make a futile attempt to replicate his mastery. So you can imagine my excitement when Tyla told me she was getting me tickets for his October show as my...
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