Japan Playing Mozart to Ripening Bananas

Now this story I had to share … You read the title right. Apparently a Japanese fruit company is playing classical Mozart to its ripening bananas! Here’s the full story from the Herald Sun.

As odd as it may sound, the article says that companies in Japan have been experimenting with playing music to not only fruit, but noodles, soy sauce,  miso and sake for over 20 years now! Sake being the pickiest where companies have experimented with loads of different musical styles from jazz to other classical artists like Bach, but Mozart is the sweetest tasting so far.

I don’t find this far fetched at all actually as I have read in the past of experiments done well over 20 years ago on the positive affects of music to plants in general. Funny, I’ve also read studies done on the positive affect of music on productivity of a work force which held similar results ….

First with plants, one of the experiments conducted was with the use of 3 sets of plants placed in 3 separate chambers. They compared a silent chamber to one with the same tone being projected into the room in a few hour slots, and another chamber with the same tone going on non stop. The ones with sporadic tones of a few hours each time were the healthiest which is the same result productivity wise at a work force. Studies showed music in the background from time to time (not turned on all the time) increased in overall productivity throughout the day. So now you know :)

Back to plants for a second, experiments kept going to demonstrate what kind of music plants seemed to grow the healthiest with and it always turned out to be the soothing type of genres while rock made the plants lean away from the sound source and made them overall less healthy in comparison.

I find the whole thing very interesting but have to admit, if I haven’t heard of any of these types of experiments with music and plants before, pitching the initial thought of the idea as a Japanese company playing Mozart to their ripening bananas may have been a little more shocking, but I really think it can make the plants healthier. Ahh music. Positive all around. I wonder if pounding death metal would have the same effect towards other living things like keeping spiders away?

Dane Cook Serenades Taylor Swift on Tonight Show

You read the title right and I’ll chat about it a little after but here you have it, comedian Dane Cook performing a serenade to Taylor Swift on the Tonight Show:

… and what a crowd to help with the chorus. Always fun with crowd participation. The worst part of it all, the music got stuck in my head afterward and I was singing to myself ‘we love you Taylor, Taylor, Taylor Swift …’. Ahh Dane Cook, got to love him!

As for Taylor Swift, I haven’t gotten around to writing too many individual performance reviews just yet for the AMAs this past Sunday but honestly, I wasn’t planning to write up an entire blog on her as I find there were quite a few better acts and much, much worse acts that I’ll probably write about instead so I’ll take the opportunity in this blog to give props where they are due. She did a great job on her performance at the American Music Awards. Some pitch problems especially towards the beginning and in the lower register but honestly, with the awful job done with the sound in general that evening, Taylor Swift sounded better than at least half the performances of the evening. I’m not sure I get the whole ‘Apologize’ slip in during the performance but her song ‘Back to December’ on a first listen makes me want to download music or the entire album actually and enjoy some quality song writing in higher definition. I think she’s great.

More music related stuff coming but I had to slip in this blog with the serenade :)

Justin Bieber Wins 4 AMAs – American Music Awards 2010

Image from Fox News

The guy I love to hate but am gaining more and more respect for, Justin Bieber was nominated for 4 categories Sunday evening at the 2010 American Music Awards (AMA) and, even going up against artists such as Lady Gaga and Katy Perry, took all of the following home!

- Entertainer of the Year
- Breakthrough Artist of the Year
- Favorite Pop/Rock Male
- Favorite Pop/Rock album

I had the unfortunate pleasure of seeing him lip sync at the last VMA’s which, anytime I see an artist lip sync, I feel sick to my stomach, so I was really annoyed then. Something that helped him out a bit in my eyes was jumping on the drums for a few bars to show he can keep a beat. I didn’t think much of it since of course, it was hard to see past the lip synching but anyways.

Yesterday, Justin Bieber decided to hop on the piano to get the song started and was not lip synching which felt like a treat. Now the whole night, or at least for 80% of the performances, the sound was just awful. I don’t know who they hired to mix but every singer sounded either drowned out by the band (example; Santana and Gavin), or in front but way too dry (no reverb or delay) for a live setting anyways. It’s great to get intimate on record and hear that voice pierce through when they sang the song 34 times and you keep the best bits but if you hear the singer is sounded off and too clean for their own good in a live setting, help them out will ya! Anyways, all to say, it helped showcase the great singers of the night which to me, in order were Christina, Pink though a lot of the singing was sampled, still her live parts sounded great, Train, I can’t believing I’m including her but Kesha, and, to my surprise, Justin Bieber.

