street fight!

Every now and then you hear indie music that down right surprises you by doing something innovative and different –the music from Man Factory is no exception. So far they are two rounds (albums) in, on a three round compilation for the Street Fighter inspired rock-opera, aptly named, street fight! May not be every one’s cup of tea, but is sure to put a smile on the face of any Street Fighter fan!

Netflix inks deal with DreamWorks, meanwhile Amazon gets FOX

Netflix clearly has an uphill battle. The recent funk they have been going through will not be easily forgotten. To alleviate the pain Neflix has released their best news in quite some time. More content. Or at least in 2013. According to the New York Times, DreamWorks animation has made a deal with Netflix that is worth an estimated 30 million per film. Dreamworks chose Netflix, in lieu of a deal it once had with HBO, that was less lucrative. Thanks Netflix, we need more of the same.

Meanwhile, Amazon Prime’s Instant Video Service signs a deal with FOX, that will add an additional 11,000 movies and TV shows to the ever-growing service that is shaping up to be Netflix’s best competitor yet. Just in time for the Amazon “Kindle Fire” tablet?

Star Wars: The Old Republic dated

This is a few days old, but finally, Star Wars: The Old Republic has an official launch date. Many believed this game would not see a 2011 release, but despite speculation of even further push-backs, it will be available on December 22, 2011 in North America. So, get those wallets ready and PCs primed, should be fun (if you can get over paying the $14.99/month subscription).

Casey Jones The Movie

I’m not be biggest Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fan around, but leave it up the our resident turtles expert, Sergio,  to find anything cool and interesting turtles related. Enter Casey Jones The Movie. The movie does more than enough to make Casey Jones the bad-a hockey wielding street fighter that we all want him to be. Hit-up Sergio’s full review for the low-down.

What UBISOFT claims makes this game different is that it doesn’t come with a plastic instrument. You get the game, a usb cable that plugs from your PS3, PC, 360 straight into a real guitar. That’s right, there’s no faux strings, silly 5 buttons, strum bar, etc. You actually use a real guitar to play this game. UBISOFT claims Rocksmith will learn and adjust to your experience level. If you’ve never tried a real guitar before it will stick with simple single notes. Have you been playing for 10 to 20+ years?  Then it will make you play the whole piece.

Rocksmith is reported to have over a dozen difficulty levels and a huge initial library of at least 50 songs to choose from. It will also come with a virtual amp mode so you can just shred to your hearts content.The interface is a bit different onscreen. Yes we do still have the different colored notes that come down and you strum at the right time. Yes they fall vertically, but what’s different is that the color code is for each string and the tumble system covers the whole screen. You get a virtual fret board on the bottom of the screen with each fret having it’s own column.

To play, you will be going up and down the whole fret board of the guitar. Something nifty they have added is a simple learning tool that is basically called DUCKS.  This mode is your basic learning tool. You have the frets across the bottom of the screen and you have 8-bit pixel ducks that start to go up the drop board.

You strum the correct fret to shoot the duck. So it teaches you how to slide your hand up and down the fret board, strum notes, and makes it a much more intuitive learning procedure than your basic music game. Whether or not the DUCKS minigame uses just one string per fret or actually moves onto using specific notes or chords per fret is unknown at this time.

The big question is this. Does this game really even matter? I think most everyone still has in their memory the epic FAIL that was Powergig: Rise of the Six-String. Will this game revive the music game genre, or is it just a few years too late? Also, do you want to spend $80 for just a game and a chord, then buy your own guitar? If you pre-order now you will get a $25 voucher from Guitar Center, but you won’t get it till you pick up the game. UBISOFT has stated that any guitar with a working pick-up jack can be used. So you can always head to the pawn shops, or craigslist to find something cheap to start with.  Either way you look at it, unless you have a guitar you’re looking at dropping around 200 bones to get started.

What are your thoughts?

‘What is Ben Folds: Stems and Seeds‘ you ask? Well, Seeds is basically a disc that contains Way to Normal remastered and rearranged. I can’t say that I like the new track order that much…maybe I’m just used to the old sequence. He also includes new mixes of the ‘leaked’ songs.

The leaked songs are basically fake songs with the same name as some of the real songs on the album. He bundled these up and ‘leaked’ them on Bittorrent as a joke.  He had to change some of their names for copyright purposes, but they are all included here. These songs are hilarious. They have become so popular with his fans that he even plays them at his shows. He played ‘Bitch Went Nutz,’ ‘Lovesick Diagnostician,’ and ‘frowne song (feeble anthem)’ at the Mobile show.

He also includes a ‘You Don’t Know Me’ cut that was a rehearsal for Conan O’Brien and the Japanese version of ‘Hiroshima.’ The only other song that I have heard him record in Japanese was ‘Song for the Dumped’ from Whatever and Ever Amen (in the Ben Folds Five days) and I love them both.

All this extra content is awesome, but it isn’t the main draw of this release. Stems is actually what drew me to this release. He has broken up all of the songs on Way to Normal into isolated tracks (think drums, bass, piano, vocals, etc) for complete remixing!!! I think this is an unprecedented move in the music industry. I know some artists have done this sort of thing before, but I am not aware of another that has released isolated tracks and packed them in with a CD release. I haven’t actually played with the tracks yet, but you’ll be the first to know when I do!

…to be continued…

I know some of you (ok…MOST of you) probably don’t know that I am sort of a musician and songwriter. I write songs and record them in my free time for fun. I had a discussion with one of my coworkers and she asked me what would I do if people started downloading my music for free, to which I replied “I plan on it!”

Well, here it is…take it!
(FILE: everydayoftheweek.zip 82.6 MB)

Track Listing:
1. Sky (eases my mind)
2. Myself
3. Flight
4. Rest My Head
5. Chillin’
6. The End
7. Happy
8. Hope 

This took me like a week to record and it was done in my bedroom with Logic Pro, a Soundcraft Compact 4 Mixer, Condenser Mic, Fender Precision Pro Bass, Eric Clapton Signature Stratocaster, M-Audio Keystation 49e, and a Rock Band Drum Set. Yeah, that’s right…a ROCK BAND DRUM SET!

I will get more into the technical aspects with later posts, but for now check out the songs and let me know what you think!

Every Day of the Week by Kary Brown is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.karybrown.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.karybrown.com.