He annoys me, he sings about subjects way past any teen’s life experience, he gives a high five and hugs 12 people before getting on stage to accept a freaken award, he does the same thing after a performance if anyone is around him close enough to receive a hug, he lip syncs, and even after all that, I am dedicating this blog to him because musician wise, when he does sing and play an instrument, he is on key and the guy is packed with talent. I can’t deny him that and I keep respecting him more and more for it while trying to blur out all of the rest which really, are just personal pet peeves (though the lip synching is more than a pet peeve and that one, he should not be proud of). Music wise, the songs are really catchy though I just wished they had a little more substance in the choruses than ‘baby, baby, baby, ohh …’. I’m not asking for Alanis Morrisette or a country song, keep it as pop music and within the formula, fine, but give us just a little more will ya.

So congratulations to Justin Bieber for a very successful music year and I hope him the best in the next year to come. I actually have very high hopes that he’ll become a true artist in a few years and step away from the fabricated luvy duvy songs and image the labels are leaning him towards. Time will tell :)

More observational music blogs coming about the 2010 American Music Awards unless I find something else I’d rather talk about later this week so in case I don’t get around to a full out blog about it, ah man, don’t even get me started with Usher’s ‘singing’ performance at the 2010 AMA’s … If anyone reading this is a fan, you may want to skip that upcoming blog.

Stay tuned for more music goodness.

iTunes Big News of Beatles Catalogue – is it big news?

Earlier this week, if you landed on the iTunes or Apple homepage, we got a large message saying there was some big news coming. Everyone was wondering what it could be, maybe a new music service from iTunes instead of the pay per song model, maybe other technology or synching capabilities for iTunes, or, the one we all had a hunch on was that perhaps, just maybe they finally got the Beatles catalogue into iTunes. If it was the case, I was really hoping we would see, or rather have the opportunity to download music from the Beatles we never heard before like a few lost tracks somewhere but no … The big news was simply that they finally got the Beatles catalogue into iTunes so you can now download music from the Beatles with Apple.

Steve Jobs was gunning for this for quite some time. For those active in the music download world, we knew if ever this went through that Steve would make a big deal about it, as he did so far with media, and as he should really since iTunes has gotten loads of press about this addition to their music catalogue while plenty of bloggers, like myself, writing up about it and questioning if it is that big a news after all, so even more free press and viral marketing to come.

My question is if it is actually big news. Aside from a great addition, for the music world, I don’t know if this targets the generation that is the real problem with illegal music downloads or not? Sure, we’ll probably see a spike of download and what timing! Christmas is around the corner, you’ll have legal music downloaders gunning for the classics. While the more legal downloads going on the better, the problem with the industry is not with those that are currently using legal music services, it’s with those that aren’t and which a large portion of them are a generation before the Beatles. I know that is debatable since the Beatles are out of this world and can relate to any generation, but still, all I’m getting at is that big news to me would have been something that would help the music download world and the industry rather than only iTunes who are expecting a Christmas bonus from all of this.

The addition of the Beatles catalogue is big new for iTunes, but not the type of big news that I was hoping for personally that could make a dent and really have an impact on the industry.

Jessica Simpson is Engaged and Getting Married – Check Out The Ring

Jessica Simpson is in the news once again. While it’s not entirely music related, though I’ll slip in a little extra vocal analysis later to tie it to the music blog, I thought I would add this little bit of news to the music blog first to get my opinion on her off my chest later.

Check out pictures of Jessica’s ring here!

Footballer Eric Johnson (31) popped the question to Jessica (30), presenting her with a roughly $185,000 Neil Lane ruby ring. Call me boring but I rather diamonds. Looks more feminine to my eye but then again, we just buy the thing. You girls have to wear it so if you like the whole red ruby thing, by all means, knock yourselves out and tell your man about it cause chances are, we won’t guess it on our own.

The timing is questionable of course. Just last week, roughly 5 years after his split with Jessica, we heard that ex husband, Nick Lachey announced his engagement to Vanessa Minnillo. Maybe it put a fire up footballer Eric Johnson, maybe it put a prior fire up Jessica Simpson who then gave a little extra push to Eric, who knows, who cares. They are now engaged so to all of you who follow the entertainment news, keep your eyes peeled for a lot more on all of this.

For this music blog’s purpose, I have to relate this to something more musical than a ruby ring so something I wanted to get off my chest about her that I didn’t want to use an entire blog for is trying to understand how I am convinced she has a superb voice recorded but every time I see a live clip, it annoys the heck out of me and I can barely watch her sing. Here’s a quick music video:

The annoying part are all of her verses in pretty much all of the music clips I landed on tonight while writing this blog. She pulls the Britney Spears, choke sound in a lot of the music clips I landed on, cuts a lot of hard syllables out at the beginning of her phrases, and adds the fake emotion stuff like whispering between a phrase, late phrases off tempo and pronouncing words in a different and obviously practiced and forced way (cause I checked plenty of live music videos of her singing the same song and the same ‘forced errors’ are on all of them …).

I have no emotion connection what so ever when I hear her sing verses of songs live like in the music video above. They are a huge turn off. Then I hear recorded versions of the songs and when those high notes kick in where she pushes, and some time even live like between 3:28 – 3:38 of the mentioned video, something hits me where, holy crap, this girl can sing! All the crap I heard before this point may have been worth it?

I have never been so confused about someone when I hear them sing but she is this weird exception where I enjoy complaining in my head about all the reasons I don’t like hearing the music clip during the verses and waiting for a few high notes to actual enjoy quite thoroughly.

I won’t say anything really about her personal life cause we all have ups and downs, however for her professional and music side, it’s not everyday that someone is talented only half the time and makes it as far as she did so I guess it’s open game for anyone.

If you are looking at options on where to download music from Jessica Simpson, as always, feel free to head on over to our homepage where you can download music from some of the best music download sites. Check out our reviews, read a few articles, and maybe even get a long term legal music service out of it.

Stay tuned for more music goodness!

George Bush Singing Sunday Bloody Sunday by U2

I had some good old classic U2 music playing in the car this week and so of course, I landed up on YouTube at some point looking around for great live music clips and related U2 goodness. Happy I did cause I landed on one heck of a different version of Sunday Bloody Sunday!

First, to get in the mood, or if you have been hiding under a rock and have never heard this classic, here’s the original Sunday Bloody Sunday by one of the best rock bands of all time … U2 … and a mighty good live version if I may add:

Ahh yeah, damn that song is solid.

You have to give it to these guys, live, they are hard to beat. They have won loads of awards for their tours so far and are still going strong (well, minus a recent injury that postponed a few legs of their latest tour). There stages keep getting more grand and innovative as they go, most recently their 360 degrees World Tour between 2009-2011. The design of their stage, and having it at the center of stadiums allows in most cases for the stadium to hold an addition 15%-20% more people per night! Brilliant for a band that sells out like there’s no tomorrow. The tour so far has had revenues of anywhere between $4-$10 million per night! They are already past the $300 million mark with plenty of shows ahead. Man I can’t wait! I even have tickets for the show that was suppose to be in Montreal in July I believe but because of Bono’s injury, the leg of the tour has been postponed. Hope they make it out cause I just know it is going to be out of this world! K, back to the post …

So now that you’re good and ready, the reason for the post, whether you love him or hate him, here’s George Bush singing Sunday Bloody Sunday!

Man that must have taken some work! Sure after 3 minutes, it starts getting a little ‘meh’, but the first minute, I was cracking up and loving it. So good!

As always, if you like U2 or any music, which I imagine you do or you wouldn’t have landed on this music blog, be sure to head to our homepage and check out the best music download sites where you can legally download music from all your favorite artists in an environment where they will be compensated for their hard work.

Hope you enjoyed the little music clip and stay tuned for more.

Michael Jackson – New Song – Breaking News – his voice or not?

Michael Jackson is scheduled to have a new album coming out December 2010 called Michael, right in time for Christmas shoppers of course. The album will be filled with some ‘finished’ songs and music that the public has never heard before but there has been quite a debate between Michael’s family members and the producer of the album, Teddy Riley, and the record label for his new single, Breaking News, which most of the family is convinced and making very public that they don’t believe it’s Michael’s actual voice and recording.

Incredible how much news is gathering around the king of pop lately with Cirque du Soleil, a new music album, and now of course a controversy to top it. Before my 2 cents, here’s a small trailer for the new single, Breaking News, so you can judge for yourself:

Now first off, I hate to admit that the music and song stuck in my head because I really don’t like it, especially as I have been looking back recently at some of his older music like Man in the Mirror and all the other classics. This song would be close to the bottom of the list for me but anyways, personal taste of the song aside, the controversy is around if the vocal on the track is Michael or not.

Here’s the full story on the Michael Jackson Vocal on Breaking News Controversy.

You have most of the family saying it isn’t Michael. You have the producer of the album and of course the record label backing saying that it is. You have the label going as far as bringing in scientific analysis of the vocal tracks themselves to confirm it is Michael. I mean this thing is just a debate with press and money involved to prove each side and get the Michael Jackson buzz hitting hard before this album release.

For if it is or isn’t Michael Jackson on the recording, personally, I doubt very much that the label would take a risk to put an impersonator singing songs and label it as lost Michael Jackson tracks. Do you have any idea what type of risk that would be to assume he would keep his mouth shut to begin with, then of course he’s not the only one since you have the producer and production team making the album that would know, plus all the media in the world bribing these guys with millions to admit it wasn’t Michael (which I wouldn’t be surprised if this sparks up real dumb ideas from Michael Jackson impersonators to hit up all the press and make a story that it’s their voice on the recording …). Simply as a risk, it doesn’t make sense.

What I find sad in all of it is that I wonder if Michael was happy with the takes and would have actually wanted to release these tracks. It’s one thing to make demo songs in the studio with the intention of re-singing the songs that make the cut for an album at a later time, and taking a bunch of unreleased vocal takes and splicing them digitally to make a song with loads of production on top to cover it up and give it an edge which is more how I hear this latest new song from Michael Jackson, Breaking News. The vocal takes, even after so much processing, are far from great in comparison to Michael’s usual stuff. It feels like he sang them to keep the idea on record and had the intention of later doing the vocal takes properly. They don’t make me feel connected to the song as they usual do in his other music. I could see why one of the latest tweets from Michael’s brother Jackie was saying how he and friend/producer John McClain were insisting to have certain tracks removed. It ties it together that they are aware that they are demos and Michael never had the intention of releasing unfinished work, or unperfected tracks.

As for the family with their argument that they can tell by vocal tracks if it’s Michael or not, sorry man, I’ve recorded vocal tracks for over 5 years in different studios and vocal takes can sound day and night stripped down with no EQ, and depending on the feeling of the day, the mic, the room, all of it. That’s why you have great producers and mastering guys making albums sounds as if they were all recorded at the same time when perhaps they were recorded throughout a year in 7 different studios however the original source and feeling of the vocal take still need to be stellar to give them something to work with.

Of course this is just a music blog and everyone thinks they are an expert so these are just my 2 cents. I just hope Michael Jackson would have been proud of whatever music the estate and label are planning on releasing in a few weeks. There’s no point in throwing garbage out there to taint what has been an immaculate catalogue of beautiful music all around just for a few quick bucks and to really squeeze everything out. Here’s to hope that the album has been put together with good intention but I am not counting on it.

Cirque Du Soleil Producing Michael Jackson Show – The Immortal Tour 2011

Have you heard? Cirque du Soleil is at it again! If it wasn’t enough to do The Beatles Love, Viva Elvis, and more than 20 other non musical focused shows in Las Vegas and around the continent, Cirque Du Soleil has teamed up with the estate of Michael Jackson to bring us their latest combined musical and acrobatic creation: Michael Jackson The Immortal World Tour.

Here’s the current trailer:

My biggest fear is that Cirque du Soleil will mess this up trying to take on more than they can chew. You have to be real careful when you’re trying to take an act that was as close to being perfect as it could with choreography, music, songwriting, frontman, ‘rockstar’ character and the whole package really and trying to blend it with other art like acrobatics, or even just trying to replicate that same ‘larger than life’ feel Michael Jackson’s shows had where the obvious element that made them as grand as they were was Michael himself, a presence that can not be matched by anyone in my opinion, especially someone trying to cover his songs!

One of the reasons I am so skeptical is that I have seen a few Cirque du Soleil shows. Now I’m a big fan of entertainment in general and I live in Montreal, Cirque du Soleil’s home city so in the past few years, I’ve gone to a few shows here in Montreal including Alegria (pretty good) and Ovo (don’t bother, but the costumes are incredible), and have made a trip down to Las Vegas where it seems you can’t see a billboard anywhere that doesn’t promote one of their shows. While there, we saw Chris Angel Believe which is combined with Cirque du Soleil (I did not like it one bit. We got it free with our stay at the Luxor and I’m glad we didn’t pay for it) but have also seen ‘O’ which blows every one of these shows away. It’s a masterpiece! Strong characters, beautiful music and acrobatic acts combining both water and land. Phenomenal.

The problem in all of this is that for me, it was 1 out of 4 shows that I felt was truly worth the money (and we paid like $150 / ticket!) and I would pay again happily. The rest didn’t really bring anything new or exciting to the table that I haven’t seen before outside of insane costumes. Slap different costumes and music and they can regurgitate 3,000 ‘different’ shows. That was how I felt in Vegas seeing so many Cirque du Soleil branded shows anyways.

I’m really hoping this one will be different and make me feel like I did when I watched ‘O’. Like I’m in the presence of something truly great and can’t get this entertainment at this level anywhere else. Not sure they can deliver but I’m really routing for them though cause I would love to be blown away while listening to Michael Jackson :)

So far, unfortunately, its been been hit and miss so perhaps I’m wasting optimism and should simply wait with no expectations. I regret not to have seen the Beatles or Elvis one yet to see how they do with a much more music oriented setting but I know the Michael Jackson The Immortal World Tour is stopping by Montreal 3 times I believe along with major Canadian and American cities and an over 1 week long stay in Las Vegas between Dec 3-11 so hopefully I’ll be able to catch it and write a thorough review on it.

If you want to check out their current schedule, you can head on over to the Michael Jackson The Immortal official CIrque du Soleil page.

Till then, I will sit here and enjoy classic Michael Jackson and crossing my fingers that Cirque du Soleil don’t mess up the greatest pop act of all time.

US Woman Fined $1.5 Million for Music Piracy of 24 Songs

Holy crap, now I’m all for promoting legal music downloads but man, even I feel the fine is border line insane.

First, the full story: 1.5-million-dollar verdict in US music piracy case.

In brief, Jammie Thomas-Rasset, a US woman was found guilty of copyright infringement for downloading 24 songs through a peer to peer software called Kazaa which was huge a few years back and one of the most popular peer to peer / illegal methods of downloading music out there. It had millions of users and back then, the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) was gunning down and suing individual users like Jammie. Since then, the RIAA took a different approach trying to get Internet Service Providers involved to stop piracy. This started getting into complete other issues of privacy where ISP’s weren’t too thirlled about the idea since their users would simply go to another ISP which didn’t look over everything that was downloaded but in any case …

Now before getting paranoid if you are using Kazaa today, you can settle down as Kazaa, much like Napster, has cleaned up their act and are now actually a legal music download service. We don’t have them up as a reviewed music download site yet only as their service is way too pricy next to the services we do review so we’re holding off on that one for now instead of putting them dead last as we don’t currently recommend them. We’ll keep you posted if things change, or you’ll see for yourself as we’ll have a review up.

Back to the case …

For Jammie, she is being ordered to pay $62,500 for each of the 24 separate copyright infringements. Before jumping on her side, you should know she was previously charged with the same copyright infrindgement type of scenario years prior which didn’t lead to very much, but still, talk about a scare that should have stopped her then?

Yes, it is illegal to download copyrighted material and sure, someone who was convicted twice is kind of asking for it, but she is a single mother of 4 and I don’t know her personally, but not sure that she has $1.5 million in the bank somewhere waiting on a rainy day. Regardless, I know her personal situation doesn’t change anything for a court, nor take away her actions however, my issue is the price tag / fine of $62,500 per song. Anyone else think it’s quite pricy? And I’m a freaken songwriter / musician and have a site dedicated to promoting legal music downloads so I’m assuming I’m not the only one here.

The reason I’m saying it’s pricy is that a song goes for $1. I dug up some shoplifting examples and read some laws for kicks. If someone shoplifts, stores sometimes handle fines in which case merchandise of $25 for example, the usual fine could land between $200-$500. If courts are involved, now I ‘m not saying to quote this but in Canadian law for example, from what I’ve read, if it’s a first offense, often times you can be pardoned and given a second chance but for stealing anything under $5,000 value, the max fine looks like $2,000 (which I don’t understand but hey, I’m just sharing from quick research) or up to 2 years in jail. With a fine of $1.5 million, 2 years in jail doesn’t look so bad?

The moral is don’t steal music and you don’t have to worry about all this crap cause some judges will go all out and give one heck of a hefty, in my opinion, ridiculous fine.

Katy Perry – Teenage Dream – Best Cover by The Rescues

My producer, songwriting buddy, and very good friend Eric Collard and I were discussing songs recently as usual. I find he and I have a very similar taste in music (I guess we should since we write songs together right …) and enjoy a really solid, well written song no matter what genre it ends up being produced in. This particular discussion was about a pop song; Katy Perry’s most recent single, Teenage Dream.

Now he was the first person to introduce me to Katy Perry’s first album and I fell in love with it. The music and songwriting was so strong. Lyrics gave that Alanis Morissette, story like feel that I still compare to ‘Jagged Little Pill’ which has to be one of my favorite albums lyrically of all time. She also delivered some great vocal performances on the album that at some points gave me chills and had me rewinding mini 15 second clips so for me, that really helped kick the album up even more and sell a lot of the songs.

Since then however, I was turned off of her with the song she did with Timbaland; If We Ever Meet Again. The song is good at the core but there is something in the production and vocal take that turns me completely off and is borderline annoying. The biggest issue I had is that it felt like such a step back from the music and songs on her first album. After that, I had a sour taste so when new music came along by Katy Perry, I was a much harsher critic than I would normally be with any other artist cause I know what she’s capable of so when Eric was raving about Teenage Dream from a songwriting perspective, though I only heard the song once or twice, I disagreed saying first impression, I wasn’t sold and it wasn’t part of her best work for me. My problem is that I heard her first album which is gold. If I wouldn’t have heard it, I would have probably agreed much sooner but she has so many better songs in my opinion that this one didn’t shine, nor move me as much. Then, he sent me this next music video by email of a band called The Rescues doing a cover of the song:

Holy crap! I’ve had this music video on repeat for a good 30 minutes so far. It’s awesome! (thanks Eric!). The rendition showcases the beauty of the song at its core and for me, more so than Katy Perry’s version unfortunately. So Eric, I agree man, incredible song BUT next to all of her recorded work and catalog, I’m not sure I would have this one as a top 3 or even 5 which just goes to show how incredible some of those songs are for me on her first album cause from the music clip above, I have a hard time believing anyone can deny that this is one heck of a well written song.

For The Rescues, they’ve done such an incredible job. It’s the first time I heard of them and the voices blend and work really well together. Creative harmonies at some spots and great constant and convincing feel throughout the version. Awesome!

Hope you enjoy the cover.

For the newcomers, a little personal background info to help gauge if some of the more opinion based articles such as this one are worth your time or you should just skip to watch the music videos or only stick to the more news oriented posts :)

Now I know some of you are reading this blog for the first time so in case you think I’m making any of these stories up or are talking out of my ***, since I’ve introduced Eric Collard for the first time, I think it’s only fitting to share with you the first song he and I (Bobby Bisciglia by the way for the new comers) wrote together, later bringing in Roxanne St Gelais (his wonderful girlfriend) and Rob Tremblay (my wonderful drummer, hehe) for lyrics. By the way, my rocking guitarist Phil Berube is playing guitars and bass on this demo recording:

Not sure the version of that song or music will be the final one on our (Play the Angel) upcoming album but I like giving a little personal background info from time to time cause I hate reading blogs and music articles and not knowing much about who is writing them cause especially with some of the more opinion based articles, I think it’s important to have a little background to gauge if the opinion is worth reading.

In any case, enjoy the cover and stay tuned for more great music download news and random music goodness!